David Solomon is great, I went to several of his lectures in Israel last year. He has a depth of knowledge having learnt in a variety of yeshivot including Chabad and Merkaz HaRav.

Saducee: you’re point about the Besht is likely accurate.
In fact the Ari-z”l instructed his students to learn half a day and work the other half…

Shneur Zalman in particular was very vocal about Jews leaving the cities and being self supportive in rural communities.

It used to be “the great” would sit in Yeshivah and learn supported by their in-laws… I guess many people these days considers themselves great and welfare became our ….

I do not know if you have heard of David Solomon (http://www.inonehour.net/)

He is a scholar even by your standards in Kabbalah, Jewish History and philosophy. His talks on history particularly 18th century are “brilliant”. Would recommend them.

Additionally the Besht would probably be bemused by the fact that many of the Chassidic religious don’t seem to have had gainful employment either – they seem to do a lot of study but not alot of manual labour/work aside from it – vastly different from his own personal experience.

In some ways I guess whether to Chabad’s detriment or not is debatable on the grand scale of things – the movement became so focused on Kiruv at a definite cost to its scholorship. Also there are so many “Lubavitcher” who have had no or little yeshivah education at all.

Many Lubavitcher would see this as mesiras nefesh… I believe the Rebbe would have expected this to be on top of learning not instead. Tefillin on the street was supposed to be strictly Friday afternoon unless you are on a bus and meet a Jew (A chabadnik should always carry his tefillin with him).

Fabrengens too should have their place and time. There have been very few that I have been to that were worth the time…

What is interesting is that the previous Rebbe and even earlier ones would bemoan how far their Chassidim had fallen compared to previous generations..

If Chabad’s reputation has dropped away or turned around in the last 50 years, that’s only because too many people are complacent. Feeling that their pedigree is such that the movement has already earned its reputation, people are getting lazy. I don’t know precisely when the emphasis shifted from serious discourse to farbrenging and putting tefillin on people in the street, but I think it’s having a detrimental effect.

Of course, this only goes for the reputation that Chabad have. There are many solid institutions of Lubavitch learning, and there are still plenty of serious Lubavitch scholars who engage solidly with the literature. Ginzburg, who you mention, is certainly one of them. I don’t dislike the man as much as I may have made it sound: I just don’t like the way he drums himself up as an expert in particle physics and Kabbalah as well. He is certainly, however, an expert in Chabad Hassidut.

Interesting that the Mezricher Magid directed the Alter Rebbe to write a Shulchan Aruch, pushing him in a direction away from the Chassidic leaders of the time, and perhaps in this way planting the seeds for the intellectualisation of Chassidism that resulted in Chabad.

Oh BTW, this Karliner story comes from the Chabad machzor (which was compiled by the Alter Rebbe).

P.S. I know you are not a R. Ginzburg fan.. but a nice talk given by him on the topic (note I am talking about R. Shlomo of Karlin here):

http://www.inner.org/spiritual-masters/shlomo-of-karlin.php

Also my last sentence got cut off: I do agree Lubavitch is not what / where it was 100- 200 years ago it and there is no excuse for this for the chassidim.