In the Rambam’s “Sefer Mitzvot” (Book of Commandments), this verse in the Torah is stating the first negative commandment:
“לֹֽ֣א־יִהְיֶ֥͏ֽה־לְךָ֛֩ אֱלֹהִ֥֨ים אֲחֵרִ֖֜ים עַל־פָּנָֽ͏ַ֗י׃
You shall have no other gods before Me.”
(Exodus 20:3)
The Rambam in “Sefer Mitzvot” defines this commandment to mean that we are prohibited from believing in or ascribing deity to anything except for Hashem (God).
Certain Chabad rabbis nowadays are making videos that claim the deceased Chabad rebbe is allegedly Elokus, Ein Sof (terms referring to God), or that the rebbe is allegedly “the essence of God enclothed in a body”. This is clearly deification of the deceased Chabad rebbe.
Any intellectual deification of a rebbe or intellectual deification of any created object is prohibited idolatry, regardless of whether or not one makes an idol, or bows down to that object, or serves it.
Chabad cannot simply claim that this prohibition of accepting any created object as a deity is some type of “rationalist philosophy” that was allegedly replaced by Kabbalah. This prohibition is stated explicitly in a Mishneh, Sanhedrin 60b. Fake “Kabbalah” cannot replace and erase halachos in the Mishneh.
Once such video deifying the Chabad rebbe, of which there are many, is linked below. This video tries to use the Talmud to allow deification of a rebbe, but there is no such statement in the Talmud. The terms “Atzmus U’mehus” refer to the essence of God, this is something that probably all the great rabbis before Chabad taught is unknowable by Man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9HsaE2bbYE
Deification of a rebbe is a type of “replacement theology” that the early “Jewish” Christians promoted resulting in the creation of a new religion 2000 years ago.
Of course, if Jews affiliated with Chabad seek to accept Chabad theology, that is their choice. But other Jews, who are not strongly affiliated with Chabad, have a right to know the authentic Torah beliefs.
This excellent website contains a comprehensive debunking of Chabad deification of the deceased rebbe.
https://identifyingchabad.org/
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim in the video linked below is learning the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry.
“If you wish to see a very unfortunate example of this in the Jewish world today, you need look no further than a certain Chassidic sect based in 770 in New York…there are huge photographs of their rebbe…this becomes the object of their worship…its not very different than a similar system, Christianity…the true devotion and focus of the majority of Christians around the world is not He to whom they refer to as the father, but He to whom they refer to as the son…We see that when you create any intermediary whatsoever between Hashem and yourself, the focus will always gravitate towards that intermediary…there was always a danger of this kind of thought developing and evolving into something that is plainly related to _avodah zarah…”_
TORAH METAPHYSICS 