Monthly Archives: August 2022

This story is an excerpt from the book My Story 2: Lives Changed. Get your copy today at www.jemstore.com.

Yeshivat HaRambam U’Beit Yosef, a Sephardi yeshivah, was founded in Tel Aviv in 1955, and at that time I was appointed its head though I was only twenty. Of course, it was a small yeshivah back then, but it grew and grew. And, after a time, I was looking for a place where we could grow even more.

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In 1972, I traveled to the United States to raise money for a building site and construction. At that time, a few donors to the yeshivah – businessmen who were Israelis and who happened to be in the United States just then – met me and said they had an appointment to see the Lubavitcher Rebbe. They asked me to join them and I agreed, although I knew very little about the Rebbe.

As I recall, the meeting was late at night. We went into the Rebbe’s office, and my companions asked whatever they wanted to ask – as I recall they were seeking advice on business matters; the Rebbe blessed them, and we got ready to leave. Up to that point, I hadn’t uttered a word, but suddenly, the Rebbe said, “The rabbi who is with you should stay.” And then he rose from his chair and addressed me directly, “Are you Rabbi Avraham Chaputa?”

I was surprised that he knew my name.

I replied in the affirmative, and he asked me to sit down and began talking with me. This conversation lasted a long time, at least forty-five minutes. He spoke easily in pure Hebrew, smiling all the while. I would say it was a wonderful conversation, a very comfortable conversation as far as I was concerned. (more…)

I come from a family with a strong Polish and Galician chasidic background. Even after my parents moved to Israel in 1935, as pioneers of the new settlement there, my father maintained ties with several chasidic Rebbes. Later on, I discovered that he had also corresponded with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

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After our marriage, my wife and I moved to the Chabad neighborhood in Lod, Israel, and became close to the community. Along with my work on Hebrew literature at the University of Tel Aviv, I helped found a large library and institute in Lod – the Haberman Institute – for literary studies, as well as the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which focuses on the literature of the Mizrachi and North African Jewish communities.

At the end of 1982 I traveled to the United States, together with my family, for a year-long sabbatical. Even more exciting than the skyscrapers of Manhattan was the prospect of meeting the Rebbe. Sometime before Shavuot of 1983, Rabbi Bentzion Lipsker of Arad, a warm-hearted Jew I had known from Lod, invited me to join him and spend the holiday in Crown Heights. I eagerly accepted.

For the duration of the festival, I participated in several public gatherings led by the Rebbe, and had the privilege of a more personal encounter as well: During the Kos Shel Brachah ceremony at the close of the holiday, while distributing wine to those present after the Havdalah service, the Rebbe asked Rabbi Lipsker, “Where is the professor?” I was standing nearby and immediately came over to receive some wine, which the Rebbe poured directly into my cup.

To my disappointment, I learned that the Rebbe had stopped holding private audiences. But, Rabbi Lipsker promised to try and arrange one for me. To what I owed the honor  I don’t know, but somehow, he pulled it off. (more…)

There are three countries in the North African Maghreb that, until the second half of the 20th century, were under French control: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Morocco and Tunisia were French protectorates, but Algeria was actually considered part of France itself for about one hundred years.

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In 1953, my parents were sent from France to Morocco as emissaries of the Rebbe, and from the age of three, I grew up in that region.

Six years later, the Rebbe sent other emissaries to Morocco, and dispatched my parents to Tunisia. By this time, though, Tunisia had become an independent Arab country and, for that reason, a large number of Jewish people had decided to leave. Meanwhile, Algeria had a Jewish population of close to 150,000 Jews, with no Chabad presence at all. People began to ask the Rebbe to send representatives there, but he declined, predicting that the Jews there were going to leave, since French Algeria had no future. In fact, he even told the Jewish community in France to prepare the necessary communal infrastructure for the Jews who, he said, would soon come from Algeria.

But nobody thought that this would happen. Algeria had seen some anti-colonial fighting, but the French had made clear that they were never going to leave. The French Catholics who lived in Algeria were certain that their government wouldn’t abandon them in the Arab majority country, and the Jewish community felt the same. In 1959, around the same time the Rebbe had made his prediction, Charles de Gaulle, the president of France, even traveled there and declared “long live French Algeria!”

But by the next year, de Gaulle had reversed his position, and in 1962 Algeria won its independence. By the end of that decade, almost all of the Jews had fled the country. In France they asked, “How does a rabbi in New York have such a grasp on North African politics?” It was prophetic. (more…)

I became interested in Lubavitch while attending the Bais Yaakov girls’ school in Brooklyn. At that point, there wasn’t yet a high school for the Lubavitcher girls to attend so they all went to Bais Yaakov, along with the girls from the Satmar and Modern Orthodox communities. There were students of all types.

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The girl who sat next to me, and who later became my sister-in-law, was a Lubavitcher named Rivka Eichenbaum; it was because of her that I became involved in Lubavitch. I began to attend classes for women on Chasidus as well as farbrengens and other programs.

But there was a problem. My parents were not Chabad chasidim and they strongly believed that I should be following their way of practicing Judaism. They were very committed, observant Jews who were proud members of the Agudas Yisroel community. My grandfather Rabbi Pesachya Lamm was a prominent figure who had helped introduce glatt kosher meat to America, and although he had connections with Lubavitch – the Previous Rebbe had actually eaten his meat – my father didn’t appreciate that I was now studying Tanya and doing things differently. Seeing that I wasn’t following exactly in his ways hurt him.

I wasn’t willing to listen to him, but when he asked, I said that there was someone I would listen to: the Rebbe. With that, he went and arranged an audience for himself, my mother and me. I was seventeen at the time, and they were going to take me to the Rebbe to express their concerns.

But first, I sent a six-page letter to the Rebbe, explaining my numerous dilemmas: I was drawn to Lubavitch, but my parents disapproved. Meanwhile, my teachers at Bais Yaakov preached a sterner approach to Judaism that conflicted with the Lubavitch path. They were oriented towards the Mussar school of Jewish ethics, emphasizing seclusion and avoiding the evils of the world, both on a communal level as well as personally. By isolating yourself from other people, they said, you could focus on your own studies, and you’d be less likely to wind up gossiping. The Chabad chasidic approach, in contrast, was more positive and confident, emphasizing the good to be done with ourselves and others. (more…)