Monthly Archives: March 2024

The story I am about to tell happened in the early 1950s, not long after the Rebbe took over the leadership of Chabad Lubavitch. At the time, I was in high school and living in Crown Heights on Carroll Street, which is around the corner from President Street where the Rebbe lived.

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I used to see him on Shabbat mornings, walking from his home to Chabad Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. He was not yet as well known then, and he was very approachable, as he walked alone without an entourage.

He’d greet me with “Gut Shabbos,” and we’d walk together, while he inquired about my Torah learning and about my teachers. We would part ways when we reached Eastern Parkway – he’d go right to Chabad, and I’d go left to Young Israel, where I served as a youth group leader.

We were just two people walking to their synagogues – a teenager and the Rebbe. Being so young, I did not realize the import of these encounters. I only learned to appreciate them later.

Then there came a time when my Young Israel youth group was invited for a private audience with the Rebbe. We were all Torah observant boys, studying at such storied Orthodox institutions as the Brooklyn Talmudical Academy, Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, and the Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva, which had a branch in Brooklyn back then.

From our Modern Orthodox perspective, Chabad was an anomaly, because the other chasidic sects that we were familiar with were very insular, but Chabad was open and doing a great deal of Jewish outreach. For instance, on Sukkot, Chabad chasidim would stand outside the subway stations offering the lulav to Jews, so they could fulfill that commandment. This was strange to us, and yet it also made an impact on us. And I do recall that some of the kids became enraptured by Chabad as a result. (more…)

I grew up in Long Beach, California, and – after serving two years in the army – I moved to Los Angeles. There, I attended the University of Southern California, graduating from its Law School in 1959.

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Not long after that, my wife and I met a rabbi who had come to Los Angeles to develop Chabad there. His name was Rabbi Shlomo Cunin, and we became fairly close. As a lawyer, I helped him out with a few parking tickets, and we became closer. Chabad in California has grown tremendously over the years, but I’ve been connected with Rabbi Cunin ever since the time he was working out of that second-floor office on Fairfax Avenue.

In 1969, I helped Rabbi Cunin acquire the building of the very first Chabad House. It was the old Pi Lambda Phi fraternity house at UCLA, and I had been a member of the fraternity when I was in college, so I wound up helping him with some of the legal aspects of the purchase.

Later, I accompanied Rabbi Cunin to present the key of the Chabad House to the Rebbe. We also had the lock with us. It was a Schlage lock, as I recall, and the plan was to then bring the lock back to California and install it in the door. But the Rebbe was against the idea. When we brought the key to the Rebbe, he told us: “Don’t put the lock on the door – it should always remain open!”

I’d had a private audience with the Rebbe before then, and a couple more after it as well. Whenever I came, there would be a great number of people who wanted to see the Rebbe, so you had to be patient when you waited for an audience. At my first meeting, it was around 9:30 in the evening when I began writing the note which I would hand to the Rebbe – but it was approximately 4:00 AM by the time it was my turn to enter his office. (more…)

We had heard rumors that the Previous Rebbe was coming to the United States, but nobody believed them. It was wartime, 1940, and the Rebbe – I’m referring to the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn – was still trapped in Europe.

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“The Nazis won’t let him out,” I heard my father crying after coming home one day. “Oy! He has to come here. He must!”

Although I was born in Israel, to a mother who was a sixth-generation Jerusalemite, my father, Rabbi Eliahu Nachum Sklar, was originally from the town of Zhlobin, in today’s Belarus. Papa was a very special person, a real tzaddik, and after we emigrated to America, he went on to play a leading role in several important Chabad communal institutions. When he was a young boy he went off to learn in the yeshivah in the town of Lubavitch with two other boys from his town, who both later became prominent chasidim.

At the time, the Previous Rebbe was the administrator of the yeshivah in Lubavitch, which had been founded by his father, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, who was still the Rebbe. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak would often come in to check on the students, with whom he was very close. “Every student,” he would say, “is like my own child.” And so, ever since then, my father became very attached to him.

When we finally heard that the Rebbe’s ship would be coming into New York, Papa was so excited he could barely breathe. I just cannot describe his excitement.

I was still a little girl, but my father brought me along to the pier. The Hebrew date was 9 Adar II – Tuesday, March 19, 1940 – and I was jumping up and down: “I’m going to see the Rebbe! I’m going to see the Rebbe!” I shouted. (more…)

My father must have had big aspirations for me. The very first time I was at a private audience with the Rebbe – along with the rest of my family – he told the Rebbe: “I want him to be a rosh yeshivah!” In 1966, I was just six years old, and had only started kindergarten the year before in Los Angeles. But back in Hungary, where my father was originally from, the biggest aspiration that a father could have was for his son to grow up to become the head of a yeshivah.

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The Rebbe looked at me and said, “First he should become a Torah scholar, and then vet men zen vos zein biznes vet zein – we’ll see what his career will be.”

That statement of the Rebbe set the tone for the rest of my life. I would often think about it and my father would regularly quote it too. Eventually, with the Rebbe’s blessing, I became a Chabad shliach while simultaneously running a business, which means that there are often tremendous pressures, or enticements, to spend more time with my work. “Nope,” my father would always insist at times like these, “you have to spend a few hours learning Torah every day. The Rebbe said that first you have to be a Torah scholar, and then you’ll be in business.” So I make sure to spend a few hours studying Torah every day, and it has been a tremendous blessing in my life.

As I grew up, my father kept up his high educational standards. When I was ten or eleven years old, he wasn’t happy with the curriculum at the day school I was attending. So he hired an elderly gentleman to be my private tutor for Jewish studies in the morning and then I would take a bus to school in the afternoon for general studies. The school wasn’t thrilled by this – and their Hebrew teacher was a little offended – but my father wanted the best for his son. He even tried to persuade the principal to send his son to be my study partner but, of course, that didn’t work.

I didn’t like this new arrangement. My tutor was very kind and he tried to make the whole thing as pleasant as he could – but it was boring. I did what I was told, but I really didn’t enjoy it. (more…)