Personal Encounters with the Rebbe

Dr. Velvel Greene was an original participant in NASA’s Exobiology program searching for life on Mars. The Rebbe used to ask him for regular reports on his scientific research.

Dr. Velvl Greene is Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology and Public Health at Ben Gurion University. An original participant in NASA’s Exobiology program, he served as Professor of Public Health and Microbiology at the University of Minnesota for 27 years.

Dr. David Luchins served on the staff of US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan for twenty years. He reveals the Rebbe’s influence in bringing down the Iron Curtain.

Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar is executive director of the Aleph Institute, which services the religious needs of Jewish men and women in prison. In 1985, they brought a group of prisoners to spend a weekend in Crown Heights, where they attended the Rebbe’s Shabbos Farbrengen.

In 1973, Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan was called upon by the Rebbe to help a teenager at risk. He shares a touching letter that the youth received from the Rebbe.

Former Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu shares some of the personal experiences he had with the Rebbe during his tenure as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

Mrs. Louise Hager was fourteen years-old when she first met the Rebbe's wife, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka. Over the years, she developed a close relationship with the Rebbetzin.

Dr. Susan Handelman is Professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Trying to decide on a topic for her doctoral thesis, she decided to ask the Rebbe’s opinion.

Mr. Aaron Noach Blasbalg was a member of the board of Poalei Agudat Israel for 25 years. He recalls a fascinating private audience he and his colleagues had with the Rebbe.

Dr. Susan Handelman is Professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel. While working on her PhD in 1977, she came to study in Crown Heights, with some suspicions as to what she would find to be the woman’s place in Chassidic life.

Efraim Steinmetz's father knew the Rebbe in Paris during the 1930s.

Rabbi Ephraim Sturm served as Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Council of Young Israel from 1956 to 1992. In the early 1960s, he read an alarming statistic about the assimilation rate of Jewish Orthodox students in American colleges.

Robert Steingut shares a heartwarming childhood account, of what it was like to be the Rebbe’s neighbor.

David Bezborodko was a businessman from a non-Chassidic family, who directed his family’s glass and mirror factory in Paris.

With Germany about to invade France, Asher Heber’s father was unsure whether to escape Paris with his family and leave behind their well-established life. When he consulted the Rebbe for his opinion, the Rebbe suggested some seemingly impossible advice...

Dr. David Luchins' family joined the Tzemach Tzedek Synagogue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, around 1910. In 1955, when the neighborhood changed, the property was sold for a large sum. The Rebbe was asked where the money should be spent.

After the first El Al plane was hijacked to Algiers, the story began to circulate of the Rebbe’s advice to Ariel Sharon not to board that flight. Rabbi Zev Segal decided to corroborate the story with the Rebbe himself.

Diane Abrams is an attorney in New York City. Like many before her, the Rebbe gave her a blessing for a child, and it was fulfilled. Like many before her, her meetings with the Rebbe broke many stereotypes and expectations.

Rabbi Chaim Ciment shares a few stories he heard from Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik about his days together with the Rebbe in Berlin.

Mrs. Danièle Gorlin Lassner’s parents and grandparents knew the Rebbe and Rebbetzin from Europe. On this occasion in 1987, she accompanied her parents to visit the Rebbetzin.

Dr. Yaacov Hanoka relates how the Rebbe guided him when he first left college and began studying in the Lubavitch Yeshivah

As a rabbinic student at 770, Rabbi Aaron Cousin joined his colleagues in working under the New York State "Released time" program, which allows Public School students to receive religious instruction.

Dr. David Luchins served on the staff of US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan for twenty years. In 1983, he attended a retirement party for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of Crown Heights, where she revealed the identity of a most important mentor.

Dr. Yitzchak Block is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. In the mid-1950s, he accompanied a group of college students to a private audience with the Rebbe.

Dov Zlotnik, Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, once delivered a sermon on the importance of Family Purity. As he was to discover, for the Rebbe, a good sermon requires a great ending…

Yitzchak Rabin was Prime Minister of Israel, and served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States in the early 1970s. In 1972, he was sent to convey Israel’s blessings to the Rebbe in honor of his 70th birthday.

Efraim Steinmetz is a businessman from Caracas, Venezuela. He and his wife came to the Rebbe with concerns about their children’s Jewish education. The Rebbe answered with a story from his own childhood.

While living in Berlin, the Rebbe made the acquaintance of a Jewish businessman named Yitzchok Meir Ferstenberg. Rabbi Chazkel Besser of Agudas Yisrael of America later heard these recollections from Yitzchok Meir.

Rabbi Leibel Posner was a student at 770 during the 1940s, and would attend the Rebbe’s monthly Shabbos-Mevorchim Farbrengen. An illuminating lesson in the game of life.

Yona Kese grew up in Dnepropetrovsk at the same time the Rebbe was there. He was a writer, who later became a member in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset.

In 1927, the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, was arrested in Leningrad for counterrevolutionary activity – spreading religion. Shortly thereafter Rabbi Menachem Mendel, his son-in-law to be, was forced into hiding. Shaar Yashuv Cohen is the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Israel.

In 1909, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, Rebbetzin Chana and their three sons moved to Dnepropetrovsk, a huge military city 520 kilometers from Kiev, where Rabbi Levi Yitzchok became the rabbi of the city’s 25 synagogues and 50,000 Jews. He turned to Rabbi Zalman Vilenkin, asking him to teach his sons. Chana Shapiro is Rabbi Vilenkin’s daughter, recalling her parents’ descriptions of the children in their home.

Rabbi Zalman Posner was a young yeshivah student when the Rebbe arrived in the United States in 1941. He describes an event early in the Rebbe’s presence on these shores, which was truly characteristic of the Rebbe.

Rabbi Yochanan Gordon traveled from Dokshitz, Russia, to the Rebbe’s wedding in Warsaw. His son, Rabbi Yisroel Gordon, recalls his father’s reports of the wedding.

Every year, from Berlin, and later from Paris, the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin would visit her father, the Previous Rebbe, for the festive month of Tishrei. Rabbi Moshe Gerlitzky was a student in the Lubavitch Yeshiva at that time.

Surrounded by original paintings and bas-relief mosaics, long-white-bearded Michoel Muchnik was working on a 3D mosaic of Shabbat and holiday candlesticks when I arrived at his Brooklyn studio.

The former chief rabbi of Israel describes the passing of the Rebbe, of righteous memory, and his flight in from Israel for the burial.

The former chief rabbi of Israel describes a meeting of Israeli political leftists and how his visit to the Former Soviet Union tens of years later proved their prediction to be correct.

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel, describes his first audience with the Rebbe, wherein the Rebbe asked him why the citizens of Israel had not moved on from the one political party they had voted in to power for forty-four years, to another party.