My Encounter with the Rebbe

Efraim Steinmetz is a businessman from Caracas, Venezuela. He and his wife came to the Rebbe with concerns about their children’s Jewish education. The Rebbe answered with a story from his own childhood.

While living in Berlin, the Rebbe made the acquaintance of a Jewish businessman named Yitzchok Meir Ferstenberg. Rabbi Chazkel Besser of Agudas Yisrael of America later heard these recollections from Yitzchok Meir.

Rabbi Leibel Posner was a student at 770 during the 1940s, and would attend the Rebbe’s monthly Shabbos-Mevorchim Farbrengen. An illuminating lesson in the game of life.

Yona Kese grew up in Dnepropetrovsk at the same time the Rebbe was there. He was a writer, who later became a member in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset.

In 1927, the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, was arrested in Leningrad for counterrevolutionary activity – spreading religion. Shortly thereafter Rabbi Menachem Mendel, his son-in-law to be, was forced into hiding. Shaar Yashuv Cohen is the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Israel.

In 1909, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, Rebbetzin Chana and their three sons moved to Dnepropetrovsk, a huge military city 520 kilometers from Kiev, where Rabbi Levi Yitzchok became the rabbi of the city’s 25 synagogues and 50,000 Jews. He turned to Rabbi Zalman Vilenkin, asking him to teach his sons. Chana Shapiro is Rabbi Vilenkin’s daughter, recalling her parents’ descriptions of the children in their home.

Rabbi Yochanan Gordon traveled from Dockshitz, Russia, to the Rebbe’s wedding in Warsaw. His son, Rabbi Yisroel Gordon, recalls his father’s reports of the wedding.

Every year, from Berlin, and later from Paris, the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin would visit her father, the Previous Rebbe, for the festive month of Tishrei. Rabbi Moshe Gerlitzky was a student in the Lubavitch Yeshiva at that time.