The 20th of Av (corresponding this year to August 7) marks 79 years since the passing of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson (1878-1944), father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was a renowned scholar who served as the chief rabbi of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine) for thirty-two years, until he was arrested by Soviet authorities and interrogated for his activism on behalf of the Jewish community. He was sentenced to five years of exile and sent to Chi’ili, Kazakhstan, in the remote Aqtobe region in Central Asia. His wife, Rebbetzin Chana, followed him there soon after, and even here, the couple found ways to help, sustain and inspire Jews in distress and need.
The handwritten notes on this page were made with ink derived from berries.
After serving his term, now physically weakened by the hardship of his exile, the Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and his wife moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where his health continued to deteriorate. He passed away shortly thereafter.
While in exile, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak wrote voluminous notes of his own commentary on themes in Torah, most of them esoteric, Kabbalistic. With little provision of paper and no ink, he wrote most of his notes in the margins of books, using ink that his wife made from locally grown berries. His legacy lives on in his surviving works, which were eventually published into a five-volume set entitled Likkutei Levi Yitzchak.
To study Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s works, now published in English, view this link.
THE KEREN LEVI YITZCHAK FUND
Established by the Rebbe in 1964 in honor of his father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, the fund provides short term loans to educational institutions and school teachers.
In a unique cultural phenomenon, an outsize percentage of Deadheads — fans of the Grateful Dead band — are Jewish, and when Phish did a three-day run in Alpharetta, Georgia recently, those fans found a warm welcome and an opportunity to turn their experience into one that was spiritually uplifting.
Outside of Grateful Dead-adjacent concerts an impromptu vending area called Shakedown Street often springs up, and Rabbi Noah Pawliger realized that here was a unique opportunity to offer opportunities for mitzvahs.
“The Rebbe spoke about the tremendous potential in hippies, as they don’t accept the status quo, and that they can be the agents for positive change,” Pawliger — who runs an organization aiding neurodiverse children in the Atlanta area — said. “My meeting with these unique fans has taught me that there’s potential for good everywhere you go — ‘you just gotta poke around.’”
Following the footsteps of legendary campus shliach Rabbi Nosson Gurary, Pawliger hand-wrote a few signs reading “Free P.O.T. and L.S.D.” with an asterisk explaining that this was an acronym for “Put On Tefillin and Let’s Start Davening (praying).” He began by simply walking up to Shakedown Street outside Phish or Dead and Co. concerts, toting his homemade signs, a pair of tefillin, and Shabbat candles.
The overwhelmingly positive response inspired him to expand, and this year, Pawliger came prepared with a tent, a folding table, and more handwritten signs. In keeping with the spirit of giving and the impromptu vendors selling “hippie food,” as Pawliger put it, he also brought a griddle, loaves of bread, and Chalav Yisrael cheese, offering grilled cheese sandwiches for the price of a dollar or a mitzvah.
They brought — and distributed — 90 Shabbat Candle kits homemade by Pawliger’s daughter and festooned with lyrics to make a spiritual point. “The light is growing brighter now,” the Shabbat candle kits read. “One way or another, the darkness got to give.”
Pawliger also invited fellow lay people as well as local Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries to join in the mitzvah efforts, and a number of them did so, putting on tefillin and sharing the opportunity to do mitzvot with concertgoers.
“The fans have this wonderful spirit of connectivity; people sharing with each other and greeting each other as if they’re family,” Pawliger said. “And during the Year of Hakhel, how apropos to channel that spirit of connectivity to Jewish growth.”
Summer festivals have been in the Chabad wheelhouse for years, but they are new and especially exciting for the smaller, more isolated Jewish communities that have recently become home to their own Chabad centers.
With the opening this past spring of Chabad of Laramie, the campus town now has a Chabad House as well, and the Cowboy State’s 1500 Jews have two Chabad centers to serve their spiritual needs.
Today, on the Jewish calendar, marks the 95th anniversary of the miraculous liberation of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, from Soviet prison.
When a Jewish U.S. Merchant Marine midshipman found herself stranded in Portland, Oregon, thousands of miles from home, she knew where to find kosher food, Shabbat services, and a warm welcome.
Midshipman Abigail Edelman, who is in her third year at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, was assigned—as are all prospective Merchant Marine officers—to spend time on a U.S.-flagged vessel to “learn the ropes.” In Edelman’s case, her vessel was USAV Essayons, a hopper dredge belonging to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose primary mission is to maintain the channels and harbors at ports up and down the West Coast.
Edelman, who grew up in Windham, Connecticut, connected with Chabad in high school. She was a regular at CTeen of Eastern Connecticut.
“Abigail was one of the first CTeen Leaders of our chapter,” recalls Rabbi Aizik Schwei . After participating at a Shabbat weekend in Crown Heights, she was taken by the sense of community and belonging. “I met so many people at the Shabbaton,” she told Lubavitch.com. “It made me realize that regardless of where you live in the world, the Jewish community is one big family.
Edelman leaned on that family throughout the grueling years of study and training at the USMMA on Long Island, New York, often visiting the nearby Chabad of Great Neck.
The required “Sea Year” posed a new set of challenges. “I try to keep Shabbat and kosher aboard ship as much as possible, but it can be very challenging,” she explained. She was determined to avoid eating non-kosher meat, but having kosher meat shipped to the Essayons while underway at sea was nearly impossible. So she sometimes went a month at a time without, while still maintaining grueling 10-hour shifts at the helm of the vessel.
While underway in the Pacific not far from Portland, the forty-year-old Essayons developed mechanical issues involving its propeller shaft that required repair, forcing it to dock at the Port of Portland.
Stranded thousands of miles from home and yearning for a hot kosher meal and Shabbat services, Edelman found Chabad in Southwest Portland where she joined Shabbat services and met Rabbi Chayim and Simi Mishulovin of Chabad of Portland and took their invitation to join them for Shabbat lunch at their home, following the kiddush. “It’s wonderful to see how important Judaism, keeping kosher, and attending shul is to her, regardless of where in the world she is,” said Rabbi Mishulovin.
Edelman has been back to visit the Mishulovin family several times since that first Shabbat. “It’s really nice knowing that there’s a community around the world,” Edelman told Lubavitch.com. “Wherever I go, I know there’s always a Chabad family where I feel welcome.”
While Essayons continues to languish at the Port of Portland under repair, Edelman will finally be moving on, as she was recently transferred to a roll-on, roll-off cargo ship carrying vehicles, where she will resume her routine as perhaps the only Shabbat- and kosher-observant Merchant Marine midshipman aboard an oceangoing ship.
But for a few short days in Portland, Edelman was able to enjoy the warmth and light of Jewish family and communal life, thanks to Chabad. “I’m excited to get going again, but it was a nice break,” Edelman said. “It’s so nice to be able to get a taste of home.”
WARSAW – Following the breach of the Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine earlier this week, Ukrainian Jews are boarding buses and fleeing the country towards Poland. Chabad of Poland is preparing to receive and shelter the group in Warsaw. The buses are expected to arrive just hours before Shabbos begins.
While the flooding is damaging homes and wreaking havoc on critical infrastructure, it’s also creating an environmental crisis that the war-torn region is already struggling to manage. Late Wednesday the Ukrainian authorities urged locals to only drink bottled water and avoid eating fish from the river. Both sides of the conflict have warned that minefields were likely flooded and have cautioned that landmines may have moved due to the floods. Nuclear watchdogs are worried that Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, which relies on the dam, is at risk of possible meltdown, further imperiling those living and working in the area.
“Because of the war, our brothers and sisters in the Kherson Oblast area have already lost so much,” said Chabad of Poland Director Rabbi Sholom Ber Stambler. “We must do everything possible to help them during this difficult time and ensure that they don’t also lose their hope.”
Since the start of the Russian incursion into Ukraine, Chabad of Poland has been on the front lines, helping Jewish Ukrainian refugees resettle in Poland and serving as a spiritual waypoint for those resettling in Israel and other nations. Throughout their time in Poland, Chabad’s locally based emissaries have provided Ukrainian Jewish refugees with shelter, food, and religious services to those in need.
“Our team is already at work procuring the necessary food, accommodations, clothing and other staples to ensure the highest possible level of dignity and comfort for those en route from Ukraine,” said Chabad of Poland Co-Director Rabbi Mayer Stambler. “So many generous donors from across the Jewish world have already extended their offer of support for this group, and we’re working to ensure that the group is cared for upon their arrival.”
For more information or to contribute to relief efforts, please visit: www.saveajew.org.
As bank closures swept across the country in late March, a shuttered Bank of America building in Clearwater, Florida, found new life as a vibrant Chabad center.
Rabbi Levi & Miriam Hodakov, directors of Chabad of Clearwater, had been eyeing the property since June 2021. Situated in a prime location on a bustling street corner that attracts thousands of passing cars on a regular basis, it would be an ideal space to host Chabad’s expanding activities and community needs.
Chabad of Clearwater has been around the block before in its search for a suitable space. In 2017, with the generous support of donors Moris & Lillian Tabacinic and Marvin & Linda Feldman, they purchased a neighboring lot, and broke ground on construction in October 2019. But with the onset of the pandemic, the project faced setbacks and plans came to a halt. “We were left spinning our wheels, trying to figure out what to do,” says Rabbi Hodakov.
The Hodakovs and their community members continued to look into other options, and from time to time, the rabbi inquired with Bank of America’s transaction manager for updates on the status of the building, but each time the answer was the same: The bank was not for sale.
Signs from Above
Until it was. In March 2022, the bank announced permanent closure. Sofie Menachem, a realtor and close friend of the family who had been an integral part of the property search, put the rabbi in touch with a commercial broker in her office.
When the building was finally listed and a public bidding process was initiated, members of the Clearwater community and beyond signed a petition to encourage the bank to sell to the Chabad center. Frank Hibbard, then-mayor of Clearwater, also wrote a letter on behalf of Chabad.
During this time period, Rabbi Hodakov received a call from a chaplain at a local hospital requesting his presence. A deteriorating patient wanted a rabbi to come say prayers with her. To his surprise, the patient’s son turned out to be Louis Fanelli, whose wife, Susann, had served as the former manager of the bank. Rabbi Hodakov and the Fanellis made plans to stay in touch. A short while later, toward the end of January, Chabad of Clearwater received the good news: the bank was theirs.
Closing and Opening
Chabad closed on the property on the first day of the Hebrew month of Nissan. An auspicious date, explains the rabbi, for on this day, the Jewish people inaugurated the establishment of the mishkan (Tabernacle, or the roving sanctuary) in the desert. “It was the perfect day to set up our mishkan here in Clearwater.”
Rabbi Hodakov invited Susann and her husband to come tour the property with him after the closing. She showed him around the place she had known well for years. And then, inaugurating the new facility with a Jewish rite of passage, they celebrated an impromptu bar mitzvah. Louis stood inside the building and wrapped tefillin for the first time in his life. It was a special moment symbolic of the building’s transformation from a financial institution to a center of spiritual wealth.
A recent class in the new Chabad house
The wait for the building was long but worth it. “It was very exciting to spend our first Shabbat there,” Sofie says. “It was very emotional for me, since we had gone through such a long process to get there.”
At the community’s first Seder in the bank-turned-Chabad House, the children searched for the afikoman hidden in the vault that held over 800 safe deposit boxes. The boxes have since been removed and the vault will be repurposed for the Chabad center’s storage needs.
Some features of the bank will be reimagined. Hodakov hopes to convert the bank’s drive-through into an attraction unique to the Southern United States: a kosher drive-through selling everything from food to Judaica items.
Most of the space will be remodeled. “It is a shul, after all, and not a bank lobby,” Rabbi Hodakov laughs. “We are making plans for repainting, taking down the glass teller walls, and buying furnishings in anticipation of the grand opening at the end of the summer.”
The Hodakovs are also exploring the possibility of opening a full-service sit-down deli. They already run a grocery store, Clearwater Kosher, featuring imported kosher staples such as meat products, dairy items, and favorite Israeli snacks from bamba to bourekas.
Lead donors Marvin Feldman and his wife Linda, are thrilled with the outcome of their involvement. “The fact that one can be proud to walk around with a yarmulke on or to go out on the beach and light a public menorah is truly phenomenal,” Marvin says.
The year is 1948. Two Holocaust survivors run into each other on a Paris subway. Though each had assumed the other was killed in the Holocaust, they waste little time exchanging questions about wartime experiences or polite inquiries about the well-being of family and friends. Instead, the two fall back into an argument they had begun many years before, in the period preceding World War II. Both are graduates of the Novardok yeshiva in Lithuania, and their argument is intellectual, philosophical, and also deeply personal. They debate the question of how a Jew should relate to the world around them. One believes the world outside of Judaism is rich with insight and enlightenment. The other maintains that the Torah is the only source of meaning in this life, and all other endeavors amount to nothing but vanity and self-destruction.
Chaim Vilner, a left-leaning Yiddish writer, admires secular humanist attempts to reform and improve the world. When he was younger, he was a student of Mussar, a Jewish movement that pursues spiritual and ethical perfection. He studied at Novardok, an extreme outpost of the Mussar movement where students would willingly engage in seemingly humiliating, self-abnegating behavior in order to break free from the physical world. Nearly all of the world of Novardok was wiped out during the Holocaust, with few surviving adherents. Hersh Rasseyner, Vilner’s interlocutor, is one of them.
For Rasseyener, the only path towards moral improvement is through actions—the fulfillment of mitzvahs—and not through lofty philosophical abstraction. In Rasseyner’s view, all of the wisdom of Western Civilization amounts to very little. After all, it did nothing to forestall the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century. As he tells Vilner: “You thought the world was striving to become better, but you discovered that is was striving for our blood.”
The substance of this argument forms the bulk of the iconic Yiddish story, “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” first published by the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade (pronounced: grah-deh) in 1951. “My Quarrel” is a classic of Yiddish literature, due in large part to an early English translation by Milton Himmelfarb. This translation drew attention when it first appeared in Commentary Magazine in 1953. It was also canonized in Irving Howe’s famous anthology of Yiddish stories. Yet Himmelfarb’s elegant translation, accessible for an audience with minimal Jewish background, takes liberties with the original, downplaying many of Grade’s rabbinic or Jewish expressions, and even deleting some parts of the story entirely.
Chaim Grade meets with the local leadership of Kfar Chabad, Israel 1964
Enter Ruth Wisse, a scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literature, whose new translation of “The Quarrel” restores the Jewish texture of the debate while presenting a more complete version of the story. Wisse’s translation includes heretofore excluded passages, and also quotes many rabbinic phrases in their original Hebrew. The new edition, published by a partnership between Toby Press and the Tikvah Fund, even includes Grade’s original Yiddish text alongside the English. In doing so, this version highlights dimensions of Grade’s own Jewish identity that may have been less apparent in the story’s previous English incarnation.
Grade himself, in his biography and chosen profession, strongly resembles the maskil (enlightened) Vilner. He too spent time studying in Novardok and then abandoned the yeshiva, along with much of his religious observance—at least for a period of time. There are hints that the character Rasseyner is also based on a real acquaintance of Grade’s. Yet the story itself is remarkably even-handed, and one almost feels that, through Rasseyner, Grade allows himself to articulate certain truths that would have been unacceptable for him to express in his urbane literary milieu. This, in fact, is what makes the story so powerful and spiritual.
Rasseyner argues that the horrific experiences of anti-semitism during the Holocaust and throughout Jewish history prove that Jewish assimilation is doomed to fail. Even mild attempts at secularization, or moderation, of “lightening the burden” of Jewish tradition, are futile in Rasseyner’s view. As he says, “a half truth is no truth.” In keeping with Novardok’s tradition of strident rebuke, Rasseyner does not hesitate to attack Vilner’s sensibilities, his career, or even his personhood: “Instead of looking for solace in the Master of the World and in the Community of Israel,” Rasseyner says, “you’re looking for the glass splinters of your shattered dreams. And as little as you’ll have of the world to come, you have even less of this world.”
Chaim Grade’s letter to the Rebbe, dated the eve of Passover, 1976. Written in Yiddish rhyme, Grade is effusive in his praise of the Rebbe for—among other things—his impact on the Jewish people, and personally, “for drawing him [Grade] out of dark places.” He wishes the Rebbe long life at the helm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
One particularly illustrative section, which was excluded from the Himmelfarb translation and is restored by Wisse, involves the only additional character in the story—a student of Rasseyner’s named Yehoshua who happens to come upon Vilner and Rasseyner in the middle of their debate. Rasseyner saved Yehoshua in the concentration camps and nourished him back to life physically and also spiritually, through Torah learning. Though he’s initially respectful, Yehoshua turns critical and angry at the bareheaded Vilner for his life choices. In her introduction, Wisse suggests that Grade wrote Yehoshua as a critique of the ultra-Orthodox, especially when they lack maturity and perspective. Yet Yehoshua’s fiery presence in the story also reflects a different light on Rasseyner himself, who appears more gentle and mature by contrast.
Through Yehoshua’s moving account of how Rasseyner saved his life in a concentration camp, we see Rasseyner’s ideals in action. We are allowed to experience, and not just intellectually absorb, how for Rasseyner, religious fervor and human empathy go hand in hand. At one point in their conversation, Vilner asks Rasseyner if he remembered to daven Mincha, the afternoon prayer, that day. Rasseyner tells him that, even if he had not, “I wouldn’t have left you.” Rasseyner may be critical and even harsh, but he is as uncompromising in his concern for Vilner as he is in his religious principles.
Still, while Wisse’s translation makes Rasseyner’s arguments more sympathetic than ever, Vilner continues to voice his part. He does not refute Rasseyner point by point, but rather appeals to the logic of those same arguments to make his own case for tolerance and inclusiveness. Vilner counters that Rasseyner’s dismissal of secular, enlightened Jews is wrongheaded. Many of these ordinary assimilated Jews worked hard, tried to provide for and protect their families, and suffered in the catastrophes of the era just the same. Then Vilner extends a similar defense to the non-Jewish world, not the great artists and thinkers—who, he seems to implicitly cede to Rasseyner, did not do much to avert moral catastrophe—but two righteous gentiles, an elderly Pole and a Lithuanian, who quietly risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. “Where in your world,” Vilner asks Rasseyner, “is there a corner for these two old people?”
In the end, Vilner concludes that despite all the theological doubt and confusion wrought by the Holocaust and Communism, his love for his fellow Jews has become “more anxious and deeper.” While his quarrel with Rasseyner allows Vilner to clarify and outline everything that he objects to about religious Judaism, in the process of arguing he discovers that his affection for his fellow Jews has only strengthened despite, or perhaps as a result, of this extended debate. Vilner turns toward Rasseyner much in the way that Rasseyner turns toward him, and says, “I love you with all my soul.” Before they part, the supposedly secular Vilner tells Rasseyner, “I say to you as the Almighty said to the Jews assembled in Jerusalem on the Holy Days: ‘I want to be with you one day more, it is hard for me to part from you.’”
“My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner” reads less like a “war” and more like an attempt at integration. While the fiercely logical debate takes place between two Lithuanian yeshiva graduates with a high-level Talmudic background, there is something distinctly romantic, and one could also say Chasidic, about the holistic mode that the story and the arguers embrace at the end.
In her wonderful introduction to the story, Wisse recounts a debate over the translation of the story’s title, “Mein Krig Mit Hersh Rasseyner.” Should “Krig” be translated as the technically-correct “War” or the gentler “Quarrel?” Ultimately, the story reads less like a “war” and more like an attempt at integration. While the book’s fiercely logical debate takes place between two Lithuanian yeshiva graduates with Talmudic backgrounds, there is something distinctly romantic, and one could also say Chasidic, about the holistic mode that the story and the arguers embrace at the end.
Interestingly, this pivot is anticipated elsewhere in the story in a short, infrequently cited exchange that is left out of the Himmelfarb translation, but which Wisse thankfully includes. Even before they begin to quarrel, Vilner notices that something has changed about Rasseyner’s once-harsh mannerisms. “Reb Hersh,” he tells him, “you’re not speaking like a student of Novardok, but more like a Chasid of Lubavitch who is studying the Tanya.”
Rasseyner answers that, for skeptics like Vilner, Chasidism and Mussar may seem like opposing points of view. But, on a deeper level, “they are one and the same…when I feel overpowered in the struggle of life, I study Mussar. And when Mussar leads me too far into gloom and seclusion and tears me away from the community of Israel and love for my fellow Jews—then I turn to Chasidism.”
This passage is interesting because it broadens Rasseyner’s worldview beyond the confines of the Novardok yeshiva and positions him as a representative of the diversity of religious Jewry. Perhaps the fact that Chasidism now features more prominently in his worldview is part of what ultimately allows Rasseyner and Vilner to relate to one another in a manner that they were unable to before.
In fact Grade himself, despite his complicated religious identity, and his Lithuanian yeshiva background (he was also close with Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, the Chazon Ish) seems to have harbored a warm spot for Chabad Chasidut. After Grade’s passing, his close friend, the late Chasid, Yisroel Duchman, wrote a remarkable obituary for Grade in the Algemeiner Journal that detailed some of this Lubavitch connection. Duchman spoke to Grade’s time in Kfar Chabad after the war, as well as to his unique relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Wisse’s translation includes heretofore excluded passages, and also quotes many rabbinic phrases in their original Hebrew. The new edition, published by a partnership between Toby Press and the Tikvah Fund, even includes Grade’s original Yiddish text alongside the English. In doing so, this version highlights dimensions of Grade’s own Jewish identity that may have been less apparent in the story’s previous English incarnation.
Like his characters Rasseyner and Vilner, Grade endured many difficulties during the Shoah. His wife and mother were murdered by the Germans, and his childhood community of Vilna was decimated. Even after having survived, Grade also encountered coldness from former friends and acquaintances from his Novardok yeshiva past, precisely when he needed warmth. Duchman quoted Grade as having said, “in Kfar Chabad I was warmed.”
In reflecting upon his relationship with Grade, Duchman made the following observation, which could easily be applied to “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner” as well: “When we met we used to talk about Jews and Judaism and about the world at large. We didn’t always agree with one another and oftentimes we argued, but our differences of opinions never detracted from our friendship, and until his very last day, Grade remained a close and loyal friend.” In addition to raising many fascinating theological issues and debates, “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner” explores the way in which two mens’ religious sensibilities (or lack thereof) are inextricably bound up with their feelings toward one another.
“My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner” ends at a kind of impasse, with neither side a clear victor. Chaim Grade’s own life, however, ended with his instructions to be buried in the beautiful woolen tallit with which he prayed each day—a final hint as to which side his heart and soul ultimately belonged.
This article appeared in the Spring-Summer 2023 issue of the Lubavitch International magazine. To download the full magazine and to gain access to previous issues please click here.
