Monthly Archives: June 2023

My parents passed away at a relatively young age, and after that I was brought up in the home of my uncle, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, the world renowned Halachic authority and dean of Jerusalem’s Kol Torah yeshivah. Eventually, after my marriage, I entered the rabbinate myself, and was appointed rabbi of Ramat Chen, which is today a neighborhood of Ramat Gan, Israel.

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In 1971, I traveled to a wedding in the United States and stayed in the home of a certain well-off Jew in Queens, New York. “Rabbi Aurbach,” my host asked me, “what would you like to see while you are here?”

I replied that I would like to use this opportunity to see some of the great Torah sages of America, and since my host was well connected in rabbinic circles, he helped me to do just that. The first meeting he set up for me was with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

I walked into the Rebbe’s office with a feeling of reverence. The Rebbe invited me to sit down and asked for my name.

After I introduced myself, he asked, “Was your father Eliezer?” That was, in fact, my father’s name.

“Did you know that your father was here before?”

Again, I answered affirmatively. I remembered my father having an audience in 1952. It was before my Bar Mitzvah, and when my father returned from the US, he told us about the meeting. He had been especially taken by the Rebbe’s eyes, and how they seemed to look into the depths of his soul. (more…)

My parents fled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, during WWII, along with many other Chabad families. Despite the harsh material and spiritual conditions of the USSR, the chasidim there managed to maintain a Jewish way of life, while imparting an authentic Jewish education to the next generation. In fact, our own home became host to an underground yeshivah headed by my grandfather, Reb Zalman Pevzner, who would teach Torah throughout the day – to children in the mornings, and to older boys in the afternoons.

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In 1971, about a year after my Bar Mitzvah, my family left the USSR for Israel. I carried on studying in Israeli Chabad yeshivot and my family settled in Nachlat Har Chabad, a neighborhood of Kiryat Malachi that had been established by Chabad emigres from the Soviet Union some two years before.

By the end of that first year, we received word that the Rebbe had invited us newly emigrated chasidim to spend the festive month of Tishrei in his court; in fact, he even wanted to cover most of our travel expenses to come see him.

Three days before Rosh Hashanah, I arrived in New York and I saw the Rebbe for the very first time that evening at prayers. The Rebbe looked out at our group, nodding his head in greeting, and we felt him gaze intently at each and every one of us. The very next day, I enrolled in Oholei Torah, a local yeshivah, and quickly settled in.

After Yom Kippur, my family had a private audience with the Rebbe, during which the Rebbe spoke primarily about me. He inquired into where I was learning, who my teacher was, the tractate and chapter of Talmud we were studying. He quizzed me on my studies. He seemed to appreciate the first answer I gave, and so he kept going, with a question on a gloss of Tosfot a few pages into the chapter, and another one after that.

“I haven’t learned that yet,” I told the Rebbe. He smiled, and showered blessings on me, the traditional wish for “Torah, marriage, and good deeds;” and on my parents, that they settle successfully into their new lives. (more…)

My father’s parents were Russian immigrants who had arrived in Chicago by boat in the early 20th century. Even though they were not religious, my father began his schooling in a religious day school in the 1940s. It was there, as a six or seven-year-old, that he developed a great love for learning and Judaism.

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When it was time to start regular schooling, he wanted to continue learning in a yeshivah out of town, in Montreal or New York, but being too young, he went on to public school. One time in sixth grade, his class had a cooking activity. My father refused to taste the non-kosher food, and my grandparents got a call from the principal: “What are these problems we’re having with your son?”

After that incident, he went off to attend the Lubavitcher high school in Pittsburgh, followed by the legendary one in Crown Heights, on the corner of Bedford Avenue and Dean Street. Later, he would go off to the yeshivah in Montreal. During those years he became very attached to the Rebbe.

When my father finished yeshivah, he and his parents wanted him to start college, and  he wrote to the Rebbe about his plans. The Rebbe replied, by letter, that college was no place for a yeshivah student like him, and he also wrote a separate letter to my grandparents explaining why their son should not go to college. Still, they insisted that he go, and my father even had an hour-long meeting with the Rebbe to discuss the matter.

“Are intellectual pursuits your aim, or do you want to study in college in order to make a living?” the Rebbe asked him.

My father indicated that it was the latter: Earning a college degree would enable him to secure a better job and a stable livelihood. (more…)

This story is an excerpt from the book My Story 1. Get your copy today at www.jemstore.com.

I grew up on Long Island, New York, in a non-observant home. It was not until I was in my late twenties, when an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Gutman Baras, opened a synagogue in Plainview, Long Island, that I became religiously involved. Through Rabbi Baras and his wife Chana, I found my way to Machon Chana, which is a school in Crown Heights for women with no previous religious background who want to study Torah.

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I made rapid progress through their course of study and the next year, I met my future husband, Menachem, who had also returned to Yiddishkeit as an adult. By July of 1983, we were engaged. We wrote to the Rebbe, received his blessing right away, and began to make plans for the wedding.

Before setting the date, we checked the community calendar to make sure that we were not conflicting with any other event that our guests would feel obligated to attend.

We considered two dates. Menachem favored a date in the month of Tishrei, which includes many important Jewish holidays – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah. Many of his rabbis and colleagues from Seattle would likely be in New York during Tishrei, and they’d be able to participate in the wedding. I favored Kislev, the month of Chanukah, because that was my favorite month of the year. We wrote to the Rebbe, naming the two possible dates – one in Kislev and one in Tishrei – and asking which he thought was better.

The Rebbe responded with a note, “Why wait so long?” and he circled the earlier date – which was the 12th of Tishrei. (We later learned that in general the Rebbe favored short engagements.) Now, the next day, the 13th of Tishrei, was the anniversary of the passing of the Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe, when the Rebbe customarily held a farbrengen. But on the 12th of Tishrei the community calendar was empty, so it was a good day for our wedding.

THE MORNING OF THE WEDDING, as I was getting ready, I got a phone call from Rabbi Binyomin Klein, the Rebbe’s secretary. (more…)

Growing up, I didn’t have any grandparents; they had all perished in the Holocaust. As a matter of fact, none of my friends or contemporaries in Los Angeles did either. In our community of Hungarian immigrants, almost all of the adults were survivors so I never even knew what a grandmother or grandfather was.

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My father, Berel Weiss, was a successful entrepreneur in the nursing home industry as well as a devout chasid and a very spiritual person. We would walk to shul each week on Shabbat, and he would tell me stories about the Baal Shem Tov and the Rebbe. “He is our grandfather,” my father would say.

Although there were very few Lubavitchers in Los Angeles then, my father had gone to meet the Rebbe in 1962, and it was a seminal moment in his life. He had a very emotional meeting with the Rebbe, and then a formal audience. He only brought my older brother Yona Mordechai along, but he did write my name in the note he handed to the Rebbe. The Rebbe read the note, and when he reached my name, he underlined it.

“Your younger son, Moshe Aron, where is he?”

“He’s too young,” my father explained. I was just two at the time.

When I turned three and had my traditional upsherinish, or hair-cutting ceremony, there was a chasid there by the name of Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Kazarnovsky. He was a very warm man who would periodically visit us in Los Angeles, and he delivered a gift. For my upsherinish, the Rebbe had sent me a little Chabad siddur. (more…)