My Encounter with the Rebbe

Dr. David Luchins' family joined the Tzemach Tzedek Synagogue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, around 1910. In 1955, when the neighborhood changed, the property was sold for a large sum. The Rebbe was asked where the money should be spent.

After the first El Al plane was hijacked to Algiers, the story began to circulate of the Rebbe’s advice to Ariel Sharon not to board that flight. Rabbi Zev Segal decided to corroborate the story with the Rebbe himself.

Rabbi Chaim Ciment shares a few stories he heard from Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik about his days together with the Rebbe in Berlin.

Dr. Yaacov Hanoka relates how the Rebbe guided him when he first left college and began studying in the Lubavitch Yeshivah

As a rabbinic student at 770, Rabbi Aaron Cousin joined his colleagues in working under the New York State "Released time" program, which allows Public School students to receive religious instruction.

Dr. David Luchins served on the staff of US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan for twenty years. In 1983, he attended a retirement party for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of Crown Heights, where she revealed the identity of a most important mentor.

Dr. Yitzchak Block is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. In the mid-1950s, he accompanied a group of college students to a private audience with the Rebbe.

Dov Zlotnik, Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, once delivered a sermon on the importance of Family Purity. As he was to discover, for the Rebbe, a good sermon requires a great ending…

Yitzchak Rabin was Prime Minister of Israel, and served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States in the early 1970s. In 1972, he was sent to convey Israel’s blessings to the Rebbe in honor of his 70th birthday.

Efraim Steinmetz is a businessman from Caracas, Venezuela. He and his wife came to the Rebbe with concerns about their children’s Jewish education. The Rebbe answered with a story from his own childhood.

While living in Berlin, the Rebbe made the acquaintance of a Jewish businessman named Yitzchok Meir Ferstenberg. Rabbi Chazkel Besser of Agudas Yisrael of America later heard these recollections from Yitzchok Meir.

Rabbi Leibel Posner was a student at 770 during the 1940s, and would attend the Rebbe’s monthly Shabbos-Mevorchim Farbrengen. An illuminating lesson in the game of life.

Yona Kese grew up in Dnepropetrovsk at the same time the Rebbe was there. He was a writer, who later became a member in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset.

In 1927, the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, was arrested in Leningrad for counterrevolutionary activity – spreading religion. Shortly thereafter Rabbi Menachem Mendel, his son-in-law to be, was forced into hiding. Shaar Yashuv Cohen is the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Israel.

In 1909, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, Rebbetzin Chana and their three sons moved to Dnepropetrovsk, a huge military city 520 kilometers from Kiev, where Rabbi Levi Yitzchok became the rabbi of the city’s 25 synagogues and 50,000 Jews. He turned to Rabbi Zalman Vilenkin, asking him to teach his sons. Chana Shapiro is Rabbi Vilenkin’s daughter, recalling her parents’ descriptions of the children in their home.

Rabbi Yochanan Gordon traveled from Dockshitz, Russia, to the Rebbe’s wedding in Warsaw. His son, Rabbi Yisroel Gordon, recalls his father’s reports of the wedding.

Every year, from Berlin, and later from Paris, the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin would visit her father, the Previous Rebbe, for the festive month of Tishrei. Rabbi Moshe Gerlitzky was a student in the Lubavitch Yeshiva at that time.