Copyright The Jewish Week Jul 22, 1983The Lubavitch rabbi who was attacked and thrown from a van has received new threats against his life. The Jewish Week has learned.
"He has received serious threats against his life including a letter in Yiddish that he says could only have been written by his attackers," declared Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, a spokesman for Lubavitch.
Krinsky said the letter to Rabbi Mendel Wechter, who was viciously attacked and had his beard shorn on a Borough Park street after being abducted by a group of masked men on June 20, called for him to leave the country.
The new threats come as tensions continue between the Lubavitch and Satmar groups, despite a Daily News report that a settlement between the two Hassidic groups was near.
The conflict spilled onto the airwaves last week when spokesmen for both groups appeared on a local Jewish radio talk show hurling charges at each other.
The show became so controversial, that the hosts of "Night-Rap," Rabbi Yaacov Spivak and Zev Brenner, publicly apologized for the spitefulness of the comments made during the show by Rabbi Ephraira Stein, the spokesman for the Satmar community.
Charges soul snatching
Stein had charged Lubavitch with deliberately entering other communities with the intention of taking members at whatever age and initiating a drive to influence them with Lubavitch philosophy.
Further, he charged that the . . . which movement is "practicing Messianism" -- and that they have proclaimed a "false messiah" in the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.
"In the Kfar Chabad publication, a Lubavitch journal, on the first page they proclaimed that moshiah has arrived, and that he is now residing a 770 Eastern Parkway" (headquarters of Lubavitch), Stein said.
He also called on the . . . rebbe to publicly admit that he has made a mistake in handling the current controversy.
Stein's sharp statements against the Lubavitch leader drew much controversy to the radio show.
According to Brenner, more than 400 bootleg tapes of the program sold in Williamsburg in the days following the broadcast. In addition, both broadcasters felt compelled to apologize for allowing disrespectful statements to be made against the Lubavitch rebbe.
Apology to rebbe
"I on behalf of the "Night-Rap" program and my associate, Zev Brenner would like to take this opportunity to ask forgiveness from the Lubavitcher rebbe for any disrespectful comments that may have been made through this program -- not directly by us -- but through the medium of this program," said Spivak on last Sunday night's show.
Stein, speaking from a phone tie-in which was constantly being interrupted by emergency phone calls" from outside, initially refused to be on the show.
"Two minutes before be was to go on, he called to cancel, because he said he wanted to put a clamp on the publicity," said Brenner.
The hosts were going to cancel Lubavitch spokesman Krinsky, but decided to go ahead with just one viewpoint. Krinsky spent the next hour answering questions from the hosts as well as the public.
However, Stein had a change of heart after the Lubavitch segment, and called for equal time. He did not answer questions from the public.
With regard to the attacks on the Lubavitch rabbis, Stein called them "past moot, I don't think it deserves to be discussed."
But he admitted that there is a "small, very insignificant number of people that do not behave the way a Hassidic yid should behave" in the Satmar community.
"It is very unfortunate, it is deplorable, we feel the brunt of it more than anyone else, and we would like to get rid of that element more than anybody else," he said. "But we can only do it the way the Torah dictates."
Meanwhile, in a second letter published in The Jewish Week the Lubavitch rabbinic court renewed its call for a boycott of all products bearing the certification of the Satmar-dominated Central Rabbinical Council.
"We proclaim once more that the ban issued on all products bearing the hechsher of the 'Hischadus Horabonim' remain in full force and effect," the court stated. "We also declare that as long as no written proclamation is issued nullifying the decree, it continues to remain in full effect." The court listed 18 different products which are covered by the ban.
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