Chabad - Why Chabad frightens me

The following reasonable and sensitive comment by Rabbi Oliver asks for my personal response. I will take a reluctant stab at answering because it is actually asking a very hard question - Who are you? - as if this were relevant to these issues.

I am first of all an observer and a participant. I have meaningful friends and interactions with a wide range of people with a wide range of beliefs. I have focused for many years on understanding the meta issues of the Jewish people and to be able to articulate the processes which lead to success and those which lead to disaster. If you peruse my seforim - Yad Moshe - the index to the Igros Moshe, Yad Yisroel - the index to the Mishna Berura and finally Daas Torah - the range of legitimate hashkofa views. You will notice that I am providing an interface - for others - to be able to quickly gain access to information of our gedolim regarding a wide range of issues. As I wrote in the introduction to Daas Torah - I was advised by the great talmid chachom and baal machshava - HaRav Moshe Shapiro, shlita - to let the texts speak for themselves without interjecting myself into the issues. Thus I try to stay in the background - but at the same time I try to make things happen as a catalyst for others.

The issue of Chabad is a very troubling one. The most frightening thing in the world is not a monster but something familiar - someone you love who might be corrupted and is out to destroy you. For example a husband or wife who becomes mentally ill and it is difficult to know whether their thoughts and actions are healthy or sick. A child who is a drug addict. Cancer is the most frightening disease because it turns your own healthy body into a destructive and deadly force. The communist scares of the McCarthy era was that maybe your best friends or your father was a communist. The horrors of the Inquisition were the result of the fear of the goyim that those who had converted were not sincere and so they did horrible tortures on people to try and clarify whether the converts were friend or foe. Fat people, mental ill people or the handicapped are discriminated against because they are distortions of what a person is supposed to be. The Fifth Column or traitor is the most frightening enemy.

I once talked to a chabadnik who lives in Crown Heights and asked him how he could live with the low life muggers and drug addicts that surrounded and permeated his neighborhood. He said ,"I can live with that because it is obvious that they are the enemy and they have no influence on me or may family. I could never live in Flatbush or some other nice quiet neighborhood because I would constantly be explaining to myself and my kids why that saintly apikorus or Christian is somehow inferior because they don't have Torah. I would be in constant fear that my children would fall in love with wonderful Reform or Conservative Jews. - who have more sensitivity than their chabad teachers. In Crown Heights I know who I am and I know who I am not."

Chabad elicits primal fears because they are in many ways the ideal of what a Jew is, at the same time they seem to do or think such grotesque absurd things or even heretical ideas that the cognitive dissonance drives me crazy. Therefore whenever Chabad says, "Look at all the mitzvos we do, look at our mesiras nefesh, look at all the people are frum because of us." It doesn't advance their cause it makes it worse because the dissonance becomes stronger. Whenever a chabadnik says, "Well on the surface what we say and do might seem problematic but if you learn to think like us by years of study you will agree that there is no problem" also increases the problem. If I, after years of Torah study or the talmidei chachomim I know and respect are upset about what they hear and read about Chabad - it doesn't help to say that my role models of Torah don't know what they are talking about. The "Just trust me" of the chabadnik is scary. After all isn't that what the Wolf said to Little Red Riding Hood?
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Rabbi Yehoishophot Oliver has left a new comment on your post "Chabad - Daas Torah Blog is "Pure unadulterated ha...":

I actually thought his mention of your sincerity was a backhanded compliment. Whatever.

Rabbi Eidensohn, just as you say that Chassidei Chabad should understand where you and your colleagues are coming from, so should you try to understand where Chassidei Chabad are coming from.

The relationship that a Chabad Chossid has with his Rebbe is a very deep relationship. It's not just about learning Torah. It's a deep personal feeling, and it's supposed to be (see, for example Kuntres Hishtatchus from the Mittele Rebbe). What if someone would start a blog badmouthing your father, would you respond dispassionately? I don't think anyone would. And if you didn't, would that reflect badly on your character? Nope.

So when you come on here, for all to see, and in essence attack Chassidim and even the Rebbe, albeit in a scholarly sounding way, it's very upsetting. We know that these claims come from misquotes, exaggerations, third-hand reports, etc. Take your post right here. Is it really fair to jump to a conclusion that one hostile post tarnishes the entire movement? I think not. We also know that some claims have some truth to them, albeit exaggerated as if these are faults of everyone or most, when in fact it's only a small minority or even a handful. You see, we know that these are exaggerations.

For example, we know that the vast majority of Lubavitchers are very nice people, and the earlier post where you quoted something impolite that a Lubavitcher said to you really comes off as a totally unfair misrepresentation, when we know that it's not so. Also, we know that there exist some regrettable faults in certain individuals over which we don't have much control, and quite frankly, that also causes us pain.

This upset feeling is all the more intense when we as Lubavitchers know that a claim, certainly the one concerning revelation of Elokus in Tzadikim, is simply not factual.

I personally have been so upset that I've had to make a tremendous effort not to go there, and stick to the issues in a more understated way, because that's the way I'm going to have some constructive impact. I think that Hirschel's post wasn't constructive, but personally, I can relate to Hirschel's sentiments. And I know other Chassidim who are so upset when they see the distortions and exaggerations, etc., that they just can't handle it, so they avoid such sites and interactions altogether.

I don't know you personally; I'm still trying to figure you out from your blog, but there definitely exist people who have a sick, malicious agenda to attack everything about Chabad, one driven by far less than pure motives, even if only subconsciously. Everything they can get their hands on that sounds disparaging, they post, and all in the name of "exposing the truth." That's sinas chinam because although there are pretexts for the hatred, at the core those are not the reasons, and this is just evident in the way they talk. They are out there, and everyone knows the names of their blogs. Is it so far-fetched for someone to confuse you with them, that you should be surprised at a hostile response? (By the way, I'd appreciate a response, instead of just reposting my post for others to respond.)