Monthly Archives: October 2024

I was born in Israel in the town of Rosh Pinah, in the winter of 1918. I was named “Aviv” – “spring” in Hebrew – for the new era that was dawning in the Land of Israel at the time, after its conquest by British imperial forces and the end of the Ottoman era.

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The house in which I was born, raised, and then lived for the rest of my life was built by my grandfather Reb Aharon Yirmiyahu Keller. He was one of the founders of our town, along with a group of young families from Old Tzfat (Safed) that had been just scraping by with the help of the Old Yishuv charity distribution system known as the chalukah. Together, they decided to leave the mountain-top town of Tzfat, go down, and set up a new agricultural settlement so that they could live independently off the land.

The story that I would like to share took place on a summer’s day in 1929, when I was ten years old. In those days, every afternoon, my family used to gather in the home of my uncle, Shimon Keller, to drink tea together. And so, the family was sitting in Uncle Shimon’s garden and chatting, when a long, black Mercedes pulled up outside the house. We had never so much as seen such a car before, and it immediately aroused our curiosity. As I recall, the car had three rows of passenger seats, in addition to two seats at the front, alongside the driver. As the limousine came to a halt, my grandfather turned to my uncle. “That,” he announced, “is the Rebbe of Lubavitch.”

My grandfather had never actually seen Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn – the Previous Rebbe – but he had been reading the local press coverage of his historic visit to the Holy Land, which was then underway. He also had a good eye, so he was able to immediately recognize the distinguished-looking rabbi in the car. Indeed, that day was the fifth of Av, which is the yahrzeit of the 16th century kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, “the Holy Ari,” and the Lubavitcher Rebbe was making his way to pray at the great mystic’s resting place in Tzfat. (more…)

We came to Israel from Casablanca when I was five, and for the first seven years, we lived in a migrant camp in Pardes Chana. My twin brother Eliyahu Moshe and I studied in a government school, but when our parents realized how far it was from traditional Judaism, they moved to Bnei Brak, where we received a proper Torah education. When we graduated from the school in Bnei Brak, they sent us to the Chabad yeshivah in Lod and then to Kfar Chabad.

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In those yeshivot, the children of Yemenite and Moroccan families learned alongside the sons of old-stock Russian Chabad families. And so did we discover the world of Chabad, imbibe its spirit, and eventually adopt its way of life as devoted chasidim of the Rebbe. That is why it was only natural that I joined a group of students who were going to study in New York, in the Rebbe’s court – a program known today as “kvutzah.”

When we arrived in 1965, I was thrilled to be the first member of the Malka family to ever visit the Rebbe. A few weeks later, after Rosh Hashanah, a friend of mine asked me whether I could help build the Rebbe’s sukkah. “But no looking around, and no questions,” he warned me. Of course, I agreed, while wondering to myself how I – a simple, wide-eyed yeshivah student – had landed the privilege of working for the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

First, we carried sukkah walls from the basement of 770 up to the second floor, which was where the Previous Rebbe had lived. There I met the Previous Rebbe’s wife, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina, for the first time. Until her passing in 1971, her son-in-law and her husband’s successor, the Rebbe, used to have meals during festivals in this apartment, and there, on the balcony, we built the sukkah that would host them.

Next, we built a sukkah at the Rebbe’s home on President Street – which was another first for me. The Rebbe’s wife, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, opened the door for us when we came, and after we finished working, she brought out some fruit and other treats. “You worked hard,” she explained, and encouraged us to partake. (more…)

I was born in Germany in 1946, and I moved to Israel with my family in 1948. There, we settled in Beit Gamliel, an agricultural village that my father had helped found.

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As a child, I attended the village school, and then a religious cheder with an old-school teacher in the afternoons. He used to discipline us with a little cane, which terrified me, especially on Thursdays when there was a test on the weekly parshah. Too afraid to go to school on test day, I would roam the fields. My father, who was worried about the fedayeen terrorists who were active in those days, had to go out and look for me. He didn’t know what to do about my education until a friend suggested that he send me to the Chabad school in nearby Rishon Letziyon. And so began my connection with Chabad.

Shortly after, I was acting out in class, when my new teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Greenwald, came over to me. But to my surprise, instead of hitting me with a cane or a belt, he gave me a kind pat on the head. I wasn’t used to that! I became an excellent student and continued to learn in Chabad schools for the next few years, before going on to high school and then the army. (more…)

In 1954, after I had finished college and got engaged to my husband, I had an audience with the Rebbe. First, he asked about how my life was going and what had been happening since the last time he had seen me. Then, because I was about to get married, he asked whether I was planning on wearing a sheitel – a wig worn by married women to fulfill the halachic requirement to cover their hair.

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I was raised always to be totally truthful, and I had a very open, honest relationship with the Rebbe, so without thinking about being diplomatic, I just said exactly what I felt: “No, I’m not planning on wearing a sheitel.”

The Rebbe didn’t get annoyed or seem disappointed. He just looked at me with a big smile and asked, “Why not?”

“Well,” I explained, “All of my friends are college graduates from nice religious homes, and none of them are planning to wear a sheitel. Only old people do that, and it’s not something I’ve ever considered.”

I had been living in Boston since I was fourteen years old – when the Previous Rebbe sent my father to assume a rabbinic position there in 1947 – and it was a different world from the Chabad community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. There was a large community of Jews of all types, many of them observant, but they were more secular on the whole, and there certainly wasn’t a Lubavitcher community; there were maybe two or three Chabad girls in the whole city, and none of them were my age.

“Are you going to keep your hair covered?” the Rebbe inquired further.

“Oh yes,” I replied. “I’m going to wear hats. That is what everybody in Boston does.” (more…)

My family left Russia in 1946, eventually arriving in Paris, where we remained for seven years. The Rebbe’s mother, Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson, fled Russia shortly after we did, and for three months in 1947, she stayed with us.

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We lived in an apartment on the top floor of a big house in Paris owned by our uncle, Rabbi Zalman Schneerson; he was the brother of my mother, Yehudis Butman, and they were cousins of the Rebbe. We had a dining room and two bedrooms, one of which became Rebbetzin Chana’s. For as long as we lived there, we continued to refer to it as “Rebbetzin Chana’s room.”

The Rebbe, who was still simply known as “Rabbi Schneerson,” had left Europe for the United States years earlier, but that year, he returned to France to reunite with his mother and to bring her back with him to New York. During his stay, the Rebbe would come to our house to visit her twice every single day, in the morning and the afternoon. My mother would serve them tea, and sometimes cake as well.

Aside from our relation on my mother’s side, my family had another connection with the Rebbe’s family. During the war, my family had been living in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan; I was actually born there, in the town of Frunze, which is today Bishkek.

Not far from us was the city of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, where the Rebbe’s parents lived for several months in 1944. The Soviet authorities had arrested the Rebbe’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, for his rabbinic activities, and exiled him to that region. Partly because of his ailing health – he passed away that year – his sentence had been lifted, allowing him and Rebbetzin Chana to move to Alma-Ata.

During this time, my father, Reb Zalman Butman, assisted the Rebbe’s parents with whatever they needed to cover their expenses each week. When the Rebbe came to Paris in 1947, he told my father: “Reb Zalman, I know you supported my father. I would like to know how much it cost so I can repay you.” (more…)