Is Chabad ultra-Orthodox?

Despite (or perhaps because of) my distaste for labelling Jews, I was recently involved in an online debate as to whether Chabad is "ultra-Orthodox" (where I argued that it is not). This led to some self-reflection and research.

Humankind have been been involved in the process of taxonomy since the dawn of time. Hashem brought all the animal kingdom before Adam Harishon and he identified them by their "names", thus grouping and categorizing them.

The Aspirational Chossid

The genesis for this blog was at dinner with some friends. We looked around the restaurant and observed groups of young people in the community, and the discussion moved to what Chabad means to these people and how they express (or don't express) their Chabad identity.

This led to a story about a wonderful farbrengen, which was told to my friend first hand by Reb Mendel Futerfas OBM.