Chapter 1
A REBBE FOR THE NEW WORLD
In 1994, a few months after his passing, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award granted by the American government to a civilian (he is the only rabbi, and only the second clergyman, to have received this honor).1 The rarely awarded Gold Medal is designated for those âwho have performed an achievement that has an impact on American history and culture that is likely to be recognized . . . long after the achievement.â At the award ceremony, African American congressman John Lewis, the civil rights legend and cosponsor of the award, noted that perhaps the only issue on which he and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich agreed was the importance of bestowing this medal on the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Congressman Lewis, citing his awe at the Rebbeâs accomplishments, expressed his sorrow that neither he, nor his mentor, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., had ever met the Rebbe. Gingrich, yet another cosponsor, spoke not just of the Rebbeâs integrity but of his respect for the Rebbeâs representatives whom he had met in Washington. Gingrich described his good feeling at being approached by one of the Rebbeâs emissaries, someone ânot in the right Gucci shoes [and] not in the right Italian suit, who doesnât ask you to increase their profit margin, but instead says, âFor the good of the world, this is something noble and idealistic that should be [done].ââ And thatâs why, Gingrich concluded, he felt so celebratory that day.
Nor was it only Lewis and Gingrich who felt this admiration for the Rebbe. President Ronald Reagan, upon receiving letters from the Rebbe, would take them upstairs from the Oval Office to his residence and personally draft his responses.2 In an April 1982 letter, the president cited words from a proclamation for a National Day of Reflection he was about to issue honoring the Rebbeâs eightieth birthday: âYour work stands as a reminder to us all that knowledge is an unworthy goal unless it is accompanied by moral and spiritual wisdom and understanding.â When a National Scroll of Honor signed by President Reagan was awarded to the Rebbe, every single member of the House of Representatives and Senate signed it as well.
By 1990, when Peggy Noonan, the longtime White House speechwriter, published What I Saw at the Revolution, her best-selling political memoir, the Rebbe had become a widely acknowledged cultural reference. When speculating in the bookâs final pages about moral issues that Noonan, of Irish-Catholic descent, felt were better addressed by religious rather than political leaders, she specified three, âthe Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the Pope.â3
By the Rebbeâs later years, and continuing after his death, his impact had become far-reaching in a manner dissimilar from any other modern rabbinic figure. In 2013, on the night preceding his election to the Senate, Democratic candidate Cory Booker, an African American Christian, went to the Ohel, the site of the Rebbeâs grave, to pray. It was done in a private manner, no journalists were present, and the visit only came to public attention after the election. As Booker has often made clear, he regards the Rebbe as one of his foremost teachers.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe,4 was, inarguably, the most well known rabbi since Moses Maimonides (Rambam). Hundreds of prominent rabbinic figures have lived in the intervening eight hundred years, but how many can be named before an audience of Jews from the United States, Israel, France, or the former Soviet Union (the four largest Jewish communities in the world today), without the speaker needing to add a sentence or two explaining who the person was?5
The Rebbe is widely recognized in all the Jewish denominations and in all the countries just mentioned. And beyond. Visitors to Morocco have long reported seeing two pictures hanging in Moroccan Jewish homes, one of the Moroccan king and one of the Rebbe.6 Just a few days ago I saw a picture of the Rebbe in my local barbershop; the owner and senior barber is from Uzbekistan.
There is also no shortage of non-Jews who know of and feel connected to the Rebbe. In effect, he has become a global ambassador for Judaism. In 1989, Uruguayan presidential candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle, a religious Catholic, came to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for what proved to be a brief but highly significant meeting with the Rebbe. What Lacalle was pursuing was a blessing from the Rebbe, whom he regarded and continues to regard as a holy man. In an interview more than a decade later, Lacalle, who went on to serve as Uruguayâs president, spoke of how moved he was when the Rebbe gave him a dollarâone of several thousand people to whom he gave a dollar that dayâand asked him to give it to charity. âI give it to you,â Lacalle recalls the Rebbe telling him, âto remember to do works of good.â7
Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader who helped lead his country to democracy and later served as Polandâs president, has long carried in his wallet a dollar from the Rebbe that was given to him by an American-Jewish businessman, David Chase. When Walesa visited the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv and saw a picture of the Rebbe, he asked Chase, who was accompanying him: âIs this my Rebbe? The one who gave me the dollar?â8 When told that it was, Walesa bowed from the waist toward the Rebbe in a gesture of respect. The museumâs curator, who had overheard Walesaâs exchange with Chase, was stunned. âWhat is he doing?â he asked Chase. âIs the president of Poland bowing to the Rebbe?â âRight,â Chase responded. âHeâs showing his respect to the Rebbe.â9
Four years ago, a full sixteen years after the Rebbeâs death, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, a secretary to the Rebbe, was at the Atlanta airport when he was stopped by a young African American man of about twenty: âDid anyone ever tell you that you look like the Lubavitcher Rebbe?â the man asked.10 Krinsky soon learned that the man had watched the Rebbe on television.
This, too, was an unusual feature of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. How many rabbis of any background routinely broadcast speeches on television, not sound bites, but full-fledged talks? The Rebbeâs subjects encompassed not only lessons from the Torah and from Chasidic thought but insights on the space race and the moon landing (see chapter 13), energy independence, and the attempted assassination of President Reagan.11 In the heyday of Chabad broadcasts, 770 Eastern Parkway, the movementâs headquarters in Brooklyn, commonly received several hundred letters a day addressed to the Rebbe, the majority from Jews but many from non-Jews as well. This was among the largest number of private letters being delivered to any address in the New York area.
But the Rebbeâs popularity and legacy were not without controversy. Indeed, he expressed his views fearlessly, even when they were not popular. His views on Israeli security and his opposition to any territorial compromise by Israel sparked both support and intense opposition and, on one noted occasion, kept a leading prime ministerial candidate from becoming Israelâs leader. His stern opposition to public demonstrations against the Soviet Unionâs oppression of Russiaâs Jews, focusing instead on âbehind-the-scenes diplomacyâ to sustain Soviet Jewry and facilitate their release, put him at odds with the overwhelming majority of American, European, and Israeli Jewish leaders who thought demonstrations to be an indispensable and very necessary option. On more than one occasion he butted heads with leaders from both the Jewish religious left and right, and while he was determined to engage Jews from across the spectrum of observance, many Reform, Conservative, and haredi leaders as well voiced opposition to his outreach ideas, and found others of his policies alienating. And, of course, in the last years of his life, while many of his followers believed he would soon be revealed as the Messiah, this notion was overwhelmingly rejected and sometimes ridiculed by others. Notwithstanding these controversies, no one can deny the immense and reverberating worldwide impact of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson both during his lifetime and no less forcefully since.
What was it about the Rebbe that caused Yediot Achronot, Israelâs then largest-circulation newspaper, to devote twenty pages to the Rebbe on the day following his death, the type of coverage normally reserved for a sitting head of state? What was it about him that caused Newsweek, which rarely had occasion to write of the Chasidic world, to label the Rebbe âthe most influential Jew in the worldâ?
It would seem that two factors in particular account for the Rebbeâs extraordinary impact: first, his innovative ideas on how to reach Jews (later non-Jews as well), and second, the army of shluchim, the emissaries, he nurtured to carry out his ideas and his vision, eventually in well over a thousand cities.
For American Jews, even those who maintained no synagogue affiliation and had no involvement with their local Jewish community, an exposure to Judaism might well have come from being approached by a young bearded man on the street, and asked, âAre you Jewish?â If the listener was male and responded yes, he was escorted to a nearby van, a Mitzvah Mobile, and encouraged to wrap tefillin on his arm and on his headâtefillin are two small black boxes with leather straps attached to them in which are inserted texts ordaining, among other commandments, a love of God.12 Over the years, the number of men who had this experience reached into the hundreds of thousands. The same question, âAre you Jewish?,â was also addressed to women; those who answered yes were offered candles and candlesticks and asked to light and make the blessing over the candles on Friday before sundown in honor of the Sabbath.
For the Rebbe, asking Jewish women (starting with girls aged three and older) to make the blessing over the candles was only the beginning. Jewish tradition wanted them to do it right, at the specified time, for that, too, is ordained in Jewish law, which forbids lighting a fire after the Sabbath begins (Exodus 35:3). Thus, a small ad started to appear in the New York Times every Friday in which âJewish womenâ were informed as to the time candles should be lit that day. It was the only ad the Times ran regularly on its front page. Many traditional Jews routinely checked the Friday paper to know when Shabbat started, since it varies from week to week, based on when the sun sets.
No less than this outreach to the broad Jewish community, what equally characterized the Rebbe was his ability to always remain focused on individuals. I know of no other leader of his stature who remained so accessible to all those who wanted to meet with him. For the first thirty years of his leadership, he would meet with visitors three and then two nights a week, at which time people would pose personal and religious questions to him. The meetings would commence at 8:00 p.m. and last till 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., sometimes until dawn. Rabbi Uri Kaploun recalls a private meeting with the Rebbe (yechidus) that concluded at 2:45 a.m. and notes that he was the forty-third person the Rebbe saw that eveningâand that was not the last meeting of the night. Visitors from abroad appreciated that they needed no translator to speak to the Rebbe. He was fluent in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, German, and French (he had studied at universities in the last three languages, earning a degree in engineering) and was known to understand visitors who spoke to him in Spanish and Italian.
As he neared his eighties, he stopped conducting all-night meetings but soon started Sunday Dollars. Each Sunday, for several hours, he would dispense a blessing and a dollar (to be donated to charity) to thousands of people who waited in line to have a brief encounter with him.
Miriam Fellig, the sole survivor of a family destroyed in the Holocaust, was one of those who came to meet with the Rebbe. It was shortly after her marriage, and she was distraught at being alone in the world. â[You have] no one?â the Rebbe asked her. âNo,â she answered, âjust my husband; no one else.â She confided that the thought of becoming a mother frightened her, as she had no mother or family members to offer her guidance and help. Fellig soon made clear the one thing she did want was for the Rebbe to adopt her, making her in essence part of his familyâand he did. As she recalled decades later, the Rebbe took out a little black book from his pocket, marked down her and her husbandâs names, extended to her a blessing for happiness, and made sure that they stayed in touch on a regular basis.13
It is toldâand this account might well be apocryphalâthat when Henry Ward Beecher, among the most prominent and admired clergymen in nineteenth-century America, was approached by his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe (the author of Uncle Tomâs Cabin), to become involved in the case of an individual who needed assistance, the already overworked preacher demurred, âHarriet, Harriet, I am too busy. I can no longer become involved in cases of individuals.â To which his sister is said to have responded, âEven God is not that busy.â
The Rebbe, and this is not apocryphal, tried to make sure to always find time. In June 1986, my father, Shlomo Telushkinâwho had been the accountant both for the Rebbe and for the Previous Rebbe, since Chabad had come to the United States more than forty years earlierâsuffered a serious stroke, one from which he never fully recovered. For several days he lay in a hospital bed in a coma, and I was with him when he awoke.
During those days, we received calls twice daily from the Rebbeâs office asking about my fatherâs condition. âThe Rebbe wants to know,â we were told. A few days later, I received a call from Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the Rebbeâs secretary. He told me that an accounting issue had come up and the Rebbe had said, âAsk Shlomo.â
âBut you know how sick and disoriented my father is,â I protested.
âWe reminded the Rebbe of that,â Krinsky answered. âHe, of course, remembered, but he insisted that we ask your father.â
I immediately went back to my fatherâs room and posed the question to him. He looked at me, puzzled, and said the answer was obvious and told it to me.
At that moment, I realized what the Rebbe had done. He had made a calculation and asked my father a question that he knew my father would be able to answer. Sitting in his Brooklyn office...