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Menahem-Mendel SheersonThe Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, King Moshiach
Date of Birth: 11.01.1902
Country:  Russia |
Content:
- Childhood and Early Life
- Prodigious Intellect and Unwavering Faith
- Fateful Encounter with the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe
- Daring Rescue and Dangerous Mission
- Escape and Marriage
- Intellectual Pursuits in Europe and Paris
- Wartime Heroism and Steadfastness
- Renewal and Revitalization in America
- Anointment as the Messiah
- Global Impact and Legacy
Childhood and Early Life
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe and the King Messiah, was born on 11 Nisan 5662 (1902) in the southern Russian city of Nikolayev. His father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, a distinguished scholar of Torah and Chabad philosophy, was the great-great-grandson of the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch. After whom he named his eldest son.
Five years later, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak relocated to Ukraine, specifically to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), where he served as chief rabbi until his arrest. It was here, in Yekaterinoslav, that our Rebbe spent his childhood and adolescence.
Prodigious Intellect and Unwavering Faith
Rabbi Menachem Mendel was a phenomenally gifted and exceptionally diligent child, surpassing his peers to such an extent that he was forced to leave cheder (Jewish elementary school). From then on, he pursued his studies independently, eventually passing his high school exams externally at the Yekaterinoslav Gymnasium.
Witnesses of the Rebbe's childhood and adolescence recounted his extraordinary mathematical abilities, his self-taught foreign languages, and, most notably, his profound immersion in complex issues of Judaic studies and Chabad philosophy. Yet, these same witnesses never referred to him as a child "not of this world." A testament to this was the young Rabbi Menachem Mendel's heroic act of jumping into the sea and saving a drowning peer.
Fateful Encounter with the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe
In 1923, in Rostov-on-Don, Rabbi Menachem Mendel first encountered the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson. This meeting would shape his destiny. The young man became a devoted disciple of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, sharing his perilous mission of preserving the Jewish faith.
In 1927, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was arrested at his apartment in Leningrad. His subsequent release was facilitated, in part, by the intervention of Western statesmen and public figures. However, for nearly half a century, the identity of the courageous individual who risked his life to relay the news of the arrest abroad remained a mystery.
Daring Rescue and Dangerous Mission
That mystery was recently solved, again by chance, in the memoirs of one of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's close associates at the time. As it turned out, during the search of the Rebbe's apartment, while his family was forcibly confined to a room, the Rebbe's daughter spotted Rabbi Menachem Mendel approaching from her window. She whispered urgently, "Go away, we have guests!"
Rabbi Menachem Mendel immediately took the first train to Moscow, entered the German embassy, and secured a meeting with the German ambassador, informing the world of the Rebbe's arrest. But even before setting out for Moscow, Rabbi Menachem Mendel rushed from the Rebbe's house to Chaim Lieberman (the Rebbe's personal secretary) to warn him of the impending danger, allowing him to conceal or destroy the Rebbe's correspondence that he kept. The risk was immense, as the GPU could have set a trap in Lieberman's house as well, but Rabbi Menachem Mendel managed to outwit the agents, who arrived at the secretary's only a few hours later.
That night and the next day in Moscow, Rabbi Menachem Mendel walked on a razor's edge. The GPU would have shown no mercy to the 25-year-old "counter-revolutionary," but God was clearly on the side of those who risked their lives for a holy cause.
Escape and Marriage
In that same year, 1927, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was suddenly released and left the Soviet Union with his family and several close associates, including Rabbi Menachem Mendel. The group initially settled in Riga, later relocating near Warsaw, where in 1929, the Rebbe married Chaya Mushka, the middle daughter of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak.
Intellectual Pursuits in Europe and Paris
Soon after the wedding, the newlyweds moved to Berlin, where Rabbi Menachem Mendel enrolled in the technological department of the University of Berlin. In 1933, with the rise of fascism in Germany, Rabbi Menachem Mendel was forced to flee the country, but not before obtaining a doctoral degree from the prestigious Heidelberg University.
Upon relocating to Paris, the Rebbe continued his education at the renowned Sorbonne. His interests were multifaceted, and he received several degrees from the Sorbonne, including a diploma in naval engineering, which proved useful in his later years in America when he worked at a naval base in New York.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel's brilliant aptitude for the exact sciences and his broad range of interests made him a universal specialist. His profound erudition in electronics, hydrodynamics, astronomy, biology, and many other fields consistently amazed atheists from the scientific world, who believed that higher technical education was incompatible with faith in God.
Yet, his in-depth study of scientific disciplines did not deter Rabbi Menachem Mendel from simultaneously refining his knowledge of Judaism, becoming an unparalleled master of Torah, Talmud, Code of Law, and Chabad philosophy.
Wartime Heroism and Steadfastness
The outbreak of World War II found the Rebbe and his wife in Paris. They were unable to leave France in time. Remarkable stories abound about this period in the Rebbe's life. Needless to say, the German occupation authorities were ruthless towards the Jews, and any conspicuous observance of Jewish religious laws risked instant death. But it was during that arduous time that the Rebbe demonstrated by personal example that the commandments of the Torah could be fulfilled under the most challenging circumstances.
Various individuals have recounted how the Rebbe smuggled flour across the Alps for the baking of matzah, fully aware that the Germans executed people for merely possessing it. And how, at great personal risk, the Rebbe crossed the border and brought etrogs to his companions in the unoccupied zone of France, fruits without which a righteous Jew could not imagine the holiday of Sukkot.
By that time, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, now in America, had secured entry visas for his daughter and son-in-law. Via Marseille, passing German checkpoints, the Rebbe and his wife escaped to the United States.
Renewal and Revitalization in America
The war years and their immediate aftermath were a time of despair for the Jewish people and a seeming collapse of all hopes. Even in prosperous America, not all was well. Among the millions of Jews who had immigrated there from Eastern Europe, assimilation was rampant. The goals and meaning of the Lubavitcher movement were to them a meaningless set of words, like the theory of relativity, which everyone had heard about but virtually no one understood.
The return of American Jewry to genuine religion began in 1940 with the arrival of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. At his solemn reception, the head of American Jewry advised the Rebbe, in no uncertain terms, not to interfere in Jewish affairs there. The demand was couched in impeccable diplomatic language: "Remember, we are fundamentally different from the Jews of Europe!"
The Rebbe's response, "America is no different from any other country of the Diaspora!" marked the beginning of a return to Torah and Jewishness. Indeed, in a matter of years, the Lubavitcher movement had taken America by storm. A decade later, the house at 770 Eastern Parkway in New York City became the heart and center of the global Chabad movement.
Anointment as the Messiah
On February 1, 1992, the Rebbe declared that with the issuing of the Rabbinical Decree heralding the advent of the Messiah, revolutionary changes had begun in the world. In particular, Isaiah's prophecy "they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks" had started to be fulfilled, as evidenced by the signing of the nuclear arms reduction treaty between the USSR and the United States.
A month and a half later, on April 14, 1992, a resolution was adopted recognizing the Rebbe as the Messiah ("BaShevatz Makash" - "In the capacity of the Messiah").
Global Impact and Legacy
Today, there is hardly a place on Earth where the name of the small town of Lubavitch, located in present-day Smolensk Oblast, Russia, is not known. Representatives of the Chabad movement, the Rebbe's emissaries, carry the light of knowledge, Jewish traditions, and education to every corner of the globe, from Moscow to St. Petersburg, from Saratov to Riga, from Bangkok to Singapore, from Melbourne to Johannesburg, from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, from Safed to Hebron, from Los Angeles to Berlin.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe's attention to the needs and concerns of Russian Jews cannot be overstated. Throughout decades, during the years of the iron curtain, the Rebbe's work served as the only link connecting Soviet "Jews of silence" with the free world. The Rebbe, himself fluent in Russian, had an intimate understanding of the situation in the USSR down to the finest detail and took a keen interest in all aspects of life in Russia.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, the King Messiah, was a spiritual mentor and teacher not only to his followers, Lubavitch Hasidim. The Rebbe never distinguished between individuals who sought his support and counsel. A Reform "rabbi," the Prime Minister of Israel, an assimilated Broadway producer, a Soviet immigrant fresh off the boat, a Senator from New Jersey
