Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn

Sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch (1880–1950), imprisoned by the Soviet secret police in 1927, rescued from Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1939 and founder of the movement's American base

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
Image	Passport photograph
Born	21 June 1880 (12 Tammuz 5640) Lubavitch (Lyubavichi), Russian Empire
Died	28 January 1950 (10 Shevat 5710) 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
Nationality
Residence
Occupation
Known for	Sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, 1920–1950
Parents
Spouse(s)	Nechama Dina Schneersohn (m. 1897)
Children	Chana Gourary; Chaya Mushka Schneerson; Sheina Horensztajn
Sibling(s)
Education
Predecessor	Shalom Dovber Schneersohn
Website

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880–1950), known by the acronym the Rayatz and to later Lubavitchers as the "Frierdiker" (Previous) Rebbe, was the sixth leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He succeeded his father, Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, in 1920. He ran a clandestine religious network in the early Soviet Union, was arrested by the OGPU in 1927 and expelled, and led the movement from Riga and then Poland until he was rescued from German-occupied Warsaw in 1939–40 with the help of the US State Department and German military intelligence. In New York he built the institutions on which his son-in-law and successor, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, would found Chabad's global expansion.

His wartime preaching that the Holocaust was the "birth pangs" of the Messiah, and that redemption depended on immediate repentance by American Jews, made him controversial in his lifetime; according to Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman, "In the eyes of many Jews, he was blaming the victim." He died without a will, and the library he had assembled became the object of two lawsuits: a family case decided in 1987, and a case against the Russian Federation that remains unresolved.

Early life and Tomchei Temimim

Schneersohn was born in Lubavitch on 12 Tammuz 5640 (1880), the only son of Shalom Dovber Schneersohn. According to the official Chabad biography, at fifteen his father made him his personal secretary, and in 1895 and 1896 he attended rabbinical conferences in Kovno and Vilna. On 13 Elul 5657 (1897) he married Nechama Dina, a great-granddaughter of the Tzemach Tzedek.

During the wedding celebrations his father announced the founding of the yeshiva Tomchei Temimim and "the following year appointed his son to be its executive director". Heilman and Friedman likewise describe it as "the Tomekhei Temimim yeshiva, which his father had set up and which he had appointed his only son to head". Its graduates later formed the cadre he sent across the Soviet Union.

Chabad sources credit him with organising a textile factory in Dubrovna employing "some 2,000 Jewish employees" (1901), sending matzot to Jewish soldiers in the Russo-Japanese War, and lobbying in Germany and Holland against pogroms. They also state that "Between the years 5662 and 5671 (1902-1911), Rabbi Schneersohn was arrested in Moscow and St Petersburg on four occasions."

Kaminetzky reprints a Yiddish memoir by Yitzchak Schneersohn, the government-appointed rabbi of Chernigov and a relative of the family. The memoir describes the 1910 rabbinical conference in St Petersburg called by the Russian Interior Ministry, at which Shalom Dovber led the Orthodox camp. It also records that Shalom Dovber came to Chernigov for the elections "accompanied by his son the Rayatz" (Hebrew: בליווית בנו הריי"צ) and sent him to visit the memoirist.

In 1915 the court fled the German advance from Lubavitch to Rostov-on-Don, where Shalom Dovber spent his last five years.

Succession, 1920

Shalom Dovber died on 2 Nissan 5680 (1920). According to Chabad, his son "was requested by the entire Chabad world to accept the leadership of the movement". Heilman and Friedman write: "When Yosef Yitzchak became the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe in 1920 at the age of forty, it was a difficult time for any religious leader." By then, they add, the movement "had become a court on the move—some might say on the run."

Heilman and Friedman trace his messianism to his father, who had read secularisation and Zionism as signs of the end. For the son, "the Bolshevik revolution, which had forced him into 'exile' from Russia and trapped his many Hasidim and other Jews in its godless regime, was a sign of the pangs that preceded the birth of the Messiah."

Soviet Russia, 1920–1927

The underground network

In 1924 he moved the court from Rostov to Leningrad. Chabad attributes the move to "libelous accusations". Chaim Miller calls it a watershed: "'After Petersburg' 1924, the Chabad courts would always be found in significant cities: Riga, Otwock (near Warsaw) and, finally, New York."

Unlike most Orthodox leaders, who emigrated, he "stayed in Russia as a matter of principle, prohibiting his Hasidim from emigrating, particularly to the United States or Palestine". He sent graduates of Tomchei Temimim to the main Jewish centres, "Often they came in the role of shokhtim, ritual slaughterers", which gave them an income. In time they set up "a network of schools for the teaching of Torah and ChaBaD Hasidism". Chabad describes "a silent army of idealistic chassidim whom he deployed in a unique countrywide underground educational network". Chabad also states that he founded a yeshiva in Warsaw in 1921 as a reserve centre, and one in Uzbekistan in 1927.

The American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) chose him to distribute relief to Soviet Jews, since "there seemed no one better positioned to reach large numbers of Jews". In Heilman and Friedman's account, this control "made him even more powerful, but it also made him a potential target for the communist authorities", and it angered local Jewish leaders who resented the Lubavitchers' control of the money.

Emissaries and the 1929 Zemba letter

One of the men he sent east was R. Simcha Gorodetzky, whom he directed first to outlying Lubavitch settlements and then, in 1926, to Samarkand to work among Bukharian Jews. In January 1929, after his own expulsion, the Rayatz wrote about Gorodetzky to the Gerrer scholar Menachem Zemba while fundraising for schools still operating inside the USSR. The letter is quoted at length in Zaltzman's Chabad-side memoir:

Who is the one who put his life in substantial danger by traveling to Bukharia; who, with the help of Hashem, founded schools in Samarkand, and for three months brought together some 800 young children studying under the tutelage of 45 teachers; who generated such enthusiasm on the parents' part that they committed to contribute to their children's tuition, and to establish a special community committee to pay for the rest; and who founded Tiferes Bachurim, where young businessmen, factory managers and laborers—eventually around 150 students—gathered to learn Torah?

R. Simcha worked tirelessly for an entire year. His work was performed entirely in secret, until, when it became known who had been directing all of this activity, the NKVD came to arrest him. Because someone had come from Tashkent requesting that R. Simcha travel back with him to found schools there, as he had in Samarkand, he left that night and was saved.

For three months the Yevsektzia worked to destroy what R. Simcha planted with the blood of his heart, with the sweat of his brow, with trembling and awful fear. Twenty teachers were deported to prison where they were tortured terribly and put on trial. About eight teachers fled and escaped, and the rest remained until, after much effort and expense, the detainees were released from their confinement, thank G-d.

R. Simcha stayed for four months in those outlying cities and labored with blood and heart setting up schools, and, thank G-d, he was successful. Until today, about eight months since he was forced to leave that region altogether—his image had been circulated amongst the regional GPU offices, along with orders that left his fate in no doubt, should he be caught—the sound of Torah can, thank G-d, still be heard ringing in Samarkand from the 400 students still there, may they live and increase. Dozens upon dozens of students in other towns are also learning, although unfortunately there is no money to support them, may Hashem have mercy.

R. Simcha did not let up from his work, Heaven forbid. He traveled to the ends of the Caucasus region, where our brethren the Mountain Jews dwell, may G-d be with them. He then journeyed to the city of Derbent, where he found some thirty young students learning under the guidance of a teacher; now, through his tremendous work efforts and with Hashem's help, 360 students learn there today. After four months of continued labor, the secret committee that he established there informs us that they are able to increase the number of those learning to 500. However, in order to pursue this, they need outside assistance; not much aid, merely 150 rubles a month. How painful it is that their meager request cannot be met. The conditions of the place require great care and R. Simcha is in much danger, so he plans to travel on to Kuba, a large city full of G-d-fearing Jews and those who know Torah.

The same mission is summarised in the Rayatz's own Hebrew letter of 2 Shevat 5689, printed as Igrot Kodesh vol. 2, letter 423, and quoted by Levin in his chapter on Gorodetzky's mission:

העמיר עצמו בסבנה ממש, ובא לבובארא, ובעזה״י בעיר סמרקנד יסד חדרים ובמשך בשלשה חדשים אסף וקיבץ בשמונה מאות תלמידים שי׳ קטנים אצל ארבעים וחמשה מלמדים שי׳

("He put himself in real danger, and came to Bukhara, and with the help of Heaven in the city of Samarkand he founded schools, and within about three months he gathered some eight hundred young students under forty-five teachers.")

Levin's quotation matches the figures in the English text of the Zemba letter as given by Zaltzman (about 800 children and 45 teachers), which suggests that Zaltzman is drawing on the same letter or on a closely related fundraising letter of the same period.

The Yevsektsiya

His chief adversary was the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the Bolshevik party. It was led for most of its existence by Semion Dimanstein, "a former student at the Lubavitch yeshiva who had received rabbinical ordination". To the Yevsektsiya, the Rebbe's activities "were anathema". He was "denounced by the Yevsektsiya and marked by the OGPU as a 'foreign agent' running a 'counterrevolutionary network' that imperiled the Soviet state." Osipova quotes the Moscow Yevsektsiya leader Moishe Litvakov complaining that the Rebbe had "организовал всех служителей культа — раввинов, шойхетов, меламедов — во всех концах страны", and threatening: "А мы решили выкорчевать его с корнем" ("And we have decided to uproot him"). She also describes how, in early 1927, he negotiated extra funding from an "американского благотворительного фонда" (American charitable fund) for the Council of Rabbis' budget: 40,000 dollars for the second half of the year, used for home-workshop equipment so that observant Jews could keep the Sabbath.

Chabad hagiography records a confrontation in which an agent pointed a gun at him and said, "This little toy has made many a man change his mind". The Rebbe replied: "That little toy can intimidate only the kind of man who has many gods-passions, and but one world-this world. Because I have only one G‑d and two worlds, I am not impressed by your little toy."

Chabad tradition also records protectors inside the security apparatus. Yosef Yitzchak Kaminetzky tells the story of a senior OGPU officer named Bashkov. According to this account, Bashkov was the son of one of the Rebbe's underground teachers. In 1927 he visited the Rebbe at his Moscow hotel, and while he was there, armed Yevsektsiya men from Moscow burst in to arrest the Rebbe. Bashkov produced his OGPU headquarters identity card and sent them away.

Arrest, sentence and release, 1927

"Near midnight of June 14, 1927," an OGPU detail "headed by two former Lubavitchers" searched his Leningrad flat and arrested him. He was taken to what Lubavitchers called "Shpalerka Prison", probably the Spalernaya prison. His secretary, Chaim Lieberman, burned papers before he too was arrested. Miller writes that "Lieberman's Soviet interrogation files state that no incriminatory documents were found." As he was led away, the Rebbe blessed his infant grandson, Shalom Dovber (Barry) Gourary, "that this child grow to be the greatest of his brothers". Heilman and Friedman read this as a signal about the succession.

The case file was opened in the Memorial research for Irina Osipova's 2002 history of the Chabad underground, which was published with Chabad support. According to Osipova, the main evidence against him came from a former associate, Sabshel-Yakov Sorin, who testified on 21 February 1927 that "к Шнеерсону ежемесячно стекаются денежные средства со всех концов СССР и из-за границы" ("money flows to Schneersohn every month from all over the USSR and from abroad"), and that "Шнеерсон с заграницей вел нелегальную переписку" ("Schneersohn conducted illegal correspondence with abroad"), some of it allegedly by the Polish, Latvian and Estonian diplomatic post. At his interrogation on 16 June he was charged with "контрреволюционной деятельности" ("counter-revolutionary activity"): backing reactionary forces, running a network of chadarim and yeshivas across the country, and receiving financial aid from foreign organisations and charitable funds to support religion. He replied: "Я занимаюсь исключительно учением хасидес, другими делами я не занимаюсь" ("I occupy myself exclusively with the teaching of Hasidism; I do not engage in other matters").

The indictment of 21 June 1927 accused him of having, "будучи руководителем еврейской националистической группы хасидов, нелегально организовал еврейские школы — хедеры и ешиботы, где преподавали религиозное учение малолетним" ("as leader of a Jewish nationalist group of Hasidim, illegally organised Jewish schools, chadarim and yeshivas, where religious doctrine was taught to minors"). He refused to sign it. On 27 June he was sentenced to three years' exile and sent to Kostroma. After further intercession by Ekaterina Peshkova the case was reviewed on 11 July, and he was allowed to live freely in the country.

Whether he was sentenced to death is disputed:

• Chabad account. He was "sentenced to death, but the timely intervention of leading foreign statesmen saved his life".
• Miller. The death sentence "was abated—Rayatz himself later saw his file with the command for execution crossed out". He was then convicted under articles "no. 14 and 58 ('Acts of Sabotage against the Revolution') and no. 122 ('Teaching Religion to Minors')" and sentenced to ten years on the Solovki Islands, later commuted to three years' exile.
• Heilman and Friedman. They write that he was sentenced to death "according to Lubavitcher versions of the events" and that the condemnation was "if in fact it occurred".
• Rapoport's reply. Chaim Rapoport answers: "There is only one account of the arrest, and that is the one that Rayatz himself penned (and subsequently published) in his own personal diary. See Likuttei Dibburim vol. 4, page 1218ff. There are no other 'versions' of this story."

• Levin (Kehot). In a Hebrew précis of the committee founded after the Rayatz's release—the material Levin prints as background to the "Vaad Magen uMachseh" for Russian Jewry—he states without qualification that a death sentence was passed and then exchanged for exile:

וביולי 1927 נעצר מר שניאורסאהן, נשלח למאסר ונגזר דינו למוות. פסק־דין זה הוחלף לאח״ז, ובסופו של דבר נקנס בעונש גלות.

("And in July 1927 Mr Schneersohn was arrested, sent to prison, and his sentence was decreed as death. This judgement was later exchanged, and in the end he was assessed the punishment of exile.") The same précis adds that through the intercession of various notables with the Soviet ambassador he was freed and permitted to leave Russia for Riga.

Levin also prints contemporary letters about the Kostroma exile that followed the commutation. A Hasidic letter of 5 Tammuz, written two days after the Rayatz was released from prison and sent into exile at Kostroma, explains the government's charges in coded Hasidic language (the "claim of Laban against Jacob") and treats the exile itself as the result of American relief money crossing the "curtain" between the worlds. Another letter, written from Russia on 14 Tammuz, reports that on Tuesday or Wednesday of Erev Rosh Chodesh Tammuz he was told he had been sentenced to deportation to Kostroma; the first threat had been a harsher place of exile, later softened.

After leaving the USSR the Rayatz himself summarised the episode in a letter of 8 Marcheshvan 5688 from Riga:

שמונה עשר וחצי יום ישבתי במאסר, עשרה ימים בגלות קאסטראמא, וששה שבועות בגלות מאלאחאווקע

("Eighteen and a half days I sat in prison, ten days in Kostroma exile, and six weeks in Malakhovka exile.")

• Osipova (OGPU case file). Osipova's footnote on the death sentence matters most for this dispute. She repeats the Chabad account that Peshkova's efforts got the death sentence "заменен сначала десятилетней ссылкой на Соловки, позднее ... трехлетней ссылкой в Кострому" ("commuted first to ten years' exile to Solovki, and later ... to three years' exile in Kostroma"). But she adds in parentheses: "хотя этого нет в материалах следственного дела" ("although this is not in the case file materials"). A further note records only that "после одного из допросов его пригрозили расстрелять в течение 24 часов" ("after one of the interrogations he was threatened with being shot within 24 hours"). The book's foreword, by the Chabad emissary Rabbi Itzhak Kogan, nonetheless states that a "смертный приговор" (death sentence) was commuted.

Editor's note: Osipova is the first source used here that has seen the OGPU case file (P-14337). On her account the file records a three-year Kostroma sentence and no death sentence. That fits the scholarly view (Heilman & Friedman, Rapoport) that the death sentence is not documented, and it conflicts with the Chabad account repeated in Levin and in the book's own foreword. The file does not rule out an unrecorded verbal threat or an informal decision. The book was published with Chabad support, which makes the admission in n. 124 more notable.

A campaign for his release involved:

• Ekaterina Peshkova of the Political Red Cross, the former wife of Maxim Gorky
• the JDC
• Senators Robert Wagner and William Borah, with Borah's involvement "enlisted by American Reform rabbi Stephen Wise"

Miller adds Rabbis Hildesheimer and Leo Baeck in Germany, Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and Justice Louis Brandeis. He quotes Borah: "every so often I do something that assures me of votes in that 'final election' which we will all have to stand for someday."

On 3 Tammuz (3 July) he was told that he would be exiled to Kostroma on the Volga. From the train he declared: "Only our bodies were sent into exile and subjugated to alien rule; our souls were not given over to captivity!" Chabad states that he "was informed of this decision on his birthday, Tammuz 12. The next day he was permitted to leave". The two days, 12–13 Tammuz, are kept as a Chabad festival of liberation.

The length of the exile varies by source. Heilman and Friedman call it "just ten days… not exactly Siberia". Miller says he was freed "just eight days after his arrival". Joseph Telushkin says nine.

Rapoport objects that Heilman and Friedman left "one of his daughters" unnamed, although his Igrot Kodesh identifies her as Moussia (Chaya Mushka).

Expulsion

Under continued surveillance, he negotiated his departure with the OGPU. The night after Sukkot (20 October 1927) he left for Riga. Before leaving he wrote: "I am not leaving under duress—far from it! I am doing exactly what I planned to do." According to Chabad, he left with "the bulk of his valuable and historic library".

Riga, 1927–1934

Within a month he convened the Vaad L'Chizuk HaTorah V'Hadat B'Russia (Committee for Strengthening Torah and Religion in Russia), on 17–18 November 1927, to keep JDC money flowing to Jews under Soviet rule. Heilman and Friedman note that "Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak would not see most of his Hasidim in the USSR again, as many of them perished either in the Stalinist terror or in the brutal murders of the Nazi firestorm." He founded Mahane Israel, a social-service arm "modeled on similar Latvian organizations", and recruited Chaim Hodakov. In this period the movement "shifted its orientation from the strictly parochial to something more expansive".

1929 journey

In 1929 he visited Palestine and the United States. In the US, Chabad says, he was received by President Herbert Hoover.

Marriages of his daughters

His daughter Chaya Mushka married Menachem Mendel Schneerson in Warsaw in November 1928. Chana had married Shmaryahu Gourary earlier.

Historiography and the Kherson forgeries

In this period he also took up the "Kherson genizah", a cache of letters attributed to the Baal Shem Tov and his circle. Tests showed the paper "could not have been produced before 1846". Ada Rapoport-Albert writes that the results "were sent to the new Admor, R. Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, and he responded in December 1929 by advancing the explanation that the extant letters were only copies of the originals, endorsing their ultimate authenticity." Rachel Elior concludes that his history of early Hasidism "does not stand up to critical examination; it is but a revision of the past in the service of contemporary needs."

Poland: Warsaw and Otwock, 1934–1939

Chabad states that he moved to Warsaw in 1934 and, "Two years later", to Otwock, where the central yeshiva "attracted many hundreds of scholars". Heilman and Friedman date the court's relocation to Otwock to 1935. In Otwock he held the library and manuscripts that became central to the later lawsuits. On 19 Kislev 5699 (12 December 1938) he told followers, "We need to talk about the Messiah."

Rescue from Warsaw, 1939–1940

Hiding in Warsaw

He fled Otwock for Warsaw on 5 September 1939 and hid at the homes of followers, including Zalman Shmotkin and, later, 29 Bonifraterska Street.

The American campaign

American Lubavitchers led by Israel Jacobson hired the Washington lawyer Max Rhoade. Rhoade called the Rebbe "a sort of Pope" of the Jews and, in one message, compared him to St Francis of Assisi. Senator Wagner wired Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and the State Department official Robert Pell turned to the German official Helmuth Wohlthat, with whom he had dealt after the Évian Conference.

The Abwehr operation

Bryan Mark Rigg's Rescued from the Reich (Yale University Press, 2004) is the standard account.

• The chain of command. According to a review in the Journal of American History, Hull "initiated State Department contacts with a sympathetic Nazi official, Helmut Wohlthat. Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, the anti-Hitler military secret service chief, then selected Ernst Bloch and two other Mischlinge officers secretly to transport the rebbe to Riga".
• American motives. Heilman and Friedman attribute to Rigg the judgement that "American officials' ignorance of the social topography of American Judaism, when combined with the political pressure exerted by well-placed politicians, may have persuaded them that the rescue of the Rebbe, described as an important spiritual leader, could yield good publicity at a minimum risk." In the book the passage appears in Paula E. Hyman's foreword. She adds that "Without pressure from the U.S. State Department, the rescue of the Lubavitcher Rebbe would not have occurred. Yet this same State Department had demonstrated no interest in saving Jews from Nazi persecution before the outbreak of war." Rhoade told Pell that the German officials "would not wish to deprive the Rabbi, who is a sort of Pope, of his immediate disciples."
• German motives. The German historian Winfried Meyer (Unternehmen Sieben, 1993) reconstructed the Abwehr side. Meyer is quoted as saying: "The only force who would be able to do anything was military intelligence since Warsaw was occupied by the German military and not by a civil administration". He argues that Göring and Canaris "were glad to do the American government a favor by rescuing Rabbi Schneersohn", hoping to keep the war from escalating.
• Bloch. Major Ernst Bloch, who was half-Jewish, located the Rebbe in December 1939. The party travelled by train via Berlin, where they spent the night of 15 December at the Jewish community offices, and reached Riga on 17 December.

Arrival in New York

On 6 March 1940 the party flew from Riga to Stockholm and sailed from Göteborg on the Drottningholm. They reached New York on 18 March, and the Rebbe disembarked the next morning. His youngest daughter, Sheina, and her husband, Mendel Horensztajn, could not obtain US visas as Polish citizens, and they perished. Chabad sources say they died at Treblinka; a niece's testimony suggests Otwock. Under Breckinridge Long, the State Department was slow to admit the rest of the family. The Schneersons reached New York only in June 1941.

America, 1940–1950

Institutions

In September 1940 he moved his headquarters to 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. He founded or refounded:

• Tomchei Temimim in the United States
• Machne Israel
• Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch
• the Beth Rivkah schools
• the Kehot Publication Society
• the monthly HaKriah VeHaKedushah

Shortly before his death he also laid the groundwork for schools in North Africa, Israel (Kfar Chabad) and Australia.

The messianic campaign: L'alter li'teshuva, l'alter li'geula

His slogan in America was l'alter li'teshuva, l'alter li'geula, "repentance immediately, redemption immediately". Followers posted it as stickers around the neighbourhood, but it "was a message whose significance at the time was not always clear to everyone." On arrival he declared: "Jews, we must repent and save our children and ourselves from the danger."

Miller, writing from within the movement, presents the slogan as a response to three crises: the "four and a half million Jews trapped in his native Russia", the Jews of Poland, and the "close to five million Jews who resided peacefully—but quite irreligiously" in the United States. He describes "a series of 'urgent appeals' published in newspapers during the early 1940s". Miller adds that his son-in-law signed letters "with blessings for le-alter le-teshuvah, le-alter le-geulah".

Wartime theology

Heilman and Friedman reconstruct his theology from HaKriah VeHaKedushah and the work of Gershon Greenberg.

• The Holocaust as birth pangs. The suffering in Europe was "the birth pangs of the Messiah, the suffering that precedes redemption."
• American Jews as the cause. "as the body of Jewry was being burned in Europe, in the new world the Jewish soul was being destroyed by the fire of American Jewish heresy." In August 1941 he wrote that American Jews' "coldness and indifference . . . towards Torah and religion" were no less destructive than the fire threatening "to annihilate more than two-thirds of the Jewish people."
• A "day of fire". In June 1941 he warned that if they did not repent, all "non-pious Jews would be killed," on "a day of fire [a brenenden tog]."
• Mahane Israel. He founded it on 20 October 1940. It "thought of itself as a religious safety zone protected from the Hurban [destruction], a Biblical 'Goshen'".

Rigg, writing as a historian of the rescue, is blunter. In his reading the Rebbe "believed the Holocaust was God's punishment on the Jews for abandoning their faith. Only renewed obedience to God and belief in the Prophets would end the punishment—continued disobedience and disbelief were 'perverse Jewish Nazism.'" Rigg argues that, in consequence, "Political action to end the Holocaust or save lives was futile as long as Jews failed to follow the commandments." A Lubavitch appeal of the period that Rigg reproduces urged: "HAVE COMPASSION UPON YOURSELVES, UPON YOUR SONS AND DA UGHTERS, SO that you be not destroyed in the birth pangs of the coming Messiah."

He also implicitly rebuked other rabbis, inviting Jews to "imagine what would have happened if a few hundred rabbis . . . had appeared before the community and announced that the day of redemption is coming soon".

Reception

Heilman and Friedman judge: "This was not a message designed to make friends and influence people in America—or anywhere, for that matter." In their view, his messianism "created conditions that led to the decline of his influence in America". His successor recast the doctrine: "His was not a messianism of pain and catastrophe. His was a messianism of promise." See Chabad messianism.

The library

Assembling and saving the collection

Much of the family library "had been confiscated in 1924 by the Soviets". He could not meet the Soviets' price to buy it back, so in 1925 he bought the library of Shmuel Weiner of the Asiatic Museum in Leningrad. In November 1939, to get the books out of Poland by diplomatic pouch, he wrote that he had "no space for the books which Agudas [Chasidei] ChaBaD loaned me for study. I would be pleased if Agudas ChaBaD were to take these books back." About ninety boxes reached the United States in 1941.

Nazi forces seized other manuscripts in Otwock. He later wrote to Alexander Marx of the Jewish Theological Seminary that "the evildoers confiscated several boxes full of aged manuscripts and valuable books which had been kept in my library in Otwock".

Agudas Chasidei Chabad v. Gourary (1985–1987)

After his death, his secretary Lieberman "did not give the new Rebbe free access to the ChaBaD library". In 1985 his grandson Barry Gourary removed some 500 books and sold some of them. Barry and his mother claimed the library as family inheritance. The successor told followers that "the war [conflict] is not only over the seforim [books], but rather oif dem benkel—'over the seat'".

Judge Charles P. Sifton found for Agudas Chasidei Chabad on 6 January 1987. He held that the library "was never held by the Rebbe as personal property for his personal benefit … It was held as personal property for the community's benefit and for charitable uses". The Second Circuit affirmed, finding "a settlor's unequivocal intent to convey the library … to appellee as trustee for charitable purposes". Chabad celebrates the date, 5 Tevet, as Didan Notzach ("our side won").

The Russian "Schneerson library" dispute

The collection left behind is in two parts:

• The Library. Some 12,000 books and manuscripts "seized during the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War between 1917 and 1925", held by the Russian State Library.
• The Archive. Some "25,000 pages of handwritten teachings and other writings of the Rebbes" seized by Germany in Poland and taken by the Red Army as "trophy documents". It is held by the Russian State Military Archive.

Judge Royce Lamberth entered a default judgment in 2010 ordering their return. Russia responded that it would "refuse to loan cultural artifacts and art to institutions in the United States". In January 2013 the court imposed "a fine payable to the plaintiff in the amount of $50,000 per day". See Schneerson library and Russia.

Death and succession, 1950

In his last years he had multiple sclerosis and had suffered a stroke. Rigg records that his "multiple sclerosis and strokes prevented him from walking on his own". He was also "overweight and a heavy smoker". He died of a heart attack at 770 on the Sabbath morning of 28 January 1950 (10 Shevat 5710); the doctor pronounced him dead at 8:07 a.m. Some 3,000 people attended the funeral.

He "had died intestate". He left neither a will for his property, "including his beloved and huge library", nor a "'moral' will that indicated who should lead". Rumours of a lost will naming Barry were "unsubstantiated".

The two sons-in-law

• Shmaryahu Gourary. The elder son-in-law had been his chief aide, and Shalom Dovber had reportedly chosen him for the family. He later accepted his brother-in-law's authority and testified for him in the library trial.
• Barry Gourary. Barry did not want the role. He said: "I decided that was not the kind of life I wanted to lead."
• Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The younger son-in-law formally accepted the leadership on the first anniversary, 10 Shevat 1951.

The biographers disagree about how close the Rayatz and Schneerson were. Heilman and Friedman stress Schneerson's distance from the court in the 1920s and 1930s. Rapoport counters that "Rayatz sent the bulk of his talks and discourses to be edited by the Rebbe prior to their publication".

Legacy

His successor presented himself as the continuation of his father-in-law: "The Previous Rebbe would continue to lead them." The Rayatz's ohel (tomb) in Queens, where Schneerson was later buried beside him, became a pilgrimage site. In the official history, by contrast, "no mention is made of Chana Gourary, her son Barry, or Chaim Lieberman".

Works

• Likkutei Dibburim (talks; includes his own account of the 1927 arrest, vol. 4, pp. 1218ff.)
• Sefer HaZichronot (memoirs; English Memoirs, Kehot)
• Igrot Kodesh (collected letters)
• Sefer HaMaamarim (discourses)

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Menachem Mendel Schneerson
• Shalom Dovber Schneersohn
• Chabad messianism
• Agudas Chasidei Chabad
• 770 Eastern Parkway
• Schneerson library
• Yevsektsiya
• Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia
• History of Chabad in Tsarist Russia – Selected Chapters, 1770–1920

External links

• The Previous Rebbe – Chabad.org

Bibliography

• Irina Osipova, Khasidy: "Spasaya narod svoy". Istoriya khasidskogo podpol'ya v gody bol'shevistskogo terrora (Moscow: Formika-S, 2002), ISBN 5-89737-134-2. Based on OGPU–NKVD–MGB files collected by Memorial; published with Chabad support, foreword by Rabbi Itzhak Kogan.