Rabbi Shmuel Butman, the outspoken Lubavitch Chasid leading the effort to convince people that the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson is the Messiah, has been fired from his job running the Lubavitch Youth Organization.
Or has he?
Contradictory messages are coming from leaders and spokesmen for various programs within the Lubavitch movement, who each claim the authoritative mantle to the late rebbe’s vision and say that the rebbe charged them with carrying out his wishes.
The disagreement sheds light on the deep divisions within the Lubavitch movement over whether Schneerson should be promoted as the Messiah.
Schneerson died June 12, 1994, two years after he suffered a stroke that seemed to incapacitate him, though his followers continued to rely on him for advice on matters ranging from whether to have surgery to whether they should go ahead with a particular business deal.
Many still seek their rebbe’s heavenly intercression and go to the cemetery in New York where he is buried to pray and to leave notes on his grave, requesting his help.
Butman himself said he has not been fired, and his version of the story is backed by one board member of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, an outreach group that falls under the purview of one of two umbrella Lubavitch organizations.
But another board member said Butman was fired, a view confirmed by Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who, as a director of Machne Israel, one of the umbrella groups, is technically Butman’s boss.
The board of Lubavitch Youth sent Butman a letter dated Feb. 5 saying that they were firing him because, despite repeated warnings, he has failed to submit reports of income and expenses for the last two years.
The letter, written in Hebrew, also cites as a reason for his dismissal the fact that he was using the fax and phone lines of the Lubavitch Youth Organization to promote his message that the rebbe is the Messiah – work that some within Lubavitch are deeply unhappy about.
Butman said the whole episode was misunderstanding that was rectified in a Feb. 12 meeting with board members.
“I am not fired,” he said, reached at his home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
“We had a certain dispute, to straighten out some things of organizational matters. It’s not a question of financial records. There’s no dismissal whatsoever,” said Butman. “We drank `I’chaim,’ we worked it out 100 percent.”
He said he promised to keep the work of Lubavitch Youth completely separate from his work as chairman of the International Campaign to Bring Moshiach.
“At the same time, I was not precluded from working on both,” he said.
Butman described the work of the Lubavitch Youth Organization as “the outreach arm of the Lubavitch movement, which means that everything that has to do with outreach goes through the Lubavitch Youth Organization.”
He added, “Working with college students, going to army bases, going out on the street to put on tefillin [on Jewish men], the menorah lightings, all this is the Lubavitch Youth Organization.”
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a spokesman for Lubavitch World Headquarters and an aide to Krinsky, said Butman’s description of the purview of Lubavitch Youth is “unbelievable, to put it mildly.
“Rabbi Butman is not known in Lubavitch to have participated or overseen any of those activities other than his publicity garnering menorah lighting in Manhattan.”
Referring to Butman’s Moshiach campaign, Shmotkin said, “How dare he take credit for the very work that no one in the world did more to destroy than he Shame on him.”
Those who believe that the late rebbe should be considered the Messiah are happy about the International Campaign to Bring Moshiach, which is now producing a two-minute commercial and a 30-minute infomercial to be broadcast on television later this year.
The campaign also sponsors billboards and newspaper advertisements promoting the rebbe as Moshiach, and recently organized an international satellite program, which hooked together Lubavitch-led congregations in Israel, Europe, Australia and the United States to proclaim the rebbe as “king Messiah.”
Those who disagree say that the rebbe’s legacy is being betrayed and that the good work of Lubavitch is being undermined because the promotional campaign scares Jews away from the movement’s outreach work to bring Jews closer to traditional observance.
Spokesmen for each side accuse the other of being few in number and marginal in influence.
Meanwhile, Lubavitch Youth Organization board member Rabbi Hirsch Gansbourg confirmed Butman’s version of recent events, saying, “He’s not fired at the moment. I hope it will be laid to rest.”
“The financial records are nobody’s business,” he said, when asked about the alleged irregularities. “It’s wrong to dig into something like this.”
But another board member, Rabbi Mendel Shemtov, contradicted that view, saying that the board’s “decision was to fire Butman. He had two warnings in writing.”
“I have no idea why they think he hasn’t been fired,” he said. “There were no other meetings [of the board] after this to discuss it.
“If you fire someone he’s going to try to get it back. If he will, I don’t know.”
Krinsky, who described Butman’s behavior as “simply an abuse of the office,” said the decision to fire Butman was reported to him and that he has not been notified of any reversal of that decision by the board.
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