One morning, Reb Dovber, who would become the Mitteler Rebbe, woke up startled at the dream which he had just experienced. Shortly afterwards, he encountered his father, the Alter Rebbe. “Tell me your dream,” his father directed him.

Reb Dovber began to relate how he had seen a tall man who limped on his left side, standing on a raft and navigating it through calm, gently flowing waters. Then he had seen his father on another raft, struggling to steer it through turbulent and agitated currents.

“The tall man was my Rebbe, the Maggid,” the Alter Rebbe told his son. “His mission was to show tzaddikim (righteous people) how to pilot a course in life. Navigating such a passage is a challenge, but a tranquil one. My mission is to direct baalei-teshuvah, those who must return to their Jewish core. This is a far more irregular and tumultuous path.”

The Alter Rebbe transmitted this mission to his successors. Thus it is no wonder that it was the Rebbe’s initiative that sparked the teshuvah movement in America and throughout the world. In the 50s, when Rabbis throughout the States were lamenting the inroads that assimilation had made throughout traditional Jewry, Charles Ratner, a secular Jewish historian, asked the Rebbe what place an American Jew who had studied science and has the doors of American society open for him could have within the Jewish tradition. The Rebbe answered that American Jews possessed genuine sincerity, and that this quality would ultimately lead them back to their Jewish heritage.

In the 60s, the Rebbe instructed his chassidim to view the upheaval experienced by American youth, not as a rebellion against authority which should be held in check, but a sincere search for meaning and purpose that should be encouraged. It was in that era that he founded the first yeshivos for baalei teshuvah and established Chabad Houses on university campuses. Not only did the Rebbe encourage others through this endeavor, but as illustrated in the few examples that follow, he played a personal role in guiding many on the path to teshuvah.