Minnesota’s Shliach’s 85th Birthday in New York 

There is good reason why Rabbi Asher Zeilingold, one of the longest-serving pulpit rabbis in the United States, marked his 85th birthday in New York. For many years, the Rebbe granted yechidus to those celebrating a birthday. The exception was for birthdays that fell at the end or beginning of Tishrei. Since Rabbi Zeilingold’s birthday was shortly before Rosh Hashanah, as a bachur in the 1950s he was told that he would need to wait for his yechidus.

By then, he was already regularly writing to the Rebbe and receiving lengthy letters and responses to his questions. He sat down and wrote to the Rebbe that, while he was not able to have a yechidus at that time, as was customary on one’s birthday, he still wished to ask the Rebbe several questions regarding his personal Avodas Hashem.

To his surprise, the very next day, the Rebbe’s mazkir approached him and said that when the Rebbe read his letter, he instructed that he should have a yechidus that night. “But you will only receive a brachah for your birthday,” the mazkir told him, “and the responses to your questions, the Rebbe will give in writing.”

In his forthcoming book Clear Vision: Living by the Rebbe’s Guidance – which includes the Rebbe’s guidance to him and the stories he experienced with the Rebbe – he writes that since then, he “always tried to be in New York on my birthday.”

Throughout all the years that there were still birthday audiences, “I always had one.” After Gimmel Tammuz, “I have made every effort to come to the Rebbe’s Ohel on my birthday.”

In recent years, due to the difficulty of travel, he has not been able to come to New York. However, for his 85th birthday, he made the extra effort to be there. Already in New York, friends, family, and shluchim came to wish him mazel tov and many happy and healthy years.

At the birthday gathering, he thanked Hashem for all the brachos He has given him. He told those gathered that he would soon be celebrating six decades on shlichus, which the Rebbe had guided him to undertake as the rabbi of Adath Israel in St. Paul. “When I suggested to the Rebbe that I should leave,” he said, “I added that if the Rebbe tells me to stay here, I will.”

In a lengthy response, detailed in Clear Vision, the Rebbe empathetically replied that he should not only stay, but expand his activities there. In one part of his response, the Rebbe wrote, “I am with you in your activities,” a message that Rabbi Zeilingold has kept close to his heart ever since.

“The Rebbe put me here,” he told the gathering, “and I am continuing, boruch Hashem. The Aibeshter should give me the koach to continue to bring goodness to the world.”