Were the Rebbe and Alter Rebbe at Odds With an Issue

By Rabbi Shloime Naparstek, Moshiach Office Co-director

On the 24th of Teves 5573 (December of 1812), the Alter Rebbe passed away. No, he was not at home in comfort surrounded by Chassidim, but on the run, in a far-off hamlet. With the advancement of the French military led by the French Emperor, Napoléon Bonaparte, into the Russian interior during the Russian campaign of 1812, the Alter Rebbe left his hometown of Liadi so as not to be under French occupation even for a moment.

Such was the extent of the dislike the Alter Rebbe had for Napoléon and his worldview. He made his view public and gave tactical assistance to the Russian army to ensure a victory for the Czar. On the spiritual plane as well, the Alter Rebbe famously rose early on Rosh Hashana of that year and blew the shofar before davening to solidify Napoléon’s defeat.

Napoléon Bonaparte’s rise to power in the wake of the French revolution of 1799 marked a significant advancement of the ideas of emancipation and the rights of individual men. Liberty became an important value, and the power of monarchic governments has been on the wane ever since. In addition to land conquest, Napoléon’s method was to introduce these revolutionary ideas to the areas he conquered and alter its previous philosophy to match his own.

But the philosophy was G-dless, and therefore a danger to the continuation of Yiddishkeit. The Alter Rebbe saw this new trend to be such a threat, that he supported the dictatorial Czar who was by no means a friend of the Jews, to ensure Napoléon would not be victorious – and ultimately passed away during his escape (just ten days after the Russian victory), all to preserve Yiddishkeit.

Make no mistake about it: the American Revolution, the Bill of Rights, and the establishment of (basically) the first government based on the separation of church and state as a fundamental premise (the USA) is born from the same revolutionary trend as the French revolution. Nowhere else in the world is the liberty of the individual citizen awarded such sacred status, and America is the most significant influencer in that regard on its sister nations.

So, doesn’t it surprise us when the Rebbe speaks so highly of the foundation of America? Of Thanksgiving, for example, as an indication of a good society?
Doesn’t it surprise us that it is the Rebbe’s philosophy that we embrace the free society we dwell in and wield the modern culture as an imperative?
The Rebbe sees America as the best breeding ground for us to fulfill our mandate of spreading Chassidus to the world. Doesn’t this seem contradictory to the Alter Rebbe’s vehement opposition to Napoleon?

The Alter Rebbe made it clear that Napoleon’s new age thinking at its heart was ‘prikas ol’, a rejection to living a G-dly life, and therefore was a real threat to Yiddishkeit. Yiddishkeit would not have survived the onslaught and the Alter Rebbe saved it.

Looking at it objectively and considering the 42 years of the Rebbe’s words and attitudes on freedom and the United States, you may question: Was the Rebbe at odds with his great-grandfather, the Alter Rebbe, on this issue?

There is a fundamental difference between the American and French revolutions. The world has progressed, and being that we are so close to the Geulah-state, things are getting more and more crystallized. You see, Geulah isn’t an “atom bomb” event that radically changes everything in one instant. It is an evolution through history. Slowly (and recently quickly) but surely, the world – its philosophies and cultures, its trends and ideas – realizes its ultimate purpose of being and gets more and more aligned with the G-dly ideal.

Both revolutions were proponents of freedom, but whereas the French Revolution of its time proposed freedom from religion, the American Revolution, which sprouted from the ideals of the first settlers, proposed freedom of religion. The American Revolution had a G-dly core, where the rights of the individual man was based not on natural law but on its origins as a G-dly gift to each human being.

Both revolutions are linked and are of the same stock – but the world has gotten closer to geulah and that is where the big difference lies. The Rebbe was not at odds with the Alter Rebbe. They were of the exact same reasoning. The difference is due to the difference of generation. The Rebbe’s generation, situated on the brink of Geulah, is closer to a more holy existence and its demand for freedom and liberty has at its heart a thirst to promote living more G-dly.

The Alter Rebbe opposed new age thinking because in his generation, many years prior to Geulah, man would have preferred freedom from a G-dly life. There has been a deep change in the core of human nature since. Now that we are so close to Geulah, human nature has reached the point that it now seeks a connection with G-dliness. The Rebbe utilizes new age thinking because now man seeks a connection with G-d, but he also desires individual freedom of how to express it.

That is why a Moshiach minded person seeks to wield the culture and modern trends around him. He doesn’t oppose it; he utilizes it, because he understands the nature of our times: Modernity isn’t standing in the way of Geulah, it’s the key to revealing G-dliness. Society is not the challenge, it’s part of the solution.

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The above is based on the Sicha Vayeishev 5752 – 30 years to this Shabbos
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