Chabad Rebbes

Parshas Vayeilech includes a passage that relates that G‑d will bring retribution on the Jews because of their sins. The Jews will then say: “Is it not because G‑d is not in my midst that all these troubles have befallen me?” The passage continues, explai...

This Torah reading contains the verse: “You will return to G‑d your L‑rd and heed His voice.” Maimonidesunderstands this verse as a description of what will take place in the future. Our translation follows that interpretation, i.e., after the Jews will b...

This week’s Torah reading contains the mitzvah to write a Torah scroll and thus brings to mind the following sequence of events. A few days after the Simchas Torah holidays of 5742 (1981), the Rebbe called in several of the leading members of the Lubavitc...

This Torah reading is always read before Rosh HaShanah. As the High Holidays approach, the question raised at the end of the following story is something for all of us to ponder. “I was in the midst of teaching a class,” relates Rabbi Shabtai Slavaticki, ...

Once the vintage chassid, Reb Peretz Chein, was sitting together at a chassidic gathering with several colleagues. To hide what was then an illegal gathering, they were meeting in a cellar. Their candles had burnt out and the only light was a faint glimme...

One Rosh HaShanah, Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev felt uplifted. He sensed that his prayers and his sounding of the shofar had been uniquely inspired. A heavenly echo interrupted his thoughts: “In a far-away Russian village, there is a congregation whose...

The Sidra of Vayelech is usually read on the Shabbat after Rosh Hashanah. And the Rebbe establishes the connection between its content and its place in the calendar. The Sidra describes how Moses, having finished putting the Torah into writing, handed it ...

Nitzavim is the Sidra invariably read before Rosh Hashanah, and it begins with Moses’ address to the Jewish people, “You are standing today, all of you, before the L-rd your G-d….” This invocation is both general and specific. It mentions the individual c...

In the beginning of the Torah portion Vayeilech, Moshe tells the Jewish people that it is time to hand over the reigns of leadership to Yehoshua, for “Today I am 120 years old and I can no longer go out and come.”Devarim 31:2. RashiIbid. explains that thi...