Most of the converts were collected in America, because it was in the heartland of America, in Postville, Iowa, that my brother and his Hasidim sojourned for the longest period of time during their wanderings in the wilderness; Postville, Iowa, was their Kadesh Barnea, their oasis. A Jewish infrastructure was already conveniently in place around the Chabad kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking sweatshop located there, the town’s main natural resource. And to ease the way for my brother, Shmelke (a vegetarian from his earliest years), there was the flat terrain, so friendly to the disabled in wheelchairs. Above all, he was born in the USA, he was a citizen, he had a US passport, he could even run for president. As an American citizen he could expect full rights and protection from his government. Even if an extradition treaty existed with Israel, he would not be handed over, his legal team assured him, without serious prior concessions from the Jewish State in territory, right of return for Arab refugees, and other nonstarters as part of the deal. Just keep the old lecher, he’s all yours, we’re not giving up anything, Israel would declare, and wash its hands of the whole business. And should his enemies persist out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness, committing the gravest of sins by turning into informers, chasing and pursuing him in exchange for nothing but the sadistic pleasure of the hunt, his lawyers would fight his extradition all the way to the Supreme Court, the fight would drag on for decades, plenty of time to pack up and move on in search of the elusive Promised Land.

As it happened, though, what caused my brother and his followers to decamp from Postville, Iowa, in the end was not the notorious event that took place there—the massive raid by immigration authorities on the Chabad-owned meatpacking plant and glatt kosher slaughterhouse, the arrest and deportation of hundreds of illegal immigrants, the charges of child labor law violations, identity theft, social security manipulation, sexual harassment, fraud, money laundering, and so on and so forth, not to mention the ethical issues churned up when labor exploitation is linked with kosher certification, toxic work environments in which human beings are treated more cruelly than animals destined to be served up in a cholent stew for the Sabbath lunch. Rather, it was the ongoing war between the Chabadniks and the Breslovers over messianic issues—whose rabbi was really dead, whose would reappear quickly and in our time as the Messiah in white robes riding on the back of a white ass, and other matters of equal gravity and weight.