q and A

By Michael Orbach

Issue of June 25, 2010/ 13 Tammuz, 5770

Samuel Heilman is the Harold Proshansky Chair of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center and is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College of the City University of New York. A sociologist of Jewish life, his latest work is “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson” which he co-wrote with Menachem Friedman. It has not earned universal praise within the Orthodox community.

Michael Orbach: What was the goal in mind for the book?

Samuel Heilman: We wanted to explain what it means to be a shliach, and to explain who the man who sent them on their mission was and how he transformed himself from a man pursuing a secular career to one caught up by Messianism and the denial of death.

MO: What’s the reaction been from Lubavitch itself to the work?

SH: Anything that does not present their Rebbe as sublime and always focused on religious concerns is viewed as offensive at best and slander at worst. A Hasid cannot see his Rebbe as anything short of an object of holy veneration. But as sociologists, we don’t look at him that way.

MO: How do you think the revelations about the late Rebbe will affect his legacy?

SH: That we leave to prophets and reviewers of our work.

MO: What is the Rebbe’s greatest accomplishment?

SH: His personal transformation in his 40’s and his ability to inspire, what was at the time, a dying movement to change its character and become a worldwide phenomenon that not only goes where Hasidim never did before, but does so with the confidence that their work has cosmic and messianic meaning.