Thousands visit Rebbe’s Ohel

Jacob Elizerov drove nine hours from Ohio to join thousands who came from as far as China to visit the Queens grave of Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitch leader who died 11 years ago Sunday.

“I think I am even too young to understand right now the righteousness of this person,” said Elizerov, 21, who waited for two hours with his family to enter the rebbe’s concrete tomb.
The visits celebrated a man some believed was the Messiah.

Schneerson led the Lubavitch movement from 1950 until his death in 1994.

Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a Lubavitch spokesman, estimated that 21,000 visited Schneerson’s grave over the weekend. The lines snaked through Old Montefiore Cemetery in Cambria Heights and spilled onto the sidewalk.

Every 30 minutes a group of 50 was allowed two minutes inside the tomb. Many scrawled prayers onto pieces of paper and threw them into a white pit inside the crypt. Others touched the tombstones.

“It’s kind of a recharging of your spiritual battery,” said Dina Greenberg, 31, who flew 22 hours from Shanghai. “I always feel a little more connected.”

Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, 25, from Champaign, Ill., avoided the long lines by visiting the gravesite at 6 a.m. “You can come with all your hardships and day to day struggles. When you come here, you remember how much he encouraged the work that we do,” Tiechtel said. “You get the rejuvenation.”

For Shimon Laber, 25, who arrived from California that morning, it was a chance to ask for blessings for his baby, due in three weeks.

“I come to pray. I come to connect with the Rebbe and I come to report on my progress and accomplishment and ask for blessings for the year to come,” Laber said.

Many of the pilgrims were emissaries who are spreading Schneerson’s message on other continents. “In the last 11 years, we’ve seen such suffering on a worldwide scale,, and we want him to intercede with God on our behalf to shower us with blessings,” said Mindy Chazan, 44, who lives in Manchester, England.

Recent debate over whether Schneerson was the Messiah, or Moschiach, threatened to divide the community.

Yesterday, Schneerson was referred to as a great leader. “I believe that he was the best potential person to be the Moschiach,” said Greenberg. “I have not seen another leader who cared so much for everyone of God’s creations, all humanity, Jewish and non-Jewish. That is what personifies a great leader.”