Monthly Archives: November 2023

I was all of ten years old in 1967, when the Rebbe sent the first group of six yeshivah students from 770 – “the bochurim” as we called them – to Australia.

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There were venerable chasidim in Melbourne, my grandfather Reb Isser Kluwgant among them, but they inhabited a different world than us kids, and we didn’t personally relate to them or aspire to adopt their way of life. We loved and respected them, but they were distant.

And then along came these American boys, like a breath of fresh air. They were young outstanding Torah scholars who taught Torah at the yeshivah from morning to night and spoke in the synagogues on Shabbat. But beyond that, they brought Judaism to life for us, making it something we wanted to be a part of. They emanated joy, along with a deep fulfillment, and there was an innocence about them; they were wholesome and whole.

They also had a certain aura about them, a sense of something beyond our world. Later I understood it was the aura of 770, the fact that they were chasidim of the Rebbe. And so we were fascinated by them. We scrutinized their mannerisms, the way they spoke, their gestures – we absorbed it all. The Rebbe knew this would happen, which is exactly why he sent them.

Had these bachurim not come to Australia, it is quite possible I would have remained observant, but that I am a chasid and a shliach is a direct result of their influence and inspiration. (more…)

I was born in France in 1935, after my family fled there from Germany. Following the Second World War, we made our way to Israel, and soon after, my father, a graduate of the legendary Brisker yeshiva, passed away.

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As a young man, my own yeshivah career began in the town of Be’er Yaakov, in a Lithuanian-style yeshivah. During that time, I became connected to Chabad when I began participating in a secret Tanya class – something that went on for some time. My brother, Rabbi Aharon Mordechai Zilberstrom, had also become close with the movement during the war, and he helped found and run several Chabad schools afterwards. Eventually, because of these connections, I transferred to the Chabad yeshivah in Lod in 1955.

Two years later, the Rebbe asked the yeshivah faculty to send him a list of students who were capable of being teachers and strengthening Chabad’s expanding school network; of serving as “education emissaries,” as they were called. Of that list, the Rebbe chose ten names, including mine. This was how I began working in education while still a yeshivah student.

I taught in several schools – first in Ta’anach, and then in the Malcha neighborhood of Jerusalem, where I later became principal. I also taught and headed up two newly-founded schools that had been set up for new immigrants to Israel from Morocco and Romania.

Those early days were hard. The authorities were often uninterested in cooperating with us and could make things quite challenging. We worked in difficult conditions, in rented classrooms into which we would drag our desks and chairs each morning – then out again in the evening – and in sheds with roofs that leaked in the winter. Along the way, however, we received letters from the Rebbe in which he would encourage us to carry on, while offering instructions and detailed educational guidance. (more…)

My love for the Land of Israel comes from my parents. They moved here when they were young – first to Tel Aviv, back when it was still small, then to a little farm in Kfar Hasidim – and they nurtured our connection to the land.

My family knew very li

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ttle about Chabad. After Baruch and I married, he wanted to go see the Rebbe. Personally, I felt my place was in Israel, but I went along with my husband. In 1964, we traveled to New York by ship, and when they finally met, the Rebbe encouraged my husband to attend art school in New York, which led to us living there for a year.

About a month after arriving, I had an audience with the Rebbe; I was pregnant at the time, and I wanted to receive his blessing ahead of the birth.

He spoke to me like a father to his child. He asked me many questions, such as whether I had friends in New York, and what the doctors had said about my pregnancy. He even gave me the names of some local women with whom I could speak Hebrew – women I have remained friends with until today. I had known nothing about the Rebbe, but after that first meeting, I felt very close to him.

After a year in Crown Heights, the Rebbe told us that our place was in Israel.

“Where?” we asked.

“Wherever you want,” he replied. (more…)

Back in the early ‘80s, I owned a bookbinding business in New York and had a few regular Chabad customers. They would tell me about their Rebbe, and around Passover time, they told me about a special gathering he would have before the holiday which they invited me to join.

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I went, and I was very impressed. There were a lot of people there, and the Rebbe sat at a long dais in the center of a cavernous room. There were some prominent Jewish leaders in attendance as well as some local politicians, some of whom were not Jewish.

The Rebbe spoke in Yiddish, but I was given a transistor radio that could play in my ear a simultaneous English translation of what he was saying. Every once in a while, shot glasses with wine were passed around and when the Rebbe was between talks, everyone would say l’chaim. You would hold up your cup, and the Rebbe would give you a toast. At one point, I made eye contact with him, he smiled, and I made a l’chaim.

It would be a long time before I had a real face-to-face with the Rebbe. In the meantime, in 1983, I married my wife Rebecca. We wanted to have a child, but it wasn’t happening. After a while, we began going to fertility clinics and trying out different medicines. When that didn’t work, we became a little discouraged.

“It’s not so bad,” my sister told me. “You can adopt.”

Well, one day in 1989, I was watching TV in the living room with Becky, when out of nowhere she said, “Jay, I want to go to the Rebbe to get a blessing. Maybe he can help us.”

I hadn’t seen the Rebbe since that gathering, and had never actually met him, but I knew that he received people every Sunday. You could go tell him what your problem was and he would give you a blessing. (more…)