The Messiah? Rabbi Menachem Schneerson and the Lubavitcher Movement

I clearly remember that day in June 1994 when the Hasidic Rabbi died and when the 150,000 or so Jews who belong to the Lubavitcher movement had shut down the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel and the Palisades Parkway as well as the Verrazano Bridge in the Holland Tunnel. The Brooklyn Bridge itself was shut, the Whitestone Bridge and the Van Wyck Expressway were completely gridlocked, and even the Throgs Neck Bridge was on its last legs when Rabbi Menachem Schneerson was being transported to the cemetery.

As leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, he took an insular Hasidic group that almost came to an end with the Holocaust and transformed it into one of the most influential movements in religious world Jewry, with an international network of over 3,000 educational and social centers. The institutions he established include kindergartens, schools, drug-rehabilitation centers, care-homes for the disabled and synagogues.

Many of his adherents refused to believe that he died on June 12, 1994, believing instead that he did not really die but will reveal himself to be the messiah.

They visit his grave every year in Queens thinking that he will rise out of it. I myself have visited his grave twice because my grandfather is buried near that Montefiore Cemetery near Flushing Meadows in Queens since 1966. The Armenians are buried adjacent to where the Jews are buried.

Schneerson was criticized for his passion and desire to raise awareness of the coming of the Messiah. Detractors criticized a children's song with the words "We want moshiach (the messiah) now / We don't want to wait," that Schneerson commended.

Following age-old Jewish tradition that the resting place of a tzadik is holy, Schneerson's gravesite is viewed by many as a holy site and has been described by the Yedioth Ahronoth as "the American Western Wall", where thousands of people, Jews and non-Jews, go to pray each week.