“We Want to See Our King”: Apparitions in Messianic Habad

Abstract

Reports of apparitions of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last leader of the Habad Hasidic movement, have been spreading among the radically messianic Hasidim (meshichistim) in Israel, who maintain that the Rabbi, the designated Messiah, has not died. Expanding on the cognitive model of source misattribution, I seek to account for the apparitions by unpacking the messianic ecology cultivated by the meshichistim to make the absent Rabbi present. Habad's dialectical mysticism and anguish over the Rabbi's disappearance are likely to provide the mindset and motivation for sightings, but it is the rich array of icons and traces of the Rabbi, and mimetic practices in which they are embedded, that constitute the perceptual field where he can be seen. This cultural décor is particularly evident for apparitions in ritual arenas, while apparitions in mundane settings are often triggered by acute distress. Comparing the apparitions to visions in Christianity, I account for the lingering ambivalence toward apparitions in messianic Habad by highlighting the epistemological constraints imposed on them by the denial of the Rabbi's death. [apparitions, Habad Hasidism, signal detection theory, messianic ecology, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneeerson]

In terms of magnitude and acuteness, the messianic fervor that swept the Habad Hasidic movement under the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson has not been observed in Judaism since the heydays of the Sabbatian movement in the second half of the 17th century (Dahan 2006; Dan 1999; Dein 2010; Ehrlich 2000; Elior 1993; Friedman 1994; Heilman 2001; Heilman and Friedman 2010; Kraus 2007; Loewentahl 1994; Ravitzky 1991; Shaffir 1993).1 Although the charismatic Rabbi promoted the notion of imminent redemption without explicitly referring to himself as the designated Messiah,2 most of the Hasidim came to the conclusion that he had to be the chosen one. His success in transforming Habad into a transnational movement and a leading force in the Jewish world, and his accuracy in forecasting various historical events, such as Israel's victory in the 1967 War, the collapse of the Soviet union and the exodus of its Jews, viewed as signs of the forthcoming redemption, have bolstered this identification.

The messianic conviction was corroded but not shattered by the death of the childless Rabbi on June 12, 1994.3 Habad today is as popular as ever despite the apparent oxymoron of a Hasidic community without a zaddik (Hasidic master).4 But the headless movement has been seized by a growing friction entailing, among other matters, the ontological status of the absent Rabbi. Most Hasidim have acquiesced to his death while still hoping for his resurrection as the Messiah. But a significant minority of radical Hasidim called meshichistim (“messianists”) flatly denies the Rabbi's demise claiming that he continues to live, invisible but intact, in “770,” his abode and the movement's epicenter, located at 770 Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights, Brooklyn.5 The meshichistim maintain that the Rabbi will reveal himself as the redeemer tekhef u-miyad mamash (“immediately and without delay in actuality”).6 But until this imminent yet ever-stretchable future is realized (see Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008), they, too, have to handle the painful void engendered by the Rabbi's disappearance. This they endeavor to do by cultivating a rich messianic ecology, replete with signs and prompts of the absent Rabbi and punctuated by ritual practices designed to “enliven” him (Kravel-Tovi 2009; Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008). The messianic ambiance thus constructed serves as the backdrop for the phenomenon I highlight here: reports of apparitions or sightings of the Rabbi among the Hasidim since 1994.

I have been studying the messianic surge in the Israeli communities of Habad since 2003. Starting almost a decade after the Rabbi passed away, my focus has been the array of means used by the Hasidim to render the absent Rabbi palpably close (cf. Luhrmann 2004, 2012). I culled most of the testimonies of apparitions from the weekly messianic publication, Si'hat Ha-Geulah (Discourse on Redemption), that commenced publication July 1994, three weeks after the Rabbi's death. The textual material is augmented by interviews conducted in 2008–10 with 21 meshichistim, ten of whom reported sightings of the Rabbi. Most of the interviewees are males of Ashkenazi (Euro-American) background roughly equally divided between born Habadniks and religious returnees. The first interviews were conducted with activists on the board of Si'hat Ha-Geulah in the town of Bat-Yam, and then spread, using a “snowball” method, to other Habad communities in Israel. All in all, interviewees were willing subjects, ready to share their experiences and pleased that they were granted scholarly attention. After being promised full confidentiality all consented to recording of the interviews. All interviews were conducted in Hebrew. The messianic publications from which the apparition reports were collected were all in Hebrew too. The excerpts used for this study were translated into English by the author. The various sources yielded a total sum of 76 testimonies of apparitions. Fifty-seven of the published reports were put together in a special volume, titled Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim [To Open the Eyes (2007)].

Of all the offshoots of Habad's messianic ecology, apparitions test most defiantly the limits of the painful void of Schneerson's disappearance, making the Rabbi temporarily visible for the seers. For the social scientist intrigued by apparitions’ challenge to sense-based reality, the elaborate messianic ecology cultivated by the meshichistim provides a golden opportunity for tracking processes through which apparitions are achieved. Accounts of visual encounters with the Rabbi in 770, where setting and schedule are highly structured, offer a particularly unobstructed view of these processes. Capitalizing on the richness of the testimonies and the density of the messianic ambiance in which they germinated, my aim here is to make sense of the apparitions, to outline how they come about in the current historical moment, using a framework that is experience-near yet theoretically informed. I seek to unpack the “cultural invitation” (Luhrmann 2011, 2012) that shapes the visual experiences under discussion and situate them in a comparative framework against the rich ethnographic and historical material on visions and revelations in Christianity.7

In terms of settings and circumstances, the reported experiences coalesce into two clusters that differ significantly and capture a bifurcation in the phenomenology of seeing the Rabbi, and perhaps of visions at large. Whereas a minority of the apparitions took place in mundane settings, where they were often triggered by imminent danger, most of them were reported from 770 or other Habad centers where the presence of the Rabbi is taken for granted in meshichistic discourse. This ontological presumption molds the apparitions in Habad's ritual settings in a peculiarly realistic cast, the theoretical import of which I seek to highlight by comparing these apparitions with similar phenomena in Christianity. I argue that even though apparitions dramatically defy the predicament of invisibility, or perhaps just because of it, they play an ambiguous role in the “trial of faith” with which Habadniks have been preoccupied since 1994. This ambiguity I link to the hyperrealism of the apparitions in 770 and other ritual settings, which curtails their imaginative horizons and impoverishes their redemptive vision.

To grasp the full epistemological consequences of Habad's ritual apparitions, it is essential to distinguish them from other related phenomena. Without ignoring the risk of obscuring their malleability (Taves 2009b:149), I elucidate below the way I am using the category of apparitions in reference to related terms such as vision, hallucination, and visualization.

Vision is a fuzzy category, encompassing a wide variety of experiences ranging “from ‘encounters’ that exhibit the tenuous and fleeting features of dreams to experiences that are virtually indistinguishable from those that mark the ordinary perception of public events” (Wiebe 1997:213). Although Wiebe does not posit a clear line between visions and apparitions, he refers to New Testament scholars who use “apparitions” (or “appearances”) for visual encounters grounded in physical reality as against the more ephemeral and spiritual nature of visions (Wiebe 1997:142). In this sense, apparitions belong to the more “objective” pole, entailing ordinary perception of public events. As I show, this meaning fits well with experiences of seeing the Rabbi in Habad. All beholders reported that they saw the Rabbi “out there,” while fully awake, with their eyes open. The Rabbi was seen clearly and transparently, just as he was in his lifetime, and his appearance did not entail any change in the physical environment. This characterization of apparition draws it closer to hallucination, “the apparent perception (usu. by sight or by hearing) of an external object when no such object is actually present” (Wiebe 1997:195), but the two categories should not be conflated. The differences between apparition and hallucination are spelled out below. Implications of the more ephemeral and spiritual character of visions are discussed in the conclusions.

Visualization refers to a set of practices designed to elicit vivid images in the mind (Luhrmann 2012; Newman 2005; Noll 1985; Taves 2009a). Note that the lines among visualization, vision, and apparition are porous. Because mystics, shamans, and gurus seek to dissolve boundaries between mind and reality, a meditative exercise starting with the eyes shut, in which visual imagery is deliberately invoked and enhanced, may collapse into a full-fledged apparition, as the image “seen” in the mind's eye turns into an experienced palpable object in physical reality. The fact that visualization training is likely to involve absorption—narrowing of attention by focusing on the mind's object while ignoring background stimuli (Luhrmann 2012:200)—might be conducive to this process. However, the introduction of absorption further confounds attempts at demarcation because it involves some aspect of altered consciousness, blurring the distinction between wakeful awareness and a trancelike, dissociative state. Because Habadniks are encouraged to elicit vivid images of the Rabbi in time of need—often with the Rabbi's picture as a prompt—visualization can be a mediating link on the way to apparitions. For analytic purposes, I limit my use of visualization to the practice of eliciting visual images in one's consciousness, viewing it as a procedure while bearing in mind that the outcome of the mental processes it evokes can be full-fledged apparitions.

General Attributes of the Apparitions

Visual encounters with the Rabbi increase over the years. Of the 76 apparitions reported throughout 1994–2010, yielding an annual average of 4–5 cases, 75 percent occurred in the second half of that period. The background characteristics of the seers vary. Women and children, overrepresented in modern Marian apparitions (Christian 1981, 1996; Zimdars-Swartz 1991:54), are a minority here. Only one-third of the adults were women, while children compose just 13 percent of all seers. Unlike the typical Marian apparition pattern, in which girls are overrepresented, almost all young seers are boys. Although most reports come from rank and file Hasidim, some are also from well-known rabbinical figures. New Hasidim, recent immigrants to Habad, are strongly represented among the seers. Non-Habadniks, including a few who are entirely nonobservant, are also among the seers. Over two-thirds of the reports come from Israelis, equally divided between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews.8 The relative salience of newcomers and Mizrahim among the seers is congruent with the contention that messianic enthusiasm is more evident in the movement's periphery and among new Habadniks (Bilu 2009; Szubin 2000). Most seers reported a single apparition, but in some cases the Rabbi is seen twice or more on different occasions by one individual.9 A few simultaneous apparitions, usually involving a dyad, were reported too.

In terms of location, a substantial majority of apparitions occurred in religious arenas associated with Habad. No fewer than 39 cases—more than half of the entire corpus—took place in 770, the Rabbi's house, and another 15—in Habad Houses, synagogues, and religious academies. Apparitions in nonreligious locations compose just over a quarter of the reports. Still, these locations are quite varied, lending support to the notion that the Rabbi can reveal himself anywhere, at home (even “between the refrigerator and the kitchen sink,” as one female seer put it), in schools, hospitals and buses, and outdoors, even in the depths of the ocean or forest. Globally, the Rabbi is seen primarily in the United States (almost exclusively in 770) and a bit less so in Israel (but all over the country), with a few apparitions reported from Australia, India, Vietnam, and Egypt (Sinai).

In terms of timing, about half of the apparitions are sighted on festive days, and the rate rose to 75 percent for those occurring in 770. No less than one-third of the apparitions in 770 occurred on High Holidays dotting the month of Tishrei, mostly in Sukkoth (Feast of Tabernacles). In Habad, as in other Hasidic sects, Tishrei is the preferred time for visiting the Rabbi; and this custom does not subside following the Rabbi's disappearance (Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008). Sim'hat Torah at the end of Sukkoth, in which the completion of the annual cycle of Torah reading is celebrated by dancing with the Torah in “encirclements” (ha'ka'fot), was imbued with special spiritual power by previous Habad presidents. The Rabbi followed suit, linking Sim'hat Torah with the redemption, and actively participating in the dances. Thus mystically charged, the last days of Sukkoth are explicitly deemed by messianic activists “auspicious days for seeing the face of the Rabbi” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:78). Indeed, most revelations during the week of Sukkoth occurred on Sim'hat Torah. Other auspicious days for seeing the Rabbi were the Sabbath, the festivals of Passover and Purim, and the dates of his birthday and disappearance according to the Jewish calendar (11 Nissan and 3 Tammuz, respectively). The spatial and temporal dimensions of the apparitions are interconnected. Eighty percent of the sightings on festive days took place in 770. The majority of revelations on mundane days occurred in ritually unmarked settings.

Most apparition sightings are brief, ranging from a few seconds to a minute or two; just long enough to afford eye contact with the Rabbi, followed by a nonverbal gesture of encouragement on his part. Reports of verbal messages from the Rabbi are usually limited to laconic statements—a short blessing or command or a few words of encouragement. In two cases the Rabbi's messages evolve into an elaborate discourse. The polyglot Rabbi addressed percipients in their native languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, English, or French.

How to Account for the Apparitions?

Although apparitions bear formal resemblance to visual hallucinations, reducing seers’ experiences to psychiatric symptoms is category fallacy. To support this view, one does not even have to turn to the rich ethnographic data on culturally enjoined hallucinatory experiences across the globe (al-Issa 1995; Bourguignon 1970; Menezes and Moreira-Almeida 2010).10 The notion that hallucinations are not exclusive to schizophrenia and appear in normal populations in rates well over 10 percent has been established in surveys spanning a century-long period (Boksa 2009; Luhrmann 2011; Sidgwick et al. 1894; Tien 1991).11 Recurring studies indicate that in the context of grief after death of a spouse, one-third to one-half of the bereaved report hallucinations involving the deceased (Carlsson and Nilsson 2007; Grimby 1993). All this should not grant a sweeping immunity from mental problems to every one claiming to have seen the Rabbi. However, the varied backgrounds of the seers and the fact that most were functioning quite adequately in their communities, without a known psychiatric history, render an indiscriminate adoption of the psychopathological model inadequate. Because apparitions in Habad are rare, brief, and gratifying, they may be categorized as “sensory overrides” (Luhrmann 2011, 2012:230–232) to avoid the clinical connotations of hallucinations.

I argue that the Rabbi's sightings can be cogently apprehended as a contextual accomplishment (cf. Berryman 2001:597) evolving in Habad's elaborate messianic ecology. In accounting for the cognitive processes that give rise to the apparitions, signal detection theory lends itself as a promising orientation point. In terms of the model it provides, hallucinations are the outcome of misattribution in source monitoring otherwise achieved by the cognitive procedure designed to sort out external events from internal ones and categorize them accordingly (Bentall 2002, 2003). Misattributions leading to hallucinations occur with interference in source monitoring, blurring the otherwise easily available distinction between external and internal stimulation. Bentall (2002:103) identifies three sets of interfering factors: beliefs and expectations, stress (emotional arousal), and environmental noise.

However, despite its elegance, the source misattribution model is too experience-distant to capture the richness and dialectical complexity of Habad's messianic lifeworld in which reported experiences of seeing the Rabbi germinate. I embark here on the triad of factors suggested by Bentall, seeking to thicken and enrich their role in charting the course of the apparitions, while problematizing the model's clear-cut distinctions. In accounting for the apparitions, it is likely that Habad's mystical doctrine and the Hasidim's enduring anguish over the Rabbi's absence resonate with cognitive expectations and emotional arousal, respectively, as predisposing factors. But it is the rich array of cultural artifacts and practices that plays the decisive role in shaping and “inviting” the majority of apparitions occurring in the ritual arenas of 770 and secondary centers. What the cognitive model portrays as ambiguous stimulation or “noise,” an ethnographic experience-near perspective reframes as “context”: the cultural framework and social circumstances constituting and constituted by the messianic ecology. Let me elaborate.

In terms of beliefs and expectations, Habad's mystical theosophy, promulgated by the movement's founder, Schneur Zalman (1745–1812), and further cultivated by his successors, promotes a hermeneutic of suspicion toward empirical reality (Elior 1993; Ravitzky 1991; Schwartz 2010). Scholars who view it as acosmic, maintain that such mysticism “denies the substantiality of the manifest world and attributes sole substance, vitality, and spiritual essence to the hidden God” (Elior 1993:220). Others maintain that Habad's theosophy contains both acosmic and panentheistic elements, without seeking to resolve the tension between them (Schwartz 2010; Wolfson 2009).12

It is an open question whether rank and file Hasidim are thoroughly acquainted with exegetical nuances highlighted by scholars.13 Still, that the “doctrine of the unity of opposites” (as dubbed in Habad) blurs boundaries between being and nothingness, material and spiritual, manifest and latent is not lost on the Hasidim. The challenge to binary oppositions, amplified by the conviction that human perception of the world is shortsighted and illusory, may facilitate the acceptance of sensory experiences without material source. At the same time, the fact that a mystical movement with an acosmic accent such as Habad is so strongly involved with the real world, invested as it is in Jewish and world affairs, is no less than intriguing. To resolve this tension, one should take into account that Schneur Zalman's mystical doctrine was designed for the wide Jewish masses, the “mediocre” (bei'nonim) in his language, and therefore underwent a massive process of systematization and routinization (Pedaya 2011). A clear-cut bifurcation allotted bounded prayer time for mystical absorption and self-effacement (but even then under the control of reflective awareness) while the rest of the day was viewed as a profane time in which engagement with the real was approved and, by sheer contrast, even enhanced. I argue that the attempt to domesticate and routinize mystical experiences and intensive involvement with the real have a bearing on the nature of Habad's apparitions today.

The general reluctance to acquiesce with the painful absence of the Rabbi fits the slot of emotional arousal or stress factors in the model. “We want to see our King,” is a common cri de coeur among Habadniks since June 12, 1994. Two-tier talk of the meshicistim is noteworthy. Although openly conveying the optimistic conviction that the Rabbi's disappearance is just an ordeal comparable with Moses’ 40 days of concealment on Mount Sinai before receiving the Torah, they bemoan his absence and constantly beseech him to reveal himself at once (Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008:74). Aside from general anguish over the Rabbi's absence, some of the experiences of seeing him are precipitated by acute and situation-specific stress as I elaborate in comparing apparitions encountered in ritual and mundane settings.

Cognitive expectation and emotional arousal are likely to supply the mindset and motivation for the proclivity to see the Rabbi in moments of perceptual “breaks” (Luhrmann 2011:73). But it is the constellation of concrete signs and markers of the Rabbi, and the practices in which they are embedded that structure the perceptual field in which the Rabbi can be seen. For the sake of analysis, I divide this array into three groupings: icons, traces, and mimetic practices of embodiment.

Icons

Widespread circulation of the Rabbi's pictures in messianic Habad and beyond is unprecedented in the Jewish world. Impressive portraits of the Rabbi, with his long flowing white beard and piercing blue eyes, adorn posters, signposts, books, magazines, charity boxes, clocks and watches, ritual cups, key-binders, visa cards, medallions, and much more. It should be noted that aniconism in Judaism has been gradually eroded in the modern period, as pictures of rabbis and sages became a popular means for aggrandizing and disseminating their charisma.14 Still, as Balakirsky-Katz (2007, 2010) shows, Habad was ahead of any other orthodox group in using pictures; and this culminated in an elaborate visual culture amounting to iconophilia during the Rabbi's long reign. The Rabbi's personality cult and his image as a religious and political leader far beyond the movement's circles were bolstered by his wide visual exposure. After 1994, this visual repertory became a major resource for making the absent Rabbi present and visible. For many contemporary Hasidim—particularly newcomers and younger followers who have never seen the Rabbi in vivo—the photographs supplant rather than supplement the traditional master–disciple relationship.15

The ubiquity of the Rabbi's portraits in messianic publications constitutes visual bombardment in hagiographies, in which text is dotted with numerous pictures of him.16 This redundancy assures that readers find it difficult to avert their gaze from the Rabbi. Visual omnipresence governs the messianic ecology at large, given the multiplicity and magnitude of the Rabbi's portraits in the homes of meshichistim—an abundance and volume that generate an eerie sensation of intimate attendance (Dein 2010:91–92, 113–121).

The vividness and vitality of the Rabbi's visual images are augmented with moving pictures. Video clips of the Rabbi's Hasidic gatherings, shown incessantly in 770 and in various Habad Houses, can produce an uncanny sense of real presence (Shandler 2009:252).17 This presence is not sustained only by the video's “liveliness” in comparison with still pictures but also by the temporal equivalence that often exists between actual events commemorated in the videos and their screening. In 770, this congruence is spatial too, because, for example, a video shown there on Sim'hat Torah was not only taken on the same festive occasion but also in the same location as that of the original celebration. Two audiences are involved in the screening of these videos, one virtual, projected with the Rabbi on the screen, and the other actual, watching the video. When these two crowds, similar in appearance and posture, cry out “Amen” in unison following the Rabbi's sermon, the virtual and the actual are difficult to disentangle.18

I do not wish to claim that Habadniks suffer from “epistemological vertigo” as a result of their exposure to the Rabbi's videos. Yet the sense of lively presence engendered by the movies affords all Hasidim, moderate as well as radical, the possibility of retaining a vivid image of the Rabbi in their memory. In highlighting the salience and pervasiveness of the Rabbi's portraits, I am also not arguing that they are a necessary or even a sufficient condition for seeing him. Vivid encounters with otherworldly figures preceded the invention of photography and, as archaic layers of religious experience, had probably existed long before elaborate iconography was in use. Still, I argue that icons facilitate apparitions; and photographs—as an unvarnished emanation of the referent, constitute a “certificate of presence” (Barthes 1981:80). The association between Habad's visual culture and the experiences of seeing the Rabbi is likely mediated by a strong cognitive schema generated by wide exposure to the Rabbi's pictures.

In processing the Rabbi's portraits into enduring and accessible visual imagery, visualization techniques play an important role. The widespread Hasidic practice of portraying the face of a tsaddiq in one's mind was enthusiastically embraced by the Rabbi. He urged his followers to visualize the face of his predecessor and father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak (RaYaTZ), whenever asking for his intercession, explicitly instructing those who had never seen RaYaTZ to use his picture as a visual aid. The Rabbi urged his Hasidim to bond with RaYaTZ on his tomb in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens by visualizing his presence there, and in all probability followed this practice himself during his regular visits there.19 The Rabbi also encouraged the Hasidim to invoke the image of the Messiah (without explicitly identifying him) on various festive occasions, primarily on the last day of Passover, during the “Messiah's dance” the Rabbi himself had initiated. Many Hasidim followed his suggestive instructions by visualizing the Rabbi-cum-Messiah dancing with them. Apparitions in which the Rabbi was dancing amid the Hasidim were reported by meshichistim following his disappearance.

The Hasidim have incorporated the Rabbi's encouragement to use visualization, as indicated by the many stories in which they remark on eliciting his image in their mind when facing a problem. Habadniks resort to visualization particularly in emergency situations, when the Rabbi's intercession is required at once. As indicated before, visualization differs from apparition as it is premeditated, enacted with eyes shut, and involves a mental object (in the mind's eye).20 Still, it may serve as an important prompt on the way to the apparitions. Moreover, while visualization-as-technique is conscious and intended, the Rabbi's image often surfaces spontaneously and effortlessly in the Hasid's mind.

Spontaneous elicitations of the Rabbi's image are an essential component of the psychic life of many meshichistim, who are likely to process scenarios of the imminent redemption cinematographically, as a narrative sequence of visual images (cf. Kracke 1987). Although spontaneously elicited visual scripts might be ubiquitous in the Hasidim's inner lives, my focus here is on visualization-cum-technique. Although none of the interviewees explicitly related an experiential sequence in which visualizing the Rabbi's image (in the mind) evolved into an apparition (seeing him “out there”), visualization likely serves as a mediating link on the way to seeing the Rabbi. Moreover, the elaborate cultic practices in which the Rabbi's portraits are used as panacea shed light on the importance of the pictures in precipitating apparitions despite the absence of visualization from the reports. In many miraculous stories, the curative power of the pictures is displayed in the course of an elaborate ritual based on the notion of visual reciprocity between the supplicant and the Rabbi.21

This is how the core of this ritual was conveyed to a woman suffering from a problem-ridden pregnancy: “Stand by the holy picture of the Rabbi, the King-Messiah, and utter a chapter from Psalms with great absorption. Then declare that you subscribe to the Rabbi's kingdom—(say) ‘Long live forever our master, teacher and Rabbi the King-Messiah’—and ask for an easy birth and a healthy baby” (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 181, January 16, 1998: 3). Although in many cases it was the supplicant who initiated an interaction, in others it was the Rabbi's mesmerizing gaze, coming from the picture, that ensnared onlookers, compelling them to stare back at him (cf. Christian 1992). Because the Rabbi's eyes are described as no less expressive than penetrating, this visual reciprocity often ends with a nonverbal message of assurance and succor. In three cases, these messages evolved into full-fledged auditory hallucination (or sensory override) as the Rabbi's voice was heard by the percipient as emanating from the picture.

The fact that the Rabbi's postures in many reported apparitions follow his stance and position in popular pictures indicates the salience of the pictures in shaping the Rabbi's sightings. This salience is evident in the messianic volume To Open the Eyes (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007) in which reports are illustrated by no less than 29 pictures of the Rabbi in 770. The accompanying captions accurately depict the Rabbi's postures and gestures in the pictures; for example, “he looked at me with his piercing eyes and raised his holy hand encouragingly,” or, “he was leaning with his face turned right.” Yet all these captions are taken verbatim from the reports. It is likely the pictures served as visual guidelines for the apparitions.

Another presumed link between pictures and apparitions appeared in the report of a pregnant woman with serious medical problems, who was urged by the doctors to undergo abortion. During the preparations for an ultrasound examination she suddenly had a revelation: “On the wall facing my bed I suddenly see the Rabbi, with his fedora and blue eyes, assuring me with a broad smile: ‘Don't you worry, everything will turn out all right’” (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 533, February 4, 2005: 3). Indeed, the ultrasound was normal and the abortion cancelled. The sighting of the Rabbi's image “on the wall” was likely triggered by the patient's angst and his actual picture there. If indeed this was the case, then the woman's phrasing of her experience captures the transformative moment in which a flat portrait turns into a live figure in the apparition. This possibility is lent credence by a female Habadnik I interviewed who reported that once, when she turned to the Rabbi for help, glancing at his big picture in her living room, she was amazed to see him coming out of the picture and approaching her. In this unique testimony the move from picture to apparition is entirely explicit.

The Rabbi's pictures can precipitate apparitions then. Still, even in messianic Habad the experiences of seeing the Rabbi cannot be entirely extricated from their ontologically precarious status, as private and subjective events. As genuine and real as these experiences have been to the seers, they could not be publicly validated. Indeed, some seers admitted that they were reluctant at first to share their experiences with others as they feared mocking and denigrating responses to apparitions that they suspected stemmed from their own “imagination,” “dreaming,” or even “madness.” Aside from their role as triggers, pictures were used to grapple with this predicament too. Just like miraculous photographs in contemporary Marian settings (Berryman 2006; Bitel 2009; Davis and Boles 2003:381–382, 390; Matter 2001:134; Wojcik 1996), pictures served as objectifying signs for the meshichistim. Their role became evident on two separate occasions that drew attention in messianic Habad. In the first incident, a boy from Jerusalem, who spent the High Holidays of 2003 in Crown Heights with his family, was photographed in front of the Rabbi's Bimah (platform) in 770. It was claimed that no one else was around when the picture was taken; but after the film was developed the parents were shocked to discover in the picture an elderly Hasid standing near the child with his back to the camera. Although the identification of the elderly figure as the Rabbi was hotly debated in Habad, for many meshichistim it provided the missing link for corroborating the Rabbi's enduring presence in 770 (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:176–179).

The other incident occurred on October 14, 2006, in 770. A visitor used the video camera in his mobile phone to document activities in the main hall. Amid the dancing and chanting crowd, the camera captured a figure resembling the Rabbi walking vigorously toward the arc. Even though the video's acuity was not satisfactory and the episode lasted one or two seconds only, it had enormous impact on the meshichistim who claimed that on that day “the (Rabbi's) revelation has started” (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 623, November 24, 2006: 1). As one of the activists put it: “During the years following his disappearance, the Rabbi revealed himself to people in private only … The novelty this time was that he revealed himself to hundreds of thousands” (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 625, December 8, 2006: 3). The video keeps running in messianic Internet sites and pictures gleaned from it are used as screen savers among meshichistim.

Traces

Habad's messianic ecology is replete with traces of the Rabbi. The Rabbi's house, his red armchair and Torah Scroll, the dollar bills he used to deliver on Sundays, the water in which he immersed himself in his mikveh (ritual bath), and the sukkah (tabernacle) built for him for the Sukkoth Festival—all these are examples of indexical signs because their association with their referent, the Rabbi, is based on spatial proximity or contiguity. These signifiers are conducive to making the absent Rabbi palpably felt because “indexical signs participate, in one way or another, in what they signify. They have a ‘real connection’ with their objects” (Innis 2004:201).

Note that until the rise of digital technology, photographs were no less indexical than iconic. From Pierce on, scholars have highlighted the fact that beyond sheer iconicity—photographs resemble the objects they denote—they are products of the physical state of the objects (Batchen 2004:40). This makes them “something directly stenciled off the real” (Sontag 1977:154), “a kind of deposit of the real itself” (Krauss 1984:112). Following Barthes's assertion that the reality offered by the photograph is not of truth-to-appearance but that of truth-to-presence (Barthes 1981), Batchen claims that “the indexicality of the photograph allows it to transcend mere resemblance and conjure a ‘subject,’ a presence that lingers” (Batchen 2004:40).

The Hasidim are meticulous about keeping the Rabbi's abode as well as his paraphernalia and possessions intact, just as they were before; and they strive to make them even more accessible and widely dispersed than before. Thus, replicas of 770 were built in various places in Israel and other countries (Balakirsky-Katz 2010:144–173; Dein 2010:89; Weingrod 1993) and some Hasidim boast bookcases and drawers shaped as a tiny 770. A few Habadniks went so far as to shape the facade of their houses in the design of the Rabbi's abode. In addition, various artifacts, from charity boxes to candle packs and mezuzah cases, were designed as miniature 770s.

The extent to which the Hasidim respect these traces of the Rabbi can be demonstrated by an ad praising a certain brand of Calabria citrons (ethrogim) for ritual use in Sukkoth. The reputation of these citrons stems from the fact that they came from trees grown from the seeds of one of the original citrons the Rabbi had been using for Sukkoth. In addition, the jam made from the Rabbi's citrons has become known for its curative power, primarily for problems in pregnancy and birth (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 682, January 25, 2012: 4).

The move from singularity to multiplicity, evident in the reproduction of 770, is present here too: out of one citron that once belonged to the Rabbi many can be grown. In principle, this chain of citrons can go on forever. This move, counterposed to the notion of the living Rabbi's singleness and irreplaceability, stands also in ironic contrast with the Rabbi's whereabouts in his lifetime. Not only was the actual Rabbi, ensconced in his offices for most of the day, a scarce resource to his Hasidim, but during his long reign his accessibility gradually diminished. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the messianic tension reached new summits, individual meetings (yehidut) with the Rabbi were replaced by collective gatherings and these attenuated as the Rabbi aged. Aside from his regular visits to the tomb of his predecessor, he seldom left 770. As against this growing withdrawal, the Rabbi's iconic and indexical signs are multiple, and most of them can be further reproduced. His photographs can be distributed in endless copies; and this redundancy applies to many items in the Rabbi's holy paraphernalia. Even his mikveh water can be used open-endedly as a panacea, because the water can be diluted presumably forever without losing healing power.22

In addition, an individual Hasid may be exposed to a wide variety of the Rabbi's traces simultaneously. This is certainly true when he or she is coming “to be with the Rabbi” in 770; but for most meshichistim the Rabbi looms high in the domestic sphere too: his pictures decorate their apartments’ walls and books’ covers and are imprinted on various objects from ritual cups to clocks; a dollar bill delivered by the Rabbi, laminated and framed, is likely to be put on display; and a bottle of water from his mikveh might be in sight too. This multiple indexicality saturates the messianic landscape but does not stop there, as it generates a distinct messianic habitus. It is easy to identify male meshichistim by their kippa (head covering) with the mantra, “Long live the King Messiah for ever,” the Messiah flag emblem on their coat flap, the pocket-sized portrait of the Rabbi in their wallet, the design of his abode embroidered on their prayer shawl bags, and the sequence 7–7–0 included in the combination of their mobile phone, Internet passwords, and bank codes. Thus, on top of becoming hypervisible because of his pictures, the virtual Rabbi is also portable and embodied. His followers feel intimately connected to him (cf. Luhrmann 2004, 2012), deeming themselves his emissaries and “children” (Fishkoff 2003; Heilman and Friedman 2010:248–278; Kraus 2007). Many of them confer his name on one of their male children. Viewing the Rabbi as an exemplary model for Hasidic behavior, they seek to emulate him, not merely by “being with the Rabbi” but also by “living (the) Rabbi.” They repeat his famous phrases and imitate his gestures. More profoundly, they seek to identify with him, to comprehend the depth of his thinking and to follow his instructions as best they can. In this sense meshichistim become living icons (Berryman 2001:603) of the Rabbi. Many of the Rabbi's traces, particularly those in 770, participate in structuring the perceptual field in which his sightings might occur.

Mimetic Practices of Embodiment

Beyond the array of iconic and indexical signs that dot the messianic landscape, the Rabbi's presence is felt in an elaborate set of ritual practices through which he is “embodied.” These practices are mimetic: involving the Rabbi as an active participant, they seek to replicate the past “just as it was” (Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008:69). Mimetic practices of embodiment are enacted primarily in 770, as part of the daily routine in the Rabbi's abode. The Hasidim who come to be with the Rabbi there are drawn into a special ecology in which the Rabbi is deemed the prime mover (Dein 2010:87–100).

To convey the assertion that the Rabbi is still among the community, the structured daily routine that dominated the site until 1994 is meticulously reproduced. Most vivid in this system are rituals that act as sensory prompts “placing” the Rabbi in the same times and places where his past presence was most strongly felt. This is most evident in the three daily prayers conducted in the big study hall (Zal Ha-Gaddol) serving as synagogue. Just as the prayer is about to begin, a young yeshiva student reaches the podium on which the Rabbi used to pray in front of the congregants. He rolls the carpet over the podium and then exposes the covered armchair of the Rabbi and his “stander” (pulpit). On Sabbath and holydays, one of the elderly Hasidim is honored with this task. Ready to accept the King–Messiah, the congregants lift their eyes and gaze at the stairs descending from the Rabbi's office on the second floor. Then they split to create a clear path (shvil) leading to the podium. On Mondays, Thursdays, and the Sabbath, when passages from the Torah are read during prayer, one of the veteran Hasidim is given the honor to lay the Rabbi's Torah scroll open on the stander. The same Hasidic song that welcomed the approaching Rabbi in the past is excitedly reiterated today. Following the prayer, the carpet is unrolled, the armchair and stander covered, and the congregants accompany with song and dance the Rabbi's presumed exit.

Following the Sabbath and Holidays, a ceremonial gathering takes place in the major study hall. Once, under the presidency of the Rabbi, these public meetings were joyful and ecstatic events, in which the Rabbi endorsed Hasidic values and inculcated his vision of the impending redemption. The setting of the gathering is kept intact today including the Rabbi's table, covered with a white tablecloth and adorned with halla (Sabbath loaf), a knife, and a bottle of wine and wine glass for kiddush (ritual of sanctification). The Rabbi's armchair is brought to the table and the Hasidim are seated in front of it. When the meeting ends, after various rabbinical figures address the audience, a veteran Hasid approaches the Rabbi's table and, facing his armchair, cuts the halla into small pieces. The halla pieces, and later the “wine-glass of blessing,” are distributed among the Hasidim. These ritual activities are done on behalf of the Rabbi and reproduce his own renowned acts of distribution during his lifetime.23

Other embodied practices are enacted on the High Holidays that punctuate the month of Tishrei. At the end of the closing prayer on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), a mobile staircase is put on the podium as in previous years, for the Rabbi to watch from above and direct the traditional singing of the Hasidim. On Sukkoth, a tabernacle is built for the Rabbi as before, with the “four species” waiting for him inside. The Hasidim are encouraged to make the appropriate blessing over the “four species.” Some of the passers-by extend their hands to receive the Rabbi's lekah (piece of cake) as before. On these occasions, in which devotion, embarrassment, and playfulness converge, the mimetic becomes pantomimetic. On special occasions the Rabbi is accorded the honor to lead the public prayer. The gaze of all present is focused on the Rabbi's armchair as long as he is supposed to utter his part. Then the crowd ecstatically responds in impressive synchronization, chanting in unison the complementary verse.24 On Sundays, a line of visitors stretches at the entrance to 770, where the practice of distributing dollars for charity continues as before, even though human shortsightedness renders the Rabbi invisible. The dollar bills currently distributed on Sundays are capable of performing miracles just as the original ones. These mimetic embodied practices were an integral part of the scene in most of the apparitions in 770.

Apparitions in Ritual and Mundane Settings

The reports in the messianic volume, To Open the Eyes (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007) are divided into two clusters, separating apparitions that took place in the Rabbi's “royal palace” from those occurring elsewhere in “all the places under his rule.” This spatial division captures an essential phenomenological distinction between two types of revelations. Most of the apparitions I discuss took place in a ritual context, in which the Rabbi's presence was strongly felt through the rich web of icons, traces, and mimetic practices of embodiment, but also sorely missed because of his enduring invisibility. The messianic ecology structures a perceptual field functioning as inviting ground for seeing the Rabbi. Given the density and redundancy of this ecology, it is not surprising that the majority of the apparitions take place in the “right place,” the Rabbi's abode, and in the “right time,” during festive occasions in the daily and annual ritual cycle (prayers and holidays, respectively), in which the Rabbi is supposed to be among the community. Note that even in this inviting milieu, where the craving to see the Rabbi is often translated into an explicit request that he reveal himself, accompanied presumably by visualizing his figure, apparitions still constitute an uncommon phenomenon, a contextual accomplishment experienced by seers as startling and electrifying. These situations are different experientially from those in which the Rabbi appears out of the blue, outside the suggestion-saturated domain of 770. I outline the major differences between the two types of apparitions using illustrations from the reports.

Apparitions in 770 are fueled emotionally by the excruciating gap between the dense messianic ecology there and the Rabbi's intolerable invisibility. The dialectical nature of this process should be noted. The icons, traces, and practices of embodiment, designed to fill the painful vacuum generated by the Rabbi's disappearance, are likely to magnify the loss no less than soften it, particularly for veteran Hasidim who retain vivid memories of the Rabbi in his lifetime (Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008). But the same messianic ecology that might accentuate the void is also constitutive of the perceptual gestalt in which the common wish to see the Rabbi “immediately and without delay in actuality” is occasionally fulfilled. A few examples of apparitions in 770 will suffice to illustrate this dynamic.

A Hasid joins the Morning Prayer in 770, “in the miniyan [ritual quorum] of the Rabbi, the King-Messiah,” for the last time before going back to Israel. From his seat, close to the Rabbi's bimah, he responds to the public announcement, “long lives our King Messiah,” with a cry of his own, ‘Until when?’ which he repeats three times sealing it with the messianic rallying call: “Rabbi, we want Messiah now.” The revelation follows suit: “Suddenly I saw the Rabbi standing on the bimah in front of me, wrapped in his prayer shawl and phylacteries. He leaned over the stander with his face toward the congregants” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007: 50–52). The excitement of the seer was immense, yet the revelation was not entirely unexpected. Urged by the protagonist, it occurred where the Rabbi was supposed to reveal himself.

The implicit expectation to see the Rabbi in 770 might be extended into a most explicit attempt to summon him. A yeshiva student turns nostalgic following the Day of Atonement's evening prayer, when “the Rabbi … stays over to recite Psalms with all the congregants.” Recalling “the previous years in which I was privileged to be here, on the same special occasion, and see the Rabbi dressed in white like an angel … I was overcome by the desire to see him as before.” The wish is translated into an explicit request: “Rabbi, I know with absolute certainty that you are here, alive and well without any change! Please let me see you with my material eyes.” In the beginning the plea remains unanswered. “When I continued to look toward his holy place, I could not see anything aside from the red armchair and the stander covered with a white map.” But then, after the student elicits the memory of his eminent grandfather, known for his Hasidic devotion, he takes a look at the bimah again and his heart “misses a beat” as he sees the Rabbi “standing in his usual place, adorned with his kittel” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007: 19–20).25

The tension between the rich messianic ecology and the painful void is evident in both cases. The Rabbi's traces—his bimah, armchair, and stander—and the ritual practices in which he is supposed to participate—the Morning Prayer and the public recital of Psalms on Yom Kippur, respectively—made both protagonists acutely aware of his absence and pushed them to demand that he reveal himself. At the same time, these artifacts and practices serve as sensory prompts on the way to the apparitions.

Common ritual practices in which the Rabbi has revealed himself in 770 include the daily prayers, the distribution of dollar bills on Sundays, the Sim'hat Torah dances, and Hasidic gatherings following the Sabbath and holidays. Most often the Rabbi appeared on the bimah, making the same gestures with which he had become identified before 1994 (and which were popularized by his pictures): he was seen leaning on the stander, touching the arc's curtain on his way to and from the synagogue, and waving his hand for encouragement. In three cases he was seen in the “path” (shvil) opened for him by the Hasidim before and after prayers. The “path” is the scene for the famous video from 2006 mentioned before, which arguably captured the Rabbi on his way to the podium. The details of the Rabbi's dress and appearance noted in the reports are compatible with the occasions in which he was seen. Thus, during the prayers he is always seen wrapped in his prayer shawl and on the Day of Atonement—with his white kittel. He is seen delivering dollar bills on Sundays, making blessings over the “four species” in Sukkoth, and circulating glasses of wine and pieces of cake following Hasidic gatherings. Note that the dollar bills, the four species, and the wine and cake continue to be incorporated into present-day practices of embodiment conducted in 770. Apparitions in Habad Houses, viewed as “satellite branches of 770” (Balakirsky-Katz 2010:152), follow the same dynamic as in 770, but in a diluted form, germinating in a milieu less populated with the Rabbi's signs and practices.

Apparitions in ritually unmarked settings compose a bit more than one quarter of the entire corpus. Many of these experiences were precipitated by distress, which in some cases amounted to a life-risking situation. None of the nonritual cases were explicitly triggered by the Rabbi's painful absence per se. Contradistinctively, none of the apparitions in 770 or its derivatives were related to a problem-in-living other than the Rabbi's absence. The rich messianic ecology that presumably provides the cognitive-perceptual framework for ritual apparitions is less evident in mundane appearances, particularly outdoors. Apparently, in most of these cases the acute distress and the mystical theosophy were potent enough to “invite” the apparition—without the multiple cognitive cues that dominate the landscape of ritual apparitions.

The following examples involve serious trauma as a trigger. A 14-year-old girl, attacked by a snake in the field, cries out in panic, “Rabbi, save me,” and is privileged to see him. The Rabbi commands her to strangle the snake and she, invigorated by his presence, finds the power to do so (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:170–2). A bus on its way to Jerusalem from a West Bank settlement is attacked by Palestinians. Amid the fire, a teenager “sees the Rabbi in front of her. He pulls her down to the bus floor, thus saving her from the bullets.” The girl in the adjacent seat is killed in the attack (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:137). A diver suffering from a rapture of the deep is rescued by another diver. When he regains consciousness, he dimly recalls two figures pulling him out, even though his friend insists that he had acted alone. A few days later, after seeing the Rabbi's portrait, he identifies him as the mysterious second rescuer (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:133–135). There is a range here from summoning the Rabbi in the first case, through an unsolicited but recognizable appearance in the second, to a more enigmatic appearance, only retrospectively confirmed, in the third case. In most of the mundane cases the Rabbi's appearance is not intentionally invited. It is clear that even in the snake episode, the Rabbi's name emerges spontaneously and abruptly, out of the traumatic experience. It is not surprising that the two girls were Habadniks while the diver was not.

Other stressful situations that precipitated apparitions were related to acute medical problems, loss of a significant other, and pressing economic predicaments. Only three mundane cases were entirely devoid of stress as a precipitating factor. The centrality of stress factors in mundane apparitions made them more akin to the Rabbi's revelations in dreams and special states of consciousness (such as near-death experience). There, too, the Rabbi's intercession was often precipitated by acute distress. My focus on sightings occurring in wakeful states led me to exclude these types of experiences from this work. But for some mundane apparitions, such as the one experienced by the diver who suffered from a rapture of the deep, the line between ordinary and nonordinary states of consciousness could not be clearly delineated.

The divergence between the two types of apparitions in setting and experience is reflected also in the gender composition of the seers. Although in the public ritual space of 770 men outnumbered women in a rate of 3:1, the genders were more or less on a par in ritually unmarked spaces. Similarly, whereas most of the seers in 770 were Hasidim, seers in other locations came from more diverse backgrounds, encompassing Hasidic, orthodox, traditional, and even nonobservant men and women. Just as with the rescued diver, in some other mundane cases recognition was retrospective, too, usually after stumbling on the Rabbi's picture (although the reporters were acquainted with his name). Interestingly, the Rabbi's miraculous power is more strongly experienced in mundane settings, because only there did his intercession relieve the seers from serious trouble. In most ritual cases the very appearance of the Rabbi is a miraculous climax. Finally, most of the Rabbi's apparitions in mundane settings are classic examples of deus ex machina, though they could be preceded by a visual elicitation of his image (common in emergency situations). Most of his sightings in 770 were abrupt and brief, too, but they appeared as the tip of the iceberg of his enduring presence, latent but strongly felt. Clues to this underground humming of the Rabbi's perennial existence in 770 came from various reports.

A representative example entails a Hasid coming to pray “in the Rabbi's miniyan” on the first night of Sukkoth. On entering the hall, he notices a hand extended “above the Rabbi's holy bimah,” signaling to him to draw closer. He tries to push forward but cannot reach the Rabbi's stander. Following the prayer he finds himself wavering between two options: either to stay attentive near the Rabbi's other stander, from which he used to give a special homily on each night of the holiday, following the evening prayer, or to join the dances on the other side of the hall. The protagonist cannot make up his mind: “On the one hand, one cannot disregard the conviction that the Rabbi is here in materiality and delivers a talk as before. On the other hand, one cannot hear anything, so perhaps the Rabbi would like us to rejoice (dancing) in the holiday instead.” Stuck between the two options, the Hasid turns his gaze to the bimah and suddenly spots the Rabbi standing there, leaning over the stander. “The Rabbi smiled and pointed with his holy finger at the Hasidim in front of him, as if to say: ‘you see them, these are my guys.’” Following the sighting, the Hasid decides that he, too, “would like to be counted among the Hasidim who ‘belong’ to the Rabbi,” and he stays with them. Later on, when he relates the exciting experience to another Hasid, he manages to capture a brief movement on the bimah. Raising his eyes, he sees the Rabbi again, now near the first stander reserved for prayers. “The Rabbi smiled at me and waved his holy hand as if to say: ‘I have finished, now you may go dancing’” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:90–92). Note that the Hasid saw the Rabbi (or part of him) in a sequence of three different positions, in perfect equivalence with the ritual pattern the Rabbi had kept on Sukkoth before 1994. These brief sightings appear as scattered fragments of the Rabbi's hidden routine in 770, as “eruptions” or “flashes” in which the virtual Rabbi is sporadically actualized (cf. Deleuze 2004:260). Such multiple flashes in one episode recurred in other reports of apparitions in 770 but were almost nonexistent in mundane settings.

The enduring but latent presence of the Rabbi in 770 was more easily exposed by young seers. As a rule, children's apparitions were of longer duration than those of adults, making overt more fragments and wider sequences of the Rabbi's hidden presence. The gap was attributed to the purity and innocence of the very young (Bilu 1982:275–276; Davis and Boles 2003:386). Just how far this infantile innocence could go is demonstrated by a report involving one of the youngest children to see the Rabbi. A 3.5-year-old boy came from Jerusalem with his family to spend the Passover “with the Rabbi.” The father's account highlights how he inculcated the messianic reality in his children: “In our home, the children are trained that the Rabbi … is alive in actuality, without any change. Even the youngest children grow with the straightforward belief in [the Rabbi as] the president of the generation and are unconditionally attached to him. Many times I show my children video clips of the Rabbi and give them his pictures to keep.” Against this background, it was not surprising that when the father came with his youngest boy to a “gathering with the Rabbi,” on the Sabbath preceding Passover (Shabbat Ha-Gaddol), the child asked at once to see the Rabbi. The father pointed at the Rabbi's red armchair, but the child complained that he was too small to see anything. The two climbed on an elevated platform, and when they reached the upper step the child burst with joy: “Here is the Rabbi, I can see him now.” He demanded to stay longer so he could spend more time looking at him. Following this revelation, the Rabbi was reportedly seen by the child in all of the prayers and gatherings throughout the week of Passover. The association between pictures and sightings was illustrated by a casual remark the child made following one of the prayers: “Dad! The Rabbi waved at me just as he did in the video!” For the father, the child's experience of unobstructed sighting of the Rabbi was the embodiment of the messianic ideal: “As I understood it, for Shalom-Baer [the child's name] there was no disappearance [of the Rabbi] at all” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007: 39–41). The uniqueness of this case, providing a full glimpse into the Rabbi's hidden life through multiple apparitions, situates it at the contrasting pole of the unexpected, deus ex machina type of apparitions in mundane settings.

Apparition and its Discontents

The reported apparitions have endowed the meshichistim with invaluable ammunition in their struggle to establish the notion of imminent redemption. Just as in other apocalyptic movements that urge members to adopt new ways of seeing, the Rabbi amply used visual idioms and metaphors to mark the transformation from ordinary days to the end of days. If indeed the ultimate goal of the Hasidic activity is to generate the enchanted moment in which the Rabbi will reveal himself “to the eyes of all” (le-eynei kol), reported experiences of seeing the Rabbi appear as a glimpse into, and a metonym of the desired messianic time. Still, despite their apparent importance, apparitions stirred ambivalent feelings in Habad, even among the meshichistim.

First, even though accounts of seeing the Rabbi could easily go public through an elaborate web of messianic media, the experiences of seeing him could not be publicly validated. This predicament was mitigated by a wide array of objectifying signs (cf. Davis and Boles 2003:398–394): the aforementioned photograph and video which made the Rabbi present “to the eyes of all;” the presence of artifacts presumably delivered by the Rabbi during apparitions, such as a dollar bill and a ten cent coin, in the hands of seers after their encounters with him (cf. Bitel 2009; Christian 1996:146); the reporting of specific gestures made by the Rabbi during apparitions, which perfectly matched his past behavior even though these gestures could not have been known to the seers; the perfect compatibility between events “within” the apparition and “without” it;26 the occurrence of simultaneous apparitions which deployed the sightings on the intersubjective level and rendered them sharable; and the “confessional” accounts of skeptics, who used to mock at the credulous belief in the Rabbi's immortality, until they themselves were startled to see him.27

Despite this arsenal of objectifying signs, a subdued air of uneasiness persists in the Hasidic discourse over the apparitions. A second cause of discontent is related to the dialectics of presence and absence in messianic Habad. While seers’ experiences challenged the Rabbi's disappearance, for ardent meshichistim they emerge too erratically and piecemeal to mitigate it altogether. Inadvertently, they could even accentuate it. The apparitions draw seers and vicarious participants closer to the watershed of the ultimate revelation; but as scattered fragments of the Rabbi's eternal presence they are unable to quench the eschatological thirst for redemption. Dialectically, the presence of absence is transformed into the absence of presence (Handelman and Shamgar-Handelman 1997). As I note in my concluding remarks, the problem is exacerbated by the peculiar nature of apparitions in 770.

Concern over the paucity of apparitions is articulated lucidly in one of the apparition reports in response to puzzlement over the special merit of a certain boy who was entitled to see the Rabbi: “The Rabbi chooses to reveal himself without a special reason. The revelation is the normal state, which should exist all the time. We don't have to search for reasons. The only reason we need to look for is the incomprehensible fact—why we have not been privileged yet to experience the perfect and long-lasting revelation …” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007: 74). A newcomer to the movement, who saw the Rabbi on his first visit to 770, overcame his excitement by saying: “it was only natural for me to see the Rabbi in his own abode” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007: 96). Yet, “normal” and “natural” as these experiences were rhetorically presented, they have been quite uncommon, the exception, rather than the rule.

If apparitions were too scarce for many meshichistim, for the more spiritually oriented Hasidim, loyal to Habad's reputation as the bastion of “wisdom, intellect, and understanding,”28 apparitions were too plentiful. For them the incessant search for tangible proof of the Rabbi's eternal existence is entirely redundant—a moral failure vis-à-vis the ordeal of the Rabbi's invisibility. I am not sure that the holders of this elitist view would go so far as to accept Wolfson's claim (2009) that the Rabbi had never viewed himself as a potential messiah, seeking instead to generate a collective messianic consciousness in the Jewish people where absence and presence, God and world, would be integrated. But their ambivalence regarding the apparitions might resonate with Wolfson's criticism of the meshichistim: “What is seemingly lost to those who follow this path is the realization that true vision consists of seeing the invisible in the visible, and not of seeing the nonvisible as visible” (Wolfson 2009:276). For Wolfson, as for some Hasidim, “postmortem apparitions of the seventh Rabbi … are indicative of a profound spiritual blindness” (Wolfson 2009:276).

A diluted version of this criticism is noted among meshichisim too. As Kravel-Tovi (2009) shows, Habadniks subscribe to two incongruent systems of logic in constructing their (messianic) reality: one pragmatic and sense based, with special emphasis on sight in discerning what is “real”; the other mystical and dialectical, informed by Habad's acosmic accent and cultivating a hermeneutic of suspicion toward sense-based reality. The two systems comingle in a strained way. Thus, the same messianic publications that praise the apparitions as a proof that “the Rabbi is with us more than ever” resort on other occasions to an internal and spiritual mode of seeing, in line with the Hasidism's accent on the interior (hidden) meaning of the Torah. One activist articulated this supremacy of spiritual seeing by claiming that “to open the eyes seems quite easy … but lifting the eyelids does not mean opening the eyes. What the Rabbi taught was ‘to open the eyes of the intellect, of awareness and comprehension’” (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 206, July 17, 1998: 1).

The same inconsistency was evident in the introduction to the apparitions’ collection. The anonymous editors noted apologetically that “this volume does not aim to provide proof that the Rabbi is alive in actuality in his abode 770. This belief is a reality determined by our Holy Torah” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:3). They explained that just as pilots suffering from vertigo know that they have to rely only on the objective data from the control panel even though it contradicts their sense-based impression, so the Hasidim adhere to the Torah as the true guide to overcome confusion and disorientation in this trying time. But in a subsequent passage the editors justify the publication of the reports by saying that “although we believe whole-heartedly … that the Rabbi is alive exactly as before, clear-cut knowledge can only come from eyesight” (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:14).

Conclusions

What insights can be gleaned from the apparitions in messianic Habad for advancing understanding of these and related phenomena from a social science perspective? First, the accounts provide lucid testimony to the power of culture in setting into motion the processes through which the imperceptible may become perceptible. Although the notion that culture can affect fundamental mental experiences is far from novel, the detailed reports enable one to appreciate the scope of the molding of the perceptual field of the Hasidim in terms of décor, paraphernalia, and ritual. Given that the messianic ecology is densely dotted with visible signs of the invisible Rabbi, his occasional sightings there are “in place,” just as—by way of perceptual closure—a figure in a puzzle can be vividly seen, even though one or more of the puzzle's pieces is missing.

The massive structuration of the environment in messianic Habad may call for the opposite question: why have apparitions not been more widespread among meshichistim? The question is particularly pertinent for 770, transformed by cultural expectations, cues, and practices into an inviting, suggestion-saturated milieu for the Rabbi's presence. To account for the differential capacity to see the Rabbi, one should probably resort to mental skills or dispositions not equally distributed among believers. Absorption, “the capacity to treat what the mind imagines as more real than … what the eyes and ears perceive” (Luhrmann 2012:201), might be the critical variable separating seers from nonseers. Training can improve this skill, but it cannot entirely eliminate individual differences as measured by the Tellegen Absorption Scale (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974; cf. Luhrmann 2012:195–196).

Second, overt differences between apparitions in ritual and nonritual settings enable one to distill two distinct trajectories for perceiving visual stimuli without a material source. The major inviting factor in the first track is the rich cultural ecology that structures a perceptual field conducive to seeing the Rabbi. In a comparative vein, apparitions in ritual venues across the world, from visual encounters with the Virgin in Marian pilgrimage sites to Elvis sightings in Graceland, are likely to be associated with this first track, where setting, expectations, training, and ritual may combine to produce extraordinary visual experiences.29 In monasteries and churches in late Medieval Europe, to take one well-documented example, a similar combination of inducing factors was at work. A changed understanding of the Eucharist, resulting in a shift from “receiving” Christ in communion to “seeing” him in the host at the moment of consecration was linked to the dissemination of new practices of meditation and visualization, leading to an outpouring of lay visions (Bynum 1987:53–56; Newman 2005; Taves 2009a:151–2). “It should not be surprising,” Newman notes, “that a gaze fixed lovingly and habitually on the host, understood as the visible, edible body of God in the world, should sometime see it transformed into the infant Christ (Newman 2005:16). The proliferation of religious art in all media in the late medieval period made “holy seeing” more accessible to lay believers. From the vantage point of present-day visual technologies, actual painted or sculpted images and religious theater are but pale, innocuous antecedents of photographs and videos, respectively, but they probably played a similar role in inducing sightings. “A nun who daily wept before the pieta or kissed the feet of the crucified would find it increasingly easy to visualize these figures in a prayer and the line between ‘visualization’ and ‘vision’ is a fine one” (Newman 2005:17).

The major inviting factor in the second track is serious distress and the emotional upheaval it entails. The threat to one's well-being in a context of Hasidic belief is sufficiently potent to engender a sighting even outdoors, without the suggestive décor that governs the landscape of ritual apparitions.30 The two trajectories are not entirely exclusive. Distress may play a role among visionaries in Marian or Hindu shrines, as it does among Hasidim in 770, and environmental cues appear in mundane settings too. Still, the gap between the two types of experiences is sufficiently clear to render the typology worth pursuing.

Third, in reviewing the reported experiences of seeing the Rabbi against the Christian material, and in light of the distinction between visions and apparitions, a major epistemological disparity between the experiences subsumed under these two categories comes to the fore. Visions in medieval and early modern Christianity were viewed as “unusual sensory experiences” (Taves 2009a:126), by definition discontinuous with ordinary reality. Their spiritual nature was highlighted insofar as the things “seen” were not viewed as actual bodies but, rather, as their images. Visions required that “the pathways of normal perception … are blocked in such a way that the eye does not focus on physical reality but instead turns inward toward images that exist within the mind” (Newman 2005:11). Visionaries such as St. Theresa of Jesus (San Juan 2008) or Hildegard of Bingen (Newman 1985), believing that a true vision resides in the soul, sought to dissociate their mystical experiences from the physical act of seeing. Given the emphasis on alternative ways of seeing, it is not surprising that “altered states of consciousness have been the sin qua non of visions” (Newman 2005:8).

Visionaries in modern Marian shrines, although often too plebeian to frame their experiences in a coherent religious doctrine, still betray in their accounts and behavior the hiatus between their visions and ordinary visual experiences. In many a case Mary hovers above, in space, and the eyes of seers and followers are lifted toward her. She may take peculiar shapes—appearing “like a cloud,” or “a big ray of light coming from the sky very slowly” (Bitel 2009:81).

Contemporary Evangelicals, as presented in Luhrmann's seminal study of the Vineyard Church (Luhrmann 2012), share with Habadniks the passion for rendering their idolized Other palpably close and “democratized” (i.e., accessible to all). They differ from Habadniks and Catholics alike in that their preferred sensory mode for mystical contact is aural, rather than visual. Yet cutting across these different sensory modalities, the spiritual essence of visions noted in earlier Christian revelations is firmly maintained. God here “is more like a state of mind” (Luhrmann 2012:83). His voice “normally sounds like a flow of spontaneous thoughts rather than an audible voice” (Luhrmann 2012:46); and newcomers have to learn to recognize God's thoughts in theirs. Notwithstanding the mentalistic accent in the discourse of these modern, psychologically sophisticated believers, they, too, seem to draw a clear line between experiences of hearing God and ordinary auditory perception. As stated before, this line is permeable, given that sensory overrides occasionally occur; but even then the line is not obliterated conceptually and epistemologically.

Note the following account: “About four feet high. Absolutely external. Absolutely visible. This white, glowing messanger” (Luhrmann 2012:285). Even though the account uncharacteristically articulates a visual (rather than aural) experience that is situated out there (rather than in the mind), it cannot be confounded with reported experiences of ordinary visual perception. What makes Habad apparitions in 770 and other ritual zones so distinct from the array of visionary experiences in Christianity past and present is their hyperreal nature. The denial of the Rabbi's death by the meshichistim is a blatant ontological statement that inevitably limits the epistemological horizons of the seers and, consequently, the soteriological implications of their experiences.

Committed to the notion that the Rabbi resides in “flesh and spirit” in 770, the Hasidim see him there, “just as before,” in image and gestures perfectly matching his appearance and conduct in his lifetime. It is tempting to suggest that Habad's highly structured and systematized mysticism as well as its strong involvement with the real world both find expression in the “orderly” apparitions. In the visual encounters with the Rabbi the basic dimensions of ordinary reality are usually maintained—the Rabbi is seen in the right place and the right time—and the experiences of seeing him subscribe to the principles of veridical perception. I suggest that the discontent inherent in the apparitions is amplified by the bothering gap between the future-oriented picture of the hyperenchanted world-on-the-verge-of-redemption that the Rabbi promoted and the past-oriented and hyperreal nature of the experiences of seeing him. In these experiences awareness is not dramatically altered, the gaze remains horizontal, rather than turned upward, the scenery terrestrial, not celestial, and the physical environment remains the same. In the end, the apparitions, like other reproductions of the Rabbi's icons and traces, are but replicas through which a lost past is temporarily restored.

Risking another comparison with Christianity, I return to the distinction between apparitions and visions and situate it historically (or rather metahistorically). In Jesus's appearances following his crucifixion and resurrection his body was portrayed as having physical reality. Following the ascension, the visual encounters with him have become less “real,” assuming a more spiritual nature (Wiebe 1997:142). As a postascension phenomenon, visions in Christianity thus partake of this creative spirituality, appearing as the product of mental processes captured by concepts such as “the mythopoetic function” (Price-Williams 1999) and “autonomous imagination” (Stephen 1989:41–64). The epistemological openness that these processes allow engenders experiences that are “light, fanciful, not-real-but-more-than-real” (Luhrmann 2012:83). Stephen argues that although such experiences are not deemed external reality, “they become more real than external reality,” and have much greater freedom and richness of imaginative inventiveness (Stephen 1989:56). The meshichistim in Habad appear to be stuck in a “pre-ascenstion era,” waiting, to use an analogy more palatable to their convictions, for “Moses in our generation” to come out of his occlusion.31

Notes

1. 1

   Habad is acronym for “wisdom, intellect, knowledge” in Hebrew. The movement is also known as Lubavitch, after the town in Byelorussia, which had been its center until the early 20th century.

2. 2

   The Rabbi consistently referred to his predecessor and father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersen (RaYaTZ), as “the Messiah of the generation” (Heilman and Friedman 2010); yet some of the references he made toward the end of his life could be interpreted as indicating a messianic self-awareness. Scholars sharply differ on this issue. Dan (1999) and Dahan (2008) claim that the Rabbi did view himself as the Messiah and that his childlessness might have been deliberate, accommodating to the messianic model of the end of history. Others argue that the Rabbi's messianic vision was entirely devoid of personal dimension (e.g., Wolfson 2009).

3. 3

   The classic analysis of failed prophecy in terms of dissonance theory (Festinger et al. 1956) was employed, with various adaptations, to make sense of Habad in the aftermath of the Rabbi's death (Dein and Dawson 2008; Dein 2010; Shaffir 1993, 1994, 1995). For critical views of dissonance as adequate conception for understanding post-Schneerson Habad see Dein (2010:139–146), Kravel-Tovi (2009), and Kravel-Tovi and Bilu (2008).

4. 4

   Intriguingly, the Breslav Hasidic sect, without a living zaddik since the beginning of the 19th century, is also popular today. For a comparative analysis of Habad and Breslav see Bilu and Mark (2012).

5. 5

   In the Jewish mystical system, Gematria, based on assigning numerical values to alphabetical letters, 770 is tantamount to “The Abode of the Messiah” (Beit Mashiach).

6. 6

   To emphasize the immediacy of the coming of the Messiah, the Rabbi used to end many talks with the phrase, tekhef u-miyad mamash, often repeating the last word, mamash, two or three times. The Hasidim hastened to read the word, composed of the Hebrew letters mem, mem, shin, as acronym for Menachem Mendel Schneerson, or, no less pertinent, for moshiach Menachem shmo (A Messiah named Menachem). In one of his talks, the Rabbi said: “mamash, with all the interpretations of mamash,” thus possibly alluding to himself as the chosen one.

7. 7

   Luhrmann's seminal work dealt primarily with experiences of hearing God's voice among Evangelicals (Luhrmann 2004, 2005, 2011, 2012) reflecting Protestantism's tendency toward the aural mode (see also Dein and Littlewood 2007). The visual mode is dominant in encounters in Catholicism with Jesus (Bynum 1987; Newman 1985, 2005; Taves 2009a; Wiebe 1997) and with Mary (Bitel 2009; Christian 1981, 1992, 1996; Matter 2001; Zimdars-Swartz 1989, 1991).

8. 8

   Hasidism emerged and spread in East Europe, among Ashkenazi Jews; yet Habad, unlike most other Hasidic groups, accepts Mizrahim (Jews of Mid-Eastern or North African background) without reservation.

9. 9

   A single apparition may sometimes include more than one sighting: the Rabbi seen intermittently, in brief exposures, in the same location. Episodes are described in the text.

10. 10

    In her comprehensive study of 488 societies, Bourguignon (1970) found that in 62 percent of them subjects experienced “hallucinations” in their ritual practices.

11. 11

    More recent studies confirm this finding. For example, 7–30 percent of children and adolescents in six community survey studies in various countries reported experiencing hallucinations (Scott et al. 2009).

12. 12

    “Panentheism understands God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world” (Culp 2009).

13. 13

    Wolfson (2009) claims that the messianic project cultivated by the meshichistim, with the Rabbi as the designated redeemer, is based on gross misunderstanding of the Rabbi's messianic teachings.

14. 14

    On the uses of rabbis’ and sages’ portraits in traditional and orthodox society, including Habad, see Cohen (1998), Heilman (2001), and Shandler (2009).

15. 15

    This process had started when the Rabbi was alive: “Broadcasts and videotapes have allowed followers around the world to engage the Rabbi's presence, and the spiritually transformative properties this encounter entails, without leaving their homes” (Shandler 2009:250).

16. 16

    How far this visual exposure can go is demonstrated by a 675-page-long messianic exegesis, Now I Know (Ata Yada'ati), where the Rabbi's iconic portrait decorates the upper left corner of each and every twofold page (Sasson 1998).

17. 17

    David Berger maintains “the availability of a vast library of videotapes which can preserve a sense of the departed Messiah's physical presence” (2001:29) sets Habad's messianism apart from older messianic movements, such as Christianity and Sabbatianism.

18. 18

    I am indebted to Michal Kravel-Tovi for sharing with me this episode. Jeffery Shandler reached similar conclusions: “Those who watch this video can rise up from profane life into another world, a spiritual world, and experience the numinous awakening in matters of divine worship and the holy illumination felt by those who participated in the farbrengen itself” (Shandler 2009:249 n. 41).

19. 19

    Even at the zenith of his fame, the Rabbi was adamant to present himself as a deputy and medium of his predecessor. His proclaimed bonding with RaYaTZ might have helped him to win the battle of succession after RaYaTZ passed away in 1950 (Heilman and Friedman 2010:29–64).

20. 20

    The tension between seeing the Rabbi in one's mind and seeing him “out there” (in apparition) was dramatically articulated by a young female visitor to 770, after a frustrating attempt to “see” the Rabbi there: “I am opening my eyes! … well, I still can't see. It's precisely when I open my eyes that I can see that the (Rabbi's) chair is empty. When I close them, the Rebbe is with me” (Kravel-Tovi 2009:254).

21. 21

    This visual reciprocity brings to mind the Hindu practice of darshan (Babb 1981).

22. 22

    This endless multiplication stands in stark contrast with the Rabbi's childlessness.

23. 23

    The description of the practices is based on the fieldwork Michal Kravel-Tovi conducted in 770 in 1999–2000 (see Kravel-Tovi 2009; Kravel-Tovi and Bilu 2008). She dubbed the practices “ritual practices of re-presenting.”

24. 24

    This is how the Rabbi's participation in the prayers was depicted by a visitor: “Even though our eyes are still shut, and we cannot see the Rabbi in materiality (be-gashmiut) after Tammuz 3rd (the Jewish date of the Rabbi's death in 1994), there, in his study hall, it seems that he is the only one who guides the work … On Sim'hat Torah, it is customary to honor the Rabbi with the verses of ata hereytah (‘you have shown’). The Gabbai cries out: ‘Mr. so and so bought the verse and he honors the Rabbi … with it. The huge crowd keeps silent—now the Rabbi is reciting (the verse)—and then repeats the verse together’” (Si'hat Ha-Geulah 267, October 15, 1999: 3).

25. 25

    Kittel is a white robe that serves as a burial shroud for male Jews. It is also worn by Ashkenazi Jews on festive occasions, such as the Day of Atonement.

26. 26

    For example, the Rabbi revealed himself to a Hasid in Melbourne, Australia, and promised him that the economic problems that burdened his family would be relieved. At exactly the same time, the Hasid's parents were discussing their economic difficulties (Lifko'ah et Ha-Einayim 2007:109–110).

27. 27

    Christian (1996) describes a similar phenomenon in Ezkioga, Spain, in the early 1930s, where anarchist workers underwent conversion and had visions of Mary.

28. 28

    See N. 1.

29. 29

    The role of expectations is tricky because “an apparition may be understood as the appearance within the physical environment to one or more individuals of a person they would not expect to be within the immediate perceptual range” (Zimdars-Swartz 1989:125). While many meshichistim visiting 770 would concur that the Rabbi is not within their “immediate perceptual range” they still expect to see him, as, for example, do pilgrims to the Marian apparition site at Conyers, Georgia, who are told that “the Rosary is at 12:00 and the Virgin Mary appears at 12:20 …” (Davis and Boles 2003:385). This type of structured expectation does not exist in mundane apparitions.

30. 30

    Apparitions in which the Rabbi saved the seer from a life-risking situation share much in common with “the third man factor” (Geiger 2009), an uncanny sensation of a mysterious presence that gives protection and guidance under grueling physical conditions. “The third man factor” appears as a subset of the more comprehensive “sense of presence” phenomenon (Luhrmann 2012:378).

31. 31

    Apparitions in Habad share intriguing similarities with Elvis sightings in U.S. popular culture (Doss 2005; Marcus 1991; Reese 2006). Although the comparison between Habad and “the Presleytarian Church” (Plasketes 1997) may seem strained, note that Habad, too, was reshaped in the United States, which some scholars view as “the most ocularly oriented or hypervisualized of all cultures in recorded civilizations” (Meyert 1997:67). Harold Bloom (1992) deemed Habad a U.S. religion despite its Eastern European origin.

Biography

• YORAM BILU is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Psychology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.