NEW YORK — While the 89-year-old Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson convalesces in his Brooklyn home after a stroke he suffered March 2, his followers around the world are praying for his recovery and pondering the future of the movement he has headed for more than 40 years.

Known as Chabad Lubavitch, the movement has stirred admiration from many outside its fold who credit it with helping bring secular Jews back to a knowledge and appreciation of their religious heritage. In New York and other major cities, young men in the Lubavitcher movement drive through neighborhoods in vans known as "mitzvah tanks," distributing information on Judaism and demonstrating Jewish rituals. Mitzvah is the Hebrew word for good deeds.

The Hasidim--the Hebrew word for "pious ones"--dress in the traditional Hasidic style: black suits and black flat-topped felt hats. Beards and curled sideburns are other hallmarks of their appearance.

Whatever admiration the movement has drawn has been more than offset by strong criticism from liberal Jews who charge that Schneerson has manipulated his followers in an effort to make ultra-Orthodox Judaism a dominant political force in Israel.

Schneerson has never set foot inside the Jewish state. This has been another source of controversy, as is the belief among many of his followers that he is the Messiah--a belief that Schneerson has declined to address in public.

The Lubavitcher movement is one of several movements of Hasidic Judaism, a branch of the faith that emphasizes emotional experience and joyful worship in contrast to other branches of Judaism, which tend to focus on the intellectual component of faith. Hasidic Jews also stress the role of the \o7 rebbe\f7 , a single spiritual leader who presides over others in the movement. In general, Judaism is egalitarian in its approach to religious leadership. But to Hasidic Jews, a \o7 rebbe\f7 is a man whose unique qualities enable him to come closer to God than other people and enable him to act as a mediator between God and the believer.

Hasidic Judaism originated as a mystical revival movement in southeastern Poland in the 18th Century by Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, also known as the Baal Shem Tov--Master of the Good Name--who was regarded as a miracle worker. The movement was an emotional lifeboat for Jews suffering from poverty and persecution. Many were also recovering from bitter religious disillusionment after an experience with a man known as Shabbethai Tzvi, whom they had come to regard as a false Messiah.