The Rebbe bet the farm

Bruce AKA the Chicxulubavitcher Rebbe comments to the lengthy discussion about Lubavitcher headgear, etc:

In this discussion on the lack of continuation of 'old' style or 'old' school Lubavitch customs, all comments above are missing a key point. The Rebbe bet the farm -- *everything* -- on the geula, Moshiach, his revelation, what ever you want to call it. Nothing was spared in this wager. Nothing was held back from his shlichus, not custom, not chassidic style, not community, especially Crown Heights. He himself said that he was 'meshuga' for Moshiach. Unfortunately, or from some other's point of view, naturally, he lost the bet. There's not going to be any avoida pinimis in Lubavitch, no more 'tayreh', no more 'varmkeit,' no more 'real' mesiras nefesh. In sometime in the future, if the Lubavitchers in Gaza chained themselves to walls against a forced withdrawl, it would be paraded around the world by the shluchim as if it were no more than a publicity stunt.

All the nostalgia in the world won't bring it back. It's over. Face it; it's just going to get worse. More of Lubavitch will frie out, go to college, rent videos, hire escorts, smoke pot, and be more, never less, materialistic. Perhaps the only thing which could save old-style chassidus is peak oil slamming America and the rest of the world out of modernity and back to the shtetl (the 'die-off' scenario).

REMBRANDT, Belshazzar's Feast, National Gallery, London