Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (; ), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups and Jewish religious organizations in the world. Unlike most Haredi groups, which are self-segregating, Chabad operates mainly in the wider world and caters to secularized Jews.
Founded in 1775 by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the name "Chabad" () is an acronym formed from three Hebrew words—Chokhmah, Binah, Da'at, the first three sefirot of the kabbalistic Tree of Life: , "Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge"—which represent the intellectual and kabbalistic underpinnings of the movement. The name Lubavitch derives from the town in which the now-dominant line of leaders resided from 1813 to 1915. Other, non-Lubavitch scions of Chabad either disappeared or merged into the Lubavitch line. In the 1930s, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, moved the center of the Chabad movement from Russia to Poland. After the outbreak of World War II, he moved the center of the movement to the United States.
In 1951, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson formally accepted the leadership as the seventh Chabad Rebbe. He transformed the movement into one of the most widespread Jewish movements in the world today. Under his leadership, Chabad established a large network of institutions that seek to satisfy religious, social and humanitarian needs across the world. Chabad institutions provide outreach to unaffiliated Jews and humanitarian aid, as well as religious, cultural and educational activities. Before and after his passing in 1994, Schneerson has been believed by some of his followers to be the Messiah, with his own position on the matter debated among scholars. Messianic ideology in Chabad sparked controversy in various Jewish communities and is still an unresolved matter. Following his passing, no successor was appointed as a new central leader.
In 2018, Marcin Wodziński estimated the total number of Chabad households globally between 16,000 and 17,000, accounting for 13% of the global Hasidic population. The number of those who sporadically or regularly attend Chabad events is far larger; in 2005 the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported that up to one million Jews attend Chabad services at least once a year. In a 2020 study, the Pew Research Center found that 16% of American Jews participated in Chabad services or activities at least semi-regularly.
History
The Chabad movement was established after the First Partition of Poland in the town of Liozno, Pskov Governorate, Russian Empire (now Liozna, Belarus), in 1775, by Shneur Zalman, a student of Dov Ber of Mezeritch, the successor to Hasidism's founder, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. Rabbi Dovber Shneuri, the Second Rebbe, moved the movement to Lyubavichi (), in current-day Russia, in 1813.
The movement was centered in Lyubavichi for a century until the fifth Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Dovber left the village in 1915 and moved to the city of Rostov-on-Don. During the interwar period, following Bolshevik persecution, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, under the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, was centered in Riga and then in Warsaw. The outbreak of World War II led the Sixth Rebbe to move to the United States. Since 1940, the movement's center has been in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
While the movement spawned a number of offshoot groups throughout its history, the Chabad-Lubavitch branch is the only one still active, making it the movement's main surviving line. Historian Jonathan Sarna has characterized Chabad as having enjoyed the fastest rate of growth of any Jewish religious movement in the period 1946–2015.
In the early 1900s, Chabad-Lubavitch legally incorporated itself under Agudas Chasidei Chabad ("Association of Chabad Hasidim").
In the 1980s, tensions arose between Chabad and Satmar Chasidim as a result of several assaults on Chabad Hasidim by Satmar Hasidim.