![]() ![]() Or, in the words of a popular athletic brand, “just do it.” The Rebbe applied this urgency and positivity to every hurdle that he and his community faced, including the challenge of healing from the most systemized genocide the world had ever seen. Chabad-Lubavitch shluchim outside of 770 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. ![]() For a man who had escaped some of the 20th century’s cruelest moments, he remained remarkably positive, and embodied the concept of l’chatchila ariber, or “leaping over obstacles.” He borrowed this precept from the Fourth Lubavitch Rebbe, who believed that if you encounter an obstacle, you shouldn’t try to go around it. Instead, he believed that the Jewish people boast an ancient heritage worth celebrating publicly. ![]() The Rebbe’s vision for Judaism wasn’t defined by a mentality of persecution. In the wake of the Holocaust, who could blame a traumatized community for wanting to band together in a safe location? But the Rebbe, who had lived through pogroms, revolutions, and Nazism, didn’t believe in hiding. “Don’t separate yourself from the community.” The prevailing wisdom on the importance of communal life had not changed since the first-century CE, when Hillel the Elder told us in the Mishna: al tifrosh min hatzibur. It’s difficult to exaggerate how radical this vision was in 1951. A menorah and a poster of the Rebbe greets ferry passengers outside of the terminal on Isla Mujares, Mexico. All that matters is that wherever you go, you must ensure that Jewish life can flourish. ![]() It doesn’t matter if they’re affiliated or unaffiliated, if they’re on college campuses or bustling cities or rural towns. But the Rebbe was a deeply practical thinker, so he included a blueprint for exactly how to put this love into practice: Get out of Crown Heights. One cannot differentiate between them, for they are of a single essence.” In other words, loving your neighbor is a Godly act - the same as loving God! “The three loves - love of G-d, love of Torah, and love of one’s fellow - are one. On January 17th, 1951– the night he officially assumed leadership of the Chabad movement - the newly-minted Rebbe unrolled his vision for world Jewry. It was there that the future Rebbe eventually became his father-in-law’s successor. In America, the couple settled in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the Sixth Rebbe had established the new Chabad headquarters. Many others in their family, including Rabbi Menachem Mendel’s brother and Chaya Mushka’s sister and brother-in-law, weren’t so lucky. The two men – one a Hasid, the other Modern Orthodox – maintained their lifelong friendship through the violent upheavals of the 20th century.Īs the Nazi threat engulfed Europe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel and his wife Chaya Mushka escaped to the United States by the skin of their teeth. Among his friends there was Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a towering figure in Modern Orthodox Judaism. The company he kept in his off-hours was no less luminous. When he wasn’t immersed in Jewish texts, the future Rebbe studied engineering in Berlin under two Nobel Prize winners – Walther Nernst and Erwin Schrodinger. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, 1880-1950, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. ![]()
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