Here’s My Story: Let’s Talk About Today

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My father was a learned, spiritual Jew, even though he never studied in a yeshivah. Instead, after fleeing from Czarist Russia just before the Revolution, he went to Fordham University Law School. And while many other Jews in those years gave up on Shabbat, he remained observant, even when it demanded real sacrifice.

When I was growing up, he had a trajectory planned out for me. I would go to Williamsburg’s Yeshiva Torah Vodaath through high school, and then stay on afterwards in their yeshivah program, while attending college in the evenings. Like my father, I was going to become a lawyer.

Living in Williamsburg, my father knew and worked with many chasidim. He also had a special respect for the Lubavitcher chasidim – “they’re the ones who go out of their way for others,” he told me – but he didn’t want me to become one.

Then, in the early ‘50s, when I was about thirteen, a couple of young yeshivah students came to visit the bungalow colony where my family was staying for the summer. “These are Lubavitchers,” I was told, “and they spend their vacation selling Jewish books and sharing Judaism with others.” It was the first time that I had witnessed Chabad’s outreach work.

At summer camp a couple of years later, I studied some Tanya, the seminal work of Chabad philosophy, with a different visiting student. The next summer, I went to Chabad’s Camp Gan Israel. In 1955, I began attending a weekly class on Chasidut, which had a profound influence on me. I also began attending the Rebbe’s farbrengens regularly.

One of these was on the last day of Passover, 1956. Berel Shemtov, another young chasid, took me along, together with a colleague of mine from Torah Vodaath, to receive some wine and a blessing from the Rebbe. It was the first time I met the Rebbe, eye to eye.

“They want to ask for a blessing to become chasidim!” Rabbi Shemtov told the Rebbe, after introducing us. He must have felt that this was what we really wanted, deep down.

“I agree to the blessing,” replied the Rebbe, “but they have to agree too!”

I started to feel that there was something exciting in Chabad. These people were interested in the broader Jewish community, and there was a depth to them that went to the essence of Judaism.

When I was in 12th grade at Torah Vodaath, Gershon Mendel Gorelik, the young man who was teaching our Chasidut class, suggested that I have a private audience with the Rebbe, so I made an appointment for around February of 1957.

In preparation, I memorized a chasidic discourse and adopted a few extra chasidic customs. Then, I wrote all of this in a note that I gave to the Rebbe when I went into his office – along with a few questions about my future studies and my plans to go to college.

In the audience, the Rebbe instructed me to study Chasidut every day for at least ten minutes. As for my yeshivah studies, he encouraged me to remain in Torah Vodaath until the end of that academic year. But then he continued: “If you want my opinion, I think that rather than going to college, you should spend a year devoting all of your energy to Torah subjects – and maybe even longer than that.”

I could have followed the Rebbe’s advice and devoted all my time to Torah study in the Torah Vodaath yeshivah. But I realized that all of my classmates there would be attending evening college, and I began to think it was time to make the move to Chabad’s Tomchei Temimim yeshivah network. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. Then someone remarked to me that “sooner or later,” I would come to Tomchei Temimim, but I would probably regret that I hadn’t come sooner. I decided to write a letter to the Rebbe asking about it, and with his encouragement, I went to the Chabad yeshivah in Montreal after the Tishrei holidays.

Just a few days before I left for Montreal, at the farbrengen that Simchat Torah, I went over to the Rebbe with a request: “I want to ask for a blessing that I should succeed in Tomchei Temimim.”

The Rebbe turned to me: “Amen! Amen!”

I began to back away from his table when the Rebbe called after me: “But you also have to do something for this!” In other words, the empowerment you get from above doesn’t absolve you from putting in your own effort.

My father, meanwhile, was displeased with my change of plans. To him, I was just going to be hanging out in a yeshivah instead of pursuing a career, and although he wasn’t the type to get angry, he was upset with the whole idea. To say that our relationship was strained is an understatement.

The next time I came back home from Montreal, in early 1958, I had another audience with the Rebbe, where I spoke about my family situation. The Rebbe advised me to avoid getting into debates about the issue with my father. “Don’t push him into a corner,” was how he put it. Instead, I should study well in yeshivah, and when my father would see that I was succeeding there, the results would bring him around.

The Rebbe also asked whether my father had ever come to a farbrengen in 770.

He hadn’t. “I tried to get him to come talk with the Rebbe, but he declined,” I offered.

“Asking him to come and talk with someone he has never met before might be too much,” the Rebbe said. The open atmosphere of a farbrengen, however, with the diverse crowd of people in attendance – “Jews with beards, and without beards,” as he described it – might be more inviting.

At the Rebbe’s suggestion, I had someone who was close with my parents invite my father to come to the next big farbrengen, which was that Purim, and even to drive him there and back. The Purim farbrengen of 1958 ended up being a special event and a very positive experience for my father. When I saw the Rebbe a month after that, at the Kos Shel Bracha ceremony at the end of Passover, he asked about my father.

“It got a little better,” I reported.

“It will become completely better!” predicted the Rebbe.

Over the four years I ended up spending in Montreal, until the summer of 1961, that was exactly what happened. My relationship with my father thawed, and in 1962, just a few days before my wedding – which the Rebbe was going to officiate – my parents went to meet him.

I opened the door as they went into the Rebbe’s room, and introduced them: “These are my parents.” Before I closed the door and left, I saw the Rebbe jump up and walk around his desk to greet them and shake my father’s hand.

Later, I heard what happened. My father, a man of deep integrity, felt uncomfortable with the Rebbe’s friendly gesture. Given his early opposition, he felt that it was undeserved.

“I have to tell you,” he confessed, “when my son went to your yeshivah, I wasn’t very happy.”

“But what do you say today?” asked the Rebbe.

“Today I’m happy,” answered my father.

“Then let’s talk about today.” Let’s focus on the positive, the Rebbe was saying, and build on that.

Rabbi Shmuel Lew has been serving as an educator and Chabad emissary in London since 1965. He was interviewed five times in the years 2007, 2009, 2020, and 2021.