“Something doesn’t add up.”
Jerusalem, July 2 – Scandal rocked a local congregation today amid revelations that a couple who follow the teachings and customs of the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement have multiple male offspring but not a single one carries the name either of the founder of the movement or its most recent leader and last head of the dynasty.
Chaya Mushka and Yosef Yitzhak Cohen, who have six children, among them three boys, have named none of them Shneur Zalman or Menachem Mendel, two names that feature in almost obligatory fashion in every Chabad family. Chabad is a Hebrew acronym for the formal name of the movement that Shneur Zalman of Liadi founded in Lubavitch, growing to prominence in what is now Lithuania and Belarus, more than two hundred years ago.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson who died in 1994, served as the last Lubavitcher Rebbe; his five decades of leadership cemented the movement’s place in modern Jewish life and made Chabad an indispensable part of any fledgling, and some established, Jewish communities, as well as a resource for travelers and seekers around the world.
Neighbors and fellow congregants, as well as several people identifying as friends of the Cohens, showed a wide array of reaction to the shocking revelation. “I… I guess I should have noticed sooner?” wondered Levi Shulman, a longtime neighbor. “It just didn’t occur to me because I didn’t give it much thought. But now that you mention it, it’s bizarre. Makes me wonder about other aspects of their lives, how assiduously we can assume they observe Chabad practices, things like that. It’s not OK to speculate, or to discuss any specifics publicly, but yeah, that subject has to come up at some point, at least in direct conversation with them. We need more facts here, because something doesn’t add up.”
Some took the development in a different, and more alarming, direction. “What if they’re imposters?” worried a community member who declined to giver her name. “We had a problem not too many years ago with a family that dressed and talked like very religious Jews, but were actually Christian evangelical missionaries. Two such cases that I can recall, actually. What if this is another one of those? Once upon a time you could clock pretty quickly who was authentic and who wasn’t, but the missionaries are getting more and more sophisticated, and only the subtle things will tip you off. Is this one of those things? We have to investigate.”
In the meantime, she said, her family would not be associating with the Cohens.
A member of the family told reporters to leave them alone, and that the parents did not want to discuss their first two children, who had died in infancy.
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The last line was not funny at all. Please edit this piece so as not to break the hearts of the unwary!