The Religion & Culture Web Forum excerpts Jeffrey Shandler’s forthcoming book on American Jews’ engagement with new media:
It was not inevitable that discussions of the Rebbe’s existence after [his death on] 12 June 1994 would center on visibility, but neither is it surprising. Seeing the Rebbe—not only in person but, much more widely, through an array of mediations of both still and moving images—had become a hallmark of Chabad hasidim under Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s leadership. Portraits of the Rebbe have functioned at times like a brand for Chabad, at times like a devotional icon; both the Rebbe himself and his followers characterized contemplating his image with spiritual value, drawing on precedents within Chabad teachings that are, in turn, rooted in rabbinic and biblical prooftexts. In his final months, the Rebbe had become more and more like a portrait—silent and immobile, displayed with special reverence. His stillness enabled followers to project onto him their own understandings of his significance independent of his agency.
At the time of the Rebbe’s death, author Chaim Potok suggested that “the media conscious orientation of the Habad movement, starting with the arrival of Yosef Yitzak in the United States, may have been a key factor in its promulgation of a strongly messianic ideology. Messianism may have been seen as a device to attract more media attention to the movement and its outreach goals.” I would argue, conversely, that Chabad’s elaborate media practices have enhanced the community’s ability to imagine the Rebbe as the messiah: a figure with worldwide renown and impact, exhorting his followers to make unprecedented use of the divine gift of technology to advance redemption. In some ways, the Rebbe was like the “miracle of television”—able to be in more than one place at the same time, widely seen and yet immaterial.
Read the entire chapter and invited responses here.