First Person

After having met a believer you are no longer the same. Though you may not have accepted his faith, you have nevertheless been embraced by it. For the true believer believes in you as well

Question: How did you become a rebbe?
Answer: What do you do if they put the key in your pocket and walk away?

I will forever attribute the first step of my restoration to sanity and self-respect to one man who, with unfathomable intuition and faith in humanity, made a selfless, precise therapeutic intervention in my spirit, and demanded neither my soul nor my bank book as recompense...

My father saw himself as a young child, sitting on his grandmother's lap. "Liuvu," she was saying to him, "anytime you are in trouble, the one who can help you is the Lubavitcher Rebbe." This was the first time he had ever heard of the Rebbe

"There's an old man in Brooklyn," the Rebbe said, "who thinks about you and invites you to come back on your 20th anniversary." To Greene, he seemed more like a loving uncle than the spiritual leader of the Jewish world...

It was merely the expectation that I would see the Rebbe again. Or, to be more precise, that he would see me...

I had never seen such a strong bond and commitment in my life. The mere mention of his name would make their eyes sparkle. I never thought that I would be able to admire and respect someone so much...

Fallacious arguments flew away like frightened bats as we toned the walls of our hearts to prepare for an all-out war -- fairly fought, wind against wind

How could you mend a fracture so deep, such a hole in the heart of humanity? ... Would it be possible to search out every Jew in love as Jews had once been searched out and hunted down in hate?

Despite the activist manifestations of the Lubavitch Movement, it should be remembered that Lubavitch is primarily an intellectual movement.

In the Rebbe's writings and talks one will find mention here and there of the past -- the Rebbe's own past, the past of his people and of humanity. But the focus is on the future

How does one measure greatness? In the case of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the answer is easily obtained. I know of no one who has left the Rebbe, even after a moment of yehidut (one-on-one meeting), without being deeply affected, if not changed, by their encounter...

"Now that you have interviewed me," said the Rebbe, "I'd like to interview you. Unless you have any objections?"

"When a Jew in Miami," the Rebbe said to me, "sees pictures of Jews at the Western Wall wearing tefillin, he gets an urge to put on tefillin himself."

"In these days of confusion the Rebbe's statesmanship and strategic vision are a wellspring of living waters."

Of course, you could always paint pictures on the walls. Perhaps even illuminate them from behind. Or use mirrors, even a battery of television screens. But only a tzaddik can be your window

Just about everything imaginable was happening--except for what everyone had predicted would happen