Commenters at CrownHeights.info Offer Rare Glimpse at Discord Within Chabad

The news stories posted at CrownHeights.info, a community blog for the Lubavitch residents of the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, are themselves unremarkable. Consisting mostly of dry recitations of local events or reprints of material from other sources, they sometimes seem to just fill space between the lengthy lists of birth, wedding, and bar-mitzvah announcements posted daily on the site. Below the news stories, however, the comments sections that accompany every post contain long strings of often vehement debate, a free-for-all of hot-tempered banter.

Heated, impolite comments on the Internet are hardly news. But the comments at CrownHeights.info offer an uncommon window into the Lubavitch community. The commenters engage in frank conversations, on topics ranging from the Rebbe to race relations, that are seldom aired in a public forum.

Perhaps the most publicized effect of the advent of the Internet in the insular world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism has been to create a safe haven for dissidents, a private place where members and former members can voice criticism of the community, protected by the relative anonymity of an IP address. The comments section at CrownHeights.info plays a parallel role for Lubavitchers not on the fringes of the community. The result is a forum that feels like a private conversation among fellow members of a small community that is hosted on a universally accessible website.

A July 13 posting sparked a heated debate in the comments section on the character of Aaron Rubashkin, the Lubavitch founder of Agriprocessors, the kosher slaughtering firm that stands accused of mistreating both workers and animals at its Postville, Iowa plant. Many anonymous writers condemned Rubashkin's behavior as "100 percent disgusting," and commenter Izzy Berkowitz typed that "he has no right breaking the law shame on him for doing this to this country." In response, a man who identified himself as "Boruch ben Tzvi A H HaKohaine Hoffinger" wrote, "To all you idiot, arrogant, anti-Lubavitch writers the Rebbe loved Jews and, like a father, wanted to protect them! That's why you are NOT Lubavitchers; not even a little!"

In the comments on a January 4, 2008 post regarding an Israeli rabbinical court's decision to reject an applicant for conversion to Judaism who believed the deceased Lubavitcher Rebbe to be the messiah, commenters discuss the advisability of publicizing the belief that the Rebbe is the messiah. One commenter, who identified himself as Bakasha Nafshis, wrote, "Years and years of a Shliach's sweat blood and tears can all be erased with one stupid comment, one fanatical piece of literature, one sign, one poster.The irony of holding such a conversation on a public website was apparently lost on the commenters.

Comments on the site sometimes carry racist undertones. When the site reported that a Hispanic man publicly exposed himself to a Jewish woman on July 28th, one comment asked, "Is there anyway that he could get deported?Binyomin Lifshitz, the founding editor of CrownHeights.info, says that he tries to keep the debate under control by moderating the comments. He deletes comments he considers racist.

"The reason for moderation is because it is a Jewish web site," Lifshitz said. He says that he feels responsible for maintaining the site in line with the values of his neighborhood.

Lifshitz believes that commenters sometimes forget that their opinions could reach an audience much broader than the Crown Heights Lubavitch community. "People sometimes lose sight of that," he said.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.