At a recent wedding of Danny Freundlich (a JEM staff member) to Chana Sara Newfield, the My Encounter team heard about an uncle and aunt of the groom that had an amazing story with the Rebbe in 1940. At the wedding, Rabbi Yechiel Cagen, director of the My Encounter project, introduced himself to Rabbi Shlomo and Faygie Levy, and asked about their story. Two days later an interview was setup in the My Encounter studio in Crown Heights.

Rabbi Shlomo Levy and Rabbi Yechiel Cagen

While in Nice, France, Faigy’s father, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Lieberman befriended the Rebbe and would often walk with the Rebbe to Shul. At that time, Southern France was ruled by the Vichy Government – a Nazi puppet government that was very anti-Semitic towards Jews. A law was enacted that every person must register with the new government and disclose his or her religion. It was a law to make it easier on the Nazis to locate every Jew.

Shortly after the rule was enacted, Rabbi Lieberman and the Rebbe went together to the government office to register.

Mrs. Faygie Levy in the My Encounter Studio

When the officer saw the Rebbe, he wrote down ‘religious’. When the Rebbe saw this, he insisted that they write ‘Religious Jew’. Rabbi Lieberman was amazed at the mesiros nefesh the Rebbe had to insist they write ‘Jew’. Now the Nazis could, G-d forbid, easily locate the Rebbe as a Jew.

Help with our goal of 100 interviews from now until 3 Tammuz. Join us for $1 per interview. www.dollarperinterview.com

Help us reach our goal with $1 per interview!

The My Encounter with the Rebbe project has taken it upon themselves the ambitious goal of conducting 100 new interviews from now until Gimmel Tammuz.

We are asking  for your help with getting this done by donating $1 (or $2, $5, $18, etc.) per interview. We average about 15 interviews a month. The goal is to accumulate enough funding per interview so that we can interview the critical interviewees on our list without holding back. We need to get it done quickly because, as you know, it is a race against time.

With your small donation of $1 per interview, we will be able to record these precious stories of our Rebbe and share them with the world. www.dollarperinterview.com

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In 1961, I had just started college, where I was studying to get a teaching degree, when I got engaged. I began to think that it was not worthwhile to continue with my education because it would take a few years before I could finish, and meanwhile, I had to make a living and support a wife. As well, a certain business proposition came up just then, and I decided maybe I should  take advantage of the opportunity. So I wrote to the Rebbe.

I told the Rebbe about my plans, and I asked for his blessing for going into business with my younger brother. The Rebbe responded with a lengthy and detailed letter giving business advice – what to watch out for and so forth – and he concluded with: “All the above applies to your brother. As for you, you should devote all your time and energy to the pursuit of Torah and general studies.”

I wrote back to the Rebbe quoting the Talmud, “Im ayn kemach ayn Torah – If there is no flour for bread, there is no Torah.”

In response, the Rebbe offered me a job at Chabad Headquarters, so that I would have an income and not have to quit college. The job was translating bulletins for the Lubavitch News Service and translating the Rebbe’s private correspondence. (more…)

My first meeting with the Rebbe is a blur.

I remember coming into Chabad Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. It was unlike anything that any nice Jewish boy like me, from a secular background, could ever imagine.

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What I especially remember out of this blur is standing in the midst of all this tumult in front of a man who had this big smile and this warm, amazing face and these incredible eyes that sparkled. He was warm and engaging, although he was the center of all this attention. I want to say that he was a “celebrity,” but I don’t think that’s right word, although in a sense he was that, and when I met him, coming from my world – the world of TV news – that’s how I perceived him.

That was the first time…

Another time that I met the Rebbe, my wife was pregnant and I remember asking him to give me a blessing that everything should go well with the pregnancy and with the child

He did. First, he gave me a dollar, and he said this was for success. And then he gave me two dollars, and he said this was for the children.

I didn’t understand why he gave me two. And only later did I learn that my wife was pregnant with twins. I didn’t know it at the time.

During the pregnancy, the doctors told us that one of the children was struggling with getting nutrition in the womb – he was much smaller than the other – and that they might have to do an emergency procedure. So I wrote to the Rebbe. (more…)

I was born and raised in Williamsburg. When I was a little girl my father was involved with “the Malachim,” an insular chasidic group. They were extremely preoccupied with modesty: The men never looked at women. I remember one of them eating a Shabbos meal at our house, and he covered his face with a napkin so that he wouldn’t have to look at my mother.

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Eventually my father left this group. I was a little girl when this happened, so I don’t know the reason, but he joined Chabad. And that’s when I discovered how differently the Rebbe related to girls and to women.

I remember one Shabbos – it would have been in 1954. The Rebbe had just completed a farbrengen – a chasidic gathering, where he would speak on Torah topics for several hours.

I was ten years old at the time, and I was standing near the door of the Rebbe’s study. As he walked out and saw me standing there. He stopped, turned to me, and asked: “Did you say L’chaim at the farbrengen?

“I did not,” I answered.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because a girl doesn’t say L’chaim,” I said.

“Why not?” he persisted. (more…)

In 1969, after qualifying to become an elementary school principal, I was given my assignment – and it proved to be in a high-crime neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.

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I didn’t know whether I should take it or not. I was apprehensive because it was the year after half of Chicago was burned down in the riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination. There was a lot of anger in the air, and a lot of anti-white anger. And here I would be replacing a black principal in a predominantly black school, at a time when only 8 out of 400 principals in the Chicago school system were African-American.

Was this a wise thing to do? I wasn’t sure, and so I decided to go to New York and get the Rebbe’s advice.

What happened in that audience with the Rebbe only intensified the awe and admiration I already had for him. It was a very special audience.

I asked the Rebbe a very serious question pertaining to my future: “Shall I accept this assignment in the heart of an African-American neighborhood or not?” But instead of answering me, the Rebbe responded with a question of his own: “Will Mayor Daley run for reelection?”

I didn’t understand what he meant – I didn’t see the connection to my question, but when he asked me this question a second time, I answered, “Yes, he will probably be mayor for the rest of his life.” I was speaking about Mayor Richard J. Daley, the father of the recent mayor of Chicago, who did in fact die in office after serving as mayor of the city for 21 years. (more…)

From time to time, since the early 1970s, whenever my husband would travel to New York, he always made it a point to request an audience with the Rebbe. On this particular occasion, he arrived a few days before Chanukah – the year was 1978. This was when my husband was working as chaplain at the Pretoria Central Prison, the biggest prison in South Africa where many Jews were imprisoned, a lot of them for their anti-apartheid views.

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As he later related to me, the Rebbe’s first question to him was, “What are you doing for the Jews confined in South African prisons?” My husband replied that he did what he could, although not much was permitted. He visited the prisoners regularly, brought them food parcels for Passover and Rosh Hashanah, and distributed prayer books. The Bible was the only book that the prisoners were allowed to have, and he would say to the prison wardens that the prayer book was “our Bible.”

“What about Chanukah candles?” the Rebbe asked.

“This would not be permitted,” my husband said.

But the Rebbe did not accept this answer: “Do you realize how much a little bit of light would mean to somebody incarcerated in a dark cell? How important it would be if they could light Chanukah candles? Can’t you arrange it?”

My husband promised that when he returned home, he’d try. “I will do my best to see that it’s done next year.” But again the Rebbe did not accept this answer:

“What about this year?”

My husband pointed out that he was in New York at the moment, far away from Pretoria and, besides, there was not enough time do anything. But the Rebbe simply said, “You can use the telephone. Make whatever phone calls you need, and see what you can arrange.” (more…)

My name is Dovid HaLevi Edelman, and I first came to Lubavitch in 1941, when I was sixteen years old – this was after I finished high school, the Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva in Baltimore.

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I was sent to study at the Chabad Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway by Rabbi Avraham Elya Axelrod of Baltimore who said to me and my friends, “My Rebbe started a yeshiva in New York. It’s a beautiful building, and you’ll have fresh food and everything good.” So, on his advice, we went there.

I knew nothing of chasidism, because I was coming from Baltimore, where there were no chasidim around. But when the Rebbe Rayatz came to America in 1940, his picture was in all the newspapers including the Baltimore Sun, and I happened to see the paper with the Rebbe’s picture. When I saw his regal countenance, I was just astonished. So I cut out that photo and put it on top of my bed, even though I didn’t know who the Rebbe was. And then, a year later I was going to his yeshiva.

I came on June 3^rd, that was the day after Shavuos, in 1941.

Thirty days later, there arrived the Rebbe’s son-in-law, who would become the future Rebbe. He walked in and I was on the committee that welcomed him to 770. We yeshiva students took one look at him, and we fell in love at first sight. And he loved us back. (more…)

In 1960, I began working for NASA as part of the Planetary Quarantine Division, which was then charged with trying to find life on Mars. The Rebbe was very, very interested in the work I was doing. When we first met, he asked me if I knew what the Baal Shem Tov, the 18^th century founder of the chasidic movement, meant when he spoke of Divine Providence.

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I said that I did. The principle of Divine Providence which the Baal Shem Tov taught is that nothing a Jew sees and hears is random. Rather, it is all designed by Heaven to bring you closer to Torah and to G-d. There is nothing wasted.

And the Rebbe said, “If this is true for everybody, how much more true is it for a person who is exploring the stratosphere, or searching for life on Mars, or working in a medical laboratory dealing with diseases, or traveling all over the world and meeting so many people.”

He went on, “You must have a wealth of stories and anecdotes and events and impressions – each one of which demonstrates Divine Providence. You should keep a journal of these stories and events, and then try to analyze them to see what is the lesson you can learn from these things. And if you can’t figure it out by yourself, then bring them to me and I’ll help you.”

I followed his advice. And today I have a journal with hundreds and hundreds of stories and events, and I plan, some day, to disseminate these stories to as many people as possible.

Back then – this was the early 1970s – when word got around that I was working with NASA and looking for life on Mars, some chasidic Jews would rebuke me. They said, “You mustn’t do that. It’s forbidden by Jewish law. You shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.” Since, at this point, I had already begun my journey to Jewish practice, their words caused me concern – was I doing something wrong? I didn’t know what to make of these statements. Rabbi Feller suggested that the next time I would meet with the Rebbe, I should ask the Rebbe if that was, in fact, true. (more…)

My family immigrated to Israel from Ksar Souk, Morocco. We are Sephardi Jews of rich ancestry and this is why, when I was about ten, I began to wonder about an unusual picture that would hang on the wall of our home. Our Sephardi neighbors typically decorated their walls with portraits of Sephardi tzadikim – usually arrayed in turbans and robes – but we had a picture of a bearded man in a black hat, a suit, and a tie.

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One time, I asked my mother about him, and she told me this story:

She told me that many years earlier, this was in the early 1950s, after the birth of my older brother Shmuel and sister Simcha, she became pregnant again. It was a normal pregnancy, nine months, and a normal birth in the local hospital. But a half-hour after the birth, the baby died.

When this happened the first time, the family was very upset, of course. When it happened a second time, they were shocked. But when it happened a third time, they began to panic.

And then, my mother became pregnant again. During the pregnancy, she consulted with specialists and with rabbis. The doctors said that there was no health problem – that this pregnancy was completely normal, just as the others had been, and that they had no idea at all what could be wrong. Then one of the rabbis in our city, Rabbi Rachamim Lasri – a relative of our family from whom I also learned aleph beis in school before I immigrated to Israel – suggested that she turn to the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

At that time the Rebbe’s name was famous throughout Morocco because of the emissaries he had sent, some of whom our family was acquainted with. So, it was decided that Rabbi Lasri should write to the Rebbe. (more…)