Monthly Archives: November 2016

I was born and raised in Manchester, England. Although initially my family was not associated with Chabad Lubavitch, later in life my father became a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and, when he passed away, we discovered a rich correspondence between them. All told, my father received over 80 letters from the Rebbe!

We all had the custom of writing regularly to the Rebbe. I, myself, wrote asking the Rebbe’s advice about which yeshivah to attend, what career to pursue, where to live, and so forth. And I followed whatever advice he gave me.

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On the Rebbe’s advice, I pursued a career in Jewish education – first in Manchester and later (again on his advice) in London. After I married, the Rebbe advised me to take out a mortgage and buy a house. That very week, the owner of the housing development we lived in offered me a mortgage, and I saw straightaway that, if you’ve got faith in the Rebbe’s advice, you’ve got no problems. We bought a house which quickly increased in value. We were able to sell it at a profit and buy a much larger home where we are living to this day.

In 1972, my wife gave birth to our seventh child who passed away at only nine weeks of age. I wrote to the Rebbe that we wanted to come visit him for some inspiration, but the Rebbe said to wait a little while. As our three-year-old son was to have his first hair-cut, the Rebbe suggested that we start the upsherin at home in England, and he would personally finish it when we arrived.

And this is what we did. I was greatly honored when, in the middle of the Purim gathering, the Rebbe called out, “Is Sufrin here from London?” I immediately rushed over to the Rebbe who gave me a bottle of vodka, for l’chaim, and told me to share it with people while I was visiting in New York, and also with others in Paris and London. He then told me, “May you only have joyous occasions from now onward.”

I was happy to share the vodka in New York and London, but how was I to do this in Paris, I wondered. And then the Rebbe told me that Chabad’s Paris emissary was also visiting in New York and that I should share with him so he could distribute in Paris.

During the private audience with the Rebbe, he talked to us about our baby who had passed away. “Although you are frustrated because you can’t see her,” he said, “she can see you. Please remember that.” The Rebbe also said that it would be advisable for us to have more children.

After that he clipped off some of my three-year-old son’s hair, completing the upsherin, and we all left very happy. The scissors he used have since been passed around the world, and many boys have had their hair cut for the first time using those particular scissors. (more…)

When I was still a young girl, my family emigrated from Germany to the United States, settling in Brownsville, 1950 New York. I was a pretty tough kid, and I was expelled from my school in the middle of the year. My mother could not find another school that would accept me in the middle of a school year, until she came upon a small, new school in Brownsville named Bais Rivkah, the official Chabad girls’ school at the time. There were a few classrooms is a small house and I remember some classes being held in what smelled to me like a fish shop. Later Bais Rivkah moved to 400 Stone Ave. We stayed in that new building right through Seminary.

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From the minute I walked in the door, I was happy. Rabbi Shloma Majesky and Rabbi Yitzchok Goldin, as well as several other teachers, really took an interest in me and made sure that I was doing well, even though I was far from the best student. Each year my mother asked the Rebbe if she should move me to Bais Yaakov or Esther Shoenfeld, the more established girl’s schools at that time. Each year the Rebbe answered her, “if she is happy leave her in Bais Rivkah”.

My mother had a deep respect for chasidic rabbis dating back to her years in Poland before the war, and she made sure to give me opportunities to develop a special connection to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, whom she visited frequently. Whenever she faced a difficult issue, she went to see the Rebbe, and if I was the concern of the moment, I would be dragged along.

The first time I was brought to the Rebbe, in 1959, I was about twelve years old. At first, I was frightened to be in his presence and did not know what to say, but I came to respect the brilliance and simplicity of his answers, which eventually left the greatest impression on me. This is how the Rebbe managed to shape my life in many ways.

One of the most impactful meetings took place, around 1965, before the New York Regents Exams when I was in 12th grade. I was interested in none of the subjects that were required Regent exams, least of all history. To make matters worse, the preparatory text was a huge book which I had not read nor ever wanted to read. I had resigned myself to failure. My mother, of course, would have none of that, so off we went to the Rebbe’s office at 770 Eastern Parkway.

The Rebbe’s response, after I explained myself to him, was simple: “Don’t worry about finishing the whole textbook. Just take one paragraph at a time. When you finish one, move onto the next.”

I followed his advice, and although I would never manage to finish the book, I developed a strong interest in history. Somehow, thanks to the Rebbe’s advice, I managed to pass my Regents. In my educational career History always became the focal point of my teaching, no matter what the subject was. I believe you can’t properly understand Tanach, Talmud, chasidut, Halacha or any secular subject without having proper knowledge of the history behind it and of how it developed. (more…)

I connected with Lubavitch early on in life, when I enrolled in the Chabad Yeshiva College in Melbourne and I kept the connection even after I moved on to other schooling. . And, after university, I went to work for Lubavitch, running the youth organization in Australia, Tzeirei Agudas Chabad.

My first personal encounter with the Rebbe took place in 1974, when I was 21. I was among a group of young men from Australia who came to New York, and I got to see him privately for a few minutes. Walking in, I handed him a note with my name on it, but instead of writing my full Hebrew name, which is Raphael Yonason, I just wrote Raphael. The Rebbe looked at the note and said, “You should make sure that you are called by the correct name.” How did the Rebbe know that this was not my correct name? I have no idea.

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During that same audience, I had asked the Rebbe for blessing for two boys I had been working with. I gave him no other information than their names, but the Rebbe took the time to offer advice. One of the boys had lost his father, so the Rebbe told me that he should strengthen his relationship with his mother and, as for the other, that he would grow out of his wild streak – that his wildness was not necessarily a bad thing, rather he should make sure to channel it towards the right things.

After that he asked me how things were going in Australia, and I complained to him how hard it was to operate the so-called “mitzvah tanks” in Melbourne, where I was trying to do it. The “mitzvah tanks” were vans which went around Jewish neighborhoods playing music through loud speakers and urging Jewish women to light Shabbat candles and Jewish men to put on tefillin. Some people found them offensive, and there was a lot of local opposition to them.

After hearing me out, the Rebbe said, “Not everything which is done in America must be done in Australia.” He explained that in America, the focus is generally on the numbers; the quantity. But in Australia, people require a more individualistic approach.

“So I shouldn’t do it in Australia?” I asked.

“No, you should do it in Australia,” the Rebbe responded. “But you need to find a way to do it more quietly, without arousing opposition.”

And then the Rebbe said, “It is similar to how one can focus on the commandment ‘to love their fellow Jew’. There are some who fulfill it in a general sense, by opening organizations and so on. Others fulfill it by forming relationships; your task is to focus on loving every Jew individually. And I give you a blessing to succeed at loving every Jew individually.”

I took this blessing as my personal mission statement in life. And once I had my priorities in order, I did succeed with the “mitzvah tanks,” toning them down a bit until people got used to them. (more…)

I grew up in New York in a secular family, receiving almost no Jewish education. I became a nurse, married a doctor – a plastic surgeon like my father – and eventually moved to Hollywood, Florida, where we raised our family.

Our involvement with Judaism started through my son, Kenny, who was befriended by Chabad chasidim while attending the local Hebrew Academy. They invited him to spend Shabbat at the Landow Yeshiva in Miami Beach, and he ended up enrolling there.

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Naturally, before we allowed him to do this, my husband and I went to check out the place and we got to know Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar, the Chabad emissary there, and the other Chabad emissaries there. They made a wonderful impression on us, and that’s how we were inspired to take our first steps toward Torah observance as a family.

Shortly thereafter, we decided to travel to Crown Heights to meet the Rebbe. It was an amazing experience which I lack the words to describe. We felt we were in the presence of a very great, very holy man, who made us feel most welcome.

I recall in that first audience telling the Rebbe that my husband and I were leading a very busy social life, yet that I felt empty inside.

He looked at me and said, “But you are Jewish. You have your religion.” And I understood that I should become more involved in Judaism – that this is what was lacking in my life. I had not figured this out for myself until the Rebbe pointed it out to me.

As well, in that first audience, I asked the Rebbe’s advice concerning my children’s health. They had come down with colds while we were visiting in New York, and being a nurse I was able to detect symptoms which suggested that they had caught the croup. I said to the Rebbe, “I am worried that this is serious. Do you think I should take them to the hospital?”

“No, you don’t have to,” he responded, “Just take them home and give them tea with sugar.”

I was very relieved and very happy that I didn’t have to take them to the hospital. I started to give them tea with sugar, but my husband was not sure. So he took one of the boys to a local pediatrician to ask if antibiotics should be prescribed. But the pediatrician said, “No, just give him tea with honey.” And we were amazed that the Rebbe knew what to do just as well as the pediatrician.

After that first meeting with the Rebbe, we returned time and again to see him, as we became more religiously involved. In a subsequent audience, the Rebbe said to me, “Your husband is a plastic surgeon; he makes people beautiful on the outside. It should be your mission to make people beautiful on the inside.” (more…)

While I never had a chance to meet the Rebbe personally, he managed to have a strong impact on my life through various patients of mine. Of course, already when I was a child growing up in Petach Tikvah, I heard about the Rebbe. The local Chabad rabbi, Dovid Chanazin, who was married to my mother’s first cousin, was a frequent visitor in our home and, whenever he came, he spoke about the Rebbe. Later, when I married, I heard about him from my father-in-law, Rabbi Meir Schochetman, who studied with the Rebbe at the Sorbonne in Paris, and continued to maintain contact with him.

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But it was not until 1985, when I was a young and inexperienced doctor working at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center in the field of bone marrow transplantation, that I got to witness the power of the Rebbe’s blessings first hand.

One day we received a desperate call from a young man whose wife – a mother of two children – was diagnosed with leukemia. She had undergone treatment at a hospital in northern Israel, but to no avail. The cancer kept recurring and eventually turned more deadly, all the while causing greater damage to her body. Her doctors finally gave up, as they had exhausted all of the conventional means at their disposal. The woman’s husband, who was obviously very depressed because of the situation, happened to meet several Lubavitcher chasidim from Afula and told them about his wife. They explained to him that there was no reason for despair, and suggested that he write a letter to the Rebbe, which he did. In response, the Rebbe insisted that he turn to another hospital for help, adding his assurances that a remedy did exist.

Because of the Rebbe’s advice, this young husband called our department and, by Divine Providence, it was me who answered his call that day. After describing the cancer, the treatments and the subsequent failures, he told me that he was turning to us on the instruction of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This got me thinking and I decided that, despite the failures of the previous doctors to remedy the situation, I would have to find an avenue which nobody had considered earlier. I said, “Let me confer with my staff. Come with your wife tomorrow, and we will have an answer.”

After a brief discussion, the members of my staff all agreed that we would accept the patient and try different experimental treatments which had passed testing in the lab, but had never been tried on human beings.

After this information was passed on to the Rebbe, he responded, “May they have much success, and she should achieve a complete recovery.” Despite the slim chances of success, I was greatly encouraged by the Rebbe’s blessing. I felt this was an opportunity to sanctify G-d’s name and show how a person with no medical hope can recover with the help of a blessing. (more…)