This story is an excerpt from the book My Story 1. Get your copy today at www.jemstore.com.

I was raised in South Africa, where my parents – who were not Jews but Christians, specifically Presbyterians – emigrated from England when I was nine. Eventually, after a lot of searching, I made my way to Israel and in 1965, at the age of twenty-five, I converted to Judaism.

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Shortly after my conversion, I got married. My husband was a Jewish psychiatrist at the Sha’ar Menashe Mental Health Center near Haifa, where I worked as a social worker. At first I was very enthusiastic about Judaism but after interacting with many non-observant Jews who questioned my observance, I became confused and riddled with doubts.

Fortunately, two years later, we moved to South Africa. There, I was able to restore my faith and my Torah observance after coming in touch with Chabad. This led to my desire to meet the Rebbe, which I first did in 1972.

In advance of that audience, I had written to the Rebbe. I had been told to limit my letter to one page, but I had so much to say and so much to ask that I wrote in very tiny script to fit it all in. When I presented this one-page letter to the Rebbe, he actually took out a magnifying glass in order to be able to read it.

Among the many things I wanted to know was, “Can I really still count myself as a Jew?” I was worried that my lapse in observance had disqualified me somehow.

The Rebbe looked at me as if he was seeing through me. His eyes were so bright and full of light, I felt as if he was seeing my soul. And then he said – after noting that my conversion by the Haifa Rabbinical Court was sound in the eyes of Jewish law – “You most certainly can count yourself as a Jew. Indeed, you must. But how good a Jew you are going to be – that is up to you.”

I replied, “I want to be one completely.” (more…)

I was born in Yemen in 1944, and five years later my family emigrated to Israel. Our material circumstances were harsh; brought from one migrants’ camp to the next, we lived in tents that let in the winter rain. I remember once, in the middle of the night, that our entire tent simply flew off into a powerful storm, leaving us exposed to the rain.

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Nor were the spiritual conditions straightforward. There wasn’t yet a well-organized public religious education system, and so although we all came from observant homes, the authorities put us Yemenite children into classes combining boys and girls, with nonobservant teachers. Additionally, they attempted to draw us away from our faith. For example, they cut off our long peyot, under the pretext of a scalp ringworm outbreak. Once, they even tried to make us desecrate the Shabbat, but we refused and ran off. Eventually we left the school, and stayed home, where we received a traditional education.

In time, I attended the Porat Yosef yeshivah in Rechovot until 8th grade, before moving to another yeshivah high school in Kfar Haroeh. In my last couple of years there, Rabbi Yissachar Meir came to teach our class. He had been one of the first students of the well-known Ponevezh Yeshivah in Bnei Brak, and before joining us, he spent some three years in Morocco, setting up boys’ and girls’ Torah institutions.

Before our graduation, Rabbi Meir convinced our class to join him in forming the nucleus of a new yeshivah in Netivot which became known as the “Yeshivah of the Negev.” I ended up spending ten years there, through to 1968.

A year before that, in 1967, I got engaged and the question of where my wife and I would live came up. Of course, I wanted to remain in Netivot and continue my studies close to Rabbi Meir, to whom I had become attached. But my wife wanted to be in Rechovot so that she could live near her parents and help care for her sick mother. Having learned in the Chabad institutions of Rechovot, she had a connection with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as did Rabbi Meir. With his guidance, we decided to write to the Rebbe, seeking advice on our dilemma. (more…)

My father, Yankel Katz, was born in Mogilev, Belarus, to a Lubavitcher family that moved to Chicago a few years later, in about 1905.

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He began working as a child laborer in a printing plant, and by the age of fifteen was the main provider for the Katz family since his father could not provide very well for them.

Although my grandfather parted ways with Chasidism, my father was dedicated to the community, and became an outstanding member of Congregation Anshei Lubavitch, an elegant synagogue that was one of four Lubavitcher shuls in Chicago at the time. He was also a friend of great rabbinic leaders, and as a young man in the 1920s, he would correspond and donate money to the great rabbis of Europe, like the Chafetz Chaim and Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski.

In 1929, the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, visited Chicago and my father was fortunate enough to make his acquaintance. There, in the Lubavitcher shul, began a close and dear friendship. My father was smitten with the Rebbe’s charisma, his manner, and his friendship. (more…)

In the mid-‘70s, I was diagnosed with a murmur in my heart. A certain procedure had recently been developed for my condition, and the chief cardiologist at Miami’s Mount Sinai Hospital was going to perform it on me.

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I went into the hospital, and everything seemed to go very well. Since the procedure required general anesthesia and I was still out, the doctor informed my wife that I was in recovery. In the meantime, she went home to get some things. At the time, we lived just three blocks from Mount Sinai on North Meridian Avenue.

After enough time had passed and I was supposed to be out of recovery, she decided to call me in my room to ask me how I was. She called, and there was no response. So she hung up and tried again.

I was sharing the room with another gentleman, and eventually he woke up and picked up the phone.

“What’s going on with my husband?” she asked him. “Where is he?”

I was right next to him, sleeping.

“Well, wake him up.”

The guy tried calling out to me by name, but got no response. “Listen,” he told her, “your husband is not waking up.” (more…)

Gail Goldberg

My husband and I both grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in middle-class Jewish families. We dated in high school, reconnected again later on, and got married in 1965.

My first pregnancy went okay – for a while. But then we learned that the baby was not developing fully. The doctors didn’t know why, and all I know is that I went into labor, and had a baby that I never saw: It was a stillbirth at seven months.

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It was a depressing experience, but we were still newly married and still planned on having children. We moved, and a couple years later I got pregnant again. I had a new doctor, a new hospital, and we were also increasing our Jewish observance after joining a new synagogue with a wonderful rabbi. But that pregnancy also ended up as a stillbirth.

David Goldberg

By this time, we had moved to Washington, D.C., where we were both working for the CIA. The doctors had advised us against pursuing another pregnancy, as there was a potential risk for my wife due to some health problems she was experiencing as a diabetic, so we decided to try to adopt a child. We applied, and were placed on a short list. But when we decided to move back to Chicago, it turned out that this ended the adoption procedure we had begun in Washington, and we had to start over again.

In Chicago, whether by serendipity or Divine Providence, we ended up in the same neighborhood as Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Hecht, an emissary of the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, who also had a relationship with Gail’s brother, Roy. Since by this point we had become more sensitive to Halachic observance, I asked him about some of the relevant laws pertaining to adoption.

Rabbi Hecht looked at me and said, “Before you adopt, there is a rabbi in New York I’d like you to see.” (more…)

My wife and I got married in 1966 in Jerusalem. However, several years passed and we had not been blessed with children. We visited medical experts and professors but, after their consultations and tests, they all threw up their hands and explained to us that there was no chance that we would have children.

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Although I am not a Chabad chasid, I had for many years prayed in a Chabad synagogue and studied Chabad teachings. In 1973, I sent a letter to the Rebbe, in which I related what the doctors had told us, and asked that he bless us to have children. In the answer which I was privileged to receive, he said that he would pray for us at the resting place of his father-in-law, the Previous Rebbe, and recommended that I have my tefillin as well as the mezuzot in our home checked to ensure “that they are all kosher in accordance with the law.”

Then, at the end of the letter, after his signature, he added: “P.S. Since at times G-d’s blessings for healthy children are held back as a result of a lack of meticulousness and care in observing the laws of family purity, and since a lack of knowledge leads to a lack of observance, you ought to verify all the relevant details with a rabbi, with the intention of observing them to the fullest.”

The years continued to pass and we still didn’t have children, but we never gave up hope. We had heard many stories about the Rebbe’s blessings, so my wife and I decided to make the trip to see him in person. We arrived in New York in the winter of 1981, fifteen years after our wedding. I immediately contacted the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Leibel Groner, who scheduled us for an audience with the Rebbe. At the appointed date, we waited until nearly 1:00 AM and then entered the Rebbe’s study. I felt tremendous excitement at seeing the Rebbe for the very first time.

When he inquired as to whether we had any children, I replied that this was precisely the reason we had come. I showed him some letters and reports we had received from our doctors which the Rebbe studied for some time. I remember the way he leaned forward and read them intently by the dim light of the lamp that stood on his desk. A few minutes after we had entered, a knock was heard and Rabbi Groner appeared at the door: Our audience was taking too long. The Rebbe paid no attention. He continued to study the doctors’ letters. (more…)

The first person to spot my artistic ability was my kindergarten teacher. A rowdy child growing up in 1940s Haifa, I showed little interest in the regular games. But, when she brought me some paper and colored pencils, I found myself.

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In school, the only thing that interested me was the ceiling; I could imagine anything on that empty white space. Biblical studies interested me least of all; our teacher was less concerned with the soul of the prophets and their messages, than with analyzing the text with the tools of biblical criticism, a kind of scriptural autopsy. When I was eleven, my father brought me to the artist and photographer Shlomo Narinsky. I would go out into the fields or the Carmel forest to paint, and then come to him once a week to receive his criticism and guidance.

After high school, I went to Kerem B’Yavneh, a religious Zionist yeshivah, where one day, a few friends suggested making a trip to Kfar Chabad. I didn’t know where that was, but I was curious. We went to a farbrengen there and the songs I heard that night captivated me; they came from the heart and penetrated straight into mine. This is what I have been longing for, I thought. Seeing the children with that pure look in their eyes alongside elderly chasidim was enchanting. I transferred to the Chabad yeshivah in nearby Lod where I was introduced to chasidic teachings. With them, I probed deep, I reached high, and I broadened my horizons. (more…)

When I was growing up in the ‘70s, my father would fondly recall the classes that his dean at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, would give on the Tanya. He found them fascinating and he encouraged me to study the Tanya as well. But when I opened this seminal work of Chabad philosophy, all I saw were Kabbalistic terms that meant nothing to me. Nor was Chabad philosophy part of the approved curriculum in the yeshivah I was learning in at sixteen.

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One day, another student asked to speak with me in private. “Promise me that you won’t share this with anybody,” he began.

He revealed that once a week, somebody would come from Brooklyn – we were located in Upstate New York – to give a class. “I know that you’re open-minded and have an interest in Jewish thought,” he said, “so I’m inviting you to attend.”

“At 2:00 AM,” he went on, “we go out to a designated spot on a side road. Somebody picks us up and drives us to the location where we learn for a few hours, sometimes through the night. I can tip-toe into your room and wake you up on time.”

My curiosity was sparked. This student was a bright young man who took his studies seriously so I figured that if he found the classes interesting, then they probably were. (more…)

I came to the army from yeshivah in 1951, and met Rabbi Shlomo Goren right away. As the Chief Rabbi of the IDF, he transferred me into chaplaincy to work alongside him. Although we didn’t agree on everything, we became very close.

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Rabbi Goren admired the Rebbe because the Rebbe said what he believed, whether or not it was popular. Both the Rebbe and he, and to a degree myself, were nonconformists, who were unafraid of the backlash that came with going against the grain.

This was also the relationship I forged with the Rebbe. As the rabbi of the moshavim, Israel’s agricultural settlements, and later as a member of Knesset, I would have an audience with the Rebbe every time I was in the US. Sometimes, I would express views that I knew he did not share, but he always heard me out. “I know that you think what you say and you say what you think,” he once complimented me.

The Rebbe brought up my independent spirit, indirectly, the very first time I met him in 1959. It was a late-night meeting that went for hours, and at the end, just before the Rebbe went to morning prayers, I remember he had one more question for me:

“Reb Menachem, are you a chasid or a misnagid?” he asked, using the term for the historical opponents of Chasidism. (more…)

This story is an excerpt from the book My Story 2: Lives Changed. Get your copy today at www.jemstore.com.

In 1966, I had given birth to Danny, the youngest of my three sons. As he grew, he did not speak anywhere near as early as his brothers. When I asked the pediatrician, “Why is Danny not speaking yet?” I was told that he might have a hearing problem. After some testing, the pediatrician confirmed that, indeed, Danny had a severe hearing problem.

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At eighteen months of age, he was fitted with a hearing aid. In those days, that meant wearing a harness that carried battery-operated equipment which was connected by wires to the buttons in his ears. It was not a very pleasant setup, to say the least. Danny was an active toddler, and it was a constant battle to prevent him from pulling out this contraption and throwing it on the ground. Eventually, though, he understood that this bulky contraption helped him communicate with his friends.

To be clear, by no means were we strangers to the problems faced by hearing-impaired children. Our oldest son, Barry, had begun to lose his hearing when he was four years old, and it continued to deteriorate until he was seven. But Barry had already learned to speak quite well before his hearing loss. Danny would have to learn to speak after he had lost his hearing – an overwhelming challenge for a young child.

In the summer of 1967, we moved to Skokie, Illinois, so that Barry, our oldest, could start first grade in a Jewish day school there, and Danny would be able to enroll in a special education program at Northwestern University that had a big center for young children with hearing problems.

Back then, there was a huge disagreement among educators as to whether hearing-impaired children should learn to communicate with sign language, or they should be taught how to talk. Northwestern University was on the side of trying to teach them to talk, so this is the kind of therapy Danny received until he was three, when he was enrolled in a special education nursery program in our local school district. (more…)