Monthly Archives: June 2020

When I first became Torah observant, my husband gave me a hard time about it. He did not understand why I was suddenly doing some of the things I was doing – to him it seemed I was becoming a different person than the one he had married – and he did not like it.

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So I wrote a very self-righteous letter to the Rebbe, complaining, “I’ve decided to keep Torah and my husband won’t cooperate. But isn’t it true that I must do it despite what he says?”

I fully expected the Rebbe to respond, “Yes, you have to do what the Torah commands, no matter what your husband wants.” But the Rebbe did not say that. Instead, he gave me a two-part answer that basically said: “Don’t fight with your husband about religion, and find someone to influence him, someone whom he will respect.”

It was such wise advice, and fully in keeping with the Rebbe’s approach of finding a positive solution to every problem. And I wish I had immediately done what he said, but it took me a while to accept that harmony in the home – what Judaism calls Shalom Bayit – had to take precedence.

Generally, what happens when a wife fights with her husband about religion? Whether or not he gives in, he is not going to like her and he is not going to like religion, which he will see as a divisive force in their marriage. Furthermore, their children will be adversely affected when they see their parents fighting and they too will identify religion as the cause of the tension in the home.

As for the second part of the Rebbe’s advice, I had to accept that I wasn’t supposed to be my husband’s rabbi – I was his wife. He was Sephardi so the way to reach him was through a Sephardi rabbi, one who understood his background and knew how to speak to him about religious matters.

The moment I found such a person and took a step back, things started to improve.

There were further issues to be sure – some quite painful. In fact, there was a point in time that I considered divorce. At one stressful juncture, I wrote to the Rebbe that I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted a husband who would accompany me on my journey to become fully Torah observant, not one who was fighting me every step of the way. If we divorced, I reasoned, all this strife would go away, and we could both lead happier lives apart from each other. (more…)

I was born and raised in Tel Aviv, where I attended the Bilu School – the religious school famous for its boys’ choir conducted by the world-renowned cantor, Shlomo Ravitz.

Subsequently, I studied at the Israel Academy of Music and then served as a cantor in the IDF, in Johannesburg and in London, before moving with my family to New York in 1973 to take up the post of cantor at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue where I have been ever since.

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After we had been living in New York for about three months, one of the members of the synagogue invited me to join him at a farbrengen where he introduced me to the Rebbe, and from there our relationship developed.

Many times, the Rebbe gave me blessings for success in my profession, urging me to travel and hold many concerts, including concerts to raise money for charity.

On one occasion he said, “You should honor G-d with your voice,” going on to the explain: “According to our Sages, the verse [from Proverbs], ‘Honor God with your property,’ can be read to mean, ‘Honor God with your voice,’ which applies to a cantor.”

Then he quipped, “If I would try, I don’t know if I’d succeed – the audience might run away. But when you sing, more people come and they increase their donations as well.”

Another time – after I had given a series of concerts in the Soviet Union – the Rebbe was especially effusive with his praise.

I had gone to the Soviet Union in May of 1989 – three years after the start of the reforms known as glasnost and perestroika – at the invitation of Ralph Goldman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Soviets would not allow rabbis to visit, so he had the idea of bringing in Jewish singers, and to this they did not object.

So we staged a series of concerts to bring some Yiddishkeit to the people there, and when I returned, I got word that the Rebbe was so pleased with what we had done that he wanted to see me. He was particularly interested to hear how I managed to have the microphone removed from the Choral Synagogue in Moscow. (more…)

Both of my parents came from Lodz, Poland, where they got married and raised two children. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they were herded into the Lodz Ghetto which was liquidated in August of 1944, with the residents sent to concentration camps. Both my parents managed to survive and be reunited after the war, but their two children – a brother and sister whom I never met – did not survive.

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My mother became very quickly pregnant again and gave birth to my older sister in 1946 in a DP camp. Unfortunately, my mother was not in the best shape at the time and my sister received poor prenatal care, so she ended up being sickly her whole life. I was born two years later and, when I was a baby, we immigrated to the United States, settling in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn where some Lubavitchers lived at the time.

Although my parents were not Lubavitch, they came from a chasidic background and, when I reached school age, they sent me to the chasidic school nearest our house which happened to be a Lubavitch school.

The Rebbe had taken over the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch two years earlier, in 1951, and the stories about him were already spreading. My mother, who had very strong belief in the power of tzaddikim, naturally gravitated to the Rebbe.

Her reliance on the Rebbe, his blessings and guidance grew even stronger when my father – who had been physically and mentally broken by his experiences during the war – passed away when I was twelve, just two months before my Bar Mitzvah.

All along, the Rebbe treated my mother with incredible patience and empathy. I recall her telling him about her experiences in the Holocaust – which took a long time – as the Rebbe listened with great attention. He was also very patient whenever she broke down in tears, as she spoke about how sickly my sister was, one of the main topics of every audience we had.

As for me, I saw the Rebbe every year around the time of my birthday. Usually, he would ask me what I was learning and then quiz me on that subject. I still remember a few of his questions because he stumped me a couple of times.

Once he asked me about the teaching of the Mishnah concerning a watchman who locks up an animal in its pen and then goes to sleep. “Is he liable if the animal is stolen during the night?” (more…)