Sunday, December 26, 2010

The Rebbe Is Like The Pope

About a week ago I was sitting in my history class where we were talking about stuff to do with Italy, and where the whole Pope concept came from. My teacher was telling us how Bishops were Priests who were in charge of certain areas of land and then how the Pope, another Priest was in charge of all the bishops. (Still no clue if this whole Bishop thing still exists today. If you know if it does feel free to comment in the comments section)
Anyway my bored Jewish soul was tired of hearing about Priests, Popes, etc. So I raised my hand to make a valid point. I told my class how Jews have a similar thing to this whole Bishop thing today. My teacher asked me to explain "Well..." I started, "every country outside the US has something called a chief rabbi who is in charge of all things Jewish in that country."

Across the room a girl who went with a reform youth group to New York City which ended up visiting Brooklyn, and then Crown Heights, the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters, and who didn't even know that there is a Chabad House in town shouted;  
"Oh ya and that Rebbe guy is like the Pope!"

So after a good conversation I found out all about my friends trip to Crown Heights which is irrelevant at the moment to the fact that the Rebbe is like the Pope. My friend when she said this had no idea how true this statement was.

The Rebbe sent, sends Shluchim all over the world, and apparently his face and name are known by Jews everywhere. The Pope is in charge of all the Catholic Churches and is known by almost every person in the word, Christian and non Christian.

So you decide is the Rebbe like the Pope? Feel free to answer in the comment section bellow.

5 comments:

  1. 1. Popes and Bishops are still around today. They have a strict chain of command.

    2. "Shliach" means a messenger. In this case, of Lubavitch.

    Whereas each Pope is succeeded by another and can recall and send out priests, the Rebbe is no longer able to do so. As such, the analogy, while possibly valid 20 years ago, is no longer accurate.

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  2. Well, the "rebbe" is dead for starters, two not all Jews follow a rebbe just a percentage of Jews and they follow their rebbe for thier "chasidic" tribe.

    The bishops cover a diosese or arch diosese which is a metropolitan area. They also have monks "brother" and monseniors.

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  3. Hey guys thanks for input. I really appreciate these first few comments.
    alarbean- for the whole Pope being succeed by another. i thought there were elections...? how does that work?

    michaeltastastik- popes are not followed by every christian either

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  4. PLZ PLZ DONT PUT A PICTURE OF A TZADDIK NEXT TO THE POPE LIHAVDEL LIHAVDALAOS!

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  5. Yes, it's true that there's an election. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope#Election for information.

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