Lubavitcher

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A follower of the Lubavitch branch of Hasidic Judaism, a movement also known as Chabad
2. A person who belongs to the Chabad Hasidic group that originated in the town of Lubavitch in Russia
3. An adherent of a Hasidic Jewish sect centered on study of Kabbalah and devotion to its rabbinic leaders

Etymology: The name comes from Lyubavichi, a village in western Russia that served as the home of the Chabad movement's leaders for more than a century. Its Yiddish-speaking community knew it as Lubavitch, and that popular name is what stuck. The movement's followers came to be called after the place, so a "Lubavitcher" is literally someone from Lubavitch, even though most of them never lived there. The suffix "-er" is the ordinary English and German way of marking a person connected with a place, as in "New Yorker" or "Londoner." Applied to a Hasidic group, it names followers by the town where their rebbes lived, not by a founder's name, which is how many other Hasidic dynasties were labelled. The word is used both as a noun for an individual and as an adjective for the community's customs, institutions and dress.