Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History

by Joseph Telushkin

What upset the Rebbe in particular was Plato’s social philosophy, his advocacy of the abolition of the nuclear family and his belief that children should be taken away from their parents. Plato claimed that parents influence children to be egotistical, and it would be better if children were raised without knowledge of their parents, as wards of the state.

suppose that scientific inquiry and historical research led you to conclude that factors which you might regard as irrational have contributed to the continuity of Judaism. Wouldn’t you feel logically bound to acknowledge the power of the irrational, even though you declined to embrace it?”

two people meet and there might be a glimmer of understanding, like a tiny flame.

The first campaign to increase the number of Jewish men putting on tefillin was initiated just before the 1967 Six-Day War, but starting in 1974 this, and all the campaigns, was given a great boost.

The very act of giving habitually, rather than sporadically and impulsively, converts generosity into an innate part of a person’s character.

Years later, also at a public speech, the Rebbe offered more background to the story, adding information that made the Alter Rebbe’s behavior seem even more unusual.1 All the actions he performed that day, including chopping wood and cooking a meal, took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays, and a day on which such activities are normally—and strictly—forbidden by Jewish law. The reason the new mother was alone now became clear as well; her family members were apparently so anxious to attend the Yom Kippur service that they left her alone, assuming that the woman would be all right resting by herself with the baby for a few hours. That day, the Alter Rebbe, having somehow learned that the new mother was alone, was suddenly overwhelmed with the certainty that the woman required someone to attend to her needs immediately; it might well be a matter of life and death. And since no one else was taking care of her, he concluded that he should be the one to do so.2

In the midst of his great busyness, Weinreb confronted an early midlife crisis. The immediate impetus was his difficulty in deciding on a career choice: psychology, education, or the rabbinate. At the same time, he found himself plagued by some religious doubts and challenges. The combination of career and other uncertainties threw him into a bit of a depression.

In Chabad outreach, and in the Rebbe’s speeches throughout the postwar years, the emphasis was never on the Holocaust, but on simcha shel mitzvah, the joy of doing a mitzvah. This probably had to do both with the Rebbe’s naturally optimistic inclination and with a strategic assessment that the Holocaust does not ultimately provide a positive motivation for Jews to go on leading Jewish lives.

Since time is finite, the only way we can carry out all that we need to do is to utilize whatever time we do have to its full capacity; this means giving our entire focus, our full concentration, to whatever we are doing at that moment. Therefore, while working on one task, “we must regard anything else we have done before and anything that we are planning to do later as totally insignificant.”

when the Rebbe felt compelled to comment in a critical manner about another person, he restricted his criticism to a precise area of disagreement and did not attack the other’s motives.

he kept attention focused on the issue and didn’t let the disagreement deteriorate into a personal dispute. In consequence, his relations with those with whom he strongly disagreed were never ruptured.

In the Rebbe’s words, “as regards the awful events of the last generation [i.e., the Holocaust], it is clear and obvious (barur ve-pashut) that they did not come as punishment.”22 He returned to this issue again: “To say that those very people were deserving of what transpired, that it was a punishment for their sins, heaven forbid, is unthinkable. There is absolutely no explanation or understanding for the Holocaust. . . . Certainly not the explanation of a judgment and punishment.

the Rebbe emphasized that evil sometimes reflects rather the ability of evil human beings to misuse their free will.

the boy to be able to eat in his parents’ house (for one thing, by providing the parents with a new toaster oven and microwave that would only be used for kosher food).

“On one’s birthday, the Rebbe believed that each person should be secluded for a certain part of the day, do a cheshbon ha-nefesh [soul-searching] and engage in introspection. The custom also is to take on a resolution for the coming year, to do something that you didn’t do in the past year, something a little bit additional in your observance or in your studies, your Yiddishkeit.” (Characteristic examples are taking upon oneself an extra study session, or giving more charity, but, in truth, of course, it could be any act involving ethical and/or spiritual self-improvement, and kindness to others.)9

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recalls an early meeting with the Rebbe, when he, Sacks, said in passing, “I found myself in a situation . . .” The Rebbe stopped him and told Sacks that the expression “I found myself in a situation” was both inaccurate and an evasion of responsibility; one should say, rather, “I placed myself in a situation.” And the Rebbe continued, “If you can place yourself in one situation, then you can place yourself in another situation.”

Dr. Viktor Frankl’s school of thought. Frankl, a psychiatrist and author of Man’s Search for Meaning—based on his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps—was the founder of logotherapy, which posits that the most powerful need in human beings is the need to find meaning and purpose in their lives.

The thought of making Jews of any denomination feel unwelcome at Chabad was totally opposed to the Rebbe’s notions concerning love of one’s fellow.

insisted that Jewish tradition be identified with Orthodox Judaism. Otherwise, a Jew who wished to repent and return to Judaism would not know what it was to which he should return.

Throughout the Orthodox world, the Modern Orthodox world in particular, when people spoke of “the Rav,” the reference invariably was to Rabbi Soloveitchik, as in “I studied with the Rav,” or “The Rav teaches that . . .” Similarly, when people spoke of “the Rebbe,” they were most often—unless they were Chasidic followers of a different Rebbe—referring to Rabbi Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

when people speak of “the Rav” and “the Rebbe,” they will be referring to Rabbis Soloveitchik and Schneerson, respectively.

To the Rebbe, the five books of the Torah and the whole genre of the Oral Law (Talmud and Midrash) were one big tapestry of unity. Where only a short while before there might have been dissonance—between various interpretations or methodologies or genres, between the abstract and the practical, between man and God—by the time the Rebbe finished his teaching there was a sense of harmony, of unity.

The Rebbe then shifted into less expected terrain: “What type of machine gun do they use?” When the soldier answered, “The Thompson” (the American-made submachine gun originally created during the Prohibition era), the Rebbe asked why they weren’t using the more advanced Swedish model: “The Thompson only shoots such-and-such numbers of bullets per minute, whereas the Swedish guns shoot many more.”

a person contemplating aliyah should ask himself the following (this is a summary of what the Rebbe said, not his exact words): Will I be able to contribute toward the development of the country? Will I be able to integrate into the economy, and not add to the excessive burden already placed on it?

Nachmanides (also known as Ramban), the thirteenth-century Jewish scholar and philosopher, who, in his enumeration of the Torah’s 613 commandments, includes living in Israel as one of them. The Talmud teaches that if one partner in a marriage (either the husband or wife) insists on making aliyah, they can demand that their partner go with them; refusal is grounds for divorce (Ketubot 110b).

obedience to the Divine Law can never be conditioned upon human approval.” Therefore, while in his opinion a belief in evolution was wrong, it was irrelevant in the larger order of things. In the final analysis, as the Rebbe told Nathan Yellin-Mor. “Judaism is not about thinking, it’s about doing” (see chapter 12).

“All knowledge you’ll ever learn, every experience you’ll have in life, are the circles. They’re not the center. If you don’t have a solid center, you’ll have jagged circles, incomplete circles, many different circles. I sense that you need that center before you start building your circles.”

Jews are associated in Jewish and non-Jewish minds alike with a passionate attraction to education and high levels of intellectual attainment. They are admitted to Ivy League colleges at a rate more than ten times their percentage of the American population and win Nobel Prizes at a rate some hundred times their percentage of the world population.

great evil and stupidity can coexist in a person of immense intellectual capabilities

“The one who is the Messiah will have this revealed to him from Above. This has not been revealed to me.”

These people] incorporate into their daily lives the Jewish values to which most of us give lip service: They visit the sick. They comfort the grieving. They take care to avoid embarrassing others.”

Contrary to some noted Orthodox figures, the Rebbe asserted his belief that there was no explanation for the Holocaust: “To say that those very people were deserving of what transpired, that it was a punishment for sins, heaven forbid, is unthinkable. There is absolutely no explanation or understanding for the Holocaust. . . . Certainly not the explanation of a judgment and punishment”

Hayom Yom (Today Is the Day). The title is drawn from a daily prayer recited at the conclusion of the morning service that begins with the words, “Today is the day . . . on which the Levites recited at the Temple,” followed by the psalm designated for that day of the week.

they opposed the idea of Jewish children praying alongside non-Jews even if the prayer was nondenominational.)

in 1983, the Reform movement in the United States instituted a new definition, defining a Jew as one born to either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father and who is raised with an exclusively Jewish identity.

“It is difficult to imagine that after what happened in Hitler’s Germany, some Jews still entertain the idea that by making themselves as inconspicuous as possible [and] concealing their Jewishness, they will gain favor with their gentile neighbors.”