Monthly Archives: September 2015

My name is Pesach Fishman. Since 1988, I have served as an emissary of the Rebbe in South Africa. At first I was assigned to be the rabbi of the Jewish community of Bloemfontein, a provincial city about 400 kilometers from Johannesburg. While there, I also served the Jews in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, which is a separate country from South Africa, but is only about a two-hour drive from Bloemfontein.

It has always amazed me how far the Rebbe’s influence reached. During the first Gulf War in 1990, I remember receiving phone calls from so many far-flung Jews. One called from the middle of Lesotho where there were not even ten Jews – counting men, women and children – wanting to know if it was true that the Rebbe said that Israel would be safe. Another caller lived on a farm 200 kilometers from where I was, and at least 50 kilometers from the nearest Jew – but he, too, heard that the Rebbe said Israel would be safe and wanted to know more.

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To me, this was an indication that the Rebbe’s influence was not confined to major Jewish centers, but extended to every little town. All these people had somehow heard what the Rebbe had to say, and were encouraged and inspired by it.

While I was stationed in Bloemfontein, just before Rosh Hashana of  1989, our son Yosef Yitzchak was born. But, unfortunately, he contracted some type of infection in the hospital and had to be placed in intensive care. He was there for eight days, and he was not improving.

I was hesitant to write to the Rebbe. I didn’t want to take up the Rebbe’s precious time, and I felt that the doctors were doing their best. G-d willing, the situation would resolve itself in its own good time. My wife, however, was insistent that we should write to the Rebbe, so we did.

We didn’t hear back immediately. In those days, we used faxes, as this was before e-mail and communications were not what they are today. But apparently we didn’t need to receive the Rebbe’s written response. The response proved much more vivid. The morning after we wrote the letter, when my wife and I walked into the hospital, the nurse greeted us with these exact words: “A miracle happened here last night! You can take your baby home today.”

Yosef Yitzchak was fine! And thanks to G-d and thanks to the Rebbe’s blessing, we had his bris during Sukkot. (more…)

My name is Yosef Yitzchak (Yossy) Goldman. I was named after the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, being born right after his passing. When my name was announced at my bris, there was a collective gasp, since I was one of the first babies named after him, and the community’s sense of loss was still very fresh and very raw.

As behooves a namesake of a Rebbe, after I completed my studies, I became the Rebbe’s emissary in a faroff land – in my case, South Africa. This happened in 1976, and it came about partly at the instigation of Rabbi Mendel Lipskar. He was the first Chabad emissary to go there, and – since we had been students together in yeshiva and good friends – he wanted me to join him.

Even before I was married, he was already talking to me about it, but I needed to get some more learning under my belt first. When the time came, I had many options. I thought about going to St. Louis because I wanted to serve in a big city, and St. Louis was the biggest city in North America that didn’t have a Chabad presence. But Mendel said to me, “When you consult the Rebbe, please also put Johannesburg on the list.”

And that is what I did. I wrote to the Rebbe presenting my options, and the Rebbe returned my letter with the word Johannesburg underlined. So with one stroke of the pen, the Rebbe dispatched me – and my wife and two small children – to South Africa, which proved to be exactly the right place for us. We went there in 1976 and never looked back.In hindsight, I don’t know how many Chabad emissaries make a life-long commitment to go to a place they’ve never been to before. But that’s what we did. I signed up for a mission on the other side of the world in darkest Africa, which back then was much farther away from New York than it is today. I guess I was  naïve or idealistic, or both, but I never took a trip to check it out. I went trusting the Rebbe that this is where I belonged – that it was our purpose in life to serve the Jews of Johannesburg.

I say “our” because the Rebbe was always careful to include the wives. When I wrote to ask his advice, I made sure to state that my wife is with me, that she is a partner in this mission, and that she is as happy as I am to go wherever the Rebbe decides.

Those who didn’t include their wives when they wrote to the Rebbe requesting his advice were inevitably asked, “Are you writing on behalf of both of you?” The Rebbe made it clear to his emissaries that it can’t be just you deciding on your own and then informing your wife after the fact. The Rebbe made it clear that it’s a partnership – it’s a team effort.

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I spent most of World War Two in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, learning in the Lubavitcher Yeshiva there. After the war ended, the Previous Rebbe dispatched my father to Antwerp to help reopen the Etz Chaim Heida Yeshiva, and I also went, but I didn’t stay there – I moved on to Paris, because it was easier to get a visa for America in France than in Belgium.

It was while I was in Paris, waiting six months for my visa to come through, that I met the Previous Rebbe’s son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson – who would later become the Rebbe – and his mother, the Rebbetzin Chana.

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The Rebbetzin had been trapped in Russia during the war but, once it ended, she made her way via various DP camps to Paris. She came there in 1947 and she stayed in the house of her cousin Rabbi Zalman Schneerson, which is where I was also staying.

We often ate dinner together, and we became very friendly. I was there when, to her great joy, her son arrived from New York to take her to America. The necessary documents took a while to arrange and this is when I got to know him.

He made everybody feel so good, even in uncomfortable circumstances. For example, once he started to tell a story, and I interrupted him; I jumped up, miffed, “Hey, I told this story yesterday!” He smiled at me so kindly and said, “Please understand – once I’ve heard a story from my father-in-law, I don’t listen to that story again from anybody else, because I don’t want to mix up their version with what I heard from him.”

How could I be upset, if he had such a good reason and he explained it in such a nice way?!

I also remember another incident. Before Passover, I went to prepare matzah – which required buying wheat and having it ground into flour. As the flour sacks were being readied for transport, I had to make sure nobody took them – something I couldn’t allow to happen. This was the special flour for Passover! So I lay down on top of the sacks and my jacket turned completely white, though I didn’t know it. When I got on the train back to Paris, people were laughing at me, but I thought nothing of it, because the French often made fun of the Jews. When I got home, the Rebbe looked at me and said, “Go look in the mirror!” And he took me by the hand to the washroom and helped me clean up. (more…)

I was born in Latvia but raised in the United States to where my family immigrated in 1930. At a very young age, I joined Young Israel, and when I was an adult, I became active as a volunteer. Young Israel appealed to me because it was an organization interested in bringing estranged Jews close to Judaism, and its doors were always open.

After a time, I became a delegate to the National Council of Young Israel, the body that governed all the Young Israel branches; later, I became an officer and, in 1961, I became national president.

As president, it was my goal to figure out what would be the best thing that Young Israel could do for the Jewish people – not only in America, but also in the Soviet Union. In trying to sort that out, I decided to seek counsel of the sages of the generation. Among those I met with was the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

When I came into the Rebbe’s office – I remember it was a simple room filled with books – I sat across from the Rebbe and he sat behind his desk, never taking his eyes off me. When he spoke, he was very direct. To begin with, he asked, “In which language would you like to speak?” I said “If you don’t mind, Yiddish.” He seemed surprised, “The American president of Young Israel prefers Yiddish?” I said, “Because this is my native language.” And then I asked him, “What do you think should be the primary focus of Young Israel for the next ten years?”

The Rebbe seemed to know everything that was happening with Young Israel. For example, he knew that we had only one kosher kitchen – at Cornell University. So he said to me, “Your primary focus for the next ten years should be Jewish college students who have little Jewish background. And you have to give them a place to congregate – a place that not only has kosher food, but also educates them in Torah. You should organize centers like this on at least ten college campuses.”

I said, “Excuse me, Rebbe, but where am I going to find the money for this?”

With a big smile on his face, the Rebbe replied, “When I ask chasidim to collect money for one of my activities, they get it done. You don’t have those kind of chasidim?” (more…)

Although I am a dentist, I have a good singing voice and I dabble in cantorial music. In 1981, I was asked to sing for a Conservative synagogue, which held its High Holiday services at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City, north of Los Angeles. The hall was full – probably 1,500 people were there – and I had a solo to sing, the prayer Unesaneh Tokef. One bar before the solo, a massive headache struck me and I fell to the ground – they had to carry me off the bimah in the middle of Rosh Hashanah.

I was taken to a room where I could lie down and rest for a while. But two hours later, the headache had not gone away, its intensity was unchanged, and it was clear this was not a good thing.

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At that point, I was taken to the hospital, where they took X-rays of my skull and neck, and came back with the diagnosis, “You have a tumor
in the pituitary gland. It’s destroying the bone, and the pressure is causing the headache.”

At that point a neurologist was called in who ordered a tomograph, in order to get a better picture of the bone destruction. After he got the results, he said, “There is no tumor. There is no destruction of the bone.”

Relieved, I thought, “That’s good – I’m going home!”

But he said, “Since we do not have a cause for your headache, we need to do further tests.” He ordered a CAT-scan.

The CAT-scan revealed that behind my right eye, in the middle of the grey matter, I had an aneurysm – a blood vessel that had blown up like a balloon – and it was about ready to burst. If it burst, death would be instant.

When my wife heard that, she became hysterical. She was pregnant with our third child and the idea of being alone with three young kids without a husband scared her witless. (more…)