My name is Shmuel Levine. I was born in Germany after the war to Holocaust survivors, who migrated to the United States on the first day of spring in 1949. Although I don’t remember any of it, that’s what I’ve been told.

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What I do remember is that the Rebbe saved my father’s life. After the war, my father was a beaten-down man. We were living with my uncle in Worcester, Massachusetts. My father didn’t care about our surroundings at all – as long as there was a roof over our heads and food on the table, that was enough for him. He took whatever menial job did not require him to violate Shabbos. He worked as a tailor and as a presser; he didn’t care about the wage. But this lifestyle was all too depressing for my mother – she said, “I can’t live like this.”

So my father tried starting a business, but he had no confidence in himself whatsoever. He didn’t know what to do or where to turn. And then Rabbi Hirschel Fogelman who is a very dear friend and mentor, somebody that I revere, said to him, “Mr. Levine, you really need to see the Rebbe.”

Rabbi Fogelman arranged an audience with the Rebbe, and from that very first meeting, the Rebbe became like a father to my father. I guess that means the Rebbe became my Zeide.

I vividly remember that first meeting with the Rebbe, even though I was very young – only nine years old – and my brother was not yet three; he hadn’t yet had his first haircut. He had beautiful reddish-gold curly hair and a great smile. I remember my brother  literally climbing on the Rebbe’s lap – and the Rebbe smiling. (more…)

I come from Johannesburg, South Africa, where I have been in the insurance business since 1964, and where I first became involved with Chabad. Although I was not observant back then, Judaism mattered to me. When my wife and I got married in 1976, we decided to keep a kosher home.

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I first met the Rebbe in 1977. I had come to New York for a business conference organized by the insurance company which was employing me at the time. The company was dominated by Jews, none of whom was observant. And they’d scheduled the conference over Shabbat, just before Passover.

I participated in a part of the conference, but in middle I went off on my own. Instead of joining the others, I came to Brooklyn to see the Rebbe.

At the time, there was a possibility that the company would be sold. Like all the employees, I was unsure what to do if that happened. Should I stay or leave? This is what I wanted to ask the Rebbe.

I had never met the Rebbe before and, while I awaited my turn, I was a bit anxious. I didn’t know what to expect and what the outcome would be. I had written out my questions and given them to the Rebbe’s secretary.

My anxiety was further increased by the instructions I received: “A lot of people are waiting. Hand the Rebbe your letter, and don’t say anything. The Rebbe will respond to you. So as not to take up a lot of his time, speak only if the Rebbe asks you a specific question. (more…)

I first met the Rebbe in the early 1950s, shortly after he had assumed leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch and shortly after I was appointed chairman of the Israel Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America. In this capacity I was involved with issues affecting religious life in the State of Israel, which were of great interested to the Rebbe. And so, we frequently met  to discuss the highly controversial issues of the day, such as religious women serving in the IDF, the place of non-Jews in the Jewish state, how the state should define who is a Jew, and so on.

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Many a time, I came to see him at about midnight and left at four in the morning. During those meetings, it became apparent to me that the Rebbe had a tremendous amount of knowledge of what was going on in Israel, including many minute details. He knew who was who in the Knesset and in every one of its subcommittees. He knew of every government meeting on every subject, and who was against and or for a particular position. It was quite an experience to listen to him speak about government meetings as though he was there.

As well, he knew what was going on with Jews everywhere, whether in Arab countries,  Eastern European countries, South Africa, or North and South America. He had to know in order to send his emissaries to shore up Jewish communities all over the globe. As far as I’m concerned, he is the individual most responsible for the re-construction of Jewish life after the Holocaust.

His efforts earned him admiration from the most unexpected quarters. For one, I can testify that David Ben Gurion admired the Rebbe. In my conversations with Ben Gurion, he expressed the greatest admiration for the Rebbe’s knowledge, for the fact that the Rebbe had studied at the Sorbonne and was as well versed in the sciences as in Torah. This was unheard of in a chasidic Rebbe, and it impressed Ben Gurion to no end. (more…)

While I was studying in the Chabad Yeshiva in Brooklyn – where I had the merit to spend three-and-a-half years in the early 1980s – I made it a point of observing the Rebbe as much as possible. As a result, I saw and learned some amazing things. But nothing impressed me more than the Rebbe’s sensitivity and love for little children.

It was the Rebbe’s practice to visit the Ohel, the resting place of his father-in-law, the Previous Rebbe, on a bi-weekly basis. Whenever he went, he went alone. And he would take sacks full of letters sent by people asking for blessings – for health, for livelihood, for marriage, for family, for success. He would spend many hours praying and reading those letters. Often he would spend the whole afternoon there, coming back only before nightfall to join the minyan for prayers.

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The one time of the year when people would join the Rebbe at the Ohel was the day before Rosh Hashanah and, in 1982, I decided to go as well.

I got there early in the morning, just before the Rebbe arrived, and I picked a good spot to stand – as close as possible to the tziyun, the tomb itself – from where I could see the Rebbe clearly.

First he prayed; then he opened the huge sack that he had brought with him and started pulling out letters one by one. He would read each letter very quickly, tear it and let it fall onto the tziyun. He read hundreds of letters – one after the other, one after the other, reading each one, tearing it and letting it fall. After a while, it seemed as if a cascade of paper was falling, falling, falling onto the Tziyun.

Here he was, a man in his 80s, standing for hours on end, reading an endless stream of letters that contained all the troubles of so many Jews – letter after letter.

As I was watching him, he pulled out a packet of papers – not white like the other letters, but colorful, like drawing paper – and started reading these colorful letters just as he did the others. When he tore them and they were falling before my eyes, I recognized from the big square letters and fanciful decorations that they were from children in kindergarten. A teacher somewhere must have told the kids to request blessings for the New Year, and then sent all their scribblings in one packet. (more…)

When I was twenty-one and newly graduated from Yeshiva University, I decided to join a group of friends and spend the next year in Israel, learning Torah at Yeshivat Har Etzion.

Before leaving, I went to see the Rebbe to ask for a blessing, and during that audience I also asked his advice about what course my career should take. I was very interested in psychology, as my brother had taken that path, but I was also considering Jewish education because I loved teaching kids and I was successful doing that during my college years.

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I arrived early for my appointment – this was in the summer of 1974 – in order to recite some Psalms in the Chabad Beit Midrash as my preparation for the meeting with the Rebbe, which I took very seriously.

As I was doing that, I remembered stories I’d heard about the famed 15^th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, who could read people just by looking at their foreheads and knowing what they had done, both good and not so good. It occurred to me that the Rebbe might be able to do the same thing, and I began to tremble; I couldn’t stop trembling for several minutes. At that point, a thought entered my mind, “Why am I so concerned about what the Rebbe is going to think of me? Why am I not more concerned about what G-d thinks of me? Shouldn’t that be more important?”

I do believe that it was the Rebbe’s presence that led me to this understanding, and I felt grateful to him for the awe of G-d that he instilled in me at that moment.

When I saw the Rebbe in person, I discussed my career choices with him, and I asked what he thought of psychology versus education.

He was all for me going into education. He said that a psychologist often deals with emotional illness of some sort or another, but a teacher can prevent such illness. A Jewish teacher in particular is educating children in a healthy way of life, according to the Torah, which is the Tree of Life. (more…)

As a college student in the early 1960s, I had occasion to attend a psychology seminar in Bethel, Maine. Since kosher meat and bread would not be available, my mother prepared a large care package, including salami and some matzah. Fruits and vegetables I planned to purchase locally.

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When I arrived, I noticed that the majority of the three hundred participants were Jewish, but I was the only one with a yarmulke. Immediately, several students came over to ask me, “Where are you getting kosher food?”

I offered to share my salami with them, and together we figured out how to prepare our meals in the seminar’s kitchen.

Other students also came over to me to ask questions about Judaism. Although I was not brought up chasidic, I had admired Chabad’s outreach work among unaffiliated Jews and I had brought a packet of Chabad brochures with me. Within a couple of days, I had given them all out, so I wrote a letter to Rabbi Leibel Groner, the Rebbe’s secretary, requesting more. In my letter, I said that I’d been speaking with many Jewish students who had never seen an Orthodox Jew in their entire lives, and I expressed pessimism as to what effect I could possibly have on them since, once the seminar was over, they would return to their secular environments.

Rabbi Groner showed my letter to the Rebbe and, a short while later, he called me to convey the Rebbe’s message: “M’darf ton, der Aibershter vet upton – You need to do whatever you can. Leave the rest to G-d.” (more…)

In 1970, when my daughter was about two years old, she stuck a Q-tip into her ear and punctured a membrane, which caused a mastoid infection. We didn’t know what had happened until we saw pus coming out and realized that she was losing her hearing.

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She was operated on two times, but each time the surgery failed. We felt she was getting good care at the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham where we lived at the time; the doctors there were highly competent, but their efforts did not succeed. As they say in Yiddish, “S’iz nisht gegeingen – It just didn’t go.” The pus was still forming and draining from her ear. Needless to say, we were very worried.

So I decided to write to the Rebbe to ask for a blessing. A short while later, I got a call from Rabbi Leibel Groner, the Rebbe’s secretary, instructing me to check the mezuzah on the door of her bedroom. He also said that the Rebbe suggested that we consult a doctor who specialized in ear surgery down south, near where we lived. He didn’t give me a name or precise location, but said that, if I did a little research, I would find him easily.

In response, I told Rabbi Groner that I had checked every mezuzah in our house about four months ago, and they were fine. I asked if I should do all that again, or just check the one on the door of my daughter’s room. He said, “That you checked them before is not relevant. The Rebbe says to check this one mezuzah – where the child sleeps – so that’s what you have to do.”

When I got this call, it just so happened that one of the Rebbe’s emissaries – Yossi Gerlitzky, who is now a rabbi in Tel Aviv – was visiting my house. We had known each other since childhood. So I told him what Rabbi Groner had said, and we both removed the mezuzah from the door. (more…)

The story that I’m about to tell you took place in the early months of 1988. I was running the advertising department of 47th Street Photo, which was a half-a-billion dollar company at the time, considered the largest photography store for graphic equipment in the world. And it had one of the largest in-house advertising agencies in New York City. We would place hundreds of ads with the New York Times yearly, (at times spending in excess of $350,000 a month!) and, as a result, we had a great deal of clout with them.

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One day, I got a phone call from the owner of 47th Street Photo, Reb Chaim Yehuda Goldstein, asking me to assist Chabad Lubavitch with ad placement. He said, “Please help them out and make sure they get what they need. Whatever you can do will be appreciated.”

Almost immediately I got a call from the Chabad representative, Reb Yehoshua Metzger. He told me that the Rebbe’s birthday was approaching and Chabad would like to honor the Rebbe with a prominent, full page ad in the New York Times. Previously, their ads had gotten lost in the paper, and they wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen this time.

I immediately dispatched my people to speak with the New York Times editors, and we were successful in procuring premiere placement – the back page of a section of the paper at half the usual price! Instead of paying $25,000, Chabad paid $12,500 – a substantial savings.

I was thrilled, Reb Metzger was thrilled, and that was the start of a beautiful friendship between us. It was then that he asked if I would like to meet the Rebbe – he offered to arrange an audience for me and my family during the “Sunday dollars,” when the Rebbe would greet people and give each person a dollar to be given to charity. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, and of course, I didn’t hesitate to grab it. (more…)

I was born on Yom Kippur in 1938, in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan, Soviet Russia, where I was educated in Torah by underground Chabad teachers. At a time when the practice of Judaism was against the law, a Chabad chasid used to come to our home to teach us the basics, despite the danger of imprisonment.

In this oppressive environment, my parents tried their best to be Torah observant. Even after the war when we moved to Moscow, where Jewish life was even harder, they took great pains to keep kosher and, against all odds, they succeeded.

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I attended public school and I tried to avoid desecrating Shabbos as much as I could. Generally, this was not completely possible, though I managed to play hooky on the Jewish High Holidays. After that, in 1955, I went to university – the Moscow Conservatory of Music – to become a pianist, and I was arrested twice while trying to attend the great Moscow Choral Synagogue. I was questioned and held in jail a few days each time, but I suffered no further fallout from those incidents.

From that time on, I – along with the rest of my family – was actively trying to leave Russia. Finally, in 1970, a Chabad emissary went to the Rebbe in New York to ask for the Rebbe’s blessing that we get out. And less than a year later – at a time when this was near impossible! – we received the green light to go. As soon as we arrived in America, of course we came to see the Rebbe to express our gratitude.

That was the first time I participated in a farbrengen and saw thousands of Jews gathered together – something which was forbidden in Russia. It was amazing to hear the Rebbe speak and to see everyone so happy, singing with such joy. For me, it was an unbelievable experience. (more…)

I would like to tell a very beautiful and very moving story about my son, myself and the Rebbe.

When my son, Shmaryahu, was a baby, he was very sickly. He was feverish all the time. If someone sneezed three miles away, he would get a cold. He had almost no immunity, and his health was of great concern to me.

At fourteen months, he ended up in the hospital – Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles – and that was the first big scare I had with him. At that time, he was tested for cystic fibrosis, a horrible prospect for a mother to hear. The first set of tests was pointing that way, and I was really in a panic since cystic fibrosis can be hereditary and I was seven months pregnant with my second son. I started to get contractions just because of the stress.

We wrote to the Rebbe, asking for a blessing. And then the doctors did some more tests which showed that they had made a mistake. He did not have cystic fibrosis but a milk allergy.

When I heard that I was so happy and so thankful at this turn of events. For whatever reason, I had to go through that angst but, in the end, it was something very minor.

As time went by, Shmaryahu got stronger but he did not get much bigger. He was very tiny and was not growing as a child should. He was just very small compared to other children his age.

When he was five, my pediatrician – a very well-known doctor – said to me, “I’m going send you to the top endocrinologist in California. People come to him from all over the world. It’s very hard to get an appointment with this man, but I’ve arranged one for you. He doesn’t take any insurance. You have to pay up front – one thousand dollars for the visit.” (more…)