Throughout this week, upwards of 50,000 people are expected to visit the Ohel, the resting place of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, at the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, N.Y., in observance of the Third of Tammuz (Gimmel Tammuz), the 29th anniversary since the Rebbe’s passing, of, which falls out this year on Wednesday night, June 21, and extends through Thursday, June 22.
For more than seven decades—since the passing of the Rebbe’s father-in-law, the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory—the small open-air structure has been a place where Jews from all walks of life pour their hearts out in prayer and to beseech G‑d, invoking the merit of the holy tzaddikim who rest there.
Most of the people who will visit the Ohel this year in all likelihood have never met the Rebbe; many were not even born at the time of his passing in 1994. Nevertheless, virtually everyone who visits the resting place speaks of the lasting inspiration they receive when there. The following are but a few experiences that Chabad.org has collected from visitors to the Ohel.
‘Every Visit a Private Meeting’
Dinah Khani, who met the Rebbe once when her mother took her to receive a dollar and a blessing as a 7-year-old, says that every time she goes to the Ohel, she feels like she’s having a “private meeting with the Rebbe.”
“All I have to do is go in with an intention, write out all that’s on my heart and pray, and I always find my answers,” she said, recalling one particular visit when she was struggling with her return to Jewish observance as a ba’alat teshuvah.
“I went to the Ohel to find Divine inspiration,” she said. While there, she read a letter the Rebbe wrote to the then-Chief Rabbi of London, Rabbi Eliezer Ze’ev Kirzner in 1968. The letter detailed the importance of a campaign to encourage boys and men to put on tefillin, which at first glance didn’t seem particularly relevant to a young woman like herself.
But upon re-reading the letter, Khani felt that the Rebbe was asking her to take on a tefillin campaign of her own by raising funds to purchase tefillin for boys who might not otherwise be able to afford a pair.
Working on the campaign, she said, “helped me not only overcome my fear and doubts about observance but see what was really needed in the community: to promote and teach kids about their roots and spark their souls through the simple mitzvah of putting on tefillin.”
It also was a reminder of her “favorite lesson” from the Rebbe that “one small effort has a ripple effect.”
“It made me realize that when there is a deficiency in the world, anybody can help make a change with even one small gesture. That one small act of inspiration can spark inspiration in so many others,” she said. “We raised a significant amount of money through this campaign—more than I ever imagined we would—but more importantly, we created unforgettable memories and connections for the families and boys not only in my community but elsewhere who could not afford tefillin.”
A Baker’s Lament

Like many people, Motty Schlesinger’s wife started baking her own bread during the Covid-19 pandemic, using her favorite sourdough recipe. People enjoyed it so much that the couple began making extra loaves and sold them from their home in Lakewood, N.J. As word of mouth spread, more and more people wanted the bread, and especially, their sourdough challah for Shabbat.
Several weeks in a row, they had more than 30 people waiting for fresh challah. But each time, the batch flopped.
“It was a huge embarrassment,” Schlesinger recalls.
When a friend recounted how his daughter recovered from a health problem after he visited the Ohel and began to learn Chassidus each night for five minutes, Schlesinger decided to try that as well.
“I went to the Ohel, I gave tzedakah, and I wrote a kvittel [note of petition] asking that the sourdough should come out good, and I would start to learn Chassidus every day,” he said. “After that, the sourdough came out very good, and business picked up.”
Hearing this, his brother suggested he increase his learning by adding the study of the Mishnah to his routine. Schlesinger decided to give it a try, and as a baker, picked out the volume of mishnayot from his bookshelf that deals with separating challah. As he opened the volume, he discovered a photo of the Rebbe inside.
“I have had that mishna on my shelf for maybe 15 years. I have no idea when or why I put the photo in there,” he said. “It was like a message from the Rebbe.”
Today, Schlesinger’s business, “Lechem Bakery,” is a wholesale distributor of sourdough bread, challah and rolls to over a dozen kosher stores in New York and New Jersey, with a physical storefront in Toms River in the works. He plans to commemorate Gimmel Tammuz by visiting the Ohel.
Carrying the Rebbe’s Message

A visitor to the Ohel over the past 29 years, Albert Hakakian came to New York from Iran in 1974 as a young student. A friend mentioned that the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn had cheap rents, and Hakakian decided to check it out.
Although he knew that the area was home to Chabad-Lubavitch, he wasn’t familiar with the Rebbe. Yet just after he got off the subway and made his way up the stairs and onto the city streets, the first person he saw was the Rebbe, who was walking out of Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.
Alone in a new country with his relatives still in Iran, Hakakian says that he was immediately taken with the Rebbe, adding that he was searching for a deeper connection to Judaism and he found it through the Rebbe. Hakakian recalled that although he did not speak a word of Yiddish, when the Rebbe spoke he felt a deep spiritual connection to his words, as though his neshama understood their meaning.
Hakakian eventually settled in Brooklyn’s Boro Park section, where there was an Iranian congregation. Still, he continued to visit 770 and the Rebbe. He would often take the subway to Crown Heights on a Sunday to receive a dollar and a blessing. One Simchat Torah, he walked for more than an hour to hear the Rebbe speak at a farbrengen.
When it came time for him to marry, Hakakian asked the Rebbe for a blessing. Three months later, he had found his bashert, his soul mate.
Today, Hakakian works as a Judaic artist creating beautifully detailed ketubot, marriage contracts. He says he remains impacted by the Rebbe and visits the Ohel regularly, though this Gimmel Tammuz, he will be staying closer to home, where he will study Torah and attend a farbrengen.
Hakakian said he thinks the best way to honor the Rebbe is “to be a good person, strengthen your Yiddishkeit and do the right thing,” he says. “If everyone follows that, that is the best way to carry on the Rebbe’s message today.”
Business Guidance

When Andrea Herzog first visited the Ohel, her business was at a crossroads. Though she felt strongly about the company’s mission—Wrapunzel helps women, Jewish and non-Jewish, who want to cover their hair for religious, medical or other reasons—the finances were strained.
“We were spending so much more than we were making. The expenses were only getting
higher,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I should just quit the whole thing. I was just really, really at a loss about what to do about work.”
Though not affiliated with Chabad at the time, Herzog made a “very impulsive” decision to go to the Ohel, and request a blessing from above. When she walked into the entryway, a video of the Rebbe was playing on a monitor.
“He was talking about the importance of our relationship with non-Jews and what our job as Jews is to unite the world, to be a kiddush Hashem and not be insular, and how important it is to bring what we have to offer to the whole world and not keep it hidden,” she said. “That is really what I do with my work.”
Hearing that message, said Herzog, “put me back on the right track and
reminded me of why I’m doing what I’m doing. It has given me so much clarity.”
Now, her company continues to provide unique head wraps for women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who feel a sense of connection and unity through their shared practice.
A Request for Healing
Sharon M. had gone numerous times to the Ohel to ask for things she thought were important. As she looked around, she says, she was always struck by the people who were there “crying and sobbing and looking like they were dealing with something truly serious.”
Then, nine years ago, Sharon’s infant niece was hospitalized a number of times. Each time, the prognosis became progressively worse. “The doctors were saying awful things to my brother and sister-in-law. That even if the baby got better, she wouldn’t be able to eat on her own or function independently.”
“At 11 p.m. that night, I went to the Ohel,” Sharon said. “I wrote a very detailed letter, begging, demanding that she should have a full refuah, recovery. I also took upon myself a pretty serious religious commitment at the time.
“Within two days a new medical team was assigned to my niece,” she continued. “They tested her and found she was highly allergic to milk proteins.” Because of the infant’s allergy, she had been stripped of her immunity and became very sick. “It was a slow process, but once she was put on the right formula, she was able to leave the hospital and thank G‑d, none of the things the first doctors said came true.”
A few years later, with the world virtually shut down because of Covid-19, Sharon again turned to the Rebbe to seek help from above for her father, who has a rare disease and was in need of an organ transplant, which he received.
“I grew up in a secular community,” Sharon said, “but now our whole life revolves around Judaism. We try to live our life according to what the Rebbe teaches us, and his guidance is present in our lives every day.”
A Sense of Holiness
As a young boy, Ilya Aronovich’s family immigrated from the Soviet Union and settled in
Washington Heights, a neighborhood in New York City that is home to a community of descendants of German Jews living among a large Latino community. His parents enrolled him in the local Jewish school, Breuers, for elementary school.
After graduating from elementary school, Aronovich attended public schools in the neighborhood. He attended college, pledged a Latino fraternity, got engaged to a Latina girl, and was on a path to a life removed from Judaism.
Four days before his wedding, he decided to cancel it. One year later, he was engaged again, this time to a Jewish woman, Julia, who was also from the former Soviet Union. The couple settled on Long Island where they became connected to Chabad of Great Neck.
They soon began to visit the Ohel and ask the Rebbe’s intervention on high for help in various matters.
It was during a visit to the Ohel nine years ago that Aronovich had what he described as an “above world” experience.
For 45 minutes straight, he said, he felt an “overpowering sense of kedushah, of holiness.”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “I don’t understand what happened. It was such a spiritual experience for me that has not been replicated since. The whole time I was there, I just got this awe of being in a holy place. I can’t explain it. Some people say they experience that at the Kotel, the Western Wall, but I got it at the Ohel.”
Though it’s never happened again—he has been to the Ohel many times since, and to the Kotel numerous times—the Aronovich family has continued to grow in their Judaism and their connection to the Rebbe.
For Gimmel Tammuz, Aronovich says he will once again visit the Ohel and attend a farbrengen at a local Chabad center. “It’s important to me because it is a very special time,” he says. “The Rebbe is not available to us in a physical form, but there are many people today who have never met him and are still his Chassidim.”
“My wife and I feel the Rebbe’s presence all around us,” he continued. “But for some reason Hashem [G‑d] wanted us to function more and more seemingly on our own. But the Rebbe is with us.”
‘I Get It’
Over the years, Rabbi Gaby Danieli brought many of his students at Yeshiva University’s Isaac Breuer College of Hebraic Studies to the Ohel as part of his seminars on Chassidic thought and practice. “I had been to the Ohel many times for personal reasons as well, and every time I approached the brick house and opened the white front door it felt like the first time I was there,” says Danieli, now a teacher of Judaic studies in Jerusalem.
“I am immediately greeted by the Rebbe's warm smile from the large photo at the entranceway. Hearing his voice on the video playing in the anteroom is not just a replay of a farbrengen of the past, but a direct message to me in the present relating to my life.”
Danieli tells of one visit that “I can’t put into words, but I’ll try.”
It was an evening during the fall when he brought a group of his students to the Ohel.
“I’ll never forget the look on the face of one senior student as he approached me by the coffee stand after he was at the Rebbe’s resting place. No words needed to be exchanged. I felt what he was experiencing because it is what many of us feel and experience by being in the presence of the Rebbe: It’s a moment of being embraced, similar to a parent’s hug after being away for so long. It’s a moment of empowerment, like a general encouraging a soldier to do his best for the sake of all.”
“As we left the Ohel the student said, “Gaby I got it. I understand what you can’t convey in class about a Rebbe. I get it!”
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