Here’s My Story: The Fourteen-Year-Old Teachers

Mrs. Batsheva Shemtov

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My parents, Eliezer Gershon and Menucha Lazaroff, were both from Russia, where their fathers had both been Lubavitcher rabbis, but I was born in Georgia. It was in the middle of the Second World War, and conditions there were better for Jews than in other parts of the Soviet Union. When I was just six months old and my mother was expecting her second child, my father was taken away to join the army. Unfortunately, he never came back.

Once the war was over, and my courageous mother learned my father’s fate, we managed to get permission to leave the Soviet Union. After wandering through Europe with a group of Lubavitcher refugees, we made it to Paris, where we remained for three years.

From there we joined a group of Lubavitchers who moved to Israel. We settled in the town of Lod, and then moved to Jerusalem in around 1952, when I was ten.

By this time, the Previous Rebbe had passed away and was succeeded by his son-in-law. It is interesting how we felt a connection to the new Rebbe right away. Even though my mother knew him from a visit he made to Paris in 1947, I had never seen him at all. There were no videos in those days, and very few pictures, yet we knew that there was some type of tie between us.

My mother would write to the Rebbe all the time. One thing she asked him a few times was about moving to the United States. Things were hard for her in Israel, and her brothers who were already living in North America thought that it would be easier for her to make a living there. For a time, the Rebbe advised her to not come, explaining that the education was better in Israel. Only in 1958 did he tell her that it was okay to come — perhaps because my brother and I were already older, and the Jewish community in America was more established.

So, from age ten to sixteen, I grew up in Jerusalem, attending the Beis Yaakov girls’ school. Now, shortly after the Rebbe had assumed his leadership in 1950, he began encouraging his chasidim to spread Judaism to those who were less observant. In those days, many religious Jews objected to this. How can you mingle with people who do not observe the Torah? they wondered.

If you send young people out of the community, you are putting them at risk! Eventually they saw what this kind of work accomplished and they started to do many of the same things, but back then the Rebbe came under a lot of criticism.

Throughout the 1950s in Israel, there were large numbers of Jewish immigrants arriving into the country, being placed in absorption centers and transit camps, called ma’abarot. Most of them were not coming from Europe like we had, but were fleeing from Morocco, Yemen, and other Arab countries. Although their Jewish identity and faith tended to be strong, and they were far from secular, these immigrants often had very little knowledge about Judaism. My friend Rochel Sasonkin — today Rochel Dunin of Taanach, Israel — and I were the only Lubavitchers in our school, and so when we heard about it, we decided to take up this new mandate from the Rebbe. We would go to the ma’abarot, organize programs for the children there, and share whatever we young girls knew about Judaism.

Although we felt that we had this responsibility towards others, we weren’t always sure how to best go about our activities. So, in 1955, I wrote a letter to the Rebbe asking him for guidance on exactly what we should do in these ma’abarot, and how to go about it in the most effective way.
Soon after, we received a reply by airmail.

“I’m surprised by the question,” began the Rebbe. “Just as you can be sure that you are influenced by your friends, and just as every person is influenced by their surroundings… how much more so here: Any effort on behalf of Torah and mitzvot… has the power to penetrate and to resonate many times over…” In other words, just as many of my friends and classmates had been a positive influence on me, the Rebbe expected me to fill that role and be a positive influence in matters of Judaism for others.
But then he gave “two general points regarding such efforts.”

First, that I myself should serve as a “living example, in your conduct and your affairs, of what the daughter of a chasidic home” is supposed to be.

Second, he recommended that I share “chasidic stories and ideas in the appropriate language, and in a way they can understand. For this, rich and diverse content can be found in the talks [of the Previous Rebbe] and in his Likkutei Dibburim.”

“So long as your words come from the heart,” the Rebbe added, “if you speak of these matters again and again, you can be certain that your words will be accepted and have an impact.” He then concluded by telling me to consult with the leaders of the Chabad women’s group in Jerusalem, who would be able to give us practical guidance.

One day during this period, my teacher at Beis Yaakov told me to ask my mother to come in for a meeting with her. Thank G-d, I wasn’t a troublemaker, but I didn’t know what it was about and, out of worry, I could barely sleep that night.

“I heard that your daughter and her friend are involved with Chabad,” the teacher told my mother the next day. “They have been going to different places with non-observant children, and we are very concerned. She is getting a Torah education at Beis Yaakov, but we are worried that the environment there may affect her negatively. Did you know that she is doing this?”

My mother, who was herself the head of the local Chabad women’s group, explained that she knew exactly what I had been doing. “Believe me, if I saw that this was having a negative influence on my daughter, I would not let her go. But actually, I have seen that the effects are very positive.”

That letter from the Rebbe has guided me for the rest of my life, but decades later, after it was published (in Igrot Kodesh Volume 12) I noticed something about it. The date on the letter was the 7th of Tishrei — meaning that it was written just a few days before Yom Kippur. Normally, the Rebbe would only answer the most urgent letters during this period, known as the Ten Days of Repentance.

It amazes me that, during a time he usually did not respond to such letters at all, the Rebbe not only paid attention to a letter from a fourteen-year-old girl in Jerusalem who had asked him a question, but decided to reply immediately. He also could have just told us to consult with the local Chabad women and left it at that, but he took the time to offer guidance and some detailed instructions. It seems that, for the Rebbe, this really was a matter of spiritual urgency: On a question like this, about the souls of Jewish children, there was to be no delay.

Mrs. Batsheva Shemtov has served as the Chabad emissary to Philadelphia, together with her husband Rabbi Avrohom Shemtov, since 1962. She was interviewed in May 2015 and January 2022.