Monthly Archives: March 2021

My family has been associated with Chabad for many years. In fact, after the war, when young Lubavitcher refugees arrived in Montreal, some of them stayed with us, and our strong attachment grew from there.

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The leader of this group – Rabbi Aryeh Leib Kramer – was most instrumental in setting my life on the right path.

Like many of those who grew up in the 1960s, I had explored different religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, and the New Age teachings of Edgar Cayce – until it finally occurred to me that I should also look into my own roots in Judaism.

That is when Rabbi Kramer suggested I meet Rabbi Yosef Minkowitz, director of the Beth Rivkah Academy. I did, and I began studying with him – I have now been studying with him for over thirty years. (more…)

The events which I am about to relate happened when I was eighteen years old and still a student at the Chabad yeshivah in New York.

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On the Eve of Passover, before going home to my parents for the Seder, I went to stand in line to receive a piece of matzah from the Rebbe.

When he saw me, the Rebbe said, “I understand that you are going to the Bronx so please be so kind and deliver matzah from me to a family over there. My secretariat will give you the address.”

I was elated to have the privilege to do something for the Rebbe; I couldn’t be happier to do this good deed. But when I got the address from Rabbi Mordechai Hodakov, the Rebbe’s secretary, I realized this wouldn’t be a simple matter.

My parents lived near Yankee Stadium in West Bronx, while this address was all the way on the other side of the Bronx Zoo in East Bronx which, in 1958, was a crime-ridden area, very dangerous at night. (more…)

When I graduated high school, my parents gave me a present – a ticket to fly from Paris to New York, where I could visit with the Rebbe. Although my parents were religious, they were not chasidic, but I had been connected to Chabad since my early teens and they knew this present would make me very happy.

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I remember that, upon entering the Rebbe’s room, I felt very cold because the air conditioning was on high, but as soon as the Rebbe looked at me with his bright blue eyes, I warmed up. He spoke to me softly, in French, and he put me totally at ease. I felt calm and serene – as if I was meeting with a loving father.

During the audience – which took place in July of 1968 – the Rebbe asked me many personal questions. He also answered questions I asked him, both my own and those that my friends from high school wanted me to ask. In particular, their questions concerned issues of faith. For instance, they wanted to be reassured that the Torah is the word of G-d and that it was given to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai – that these things really happened.

“You can tell your friends,” the Rebbe said, “that just as we know and accept as historical fact that Columbus discovered America, we also know that there was a revelation from G-d at Mount Sinai.” (more…)

My ancestors have been Chabad chasidim going back at least one hundred and fifty years, but because we lived in Australia, we were able to visit the Rebbe in New York – half a world away – only rarely. I myself made the trip for the first time in 1971, when I was nineteen years old.

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I was most fortunate to be able to obtain an appointment with the Rebbe not long after my arrival, and I very much looked forward to meeting him, especially because I wanted to ask his blessing for a specific problem I was experiencing.

For quite a while, I had been plagued with migraine headaches. Sometimes, they would come on as often as once a week, preceded by flashes of light appearing before my eyes. When I began experiencing those flashes, I knew that shortly thereafter I would get a migraine headache. I had been to medical specialists who prescribed different medications, but none of them helped.

I had only hoped for the Rebbe’s blessing for recovery from this ailment, so one can imagine my surprise when, in addition, the Rebbe gave me a medical prescription. He said, “When you first get the signs that a migraine is coming on – when you get those flashes in your eyes – you should immediately take Anacin.”

Anacin was not a medication that I was familiar with at the time, as it was not available in Australia (and is still not). So I responded, “I don’t know what that is.” (more…)

When I was approaching my Bat Mitzvah, I heard that there was a custom to write to the Rebbe for a blessing. I was fairly new to Chabad and wasn’t familiar with this custom, but as I sat down to write my letter, I thought it would probably be nice to also give the Rebbe a blessing. I shouldn’t just be asking and taking; I should also be giving. This is the way my twelve-year-old mind reasoned.

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I knew that the Rebbe was childless, so I decided to give him a blessing for children. Now, this was 1981, so the Rebbe was nearing eighty, but I did not see that as an obstacle. Didn’t Avraham have Yitzchak when he was one hundred years old? The Torah teaches us that G-d can do anything!

Still, I was a little bit shy about writing this outright. I didn’t know if the Rebbe opened the letters himself, or if his secretaries read them first. I didn’t want anyone else to see what I wrote, because they might not give my letter to him if they felt that a blessing to the Rebbe from a little girl was not appropriate. So I decided to write that part of the letter in Hebrew code.

There are a number of substitution systems where Hebrew letters are exchanged with each other according to certain specific methods. The most famous is called Atbash, but there are many others. My younger brother helped me with this, and he told me which code was best for me to use. (more…)