Monthly Archives: November 2020

While I worked in New York with the Jewish Agency for Israel, serving as director of the department of Torah education and culture in the United States and Canada, I often visited Chabad headquarters to participate in the Rebbe’s farbrengens. Since I and my colleagues were recognized as senior representatives of the State of Israel, we were invited each time to sit near the front where the Rebbe and other distinguished chasidim would sit.

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On the eve of Simchat Torah of 1973 – which fell two weeks after the start of the Yom Kippur War – I came with my friend Dr. Shlomo Levin, then consul in charge of religious affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York. Since we were from Israel, the holiday had already ended for us, but we still came to join the celebration and see the Rebbe.

In the days that had passed since the outbreak of the war, I had been busy organizing public events – such as pro-Israel rallies of Jewish students outside the UN building – but I had also been quite depressed by the bad news coming from Israel. Still, I knew that if there was any place where I could hear an uplifting message and gain some encouragement it would be at the Rebbe’s farbrengen.

When Shlomo and I entered the synagogue, it was already packed with thousands of chasidim. Despite the crush, as soon as the Rebbe noticed us, he signaled that we should approach him. Although the hakafot – the dances with the Torah – were about to start, the Rebbe began speaking with us about the situation in Israel. (more…)

As a Chabad emissary in Vancouver, I made it a weekly habit to visit the electronics business of two of my supporters and friends – Carl Stein and Ben Tessler – in order to study Torah with them. During those sessions, the conversation often turned to the Rebbe and the power of his blessings.

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It so happened that they had an in-house lawyer, a Jew named Brian Kershaw. One day in 1976 or 1977, Brian asked me, “Does the Rebbe bless non-Jews as well?”

“Of course,” I replied.

“My wife is sick,” he said. “And I would like you to ask the Rebbe for a blessing for her recovery.”

So I wrote a letter to the Rebbe, giving her name and her father’s name, as that is the custom when requesting a blessing for a non-Jew. (When requesting a blessing for a Jew, the mother’s name is always provided because, according to Jewish law, a person’s Jewish identity is determined by the mother.)

A week or ten days later when the letter arrived in New York – this was before the advent of fax machines – I received a phone call from the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Binyomin Klein, with the message: “The Rebbe would like to know her mother’s name.” (more…)

My parents – Rabbi Meir and Sima Itkin – were part of a group of Lubavitch chasidim who escaped the Soviet Union after World War Two and came to the United States at the direction of the Previous Rebbe.

As our family awaited permission to immigrate, we stayed in Paris. I was a baby at the time, but I remember the story being told of the visit by the Previous Rebbe’s son-in-law – Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the future Rebbe – who came to escort his mother to America. You can imagine the excitement of the refugees at his arrival, with everyone rushing to meet him.

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My father told me later that Rabbi Schneerson realized the need of the chasidim to connect with the Rebbe through him, and so he took the most personal thing that each person owns – his name – and spoke about it. To my father he said, “Your name, Meir, comes from ohr meaning light. You will light up the world.” This short conversation set the stage for my father’s lifelong attachment and devotion to the future Rebbe.

To both my father and my mother, the Rebbe was everything. He epitomized the philosophy they believed in, the values they held dear, and most importantly, the love that united all Jews. And whatever he said – or even hinted at – was of utmost importance to them; they followed his directives to the letter.

So it was no accident that they bought the house at 760 Eastern Parkway, as close as one could possibly get to the Rebbe’s headquarters at 770. My father had considered another property at first, not on the main street but a few blocks away where other religious families lived, but the Rebbe asked him, “Don’t you like me as your neighbor?” So that was that. (more…)

My father was one of the founders of the Tiferet Yisrael yeshivah in Jerusalem, which functioned under the leadership of the Rebbe of Boyan, a branch of the Ruzhin chasidic dynasty. And I was one of its first students.

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During my years in that yeshivah, I became very connected to the Boyaner Rebbe and, in 1969, I decided to visit him in New York. To get there, I joined a charter flight of Chabad chasidim who were traveling to the Lubavitcher Rebbe just before the High Holidays, and as member of their group, I was invited to meet with their Rebbe. I accepted that invitation and so did a friend of mine.

My friend went in first. Afterwards, he told me that the Rebbe asked him for his name, and after he answered “Barzel,” the Rebbe remarked, “Barzel? Twelve years ago, someone by the name of Barzel visited me. Are you related?”

Indeed, his uncle, Rabbi Ezra Barzel, had visited the Rebbe in the past. When my friend later told his uncle what the Rebbe had said, the man was shocked. “In the twelve years that have gone by since I visited the Rebbe I hadn’t written him, spoken to him, or seen him. So how did he remember me after all these years, during which he must have met thousands of other people?” (more…)