Religion: The Lubavitchers

A rundown, three-story building at 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn is the hub and powerhouse of one of the most intense religious brotherhoods in the modern world: the Lubavitcher movement. In Communist Russia and North Africa, Australia and all over the U.S.. an estimated 10,000 followers of this Hasidic sect look to Brooklyn for light and guidance, for it is the home of their Rebbe,* Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He is the seventh leader of the Lubavitchers, a man whose wisdom is believed by his followers to be something more than human.

Few outsiders have made the effort to try to understand this...