For Many Members of Habad, Wait for the Messiah Is Over : Judaism: They contend that their spiritual leader is the moshiach Jews were promised so long ago. But others are not so quick to believe.

BET SHEMESH, Israel — “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah . . . Messiah, Messiah, Messiah. . . .”

As Moshe Dickshtein rolls into town in his 32-foot van, the music blares over loudspeakers. Homemakers pause in their shopping to catch the words, teen-agers do a couple of dance steps on the sidewalk, other drivers slow down and smile.

The tune is catchy, and the words are from a Hebrew prayer that devout Jews recite each day to renew their faith and remind themselves of the need to prepare for the Messiah.

But Dickshtein’s message is different, astounding even, for those who come to listen to his earnest talks.

“King Messiah has come!” Dickshtein told visitors to his van. “He is here! The waiting is over! King Messiah has come!”

Dickshtein, 36, belongs to Habad, the Lubavitcher movement of Hasidic Jews. Many of its members believe that their spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the ailing 90-year-old Lubavitcher rebbe, is indeed the Messiah, or moshiach, that Jews were promised so long ago.

“There is no question about this,” Rabbi David Nachshon, a Habad official in Israel, said of Schneerson, who has suffered crippling strokes and is partially paralyzed. “He will for certain reveal himself as the moshiach, and he will redeem our nation and the world.

But last Sunday--the day that thousands of Schneerson’s most ardent followers were expecting the Brooklyn rebbe to proclaim himself as the Chosen One--was one of disappointment. Schneerson did nothing of the kind.

“Every day that the Messiah doesn’t come and isn’t revealed, I am disappointed,” said Nachshon, who had gone to New York last week for what he hoped would be Schneerson’s coronation as “king Messiah.”

That Schneerson failed to reveal himself as the Messiah came as no surprise to his closest aides.

At Habad’s headquarters in Brooklyn, spokesman Yehudah Krinsky, a rabbi and longtime secretary to Schneerson, said the rebbe has never claimed to be the moshiach. Krinsky said those who make such an “absurd” claim represent a “fringe group” within the movement.

“We’ve never denied that if we had to pick a candidate that the rebbe is he,” said Rabbi Baruch Y. Hecht, associate director of Habad of California. “But we have not proclaimed the rebbe as King of the Jews.”

Born in 1902, Schneerson is the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe since Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder. Trained as an engineer at the University of Berlin and the Sorbonne, he emigrated to the United States in 1941 and succeeded his father-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, in 1951.

Whatever the future holds, the evident split within the Lubavitcher movement comes at a time when no one is positioned to assume the mantle of leadership when Schneerson dies. That explains, in part, why the most fervent members want to accelerate events and have Schneerson coronated before he dies.

The high esteem for Schneerson also precludes any talk of a successor. More important, however, is the tenet that if one truly believes the moshiach’s arrival is imminent, any thought of tomorrow becomes irrelevant. Indeed, it is this article of faith--the idea that the Messiah will come at any minute--that energizes the movement’s followers.

With more than 250,000 supporters claimed worldwide, Habad is distinguished by its campaigns to strengthen the faith and religious practice of Jews. It is notable for its efforts to bring lapsed Jews back into the fold.

Expectation of a messiah is a fundamental tenet of Judaism. But unlike the Christian belief that Jesus as the Messiah was both God and man, the Messiah expected by Hasidic Jews is very much human and not divine.

“The Messiah is a man who is going to come and lead the children of Israel,” said Jerome R. Mintz, professor of anthropology and Jewish studies at Indiana University and the author of a recent book on the Hasidim. “He doesn’t have to be a supernatural figure. He’s ordained by God.”

Many Jewish theologians have held that a potential messiah is born each generation. Once the Messiah is proclaimed, according to traditional Jewish belief, there will be world peace, all Jews will gather in Israel, the Temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt and the dead will be resurrected.

For nearly a decade, many in Habad, believing Schneerson to be the Messiah of this generation, have organized campaigns to prepare for him and promote his acceptance.

In Los Angeles, billboards urging readers to call a toll-free number to “Discover Moshiach” went up two months ago at a cost of $7,000, said Rabbi Chaim Sanowicz of Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad in West Hollywood. Unlike the billboards in Israel, however, those in Los Angeles make no claim that Schneerson is the Messiah.

But the message carried by Habad’s legion of street preachers in more than a score of countries is causing considerable controversy, even within Habad itself.

“We strongly protest against the announcements appearing in recent weeks that are causing damage to the honor of (Schneerson) and to our sympathizers and that are pushing away many Jews from drawing closer to Judaism in general and Hasidism in particular,” eight Habad-affiliated rabbis in Israel wrote recently in an open letter. “We call from the bottom of our hearts to all who are doing this to stop immediately.”

Rabbi Eliezer Schach, leader of a rival Hasidic movement, denounced the “King Messiah” campaign as “vain and stupid” and “false messianism . . . cheapening one of the foundations of Judasim and damaging simple faith.”

And at the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the guardian of religious orthodoxy here, there is clear consternation.

To declare anyone as the Messiah is “a very serious matter,” a senior official said, adding that there inevitably would be “the disappointment after the hopes prove false.”

As the controversy has grown, however, there have also been rejoinders from believers. Rabbi Zvi Glizenstein of Eilat in southern Israel denounced the authors of the open letter and wrote in a response published here by the religious newspaper Yom Hashishi, “Men, women and children know clearly that the rebbe is the King Messiah.”

“The simple folk accept it right away--the rebbe is the Messiah,” Dickshtein said, sitting in his van, parked down the street from a local high school to draw in passing students. “Those who are more learned need more persuasion. . . . But people are coming to recognize the rebbe as King Messiah.”

Jewish history, however, is filled with false messiahs. The warrior Bar Kokhba, who led a disastrous revolt against Roman rule in the 2nd Century, was thought by some Jewish leaders of his era to be the Messiah. Shabbetai Zevi, a wealthy Turkish Jew in the 17th Century, was similarly thought to be the Messiah--until his conversion to Islam.

There are usually predictions in each generation that the Messiah has arrived, and various contemporary events--from Napoleonic wars to Nazi concentration camps to the Persian Gulf War--are cited as fulfillment of biblical prophecies that the war of the satanic nations of Gog and Magog will herald the Messiah’s arrival.

Recalling a previous campaign to proclaim another rebbe as the Messiah, Mintz commented in an interview, “The students were in just as much of an uproar” as Habad is now. But when the rebbe died, there was great disillusionment, and that is likely to happen again, Mintz said.

“Everyone has worked themselves up to a frenzy now,” Mintz commented. “Of course, they’re going to be doomed to disappointment. There was a terrible falling off when the previous rebbe died.”

Parks reported from Jerusalem and Stammer from Los Angeles.