I am writing in response to the ongoing catfight between Shmuel Pollen and Stephen Tolany. Before getting to the main topic of my letter, I want to rebuke Pollen for his immature tactics; he consistently patronizes his audience and never fails to take a cheap shot every time he thinks he's scored a point. I understand the fact that he does not respect Tolany's beliefs, but he should do a better job pretending.

Tolany's intellectual honesty is admirable, but he wastes his time niggling about what R' Ahron Soloveichik really said, whether Moshiach can die in the middle of his career, and other such peripheral matters. Why are you fighting about such things? Why go after Lubavitcher Messianism one branch at a time when you can just yank it out by the roots?

Pollen seems convinced that if he can only prove that Moshiach can come back from the dead then we have good reason to believe that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is Moshiach. The gap in logic here is about the size of the Grand Canyon. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was surely a great man, but if every Jew who ever lived is still a candidate to be Moshiach, I'm afraid the Lubavitcher Rebbe is nowhere near the top of the list. Didn't Ezra do more to hasten the redemption? Or Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai? How about Moshe? If we must choose a descendant of Dovid, why not choose Dovid himself?

But it gets worse. The Lubavitcher Messianists do not claim that their dead Rebbe will be Moshiach, but that he already is Moshiach. He already has revealed himself to the world, and it's only blind people like me who fail to recognize his malchus. Now, I'm open-minded enough to accept the Lubavitcher Rebbe as Moshiach if he rises out of his grave, blows the shofar, brings all the Jews to Israel, suppresses our enemies forever, and builds the bais hamikdash (preferably in Jerusalem). But getting a few people to wear tefillin does not a redemption make. With redemption like this, who needs galus?

I am old enough to remember when the Lubavitcher Rebbe was dying in the hospital and his loyal followers insisted that he would recover, despite the grim prognosis, and reveal himself as Moshiach. Then the Lubavitcher Rebbe passed away. I watched the news coverage of the funeral, and I was both amused and humiliated by Lubavitchers telling interviewers that their Rebbe was going to come back to life, that he was still Moshiach. I suppose they think they made a kiddush Hashem.

I ask you: was this belief that the Rebbe will come back from the dead based on a thorough analysis of Pollen's sources, or what is known in psychological terms as "reaction formation"? Had the Rebbe left a successor, there would be no discussion about him still being Moshiach; the Lubavitchers would have a surrogate to follow, and all would be well with the world. But they were forced to modify their beliefs to account for the dead body in the ground, so they backtracked in search of sources to accommodate them.

And what of these sources? The emotionally desperate Lubavitchers succeeded in uncovering a handful of opinions, albeit held by great men, that lend a measure of credence to their impassioned, ironclad belief. These opinions never made their way into mainstream Judaism, and that's important. The fact that a few great people might have believed that Moshiach could theoretically come back from the dead is a far cry from crowning a dead person. Remember, R' Hillel says in Sanhedrin that we used up our redemption in the times of Chizkiya. I'm sure R' Hillel was a great man, but his opinion never made it out of the front gate, and debunking it did not divide the Orthodox community.

Besides, is this how we determine such serious matters, by scouring the land for any thread to hold onto and closing our minds to everything else? Pollen has managed to prove only that his belief might be on the fringes of traditional Jewish thought; he might not be invalid to give testimony in a Jewish court. Only one thing is certain: his method of analysis and determination is quite far from traditional Judaism.

The truth of the matter is, even if one believes that the Rebbe is Moshiach, he has no business trying to sell others on the idea. If the Rebbe is Moshiach, he should be capable of convincing us on his own. When Moshiach is finally here, I'm sure I'll know his identity and authenticity without anyone telling me. In the mean time, I have more important things to worry about.

The author is a Yeshiva College ('01) graduate, and is currently studying in RIETS.