 
Standing Before Heroes
Heard In The Bagel Store
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By Larry Gordon
Published on Thursday, November 19, 2009 -
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| Gabi and Rivka Holzberg, z’l |
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Just two days after last year’s international conference of sh’lichim — emissaries of Chabad-Lubavitch around the globe — the world was stunned by the brutal murder in Mumbai, India of two sh’lichim, Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, of blessed memory. Just as stunning was the unceremonious fashion in which their then two-year-old son, Moshele, was rescued by his nanny, who simply rushed out a rear door to safety while inside chaos reigned and wanton murder was committed.
I had the privilege earlier this week of attending the sh’lichim dinner in Brooklyn, as one of 5,000 (yes, five thousand) guests in attendance. This is a very special annual event that brings the men together for five days of recharging their spiritual batteries, with workshops on techniques and various topics related to the sh’liach’s endeavor. (The women on sh’lichus have a separate but similar conclave later in the year.) The event feted the work of all these young men and women, along with their families, for the unstinting self-sacrifice that is a part of everyday life for them, many in the far reaches of G-d’s vast and awesome Earth.
I sat mostly silent through a roller-coaster ride of emotional highs and lows, never knowing where the next turn would take us. Commemorations of the tragic loss of the young Holtzberg couple was the emotional climax of Sunday night’s banquet. Those tragic events drew the young men and women in disparate parts of the planet closer together, as they are out there building their families and drawing Jews who have been disconnected and estranged from Yiddishkeit into the warmth of their homes and closer to the essence of who they are. It was announced that during the last year, since the murders in Mumbai, over 500 children were born to sh’lichim who gave the name Gavriel or Rivka to their newborns.
The reality of Chabad is that it is a wonderful assortment of things. For some, Chabad represents everything that is good and right about the modern world in these difficult and challenging times. To a number of people it is exactly the opposite. And for others it is a home base that can always be relied upon and turned into a temporary home when you are out there on business or spiritually drifting your way through what you were hoping would be one of those exotic vacations.
Indeed, Chabad is so many things to so many different people, and that’s part of its magic and intrigue. The sh’lichim banquet dinner is the apex of a long weekend, and though it requires a significant commitment of time—about five hours—it places the facts and history of Chabad and the Rebbeim in a usually neglected but vitally important context.
Part of the evening was dedicated to saluting the fashion in which Chabad was able to establish itself on these shores after the devastation of European Jewry during World War II. The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson—known to Chassidim as the “Friediker Rebbe”—visited the U.S. in 1929 as a prelude to what would become his desperate choice to settle here in 1940. It wasn’t necessarily a calm or simple choice, but rather one arrived at after fleeing to save his life and the lives of his family and others from the Nazi inferno.
One of the featured speakers at the dinner, Dr. David Luchins, a professor at Touro College and a former senior adviser to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, enthralled the guests with a short history of the trials and tribulations faced by the Friediker Rebbe, as well as his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in building their international empire, beginning with the Friediker Rebbe’s arrival on these shores in 1940.
“The first night the Rebbe was here in New York, he met with a delegation of New York communal leaders who came to greet him at a hotel he was staying at in New York City,” Dr. Luchins related. The Jewish leaders in New York knew what the Friediker Rebbe’s plan was, Luchins said, and they essentially came to tell him that his plan would not work in the New World, here in the United States.
“They told the Rebbe that America takes great men and makes them small,” Dr. Luchins said. “They told him that if the Rebbe thinks he can open a network of Jewish educational institutions here, he is definitely headed for catastrophic failure.” The Rebbe later told an aide that his first nights in America were sleepless, as he pondered the ominous warnings from people who understood the nature and attitude of Jews in America in 1940.
After careful thought and introspection, the Rebbe declared to those around him that “America iz nisht andersh,” that America is no different than any place else in the world, and that the study of Torah and a life dedicated to spreading Torah and mitzvos can be successful here, just as it had been over the generations in cities and communities in Europe. For a while, the future of Yiddishkeit in America looked shaky and tenuous. The prognosis from many corners was not positive or encouraging.
But the Rebbe persevered and began the ambitious project of sending out his emissaries to minister to the Jewish communities that were in crisis after staring down possible annihilation. Soon after the Rebbe settled in New York he sent out his first sh’lichim to Morocco. Slowly and in a methodical fashion, the sh’lichim were sent out to simply be there for Jews who may have been a bit misguided and perhaps even spiritually adrift.
And over the last 70 years, it is remarkable how that enterprise of simply being out there to serve Jews—in far-flung places and in urban centers alike—has changed. The prognostication after the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, passed away 15 years ago—that Chabad had seen its best days and that without his personal leadership the movement would dwindle and dissolve—was just wrong. The legacy of the Rebbe’s leadership continues to inspire and energize young people to relocate into the hinterlands and undertake the mission that the Rebbe committed himself to. That is, bringing Jews closer to their inner selves and to the study of Torah and the performance of mitzvos.
Dr. Luchins did a great deal of reminiscing for the thousands gathered. He talked about his family’s personal involvement with Chabad, spanning a period of 160 years. He spoke in detail about the meetings between the Rebbe, Senator Moynihan, and himself, most often on the matter of Soviet Jews. The Rebbe, he said, had met with Dr. Luchins’s father, a professor of psychology, numerous times and used him as an agent when he traveled to international educational forums that were sometimes held in the Soviet Union.
On one particular mission, the Rebbe summoned the senior Professor Luchins to his office at 770 Eastern Parkway for him to take a suitcase to Russia on his planned 12-day trip. “In the suitcase you will find 14 pairs of tefillin, one for each day of your trip,” the Rebbe said. Professor Luchins interjected, explaining to the Rebbe that the trip was only for 12 days. “Two of the pairs are Rabbeinu Tam,” said the Rebbe.
Near to the Rebbe’s heart was the plight of Soviet Jewry during the dark days of Communist rule. Through his emissaries and businesspeople traveling to the USSR, the Rebbe tried everything he could to keep the embers of Torah and the Jewish way of life aglow. It was an awful struggle, with the path to freedom littered with much dejection and disappointment for everyone involved.
But then, in 1985, as Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power, the Rebbe felt that something was about to change. The rumor was that after many years of a tightly clad iron curtain, there was a possibility that Gorbachev was ready for change and that Jewish emigration might be able to restart in earnest. That spring, the large annual Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry was planned to take place in front of the United Nations. The annual event, which usually attracted upwards of 100,000 people, was meant to embarrass the Soviets for the lack of freedom and for the oppression of Jews in the USSR. The Rebbe called Senator Moynihan—who had extensive involvement in trying to pressure the Soviets to release Jews who wanted to leave—along with Dr. Luchins.
The Rebbe said that Gorbachev was a man who was looking for reciprocity, and that we do not want to miss an opportunity or be satisfied with just a few people being released. The Senator and Dr. Luchins asked the Rebbe what he recommended, to which he responded: “If you want everyone out now, cancel the rally.” After much discussion and some apprehension, that year’s Solidarity Sunday was canceled. Shortly thereafter, the floodgates were opened, and ultimately over one million Jews would leave the Soviet Union and arrive in Israel, and the Communist regime would crumble.
Today there are 138 Chabad families on sh’lichus in Russia, and another 145 in the Ukraine. There are 6 in Hungary, 4 in Uzbekistan, 1 in Lithuania, 3 in Poland, 1 in Serbia, 22 in Austria, 235 in France, and 1 in Denmark, just to name a few locations. Some of the new locations over the last several years include 1 Lubavitcher family in Norway, 2 in Ireland, 1 in Denmark, 1 in the Congo, and 2 in New Zealand. In the Americas, there are 92 families in Argentina, 80 in Brazil, 2 in Panama, 1 in the Dominican Republic, 1 in Martinique, 1 in Puerto Rico, and 1 in St. Martin.
The number of sh’lichim families in some other locations around the world include 665 in Israel, 108 in Australia, and 23 in Italy. There are also countless numbers of families on sh’lichus in just about every state in the U.S. and in Canada too.
The sh’lichim, as one could see by just looking around this colossal room at the dinner, are a special breed, infused with a spirit that daily demonstrates a unique capability to break through the natural restrictions that seem to govern most of our lives. A sh’liach has a combination of courage, fortitude, and faith. As Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin, a sh’liach in England, said apropos of this week’s Torah portion, a successful sh’liach is a combination of Yaakov and Eisav. Yes, the sh’liach of the Rebbe harbors the kindness and goodness as well as the Torah scholarship of Yaakov. But it is also imperative for him to be like Eisav, an “ish sadeh,” a man of the field, daily interfacing with the reality of the outside world. The challenge, he said, is to infuse the necessary work in the field with the qualities of Yaakov Avinu.
In the year since the previous sh’lichim convention, there was much to be proud of, as a great deal had been accomplished. The director of the sh’lichim office, Rabbi Moshe Kotklarsky, said that not one Chabad House anywhere in the world had to be closed because of the global economic downturn difficulties. And finally there was the keynote speaker, Rabbi Yudie Shem Tov of Yardley, Pennsylvania, who talked about the emotional highs and lows, the triumphs and disappointments of a sh’liach.
He talked about how he encountered a local young man, Michael Levin, in a group for teenagers. The rabbi did not know it at the time, but Michael had taken great inspiration from their talks. Michael, only 19 years old, volunteered for the Israeli army and was killed in the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Rabbi Shem Tov introduced Michael’s father to the gathering. Five thousand men stood and applauded for Mr. Levin’s son, a hero of Israel.
“I am standing tonight before heroes,” Dr. David Luchins said in his tribute to the Chabad emissaries. And indeed we remembered Gabi and Rivka Holtzberg, the heroes who gave so much—including their very lives—and who touched so many people in so many extraordinary ways. Both Gabi’s and Rivka’s fathers were present as well, and they too were singled out for their endurance and the hope for the future that they represent in their equanimity. This night was also a tribute to Moshele Holtzberg, now an orphan for a year and this week celebrating his upsherin and third birthday. Rabbi Kotklarsky said that he was certain that Moshe’s parents were beaming and proud. How could they not be—Moshe Holtzberg is a future hero.
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com. ♦
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