COLUMN ONE : Life After the <i> Rebbe</i> a Puzzle : Chabad’s future is clouded by the death of the man some thought was the Messiah. How it copes without its leader will shape fate of the orthodox Jewish sect and its vast fund-raising and social service network.

“Can Chabad Outlive the Rebbe?” asked the headline in a recent edition of a leading Jewish journal, as the 92-year-old leader of one of Judaism’s most aggressive and charismatic sects lay comatose in a New York hospital.

After the death Sunday of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh leader, or rebbe , of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, that question is at hand. At stake is the future of an organization that Schneerson personally transformed in his 44 years of leadership from a provincial sect into what Allen Nadler, an expert on the group’s activities, describes as the “most famous and powerful movement in contemporary Orthodox Judaism.”

Hinging on the future ideological and political course of the movement is the exploitation of millions of dollars in real estate holdings and the fate of an extensive network of schools, synagogues and such social programs as drug rehabilitation centers. What happens may depend on how Chabad as a whole comes to terms with Schneerson’s death.

Chabad claims more than 250,000 members in more than 30 countries, although outside observers call that an overstatement and place the number of adherents at as little as 25,000.

Thousands of non-members contribute to Chabad programs, including a highly publicized annual telethon in Los Angeles, worship at its synagogues and support its political and social initiatives.

The group has played a significant role in recent Israeli politics and lobbies forcefully in Washington on behalf of its social welfare activities. Schneerson’s speeches and sermons are the core of an enormous recorded library and are regularly broadcast across the globe on radio and satellite TV.

Chabad also sponsors a large fund-raising network whose benefactors include leading Jewish families and business people, smaller contributors and government programs. Its annual budget for charitable enterprises and missionary activities among fellow Jews has been estimated at $100 million. The budget for its Los Angeles outpost alone is more than $16 million, according to its leader, Schneerson disciple Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin.

But the rebbe’s illness--he suffered a stroke in 1992 and spent the last few months in a coma--provoked a major crisis within the sect as its other top leaders split over issues ranging from the proper medical care due Schneerson to the movement’s theological direction.

Some sources say the resulting uncertainty has cut substantially into the group’s charitable receipts. But Chabad’s problems are rooted in the increasingly Messianic character the sect assumed in recent years, with many adherents going so far as to identify Schneerson himself as the Messiah--and thus possibly immortal.

This belief not only conflicted with mainstream Jewish views of the nature of the Messiah, but established an obvious hurdle for the organization’s continuity after his death. By Chabad practice, only Schneerson could appoint a successor, as he was appointed in 1951 by his father-in-law, the previous rebbe . He died without naming an heir, although many believe that he has left a will.

The rebbe ‘s passing without his revelation as the Messiah would be “such a devastating blow that a majority of people would never recover,” Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, a former Chabad chaplain at UCLA who broke with Cunin’s organization but not with Chabad, said in an interview shortly before Schneerson’s death.

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The only appropriate successor would have to be “somebody with unbelievable talent to have the allegiance of 200,000 people--doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, people in the entertainment industry,” Schwartz said. “There’s no one who has all his facets in one person.”

In an interview Monday, Cunin himself gave no indication that his faith has been rocked by Schneerson’s death. “We believe the Messiah is coming any day,” he said. “We believe the dead will come back to life. Our belief in both of these is completely in place. The rebbe has his people in charge all over the world.”

Asked if a successor would be named, Cunin said: “No, not from the way I see it. He’s still with us.”

But other observers say that even if it survives in some form, Chabad cannot help but be seriously shaken by the passing of its charismatic leader.

“Some people will leave the movement, maybe even a majority, but some will become more dedicated,” said Menachem Friedman, an expert in ultra-Orthodox sects at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “One can’t be sure to which side the future belongs. But death is never a major obstacle to dedicated believers in a Messiah; see Christianity.”

For all that, Schneerson’s leadership--even critics acknowledged his charisma and strong personal presence--was key to the group’s growth and influence. He gave the organization its mission of preserving and glorifying Jewish identity in the face of modern pressure to assimilate--a message with appeal even to the assimilated, whose contributions help fill the coffers of Chabad Lubavitch.

(“Chabad” is an acronym from the Hebrew for wisdom, understanding and knowledge; Lubavitch is the Lithuanian hamlet where the sect began.)

“Until the last crisis (of the rebbe ‘s illness), they found getting financing easy among people concerned about intermarriage and the possibility of Jewishness disappearing from the modern American world,” said Friedman. “Chabad was fighting that much better than any other Jewish organization, so people concerned about it were donating to Chabad.”

Ironically, he said, Chabad was unique among Orthodox groups in its willingness to broadcast its message over the very technological advances that characterized the menacing modern world, including satellite television. Adherents, supporters, or the merely curious could engage Chabad members over the Internet, the global network of computer users.

“Traditionally, the Jewish Messiah ushers in a new era of universal peace and knowledge of God, rebuilds the Temple in Jerusalem, and restores exiles to Israel,” said Allen Nadler, an expert in Jewish orthodoxy at the Yivo Institute in New York. “Chabad’s Messianism shows a lot of American Christian influences. In fact, the very way the Lubavitchers deliver their message is very similar in technique and form to our fundamentalist and evangelical Christians in their use of TV, brochures and missionaries.”

Over the years, Schneerson and his followers and supporters rarely shrank from employing his tremendous authority on behalf of their goals in politics.

Among the group’s most controversial steps was its agitation in support of a change in Israel’s Law of Return, which grants citizenship to all Jews returning to the country. Chabad in 1989 tried to force an amendment to the law denying citizenship to those who had been converted by rabbis in the Conservative and Reform movements.

The campaign eventually failed, although it has remained a source of resentment among Reform and Conservative Jews. Schneerson, who never visited Israel himself, also spoke out against the Camp David peace accords and against Israeli government policies he interpreted as relinquishing Israeli territory.

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On occasion his authority was pressed into service for other ends. Last year, Australian and American securities regulators suspended trading in shares of Great Central Mines, an Australian gold and diamond mining concern, amid indications that the rebbe himself was indirectly behind the stock’s tripling in price--to $14, from just under $5--in the month after its debut in U.S. trading.

The company’s chairman, Joseph L. Gutnick, a major contributor to Chabad, used a video featuring Schneerson as part of his pitch to new American investors. The video showed the rebbe apparently pointing to a map of the Greater Nabberu region of Australia, where Gutnick contended the company was about to make a major strike. Gutnick also said publicly that the rebbe had “assured” him “both publicly and privately that I will be involved with major discoveries in both gold and diamonds.”

But Great Central’s own joint venture partner on the Nabberu mine downplayed its potential. In the end, the company itself withdrew from all diamond mining in the region, and the stock price settled down. It closed Monday at $7.125 in NASDAQ trading.

It was Schneerson’s potent personal authority that gave Chabad followers a strength of conviction that critics said sometimes has manifested itself as an inclination to run roughshod over opponents--an end-justifies-the-means approach to everything from proselytizing to fund-raising.

Chabad branches have been at the center of courthouse fights over their determination to erect Chanukah menorahs and other religious symbols on public lands. Some financial supporters have said that they have been asked to lend money to local Chabad organizations, only to run into later difficulty collecting repayment.

Under Chabad’s structure every local group owes nominal allegiance to headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn--a place known among adherents simply as “770”--but they remain legally and financially autonomous.

That provided the organization room to maneuver when financial problems enveloped Chabad of Irvine, a branch founded in 1979 by Rabbi Mendel Duchman. Duchman resigned his post in 1991, leaving his congregation burdened by debts of some $1.2 million and three lawsuits filed by former members and a local bank. The members charged that Duchman persuaded them to co-sign loans for Chabad by misrepresenting the terms and alleged that he defaulted on the loans and left them to pay the creditors. The congregation later was reorganized.

By most accounts, Cunin is one of Schneerson’s most vigorous and successful disciples. Since coming west 27 years ago on Schneerson’s injunction, “Go--California is yours,” Cunin has built Chabad here into one of the group’s most active centers.

Chabad operates a drug rehabilitation program in Los Angeles and Chabad Houses, or educational centers, near several colleges.

And Cunin has become a familiar figure via Chabad of California’s annual telethon, on which he has shared the stage for 13 years with such Hollywood celebrities as Jon Voight and Shelley Winters. The telethon reportedly raises more than $3 million a year.

But Cunin’s rise has not come without controversy. At one point, Chabad of California owed $18 million to 40 banks and 18 individuals--”and all of it (secured by) my beard,” as Cunin put it in a 1990 interview with The Times. All the creditors were eventually paid off, he said Monday.

While seeking contributions to fund the deficit, Cunin met Beverly Hills matron Hermine J. Weinberg, who gave him a $1,000 contribution and later, without the knowledge of her husband or children, rewrote her will to cut off her closest relatives in favor of the Westwood Chabad House. She completed the change just days before taking her own life in 1985.

William Weinberg and his children sued to overturn the bequest, charging that Chabad officials took advantage of a woman with a history of mental problems, a charge Cunin denied. The case was settled in 1988 with an agreement that awarded about $21 million to Chabad, a sum Cunin later called “the Weinberg miracle.”

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Within a few years that money was depleted, according to Jerry Weintraub, the producer of “The Karate Kid” and other Hollywood movies, who acts as a co-host of the annual telethon and a major fund-raiser and informal financial adviser to Cunin.

“Their finances are a mess,” Weintraub said last week, adding that Cunin’s determination to accede to most of the charitable requests crossing his desk confounded efforts to stabilize Chabad of California by creating an endowment fund.

Now, branches such as Cunin’s are faced with the task of carrying on without their leader’s physical presence.

“They’re all in inner turmoil,” observed Weintraub in an interview shortly before the rebbe ‘s death. “Yet they try to carry on. I think when they close the door at night, they’re frightened.”