The Early Years

Rabbi Sholom Dovber, the fifth leader of the growing Chabad movement, was constantly kept busy by the growing number of public meetings, conferences and important Rabbinical convocations which he had to attend.

The endless stream of Chassidic delegations, people seeking his advice and guidance, the need to supervise and instruct his followers in addition to his personal need for Biblical and Chassidic study, made increasing inroads into working days which already stretched from early morning until late at night.

He decided to appoint a personal secretary to relieve him of part of this enormous burden. His choice was his fifteen-year-old son, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn. Born on Tammuz 12, 5640 (1880) in Lubavitch, Russia, the young man had proved his ability in the field of study and was already acknowledged as a brilliant scholar. He was soon to prove himself to be a no less brilliant administrator with an outstanding talent for communal and civic activities.

In 5655 (1895) the young Rabbi participated in the great conference of religious and lay leaders in Kovno, and again in the following year in Vilna.

On Elul 13, 5657 (1897), at the age of seventeen, Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn married Nehamah Dinah, the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Schneersohn, a prominent man of great scholarship and piety (and the grand-daughter of the Tzemach Tzedek).

During the week’s celebrations that followed the wedding ceremony, Rabbi Sholom Dovber announced the founding of the famous Lubavitch Talmudic seminary Yeshivah Tomchei Tmimim, and the following year appointed his son to be its executive director. Under the able direction of Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn and guided by his ever-watchful father, the Lubavitch Yeshivah flourished and developed and many branch seminaries were formed throughout Russia.

The first two decades of the twentieth century were to test the young Rabbi’s unbounded energy, zeal and ability to the full. Only the briefest mention can be made here of even the most important of the events contained in those twenty years.

As part of the strenuous efforts being made to improve the economic status of the Jews in Russia, Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn was delegated by his father to conduct an intensive campaign for the establishment of a textile factory in Dubrovna.

This campaign, in the year 5661 (1901), took Rabbi Schneersohn to Vilna, Lodz and Koenigsberg. He obtained the co-operation of leading Rabbis and of the famous philanthropists, the brothers Jacob and Eliezer Poliakoff, and the textile factory was duly established with some 2,000 Jewish employees.