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Article: Great expectations. (Hasidic Jews' anticipation of the Messiah's arrival)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- November 30, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I FIRST SPOTTED Menachem Schneerson, the rebbe or leader of the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Judaism, on late-night cable TV. Tapping through the preachers, the pundits, and the shows of yesteryear, one would suddenly come upon a keen-eyed, thick-bearded old man in a black coat and fedora, speaking in Yiddish to a dense crowd of men, similarly dressed. Sometimes his listeners burst into song, which he encouraged with go-team shakes of his arm: when they stopped, he resumed. It looked live, from nineteenth-century Russia. In fact, it was all happening in Brooklyn. Only in America.
Rebbe Schneerson has not led such a meeting in years, and a stroke this spring kept ...