After escaping Nazi-occupied Paris, and many perilous months in Vichy France, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), and his wife, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka (1901-1988), boarded the SS Serpa Pinto in Lisbon, Portugal. On Monday, June 23--Sivan 28 on the Jewish calendar--at 10:30 A.M., they arrived in New York.
Shortly after his arrival, the Rebbe's father-in-law, the then Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (who had been rescued from Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1940), appointed him to head the social and educational outreach programs of Chabad-Lubavitch. Thus the Rebbe began his decades-long revolutionary work to revitalize Jewish life in the Western Hemisphere, which spread, by means of the emissaries ("shluchim") he dispatched from his New York headquarters, to every part of the world.
Links:
Inspiring the Jewish American Revolution
World Jewry Thrives Seven Decades After Rebbe’s U.S. Arrival
When it all began, heaven was here on earth.
This physical, earthly world, more than any of the higher spiritual worlds, was the place where the very essence of G‑d’s infinite light could be found.
But humankind, step by step, banished that divine presence from its home, with a tree of knowledge, with a man who murdered his brother, with all those things that human beings do…
Since humankind chased it away, only humankind can bring it back. And this began with Abraham, who proclaimed Oneness for all the world.
And it ends with us.
Our generation will bring heaven back down to earth.