Chabad - Rav Shochet criticizes Prof. Berger's book

Rael Levinsohn commented to "Chabad - Atzmut was placed in a body III": Another important source regarding this topic is this article by Rabbi Immanuel Schochet.

"When you hear something unseemly about another, be deeply grieved. For if the report is true, the one spoken about is not good. If the report is false, the one speaking is not good." (Baal Shem Tov) This maxim comes to mind when reading Prof. David Berger's recent book in which he accuses a prominent Jewish religious movement, Chabad-Lubavitch, of distorting Jewish tradition, false messianism, adopting Christian doctrines, and indicts its followers as heretics and idolaters.

Key quote:

The "controversial" phrase in its full context makes it crystal clear, beyond any shadow of doubt, that a rebbe is not, Heaven forbid, identified with the Godhead. God, rebbe and hasidim are incontrovertibly distinguished one from another. In sound Talmudic-Midrashic tradition, the tzadik (saint) stands above the people and serves at best as in intermediary to bring the latter to a bond with God. The concept of intermediary is explicitly qualified to be of supportive nature ("an intermediary who joins together"), as opposed to, Heaven forbid, the Christian concept of an indispensable intermediary ("an intermediary who separates") which violates a fundamental principle of the Jewish faith.
The distortion by the lunatic fringe of the messianists and the venomous mitnagdim who reject hasidism a priori, is no more than crude ignorance or pernicious mischief. "Whoever wishes to err, let him err!"
It should be noted, though, that the Rebbe appears to have anticipated this tragic malignity three decades before the birth of the lunatic fringe, and way before the "discovery" of his words by the mitnagdim in the 1980's: in the reprints of this discourse in Kuntres Yud Shvat (published in the 1960's), and in Sefer Hama'amarim Bati Legani (New York 1977, p. 277) he ordered the deletion of the "controversial" phrase!