Chabad's Last Mission

A Jewish man who lives separated from his wife can accomplish a divorce by use of a messenger. The messenger needs only to get the wife to accept the document from him. He will then have successfully executed his role as messenger for the divorce.

An analogous event took place one Shabbat 19 years ago when the Lubavitcher Rebbe addressed his thousands of emissaries from around the world who gathered at his Brooklyn headquarters. These emissaries who serve as messengers of the Rebbe to disseminate his messages worldwide, who gather in Brooklyn for this annual meeting with their prolific leader, were shocked by the Rebbe's new marching orders. They were accustomed to the Rebbe's continual stark demands for extended outreach - but the gigantic nature of their new campaign now dwarfed whatever ambitious assignments were heaped upon them in years heretofore.

The Rebbe said they have from now on one main message to deliver, and that any other outreach to Jews they are involved with must be subsumed and secondary to the one main message. The new piece of information they must now deliver is this: That Jews must accept the Rebbe's role as Moshiach! That Moshiach has already been given this rank of redeemer but, as a king, he cannot yet function unless much of Jewry accept his kingship, without which a redemption cannot be forthcoming.

The Rebbe spoke clearly; "The solitary mission remaining ..." "The gate through which all other outreach must be channeled ..." "The year when the King Moshiach revealed himself ..." "The redeemer has already been given the go-ahead ..." "Everything you do must be penetrated with this one central idea ,,," "All Jews have already merited redemption," and "All that remains is for people to accept Moshiach for who he is!"

In plain words, God has already dispatched the Rebbe to redeem the Jewish people. The only duty that remains incumbent upon the people to accomplish this feat is to accept the messenger of God. The Rebbe wished to awaken his emissaries to a new turn of events, a turnabout, a world of new circumstances that his emissaries must from now on dwell on, to get Jews to accept the Rebbe as Moshiach. For he, as a king, needs a nation to nominate him, for him to lead them. "There is no king without a nation," we are often told in Chassidus. The king cannot force himself upon his people.

From that day on, the emissaries had their new work cut out for them. Yes, they could continue encouraging observation of commandments and continue talking Torah, but, in and of itself, these are now no longer main objectives - if they act as representatives of the Rebbe. What they can do, instead, is to continue these functions and explain how they can accelerate the Rebbe's revelation, and then broach the issue of Moshiach.

Any Chabad emissary who fails to make this main mission his priority, something that any Jew he meets can immediately sense and discern if in fact he lives up to it, then any other function with which he replaces his main mission, despite its lofty reach, is a mission unaccomplished. The litmus test of every Chabad emissary can easily be assayed by any Jew he reaches out to - did he allude to the Rebbe as Moshiach or is he avoiding the issue. It is a simple test.

Certainly such mystical news cannot be poured out in indiscreetly, to a mind that cannot yet fathom simpler religious aspects. But it must, nevertheless, serve as the core for which all endeavors are meant to expose.

For many emissaries this main mission is difficult to adjust to, particularly when he calculates that his financial backers might thereby find him unsuitable for "serious" consideration any longer. But here too the Rebbe had forewarned and informed his emissaries that "The world is ready", that people are, surprisingly enough, ready for this ostensibly irrational novelty. It is, anyhow, not for the emissary to allow his calculations to interfere with his mission otherwise he automatically disqualifies himself as the Rebbe's messenger.

Chabad's new - and only - mission is, in fact, Chabad's new and final mission; Its last hurdle to the finish line. Of all the Rebbe's "mitzvah campaigns", this one is the hardest, for obvious reasons. But it's not for his emissaries to decide on the agenda. This last mission is the toughest, a test, to be sure, and, despite occasional winds of resistance in a world accustomed to the prevalence of natural law, those loyal to the Rebbe follow through with gusto to deliver their supernatural message, albeit in a cogent, even rational manner.

So if you see a Chabad emissary (any Chabadnik thus qualifies) doing everything BUT driving this central point home, you can remind him by asking him what it was the Rebbe conscripted him for on that eventful Shabbat, Chayei-Sarah, 1992.