Ezra Glinter, "Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah" (Yale UP, 2024)

Jul 5, 2025

Ezra Glinter, a writer and biographer known for his work at the Yiddish Book Center, dives into the complex life of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher rebbe. The discussion highlights how Schneerson revitalized the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and became one of the most controversial rabbinic figures of the 20th century. Glinter also addresses the challenges in interpreting Schneerson's legacy and the broader implications of his messianic beliefs, exploring themes of faith, identity, and the ongoing quest for redemption within the Jewish community.

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INSIGHT

Biographer's Challenge on Understanding

Biographers treat a person's life as a work of art they analyze through texts and actions. - Glinter found it challenging to fully understand Schneerson due to lack of direct interviews and his non-autobiographical nature.

ANECDOTE

Unanswered Biographical Questions

Schneerson gave insightful interviews in his younger years, which Glinter often quotes. - Ambiguities remain, especially on when Schneerson accepted his leadership and beliefs regarding messianic identity.

ANECDOTE

Rebbe's Courtship Amid Turmoil

Schneerson and Chaya Mushka had an unusually long courtship amid political turmoil. - Despite rumors, their delayed marriage was due to difficult circumstances, not scandal.

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The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. The man most recognized for the movement’s success is the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah.

While hope of redemption has sustained the Jewish people through exile and persecution, it has also upended Jewish society with its apocalyptic and anarchic tendencies. So it is not surprising that Schneerson’s messianic fervor made him one of the most controversial rabbinic leaders of the twentieth century. How did he go from being an ordinary rabbi’s son in the Russian Empire to achieving status as a mystical sage? How did he revitalize a centuries-old Hasidic movement, construct an outreach empire of unprecedented scope, and earn the admiration and condemnation of political, communal, and religious leaders in America and abroad?

In Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah (Yale University Press, 2024), Glinter presents a thoughtful biography of the spiritual leader that inspired the Lubavitch Hasidic community and its global outreach activities.

Interviewee: Ezra Glinter is a writer, editor, translator, and biographer. For five years he worked as the deputy culture editor of the Forward newspaper, where he edited Have I Got a Story for You, an anthology of Yiddish fiction in translation. He is currently the senior staff writer and editor at the Yiddish Book Center.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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