Living Torah Archives

There are many similarities between Maimonides and the Alter Rebbe, the Founder of Chabad Chasidism. They both issued decisions on Jewish law that guide all later generations.

The twenty-fourth of Teves marks the passing of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Chassidism. He is famous among Jews today as the author of both the Tanya and a version of the Code of Jewish Law. His name, Schneur, hints to his unique ability to teach and expound on both the revealed and the more esoteric parts of the Torah.

There are many similarities between Maimonides and the Alter Rebbe, the Founder of Chabad chasidism. They both issued decisions on Jewish law that guide all later generations.

When the match was proposed between the Alter Rebbe, the founder of Chabad Lubavitch, and Shterna, the daughter of one of the wealthiest Jews of his day, the Alter Rebbe set a tough precondition: His dowry was to be used to help settle poor Jews on the land, and help them earn a livelihood.

In the early 1980s, the Rebbe began to speak on the importance of raising awareness about the Seven Laws of Noah among non-Jews.

A Talmudic passage about marriage helps us gain a deeper understanding of the journey of teshuva, repentance.

Once, in the middle of the night, one of the Mitteler Rebbe’s children fell out of bed. Entirely engrossed in his studies, he did not hear the child’s cries. However, his father, the Alter Rebbe, heard the cries, closed his Torah books, and went to comfort the child. The Alter Rebbe later said to his son: no matter how deeply immersed you are in holy pursuits, when a child cries you must hear it; you must stop what you’re doing and soothe their pain.

The Alter Rebbe relates that he was informed of his release from prison as he was reciting the verse in Psalms, “He redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that came upon me, because of the many who were with me.”

The Alter Rebbe would read the Torah in public. One year, he was away during the Torah reading of Ki Savo, and his young son and future successor, Rabbi Dovber, heard someone else read the portion, which includes G-d’s severe rebuke of the Jewish people. The son became so distressed that he fainted, and weeks later it was still questionable whether he’d be able to fast on Yom Kippur. The chasidim later asked him: “In previous years you didn’t faint; what happened this year?” The boy responded, “When father reads it, I don’t hear curses.”

It happened once on Shabbos that in the midst of prayer, the Alter Rebbe removed his Tallis and went to the edge of the town. There, he found a woman who had just given birth. The Alter Rebbe had sensed that she needed help...

Once, after Rosh Hashanah prayers, the Alter Rebbe asked his son, the Mitteler Rebbe, “With what meditation did you pray this Rosh Hoshanah?” He replied, “With the verse, ‘All mankind shall prostrate themselves before You’.” Then the Mitteler Rebbe asked his father, “With what meditation did you pray?” The Alter Rebbe responded, “I prayed with my lectern.”

The mystical secrets of Torah were always studied by the Jewish people, but during most of Jewish history they were guarded and only accessible to a scholarly elite. In later generations these teachings were disseminated to a wider extent, but even then, they were only comprehensible to the initiated; the spiritual illumination of these teachings reached the outside world through those who studied them.

There are many similarities between Maimonides and the Alter Rebbe, the Founder of Chabad Chassidism. They both faced extreme opposition to their teachings, yet the opposition fell away. Eventually, their detractors became ardent disciples.