Menachem Mendel Schneerson

If the non-Jewish public is even vaguely aware of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, it's probably because its annual telethon draws celebrities including Adam Sandler, Michael Douglas, James Caan, Whoopi Goldberg and Anthony Hopkins. But within the Jewish world, this small branch of Judaism is generating outsized levels of interest -- and concern.

Stricken followers of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson bore his plain pine coffin on their shoulders Sunday before he was interred with simple prayers in a small cemetery in Queens. Around the world, disciples of the charismatic leader of the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher movement greeted his passing with tears, songs, hope and disbelief. Many of his supporters believed the rabbi, with his full white beard and piercing blue eyes, was the Messiah.

By outward appearances, it was just another day at the Chabad of the Valley last week. Only four days after the death of the \o7 rebbe \f7 or grand rabbi--thought by many of his followers to be the Jewish Messiah who would usher in an era of peace in the world--the Valley headquarters of the international Hassidic movement seemed to be functioning as if nothing unusual had happened. No consternation, tears, nor trappings of mourning.

The 90-year-old spiritual leader of the Brooklyn-based Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Jews appeared before his followers Sunday without a mention of what had been awaited--that he is the Messiah. Grand Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was rendered speechless and largely paralyzed by a stroke last year, appeared on the balcony of the sect's world headquarters during evening services.

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.

Honk if you're ready. "Prepare for the Coming of the Messiah," reads a bumper sticker put out by the Habad Hasidic movement. "Prepare for the Coming of the False Messiah," reads another, issued by doubters. The question of whether the End of Days is on the calendar soon--and whether Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Habad Hasidic movement, is the Messiah and is coming to Israel--has ignited fierce controversy here.

A week before her bat mitzvah, Neely Katzir went to New York to seek a special blessing from the rebbe--a powerful 89-year-old spiritual leader who has shaken up the Jewish world by advising his followers to prepare for the imminent arrival of the Messiah. Neely, a 13-year-old from Costa Mesa, made the trip to Brooklyn last month accompanied by her father, Haim, and their rabbi. It was the highlight of her bat mitzvah--the Jewish ceremony marking a girl's passage into womanhood.

Elana Traub, owner of the tony Ted Lapidus shop on Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive, took time from a recent buying trip in Manhattan to travel deep into the tumbledown neighborhoods of Brooklyn to see an elderly rabbi with piercing blue eyes. Known to his followers simply as the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson leans on a worn velvet podium for hours every Sunday palming crisp $1 bills into the hand of thousands of followers who want a brush of his power, a touch of the piety.

As the threat of a major war in the Persian Gulf has heated up in recent weeks, so have religious predictions of a fiery Armageddon and the end of the world. The doomsayers--whose prophecy books are selling well in Christian bookstores--see the Middle East crisis as the trigger for a bloody series of events that will lead to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.