Monthly Archives: August 2013

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With the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Henry Ford Motor Company realized that the new state would need a huge number of vehicles for the military and the government, and it announced plans to build a car assembly plant in Israel.

This made news all around the world. The Jewish State was just founded, and the Henry Ford Motor Company would be the first to build a factory there!

Our joy didn’t last long. As soon as the Arabs heard about Ford’s plans, they announced that if Ford didn’t back down, they’d boycott it by putting the company on the Arab League’s blacklist.

So, of course, Ford pulled out.

For the Israeli government it was a moment of crisis. With Ford capitulating to the Arabs, who would invest in Israel?

While the government was searching for alternatives, out of the blue, my friend, Lord Israel Ziev of London, called me up and told me, “There’s a man you must talk to. His name is Hickman Price. He is with the Kaiser-Frazer Export Corporation. His company built an automobile plant in Holland, and it was a great success. Now they want to build one in Greece. I suggested to him that he should meet with you first.”

The arrangements were made, and we met. And from the very first moment, we knew we were going to do business. But this project required $2.5 million. That would be equivalent to $250 million today, perhaps $300 million – so a lot of money. (more…)

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As a foreign correspondent and columnist, I had the privilege to speak with the Rebbe at length, and on many occasions. I wrote about him for Haaretz and other Israeli newspapers. It’s impossible to describe to today’s generation what it was like to sit opposite the Rebbe and to look into his eyes, to hear him speak for two, three hours.

He had such a soft way of speaking. Once I came to see him in the winter – there was snow outside. And afterwards I wrote that his smile could melt all the snow in New York. That’s how warm his smile was.

Then there came a time when I did something that erased that smile from his face. In hindsight, I wish I had done things quite differently.

The year was 1979. The Iranian Revolution had just taken place, Ayatollah Khomeini had seized power, and a major international crisis was unfolding. A group of young Islamist militants had attacked the United States Embassy in Tehran and had taken fifty-two Americans hostage. The situation was very tense, and there was a sense of fear in the world.

At a public address on November 17, the Rebbe requested that, because of the situation in Israel and around the world, a public fast day be announced. Even though Chabad is not in favor of fasts, the Rebbe said that if other rabbis should issue a call for a special day of fasting and prayer, he would endorse and support it. (more…)

As far I’m concerned the Jewish women’s liberation movement was started by the Rebbe.

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When I was a young woman growing up in Williamsburg, what was there for girls? If any Rebbe held a chassidic gathering, women couldn’t go. Women were excluded, and this was true across the board – whether it was Satmar or Klausenberger or whatever.

The involvement of girls and women was pioneered by Lubavitch on the Rebbe’s direction. You never saw it anywhere else. In fact, most people couldn’t even understand what he was trying to do.

Who encouraged the women like the Rebbe did? Who talked about the women like the Rebbe did, and explained this issue to all the chasidim?

The Lubavitch women were liberated long before our sisters out there were, and we didn’t even have to fight for it. The Rebbe fought for us and put us on a pedestal, and we didn’t have to ask for the pedestal.

The Rebbe, obviously, anticipated the challenges that modern Jewish women were going to face. He saw that if he wasn’t going to get the women involved in Judaism, the women would get involved in other things.

When the Rebbe sent out his emissaries, his shluchim, he didn’t send a husband and a wife – he sent out a couple, and he gave them both a task to do. (more…)

I first met the Rebbe when I visited him to discuss my mother’s illness.

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I was not a chasid. In fact, I was educated in the Mesivta Chaim Berlin and I received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. But when my mother fell ill, I went to the Rebbe because everyone among the Orthodox Jewish public already knew – it was in the public domain, so to speak – that to get good advice, to get a compassionate answer to a difficult question, to glimpse a solution to a complex dilemma, you went to the Rebbe, and that the Rebbe’s door was never closed to anyone.

My mother’s doctors could not agree on whether they should operate or not. An operation offered the possibility of a cure, but it carried a risk. Yet doing nothing meant that things would go on as they were, with the inevitable ending.

As a son, I was torn. And my mother, may she rest in peace, couldn’t make the decision. So I went to the Rebbe. I wanted to get his blessing and his advice.

Now, the Rebbe didn’t know me, didn’t know my mother, didn’t know anything about the family … But when I told him my dilemma, he looked at me and I saw tears in his eyes. He reacted as if he was my brother, and I felt as if I was discussing the problem with my brother. (more…)

In the early 1950s, I came to the Rebbe with a group of young girls from Junior Hadassah. At that time Hadassah was a very popular women’s group, and Junior Hadassah was made up of the teenage daughters of the women who belonged to Hadassah.

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Although I wasa newly-married bride at the time; not much older than these girls, I became the leader of the group in Worcester, Massachusetts. They used to come to our house, and I would teach them about Judaism.

I had told them about the Rebbe, and they wanted to see him in person, to hear him speak. At one point, we decided to go visit the Rebbe as a group. And one girl’s mother decided to come along with her daughter. The girl’s name was Estelle Greenberg, and her mother, Mrs. Greenberg, said that she, too, wanted to see the Rebbe.

It was a large gathering. Other groups of young people came that day as well, and the Rebbe spoke to all of them together. When there was a break in the program, Mrs. Greenberg requested a private audience with the Rebbe. She went in, and she was there for quite a while. When she came out, the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Hodakov, approached me and said,  “Please, the Rebbe wants to see you. Go in and see the Rebbe.”

I was surprised that the Rebbe should want to see me, and I went in wondering, “What could it be?”

The Rebbe greeted me with a broad smile and said, “Mrs. Greenberg came to ask for a blessing so that her daughter should find a husband. I gave her a blessing, but she doesn’t believe me.” At that he laughed. (more…)