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Menachem Mendel Schneerson

1902–1994 · 92 years

Never left Brooklyn, and put emissaries in more than 100 countries

Portrait of Menachem Mendel Schneerson — יחי המלך המשיח770 — 2022-10-14 — CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

He was 11 when his tutor told his father there was nothing left to teach him. His father, the chief rabbi of Yekaterinoslav, took over the Talmud and the Kabbalah himself. Few Hasidic prodigies then did what Schneerson did. He married Chaya Mushka, daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, in Warsaw in 1928, moved to Berlin, and studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the university, where he sat in on Erwin Schrödinger's lectures. The Nazis drove the couple to Paris in 1933, where he took a two-year engineering course, and out of it on June 11, 1940, three days before the Germans marched in. They reached New York via Lisbon on June 23, 1941, and he never went back.

Everything he is known for happened in Brooklyn. He became the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe on January 17, 1951, after a year of refusing, and ran the movement from 770 Eastern Parkway for 43 years without taking a vacation and almost without leaving the borough. Mitzvah campaigns pushed 10 basic practices into public life. Public menorahs went up at the Liberty Bell in 1974 and then in thousands of cities. Emissaries went out. His published teachings run past 200 volumes. The scale is easy to state and hard to explain. The explanation is one organizational idea.

Most Hasidic courts came out of the Holocaust and turned inward, rebuilding their own numbers behind their own walls. Schneerson sent his people away. Beginning with a first emissary to Morocco in 1951, he posted young married couples, shluchim, to cities with almost no Jewish infrastructure, and the posting was not a tour. The assignment was for life. They went to stay, raise their children there, and build a school, a synagogue or a preschool with money they had to raise themselves. The arithmetic worked: there are now shluchim in every American state and more than 100 countries, some 3,600 institutions, and in many towns Chabad is the only Jewish presence there is. The man who dispatched them almost never left Crown Heights.

A stroke at his father-in-law's grave in 1992 left him unable to speak, and during those final years some followers proclaimed him the Messiah. He rejected the claim, and what he privately believed is still argued over by scholars. He died on June 12, 1994, at 92. Followers still hold the belief, and how many is itself disputed. The question divided Chabad and, from his lifetime onward, drew criticism from Orthodox authorities including Ovadia Yosef and Elazar Shach. He and Chaya Mushka had no children, he named no successor, and Chabad has had no Rebbe since. Congress voted him a Gold Medal that year. His grave in Queens draws thousands a week.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Menachem Mendel Schneerson's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Merkos Shlichus other
Yeshiva students sent to isolated communities for the summer — the trial run 1942
Hayom Yom book
A Chabad almanac with one teaching for each day of the year 1943
The shluchim network other
Emissary couples posted permanently, beginning with Morocco 1951
Chabad mitzvah campaigns other
10 basic practices pushed into public life, starting with tefillin before the Six-Day War 1967
Public menorah lightings other
Began at the Liberty Bell and produced decades of church-state litigation 1974
Reshimot book
Private notebooks written between 1928 and 1950, found in his desk after his death 1994

Life in brief

with age at each point

1928 aged ~26 Marries Chaya Mushka Schneerson in Warsaw Daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. They were married 60 years and had no children.
1933 aged ~31 Leaves Berlin for Paris after the Nazis take power In Berlin he had studied mathematics, physics and philosophy. In Paris he took a two-year engineering course.
June 11, 1940 aged 38 Flees Paris three days before the Germans enter the city The couple went to Vichy, then Nice, and waited a year for a way out of Europe.
June 23, 1941 aged 39 Arrives in New York after escaping Europe through Lisbon Within weeks his father-in-law put him in charge of Chabad's education, social service and publishing arms.
January 17, 1951 aged 48 Accepts the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch at 48 On the first anniversary of his father-in-law's death, after a year of refusing the post.
1974 aged ~72 First public menorah lighting, at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia Legal challenges to menorahs on public land eventually reached the Supreme Court.
1977 aged ~75 Suffers a heart attack during the Shemini Atzeret hakafot He refused a hospital. Doctors set up a ward in his office and treated him there for four weeks.
1992 aged ~90 A stroke at his father-in-law's grave leaves him unable to speak It also paralyzed his right side. Messianic expectation among followers rose sharply afterward.
June 12, 1994 aged 92 Dies at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan Buried at the Ohel in Queens, beside his father-in-law.