Monthly Archives: April 2010

There was a very large, affluent Jewish community living in Crown Heights in the 1950s and 1960s. We constantly meet people who grew up in Crown Heights and remember ‘Lubavitch’ in the early years.

Recently, we interviewed Mr. Sheldon Rudoff, a lawyer living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He and his family lived in Crown Heights in the 1950s. (His house actually shared an alley with the Rebbe’s house.) As a teenager, he had some interactions with the Rebbe, and he shared those encounters with us.

Here is a short clip from the interview.

Pursuant to an original round of interviews which were featured in Faithful and Fortified Volume One (see trailer below), we will be conducting an additional 60 interviews with Israeli security, intelligence, journalists and government officials who had meetings and correspondence with the Rebbe about protecting Israel. These interviews are being made possible through an generous grant by Rabbi Yossel Gutnick, the Rebbe’s emissary for Shleimus Ha’aretz.

45 of the interviewees have already been identified and contacted, and 15 interview slots remain. If you have any tips or advice on specific individuals who should be interviewed for the continuation of this vital project, please email: ycagen@jemedia.org.

Please include as much information as you can about the individual you are suggesting we interview and all about his interaction with the Rebbe, including sources or links wherever possible. Please explain why you feel it would be important to interview him or her. If possible, please include his or her contact information.

Want to see more Faithful and Fortified? Click here.

The My Encounter with the Rebbe project was launched by JEM in 1998, aiming to document the unknown and untold story of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory’s life.

Many tens of thousands of individuals visited with the Rebbe privately, seeking counsel and direction. Many times that number communicated with him in writing. It is largely through these relationships that the Rebbe had his impact on world Jewry. While his published works fill countless volumes, the how and what of his impact on lives and communities – and in fact, an entire generation – remain as yet, untold.

It is this body of firsthand, undocumented, accounts that the My Encounter oral history project seeks to preserve.

The project has already collected over two hundred and fifty videotaped testimonies in which ordinary individuals and public personalities detail the relationship and correspondence they maintained with the Rebbe. Ranging between one and seven hours in length, each interview tells a different personal story – together, comprising a testament to the Rebbe’s far-reaching influence and impassioned leadership, and a tool to teach generations that follow. Although most of the interviews are conducted in English, Yiddish and Hebrew, some of them are done in Spanish, French and Russian as well. (more…)