Here’s My Story: The Year of Wonders

Rabbi Yossy Goldman

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Growing up in the 1960s, I would travel to the Rebbe with my family every Simchat Torah. We lived in Cleveland, where I attended the Hebrew Academy. It wasn’t a Chabad school, but we grew up in a very chasidic home, with a real appreciation for the Rebbe.

My father, Rabbi Zalman Kazen, would teach us Chasidut — he loved studying the Rebbe’s talks with us — and we learned chasidic melodies. But this was all nothing compared to actually experiencing the Rebbe’s farbrengens.

Every year on Sukkot, we would travel to New York, a twelve-hour train ride, to spend the second half of the holiday there. Two nights before Simchat Torah, on Hoshana Rabbah, we received lekach — traditional honey cake — from the Rebbe. Then, on Simchat Torah, there was a late-night farbrengen, where the Rebbe taught everyone a new song; we would all crowd inside and listen intently as the Rebbe sang, and then the chasidim all sang after him. It was all a very inspirational experience.

But it wasn’t until after finishing school, when I went to study in a seminary, that I developed a deeper, more personal appreciation for the Rebbe. It started with the yechidus, my first personal audience, that I had before going abroad.

I had written a letter to the Rebbe beforehand asking whether I should go to a seminary in New York or in Israel, and in the audience, the Rebbe replied that I should either go to New York — or to France. So I had my answer right away: If the Rebbe brought up France on his own, he probably wanted me to go there.

At the Beth Rivkah seminary in Yerres, a suburb of Paris, for the first time in my life, I started to seriously learn Chasidut, and it transformed me. I had done well in school and had studied a lot of Torah, along with various biblical commentaries, but now I realized how little I knew and how much there was to grow. Learning the Rebbe’s talks, and what he was telling the world, gave me a strong sense of faith and of selflessness — and it developed in me the feeling that I wanted to help. In 1976, after seminary and after getting married, I ended up doing just that, together with my husband, Rabbi Yossy Goldman.

We had two children and were living in New York when my husband asked the Rebbe where we should go on shlichut, as emissaries of the Rebbe. We had quite a few positions offered to us and we wrote about going to California, Missouri, and Johannesburg, South Africa, where my husband’s friend from his yeshivah days, Rabbi Mendel Lipskar, had moved two years earlier and had invited us to join him.

Not everyone was told directly where to go on shlichut in those days, but the Rebbe underlined “Johannesburg,” giving us a clear answer that this was our mission in life — our soul mission.

The Rebbe also indicated that I had to be on the same page as my husband. The Rebbe cared so much about the couples he sent — not only the men, but also the women. And so, the Rebbe wanted to know that we were both in agreement and that we would work as partners in bringing his message, the teachings of Chasidism, and G-d’s Torah to the world. The answer, of course, was that I was totally on board. I grew up with a lot of faith, which was further strengthened by being around the Rebbe, so I wanted to be part of his incredible vision for the world.

When we moved to South Africa, it was during the dark years of apartheid, when the government didn’t really want rabbis coming to the country to speak about morality. It was also difficult personally; I didn’t know anyone, and kashrut facilities were so limited that I had to bake my own bread. But the Rebbe’s blessings throughout were always encouraging, and the growth of the Chabad community there over the past fifty years has been unbelievable.

Over the years, our family also grew. When I was getting ready to deliver my tenth child, in 1991, my doctor told me that the baby was lying transverse (sideways) instead of being head down, and I would have to have a C-section. This was something I absolutely did not want to accept.

“I’ve had nine natural births, and I’m not going to get cut open now!” I protested.

“In forty years, I’ve never called in a second opinion,” he said, “but for you I’ll call in another doctor.”
The second doctor took a look and confirmed that the baby was transverse. They tried repeatedly to turn the baby, but he wasn’t budging. “There’s no way you can give birth like this. We’re going to have to do a C-section,” he confirmed.

Now, earlier that year, the Rebbe had declared 1991 — the year 5751 according to the Hebrew calendar — a “year of miracles.” The Hebrew letters used to spell 5751 were an acronym for “Tehei Shnat Arenu Nifla’ot,” which translates as “May it be a year of showing wonders,” and during the Gulf War earlier that year, the Iraqis had fired 39 missiles on Israel without killing a single person. If the Rebbe said that this would be a year of miracles, I was convinced that here was going to be another miracle.

The second doctor who, like the first doctor, was Jewish, looked at my husband, the rabbi. “Why don’t you call New York?” Clearly, he meant the Rebbe, and he obviously had some experience with the Rebbe’s interventions in medical matters.

I was already at an advanced stage of labor at that point, and the only reason my husband hadn’t already called the Rebbe was because it was 1:00 AM in South Africa and the hospital switchboard had long closed; cellphones had not yet been invented.

The doctor, however, used his connections to arrange for the switchboard to be opened so that my husband could make an international call to New York. My husband contacted his father, Reb Shimon Goldman, who lived in Crown Heights and who then immediately ran over to 770.

At that time, the Rebbe was on his way back from visiting the Previous Rebbe’s resting place, and so my father-in-law gave the message to Rabbi Leibel Groner, the Rebbe’s secretary. Soon, the Rebbe replied: “Seeing as the doctor suggested to call me, I hope he will not bear a grudge against me if I advise that we should listen to the woman giving birth and we should wait.”

When my husband came back with this message, the second doctor was nearby. “Your doctor’s out, and the nurses are out too, so let me check you,” he offered. He checked — and the baby had turned by himself! It was absolutely miraculous. At that stage of labor, the baby never turns. The doctor had never seen anything like it. In short order, our son was born naturally.

Two years later, a friend told me that as a result of this story, that second doctor went on to become fully Shabbat observant.

As for my son, before the birth, we had been thinking of naming him after my husband’s late uncle Nissen, but I wasn’t sure. After this nes — the Hebrew word for miracle, which is also related to the name Nissen — we knew. It was an amazing miracle, and he became an amazing boy, who is now a very special rabbi, serving as a shliach for Chabad on Campus at the University of Cape Town.

Mrs. Rochel Goldman and her husband, Rabbi Yossy Goldman, have served as Chabad emissaries in South Africa for fifty years, since 1976, and have led the Sydenham-Highlands North Hebrew Congregation in Johannesburg since 1986. She was interviewed in February 2026.