Monthly Archives: May 2021

When the USSR joined the Allied powers in fighting the Nazis in 1941, my father was drafted into the Red Army, and my mother – like many other Jews who ran for their lives at that time – fled East with me and my siblings. That is how we arrived in Samarkand, the second-largest city in Uzbekistan, where there was a big local Jewish community, including many Bukharan Jews and also many Chabad chasidim.

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I was only three years old when we arrived in Samarkand, and I ended up growing up there. While others managed to make their way to the West, we remained behind because my elderly grandfather couldn’t travel.

In my high school years, I worked part-time in a factory owned by a Chabad chasid, and where a few other chasidim worked as well. One of those was Rabbi Moshe Nisselevitch, a unique persona who founded the CHAMA organization, and I was privileged to be among the original members. The goal of the organization was to help strengthen Torah observance among the local Jews, and we engaged in many activities – despite the risks involved, as these things were against the law – such as opening religious schools for young children, building mikvehs, and organizing prayer services and joyful farbrengens.

In 1969, my cousin Gershon Jacobson, the renowned journalist and founder of the Algemeiner Journal, came from New York to visit Moscow. I was very eager to meet him and hear from him about the Rebbe, but I was also afraid. I knew that the KGB would be keeping its eyes on anyone meeting with an American citizen and that could land me in hot water and endanger all of our CHAMA work.

I decided to ask my brother Betzalel, who lived in Moscow, to investigate and report back. Betzalel met with Gershon who told him that before his other trips to the Soviet Union, he had asked the Rebbe whether to see his family members and, each time, the Rebbe had advised him to avoid it. But this time was different; the Rebbe said he should meet with family members, and to do it out in the open, without trying to hide anything. (more…)

Throughout the years that I served as the mayor of Afula, I became very close to the Chabad emissaries in the city – Rabbi Chaim Sholom Segal and Rabbi Shlomo Segal – and I came to consider them not only as my good friends but as my brothers. There came a time when I, and the Afula city council, decided to present the Rebbe with a key to the city – a symbolic golden key in an elegant box – as a token of appreciation for the important contribution that his emissaries were making to our city.

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Before we actually presented the key to the Rebbe, I began serving as a member of the Knesset, and I was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Defense, becoming responsible for protection of Israel’s home-front.

Two months later – during Sukkot of 1991 – I came to visit the Rebbe in New York with my wife Ruti. We were there for a few days, and we were hosted by Chabad chasidim in Crown Heights. In the afternoon of Hoshanah Rabbah – which coincided with Sunday that year – the Rebbe was distributing dollars, and I stood in line in order to hand him the ceremonial key to the city of Afula. The exchange I had with the Rebbe on this occasion made a deep impression on me.

Before I even managed to introduce myself, the Rebbe began to speak to me in great detail about the types of missiles which the enemy had and which might endanger the home-front. I was astonished by the vast knowledge he showed regarding the types of munition stockpiles that our enemies had and the dangers that may come from them.

I was even more surprised by what the Rebbe said to me later on in the conversation: “You are responsible not just for the well-being of the citizens living in Israel, but also for the well-being of all Jews wherever they dwell in the world.” (more…)

After I was married in 1968, I enrolled in Chabad’s kollel, the institute for advanced rabbinic studies for married men. It was a small fledgling group – there were just ten of us, sitting at a couple of tables in Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway studying Torah together. But during the same week that I was married, there were five other weddings, so immediately the group increased by fifty percent. Soon, the room we were allotted wouldn’t be able to accommodate all who’d want to join.

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Since the kollel was functioning under the auspices of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Chabad’s central educational arm, I went to see Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Hodakov, the head of the Rebbe’s secretariat, to discuss this situation. I explained the problem and my solution: “There is a building across the street that Merkos just purchased. Allow us to go into that building and learn.” He listened to me and said, “I’ll get back to you.”

The next day, he called me in and asked, “Who is going to take responsibility for the activities in that building? Will you? If so, I will give you the key.”

“What do I have to do exactly?” I asked, and he said, “In the morning you open up and at night you lock up.”

I agreed and got the key. We brought a couple of tables and chairs into the building, and we sat down to learn.

About a month later, I had just finished the afternoon prayers and was making my way back to the kollel, when I saw the Rebbe coming out of the building, followed by two of his secretaries. He didn’t say anything, but as he passed me, he gave me a very sharp look.

When I went inside, I came upon two kollel fellows looking dumfounded. “The Rebbe was just here,” one of them stammered out. (more…)

After more than a year had passed since our wedding and we had not yet been blessed with children, my wife and I turned to doctors. For a long time, we went from one doctor to the next, each of them supposedly more of an expert than the previous one until, after five years of this, we found a professor who was considered to be the top specialist in his field. He looked over our medical history, performed his own series of tests, and then he dashed all our hopes. He told us in no uncertain terms that there was no chance we would ever have children naturally.

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Of course, we were completely broken to hear this verdict. And we were terribly depressed as a result.

At the time I served as the principal of the vocational school in Kfar Chabad, Israel – an institution which was overseen by Rabbi Ephraim Wolff – and he suggested we travel to New York to seek the Rebbe’s advice and blessing.

My wife’s family members – who aren’t chasidim – objected to this plan when we first proposed it. “There are Rebbes in Israel too,” they argued. “Can’t you just send a letter?” they asked. When they saw we would not be swayed, they suggested that I go alone. “Since when do women go to see a Rebbe?” they demanded.

However, my wife knew better. So we both arrived in New York between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of 1967, and we merited to have a private audience with the Rebbe.

Waiting outside his office was nerve-wracking. We sat and recited Psalms, while feeling anxious and tense. But the moment we went inside and saw his warm smile and gentle face, all our fears completely dissipated.

The Rebbe invited us to sit down, but in accordance with the instructions we received in advance, we remained standing. I handed the Rebbe a twenty-page letter explaining why we had come to see him, which included a report about my work in the vocational school and a summary of our medical saga of the past several years. (more…)