Here’s My Story: Falling Down, Rising Up

Rabbi Elimelech Shachar

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I was born in Germany in 1946, and I moved to Israel with my family in 1948. There, we settled in Beit Gamliel, an agricultural village that my father had helped found.

As a child, I attended the village school, and then a religious cheder with an old-school teacher in the afternoons. He used to discipline us with a little cane, which terrified me, especially on Thursdays when there was a test on the weekly parshah. Too afraid to go to school on test day, I would roam the fields. My father, who was worried about the fedayeen terrorists who were active in those days, had to go out and look for me. He didn’t know what to do about my education until a friend suggested that he send me to the Chabad school in nearby Rishon Letziyon. And so began my connection with Chabad.

Shortly after, I was acting out in class, when my new teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Greenwald, came over to me. But to my surprise, instead of hitting me with a cane or a belt, he gave me a kind pat on the head. I wasn’t used to that! I became an excellent student and continued to learn in Chabad schools for the next few years, before going on to high school and then the army.

Although I remained religious while stationed at the Chatzor Air Force Base for my military service, I felt that I needed to strengthen my Judaism. So, once I was out, I returned to yeshivah for a while, this time in Kfar Chabad.

In 1970, my wife Nechama and I married and took up the agricultural life in the village of Beit Gamliel. I planted an orchard on our large parcel of land, but in the evenings, I worked as an insurance salesman.

When we had children, we sent them to religious schools in nearby Rechovot, but we still saw our future in Beit Gamliel. Eventually, we were ready to build a house for ourselves: We saved up enough money, had blueprints, and even began purchasing building supplies. In Beit Gamliel, there was a highly sought-after contractor, but just as we were preparing to sign him on to build our home, he committed to a different project.

I decided to write to the Rebbe for advice. But, although he usually responded when we asked him questions, this time, there was no answer. When our son Refael was born, he sent us a congratulatory letter, but he still made no mention of the house.

So I drove to Kfar Chabad to consult with the town rabbi, Rabbi Nachum Trebnik, who in turn directed me to the well-known chasid Reb Mendel Futerfas.

I came to his home, where I met a noble-looking man wearing a Russian-style hat. We spoke for a little, and then he asked: “You’ve been connected with the Rebbe for so long, how have you not been to him yet? Go to the Rebbe, and when you come back, tell me what he said.”

“I’m going to the Rebbe,” I told my wife when I came home. I had no idea what to expect when I landed there, in the middle of the winter of 1977, and nobody had prepared me either. It was freezing in New York but I was wearing just a short-sleeved shirt and then, on my way out of the terminal, I slipped and dropped my suitcase, spilling its contents on the icy pavement. This was how I first arrived.

At the first farbrengen I attended, I heard the Rebbe quote the words of Elijah the Prophet: “How long will you waver? If the Lord is G-d — go after Him!” I felt that the Rebbe was talking to me, telling me that I had to make some kind of life decision. I decided to have a private audience with the Rebbe.

As I waited in the foyer for my turn, an old Jew came out of the Rebbe’s room. He seemed to be trembling, and I suddenly felt nervous. “I’m not going in,” I told the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Leibel Groner. He smiled, and gently pushed me over the threshold.

I was still in the doorway when the Rebbe stood up, a smile spread across his face. This put me at ease, and I inched forward until I was standing in front of him.

The Rebbe sat, taking out a bundle of letters held together by a rubber band. I gathered that my letters about the house were in there somewhere. The Rebbe looked at the letters, and then at me. I had the sense that he knew everything about me, that there was no hiding. Then I heard him say:

“Twice a day we recite in the Shema: “And you shall teach [Torah] to your children.” If the children are in Rechovot, then the parents should be there, too.”

By suggesting that we move to Rechovot, the Rebbe answered my question about the house. But even more, I felt that he was pointing me toward my life’s purpose. Rashi, the foremost Torah commentator, interprets this verse as a general instruction to teach Torah to others, not just one’s own children, and so I understood that this was what I was meant to be doing. That is, I was meant to help educate Jewish children in Rechovot.

We moved, and I began putting on pre-holiday programs in the local kindergartens. Soon we realized that we had to make a kindergarten ourselves. One Chabad kindergarten grew to several, and more followed.

When we first came, there were scarcely ten Chabad families, and they prayed together in a rented house. But not long after, we decided to build a proper Chabad House. We began laying the cinder blocks and mortar I had originally bought for a house in Bet Gamliel, and when it was finished, the building rose to four stories.

“Why do you need such a big building?” people wondered. But the word “Rechovot” means “broad,” and we had broad ambitions.

For years, whenever I saw the Rebbe to request a blessing for our activities in Rechovot, he would reference the verse “For now the L-rd has made it broad for us, and we will be fruitful in the land,“ and then bless me, “May you have in abundance!” The Hebrew word for “abundance,” harchavah, of course, shares the same root as Rechovot.

On the night of Simchat Torah, 1988, I was injured and taken to the hospital after falling off a platform during the festivities in 770. Still, wheelchair-bound and with my right hand in a cast, I insisted on coming back at the end of the holiday. As the Rebbe was giving out wine to the chasidim following the Havdalah ceremony, I went by and he gave me a piercing look. It felt like an auspicious moment, so I declared: “Rebbe I want a blessing to set up new educational institutions in Rechovot, Rishon Letziyon, and Ness Tziyona” — two additional cities in the area.

“Amen!” replied the Rebbe, giving me a blessing for success and then handing me a bottle of spirits, which he insisted I take with my own, plastered hand.

Those blessings were fulfilled in full: In Rechovot alone, we have hundreds of students in a network of daycare centers, kindergartens, girls’ and boys’ primary and secondary schools. As these institutions grew, so did the local community; today there are over 700 Chabad families and fifteen Chabad Houses.

Not long ago, I went back to Beit Gamliel, to my farm the Rebbe had encouraged me to leave all those years ago. The trees I had planted had all been uprooted since the costs of maintaining the orchard began to exceed the revenue it brought in. But those saplings that the Rebbe sent me to plant in Rechovot are still growing, with G-d’s help, and producing ever more fruit.

Rabbi Elimelech Shachar is the director of Chabad’s educational institutions in Rechovot, Israel. He was interviewed in July of 2022.