Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson (April 18th 1902 - June 12th 1994), also known by its partisans under the name of Rebbe or the Rabbi de Loubavitch is the seventh heir to the founded dynasty of the Hassidisme HaBaD in 1797 by Rabbi Schnéour Zalman de Lyadi. He was the spiritual leader of the Mouvement Loubavitch, of 1950 following the death of his cousin and father-in-law Joseph Isaac Schneersohn until his death in 1994. He in particular allowed the diffusion of the Judaism and the foundation of a network of institutions of Jewish studies and teaching of the Torah.
A majority of its disciples claimed a long time that Rebbe was the Mashiah awaited by the Juifs. It did not have children but bequeathed more than 2600 institutions initiated during its life.
Biography
Youth
Menahem Mendel Schneerson was born the April 18th (11 Nissan) 1902 with Nikolaiev in Ukraine with the hearth from Reb Levi Yits' hak and Rabbanit `Hannah. It must carry the same patronym as Rabbi Yossef Yist' hak, his future father-in-law which it will succeed, with the fact that both go down, through two different lines, of Rabbi Menahem Mendel, third of the line, celebrates it Tsemah Tsedek. It will pass its youth to Yekatrinoslav (renamed Dniepropetrovsk by the Bolsheviks) whose his/her father Rav Levi Yits' hak is the Rabbin.Rav Levi Yits' hak is a Master inspired of the Kabbale, which explores the Zohar and the Talmud. It will be in particular charged to constitute the file kabbalistic of the instruction in 1911, at the time of the Affaire Beilis, the last and spectacular business of ritual murder.
Against any waiting, the future Rabbi de Loubavitch will not attend a Yeshiva. Apart from a first Master with whom it will take his first steps in the texts - and to which it will dedicate an eternal respect -, his father will be his single tutor.
Reb Levik prescribes with his/her son a 16 hours course of daily studies allocated with the Torah and give up to him the eights which remain to feed, sleep and for the profane studies with various professors of the city. The child accumulates the readings, devours language dictionaries, while spending most clearly his time to study the works of which it will have one day to ensure the heritage. Its room is papered astronomical charts. His/her mother enjoys to praise her capacities for absorption - those which will allow him, at the proper time, to dictate the reply to a letter by reading some three others. One knows also that it hardly taken the distractions of his age and that the books are already its fatherland.
For human qualities, his/her mother will report tardily that it jumped at the ten years age in cold Dniepr to save a child who drowned and who it will miss being carried by the typhus contracted at the time of an epidemic after being itself carried voluntary first-aid worker. The young man is interested in all, i.e. with all the intellectual deployments of which it will make later use “to develop the Creator and the profession of faith rédemptrice of the Torah”. He is registered as a free candidate in various establishments and obtains diplomas there.
At the time when it meets Rabbi Yossef Yits' hak in 1923, in Rostov, it is almost unknown hassidic community which camps around the Master. It is surprised even a little by this young man of twenty and one years, impeccably put and at the refined manners, more especially as it will be known quickly that the bright young man is intended to marry the last of the girls of the Rabbi: Hayah Mouchka. The Rabbi reassures his disciples by attesting that this a little suspect young man knows word for word both Talmud and large the décisionnaires, and that the tears which it pours at the time of Tikoun `hatsot - these lamentations that the very pious ones recite daily at midnight - are inexpressible.
Exile
In 1927, the Bolchevisme starts to repress the religious institutions and Rabbi Yossef Yits' hak, which does not let plane null ambiguity on the contempt that it dedicates to this mode and of little case only it makes of his payment, is stopped. The sentence of death pronounced against him is commuted to exile and during the next summer, it must leave the fatherland of the `hassidism for Rīga where it will establish six years lasting its “government in exile”. It takes along its family, her close relations disciples and his future son-in-law.The November 27th 1928 in Warsaw, Rabbi Menahem Mendel marries the girl of Rabbi Yossef Yits' hak. This marriage is celebrated in the Polish capital, high place of the Judaism of Central Europe. Rabbinical celebrities, whose place abounded at the time, then on the occasion to measure the intellectual texture of this man appeared ganté of white which provides them an edifying matter.
The new couple then leaves to settle with Berlin where the future Rabbi will attend the university, and a great number of Jewish intellectuals with which the city is still honoured (it will remember thereafter to have seen Albert Einstein there playing of the violin). In 1933, rise with the capacity of the Nazism the fact of leaving Berlin for Paris. There, he will attend the Sorbonne and other establishments of higher education while revivifying the spirit of the many refugees whom the storm starts to pour in the City of the lights. He ensures also a daily course the oratory of the 17 Rue of the Rose trees.
Those which attend the couple, which lives with some encablures of the station Mouton Duvernet, will attest that the opening of this man to the beings and the ideas cohabits with a piety meticulous person. Of his stay in the French capital, the Rabbi will keep all his life an attachment particular to the French Judaism, whose history thereafter will return to him well. At the point even as at the time of memorable a Sim' hat Torah in 1974 with New York, to which some five hundred French assisted, it made dance the French on the air of the Marseillaise that it entonna on the words of one canticle to the glory of God, recited the Shabbat and the feastdays to the Synagog.
In 1941, the invasion of France makes it leave Paris for the free Zone. Its tour leads it to Vichy then with Nice. Certain testimonys attest that there will be bonds with the local Résistance, and that it will take along even young people in mountain the night to make Matsot with the approach of Pessa' H.
Meanwhile, in Russia, his/her father exasperates the Bolsheviks while refusing to play their game. One night preceding the Festival by Pessa' H 1939, the NKVD makes irruption at his place and takes along it. After having forwarded prison in prison, it is sent in exile in a cesspool of the Kazakhstan where it dies on August 9th (20 Av) 1944 in a physical state of forfeiture. It is over there that with ink made by his wife - which will have joined meanwhile - he will write his comments kabbalistic of Zohar, on the margins of some books which he will have been able to carry. His/her son will publish them thereafter and will comment on them abundantly.
In May 1941, the Rabbi and his wife embark with Marseilles for Barcelona. A little later they will embark with Lisbon to accost with New York the June 23rd 1941. His/her father-in-law is since March 1940 there after having escaped in a way as rocambolesque as miraculous with the destruction of the Jews of Warsaw.
Arrival in New York
Menahem Schneerson which arrives at New York is as ignored American Loubavitch colony as he was to it entourage of his father-in-law in Russia. Initially, it is devoted exclusively to the publisher rested by his father-in-law and who has been given for task to publish the immense inheritance accumulated for two centuries.
But the health of his/her father-in-law declines and it has to replace it to celebrate the Farbrenguen, these meetings `hassidic during which the interventions of the Rabbi alternate with the songs. It is here that one will discover the hardening of this intellectual whom his father-in-law calls “my Minister for the culture”. In its interventions, it makes jump cleavages which partition apparently the various disciplines of the knowledge accumulated by the Jewish tradition. The Pilpoul talmudic is suddenly chamarré of Cabal, the literal direction becomes scarlet as the sap of Hassidisme HaBaD irrigates them and irradiates them. This man who does not have fifty years not made drink, dance, exulter and reflect the learned ones which have its age sometimes twice and which do not see anything similar in their last experiment.
In spring 1947, it makes its ultimate voyage abroad while returning to Paris to accommodate his mother who with succeeded in leaving the Soviet Union. It will leave never again its stronghold of Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
The Rabbi de Loubavitch
January 17th, 1951, Menahem Mendel Schneerson assoit on the vacant left seat, by the departure of his/her father-in-law one year before and becomes the seventh Rabbi de Loubavitch. It very quickly cuts down its charts and its profession of faith is summarized in a word: “OUFARATSTA”, the diffusion of the Torah and its values towards all the Jewish horizons which they did not reach yet . It is the jump with body lost in this company which will attest true attachment of its hassidim to its teaching. The Farbrenguen which it celebrates - which can sometimes last eight hours and more, and during which it discourses without notes - exaltent until those which do not hear a word with its Yiddish talmudic and didactic.
In this expansion of lesson, a generic profession of faith: the refusal to relativize the least aspect of a divine Torah, been used for by an unrestrained desire to sit each teaching in the world of the concrete one. The deployment in extenso of all its interventions approaches the hundred volumes. It discourses and sings, but also written, and with all. With the rabbis, with the statesmen, artists, writers - Élie Wiesel account among those whose it marked the spirit - with children and with all those which seek its council. Some thirty volumes of its correspondence were published.
It receives also much. During more than three decades it will give at a rate of two nights per week of the private audiences at the time which, lasting a turn of dial sometimes, it listens to and advises those which will have requested an interview. He also intercedes for those which make him the request of it. II master key regularly of the hours, with jeun, and sometimes under a blazing sun to reading, on the burial of his/her father-in-law, requests for blessings which flow the every day to its secretariat.
At the 76 years age, after a heart disease with the right in the middle of the joy of the dances of the Festival of Sim' hat Torah in 1978, it recovers with difficulty but continuous while refusing to take rest in spite of concerns of its entourage. It celebrates a Farbrenguen every week, without counting unexpected public interventions at the conclusion of the offices of the evening. The particular audiences stopped after its cardiac incident on the matter take again “dollar” which it distributes each Sunday morning to hundreds of people (monk, nonreligious, men, women and children, celebrities of all spheres) who pass in front of him - sometimes during eight hours of sharp - and ask her blessing and for her council (for Torah questions, but also in their work, their personal relations or their studies).
Messianism
To the beginning of the year 1980, the Rabbi passes the ultimate one and impossible to circumvent speed. He announces that the steps of the Messiah resound already and engages all those which aspire to them to hasten them by being made some the echo by the study of the lesson and laws bound at the time Messianic while attempting to convince all those that they can reach that the arrival of the Messie is a reality which awaits only our faith in it to shape. Consequently, with each one of its interventions, it will still accentuate the urgency of the effort to be deployed to make succeed the ultimate finishing of Creation.
With the beginning of the year 1990, he declares that the political upheavals occurred in Europe and who put an end to the Cold war are a sign characteristic of the next Messianic advent. He connects the fact that these changes were carried out without bloodshed to the one era first steps of universal peace.
When bursts the first Guerre of the Gulf, he declares that it is about the realization of the terms of Midrash Yalkout Chimoni announcing, for the year when Machia' H will be revealed , the war of the leader of the " Persian " (which had in Antiquity its capital with Baghdad) against an Arab country and the world distress which will result from it. According to the fitting of the account of the Midrash which reports the way in which Machia' H will reassure the Jewish people and will announce the delivery, while being held on roof of the Temple (place profanes which, according to the Rabbi, fact allusion to a ground external with Israel), the Rabbi does not cease encouraging the population of Erets Israel and announces prophetically that there will not be to fear any nonconventional attack and that the war will finish with Pourim, contrary to the forecasts of all the strategic experts. In reigning confusion, it is one of the voices which clears up and gives hope to the Jews of the whole world.
The evening of April 12th (28 Nissan) 1991, he admonishes his hassidim by saying his bitterness and his disappointment not to have seen to make all the effort that he solicited. He affirms to have achieved the work which concerned its task and which the remainder belongs from now on to those which listen to it.
He will spend the year which will follow particularly to comment on the weekly section of the Torah while sticking to show how the world in his finitude as well as the man, very human that he is, are vectors of the Infini. Urging each one to reveal this dimension in its daily life, it does not cease announcing that it is enough to open the eyes to become aware that the threshold of the Redemption is accessible.
March 2nd, 1992, whereas it is on the burial of his father-in-law, a violent brain attack withdraws it from the eyes of a Jewish community suspended with its lips.
After months of a convalescence at the time it did not cease answering at the requests of blessings and from now on reached Hémiplégie, it reappears in its synagog the day of Rosh Hashana of the Hebraic year 5753, with the autumn 1992. Three weeks later, the day of Sim' hat Torah, he encourages with strength the proclamation sung by all his' hassidim, it from now on celebrates Yé' hi adonénou morénou vérabénou melekh hamachia' H léolam vaed! , i.e. Lives our Master, the Rabbi, King Machia' H, for eternity! At the price of great physical efforts, it will make a point of attending this proclamation at the conclusion of the three daily offices during more than one year.
June 12th, 1994, it disappears, leaving to the Jews the promise of the Delivery and the injunction to work of our own forces , of those which the Jewish heart conceals, to concretize the advent of it.
That it is by requesting in its house of study of the 770 , on the Ohel where it rests near the preceding Rabbi or by writing a letter to him which it is of use to slip into a volume of his work, all those which are attached to him state to continue miraculeusement to receive councils and blessings of its share.
References
Bond of the Rabbi de Loubavitch with France
- Which is the Rabbi de Loubavitch?
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