Word: habad
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...Within Habad, a well-financed organization with 30,000 followers in Brooklyn and at least 100,000 worldwide, the expectation of the Messiah's coming has been building since Schneerson in the past few years began exhorting his disciples more and more to actively prepare for the day. The crumbling of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union's demise, explains Habad spokesman Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, "lead one to think that these extraordinary, shattering events are a precursor to something even more cataclysmic...
Last month the rebbe gave permission to one of his flock to begin building a house for him in Kfar Habad, the movement's village in Israel. Schneerson has never set foot in the Jewish state, and his followers believe he will do so only at the moment of Redemption. The ground breaking was seen as a sign that the time is near. "The Messiah will come any day," declared Moshe Kruger, standing on the plot for Schneerson's house...
...official tenet of Habad's belief that Schneerson is the Messiah, but many of his followers say outright that he is, and some have petitioned him to "reveal" himself. The rebbe has on a few occasions denied that he is the Redeemer but has done little to discourage speculation. Two weeks ago, Schneerson received a vote of confidence from renowned Talmudic scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. Though a Lubavitcher himself, Steinsaltz has a reputation for sober erudition, so it caused a small stir among the non-Habad Orthodox when he said Schneerson was "the most likely person on the scene...
Steinsaltz, who points out that Messianic expectation is a fundamental tenet of the Jewish faith, believes that each generation produces a candidate and that ordinary people can speed his coming by creating an atmosphere for Redemption. Other scholars reject Habad's active campaigning for the event. Followers of Rabbi Schach, a longtime rival of Schneerson's, believe the arrival of the Messiah is God's business, not man's. "When he comes, he comes," says Avraham Ravitz, a member of the Knesset. "It's crazy to force the Messiah to come by selling him like Coca-Cola, with jingles...
...Habad's critics also say the group may be creating the conditions for large- scale spiritual disillusionment. "If you convince people that the Messiah is coming and he doesn't," says Amnon Levy, author of a book on the ultra- Orthodox, "a whole generation may lose its faith...