Celebrating the Rebbe Rashab’s Birthday and Legacy

Today, Monday, the 20th day of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, marks the 155th anniversary of the birth of visionary Jewish leader and Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn. Though he lived only to age 59, he served as a noted leader for the largely rural Jewish communities throughout the expanses of the Russian Empire, guiding their transition to life in the modern era. During his life, he fought the oppression of both the Czarist and Bolshevik regimes as well as the tides of assimilation corroding traditional Jewish life.

From Lubavitch.com by Mordechai Lightstone:

Born in 1860 to the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Shmuel Schneersohn, the young Sholom Dovber, known by the acrostic Rashab, grew up in the famed Chasidic court of Lubavitch. The impression of thousands of the Chasidim visiting his grandfather, and later his father left a powerful mark on the Rashab. After the untimely passing of his father in 1882, the Rashab, not yet 22 years old, wished to defer the leadership of the Lubavitcher movement to his older brother Zalman Aharon. When Zalman Aharon refused to assume control as well, both brothers fulfilled portions of the position of Rebbe. For the next few years, while not officially acting under the title Rebbe, the Rashab took on additional responsibilities, becoming the de facto leader of the movement. It was not until 1892 that the he officially accepted the title of Rebbe.

Rabbi Sholom Dovber’s leadership abilities were tested from the very start. Under the rule of Czar Alexander III, a series of anti-Semitic decrees shook the foundation of Jewish life in the Russian Empire. Beginning May 15 1882, the “May Laws” created a policy of discrimination against Jews living within the Russian Empire, banning them from living in rural areas with fewer than ten thousand residents and limiting their role in communal and professional life. As tens of thousands of Jews were displaced by the edict including 20,000 from Moscow alone, the Rashab set up an organization to help relocate and support them.

As the Russian Empire began to unravel in the face of popular unrest, anti-Semitic policy and Jew-baiting increased. The government repeatedly tried to appoint members loyal to their cause to the rabbinate. These so-called rabbis, often dreadfully ignorant of Jewish law, would capitulate to the whims of the government, to the detriment of their communities.

In 1893, the Rashab traveled to the capital, S. Petersburg, for the first of several rabbinical conferences to help repeal unfavorable decrees and combat the growing influence of reform and assimilation. It was during these trips that he began to work closely with other famed Jewish leaders, including Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, Chief Rabbi of Vilnius, Lithuania, and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, the preeminent Talmudist and Rabbi of Brest, Belarus. Despite historical tensions between the Lithuanian and Chasidic communities, the two united in face of external threat.

Plagued with chronic health problems throughout his life, the Rashab traveled to various sanitariums and healing hot-springs in Central and Western Europe. While abroad, the Rashab continued to fight for the needs of his brethren. During the notorious Beilis Trials of 1913, a modern-day blood libel in which Ukranian-Jewish factory owner Mendel Beilis was accused of ritually murdering 13-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky, Rabbi Sholom Dovber provided counsel and advice to the defense lawyer Oskar Gruzenberg.

While government pogroms and libel sought to destroy the bodies of Russian Jewry, a separate battle was simultaneously being waged for their souls. The Jewish enlightenment and reform movement in Western Europe, known by the Hebrew term Haskalah, began to make inroads in the more traditional communities of the East. Pinpointing the root of assimilation and secularization on the lack of education, the Rashab set out to reinvigorate traditional Jewish education.

Until the mid 18th century, the yeshivah as a modern institution of education was unheard of. Instead, prominent rabbis throughout Eastern Europe would attract a handful of students who, with the support of the local community, would learn in the local synagogues and study halls. While the great yeshivah of Volozhin, Belarus, had opened a generation before, attracting hundreds of students, the vast majority of communities continued to follow in the traditional manner of education.

Noting that without a structured learning environment, the lure of education in the Russian gymnasiums and universities would be far more dangerous, the Rashab decided to open a yeshivah in Lubavitch in 1897. The school, later known as Tomchei Temimim, would revolutionize the study of not only the Talmud and its legal commentaries, but the esoteric teachings of Chasidic philosophy as well.

The new school did not open without opposition. According to noted Chabad historian and head librarian for the Central Chabad Lubavitch Library, Rabbi Berel Levin, even other leaders within the Chasidic world were worried about the yeshivah. “Some,” Levin notes, “went so far as to compare Tomchei Temimim’s regimented study to the secular universities it had been established to fight.”

Despite these reservations, the yeshivah gained in popularity, attracting students from across Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. By 1906, it had expanded with 10 satellite branches counting 300 students in the central yeshivah in Lubavitch itself. An additional school, known as Toras Emes, opened in 1911 in Hebron, Israel.

While educating a new generation of Jewish thinkers and scholars at the yeshivah, the Rashab was able to launch a new epoch in Chasidic scholarship. According to noted Chabad thinker, Rabbi Nochem Grunwald, “Chasidic scholarship at the time had become increasingly esoteric in its terminology and reliant on a vast knowledge of increasingly self-referential texts.” Retooling the style of discourse, the Rashab created a “renaissance” in Chasidic thought, opening its message to an even wider audience.

On October 25, 1915 when the Eastern front of the World War I neared the town of Lubavitch, the Rashab was forced to flee, ending the century-long association between the Chabad movement and the town. Moving with his family and a core group of followers deep into the Russian interior, they ultimately settled in the city of Rostov-on-Don. Despite the turmoil of the war and his weakened health, the Rashab remained active in his duties. His attention was drawn to the Mountain Jews of the Eastern Caucasus. One of the oldest surviving Jewish communities in the world, a continuous Jewish presence in the region dates back centuries. But the impoverished communities had little education. Thus, in 1916, the Rashab sent a group of his followers to set up schools and take positions in communal life.

On March 21, 1920 Rabbi Sholom Dovber passed away and was buried in Rostov-on-Don. He was succeeded by his only son, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, who would continue in his father’s footsteps as a leader and advocate for world Jewry.