By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

“The Rebbe believed every human being could change. He never asked Jews to surrender moral clarity in the hope that someone someday might.”

Few Jewish leaders have shaped modern Judaism more profoundly than the Lubavitcher Rebbe, my Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. His message of love, responsibility, Jewish pride, and moral courage transformed Jewish life across the globe.

2- @berelsolomon should get on knees at the Rebbe’s grave and beg forgiveness that the Rebbe embraced Hitler lovers 🤮. Hitler killed the Rebbe’s family. How dare you ? #FakeChabad – read the truth in Rabbi Shmuley’s new column – https://t.co/v6RgYXZyVB pic.twitter.com/5Yu9ENXl44

— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) July 17, 2026

The Rebbe believed in the infinite value of every human being. He believed no one should ever be written off. He believed in teshuvah—the possibility that people can genuinely change. Every human being possessed an infinite spark of the divine.

But he also believed in truth.

He never confused outreach with endorsement.

He never suggested that moral clarity should be sacrificed for publicity.

That is why I have become increasingly troubled by the way one story involving Senator Jesse Helms has come to dominate discussions of Jewish outreach.

One of the more troubling recent developments has been the attempt by some commentators to resurrect the decades-old Jesse Helms controversy in order to draw false moral equivalencies with entirely different modern disputes. The Helms episode has been stripped of its historical context and repurposed as a rhetorical shield to deflect criticism of contemporary figures whose own conduct has generated intense public controversy.

Historical comparisons should illuminate, not obscure. Invoking the Helms story to dismiss legitimate concerns about present-day controversies does a disservice both to history and to honest public debate. Each case should stand or fall on its own facts. Using a decades-old political dispute as a blanket defense against criticism of current conduct is intellectually unpersuasive and risks trivializing the very issues that deserve careful moral scrutiny.

If critics believe a public figure has crossed serious ethical or moral lines, they should defend that position with evidence relating to that individual’s own actions and public statements—not by attempting to rewrite or weaponize history. Honest debate demands accuracy, context, and consistency, especially when discussing matters involving antisemitism, extremism, and the memory of the Holocaust.

Today, whenever controversy erupts over whether Jewish leaders or influencers should engage deeply controversial public figures, someone inevitably invokes Jesse Helms.

“The Rebbe met Jesse Helms.”

“The Rebbe honored Jesse Helms.”

“The Rebbe believed in influencing the future.”

Case closed.

Except history is not that simple.

Two Stories—Not One

The modern understanding of the Jesse Helms story rests largely upon Professor Alan Dershowitz’s recollections.

In a Jewish Educational Media video released in 2025, Professor Dershowitz recounts that Jesse Helms, who started with less than great affection for israel, was being honored and that the Rebbe explained one should not judge a person solely by the past but should seek to influence the future.

It is a beautiful lesson

But there’s one major problem. .

But years earlier, Professor Dershowitz appears to have described the same encounter entire differently.

According to his earlier published account, the Rebbe’s very first response was that Jesse Helms had not been honored at all but had simply been present at a Chabad event as one of countless legislators attending and was denied any special status.

Those are very different versions of the same story.

One describes an intentional honor.

The other does not.

That distinction matters enormously.

I Asked Professor Dershowitz Directly

Rather than speculate, I contacted Professor Dershowitz personally.

I wrote:

Hi Alan,

Can you please explain the discrepancy that my son Mendy found in your statements about the Rebbe “honoring” Jesse Helms. I’m writing a column on it and need an official statement please. You clearly contradict yourself.

Please watch Mendy’s video wheee he quotes you directly, both in wrottten form and transcribed from video.

At the time I finished this article, I had not received a response.

If Professor Dershowitz offers one, I would gladly publish it. Indeed, the real question is why for decades Dershowitz has sat on this letter and has not published it. Some are even asking if the letter even exists. Why won’t Dershowitz clarify such an important question and where is this famous letter?

This is not about embarrassing anyone.

It is about protecting the historical integrity of one of Judaism’s greatest leaders.

Jesse Helms Is Not Today’s Debate

Even accepting the broadest interpretation of the story, there remains another point that is often overlooked.

Jesse Helms was one of the most influential United States senators of his generation.

He served for decades in the Senate.

He became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He was a central figure in American politics.

Many Jews strongly disagreed with his positions on Israel.

His opposition to aspects of American aid policy toward Israel and his criticism of Israeli military decisions generated understandable concern.

But that is precisely the point.

The controversy surrounding Jesse Helms centered on public policy.

He was a mainstream elected official whose views on Israel were vigorously debated.

Using his example as a universal template for every modern controversy strips away the historical context.

Historical analogies only work when they are historically accurate.

“The Rebbe believed in changing people—not in erasing the distinction between engagement and endorsement.”

Now that’s a far cry from the catastrophic PR disaster in Israel last week with “Heil Hitler” singing Clavicular, arranged by bizarre Chabad influencer Yossi Farro and disgustingly defended by amoral influencers Lizzy Savetsky and Emily Austin, who in doing so betrayed both Israel as well as the sacred memory of the six million.

Leading antisemites like the streamer Clavicular and his best friend, the rabid antisemite Nick Fuentes, are receiving free public relations from Jews in Israel. This is not theory. It is happening in real time. Clavicular, who has sung “Heil Hitler” along to Kanye West’s track and boasts of treating women as disposable objects for five or ten seconds in a bathroom stall, was brought to Israel, fed cholent, photographed with Jewish influencers, and given a platform that rehabilitates his image. The result is a catastrophic PR victory for a man whose ideology glorifies the murder of six million Jews.

All of this rests on the Jesse Helms lie. The claim, pushed repeatedly by Dershowitz, is that the Lubavitcher Rebbe honored an antisemite and thereby turned him into a supporter of Israel. The implication is clear: if the Rebbe could honor an antisemite to influence the future, then today’s Jewish influencers can platform Clavicular, wrap him in tefillin-adjacent optics, and call it outreach. This is one of the greatest libels ever told about the Rebbe, and it is being told by Chabad’s own media apparatus.

The Jesse Helms Myth Is Garbage

Jesse Helms was not an antisemite. He was a powerful, mainstream Southern senator from North Carolina who opposed foreign aid to almost every country, including Israel. He did not believe Jews had no right to a state. He did not call Israelis Nazis or demand the destruction of the Jewish people. He was a fiscal isolationist who believed America should not bankroll other nations’ defense.

In 1982, during the Lebanon War, Helms went further and called for the United States to break diplomatic relations with Israel until the fighting stopped. These were wrong and harmful positions. But they were policy disagreements, not racial or religious hatred. Helms was never a Nick Fuentes or a Clavicular.

Helms experienced a turnaround. By the mid-1980s he became more supportive of Israel. The Dershowitz-JEM narrative credits the Rebbe with this change through a supposed letter or honor. The evidence collapses under examination.

As above, a 2014 Jewish Educational Media pamphlet, Dershowitz himself wrote that the first thing the Rebbe told him was that Jesse Helms was not honored by Chabad. He was simply there. Another Chabad source states the Rebbe said Helms had just walked in — he was not invited, let alone honored — and Chabad chose not to be rude by throwing him out. Most shocking, the JEM video is titled “How a Former Anti-Semite Became a Strong Israel Supporter.” The clear implication is that the Rebbe turned an antisemite around while he was still an antisemite by honoring him.

As stated, Dershowitz has mysteriously never produced the letter he now claims the Rebbe wrote. In the 2025 JEM video he describes a “very poignant, very powerful letter” about honoring not only the past but influencing the future. In his own earlier telling, no such honor occurred. The photographs JEM shows of Helms flanked by yeshiva students are from his well-publicized August 1985 visit to Israel — more than a year after his shift toward Israel began in early 1984. The event the Rebbe discussed with Dershowitz took place in Washington, not Israel.

The real reason for Helms’ change had nothing to do with Jewish sycophancy. In his 1984 Senate race against North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, pro-Israel Jews and Christians sent an estimated $2–3 million to Hunt’s campaign. Hunt outraised and outspent Helms and was favored to win. That financial and political pressure — Jews fighting Helms rather than kissing his ring — forced the senator to recalculate. He moderated his Israel positions to survive politically. It was opposition, not appeasement, that moved him.

The story that the Rebbe honored an active antisemite to transform him is therefore false on multiple levels. It is a libel against the Rebbe’s legacy. And it is now being weaponized to justify platforming actual neo-Nazi-adjacent figures like Clavicular in the Jewish state.

Clavicular’s Catastrophic Visit and the “Heil Hitler / Sex-with-Women-in-the-Toilet” PR Disaster

Clavicular — a 20-year-old Kick streamer from the looksmaxxing scene — arrived in Israel this month amid controversy over his past content. He has sung along to “Heil Hitler.” He was involved in the “clubocaust” incident. He maintains close ties to Nick Fuentes, one of the most despicable antisemites in American public life. On Israeli television’s Channel 13 he was given the opportunity to apologize. He refused and attacked the presenter for even asking. This is the face of the new antisemitism: young, online, unrepentant, and now physically present in Tel Aviv with Jewish enablers.

Jewish influencers facilitated this visit. Yossi Farro, who brands himself as a Chabad figure and has built a following by chasing billionaires and celebrities to put on Tefillin on the world’s most “powerful Jews,” courted Clavicular. Farro fed him cholent, posted videos, and presented him with Jewish-themed gifts. The message sent to Clavicular’s audience and to Fuentes’ circle was unmistakable: Jews will rehabilitate you if you play along. Lizzy Savetsky, another damaged Jewish influencer, has also pledged openness to hosting figures of this stripe. The result is free PR for antisemites at Israel’s expense.

Clavicular’s own words and behavior compound the disgrace. He has bragged about using girls as sexual objects for five or ten seconds in a bathroom stall. He came to Israel, in the words of those around him, to “have sex with Jewish girls.” When confronted with the reality that he treats Jewish women as disposable, he offered no apology. Farro’s role in bringing a man with this record — and in allegedly committing on livestream to pull political levers for Clavicular to gain access to official IDF social media accounts — is indefensible.

The IDF Social Media Breach and the Demotion of Shira Braun

An IDF soldier named Shira Braun, who managed aspects of the military’s social media and TikTok presence in the Spokesperson’s Unit, appeared in Clavicular’s livestreams, abasing herself utterly. Reports indicate he made physical advances on camera and commented about taking her to a hotel room “to make love to you” they knew each other one day. She has since been removed from her position and reassigned by the IDF to kitchen duties — cooking and cleaning. This is not sufficient.

If Braun or anyone associated bragged about granting a neo-Nazi-linked streamer access to official IDF accounts, or if Farro pledged to leverage connections for such access, this is a national security matter. The IDF is a real army defending against another Holocaust. Playing with its social media channels for clout or “content” is not edgy; it is reckless endangerment of Israeli lives. Braun should face a court-martial. Israeli police must investigate Farro’s statements on the livestream. Farro should not be permitted to leave Israel until he has been questioned under oath. This is not a game. It is a stain on the Jewish state.

Chana Boteach’s Confrontation — The Moral Response My Children Delivered

My daughter Chana Boteach, an IDF veteran and Tel Aviv entrepreneur who created the Kosjwr Sex company to promote American passion and intimacy, monogamy, and faithfulness, named after the Rebbe’s saintly mother, confronted Clavicular directly in a kosher restaurant in Tel Aviv. She did what too many Jewish influencers refused to do: she spoke truth to a man glorifying Nazi ideology and degrading women.

In a video that went viral, she essentially told Clavicular, “There is no place in Israel for someone who’s both a neo-Nazi and a woman-trashing misogynist. Israel is a brave and moral country where men are raised to marry and respect women and build families; not to use girls as objects in a bathroom stall, as you bragged, you caveman degenerate. Respect this country of heroic men and strong IDF warrior women, you woman-hating chauvinist and cowardly man-child, or go back to the hole you crawled out of or wherever “Chabad” turncoat Yossi Farro dig you out of. My name is Chana and I’m named after the Rebbe’s saintly mother. Farro is a disgrace to the Rebbe and the light he brought to the world.”

Outreach Without Confusion

The Rebbe’s philosophy was both compassionate and demanding.

He believed every person possesses a Divine soul.

He believed every person is capable of moral growth.

But growth begins with truth.

Repentance begins with acknowledging wrongdoing.

The Jewish concept of teshuvah is powerful precisely because it recognizes that people can become different from who they once were.

That process is meaningful because it requires honesty.

Hope for transformation does not require pretending transformation has already occurred.

That is why I believe the Jesse Helms story has too often been simplified into a slogan rather than understood as a nuanced historical episode.

A New Era of Public Influence

The world in which the Rebbe operated is very different from today’s world of livestreams, viral videos, podcasts, and algorithm-driven celebrity.

Modern influencers possess enormous cultural reach.

Every collaboration sends a message.

Every photograph becomes symbolic.

Every appearance communicates something beyond the words spoken.

What should unite us is the understanding that outreach succeeds only when accompanied by moral clarity.

The Rebbe’s Legacy Deserves Better

The Lubavitcher Rebbe needs no mythology.

His greatness requires no embellishment.

If historical accounts differ, let us examine them honestly.

If famous anecdotes exist in multiple versions, let us ask respectful questions.

If documents remain unpublished, let us seek greater clarity.

That is not disrespect.

It is respect of the highest order.

The Rebbe taught us to think.

He taught us to ask questions.

He taught us to combine love with courage and compassion with truth.

Most of all, he taught us that Judaism never asks us to choose between kindness and conviction.

The Rebbe believed people could change.

So do I.

But he also believed that truth matters.

So do I.

The greatest tribute we can pay his memory is not to invoke his name whenever it is convenient.

It is to preserve his teachings accurately, honestly, and courageously.

That, above all, is what his legacy deserves.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi, is the international best-selling author of 37 book, the most recent being “Comeback Nation: How Israel Annihilated Its Adversaries in a Seven-Front War of Survival.” Follow him on X and Instagram @Rabbi Shmuley.