Monthly Archives: January 2023

It was the first time I had traveled to the United States. The year before, I had been involved in setting up various institutions associated with the Sadigura chasidic group in Israel, and in 1972 I made a fundraising trip to the US to help put them on firmer financial footing.

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Although I am a Ruzhiner chasid, I had corresponded with the Lubavitcher Rebbe years before. As a young boy, just before my Bar Mitzvah, I took it upon myself to write to the Rebbe, and had the privilege of receiving a letter with his blessing in response. Now, the day before returning to Israel, I decided that I could not leave without seeing him. I called his secretary, Rabbi Leibel Groner, introduced myself, and explained that I want to have an audience with the Rebbe.

“You can come at 2 AM,” he told me after consulting his calendar, “in six weeks.”

I explained that I was going back to Israel, but he insisted there was nothing he could do: “It’s completely filled up.”

Still, I decided to go to 770. I arrived at ten to nine and found a line of people waiting to see the Rebbe. Rabbi Groner came over and greeted me.

When I told him who I was, he immediately recalled our conversation. I assured him that I had only come to see the Rebbe’s holy face – perhaps just as the door opened between appointments. He allowed me to stand nearby, and then he was called away to his office. Just then, the Rebbe’s door opened, and out came three people. This, I thought, was my chance, and I walked right into the Rebbe’s room.

I extended my hand in greeting, and the Rebbe asked my name. (more…)

I am a sixth-generation Jerusalemite: On my father’s side, I’m descended from the famous Lithuanian branch of the Rivlin family that  emigrated to the Land of Israel together with a group of disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1809. On my mother’s side I come from the Chabad branch of the same family; my great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Eliyahu Yosef Rivlin, was a pioneering member of the Chabad settlement in Chevron, which was founded a few years later, in 1821.

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In my youth, before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, I studied in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, while also being drafted into the Jewish police brigade that operated under the British Mandate. My studies were, however, interrupted by the War of Independence, when I served as an officer in the IDF’s Communications Corps, and afterwards I traveled to England and completed my studies in the University of London.

In 1950, I was one of the founding members of the Galei Tzahal radio station founded on David Ben Gurion’s initiative, and from there I was invited to work for the Foreign Ministry, where I would go on to serve for thirty-four years.

While in the foreign service, I was sent for two postings to New York, the first as vice-consul from 1958-1962, and the second as consul-general from 1971-1975. Because my responsibilities included Soviet Jewish affairs, one of the first people I met in New York was the Rebbe; I knew how close this subject was to his heart.

Already in my first audience with him, the Rebbe surprised me by noting my family’s connection to the Rebbes of Chabad; one of the sons of Rabbi Eliyahu Yosef Rivlin married the daughter of Rabbi Dovber, the second leader of Lubavitch. It seems that he was well acquainted with the history of the Rivlin family, and knew about my mixed lineage of chasidim and their opponents – the mitnagdim.

“Tell me,” the Rebbe once asked, “when you come here today, do you come as a chasid or a mitnaged? (more…)

After experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust, by the kindness of G-d, I arrived in the Land of Israel in 1945. I soon joined Kibbutz Yavneh, where I managed to combine farmwork and guard duty with Torah study. At a certain point, I was approached by the Jewish Agency’s Department of Torah Education with an offer to serve as the head of a yeshivah in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Initially I balked at the idea of leaving Israel, but I consulted a few rabbis who advised me to accept.

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My wife and I reached the shores of Brazil in 1954, but when I asked the locals who came to greet us about the location of the yeshivah, they were perplexed. “A yeshivah in Rio? What are you talking about?” It seemed there had been a miscommunication; an institution devoted to full-time Torah study did not yet exist in Brazil.

I hurriedly sent word back to the Jewish Agency, only to receive their reply: “Since you’re already there, try to do what you can for the community for the agreed upon two years.”

One day, my wife and I went for a walk. As we conversed in Hebrew, a local Jewish boy overheard and took interest in us. He became the founding member of a Hebrew study group that eventually led to the opening of the “Bar-Ilan” school. After three years in Rio, we had some 600 students.

In 1959, back in Israel, I became the administrator of a farm for training young immigrants in the agricultural settlement of Shafir. While there, I got in trouble for teaching Torah subjects to the students. Concerned, the head of the local council suggested I reach out to a certain tzaddik, “a righteous man in New York” who could be consulted on such matters. After writing to this tzaddik, the Rebbe, I received a letter back from him, advising me that if I kept on teaching in a peaceful and pleasant manner, nobody would bother me. That communication turned out to be the first of many.

My connection with the Rebbe and Chabad grew stronger over the following years. In 1963, it even cost me my job at a different institution – some people didn’t approve of my connection to a chasidic sect like Chabad – but just when that happened, I got a phone call from the Jewish agency: They wanted me to come back to Bar-Ilan in Rio de Janeiro. (more…)