Monthly Archives: April 2018

I was born to a traditional Jewish family in England, where I grew up. I studied law at University College in London and then at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Since 1969, I have lived in Israel where I spent many years as a military prosecutor in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, as well as serving as a legal advisor to the IDF on issues of international law and human rights law, following which I moved over to the Foreign Ministry as a legal advisor.

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During my time with the Foreign Ministry, I was sent to New York, where I worked for four years as a senior legal officer to Israel’s UN Mission.

During that time Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu was ambassador to the United Nations, and I used to accompany him whenever he would visit Jewish religious venues and, in one instance, to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Part of the real reason why Bibi wanted to meet the Rebbe was the strong connection that all Israeli ambassadors and foreign ministers and prime ministers had with him. At the time, Yitzchak Shamir was prime minister, and he had appointed Bibi as ambassador to the United Nations. Shamir had been in contact with the Rebbe, and I assume that he recommended that Bibi pay him a visit.

When we came, it was Simchat Torah during the Hakafot ceremony. We were brought straight up to Rebbe, and he talked with Bibi and myself for about forty minutes, which I found extraordinary.

During the entire exchange – and this also impressed me immensely – the Rebbe spoke to us in perfect Hebrew. That is, not in biblical Hebrew but in regular modern Hebrew, in which he was obviously very fluent.

The discussion concerned Middle East security. At that time, Shamir was involved in negotiations to withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon, and the question of whether Israel would withdraw or not was still open. Ultimately, Israel did withdraw, but the Rebbe was very insistent that Israel shouldn’t do it at that moment in time. (At the outset of the war, the Rebbe had urged Israel to eliminate the terrorists quickly and forcefully and then to pull out of Lebanon, but in late 1984, when this meeting took place, pulling out was a retreat of sorts.) (more…)

In the spring of 1955, the Rebbe introduced the idea of women’s learning classes, encouraging women emissaries to assume the role of adult education teachers. At that time, I was still a newlywed – having been married in September of the previous year – and my husband and I were just starting out as Chabad emissaries in Cincinnati, Ohio. Being so new to the task at hand, I didn’t consider myself ready to be one of those teachers. However, at the urging of Rabbi Bentzion Shemtov, I made a phone call to a friend in an effort to organize a class. She suggested the names of three young women to join, and thus was started the first Chabad “Women’s Study Group.”

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We grew from five to thirty women, who met on a regular basis to learn. We also organized luncheons and dinners for women from various walks of life. Throughout this time, the Rebbe provided constant support and encouragement and became effectively our program chairman.

Meanwhile, my husband started classes for college students at the Hillel House at the University of Cincinnati, while I learned with the girls in their dormitory. As well, my husband was invited to teach the Talmud by the students of Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical school. When my husband asked if he should do this, the Rebbe replied that he should, but that “the students should come to you.” Indeed, they came to our apartment regularly for the next ten years.

After a time – this was in the summer of 1956 – I went to New York on my own to visit my parents and took the opportunity to have an audience with the Rebbe. Upon walking into the room, he asked me in Yiddish, “Why are you so pale?” I was shocked, because I thought I looked so good in the new clothes I had just bought for the occasion! I really didn’t know what to answer, but I told the Rebbe that I was newly pregnant and this may be why I was looking pale. The Rebbe asked me if I had household help. I didn’t, as we couldn’t afford it. Nonetheless, the Rebbe said that we should hire someone. (more…)

I was born in 1936 in Ukraine, in the city of Dnepropetrovsk (formerly known as Yekaterinoslav), where the rabbi was Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, the Rebbe’s father. Unfortunately, I never got to know him because, when I was only three years old, he was arrested for his activities on behalf of Judaism and was exiled by the Soviets to Kazakhstan, where he passed away five years later.

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After World War Two – during which my father, a soldier in the Russian army, was killed – my mother and I escaped to Germany, where we stayed for a time at a displaced persons’ camp near Bergen-Belsen. At age ten I was sent to live with a relative in England and attended the Gateshead and Manchester yeshivahs there.

After I finished my schooling, I became a jeweler, eventually settling in London. Although I was leading the life of a religious Jew, I felt something was missing in my life. When I was 18 years old, I began to study Torah with a Chabad rabbi named Yankel Gurkov who introduced me to chasidic teachings and told me about the Rebbe.

I felt drawn to the Rebbe since his father was the rabbi of my hometown, so I wrote to him, asking for a blessing for three things: proper intelligence, a good livelihood, and the right woman to marry.

Very soon afterwards I got a reply, in which the Rebbe said he would mention me in his prayers and wished me to share good news soon. Sure enough, two weeks later I met my wife. Just two weeks later!

Not long afterwards, in 1962, I came to New York along with a group of Jews from England as part of a trip organized by Mr. Zalmon Jaffe. At that time, I had my first audience with the Rebbe and instantly I felt that this is the connection that I was looking for. (more…)

I grew up in a traditional Jewish family in Brooklyn. We were not Orthodox, although we kept much of the Torah. But, when I left home, I began to lead a secular life.

That changed in 1973 when I found myself at the University of Rochester, going for a doctorate in experimental psychology; that is where I encountered Chabad – specifically in the person of Rabbi Nosson Gurary. He came to give a speech at the university, and afterwards I confronted him about certain concepts in Judaism that I felt were very medieval and unscientific. I actually felt bad about doing this, because I thought that when I presented him with the facts, I would make him doubt his faith. But he turned the tables on me – he demonstrated to me that he knew more about these scientific topics than I did.

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When I investigated what he said, I found out that he was completely right. And I also found out where he got all that sophisticated scientific knowledge from – the Rebbe.

To make a long story short, my wife and I became close to the Gurarys and the Greenbergs who were the Chabad emissaries in Buffalo, and they brought us along in Yiddishkeit. At some point in 1975, I decided – with Rabbi Gurary’s encouragement – to start putting on tefillin. Although I didn’t have much money as a graduate student, I ordered a beautiful pair and put them on. Two days after I did so, I woke up in the middle of the night to find that my left arm was paralyzed – it felt like a dead fish; I couldn’t move it.

I thought that I had slept with my weight on it and, as the day wore on, it would return to normal, but it didn’t. So, I consulted a neurologist who told me that, if I had pressed on the nerve for too long, it’s possible that it died and would not regenerate itself, or it might regenerate itself, but it would probably take as long as a year before I would regain the use of my arm. The best scenario was that it was not nerve damage but just internal swelling. He recommended wearing a sling for about a week to see what would happen. But a week passed and there was no improvement.

Meanwhile my sister Leah, who at this time was a student at the Machon Chana seminary in Crown Heights, decided to write to the Rebbe about my condition. In her letter she related the three possible outcomes that the neurologist had identified, and she got back a response in which the Rebbe had crossed out the possibility that it would never get better or that it might get better in a year’s time, and he circled “it’s going to get better very quickly.” The Rebbe also advised checking my tefillin. (more…)