In this 8th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chana describes how their Kazakh landlady’s pigs used to disturb her husband, Reb Levik‘s studies. Annoyed, he would shoo them away with his stick. This greatly annoyed the peasant woman, who admittedly loved her pigs more than her own children.
Rabbi Sholom Ber Goldshmid, the last remaining member of the of the Chabad community to survive the Hebron Massacre of 1929, passed away November 10. He was 86 years old.
It had become a custom of mine to spend the High Holidays with the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory. I was grateful to be hosted by the same family year after year, allowing me to relax and focus on my spiritual needs. One year in the late 1960s, I arrived at their home and discovered I’d been given a roommate for the holidays.
In this 7th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chana describes her and Reb Levik‘s first Passover in exile. Forced by their Tatar hosts to move out of their home, they moved in with a non-Jewish woman for 50 rubles a month. The room was considered to be “luxury” because it had a floor, but the cots they had to sleep on were infested with roaches.
Crown heights Info would like to present a free download of this week’s Torah portion of Toldos from the New Lifestyle Chumash. To order your copy visit: www.kolmenachem.com
Crownheights.info and the Avner Institute present three unique, never-seen-before photos of the Rebbe from various years of his Nesius. If you can identify when any of them were taken, please lave a comment in the extended article.
Professor Velvl Green, former chair of epidemiology and public health and professor emeritus at Ben-Gurion University, and director of its Lord Jakobovitz Center for Jewish Medical Ethics, passed away at the age of 83. A pioneer in the field of hygiene and the development of sanitary standards used in hospitals, at the height of his career, he maintained a scientific and religious dialogue with the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. He became a highly regarded lecturer on Torah and its compatibility with science, and also contributed to NASA’s search for extraterrestrial life.
It was a remarkable – if not miraculous landing. A Polish airplane whose landing gear had refused to open and was thus forced to land on its belly with no wheels. A hair-raising and incredibly dangerous thing to attempt – everyone was expecting the worst. Nevertheless the plane’s captain Tadeusz Wrona (an expert glider) managed to pull it off and all 230 passengers were saved. He was later rightly crowned a hero by the passengers and the airline for having saved the lives of all those people.
Can we learn anything from this event?
In this 6th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chanah describes her perilous travels to, and reunion with, her husband Reb Levik in the wretched little village he was exiled to. The joy of reunion was dampened only by the heartbreak she felt over the morbid conditions her husband was forced to endure. The total change in her husband’s dress, face and even personality ‘bore a hole’ in her heart:
In this 5th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chanah describes her husband Reb Levik‘s journey to exile, from Kharkov, Ukraine to a small town in Kazakhstan, and the tribulations he encountered there:
Would a compassionate and loving G-d order the murder of a man’s only son? This video takes an in-depth look at the enigmatic tale of Abraham’s sacrifice, its role as a turning point in Jewish thought and its meaning to each of us in our daily lives.
Rabbi Shalom Ber Lifshitz, whose dedication to the physical and spiritual wellbeing of new Israelis nurtured entire communities of freshly-arrived refugees from locations around the world, passed away last month at the age of 83. The Chabad-Lubavitch activist’s approach to social welfare encompassed his entire being, expressing itself in the motto: “We will not give up on the wellbeing of any Jew.”
In a volume published in 1930, Rabbi Hayim Elazar Shapiro of Munkacs (Minhas Eluzar, 1871-1937) commented that he had seen and heard it said in the name of greats that there was a practice to only hold the lulav during the Hallel service. Presumably the Munkatcher Rebbe meant that the three species that were bound together – lulav, hadasim and aravot – were held during the service and the etrog was not. The Minhas Eluzar decried this practice, calling it a “mistaken custom” and adding that it had no basis.
It is forbidden on a holiday to do any act in preparation for the following day,1 even if the following day is Shabbat. However, the sages created a halachic device, called an eruv tavshilin, which allows one to cook food on a holiday day for use on a Shabbat that immediately follows it.
Rabbi Shalom Ber Lipshitz arrived in New York on a Thursday after a long flight from Israel with plans to continue on to Canada immediately. Rabbi Lipshitz, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, headed an organization supporting Jewish educational institutions in the Land of Israel. He was travelling specifically to attend a fundraising event and hoped that spending the Sabbath with the locals would enable him to share his success stories in a more relaxed environment.
The song can be downloaded for free at Mostlymusic.com
Continuing season two of Torah in Ten, we are pleased to present the eleventh class by Rabbi Chaim Miller, Editor-in-Chief of Kol Menachem on this week’s topic, “The Rebbe on Anxiety”.
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