Tucker Carlson’s smears against Chabad could fuel hate in California

In April 2019, a man entered a San Diego County synagogue with a gun and a desire to kill as many Jews as possible.  

He killed one and wounded several others before fleeing. 

The day was the conclusion of Passover, commemorating the miraculous splitting of the Red Sea.  

Unlike last week’s Michigan attacker, the gunman did not choose the largest synagogue, or even the closest. He chose a synagogue from Chabad, an affiliate of a worldwide network of Orthodox Judaism, where celebration of the redemption from slavery is seen as connected to a future messianic redemption. 

And yes, Chabad is the same group defamed in recent days by San Diego County-raised Tucker Carlson.

Carlson claimed that Chabad engineered the war with Iran as a prelude to redemption and the rebuilding of the Temple.  

His “evidence” was images of arm patches warn by some soldiers, depicting the Temple. And to him, the proof was clear and in plain sight because he found it through a two-minute internet search. 

Perhaps a few extra minutes would have informed him that the patches are not related to Chabad. Perhaps a few more might have educated him about the true nature of Chabad.

Most Chabadniks I know do want Moshiach (the messiah) to come, and the Temple to be restored, as Carlson says. In fact, his own Christian faith is built on Jewish messianic prophesy. 

But Chabad is not unique. Praying for the Temple and Moshiach are in every variant of the traditional Jewish prayer, dating back to the times of the Roman Empire.  

What is noticeable with Chabad is the focus on bringing the messianic age through good deeds; and the idea that the messianic age is a time when knowledge of the Creator will fill the world.  

The biblical promise of peace is a natural result, because beings who can see the same Creator in others as themselves cannot hate or harm.

And Carlson seems to miss the point of Temple restoration. The Temple is a place where celebrants and sinners walk through crowds with an agricultural offering, and connect to God by giving it up, by sacrificing it.

Restoring the Temple is not the point of this war, or any other. It is a spiritual goal, not a military one.

While defaming Chabad, Carlson also spoke about its late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — also known as the “Rebbe” — as if he were a cult leader.  

A three-minute search might have shown Carlson that the Rebbe was a dedicated scholar of Torah texts whose wisdom helped him advise and inspire Jews and non-Jews alike.  

The internet has plenty of clips of the Rebbe and his warm face-to-face encounters with figures like Robert F. Kennedy, David Dinkins, Shirley Chisholm (the first black woman to run for US president), and many others.  

The Rebbe treated everyone with warmth and positivity. He was also a qualified engineer who had studied science in Berlin and Paris before World War II. After making it to the USA, he worked at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where he designed electrical systems for the USS Missouri. 

For people who later understood the Rebbe’s focus on peace and unity, it is noteworthy that when war finally ended, it was on the deck of that very ship.

I suspect that if the Rebbe could speak to Carlson, he would inspire him to go deeper than superficial punditry, and to use his platform for universal good, because that is how he spoke to everyone.  

Today, it is easy to get quick bits of information wherever we go — but algorithm-generated responses are always reactions to the questions we pose. The analytics will always try to give us what we ask for. Ask for blemishes and we’ll certainly find them.  

Or choose to look for beauty, and we’ll be rewarded with beauty.  

Perhaps Carlson may realize this and start asking better questions.  

As a Chabadnik, I will keep trying to find knowledge, peace, and sparks of divinity, and I hope to see a world where deep knowledge grows, and hatred ends.

Ken Blaker spends his days as a software engineer. He is also a husband and father, and a Chabadnik.

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