Monthly Archives: March 2014

My name is Norbert Weinberg and my Hebrew name is Natan – Natan Ben Yitzchak Dov.

I was born in Germany before the Holocaust. My family almost didn’t make it out; in fact, my father, who was a doctor in a little town called Bad-Nauheim, was arrested and sent to Buchenwald for six weeks. But somehow my mother moved mountains and got him out, and we left for England and then we came to America. I went to Yeshiva University and was ordained as a rabbi there.

In the mid-1950s, I became a principal of a Hebrew School in Yonkers. After a short time, however, I became quite discouraged about my work. The children were wonderful; they wanted to learn, and they loved learning. The parents, however, were a problem. Although they sent their children to our Hebrew School, the parents were not religious, in the sense that they didn’t keep the Torah. I think they did it because their neighbors did it – it was the thing to do – but the children were taught one thing in the school but every night they’d go home and be taught something else.

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I began to feel that I was not making a dent. I was getting pretty disheartened about the whole thing.

At this time – it was the late 1950s – I was hearing a great deal about the Rebbe. He was becoming very well known then; he was becoming a force in Jewish life. So I decided to see him and ask his advice on the matter. Maybe he agrees with me that I should switch professions and become a lawyer or a doctor.

Somehow I arranged an audience with the Rebbe. I don’t remember the exact details of how it came about, though I do remember that my late cousin, Bjorn Bamberger, came with me.

We arrived and were told to wait a while. And it was quite an experience to see the Rebbe up close. I had seen him before at a number of farbrengens but this was face to face.

I remember that my cousin and I entered the room, and there was the Rebbe seated at a desk with a library of books behind him. He stood up when we walked in. We were nobody of importance but, nevertheless, he stood up for us, and shook our hands. This was a great surprise to me, and it made me feel that he wanted to speak to me. (more…)

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a Conservative Jewish family. I was educated in public schools, though I also went to Hebrew school. In 1976, when I was 17 years old, I went on a trip to Israel that was sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative yeshiva in New York.

While in Israel, I stayed on a religious kibbutz – because there were no Conservative kibbutzim – and there I started keeping Shabbos and learning more about Judaism. After four months of this, I returned home and I wanted to continue keeping Shabbos.

So who did I call? Chabad, of course. I called up Rabbi Moshe Feller, the Chabad emissary in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and I said, “I just came back from Israel and I’d like to come for Shabbos.” He was elated and he immediately said, “Come and bring all your friends!” I had no friends to bring, because my friends were not interested in keeping Shabbos, so I went alone.

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It was a wonderful experience, and even after I enrolled at the University of Minnesota that fall, I kept going for Shabbos to various Chabad families in St. Paul. The following summer – this was the summer of 1977 – I decided that I wanted to learn Torah full-time at Machon Chana, the Chabad seminary for young women in New York.

My parents were against this, and they were very upset that I insisted on going to Machon Chana. My siblings were also upset, my relatives were upset, and my friends basically dropped me. So I arrived in Crown Heights feeling very much alone. One day, I was sitting in the dorm at Machon Chana feeling like I had no one to talk to, and the thought entered my mind, “I could talk to the Rebbetzin.”

I shared this thought with two of my roommates from the dorm, and together we wrote a letter to the Rebbetzin. We said that we knew we were not worthy but, if possible, we would like to meet with her. We took this letter to the Rebbe’s and Rebbetzin’s house on President Street, we put it through the mail slot, and we ran away as fast as we could, not sure what was going to happen.

A few days later, Mrs. Galperin, the cook at Machon Chana, came up to me and, in a low voice, asked, “Did you write a letter to the Rebbetzin?”

My heart started to pound, and I thought, “Oh no, I’m going to be asked to leave Machon Chana. They’re going to kick me out, and I’ve been here only three months!” (more…)

My parents are Holocaust survivors from Warsaw, where my father was educated in the Chabad yeshiva, Tomchei Temimim. I was born right after the war, in 1946, in a displaced person’s camp where my parents were awaiting papers for America.

When I was 11 years old, I came to study at the Chabad yeshiva in Crown Heights. I stayed there for many years, and this is where I eventually received my rabbinic ordination.

In 1967, just before the Six Day War, the Rebbe began the first of his mitzvah campaigns to reach out to secular Jews. Some of the yeshiva students were designated to reach out to Jewish soldiers, to ask them to put on tefillin. We went to Camp Smith in Peekskill, where the New York Army National Guard is based. This was during the Vietnam War and a lot of Jewish boys joined the National Guard because, even though you had to sign up for six years, you wouldn’t get shipped out overseas.

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On that occasion, I first met the chaplain of the National Guard, Ed Donovan, a Roman Catholic priest, and from the start he encouraged me to become a chaplain once I received my rabbinic ordination. There were not enough Jewish chaplains, he told me, and I would fill a real need.

I was not interested, but he kept at me whenever I visited Camp Smith. Finally, one day he said to me, “What is the name of your bishop? I want to ask him to release you, so you can join the army.”

In response, I said that I would ask him myself. That very night I wrote to the Rebbe to request his advice; should I become a soldier and a chaplain?

The Rebbe’s answer was: “Nachon hadavar, azkir al hatzion – It’s the right thing to do, I will pray for you at my father-in-law’s resting place.”

This is how my military career began. During my various military missions, I sought the Rebbe’s advice many times. At other times, the Rebbe reached out to me out of the blue.

In 1983, during the United States-led invasion of Grenada, I was deployed there. On the fifth night of Chanukah, I was aboard a military plane when suddenly the pilot motioned to me to put on the headset because I had a call. It was the Pentagon switchboard with a message to urgently call Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who was the Rebbe’s secretary. (more…)

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, around the outbreak of World War II.

My family miraculously managed to survive the war, and afterwards, we immigrated to Australia. When we got there, Australia was a parched desert when it came to Torah institutions. But thanks to Chabad, in the late 1940s, a yeshiva was established in Melbourne, and this is where I was educated.

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The rabbi in charge of the yeshiva there was Rabbi Yitzchok Groner – he was very clever, and very experienced. And he built up the yeshiva there from scratch. In the mid-1950s, Chabad opened a girl’s school. Both were highly successful.

All the Rebbe’s emissaries who came to Australia made a very good impression.  They were warm, friendly, and helpful. They went out of their way to help people. And people admired them because they were willing to sacrifice for the sake of Yiddishkeit.  Whatever the Rebbe told them to do, they did it one hundred percent, and perhaps even more.

Today, Melbourne is booming Jewishly. There is a kindergarten, a school for boys, a school for girls, a beginner’s yeshiva, an advanced yeshiva, and a seminary, all thanks to Chabad.

As I mentioned, I attended the Chabad yeshiva when I was a youngster – I came there when I was thirteen and stayed until sixteen, at which age I went into business. And from that time – this would be from 1952 – I started to correspond with the Rebbe. I wrote to him every year on the occasion of my birthday, asking for blessings. The Rebbe answered every letter that I wrote to him – usually, his reply would come within ten days.

I remember that once I asked his advice about my Torah studies. The Rebbe advised that besides my standard learning I should also learn Tanya. Regular study of the Tanya was very important to him and, many years later, he gave me a pocket Tanya, which I still have with me. When he gave it to me, he said that if it gets torn, I would be given a new one. In other words: “Keep on learning daily, diligently, and don’t worry if the book tears.” (more…)