RELIGION : Messianic Prediction Spurs Furor : An American rabbi’s followers say he is the one. But doubts abound in Israel.

KFAR HABAD, Israel — 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. To expert observers, the conflict recalls the deep sensitivity that predictions of messianic arrival have provoked throughout Jewish history. Messiah anticipation carries a lot of risks.

“What happens if the Messiah doesn’t show up?” wondered Gideon Aran, a teacher of the sociology of religion at Hebrew University. “The whole episode can result in terrible trauma.”

Aran said that worries about the accuracy of messianic predictions usually lead the forecasters to hedge their bets, and that appears to be the case with Habad. Schneerson, who lives in Brooklyn and has never visited Israel, recently suffered a stroke, and given his advanced age--89--ambiguity may be the best policy.

“We have our candidate for Messiah. I believe it is the rebbe, “ said spokesman Berke Wolfe, when asked if Schneerson was the one. “You can have your candidate.”

Signs of the Messiah’s coming are everywhere, according to Habad: the collapse of communism, the war against Iraq, the Jews pouring into Israel from the former Soviet Union. However, Wolfe was quick to point out, Schneerson has never identified himself as the Messiah.

At Kfar Habad, a community of Schneerson followers, banners proclaim the Messiah’s coming. In homage, Habad followers have built a replica of his Brooklyn brownstone headquarters.

Association of Schneerson with the Messiah provoked a bitter response from other religious groups. Rabbi Eliezar Schach, a rival Jewish leader in Bnei Brak, a suburb of Tel Aviv, called the Habad followers “infidels” and said they eat non-kosher food.

Habad is a worldwide educational and philanthropic group with tens of thousands of followers that is distinguished by its efforts to popularize adherence to strict rules of Orthodox Judaism.

Under Schneerson’s 40-year leadership, Habad changed from a movement in decline to the most dynamic of Hasidic groups. “Therein lies some of the hunger for the Messiah,” said Menachem Friedman, an expert on religion at Hebrew University. “Is this success just accidental or is it part of a plan? The answer is the Messiah.”

There is more than a little history behind the heat surrounding messianic controversy, Aran says. Proclamations of the Messiah have prompted Jewish communities to enter into battle, to sell their possessions, to stand on rooftops waiting to be carried away to Jerusalem. “Of course,” added Friedman, “questions of failure are only posed by nonbelievers. If the Messiah does not come--or dies before being proclaimed--it will be seen as the fault of humanity. . . . We weren’t ready.”

Most Israelis appear to view the uproar with detachment, as something best left to holy men. Some view it with scorn.

Zeev Chafetz, the acid-penned columnist for the Jerusalem Report magazine, demanded a clear sign of the Messiah’s coming: “What might that sign be? . . . A sudden decision by George Bush to donate $10 billion to the United Jewish Appeal might do the trick. So would Shimon Peres’ retirement from politics, a repeal of the television tax, a Super Bowl victory for the Detroit Lions--in short, anything that contradicts the natural order.”

In present-day Israel, messianism has strong political implications. The flap over the coming of the Messiah has endangered a pending merger among some religious parties designed to strengthen their appeal in the upcoming June 23 elections. A fizzle at the polls by the religious parties could undermine Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s chances to repeat as prime minister.