Rabbi Krinsky’s Candid Interview

The Rabbi / Questions for Yehuda Krinsky
Interview by Deborah Solomon, New York Times

Newsweek just published a list, “The 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America,” and placed you at No. 1. As a Hasidic rabbi and a leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, do you think you can rank rabbis or any other religious leaders as if they were athletes?
I am of the opinion that you can’t rank human beings. Every person has something to contribute to the welfare of the next human being. No two people think alike or look alike, and everyone has something that another person does not have. Who’s to say who is higher and who’s lower? In terms of the essence of human beings, I don’t feel it’s proper to rank them because we don’t really know what their mission in life is.

What’s bothersome about the best-rabbi list is that it seems to exemplify a culture in which religious leaders of all stripes are fixated on power and politics, rather than philosophical questions.
Politics and religion are not soluble. They don’t mix. I learned from the Rebbe, my teacher, my mentor. The rebbe in his tenure received Bobby Kennedy and many other politicians. He gave them all the time they needed and discussed whatever they needed to discuss. But he never chose, never gave any indication of who he favored.

You’re referring to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the former leader of the Lubavitcher movement, which is based in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Weren’t you his chauffeur in your youth? Where did you take him?
I will tell you. He never left the city. The only traveling he did was to visit the gravesite of his father-in-law, which was about a 25- or 30-minute drive to Queens from Brooklyn.

He died in 1994 and named you as the executor of his will, but the Chabad movement has since split over the issue of whether he was the Messiah.
I was always opposed to that. I felt it was wrong. But there was a group of people that felt that the rebbe implied during his lifetime that he was a Messiah. They became very vocal about it and sometimes more than vocal. They made a lot of noise, like a penny in a can; shake it, and it makes a lot of noise.

How large is your endowment?
We don’t have an endowment. If we had any money in the bank we would be remiss if we didn’t invest it in Jewish life. If I had $50 million now, I could get rid of it within a few weeks. We run at a deficit.

What do you think of Mayor Bloomberg?
He’s a Bostonian, as am I. He betrayed me. He deserted the Red Sox.

What else besides baseball do you admire in American pop culture?
Bob Dylan comes to the Lubavitch outpost from time to time. Did you know that? He was at my house for dinner a couple of times.

Do you like his music?
I’m blowing in the wind.

What do you make of the popularity of various kabbalah centers that have created a fashion for Jewish mysticism?
What do you want me to say as a rabbi? That I’m elated Madonna studies kabbalah?

She is learning Hebrew; she lights candles; she seems sincere about it.
So what? In order to understand kabbalah, the Jewish tradition going back to the Zohar, you have to spend years in Torah study. In fact, many communities banned the study of kabbalah until the student finished 40 years of Torah studies.

Why are ultra-Orthodox men so regressive in their treatment of women? You wouldn’t ever shake my hand, would you?
No.

Why not?
That’s the custom. It’s a matter of modesty, the sexes not mingling.

I don’t understand why you’re unwilling to embrace social change, when you can embrace technological change. Why is e-mailing allowed?
Why should it be disallowed? If there’s anyone transforming the modern world with all this equipment and technology, it’s Chabad. We’re using all of it. We are trying to make the world a more God-friendly place.

Note: The interview has been condensed and edited. A version of will appear in print on August 8, 2010, on page MM11 of the Sunday Magazine.