Tag: Chabad

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), was one of the outstanding, if not the outstanding, Jewish leaders of the 20th century. Known simply as the Rebbe, what made him unique was his influence, his breadth of knowledge, both Jewish and secular, his wide-ranging interests, his welcoming of all kinds of Jews, and his ability to organize and spread Jewishness to all corners of the world.

Schneerson was born in Russia, when it was still under czarist domination, and was educated both there and at the University of Berlin, where he met and befriended Rabbi Dov Ber Soloveitchik, another noted Jewish leader and teacher of the 20th century. (Just as Soloveitchik was known simply as the Rov, so the head of Lubavitch was known simply as der Rebbe.) Schneerson also studied mechanics and electrical engineering at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

In Dear Rebbe (Hasidic Archives, 2019), a meticulously researched and continuously fascinating book, edited and compiled by Dovid Zaklikowski, we have stories and letters to and from the Rebbe with three internationally renowned artists, Jewish to the core – opera singer Jan Peerce, sculptor Jacques Lipschitz, Yiddish poet and novelist Chaim Grade – as well as businessman and philanthropist David Chase, not as well known as the previous three.

These chapters are preceded by an illuminating 30-page prologue that offers a lucid introduction to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and his accomplishments. The following lines simply and directly depict his view of Jews: “The Rebbe’s openness to engagement with secular Jews was such that he spurned what he saw as artificial distinctions between the observant and the non-observant. In his view, every Jew is indispensible to the nation as a whole, entitled to a community that will support them and connect them to their heritage.”

The book also contains extensive notes, a glossary, and several pages of bibliography.

Lipschitz (1891-1973) came from a traditional family in Lithuania but, encouraged by his mother, moved to Paris in 1909 to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. There, he met other artists who, like him, would achieve international renown: Marc Chagall, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani.

When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Lipschitz and his wife successfully escaped and made their way to the United States. During a visit to the Rebbe at Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, the Rebbe told the sculptor to put on tefillin daily, which Lipschitz continued to do to the end of his life. The gatherings that Lipschitz attended, known as farbrengen, which were presided over by the Rebbe, made a great impression on the artist and he saw how thousands were inspired by the Rebbe’s remarks.

When Lipschitz was commissioned to create a Christian sculpture for a church, he told the church official that he would agree only if some words about his Jewishness would be inscribed at the bottom of the statue. The words read: “Jacob Lipschitz, Jew, faithful to the religion of his ancestors.”

After his death in Milan, the sculptor left his Italian property to Chabad to be used as an overnight camp. Lipschitz was buried in Jerusalem.

Peerce, the great Metropolitan Opera tenor, who not only starred in dozens of operas at the Met but also recorded classic Yiddish folksongs, is the next artist featured in the book. Peerce came from a traditional Jewish home and was thoroughly familiar with Jewish liturgy – to the extent that he was able to make a record entitled Cantorial Masterpieces, which he presented as a gift to the Rebbe.

In a little Yiddish bulletin issued by the Horodetz Society in the United States in the 1940s (Horodetz, in Belarus, or White Russia, is where Peerce’s parents came from), I read that a cantor in the Horodetz shul in New York gave little Jan his first singing lessons, and Jan would sing with him during the High Holy Days. “Pinkie [Jan’s nickname] is still drawn to lead prayers in shul….”

Peerce’s solo singing as a youngster at Radio City Music Hall attracted the attention of the great conductor Arturo Toscanini, who hired Peerce to sing with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Although Peerce would perform on the Sabbath, he put on tefillin daily, prayed, and always kept kosher. After an illness, Peerce and his wife drew closer to Lubavitch. In fact, in one letter to the Rebbe, Peerce’s wife wrote: “Jan and I have become staunch Chassidim of Lubavitch, more so than ever before.” And, although he had not formally joined the movement, Peerce himself would tell people, “I am a Lubavitcher.”

Peerce began singing at Chabad benefit events in the United States and Canada. Once he discovered the wordless niggunim (melodies), he called them a revelation. In a letter to the tenor, the Rebbe wrote, “Hasidic song and melody inspires one’s whole being … that’s why they occupy such an important place in Hasidic life and in Jewish life in general.”

When, late in his life, Peerce decided to stop making records, the Rebbe urged him to continue, saying that new records would increase demand for his public performances.

After Peerce died, the music commentator Martin Bookspan recalled the thrill of hearing the singer making Kiddush in his home on Friday evening. A Chabad rabbi whom the tenor had befriended said: “Song is the pen of the soul, and Jan Peerce wrote the most beautiful things with that pen.”

An equally large chapter is devoted to Chase, who did not achieve the world renown of the other three men in this volume. Chase was a Holocaust survivor who immigrated as a youngster to the United States and became a very wealthy businessman, philanthropist and supporter of Lubavitch causes. It seems likely that he was chosen to be included in this book because he gave so much money to Chabad: he was responsible for the Chabad Rabbinical College in Morristown, N.J., and the enlargement of the Lubavitch headquarters on Eastern Parkway. Chase was not particularly observant but, when the Rebbe asked him for a birthday gift – to put on tefillin every day – Chase consented.

A survivor of and escapee from Auschwitz, Chase, who was called one of the richest men in America, died in 2016 at age 86.

Of all the artists included in Dear Rebbe, the one with the most thorough grounding in Yiddishkeit was Grade (1910-1982). A master of Yiddish and Hebrew, Grade abandoned the traditional way of life as a young adult once he became involved with the secular writers of his generation.

Since I knew Grade well, having befriended him as his translator from Yiddish to English, the section in Dear Rebbe about him was particularly appealing.

I first learned of his link to Chabad and to the Rebbe when I visited Grade years ago in the Bronx a few days before Pesach. A moment after I came in, he showed me a big square flat white box. I realized at once it was a box of shmurah matzah.

“Guess who sent this to me?” Grade asked me in Yiddish.

“Tell me,” I said.

“The Rebbe’s personal shaliach [messenger],” Grade said proudly. “And he sends me a box of shmurah every erev Pesach.”

As far as I knew, the only holidays besides Pesach that Grade observed were Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But he continued his lifelong love of classical Jewish texts. Grade told me that he could read any holy book bareheaded. “But,” he said, “if I start reading a Talmud without a yarmulke, my head begins to burn.”

Of the Rebbe, Grade said, “He seeks to bring heaven closer to earth and earth closer to heaven.”

One page in the Grade section shows a photocopy of his handwritten Yiddish letter to the Rebbe: “To the dear Rebbe, who stands before my eyes and who also elevates my sparks that stumble blindly through the fog and are drawn to his light.”

Grade was once involved in a famous diplomatic problem that concerned his good friend, Zalman Shazar, then-president of Israel, and the Rebbe. In 1966, when Shazar was in New York, he wanted to visit the Rebbe in Brooklyn; Shazar’s family had strong links with Lubavitch back in Russia. But Israeli diplomats said it would be unbecoming for the president of Israel to call upon the Rebbe. If the Rebbe wanted to see Shazar, he should visit him at his hotel in New York. But it was known that the Rebbe never left 770 Eastern Parkway.

What to do? Shazar turned to Grade for advice. Grade said, “If you go against protocol and visit the Rebbe there will be a commotion, but it will quiet down. But, if you don’t go, there will be a commotion in you that will never quiet down.”

Of course, Shazar went, accompanied by Grade. It was then that the Rebbe told Grade that he had read his novel Tsemakh Atlas (called The Yeshivah in English translation), which was being serialized in a New York Yiddish daily. When Grade fell ill and couldn’t do his weekly instalments, the Rebbe noted this and wrote to him, wondering why, hoping he was well, and stating that he was looking forward to a continuation of the novel.

Weeks later, seeing that the serialization was continuing, the Rebbe wrote Grade that he’s glad to see that he is back at work, and that he is continuing to follow his writing in the Yiddish paper.

As secular as Grade was, he once tried to persuade a young Chabadnik who had doubts not to abandon his traditional way of life and “not to impoverish our Jewish nation with another Jew who has uprooted himself from our midst.”

Dear Rebbe, with lots of fascinating photographs, is a treasure of a book that will appeal to Jews of any religious shading. For all of us are, in the view of the Rebbe, tayere yidn, precious Jews.

Curt Leviant has translated four of Chaim Grade’s works, including his magnum opus, the two-volume The Yeshivah. Leviant is also the author of 10 novels, some of which have been translated into 10 foreign languages.