Famed Rabbi’s Funeral Draws Thousands

Stricken followers of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson bore his plain pine coffin on their shoulders Sunday before he was interred with simple prayers in a small cemetery in Queens. Around the world, disciples of the charismatic leader of the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher movement greeted his passing with tears, songs, hope and disbelief.

Many of his supporters believed the rabbi, with his full white beard and piercing blue eyes, was the Messiah.

Approximately three months after he suffered a stroke, Schneerson, the seventh in a line of Lubavitcher rebbes dating back to 18th-Century Russia and a force in modern Israeli politics, died early Sunday at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. He was 92, childless and, for the moment, left no clear successor.

“Unfortunately, there is no one, as they say, in the dugout who will take the place of this great leader,” said Rabbi Shea Hecht, an important figure in the movement.

On Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, a siren sounded moments after Schneerson’s death at 1:50 a.m. EDT and hundreds of the rabbi’s followers gathered in pre-dawn darkness in front of the red-brick Lubavitcher headquarters. Others surged first to the hospital.

By the time of the funeral almost 15 hours later, their numbers had swollen to thousands in Brooklyn--a sea of Hasidic men in traditional black felt hats and black coats, mothers wheeling baby carriages, young children in their best clothes, a teen-ager dressed in black on roller skates. Many were red-eyed from lack of sleep and weeping.

As word spread around the globe, supporters in Israel, France and Britain chartered planes and rushed to the funeral. Rabbi Chaim Mentz said when he reached the airport in Los Angeles 45 minutes after hearing the rabbi was dead, he was amazed to find 500 people scrambling for tickets to New York.

A long line of the rebbe’s followers filed into the headquarters building to look through a half-open door and catch a glimpse of his body, lying in his study and covered by a white cloth.

Thousands, some crying hysterically, surged forward to touch the coffin when it finally emerged from the building and was placed in a van for the trip under heavy police escort to the cemetery.

Some walked 10 miles to the cemetery where Schneerson, who through word of mouth and satellite communications transformed an isolated sect to an important force in Judaism, was interred in a small granite mausoleum.

About 100 men climbed on top of the mausoleum, open at the center, to have a better view.

After the interment, Lubavitchers were allowed into the mausoleum single-file. But many of Schneerson’s followers became impatient, and police had trouble maintaining order.

Three officers and two Lubavitchers suffered minor injuries when crowds surged forward, and two Lubavitchers were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, police said.

In Kfar Habad, the Israeli village where followers of the rabbi’s Habad movement built a meticulous replica of his Brooklyn headquarters, people danced, drank vodka and refused to believe reports that he had died.

“He’s the Messiah. He’s not dead,” one said. “It’s a test of our faith.”

Thousands of miles away, that sentiment was echoed over and over by many on Eastern Parkway. Although he never claimed to be the Moshiach (pronounced Mo-she-ah), or Messiah, many of the rabbi’s followers stoutly believed he was the person chosen to revitalize Judaism and bring peace, prosperity and heaven on Earth.

Schneerson suffered a stroke March 10--his second in two years--and his condition steadily worsened. His first stroke in 1992 had left him unable to speak and partially paralyzed.

The rebbe’s death--to the end an incomprehensible occurrence to his most zealous followers--left the movement without a leader. It also leaves them with the prospect of a tumultuous time of disillusionment and change before a new rebbe assumes leadership.

Many of Schneerson’s followers believed that because the rebbe was the promised Messiah, he would not die before world peace was established, all Jews gathered in Israel, and the Temple in Jerusalem--destroyed in 70 C.E. (common era)--was rebuilt.

“What will happen now is the continuation of the same,” said one of the rebbe’s advisers who spoke Sunday on the condition his name not be used. “We don’t know. You have to engage in willing suspension of disbelief. The rebbe’s life was full of miracles.”

“We are going to persist,” the adviser said. “What form will that take? Whatever form it requires. We’ll find a way to clear away the rubble.”

For other Jews--both religious and secular--who discounted the messianic claims and saw in some of Schneerson’s pronouncements unwelcome meddling in the political affairs of Israel, his passing will close a controversial chapter in Jewish life.

Born in 1902, Schneerson was the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe since Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder. Schneerson was trained as an engineer at the University of Berlin and the Sorbonne. In 1929, he married the second daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe. Both he and his wife, Chaya Moussia, who died in 1988, are great-great-grandchildren of the third Lubavitcher rebbe.

In 1941, he emigrated to the United States. Then, in 1951, he succeeded his father-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn as rebbe.

Since then, the movement, which was decimated during World War II and the Nazi Holocaust, has become one of the world’s most influential Hasidic sects. Its annual budget has been conservatively estimated by one of the rebbe’s secretaries at $100 million.

Estimates differ on its membership. While Rabbi Baruch Y. Hecht, associate director of Habad of California, puts the number at between 300,000 and 350,000 worldwide, one authority outside the movement, Prof. Samuel C. Heilman of Queens College of the City University of New York, said there are no more than 35,000.

Whatever the number, Schneerson built up a movement whose influence went far beyond the confines of its seemingly insular Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where devout men, or Hasidim, strictly observe the traditional dress code of beards and curled sideburns, and black flat-topped felt hats and black suits. (Not all Hasidim, however, are Schneerson followers.)

In 1988, the rebbe created a sensation that divided the Jewish world when he nearly succeeded in amending Israel’s Law of Return to require that all who convert to Judaism follow Orthodox tradition.

Shortly before Israeli elections, his movement engaged in overt politicking that resulted in five candidates for the small but ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel party winning seats in the Knesset. When those seats were combined with those held by another small ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, they became the fulcrum on which the balance of power shifted between Israel’s two major parties.

The upshot was that then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir won the endorsement of both parties--after acceding to the rebbe’s views on the Law of Return. Ultimately, however, the Knesset rejected any change in the law.

In 1992, to the consternation of some Israeli officials, the rebbe vigorously reasserted his opposition to any suggestion that Israel cede land to the Palestinians in exchange for peace--just when peace talks began to intensify.

In recent years the debate over whether Schneerson had acknowledged that he was the long-awaited Messiah divided his followers and drew dismay--and at times scorn--from Jews outside the sect.

Many Jewish theologians have held that a potential Messiah is born every generation. Unlike the Christian belief that Jesus as Messiah was both God and man, the Messiah expected by Hasidic Jews is entirely human.

In the last several years, many of Schneerson’s followers fervently urged him to reveal himself as the Messiah to bring about the long hoped-for messianic age. His most zealous followers argued that he did that when he nodded his assent as they sang a messianic song, “King Moshiach,” last year.

But the rebbe’s closest confidants, noting that he had suffered a stroke and it was hard to say what he may have intended, were adamant in discounting such claims. They did, however, acknowledge that Schneerson would definitely be a leading candidate.

At one point, Schneerson himself reportedly rejected pleas to reveal himself as Messiah. “I know what my work is. Don’t give me new assignments,” he told followers in 1991, according to a book by Jerome R. Mintz, a professor of anthropology and Jewish studies at Indiana University.

Whatever their differences over whether Schneerson had publicly acknowledged his messiahship, all Lubavitchers revered him and believed that he was the expected one. They worked fervently to bring about the messianic age when Schneerson would unmistakably reveal himself as King Moshiach.

They redoubled their efforts in 1991, when Schneerson said he had done all that he could to bring about the messianic era. Schneerson told his followers that it was up to them and all Jews to ask what they could do to hasten the Messiah’s arrival.

The result was a reinvigorated and almost unheard of effort in Judaism, aimed at proselytization and bringing lapsed Jews back into the fold.

As Schneerson grew older, such efforts intensified. Last year, for example, his adherents paid for billboards in Southern California that said “Discover Moshiach.”

What effect his death has on the movement and the morale of his followers is uncertain. Last year, in an interview with The Times, Mintz said disillusionment was inevitable. “Everyone has worked themselves up to a frenzy now,” he said. “Of course, they’re going to be doomed to disappointment.”

Heilman disagreed. He said that while some followers on the edges may fall away, those in the core group will declare that they must be even more faithful than ever because of Schneerson’s death.

Goldman reported from New York and Stammer reported from Los Angeles.