Shalom Dovber Schneersohn

Fifth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch (1860–1920), founder of Tomchei Temimim and a leading Orthodox opponent of Zionism

Shalom Dovber Schneersohn
Image	Photograph
Born	5 November 1860 (20 Cheshvan 5621) Lubavitch (Lyubavichi), Russian Empire
Died	21 March 1920 (2 Nissan 5680) Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR
Nationality
Residence
Occupation
Known for	Fifth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, 1882/1893–1920; founder of Tomchei Temimim
Parents
Spouse(s)	Shterna Sarah Schneersohn (m. 1875)
Children	Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
Sibling(s)
Education
Predecessor	Shmuel Schneersohn
Website

Shalom Dovber Schneersohn (1860–1920), known by the acronym the Rashab (also spelled Sholom DovBer), was the fifth leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He succeeded his father, Shmuel Schneersohn (the Maharash), after a contested interregnum, founded the yeshiva Tomchei Temimim in 1897, and led the court from Lubavitch until the First World War forced it to Rostov-on-Don. He was a prolific author of extended Hasidic discourses (hemshechim) and one of the most outspoken Orthodox critics of political Zionism and the Haskalah in late Tsarist Russia.

Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman treat him as the starting-point of modern Chabad messianism: "That concern with the Messiah began with the fifth of their seven rebbes, Shalom DovBer Schneersohn (1860–1920)." They write that he had been overwhelmed by secularisation, assimilation and "the increasing interest among many in a secular Jewish Zionism", "This, the fifth Lubavitcher rebbe argued, could only be a sign that the Messiah was preparing to come." He died in Rostov on 2 Nissan 5680 and was succeeded by his only son, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.

Early life

Schneersohn was born in Lubavitch on 20 Cheshvan 5621 (5 November 1860), the second son of Shmuel Schneersohn and Rivkah (a granddaughter of the second Chabad Rebbe, Dovber Schneuri). According to the official Chabad biography, at twelve he began transcribing his father's Hasidic discourses; at fifteen, on 11 Elul 5635 (11 September 1875), he married his cousin Shterna Sarah, a granddaughter of the Tzemach Tzedek, in a match arranged before the Tzemach Tzedek's death in 1866.

His father died in 1882 at forty-eight; Schneersohn was then twenty-one. From about 1880 he had already been drawn into communal work under his father.

Succession dispute and interregnum, 1882–1893

The succession after Shmuel is one of the least settled episodes in Chabad historiography. Official Chabad accounts state that Schneersohn began delivering original Hasidic discourses immediately after his father's death—an act reserved in Chabad for a rebbe—but "refused to officially take on the leadership… in deference to his older brother, Rabbi Schneur Zalman Aharon (known as 'Raza')", who likewise declined; only after Raza left Lubavitch in 1893, eleven years later, did Schneersohn "officially [accept] the mantle of leadership." A Kehot timeline printed in the introduction to Hayom Yom, by contrast, dates the acceptance of the post to 1882, while a shorter Chabad biography notes that "for the first ten years, the Rebbe Rashab did not officially accept the role."

Shalom Dovber Levin's Chabad-side Kehot history of Chabad in Tsarist Russia states the same terminus in his own words. At the opening of the fifth-generation section he writes that although Schneersohn delivered and recorded discourses after his father's death in 1882, he still did not accept the leadership until early 5654 (1893):

אף שהי' אומר מאמרים ורושמם, עדיין לא הסכים לקבל עליו את עול נשיאות תנועת חב"ד, עד תחלת שנת תרנ"ד (1893)

("Although he delivered discourses and recorded them, he still did not agree to take upon himself the yoke of leadership of the Chabad movement, until the beginning of the year 5654 (1893).") Levin cites the Rayatz's Chinuch Lenaar for the same year: "In this year he took upon himself the yoke of the leadership in all its details" (yechidut on a fixed basis, written answers to petitions, and distribution of the discourses he delivered for copying).

M. Avrum Ehrlich's critical study of Chabad leadership reconstructs a roughly ten-year interregnum. On his reading, Lubavitch historians have "censored any intimations that there was in fact such a succession" involving the elder brother; some Chabad oral traditions claim a division of labour (Raza on administration, the younger brother on spiritual guidance), while others hold that Raza was briefly regarded as Rebbe before moving to Vitebsk and declining the office after about half a year. Ehrlich dates Schneersohn's official assumption of spiritual and administrative leadership to Rosh Hashanah 1893, and notes a letter in which Schneersohn claimed his father's books and manuscripts because he "soon expected to become the rebbe." Competing Chabad courts (Nezhin, Kapust, Bobruisk and others stemming from the Tzemach Tzedek's sons) were still active during the interregnum and drew Hasidim away from Lubavitch until those leaders died.

Tomchei Temimim, 1897

In 1897 Schneersohn founded the yeshiva Tomchei Temimim ("Supporters of the Pure Ones") in Lubavitch; he gave it that name on Simchat Torah 5659 (1898). Levin's Kehot history dates the founding more precisely to Sunday, 15 Elul 5657, and names the first spiritual supervisors: the Hasid R. Chanoch Hendel was put in charge of the study of Chabad Hasidism (da'ach) and the guidance of the students in Lubavitch, while R. Shmuel Gronem was given the same charge over the branch (pluga) in Zembin, Minsk province. Its curriculum combined the "revealed" Torah (Talmud and halakha) with Chabad Hasidism as "one Torah", and emphasised prolonged contemplative prayer. Heilman and Friedman note that from the fifth Rebbe onwards the movement paid "particular attention to ensuring that the young studied and assimilated" the rebbes' texts, including sichot and ma'amarim, at this yeshiva.

Ehrlich, following Menachem Friedman, stresses the political timing: the yeshiva was opened "one month after the first Zionist Congress of 1897", and Schneersohn presented its students as "soldiers of the house of David" (milchemet beit David) in a spiritual war against the Haskalah and non-Hasidic influences. In that kuntres he wrote of the "enlightened" in unambiguous terms that he "hated" them. A cousin, Shmaryahu Noah of Bobruisk, had attempted a similar Hasidic yeshiva a few years earlier; Schneersohn's network proved the more lasting and, on Ehrlich's account, was "arguably the factor of foremost importance in establishing the Lubavitch sect as the dominant HaBaD dynasty."

Graduates later formed the underground cadres his son sent across the Soviet Union. Hillel Zaltzman's Chabad-side memoir of the Samarkand underground repeatedly identifies Tomchei Temimim alumni as the backbone of that network, records the memoirist's father's recollections of Schneersohn's prayer and farbrengens, and his sayings on children's education and on students who missed a farbrengen to stay with a sick friend.

Anti-Zionism and opposition to the Haskalah

Schneersohn was among the most forceful Orthodox opponents of political Zionism. Official Chabad chronology places his first public statement of "negative views regarding the Zionist party" in 1899. Levin dates a detailed letter against the Zionist method to 10 Tammuz 5659 (1899)—printed as letter 86 in the Rashab's Igrot Kodesh—written that summer while his emissary R. Eliezer Moshe Madievsky was in Kovno organising "yere'im and haredim" against Zionism under the banner of Machzikei HaDat. Margarita A. Gorbacheva's study of his anti-Zionist arguments records that he convened a meeting of traditional leaders in 1899 to organise a counter-camp, and that in 1900 the Warsaw pamphlet Or la-Yesharim (Ohr LaYesharim, "Light for the Upright") was published; his letter in it, she writes, "stands out on the general background of the anti-Zionist rhetoric" and treats Zionism as a conflict between religion and nationalism. Unlike some other contributors who later backed the Orthodox party Knesset Israel (1907), Schneersohn "continued to adhere to the principle of complete isolation."

Levin also records Schneersohn's reaction to Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve's interview with ten Jewish representatives in St Petersburg in late Shevat / early Adar 5664 (1904). Plehve rebuked them for three matters, one of them Zionism, and—according to the written summary sent to Schneersohn—hinted that further Kishinev-style violence was possible unless Jews "corrected" themselves. Schneersohn, then in Paris, pressed for the full minutes and wrote that Zionism and "enlightenment" were no longer spiritual questions but questions of physical survival.

In 1903 he published Kuntres Uma'ayan (Kuntres uMaayan mi-Beit HaShem), a Hasidic ethical treatise that also contains a polemic against Zionism: he rejected any attempt to leave exile "by force" or to substitute the promises of Herzl and Nordau for messianic redemption. Ehrlich summarises his position as insistence that redemption was "first and foremost a mystical process and could not be achieved by force or political ventures", and that Zionism and the Haskalah offered a secular Jewish identity that removed the need for traditional observance. He also opposed Agudat Yisrael's support for rural settlement in the Land of Israel, and kept Lubavitch out of the Agudah after announcing his withdrawal at the Katowice conference in 1909.

Heilman and Friedman's messianic reading places this anti-Zionism inside a wider theodicy: decline itself was evidence that the Messiah was near.

Communal activism and the Dubrovna factory

Chabad sources present Schneersohn as an active communal organiser under Tsarist rule. The Kehot timeline records that in 1892 he worked to postpone the expulsion of Jews from Moscow and to subsidise resettlement; in 1901 he travelled to Germany, France and Holland on communal business; in 1904 he organised committees to send matzot to Jewish soldiers in the Far East during the Russo-Japanese War; and in 1906 he "successfully endeavor[ed] in Petersburg to halt the pogroms." In 1911 he established Yeshivat Torat Emet (Toras Emes) in Hebron. He also sent emissaries to the "mountain Jews" of the Caucasus to build local leadership—an early prototype, in Chabad's own account, of later outreach (shlichut). Heilman and Friedman note that Lubavitcher rebbes had used shluchim "since the time of their fifth leader, Shalom DovBer".

The Dubrovna factory is the best-documented of his economic projects in Chabad chronology: "With the assistance of the philanthropic brothers Poliakov and the help of the I.C.A., [he] establishes a factory for weaving and spinning wool in Dubrovna, Mogilev province. Some 2000 Jews earn ample livelihoods working there" (1902).

The 1910 St Petersburg rabbinical conference

In 1910 the Russian Interior Ministry summoned a conference of rabbis and communal activists from across the Empire. The conference itself ran only about a month (4 Adar II to 6 Nissan 5670), but Levin's Kehot history dates the preparations from mid-5668 and the related work into late 5670. Under Tsarist law the "rabbinical commission" did not have to consist of ordained rabbis, and earlier sittings had been dominated by maskilim; Schneersohn set out to secure "God-fearing" delegates. He issued a circular (kol kore), sent the secretary Moshe Rosenblum with letters to leading rabbis including R. David Friedman and R. Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, travelled himself to campaign in several towns at the start of the winter of 5670, and sent his son, the future Rayatz, to St Petersburg. He stood as a candidate and was elected as a representative of Mogilev province (which included Lubavitch); according to Israel Jacobson's memoir he also campaigned in Chernigov province.

Kaminetzky reprints long excerpts from the Yiddish memoir of Yitzchak Schneersohn, the government-appointed ("rav mi-ta'am") rabbi of Chernigov and a relative of the family, who led the opposing "progressive" camp in that district. The memoir—also excerpted by Levin—describes Schneersohn's personal visit to Chernigov for the elections and a private deal in which each camp would take one of the two provincial seats; both candidates were then elected.

Flight to Rostov, 1915

When the German army approached the Lubavitch district at the start of 5676, Schneersohn and his household left the town. Levin's Kehot history, working from the Rayatz's letters and from the Rashab's internal Russian passport stamp, reconstructs the journey: they left Lubavitch on Sunday morning, 16 Marcheshvan; spent several days in Oral; and arrived in Rostov-on-Don on Wednesday morning, 26 Marcheshvan 5676. The passport was stamped "23 October – Rostov", corresponding to 28 Marcheshvan; Levin concludes that the whole journey, with the Oral stop, took about ten days. Chabad's shorter timeline gives 17 Cheshvan 5676 (25 October 1915) as the date of departure. He spent his last five years in Rostov.

He took with him the collection of the rebbes' manuscripts and a limited number of books needed for daily use. The main library—thousands of printed volumes and hundreds of manuscript volumes—was packed into 35 large crates and left in the warehouses of the Hasid R. Zalkind Persitz in Moscow; those books were later taken into the public library in Moscow and, on Levin's account, remain there "in exile to this day".

Heilman and Friedman write that he "had chosen Russian-controlled Rostov in order to avoid Germany, which he saw as the ultimate enemy, both political and cultural, under whose hegemony he believed Judaism became hopelessly compromised and religiously endangered." Ehrlich treats the abandonment of the ancestral town as transforming a local court into what Friedman called a "universal Jewish mission", even while Chabad lore compared it to Schneur Zalman of Liadi's earlier flight from Liadi.

In Rostov he continued underground religious work after the 1917 revolutions; the Kehot timeline credits him in 1916 with establishing yeshivot in Georgia, and in 1917 with securing legal exemption from military service for 2,382 religious functionaries.

Messianism

Beyond the anti-Zionist writings, Schneersohn framed his age as "the jubilee of the footsteps of the moshiah" and cast Tomchei Temimim as hastening redemption through the spread of Hasidism rather than through political force. Heilman and Friedman argue that this reading of crisis as birth-pangs was bequeathed intact to his son, for whom "the belief that the Messiah was near remained a cornerstone of his theology", and thence to the seventh Rebbe. Elliot R. Wolfson's study of Chabad messianism draws extensively on Schneersohn's discourses (especially the long series of 5672) as a theosophical backdrop to later Lubavitch messianism, without treating him as a public messianic claimant in the style of the 1990s.

Death and succession, 1920

Schneersohn died in Rostov on the eve of Sunday, 2 Nissan 5680 (21 March 1920), at 3:30 a.m., and was buried there. Among his final words, according to Chabad tradition and to Wolfson's citation of the letters, were: "I am going to heaven; the writings I leave for you" (Yiddish: Ich gay in himmel, di kesavim loz ich fahr aykh). He was succeeded by his only son, Yosef Yitzchak. The grave was later moved within Rostov when the old cemetery was threatened; an ohel marks the present site.

Works

Schneersohn wrote his discourses before delivering them; none were published in his lifetime. His son and grandson later issued them through Kehot. Chabad estimates some 2,000 discourses over thirty-eight years of leadership; he was nicknamed, in movement lore, the "Maimonides of Chabad" for the systematic organisation of Hasidic concepts in long hemshechim. Principal series and treatises include:

• Hemshech Ayin-Beis – Be-Sha'ah she-Hiqdimu 5672 (1911–12 series; 3 vols, Kehot, 1991)
• Hemshech Samekh-Vav – Yom Tov shel Rosh Hashanah 5666 (Kehot, 1999)
• Kuntres Uma'ayan mi-Beit HaShem (1903; rev. ed. Kehot, 2002; English 1978)
• Kuntres HaTefillah (Tract on Prayer; Kehot)
• Kuntres Kol ha-Yozeh le-Milhemet Beit David (5661)
• Torat Shalom: Sefer HaSichot (talks; Kehot, 2003)
• Sefer HaMaamarim (annual volumes, 5652 onwards; Kehot)
• Igrot Kodesh (collected letters)

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
• Shmuel Schneersohn
• Tomchei Temimim
• Menachem Mendel Schneerson
• Chabad messianism
• History of Chabad in Tsarist Russia – Selected Chapters, 1770–1920
• Agudas Chasidei Chabad

External links

• Biography of the Rebbe Rashab – Chabad.org
• Basic timeline – Chabad.org / Kehot (from Hayom Yom)