Meetings with Rebbe Mendel Schneerson may have been a fleeting moment for most, but thousands still speak of them as life-altering encounters. Even decades after their encounters with the Rebbe, a former Tennessee attorney and Miss Israel of 1991 still choked up during their retelling of it.
In 1975, roving Chabad representative Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky was brash, witty, and brimming with pride. Seeking assistance in establishing a local Chabad House, he arrived at the office of Alvin Gordon, a Memphis, Tenn., attorney. Gordon was so enamored with him that he and his family were soon spending the joyous holiday of Simchat Torah with the Kotlarsky family in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. The Kotlarskys took them to join the prayer services with the Rebbe.
“Imagine somebody from Mars who landed on Earth,” Gordon recalled, remembering how unprepared he was to be among the thousands gathered in the basement synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway. “I [had] never heard or seen anything like that in my life.”
The crowd was standing on pyramids built from tables and benches. The energy in the room was overwhelming, he said. “You could feel the spirit.” He thought that no one could whip this group up any more, but when the Rebbe suddenly encouraged the crowd with his hands, “the building started jumping.”
After two intense days in the Brooklyn neighborhood, the Rebbe brought the holiday festivities to a close with havdalah. When he was done, those gathered waited for hours on end as the Rebbe poured a few drops of wine from the goblet into each individual’s cup (which would be refilled over and over again by a shamesh). As the Rebbe poured, the gathered sang and danced. Gordon recalled saying, “The building is rumbling.”
Gordon and his sons joined the line, and Kotlarsky told him that he was soon going to be before the Rebbe. The attorney looked at him and thought, Yeah, I am, so what?
But as he moved closer to the Rebbe, he noticed how the line slowed. “You get to that point,” he said, “and you become aware: ‘Hold on, I gotta absorb every second of it.’”
Gordon watched as the Rebbe looked at each person deeply, then poured the wine into the cup held in front of him, and said a word or two. Each one moved on, and the next person stepped up. When it was his turn, he experienced a strong sense that only the Rebbe and he were present: “I could feel him in me down to my toenails.” He felt that there was no part of him “that he didn’t know.”
The Rebbe asked him, “What are you doing for the Torah in Memphis?” Gordon thought to himself, Who are you talking to? I don’t deal in Torah. I am just a lawyer. When the Rebbe realized that he was just standing there like “a golem,” he told Gordon, “You should go back to Memphis and say words of Torah.”
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Some fifteen years later, when Miri Goldfarb was chosen as Miss Israel in 1991, she was stunned. “I was not someone whose beauty was outstanding,” she later explained. The announcement of her name left her so shocked that she could not open her mouth. “I never dreamt that it could happen.”
But it had, and it changed her life. For one thing, it shattered her relationship with her boyfriend, who was taken aback by her sudden fame. When she traveled to the United States for the Miss World competition, she and the twenty unsuccessful Israeli contestants made a point of going to see the Rebbe. “It was very emotional to wait in line with hundreds of people,” she later said about waiting to receive a dollar from the Rebbe in a line that snaked around the building and outside. “I still smell the Brooklyn streets and recall their crevices.”
When the contestants arrived, it was feared by some in the Rebbe’s court that their visit would be seen as highly controversial and even blasphemous. Trying to mitigate the visit’s publicity, the organizer was informed that only two of the group would be permitted to meet the Rebbe. Goldfarb and the organizer were chosen.
The twenty-one-year-old was introduced to the Rebbe as Miss Israel. She asked for a blessing for happiness and that she should find a husband. If there were any misgivings by those surrounding the Rebbe, for his part, the eighty-nine-year-old did not flinch.
The Rebbe wished her that she should share good news. He then shared with her the pasuk in Proverbs that states, “Beauty is deceptive,” and continues, “but it is for her reverence of G-d that she is to be praised.” The commentaries, the Rebbe remarked, explain that when a woman has reverence for G-d, she utilizes her beauty for the beautification of Torah and Jewish observance. “Deliver this message to your friends,” the Rebbe concluded, “to the organizers, and all of the contestants.”
To the trip’s organizer, the Rebbe said, “You organized all of the beautiful women to come here? They should be beautiful in Torah and Jewish observance.”
These fleeting moments in the court of the Rebbe were not uncommon. Neither Gordon nor Goldfarb were religious Jews – surely not as Orthodox as Rebbe Schneerson was. Goldfarb seldom attended synagogue services, and Gordon went to a Conservative one. But they were both taken in by the aura, what many called holiness or inspiration. The Rebbe’s presence created an atmosphere of spirituality. And the Rebbe, in turn, regarded his visitors as future ambassadors for what he saw as his life’s mission – bringing Jewish observance to every Jew.
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Rabbi Mendel Schneerson arrived in the United States in the spring of 1941. He began to work as an engineer, as well as in the educational and publishing departments of the Chabad movement, shortly after his arrival. His predecessor and father-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, began a movement to reach out to non-observant Jews by establishing schools and publishing educational material.
After Rabbi Joseph Isaac’s death in 1950, there was a debate about who should be the next Chabad rebbe. Rabbi Mendel was not happy with the pressure he was placed under to accept the leadership. While he had published books, led small chasidic gatherings, and responded to correspondence, he was considered by those who knew him well to be more of an introvert (and he readily admitted to that fact several times).
However, seemingly after seeing how all of the work that his father-in-law invested in the movement might fizzle away, he accepted the role. Now as leader, Rebbe Mendel Schneerson – who over the decades many began to refer as the Rebbe – steered the movement into being a global Jewish outreach organization.
It was also a challenging period for the Rebbe, who had to find the funds for his new initiatives. At the same time – due mostly to loneliness, financial hardships, or lack of tangible success – many of the Rebbe’s first representatives in the 1950s abandoned their missions. It would take years for the Chabad disciples to acclimate to the new reality of the central focus on Jewish outreach. Likewise, on Rebbe Schneerson’s part, it would take training by carefully observing American culture, listening keenly to and learning from those he met, and readily asking for advice to achieve his aims to reach Jews everywhere and bolster their Jewish observance.
The Rebbe realized it would take personal connections, and that he would need to give of his personal time not only to correspond and meet with people one-on-one – which he had already become accustomed to since his arrival in the United States– but he would also need to spend hours at public gatherings connecting with the crowds. At first those who gathered were small groups, but over time they became larger and larger.
His most ambitious idea – to build Jewish outposts across the globe – would take close to a decade before finding some success, and then over another decade before Chabad had built a notable presence. Only in the mid-1980s through the 1990s was there an explosion of Chabad centers.
Three decades after the Rebbe passed away in 1994 – when Chabad today is considered almost a denomination in and of itself, and one of the largest Jewish networks in the world – the experiences of the people who met with the Rebbe in just over four decades from 1951 through 1994 are retold; they are re-experienced and even reshaped into personal encounters. They are still, among other factors, what motivate the Chabad narrative.
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The Memphis attorney still becomes emotional thinking about the Rebbe’s sudden directive to him to teach Judaism in his hometown: “It was a tremendous moment. I never have gotten over it. I couldn’t believe what he said to me.”
To him it was a holy moment. The Rebbe, Gordon said, made a suggestion, but like so many others, “I took it as a command.” When he returned to Memphis, he established a weekly Torah class at the Conservative synagogue where he is a member. He would prepare all week for the class, “I had lawyers, doctors, professionals, and businessmen [attending].”
Over the years, the class moved to his office. Ultimately, he said, “My home changed, I changed, my wife changed, my children changed – all as the result of [the Rebbe’s] words.”
The 1991 Miss Israel, who today works at the maternity ward of Raphael Hospital in Tel Aviv, said that the meeting with the Rebbe was life changing, “There is some kind of halo, some kind of spirit that protects me. It is the Rebbe that is always with me.”
Goldfarb keeps the dollar she received to give to charity in her purse. “The Rebbe said that I should do good deeds with my beauty,” and thirty years later, she said, she makes every effort to follow through. On the day she was telling about the experience, she was at an event for battered women who design clothing as a form of healing. Together with other models, she modeled their creations. The clothing was subsequently auctioned and the proceeds used to assist people in their situation.
“This is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe told me,” she said, noting that when she gets a call for a charitable cause, she is there. “This is my life’s purpose.” She then said emotionally that shortly after the meeting with the Rebbe she met her future husband. She feels that, “for the past thirty-one-years, the Rebbe watched over our marriage. I know that he is always accompanying me.”
Every day, stories of these fleeting moments are told. For the Chabad disciple, the stories evoke a feeling of pride at how great the Rebbe was, or “still is.” Those spreading Judaism are inspired by the stories to continue with their mission. For the idealistic, the stories motivate them to open another Chabad House in some far-flung corner of the universe. The stories about the Rebbe continue to energize a new generation to never give up on even a single Jew, for who knows what the ultimate result will be: From one Jew moved, a family changed, a community became inspired, or battered women found renewed strength.
