Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
I’ve written several books over the years, but in 2014, I wrote one about the Rebbe. In my research, I spent almost five years with the Rebbe by immersing myself in his writings, and in the stories that hundreds of people who had interacted and lived with the Rebbe told about him.
Over that time, the Rebbe started to have a great impact on my own life as well, in that I have become a profoundly different person as a result of studying the Rebbe’s teachings.
But my connection with the Rebbe goes back before then.
I grew up in what’s now known as the Midwood section of Brooklyn, and attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush; my father and grandfather were both ardent Zionists, and they wanted my sister and I to go to a Hebrew-speaking school. They also both had strong ties to the Previous Rebbe, as well as the Rebbe: My grandfather, Rabbi Nissan Telushkin, was already a Chabadnik back in the Soviet Union, before he got out with his family in 1923. Later, my father Shlomo Telushkin had the honor of being the accountant of both the Previous Rebbe and the Rebbe.
My father’s career as Chabad’s accountant started from the very beginning, right after the Previous Rebbe arrived in the United States in 1940. He derived a lot of pleasure from his career as an accountant, not because he made a tremendous amount of money, but because he worked for organizations he felt passionately attached to. As he got older, however, he started to cut back and give up his other accounts. The only accounts he always kept were those of the Rebbe and Chabad organizations. (more…)