I connected with Lubavitch early on in life, when I enrolled in the Chabad Yeshiva College in Melbourne and I kept the connection even after I moved on to other schooling. . And, after university, I went to work for Lubavitch, running the youth organization in Australia, Tzeirei Agudas Chabad.

My first personal encounter with the Rebbe took place in 1974, when I was 21. I was among a group of young men from Australia who came to New York, and I got to see him privately for a few minutes. Walking in, I handed him a note with my name on it, but instead of writing my full Hebrew name, which is Raphael Yonason, I just wrote Raphael. The Rebbe looked at the note and said, “You should make sure that you are called by the correct name.” How did the Rebbe know that this was not my correct name? I have no idea.

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During that same audience, I had asked the Rebbe for blessing for two boys I had been working with. I gave him no other information than their names, but the Rebbe took the time to offer advice. One of the boys had lost his father, so the Rebbe told me that he should strengthen his relationship with his mother and, as for the other, that he would grow out of his wild streak – that his wildness was not necessarily a bad thing, rather he should make sure to channel it towards the right things.

After that he asked me how things were going in Australia, and I complained to him how hard it was to operate the so-called “mitzvah tanks” in Melbourne, where I was trying to do it. The “mitzvah tanks” were vans which went around Jewish neighborhoods playing music through loud speakers and urging Jewish women to light Shabbat candles and Jewish men to put on tefillin. Some people found them offensive, and there was a lot of local opposition to them.

After hearing me out, the Rebbe said, “Not everything which is done in America must be done in Australia.” He explained that in America, the focus is generally on the numbers; the quantity. But in Australia, people require a more individualistic approach.

“So I shouldn’t do it in Australia?” I asked.

“No, you should do it in Australia,” the Rebbe responded. “But you need to find a way to do it more quietly, without arousing opposition.”

And then the Rebbe said, “It is similar to how one can focus on the commandment ‘to love their fellow Jew’. There are some who fulfill it in a general sense, by opening organizations and so on. Others fulfill it by forming relationships; your task is to focus on loving every Jew individually. And I give you a blessing to succeed at loving every Jew individually.”

I took this blessing as my personal mission statement in life. And once I had my priorities in order, I did succeed with the “mitzvah tanks,” toning them down a bit until people got used to them. (more…)

I grew up in New York in a secular family, receiving almost no Jewish education. I became a nurse, married a doctor – a plastic surgeon like my father – and eventually moved to Hollywood, Florida, where we raised our family.

Our involvement with Judaism started through my son, Kenny, who was befriended by Chabad chasidim while attending the local Hebrew Academy. They invited him to spend Shabbat at the Landow Yeshiva in Miami Beach, and he ended up enrolling there.

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Naturally, before we allowed him to do this, my husband and I went to check out the place and we got to know Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar, the Chabad emissary there, and the other Chabad emissaries there. They made a wonderful impression on us, and that’s how we were inspired to take our first steps toward Torah observance as a family.

Shortly thereafter, we decided to travel to Crown Heights to meet the Rebbe. It was an amazing experience which I lack the words to describe. We felt we were in the presence of a very great, very holy man, who made us feel most welcome.

I recall in that first audience telling the Rebbe that my husband and I were leading a very busy social life, yet that I felt empty inside.

He looked at me and said, “But you are Jewish. You have your religion.” And I understood that I should become more involved in Judaism – that this is what was lacking in my life. I had not figured this out for myself until the Rebbe pointed it out to me.

As well, in that first audience, I asked the Rebbe’s advice concerning my children’s health. They had come down with colds while we were visiting in New York, and being a nurse I was able to detect symptoms which suggested that they had caught the croup. I said to the Rebbe, “I am worried that this is serious. Do you think I should take them to the hospital?”

“No, you don’t have to,” he responded, “Just take them home and give them tea with sugar.”

I was very relieved and very happy that I didn’t have to take them to the hospital. I started to give them tea with sugar, but my husband was not sure. So he took one of the boys to a local pediatrician to ask if antibiotics should be prescribed. But the pediatrician said, “No, just give him tea with honey.” And we were amazed that the Rebbe knew what to do just as well as the pediatrician.

After that first meeting with the Rebbe, we returned time and again to see him, as we became more religiously involved. In a subsequent audience, the Rebbe said to me, “Your husband is a plastic surgeon; he makes people beautiful on the outside. It should be your mission to make people beautiful on the inside.” (more…)

While I never had a chance to meet the Rebbe personally, he managed to have a strong impact on my life through various patients of mine. Of course, already when I was a child growing up in Petach Tikvah, I heard about the Rebbe. The local Chabad rabbi, Dovid Chanazin, who was married to my mother’s first cousin, was a frequent visitor in our home and, whenever he came, he spoke about the Rebbe. Later, when I married, I heard about him from my father-in-law, Rabbi Meir Schochetman, who studied with the Rebbe at the Sorbonne in Paris, and continued to maintain contact with him.

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But it was not until 1985, when I was a young and inexperienced doctor working at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center in the field of bone marrow transplantation, that I got to witness the power of the Rebbe’s blessings first hand.

One day we received a desperate call from a young man whose wife – a mother of two children – was diagnosed with leukemia. She had undergone treatment at a hospital in northern Israel, but to no avail. The cancer kept recurring and eventually turned more deadly, all the while causing greater damage to her body. Her doctors finally gave up, as they had exhausted all of the conventional means at their disposal. The woman’s husband, who was obviously very depressed because of the situation, happened to meet several Lubavitcher chasidim from Afula and told them about his wife. They explained to him that there was no reason for despair, and suggested that he write a letter to the Rebbe, which he did. In response, the Rebbe insisted that he turn to another hospital for help, adding his assurances that a remedy did exist.

Because of the Rebbe’s advice, this young husband called our department and, by Divine Providence, it was me who answered his call that day. After describing the cancer, the treatments and the subsequent failures, he told me that he was turning to us on the instruction of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This got me thinking and I decided that, despite the failures of the previous doctors to remedy the situation, I would have to find an avenue which nobody had considered earlier. I said, “Let me confer with my staff. Come with your wife tomorrow, and we will have an answer.”

After a brief discussion, the members of my staff all agreed that we would accept the patient and try different experimental treatments which had passed testing in the lab, but had never been tried on human beings.

After this information was passed on to the Rebbe, he responded, “May they have much success, and she should achieve a complete recovery.” Despite the slim chances of success, I was greatly encouraged by the Rebbe’s blessing. I felt this was an opportunity to sanctify G-d’s name and show how a person with no medical hope can recover with the help of a blessing. (more…)

My first encounter with the Rebbe – long before he became the Rebbe – was during a Sukkot gathering in 1941. He was speaking in the sukkah, though I don’t remember what about. But I do remember the dancing. At the time I was just a kid, twelve years old, and I was hanging around the edge of the crowd when, suddenly, I felt a hand pull me from behind. When I turned around  I saw it was the Rebbe – who urged me to join in the dancing, which I did.

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Over the next ten years, before he assumed leadership of Chabad Lubavitch, I had a chance to observe him many times from a youngster’s point of view. And what impressed me was how he related to his mother. She came to America in 1947, and I recall him walking with her, letting her arm rest on his arm as she climbed the stairs. This tender moment between them has stayed in my mind.

During the years I was a student in the Chabad yeshiva, many amazing things happened that demonstrated the power of the Rebbe’s blessings. I recall one particular incident that involved a distant relative.

On this occasion, my grandfather, Rabbi Yechiel Tarshish, had summoned me to East New York, where he lived, to show me a letter he had received from his nephew’s wife in Israel. She wrote that her husband, whose name was Menachem Mendel, the son of Chana, was experiencing terrible headaches. The doctors had determined that this was the result of an injury he received during the war. He had been captured by the Germans, and a soldier hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. He fell down and others carried him away. Somehow he survived, migrated to Israel after the war and got married there. But now he was having these blinding headaches and the doctors were recommending very risky surgery, which would either remedy the situation or send him into a vegetative state. My grandfather wanted me to ask for a blessing from the Rebbe.

I did; the Rebbe gave his blessing, and the operation was successful – everything turned out well.

Some time later, as I was walking out of the 770 Eastern Parkway and the Rebbe was coming in, he turned to me and asked, “What happened with Menachem Mendel ben Chana?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about; I had forgotten all about it. (more…)

I come from a Chabad family with roots in Russia and Germany, though by the time I was born in 1958, my parents were living in Crown Heights. When my mother was pregnant with me, she and my father came to see the Rebbe to ask for a blessing. At the time, it was the custom among some religious women to wear a partial wig covered with a kerchief. At the time the Rebbe had been campaigning that married women should cover their hair with a full sheitel (wig). When the Rebbe saw my mother he said to her, “A half a sheitel is a half a blessing, a whole sheitel is a whole blessing.”

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After blessing them, the Rebbe asked to see my father privately and when my mother had left the room, he opened a drawer and took out a sum of money. It was a pretty large sum for those days. He then instructed my father to go to Manhattan and find out where the Broadway actors buy their wigs and buy my mother the nicest sheitel he could find. That is just one instance of the Rebbe’s sensitivity and caring that my family experienced.

My father was in the business of buying and selling postal stamps. As a result he travelled a lot, especially to Central and South America, buying stamps there and selling them to collectors in Europe. And, as if the Rebbe didn’t have enough on his mind, he instructed his secretariat to save the foreign stamps from his incoming mail for my father. I recall my father peeling off these stamps from the envelopes and arranging them in special collectors’ albums.

On one occasion in 1972, while my father was preparing to travel to a number of foreign cities – including Managua, Nicaragua – he wrote out his whole three-week itinerary for the Rebbe, asking for a blessing for a safe trip. The Rebbe gave the blessing, but also told my father not to rush. Meaning the Rebbe was blessing him to go, but not just yet.

So my father postponed his trip. And on December 23rd there was a massive earthquake in Managua. 6,000 people were killed and 20,000 injured. Some of the people that my father was to meet did not survive. The destruction and loss of life was terrible, but my father was spared.

Six months later my father decided to try again, and he asked the Rebbe if he should go now. This time the Rebbe instructed him, “Check and see what the US State Department advises.” My father called the State Department, and they said, “The situation following the earthquake is very bad. We don’t recommend that American citizens travel there.” So he waited.

Another three months passed, and again he asked the Rebbe, who told him that this time it was okay to go, provided he made sure to be inoculated against malaria and other tropical diseases. (more…)

I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York. At that time, it was a Jewish shtetl in every way, full of first generation immigrants, who dressed, talked and behaved as they did in Europe. But observing them and learning from them proved to be extremely valuable to me, as I had contact with authentic Judaism from an early age.

My father was a student of the Chafetz Chaim in Radun, Poland, and he guided my Torah learning. He sent me to the Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Yeshiva (RIETS), where I received my rabbinic ordination, and where I studied with Rabbi Pelayah, Rabbi Belkin and Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik.

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While there I merited to meet Shifra, the daughter of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the top Torah authority in America, and we got married. A year later – in 1949 – I was offered a part-time job teaching at RIETS, and that’s where I have been ever since. Meanwhile, I also received a doctorate in microbiology from Columbia University, where I was also offered a part-time teaching job and eventually become the chairman of the department.

Now, because I was the son-in-law of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, I became the address for inquiries from various quarters; I was easier to reach than he was. Rabbi Hodakov, who was the secretary to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, would often call me to pass on messages, and I served as an intermediary, but I had no direct contact with the Rebbe.

One day I got a call – I believe it was sometime in 1970 – that the Rebbe wanted to see me. This audience lasted from midnight until seven in the morning, and much of that time we spent talking biology.

The Rebbe was well-versed in secular knowledge and he was up-to-date on the latest advances in science. I have to admit that he was even ahead of me when it came to physics, especially the subject of radioisotope dating of the age of the earth.

Of course, his opinion was that any data that seems to suggest the earth is older than 5,700 years old is only a test from G-d, period. He argued that the rate of decay changed at the time that the creation of the earth was completed and, therefore, scientists are making a mistake in assuming that the current rate of decay has remained the same. Of course, if the rate of decay by which we date uranium has altered over time, then this would have a huge impact on the scientific dating system.

During our conversation, the Rebbe proposed that I write a biology textbook which would be acceptable to the New York State Department of Education but which would skirt the whole issue of evolution. At that time, the study of evolution was mandatory, and students could not pass the Regents tests without answering questions about this subject. (more…)

My father came from a Lithuanian – that is, non-chasidic – background. He was born in England but was educated at the Mir Yeshiva in Russia, where he received rabbinic ordination. Upon returning to England, he worked as a communal rabbi in Manchester and in Glasgow, finally setting up a Jewish school of his own about fifty miles west of London.

This school was called Carmel College, and it was a Jewish high school for boys, the aim of which was to combine the best of a yeshivah education with the best of a secular education.

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At the time, the top high schools in England were Eton and Harrow, and most upwardly-mobile Jews in England felt that, if their children didn’t go to these schools, they wouldn’t be able to make it in English society. However, my father saw that Jewish children were losing their connection to Judaism in these schools, so he sought to offer an alternative. He wanted to establish a rival school that would not only offer the very best in secular education but also the very best in Jewish studies.

Early on, Carmel College did attract some exceptional pupils who helped it establish a phenomenal academic reputation, but the majority of the students came there because they hadn’t been able to get into the top English schools, and this was the next best thing. They were not religious and not interested in a religious education, an attitude which was not aided by their non-religious parents.

I myself attended Carmel College as a youngster but, at age 16, I was sent to yeshivah in Israel. While there, in 1961, I received a call with the terrible news that my father was gravely ill with leukemia, and I rushed home. Upon return, I found him dramatically changed – he was wearing chasidic garb, and I learned that he had recently been to see the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York.

When we had a chance to talk about it, my father told me about this visit and the great impression it made on him. He said he told the Rebbe that he wanted to be a chasid, but the Rebbe, praising his work with Carmel College, said, “I don’t want you to be my disciple, I want you to be my partner.”

Why did my father make such a dramatic turn at the end of his life? He said that he came to the conclusion that the Chabad Movement had been most successful in bringing the concept of Ahavat Yisrael – love among Jews – to the forefront of Jewish thought.

After my father passed away, I enrolled at Cambridge University, where I majored in philosophy but, when I finished my studies, I decided I wanted to be ordained as a rabbi, so I returned to Israel, this time attending the Mir, the same yeshiva that had ordained my father in Russia. (more…)

My ancestors were Chassidic Jews from Poland who immigrated to Israel where I was born and educated. I studied in religious as well as in secular schools, and graduated from Hadassah Medical School of Hebrew University in 1966.

After the death of Professor Chaim Sheba, with whom I worked for a number of years, I became the director of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer Hospital, the largest hospital in Israel with 1,700 beds, 7,000 employees and an annual budget of $600 million a year. In my capacity as director I came to the United States periodically, and on one such occasion in 1976, a friend invited me to a farbrengen.

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This proved quite an experience. It was Simchat Torah, and the farbrengen was attended by several thousand Chassidim, who were dancing and joyously celebrating the holiday. But when the Rebbe walked in, everyone stood still – you could hear a pin drop. The awe and reverence with which those present held the Rebbe was palable.

At some point during the night, I was introduced to the Rebbe, and he asked me why, in Israel, we called a hospital a beit holim, meaning “house of the sick.” He expressed the opinion that it should be called beit refuah “house of healing.” He then invited me for a discussion on the subject after the holiday.

This was arranged. The meeting proved very friendly. It wan’t a formal dialogue, rather a give-and-take between two people coming from different worlds and holding sometimes similar, sometimes contrasting points of view. The conversation was conducted in a mixture of languages – in Yiddish, which I spoke a little thanks to my grandmother, in English, but mostly in Hebrew.

In his remarks, I recall that the Rebbe put an emphasis on the soul as the source of a human being’s strength. He said that the stronger a person’s connection is to his soul, the better he can cope with life. And he pointed out that the function of the mitzvah of visiting the sick is to help the sick person strengthen that connection to his soul.

The Rebbe also voiced an opinion that every person has the responsibility to take care of their own health. Yes, doctors have a role to play, but the primary responsibility lies with the individual  Give a person the best doctor in the world, but someone who does not take care of himself, does not eat well, sleep enough or exercise enough will impair his health.

Today, there is a push in medicine toward “patient empowerment,” where we try to convince people that they must take responsibility for their health and not just rely on doctors. The Rebbe was speaking to me about this thirty years ago! It is interesting that, so many years ago, the Rebbe held was advocating this approach back then,  when no one was thinking about the issue. Today it may seem obvious, but it has only become a basic rule of medical thinking in more recent years – that preventive medicine requires the individual to take responsibility. The doctor can help, but he cannot replace the patient’s own effort. (more…)

It happened twenty-six years ago that my six-year-old son, Solly, got very sick with cancer and was cured thanks to the Rebbe’s advice.

At some point in 1986, I realized that my little boy was not doing well; he had been sick for one month straight and was not getting better. I kept taking him to local doctors – here in Sao Paulo, Brazil – but they saw nothing specifically wrong. However, my mother’s intuition kept telling me something was seriously amiss.

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Finally, I convinced a doctor to do a blood test, which showed he had anemia. The doctor prescribed vitamins but they didn’t help. Solly was constantly sleeping and listless. Again, I called the doctor, who ordered another type of blood test which showed that, in fact, my son had leukemia.

Naturally, my husband and I went into shock. Our friends urged us to seek medical advice in the United States where more advanced cancer treatment was available than in Brazil. So, two days after this terrible diagnosis, we got on a plane to New York. We went directly to the world famous Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital where we were met with a woman doctor, a specialist in leukemia who also happened to be Brazilian.

This doctor told us that Solly had developed the worst form of leukemia possible and was very sick. They would have to start chemotherapy immediately.

They did, but it didn’t work. There came a point where the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for him, and we should go back home.

When I heard that, I burst into tears. We had come to the best cancer hospital in New York, we were spending a thousand dollars a day on treatment, but nothing was helping my son. How could that be?

At the moment I asked this question, I realized something else. Up to this point, I had been relying on doctors and drugs instead of G-d. And that’s when – on the advice of the Chabad yeshivah students who had been visiting Solly in the hospital every day – I wrote to the Rebbe, telling him of my despair.

He answered right away, with one word – Bitachon – which means “Trust in G-d.”

That day I made a promise – to learn more Torah, to attend classes, to become strong in bitachon. And I began to feel a stronger connection to G-d. (more…)

My grandfather, the prominent Israeli rabbi, Shlomo Yosef Zevin, came from a Lubavitcher family. He was in constant contact with the Rebbe, and when I decided – in 1955 – to begin learning in the Chabad yeshivah in New York, he was delighted. (Previously I had studied at the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak.)

Obviously, one of the main attractions of studying in New York was the opportunity to spend time with the Rebbe. And, as it happened, during my stay I had the chance to speak with him privately on three separate occasions.

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The first audience included a lively discussion concerning my various Talmudic studies. My second audience was even more interesting. In middle of our conversation, he suddenly asked me, “What are you doing here in New York – doesn’t Jewish law prohibit a resident of Israel to leave for the Diaspora?”

I was a bit surprised by this question, as I had expected the Rebbe to know the three conditions which permit one to leave the Holy Land, but nonetheless I answered, “One may leave Israel for the sake of livelihood, to seek a wife or, as in my case, to study Torah.”

“Does that mean then,” he responded, “that before leaving Israel one must make a calculation – namely, that one would study more in the Diaspora than otherwise? And, having made that calculation, one need no longer think about it?”

He paused and then continued, “Or, does it mean that one must ask himself every day: ‘I am a resident of the Holy Land of Israel, what am I doing in New York?’ And every day one must be able to answer, ‘I have studied more today than I would have back home.’ Is that what one must do?”

I had never considered this question before, and I was most amazed. It was one of the many things that amazed me. Daily, I was amazed at how much the Rebbe demanded from his yeshivah students – that we should literally immerse ourselves in the study of Torah, that we should keep increasing in our studies, and that we should not be satisfied with our past achievements. But as demanding as he was, he also cared deeply about our welfare.

It was only after I had already left the yeshivah that I learned just how important my own welfare had been to him. For example, when I first arrived in New York, he had personally instructed his secretariat to see to it that I was properly settled in.

On another occasion, he took pains to pick me out of a crowd and write about me to my grandfather. On that occasion, during Simchat Torah, I was standing in a crush of chasidim. And then I saw the Rebbe, up on his podium, turn to confer with his secretary, Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov, who pointed me out to him. I wondered what the Rebbe might want with me, but it was not until I returned to Israel that I understood. That’s when I read a letter he had sent to my grandfather in which he wrote: (more…)