Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Schneerson, trained in engineering in Berlin and Paris, takes leadership of Chabad in 1951 after the Holocaust has devastated Hasidic Europe. He reverses the inward posture of Hasidic courts by dispatching young couples as permanent emissaries to cities with almost no Jewish infrastructure, building a network now spanning over a hundred countries. He never visits Israel and rarely leaves Brooklyn, yet directs a global movement through public addresses, correspondence, and personal audiences lasting through the night. His decision not to appoint a successor, and the messianic expectations some followers attached to him, leave Chabad both the most widespread and the most theologically contested Hasidic group.