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…)

Before arriving at the Chabad yeshivah in Warsaw in the early 1930s, I studied in several other places in Poland. In those days every synagogue or smaller shtiebel had an informal yeshivah, and it was in one of these institutions that I first heard about the Tanya from a fellow student.

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He spoke very highly about this classic work of Chabad philosophy, so when I eventually joined the Chabad yeshivah and started studying the Tanya, I felt like I had found a treasure. I would study it on my own, attend classes from our chasidic mentor Reb Baruch “Poilisher,” review what I had learned, and then prepare again for the next lecture. Unfortunately, during the war, I lost all my notes from this time, but thank G-d my studies remained in my mind and heart.

Eventually I moved to New York where I worked for the Tomchei Temimim yeshivah network. In that capacity, in the mid-fifties I began hosting a weekly radio program on a local station, where I usually spoke about different aspects of chasidic thought or practice. Thank G-d, people were pleased with the program and it gave a good impression of the yeshivah, which also helped with our fundraising efforts.

In 1959, I suggested to the Rebbe that I start another radio program to teach Tanya. I would prepare a script for the class each week, and the Rebbe could give his approval before it went to air. At first the Rebbe turned the idea down: “The time hasn’t come yet,” he said.

But a year later, I heard that a prominent teacher of chasidut named Rabbi Nachum Goldschmidt had started teaching Tanya on the radio in Israel. I decided to prepare a sample script and send it to the Rebbe for his approval. As soon as I did, the Rebbe edited the draft and sent it back to me with one hundred dollars to help with the expenses. He approved. And so, in the winter of 1960, I started teaching Tanya on the radio, starting with the author’s introduction. (more…)

When I was a child growing up in Montreal, the entire Chabad community would make an annual trip to New York for the 10th of Shevat – the anniversary of the Previous Rebbe’s passing, and of the Rebbe’s subsequent appointment as his successor. We would travel there by train, an eleven-hour journey, and on the way the respected chasidic mentor Rabbi Volf Greenglass would lead a communal farbrengen, which invariably ended up with everyone in our car breaking out in a dance.

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There were few major Chabad communities outside of New York and Israel in those days, and Montreal’s was the largest community to travel together to the Rebbe, so we received special attention. All of the children were invited for a special audience, and the Rebbe spoke to us. Rabbi Yoel Kahn, the Rebbe’s oral scribe, was also present for these meetings, to ensure that the talk was transcribed, to be reviewed by the Rebbe and eventually published.

The first time I entered the Rebbe’s room was during one of these trips. It was 1960, and I was six years old. I remember standing in front of the Rebbe’s desk, together with my brothers and sisters, flanked by our parents on either side. At the beginning of the audience, my father gave the Rebbe a three-page letter he had prepared earlier. As one of the founders and directors of the Chabad yeshivah in Montreal, my father would include in his note various yeshivah related matters, in addition to writing about our family.

The Rebbe looked at the letter, and then immediately turned to my father, while pointing at me. “Why didn’t you write his name?” he asked. He didn’t just remark that the note was a name short, or ask “who is missing?” – he pointed directly at me.

My father was shocked. I saw his hands shake, and he seemed flustered. He didn’t say a word, and when the Rebbe held out the letter to show that my name was missing, he didn’t reach out to take it. (more…)

During the mid-1980s, I directed a branch of Tomchei Temimim, the Chabad yeshivah network, in the town of Kiryat Malachi, in Israel. While I was there, a certain mashpia, or chasidic mentor to the students, worked on instilling within the students a tremendous enthusiasm for the various mitzvah campaigns being promoted by the Rebbe, which involved sharing mitzvot with other Jews. Their strong commitment to these outreach activities, however, began to interfere with their regular study schedule. It happened on more than one occasion that after going out on mivtzoyim, as these activities are called, the students returned to yeshivah quite late.

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At one point, the students turned to me with their dilemma: “What should we do when mivtzoyim get in the way of learning Torah?”

In turn, I wrote a letter to the Rebbe, putting the question to him. As the Rebbe was such a strong proponent of these outreach activities, did he intend for students to engage in them at the expense of Torah study? Perhaps these mitzvah campaigns were so urgently needed that they should be done even if meant studying less Torah – but on the other hand, perhaps the students were supposed to get involved in mivtzoyim only so long as they didn’t interfere with their studies.

“A tomim,” replied the Rebbe, using the moniker for students of Tomchei Temimim, “is first and foremost a tomim. Mivtzoyim can only be with permission from the faculty.” The word “tomim” was underlined twice, and “first and foremost” had three lines under it!

His point was that it was the faculty’s job to determine how much time the students could dedicate to outreach work, outside of formal study times, without interfering in the student’s ability to fully devote himself to his main task – learning Torah. Therefore, all such activities had to be coordinated and approved by the faculty.

Over the years I spent working in Tomchei Temimim, in that particular branch and elsewhere, the Rebbe taught me several other important lessons about the nature and the priorities of the yeshivah. On one occasion, there was a certain very serious young man who had some complaint about members of the faculty, whether it was a Talmudic lecturer, mashpia, or the dean of students. “Why don’t you talk to the Rebbe about this?” he would often demand of me.

Before one trip I made to New York, he asked that I discuss with the Rebbe several issues in the yeshivah which, as he saw it, needed to be addressed. I refused, seeing as I disagreed with some of his claims. “Write to the Rebbe yourself,” I suggested. “Then, if the Rebbe wishes, he will speak about it with me.” But I also asked that he send me a copy of his letter so that I will know what he has written, in case the Rebbe chose to bring the subject up with me. (more…)

After getting married in 1965, and spending some time in Montreal, where my wife and I are from, we wanted very much to move out on shlichus – to become emissaries of the Rebbe. We had the opportunity to take up positions in Detroit, California, or Florida – but first we had to ask the Rebbe.

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When I wrote to the Rebbe about the idea, he answered that I should “consult with friends.” I did so, and my friends thought that I should go into business. However, I didn’t want to become a businessman, so I wrote to the Rebbe a few more times, telling him that I still wanted to go on shlichus – and he kept giving me the same answer: I was to follow the advice of my friends.

In general, I would write to the Rebbe as if he were my father, openly expressing how I felt and what was on my mind. And so, I took a deep breath, and decided to write one last time. I suggested that – despite what he had already told me – the Rebbe would really want me to be on shlichus.

I’ll never forget the response: “Where did you get that idea from?” the Rebbe retorted.  “Haven’t I already written, once, twice, three times,” – underlining those words for emphasis – “that you should consult with friends? Stop sending letters here because I am not going to answer. Make a decision straight away based on the advice of your friends, and may G-d grant you success.”

Well, I tried, and I didn’t get my way. But it wasn’t over just yet. (more…)

We had always dreamed of leaving the Soviet Union, and leaving all of our troubles behind.

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My family lived in Kishinev, Moldova, where I was born in 1946. My parents were highly educated people, and although practicing Judaism was forbidden, they did their utmost to teach us the Aleph-Beis, to instill in us a love for the Land of Israel, and even to try and celebrate Jewish holidays. We never even had a Hebrew book, but we did the best we could.

When I was in second grade, my father was arrested after he began trading on the black market to make ends meet. Because he was Jewish he received an especially harsh sentence: Everything he owned was seized, and he was imprisoned for ten years. He left behind a wife and four children, and we were left with nothing.

As a little girl, I remember asking my mother repeatedly, “Why was I born here? We’re in the wrong country. We have to leave!”

“Sh, don’t say that,” she would say. “G-d forbid the neighbors will hear, and we’ll get arrested too.”

Although we were so deprived, we held on to our hopes and dreams. (more…)

My encounter with the Rebbe took place nearly fifty years ago when I came to the United States from Switzerland with the goal of helping Russian Jews oppressed by the Soviet regime.

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By way of background, my parents – both of whom were from Poland –miraculously made it to Geneva during World War II. This is where they met and married and where I was born in 1948.

In 1969, after being educated in yeshivahs in England and Israel, I enrolled in Geneva University’s School of Economics. And it is there that I was introduced to the plight of the Soviet Jews who were not permitted to practice Judaism or to emigrate elsewhere. It was a hot issue at the time and many organizations worldwide were staging demonstrations and working to influence their governments to pressure the Soviets into releasing the Jews.

Because of my involvement in this cause, I came to the United States in 1972. Upon arrival, I met with the famed civil liberties advocate Nat Lewin, who suggested that I use my background in economics to investigate how to influence the United States government to play a role. So I went to the Library of Congress, and there I found that legislation already existed in the US that could help the Soviet Jews by means of impacting Soviet trade, but this legislation had not been used for that purpose.

With that information in hand, I was introduced by Nat Lewin to US Senator Henry Scoop Jackson, who was well known for his involvement in the fight against anti-Semitism. After much effort on my part – canvassing members of Congress to gain their support – Senator Jackson undertook to propose an amendment to the Trade Act. This amendment (more…)

In the 1970s, the federal government mandated that dental schools were to begin offering courses in a new kind of treatment delivery system. As a student, I thought they were interesting, and I was one of the few who signed up. After my graduation in 1974, however, the courses were dropped; the government’s interest must have waned.

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By 1982, I had long since accepted a position as an assistant professor teaching clinical dentistry at Columbia Dental School, while also attending at Presbyterian Hospital and working in a private practice. I loved teaching, but it didn’t pay well – nobody is there for the money – and I already had four children and a mortgage, so having three jobs was necessary.

At around this time, however, the government renewed its interest in this dental delivery system, and was offering well salaried teaching positions. Columbia Dental School hired a dentist, Dr. Bernard Tolpin, who had expertise in grant proposals, and the search was on for dentists with the right training to form a department to teach the subject.

Since I was the only person around with any experience in this area, I perfectly matched the criteria for the position. I applied and was interviewed by Dr. Tolpin, and we hit it off very well. I even thought he would hire me on the spot, but instead he promised to keep me posted. As time passed, I would regularly see Dr. Tolpin around the school, and he treated me like an old friend – but there was no job offer.

One day during this period of time, my uncle, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, one of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s secretaries, called me to say that the Rebbe had been asking whether I was the kind of chasid who only contacted the Rebbe when he had a problem. (more…)

Throughout my high school years and into seminary, I became very involved in a girls’ youth group called Bnos Chabad. A small organization in the sixties, one of the things Bnos Chabad would do was to arrange “Shabbatons.” We would reach out to different communities, groups or schools, and they would send their students to spend Shabbat with us in Crown Heights.

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In 1964, we got a call from a Reform congregation in New Jersey about a group of twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls interested in coming to us. We prepared a lovely Shabbat for them, and they enjoyed a beautiful program.

After Shabbat, one of our Bnos Chabad girls whose family was hosting some of these children mentioned to me that one of the girls who stayed in her house was not Jewish. Jewish identity follows the mother, and while this girl’s father was Jewish, her mother was not.

In those days, intermarriage was much less common than it is today, so when the girls’ rabbi later came to pick up the children, I explained to him that, given the nature of the program, he should have let us know that a girl who isn’t Jewish would be attending. “Well,” he replied apologetically, “the mother is thinking of converting, and she wants to raise her daughter as a Jew.”

Every time we ran one of these programs, I would write up a report for the Rebbe. This time, in his reply, the Rebbe sent me newspaper clippings from two different Jewish newspapers, one from Atlanta, Georgia, and I think the other was from Seattle, Washington. (more…)

I grew up in Bal Harbour, Florida, where my parents moved because of a young dynamic couple – the Rebbe’s emissaries, Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar and his wife, Rebbetzin Chani – who had started a new community there. Their style appealed to my parents who were young, with three children, and looking for a nice Jewish environment to raise their family.

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In 1990, when I was nine years old, I got sick – I had an upset stomach, intermittent fever, and heart palpitations for about six months – but the doctors with whom my parents consulted could not figure out what was wrong with me. It was not until we traveled for a relative’s wedding to Panama, where an old experienced physician suggested that I had an overactive thyroid – a condition called Grave’s disease.

At the time, little was known about this disease and my parents were worried about the severe side-effects that one of the recommended medications – radioactive iodine – could have on the growing body of a child. My father confided his concerns to Rabbi Lipskar, who immediately offered to write to the Rebbe for his advice and blessing.

In his response, the Rebbe recommended that we not just keep kosher – which of course we did – but that we switch to glatt kosher, a higher level of observance. This meant buying meat that was much more expensive than regular kosher meat. Back then, there were only two kosher butchers in Miami, and to do what the Rebbe advised involved a big effort on my parents’ part. But they took it very seriously. Even though they considered themselves Modern Orthodox and not Chabad, nevertheless, because the Rebbe said so, they decided they had to do it.

Up to this point, no one in our family had met the Rebbe, and it was decided that we would all fly to New York and approach him on a Sunday when he typically handed out dollar bills for people to donate to charity. (more…)