Monthly Archives: April 2022

In a sense, my first encounter with the Rebbe was in my home: I came to know Lubavitch because my father, Dr. Yosef Slavin, had fallen in love with the Rebbe. He first met the Rebbe in 1940s Paris, and was there when the Rebbe was reunited with his mother after her escape from the Soviet Union. There was something about that scene that was deeply

Click here for full-color print version

emotional for my father; “from that moment,” he would say, “I was the Rebbe’s.” Growing up, I knew that my parents’ every life decision was made after consultation with, and a blessing from, the Rebbe.

When it came time for me to start meeting young men for the purpose of marriage, it was no different. My parents never wanted my choice to be influenced by anything other than my own feelings but, unbeknownst to me, my father would consult the Rebbe before they agreed to a candidate.

One day, my father got a call from a close friend named Heishke Gansbourg. He had spent a Shabbat at Princeton University, and was assigned a certain student’s room to sleep in. The student was away, but after perusing the books in the room –  volumes of (more…)

I’ve written several books over the years, but in 2014, I wrote one about the Rebbe. In my research, I spent almost five years with the Rebbe by immersing myself in his writings, and in the stories that hundreds of people who had interacted and lived with the Rebbe told about him.

Click here for full-color print version

Over that time, the Rebbe started to have a great impact on my own life as well, in that I have become a profoundly different person as a result of studying the Rebbe’s teachings.

But my connection with the Rebbe goes back before then.

I grew up in what’s now known as the Midwood section of Brooklyn, and attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush; my father and grandfather were both ardent Zionists, and they wanted my sister and I to go to a Hebrew-speaking school. They also both had strong ties to the Previous Rebbe, as well as the Rebbe: My grandfather, Rabbi Nissan Telushkin, was already a Chabadnik back in the Soviet Union, before he got out with his family in 1923. Later, my father Shlomo Telushkin had the honor of being the accountant of both the Previous Rebbe and the Rebbe.

My father’s career as Chabad’s accountant started from the very beginning, right after the Previous Rebbe arrived in the United States in 1940. He derived a lot of pleasure from his career as an accountant, not because he made a tremendous amount of money, but because he worked for organizations he felt passionately attached to. As he got older, however, he started to cut back and give up his other accounts. The only accounts he always kept were those of the Rebbe and Chabad organizations. (more…)

I was born in 1937, in the city of Herat, Afghanistan, to the Mullah Ezra family. The Jewish community in Afghanistan is one of the world’s most ancient, and living there gave us a keen sense of our Judaism. The Jews of Herat all resided in the same neighborhood, in enclosed courtyards, each containing several homes. Although there were business ties between the Jews and our Muslim neighbors, especially ahead of the Jewish holidays – vendors would come on their donkeys to our area bearing fruit, vegetables, fish and chickens before every Shabbat and festival – we lived apart from our non-Jewish surroundings.

Click here for full-color print version

In the larger courtyards, people raised livestock, providing milk and kosher meat. There were several kosher slaughterers, shochtim, in the community, and once the meat was brought home, the women – who were all experts when it came to removing any forbidden fats or nerves – would complete the koshering process.

The synagogues, four in all, were also in enclosed courtyards. Two such courtyards contained two adjoining synagogues, one of which would serve the younger people, along with a few in-ground mikvaot.

Behind each synagogue there was a study hall, which also served as a school of sorts. As a child, I studied Torah in the study hall of Rabbi Asher Garji. We would end up spending the entire day there: In the morning, we came to pray in the synagogue, we’d have breakfast at home, and then return to the study hall. At lunchtime, we returned to our homes, which were nearby, and then went back again to learn until the evening.

For the most part, the Jews made their living as merchants and shopkeepers. Our family also owned a store in Obe, but this town had been almost completely emptied of its Jewish inhabitants. A not insignificant portion of Afghan Jewry emigrated to the Land of Israel at the turn of the century, and then, after the founding of the State, the majority of those who still remained left as well. Although relations with our Muslim neighbors were mostly calm, I do remember how, after Israel’s Sinai Campaign in 1956, things became more tense. (more…)

The first time I traveled to the Rebbe was at the end of 1963, as part of a group of yeshivah students from Israel. The journey was more than a week long; part by ship; then by train from Italy to England, by way of France; and from there by plane to the United States. After arriving, I had my turn to go to the Rebbe for a private audience. That audience was thirteen minutes long, which was considered extraordinary.

Click here for full-color print version

Among other things, the Rebbe took an interest in my family relation to Rabbi Aryeh Levine, the famous “Tzaddik of Jerusalem.” He was also known as the “Rabbi of the Prisoners,” a moniker that stuck ever since he took to visiting the incarcerated members of the Jewish underground in the days of British Mandatory Palestine.

“How are you related to Reb Aryeh Levine?” the Rebbe had inquired at the beginning of our meeting. “Is he your mother’s father?”

When I confirmed that that was the case, the Rebbe had a request for me: “I have already written to your grandfather, but if you would, please go to his home as well, and send him my regards.”

My grandfather was educated in the Lithuanian yeshivah world and was not a member of the chasidic community, but he and the Rebbe shared a bond of friendship and of deep mutual respect. In one of his letters to Reb Aryeh, the Rebbe wrote of his fine reputation — “his name goes before him,” was how he put it. My grandfather would also send all kinds of manuscripts to the Rebbe, and on his part the Rebbe would send him various publications released by Kehot, the Chabad publishing house. Indeed, after returning to Israel, I fulfilled my mission and passed the Rebbe’s regards on to my grandfather, who was most happy to receive them. (more…)

When I was growing up in Newark, New Jersey, there were no yeshivot there, just a local Talmud Torah where most of the religious boys went, four days a week. We learned how to read and write Hebrew, we learned Jewish history, but no more than that. My parents were not satisfied with this and also arranged for me to study Torah with a tutor on Friday and Shabbat afternoons.

Click here for full-color print version

“When you become Bar Mitzvah,” they said, “we’ll send you to a yeshivah in New York.”

Back then, you would have to take a bus from Newark to the Hudson Tubes, and then take the subway from there, which was really a bother for a small boy to do, especially when traveling alone. When the time came, however, I was going to go to Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn.

One day in 1942, Rabbi Moshe Pinchas Katz, a Lubavitcher who was living in Newark at the time, came over to my father. “Mr. Slansky,” he said in Yiddish, “We want your son.”

My father was a kibbitzer, he had a sense of humor, and so without hesitation, he replied, “Take him!”

Rabbi Katz then explained what he wanted me for: “We want to open a yeshivah in Newark.” My parents were thrilled by the idea, because their one and only little boy wouldn’t have to travel far from home.

When I got older, I joined a new high school that Lubavitch opened up in New York, and thank G-d, it was a good school. Rabbi Lasker, who taught English, was a top educator and every morning, we would go to 770 where Rabbi Shmuel Levitin would teach us Chasidic philosophy. Sometimes, if we got up very early, one boy who had a car would take us out to Brighton Beach to dip into the ocean, for mikveh. (more…)