The Rebbe transformed the Chabad legacy of Jewish outreach, education, and service into a global powerhouse affecting thousands of lives. The Avner Institute presents affectionate anecdotes by Rabbi Zalman Posner – author of Think Jewish and Chabad emissary of Nashville, Tennessee – on the timeless impact the Rebbe and his predecessors made on those who ever learned, ate, sang, prayed, or merely stood in their presence. Full Story
The Rebbe transformed the Chabad legacy of Jewish outreach, education, and service into a global powerhouse affecting thousands of lives. The Avner Institute presents affectionate anecdotes by Rabbi Zalman Posner – author of Think Jewish and Chabad emissary of Nashville, Tennessee – on the timeless impact the Rebbe and his predecessors made on those who ever learned, ate, sang, prayed, or merely stood in their presence.
Dedicated in memory of loving memory of Hadassah Lebovic A”h
Rabbi Zalman Posner a”h relates:
Stranger of “Lubavitz”
It was Yom Tov, and we had just davened in 770. We hurried off to the “kitchen” (that’s what we always called the dining hall) at Bedford and Dean (our name for the yeshiva which was located at that intersection in Brooklyn) for the Yom Tov meal. The younger kids had eaten already, and we had the place to ourselves.
We were in a giddy mood, sitting at the tables, a dozen of us, yelling, singing, eating, laughing, and talking. We ignored an older gentleman, well-dressed (not in Chassidishe clothes), sitting there on the side, watching us with interest.
“Fifty years ago I was just like you,” he suddenly spoke up, in Yiddish. We were certain he would finish his sentence with the familiar wisecrack, “but I got smart.” But he concluded, “In Lubavitz.” He said it with the tz instead of tch.
We jumped up and ran over to him, forgetting everything. Lubavitz! This guy was in Lubavitz! He could have said he’s from Atzilus or Gan Eden HaElyon and we wouldn’t have been as excited. “Tell us something about it,” we pleaded.
He was pre-bar mitzvah in Lubavitz and had spent only about a half year there, but what he told us we had never heard before or since “Simchas Torah in Lubavitz.”
At night when the Rebbe Rashab, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, was ready to come to the “Large Zahl,” as the large yeshiva hall was called, the bochurim lined up on either side of the path from the Rebbe’s home to the Zahl, each holding a candle. Then the Rebbe came out, fur coat draped on his shoulders, arms not in the sleeves. With him was his son who later became Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. Together they started down the path to the Zahl while the bochurim sang.
“When they came to me,” said the visitor, “the Rebbe looked at me! I tell you, he looked at me!
“Don’t laugh at me. I can still see his eyes as he looked at me! I dream of it until this day.”
I still think of the mysterious gentleman from time to time. He was apparently not a shomer mitzvoth [observant Jew], and the impression of “Lubavitz” on him had obviously not been overwhelming.
But at night he dreams of those eyes! And he never forgets that the Rebbe looked at him.
How often do we dream of the Rebbe, I wonder.
He reminisced a bit after that about names of students that he recalled. One was Elya Bobruisker, an older tamim [student of the Lubavitcher Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim], a “shayner yungerman,” he called him, a fine young man, clearing remembering him with admiration. We checked later with Rabbi Simpson, and he did indeed recall our visitor as a young bochur’el.
Many Fine Examples
Rabbi Eliyahu Simpson, aka Elya Bobruisker. Let me reminisce about him, mainly from a young bocher’s perspective, though he deserves much more. And while I am at it, I might try recalling other fine examples of what Lubavitch produced, the older Chassidim who were – though they never knew it – role models for us. These are not mini-biographies or even portraits or studies of them; they are vignettes at best.
There is a non-Chabad saying that there are two people who cannot be Chassidim of a Rebbe. One is the Rebbe’s relative, who is after all not some stranger, but related; the other is the gabbai, who stands at the Rebbe’s door admitting people and is constantly near the Rebbe. The initial awe inexorably dwindles with time and familiarity.
Rabbi Simpson proved the exception. I wasn’t there the first time he went into the Rebbe’s room, but at the thousandth time he looked as awed (yes, that’s the word) as at the first time. He never became blasé or accustomed to being close to the Rebbe. Maybe that’s because he was truly close.
He often “went in” with my brother Laibel and me for yechidus [private audience with the Rebbe] because we could not easily understand the Rebbe’s speech. It was so pleasant for us when he repeated, and even explained a lot, what the Rebbe had said.
Ever since I met him, Rabbi Simpson was a true elder Chassid, respected and honored by all. I never heard him raise his voice (except when he would announce “No smoking!” in that Litvak accent before the Rebbe would come in to farbreng), yet he was always heard very clearly. Never did a harsh word about anyone ever pass his lips. In many Chassidic homes, there is a framed photograph prominently placed in their living room of Rabbi Simpson holding the Sefer Torah that was written “lekabel pnei Mashiach” [to greet Moshiach] while the Rebbe is placing the crown on it.
In Lubavitch, Elya Simpson as the chozer who would reconstruct the Rebbe’s talk, usually a long and complex ma’amar. His successor in America was the mashgiach [supervisor] of the yeshiva, Rabbi Mordechai Mentlik, another unusual man who deserves to have a book written about him.
Shortly after Yud Shevat 5710 [yahrzeit of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe], Reb Yoel Kahan, an exceptionally brilliant young man, arrived in America from Israel and served as chozer ever since. He is ably assisted by an impressive group of bochurim and yungeleit [young married men]. As soon as a farbrengen would conclude, Reb Yoel, surrounded by a group of young fellows, would start chazara, the review, with the most difficult part first – the ma’amar, while the rest of us went home for the Shabbos or Yom Tov meal.
I will always gratefully recall how someone turned my attention to the side of the crowd at chazara one day. There stood Rabbi Simpson, listening attentively and carefully, to bochurim younger than his grandchildren.
“See how an elder Chassid listens to chazara!” my friend exclaimed. Rabbi Simpson could teach without saying a word.
True Pleasure
Reb Shmuel Levitin, the senior Chassid until his passing at a ripe old age, reared us, boys who had no idea — what is a Chassid or a Rebbe? What is a farbrengen? Unquestionably, Rabbi Jacobson played a major role in this, but Chassidus is a field broad and deep enough to call for two or three and more mashpiyim [mentors] for American neophytes such as we were.
Reb Shmuel had countless anecdotes in his arsenal. Here’s one:
Lubavitchers do not wear long peyos [sidelocks], but Reb Shmuel did. Why? During the 1930s, he was living in the USSR and was arrested as a counterrevolutionary (their favorite charge, especially for Lubavitchers of “Schneersohns,” as they called them).
In prison there was another Chassid, non-Lubavitch, with payos. The guards came in, brandishing scissors to cut them off. The man grabbed his payos and retorted, “You’ll have to chop my hands off first.”
I don’t know what happened in the end, but Reb Shmuel would say, “I saw a man ready to give his life for his payos, and I should deliberately cut mine off?”
Reb Shmuel was the Rav of 770, and all shailos [legal questions] were his responsibility. Reb Zalman Shimon Dworkin was his successor. (I’ll always remember what Reb Zalman Shimon wrote me when I argued a point of Torah law with him: “Don’t be more frum than the Shulchan Aruch!”)
In the 1940s, in the days of the Rebbe Rayatz, the previous Rebbe, Yom Tov meals were served in the stalova, as it is called in Russian – the dining room upstairs. The Rebbe sat at the head, of course, and his sons-in-law at each side. Then came Reb Shmuel and the other invited guests, elder Chassidim, and others. Often the meal included meat, which everyone, including the Rebbe, ate, but Reb Shmuel would invariably get chicken instead. He explained:
“Do you think I would decline to eat what the Rebbe eats? Don’t be ridiculous! But I spent some years in Siberia. Eat meat there? Bread was hard enough to come by! After years without tasting any meat, why should I start now?”
It was important to see someone who wouldn’t indulge a culinary pleasure. He was not alone in that either. There were other Chassidim who escaped from the Soviet Union after the war who could not stand the way we Americans would enjoy with gusto the frozen desserts served at wedding dinners.
“Marozhene,” they called it, rather contemptuously.
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