Monthly Archives: December 2019

When I started leaning in the direction of Lubavitch, my father opposed me changing my religious customs, including which prayer book I would follow, and I arranged my first private audience with the Rebbe to ask him what to do. This was in 1970, when I was eighteen years old. I explained that I was a descendent of great chasidic rabbis of Poland and had always prayed in their style (known as nusach Sephard) but I wanted to start to pray according to the Lubavitch custom (known as nusach Ari).

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There are some Lubavitchers in our family tree and, living in Crown Heights, we always had a close relationship with Lubavitch, but my father clung fiercely to the customs he learned in childhood as a Radomsker chasid and he did not want me to change my ways.

The Rebbe’s response proved very wise in that it prevented discord in the home: “Since your family’s customs are also based on the teachings of the Ari’zal [the great 16^th century Kabbalist], it’s advisable that you continue to keep them and that you pray according to nusach Sephard.”

So this is what I did for several years until my father accepted that I was a Lubavitcher through and through, and eventually he was quite happy about it. At that point, the Rebbe advised me to switch to Chabad customs.

Fast forward to the time that I married Judith Sternbuch, a Jewish girl from Switzerland and, having started a family, needed to make a living. Due to the Arab oil embargo in the early 1970s, the American economy came to a grinding halt and the job market was scarce. I had just obtained a college degree in computer science and my father-in-law urged my wife and me to come to Switzerland where the recession hadn’t hit yet and where he had lined up job interviews for me. I wrote to the Rebbe asking his opinion, and he answered, “Since you have many prospects, it will certainly work out.” I took his word as a promise and I went to Switzerland for the interviews.

In those days in Switzerland, a religious Jew couldn’t wear a yarmulke at work – is was not considered acceptable to wear a religious symbol at the office. But how can a chasid not wear a yarmulke? So I didn’t take it off, and I actually got the job – at the 3M Company – because of it, as the person who interviewed me owed a debt of gratitude to a Torah observant Jew. Later, my wearing a yarmulke on the job proved very important in how I was able to fulfill my assignment as the Rebbe’s emissary in the hi-tech world. (more…)

When my late husband, Shmuel Yaakov – better known as Jack – was a boy, he got to know Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who would later become the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This was in the 1940s, when my husband was a student at the Chabad yeshivah in Brooklyn and stood near him during morning prayers.

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In 1963, when we got engaged, Jack brought me to the Rebbe so that we could get a blessing for our upcoming marriage. I remember feeling very nervous about the audience because Jack told me it was like visiting royalty, and he described the proper conduct of behavior in the Rebbe’s presence. I was worried that I would forget some important part of his instructions, but I needn’t have been concerned. The Rebbe did not stand on ceremony, and he made me feel very comfortable from the start. When we walked into the room, he greeted my husband with great warmth, and I was immediately struck by his graciousness. He seemed to be eager to talk to us, as if he had all the time in the world.

Today, I don’t remember everything we talked about, but I do remember that he was extremely interested in our goals – what we planned to do academically and professionally.

When I told him that I was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in English literature and was planning to teach at the college level, he asked me to do something for him: “I want you to always remember what I’m telling you now,” he said. “Over the course of your career, you will have many opportunities to help the Jewish people, and you should never miss any opportunity to do so.”

And many such opportunities did arise. I always kept an eye out for my Jewish students, and I tried to guide them as much as I could. But the one incident that I remember most vividly happened about thirty years after that meeting with the Rebbe. It was a most unusual and unexpected event. I was sitting in my office and a student of mine came to see me in tears. She explained that she’d been crying because she didn’t have her assignment ready. I assured her that she could give me the paper next week, and I commented that perhaps something else might be bothering her because she seemed so distraught. (more…)

At an early age I was introduced to music, a heritage of my family.

My uncle, Albert Piamenta, was an Israeli saxophonist who became famous for mixing Judeo-Arabic music with jazz. My mother also loved music, so much so that the first piece of furniture she bought for our house in Tel Aviv was a piano. And my older brother, Yosi, was a guitar player who, in the course of his career, created a whole new style – a blend of rock and Israeli compositions, which had a major influence on Jewish music.

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I grew up playing piano but, after a time, I discovered the magical sound of the flute and that became my instrument of choice. At age seventeen, I started performing with Yosi, who was then a soldier and playing in an IDF band. I vividly remember joining him for a concert just when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973. We performed for the soldiers on the front lines with bombs flying over us.

A year after the war we formed a band – called the Piamenta Band – which became very popular. So much so that when the famed saxophonist, Stan Getz – one of the greatest jazz stylists ever – arrived in Israel in 1976 and heard our music, he invited us to tour and record with him. That was the first time in history that a musician of such caliber collaborated with Israeli musicians, and it caused a media sensation.

As our fame grew, we were sent by the Israeli government to perform throughout the U.S. and Canada at 30^th anniversary celebrations of the State of Israel. But, by this time, I had become Torah-observant, and shortly thereafter, I was exposed to the teachings of the Alter Rebbe, the 18^th century founder of the Chabad Movement, and I decided to stay in New York to learn Torah and chasidic teachings. I also formed an informal yeshivah of other musicians which I called (more…)

As a young adult pursuing an art degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, I got caught up in the culture of the Sixties. It was not until I dropped out of school and got introduced to Chabad that things started to change for me. This happened in 1972 when I was twenty.

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At a certain point after I enrolled in Tiferes Bachurim, the Chabad yeshivah in Morristown, New Jersey, an opportunity came up for me and some of my fellow students to have a private audience with the Rebbe. We prepared by increasing our Torah studies, and we went in one by one. I recall being very anxious and not knowing what to expect once I crossed the threshold into the Rebbe’s study. It is hard for me to describe what I felt because it seemed to me like a different reality. And I thought, “I have to take this spiritual feeling and somehow incorporate it into my art.”

As I was standing near the entrance to the room, not sure what to do next, the Rebbe said, “Come closer.” So I walked right up to the Rebbe’s desk and handed him the letter I had written listing my questions, and I also put on his desk three small samples of my art because I wanted him to advise me what I should do with my artistic talent. I thought that perhaps I should become a scribe as I was good at Hebrew calligraphy, and I believed that if I were to be religious this was probably a more suitable profession than becoming a painter.

But the Rebbe had another idea. He said that I should consider doing illuminated marriage contracts, ketubot, which have been the subject of Jewish art for many centuries. I asked him if I might also illustrate children’s books and the Rebbe approved of that, as long as it didn’t interfere with my study schedule at the yeshivah. By this point I was so excited that he was giving me the green light to express my talent, that I actually exclaimed Baruch Hashem (thank G-d) out loud three times. (more…)