March 17, 2006
The leadership of ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement has won a court case against Messianist opponents within its movement. The Supreme Court of New York ruled on Monday that Chabad’s leadership has the right to affix a plaque outside the movement’s main Brooklyn synagogue that refers to their late rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as “of blessed memory.” Similar plaques installed the past few years have been vandalized, presumably by radical Lubavitch affiliates who believe that Schneerson is the messiah and that identifying him as deceased is blasphemy. The plaintiffs, Agudas Chassidei Chabad and Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, were also granted a permanent injunction against the defendant, Congregation Lubavitch, barring it from interfering with the building. The judge specified that his ruling “shall in no way be construed as favoring one side or the other in the Messianic debate.”
