Monthly Archives: February 2014

My name is Abraham J. Twerski. I come from chasidic dynasties on both my father’s side and my mother’s side. My father’s side was from Chernobyl and my mother’s side was from Sanz. Also, my father’s great- great-grandfather was a son-in-law to the Mitteler Rebbe of Lubavitch, so we’re descendants of the Alter Rebbe, the founder of Lubavitch.

I myself have been ordained and practiced as a rabbi for a number of years in Milwaukee, before becoming a psychiatrist and moving on to Pittsburgh.

After I had practiced as a rabbi for a number of years, I felt I was not fulfilled in my work and – after consultation with the Steipler Gaon – I went to medical school to become a psychiatrist. In 1960, when I had just started psychiatric training, I had my first personal contact with the Rebbe of Lubavitch.

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When I went into the audience with the Rebbe, he asked what I was doing. I told him, and he said “When you finish your psychiatric training, move to New York. There are many people here whom I would like to send to a psychiatrist because they need psychiatric help, but I can’t send them to a psychiatrist who is going to say that religion is a neurosis and will tell them that they have to drop their religion.”

At that time, it was not like today – there were no religious psychiatrists in New York. And as a youngster just graduating psychiatry, I did not want to become overwhelmed. So I said to the Rebbe, “If I do that, if I become the only frum psychiatrist in New York, which has such a huge religious population, I will not be able to carry that load. I’ll need to work day and night seven days a week. There will be no opportunity for me to learn even a little bit of Torah. I won’t have a chance to ever open a Jewish text again.”

But the Rebbe said, “Where there’s a mitzvah that no one else can do and you’re the only one who can do it, that mitzvah takes priority over learning Torah.”

I said, “That would mean that I’d totally have to give up learning. And I couldn’t do that unless G-d Himself told me to do so.” To which the Rebbe responded, “What do you expect – an angel with two wings to come and tell you?”

I said, “A rabbi who resembles an angel would be good enough.” I know it was chutzpa for me to say that, but the Rebbe didn’t get offended – he just smiled. (more…)

I was born in Antwerp, but in 1939, when World War II broke out and the Nazis invaded Belgium, my family fled to France. Shortly thereafter, France also fell and was split in two, with one part occupied by Germany and under the control of the Nazis, and the rest under the control of the French Vichy Government. We smuggled ourselves from the occupied zone to the unoccupied zone, to Marseilles. We arrived there after Shavuot of 1940 and made our home near a kosher restaurant and synagogue ran by a chasidic Jew who, like my parents, was originally from Galitzia, Poland.

This little synagogue – this Bais Medrash – was the central place where Jews gathered. There were so many refugees trying to reunite with their relatives – one lost a wife, one lost a son on the road; they all wanted to find out about their families. They also wanted to find out which consulate was giving out papers, because all the consulates were in Marseilles and people were trying to get from France to Spain or Portugal and out of Europe. Every evening between afternoon and evening prayers, this Bais Medrash was a marketplace of people trying to find information and help.

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I was eighteen years-old at the time, and I would learn there with my grandfather – every afternoon from four to seven. And that is where I first saw this interesting young man.

I remember he had a presence about him. He wore a modern suit and a nice necktie, a soft hat, but what stood out about most him was his full dark beard. He smiled at everybody, always said good afternoon or good evening, but he was very quiet otherwise. While other people were talking – like I said, it was like a big marketplace – he was quietly studying off in a corner. I remember he had the Mishnayos printed by Shlesinger Publishing House – a small pocket edition that had all of the Mishna in one volume. After evening prayers, he would go home.

One afternoon, my grandfather said to me, “Aaron, find out who that young man is.” So I asked around, and somebody told me that his name was Schneerson, a name which, at first, I didn’t know was associated with Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad. And then someone told me, “This is the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s son-in-law.” That’s when I started paying attention. I would observe him as he came and went – apparently he was travelling a lot between Nice and Marseilles – but I never spoke with him. After eight months, he told people in the Bais Medrash that he was leaving for America, and that was the last I saw of him. (more…)

I grew up in Crown Heights, and as a child I studied at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, but by the time I was fifteen I left and went to a regular boys’ high school. The reason I left is that I felt too restricted there and I wanted to get a broader education. But, although I left Torah Vodaas, I never left Yiddishkeit – I always remained an observant Jew.

At age eighteen I went into the US army for three years – this was between 1943 and 1946 – and served a year overseas, where I worked with DPs, displaced persons. This was a formative experience for me, and it left a deep impression. Seeing the aftermath of the Holocaust, I came to the conclusion that Judaism had to survive, and the only way for it to survive was through Torah.

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Although I originally planned to obtain a doctorate in English literature, just when I almost finished my studies, I met Professor Saul Lieberman of JTS – the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative yeshiva – who influenced me to leave Columbia University, where I had been studying, and enroll at JTS instead.

This happened in 1950. And although I studied at JTS in Manhattan, on Shabbos, I used to come home to Crown Heights to be with my family, and I used to go to Chabad to supplement my knowledge of Talmud. Among the Chabad students I found great study partners, and one of them was Rabbi Chaim Ciment. He introduced me to the Rebbe, who was not yet the Rebbe at that time, and I told him my whole story. Apparently, he took an interest in me – and I certainly took an interest in him.

I was also very interested in Chabad. I was so impressed with the ahavas Yisrael, love of every Jew, that emanated from Chabad – an unusual amount of avahas Yisrael. I would see it in every one of the Rebbe’s chasidim that I would meet. And when I became a member of the JTS faculty I spoke out on this subject. I said that if we, in the Conservative Movement, could develop the ahavas Yisrael of Chabad, we could take over America. But they didn’t listen to me. I was outvoted many a time, and I used to say that we must reach out to every Jew, but we must reach out from the point of view of Jewish law, because an institution that does not have halacha as the basis of its studies cannot succeed or even survive. (more…)

In the early 1970s I would come to New York a few times a year, as a foreign correspondent for Hamodia and the Algemeiner newspapers. While I was in New York, I learned a lot from the Rebbe, and I received guidance from him – how to best communicate issues that I covered as a journalist, mainly in the field of security. I also carried messages from the Rebbe to senior military officers in Israel.

The breadth of the Rebbe’s analysis was astounding. When the Prime Minister, the Chief of Staff, or officers in the IDF would come to him – and I know dozens who did – he would present them with information that would amaze them. He would often show them the larger picture which they had never considered. It was this reputation that brought these military leaders to his doorstep.

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The Rebbe was not only head and shoulders above the rest, but he was an expert in my field, defense and security. He saw the broader picture and he saw it in great depth. Many times – actually, at all times – he had great foresight.

On several occasions, a senior military officer said to me: “This man amazes me! I am not a religious person, but when I meet with him, I feel like I’m sitting opposite someone who spent his entire life in the army, who understands weaponry, knows military strategy, and understands intelligence.”

The legendary Meir Amit, the only person to hold the positions of Director of the Mosad and military intelligence at the same time, once shared with me an episode that illustrates the standing the Rebbe held in the eyes of Israel’s defense forces:

In the early 1960s, Amit was once meeting with the Rebbe, and he was scheduled to fly to Israel later that night. His audience with the Rebbe ran longer than expected, and as soon as it concluded, Amit called El Al at Kennedy Airport and asked who the pilot was. It turned out that the pilot, a former military man, knew Amit. Amit knew everyone.

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