In the summer of 1968, the only Jewish girls’ high school in the Bronx closed. My parents, Rabbi Mordechai and Rachel Altein, who served as Chabad emissaries there since the 1940s, decided that my sister and I would attend the Chabad high school for girls, Beth Rivkah, and board with our grandparents in Crown Heights. To say the least, this option was definitely not my choice, but that is what we did.

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I had a lot of difficulty adjusting to a big boisterous school. It was hard to make friends, hard to “belong,” and hard to get used to the students’ behavior, which was very different from what I was accustomed to. I called home often to complain.

By the end of tenth grade, I had had enough and was determined to leave. My father decided to take me with him for a private audience with the Rebbe.

The Rebbe advised that I should not quit something in the middle and that I should stay in Beth Rivkah until the end of high school. I replied that I did not want to do that. But the Rebbe said that while he understood that I did not want to do it, that was what I had to do.

Looking back, I realize that the Rebbe was giving me two very important life lessons: When you start something, you have to see it through to the end. You have to finish and honor your commitment. Secondly, we do not always want to do what has to be done, but that is not a reason not to do it.

Once I got into twelfth grade, I was convinced that soon I would be out of my misery. I had many ideas of what I wanted to do next, including college, and any seminary besides Beth Rivkah.

I decided to write to the Rebbe, as my father had always told me to do, as a best friend and as a loving father. But the Rebbe did not answer my very long letter, in which I had literally poured out my heart and shared my dreams for the future. (more…)

The highlight of any young man’s life is, of course, his Bar Mitzvah. And for Lubavitch families in the sixties this also meant the opportunity to have a personal audience with the Rebbe. Additionally, there was a custom in those days, at the public farbrengen preceding the occasion, for the Bar Mitzvah boy to go over to the Rebbe with his father and receive a special blessing.

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My father, Rabbi J.J. Hecht, a devoted communal activist who worked for the Rebbe on a number of causes, was making a trip to Israel right before my Bar Mitzvah in 1967 – which happened to be just a few weeks before the Six Day War. When we approached the Rebbe at the preceding farbrengen, the Rebbe gave my father a bottle of spirits. “Since you are traveling to the Land of Israel,” the Rebbe told him, “I want you to spend Shabbat in Jerusalem and to lead the farbrengen there.” Before the Six Day War, Jerusalem was only partly under Jewish control, but the Rebbe wanted my father to bring this bottle there, to speak with the local chasidim and to inspire them.

Then, quoting a line from the Passover Haggadah, the Rebbe added a word of warning about the crowd my father would be facing: “But remember that over there, they fulfill the words ‘we are all wise, we are all understanding, we are all knowledgeable’…” The chasidim in Israel, in other words, had heard it all before, so inspiring them might prove to be a challenge.

Upon my father’s return, we were hoping to have a private audience with the Rebbe, but there was a problem. It was a Thursday, when the Rebbe would usually meet with people in the evenings, but because he was fasting – the Rebbe observed a series of fasts after every Passover and Sukkot – there weren’t going to be any audiences.

Fortunately, my father had some pull, and so he wrote a note to the Rebbe: “My son would very much like to have an audience before his Bar Mitzvah.” We were soon told that we could come to see the Rebbe before the evening service, but just me and my parents, so that it would be “without a commotion.”

Now, Bar Mitzvah boys traditionally deliver an in-depth discussion of some Talmudic issue, or a pilpul, at the celebration. And so, after we entered the Rebbe’s room together, the Rebbe asked me a few questions on my pilpul. Studying wasn’t my number one forte, but I had prepared well and had a good understanding of my subject, which was the various opinions on how the scriptural passages inside the tefillin are to be arranged. There is the pair of tefillin that all Jewish men put on, which follows the opinion of the sage Rashi, but then there are also versions that follow the views of Rabbeinu Tam, the Shimushah Rabbah, and Raavad. (more…)

When I was a young boy, Crown Heights was filled with all kinds of Jews. So even though I lived just a few blocks away from 770, I didn’t know much about Lubavitch or the Rebbe.

While attending medical school in Nashville, Tennessee, I met Rabbi Zalman Posner, the Chabad rabbi of the local Orthodox synagogue. He was the first rabbi I ever saw who would handle the questions people had about science and religion, the authenticity of Torah, our purpose in life, and so forth. In his speeches, he would also mention this rabbi in a “little building in Brooklyn” – the Rebbe.

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And so in 1970, when I moved back to New York with my family after finishing my military service – I was a physician and captain in the Air Force – Lubavitch was the Jewish group whose school we felt comfortable sending our children to. I was at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, first finishing my residency training and then studying pediatric cardiology, and so we sent our children to the nearby yeshivah run by Rabbi Mordechai Altein. We also hosted Torah classes in our home, made friends in the world of Lubavitch, and I even attended some of the Rebbe’s farbrengens. However, the first time I actually met him was in 1977.

It was the night of Shemini Atzeret, and our family was spending the holidays in Crown Heights for the first time. The synagogue was very crowded, and I was standing in the back, when suddenly there was screaming: “Everyone out! The Rebbe needs air!”

I took my children out, but realizing that the Rebbe was suffering a medical emergency, I headed back in. In those days, I was spending more time in intensive care units than at home, and I took my medical equipment everywhere; I was always prepared.

I wanted to help, but the chasidim weren’t allowing anyone near the Rebbe. Eventually, some people recognized me, and they let me through. By then, he was in his office, and I saw that he was pale and short of breath. The ten or twelve other physicians who were already there agreed that he had the symptoms of a heart attack. However, the Rebbe refused to go to a hospital for more intensive medical care, so most of the physicians left, aside from myself and three others. (more…)

In 1979, a couple of years after my wife and I got married, the Rebbe directed us to move to Jerusalem, where I was born, and where my parents still lived. He encouraged me to join my father’s accounting business, and a few months later I also began teaching chasidic thought in Toras Emes yeshivah, in the Chabad neighborhood of Jerusalem. The next year, we moved to the neighborhood of Givat Shaul.

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In 1985 we found that there was an old synagogue in the area that hadn’t seen a minyan for some three years and was now empty and locked. Together with some other young men in the area, we reopened the synagogue. We got the keys, cleaned it up, brought a Torah scroll and started regular services. Eventually it became “Merkaz Shneor,” the local Chabad synagogue for Givat Shaul and nearby Har Nof.

The Rebbe encouraged us quite a lot when I reported on all of this, and quite presciently: Almost as soon as we started, some thirty families moved into the neighborhood. Most had come from English-speaking countries and found themselves lost in Jerusalem. With classes and speeches offered in English as well as Hebrew, our synagogue was a lifesaver for them, and so our community grew.

The following summer, a local volunteer came to the synagogue together with his son. It was a Thursday afternoon and they were going to set up for Shabbat, but to their surprise, the door was wide open. Inside, they found a scene of destruction: Holy books thrown all over, the curtain of the Ark ripped, and a torn Torah scroll lying on the floor.

As we later learned from the police investigation, a young Arab man had broken in, apparently looking for money. Once he didn’t find any in the charity boxes, however, he decided to destroy whatever he could. He broke into the Ark, removed the Torah scroll and cut it with a knife.

The volunteer called me right away, and I called the authorities. The police came immediately, as did Mayor Teddy Kollek, and after him the city’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Yitzchak Kulitz. They wanted to see the disaster for themselves. All were shocked by what they saw. (more…)

After her family emigrated from Morocco, my mother was born in Montreal, where she was raised. Although they weren’t Torah-observant, they were traditional Sephardim, holding regular Shabbat meals and a Passover Seder.

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However, by the time she met my father, who had grown up in an observant, Yemenite family in Israel, she was living in New York and getting more connected with her Judaism. When they got married in 1987, they committed to leading a fully observant life together, settling in the Lubavitcher community of Crown Heights. Soon after, they were expecting their first child. It was all very exciting.

But then, early on in the pregnancy, my mother took the alpha-fetoprotein test to check for birth defects. The results were not good.

As the doctors explained, the levels of alpha-fetoprotein in her blood meant one of three things: The baby would have severe digestive issues, some kind of birth defect in the brain or spine, or Down’s syndrome. These outcomes were not presented to her as possibilities or even probabilities; it was definitive. And so, once they had received these results, my mother’s doctors were advising her to abort the baby.

By this time, my grandmother had come to Crown Heights to offer support. “You’re young,” she told her daughter. “How are you going to raise a special needs child? Whatever the doctors advise, that’s what we’re going to do.”

The thought of having a special needs child raised so many questions for my mother: Would she have to stop working? Would my father be able to earn enough on his own? What would it mean for their ability to have more children? (more…)

My wife Ruty and I got married in 1983, and after a few years went by without any children, it became obvious that there was an issue. This began our long struggle with infertility; private, painful, hard – and amazing.

At first we hoped that it could easily be fixed, but the doctor we went to gave us the bad news that it was not so simple. I needed to undergo a couple of surgical procedures, which the Rebbe encouraged, and even though the results were negative, his encouragement gave us the belief that it would all work out.

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At one point in this arduous journey, the Rebbe advised us to follow the counsel of “a doctor who is a friend,” and so we went to more doctors. We also tried various spiritual remedies, special food, and Kabbalistic prayers, but nothing seemed to work.

Once, I was complaining about all this to my father, Reb Berel Weiss, who had a very close relationship with the Rebbe, and he decided that we would make a special trip to New York to ask the Rebbe for another blessing for my wife and me. The holiday of Lag B’omer was coming up, and traditionally, on this auspicious day in particular, the Rebbes of Chabad would give blessings for couples to have children. There was also a large children’s parade being held that year, and my father had been asked to sponsor it.

And so, in 1990, we traveled together from Los Angeles, arriving on the morning of Lag B’omer. The parade, held in front of 770 and presided over by the Rebbe, was amazing, and when it was finished, he looked like he was in heaven. “You can’t approach the Rebbe right now,” one of his secretaries said. “It’s not an appropriate time.”

Shortly after, though, the Rebbe would be going to immerse in the mikveh, and so we stood in the driveway outside of 770, hoping to see him when he left.

When the time came and the Rebbe walked out, he went straight over to my father. “Did you get a medallion yet?” he asked.

That year, the Rebbe had given out a special commemorative coin in honor of Lag B’omer and by then we had already gone to his secretariat’s office to receive one. (more…)

Not long after moving to Miami to become the principal of the Oholei Torah school, in 1970, I began teaching a Tuesday night Torah class.

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One person who would attend and sometimes host this class was a local tennis champion named David Lifshultz. One day, David mentioned that he played a regular game with the owner of Kennedy and Cohen, a major regional retailer of large appliances. His name was Mel Landow.

“I would like to see if I could put on tefillin with him,” I told David.

David had his doubts over whether that could happen, but he told me when and where to catch Mel. I came to the tennis court and, between games, I interjected: “How about tefillin?”

Mel declined at first, but I proposed a bet: “If David wins the game, you put on tefillin.”

Along with being one of the great entrepreneurs of South Florida, Mel was an excellent tennis player, so he accepted.

“Dave, give us your best,” I cheered, and of course David beat him. Right after the game, Mel went with me to my car, where he put on tefillin. (more…)

In the summer of 1985, the Rebbe summoned the board of Agudas Chassidei Chabad, the Chabad movement’s umbrella organization, to his office. Among other matters, he had a request: The establishment of a new building in Kfar Chabad, Israel, to be named for the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. It was to serve as a center for prayer, Torah study, and the spreading of chasidic teachings.

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A couple of weeks later, during a public farbrengen for the 12th of Tammuz – the anniversary of the Previous Rebbe’s liberation from Soviet prison – the Rebbe spoke, for the first time in public, about a theft that had taken place at the Agudas Chassidei Chabad library, the central archive of the Lubavitch movement. Over a period of time, hundreds of  priceless books and other items had begun disappearing – taken, it later emerged, by the Previous Rebbe’s grandson.

The attempt by a private individual to lay claim to the Previous Rebbe’s library was a source of great pain to the Rebbe, who saw it as a spiritual attack on himself and the Chabad movement. And so over the next few years, alongside the legal response, he launched a spiritual campaign to avert this Heavenly decree. Practically, this meant expanding Chabad’s work of promoting Torah and mitzvot. Two days after that address, during an audience with a group of visitors, the Rebbe once again spoke about making a new building in Kfar Chabad. He even asked that a “property for the Previous Rebbe” be found that very day – as a rental, until construction could begin – in order to house the local Kollel, or advanced Torah institute, as well as a Torah library. It seemed that this building was part of the same spiritual campaign.

The Kfar Chabad village committee quickly convened to allocate a building, while they searched for a permanent site. Eventually, a suitable parcel of land was found on a hill near the village’s entrance that was still officially classified as agricultural land. Although rezoning normally takes years, the Rebbe insisted that no part of the construction could begin before the building permits were in place, so with the help of the relevant government offices, the entire process was completed within six months. The search for an architect, however, was already well underway – which is where I came into the picture.

For a chasidic architect, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Both excited and anxious about the responsibility, I submitted my candidacy, along with many other architects. Eventually, only two candidates remained: Myself and another Chabad chasid, Aryeh Yakont. (more…)

I grew up in a religious home, very distant from Chabad. But while studying at Jerusalem’s Kol Torah yeshivah in the 1960s, I began attending a secret class on chasidic thought, and as those teachings sank in, I started to get involved.

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From time to time, I would visit the yeshivah in Kfar Chabad to take part in farbrengens led by the renowned chasidic mentor Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Kesselman. Those gatherings made a strong impression on me, as did the yeshivah students themselves, who showed such love for their fellow Jews, especially in the way they welcomed us guests from other yeshivot.

Eventually, I began thinking about transferring to the Chabad yeshivah in Kfar Chabad. Aghast, my father sent several rabbis to dissuade me, which made me doubt whether it was the right decision. I decided to ask the Rebbe.

I wrote a detailed letter recounting all of this, and in his response, the Rebbe circled the part where I mentioned my doubts and wrote: “Based on this – stay and do not change.”

It was precisely those words that ultimately prompted me to transfer. I realized – contrary to what others had claimed – that the Rebbe wasn’t bent on bringing people into Chabad at any cost. He actually cared and thought about me. If I had doubts, regardless of their origin or validity, he preferred that I not make the move. So I stayed, until eventually, I felt confident that transferring was right for me. When I wrote to the Rebbe to say that my doubts had disappeared, I received his blessing to go to Kfar Chabad.

A few years later, I went to study in the Rebbe’s presence, in New York. I arrived in 770 one afternoon before Passover of 1973, shortly before the Mincha prayers. A few months earlier, my mother had passed (more…)