A friend gave me a copy of the book “Undaunted” about the previous Lubavitcher rebbe.  In my mind, I automatically assumed that it was about the last Lubavitcher rebbe, but then I learned that within Chabad, the “previous” rebbe is the Sixth Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.

The well researched biography reflects his profound commitment to sustaining Jewish life, profound faith and sacrifice in the face of threats to the Jewish community including Stalinist communism, Nazi Europe, and apathy in America.

As the previous rebbe’s leadership in Chabad began at the same time as the morphing of Russia from an antisemitic Czarist nation to an antisemitic communist one, I was engaged immediately.  My personal connection to the plight of Soviet Jews began as an adolescent. I knew the history of Jews in Russia, but had never read a biography of someone who lived it as the Jewish leader that the previous rebbe was.  From the advent of communism, after being expelled from the USSR, across Europe, and eventually settling in the US, the Sixth Rebbe was always profoundly connected to and concerned about the plight of Soviet Jews. The underground network of Jewish life that he maintained, largely orchestrated from outside the USSR, was remarkable. The challenges he faced from within organized Jewish institutions outside Soviet Russia was also formidable.

My experience with Soviet Jews was shaped by the Zionist leaders among them in my lifetime: Hebrew teachers, Aliyah activists, and others who sacrificed so much just to embrace and propagate Jewish life. These were the leaders of the refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion who were my heroes. I didn’t understand that behind the scenes, the previous rebbe maintained a low-profile influential network preserving Jewish life, providing the resources to do so, and educating Jewish children long before the “Soviet Jewry movement” began in earnest following the Six Day War.

Throughout my two trips to the Soviet Union in the 1980s and my personal activism that resulted in getting one Jewish family released in 1987, I encountered many selfless Jewish leaders, but never imagined there was a Chabad network that remained active.

This made my connection to and interest in the previous rebbe that much more personal.  Thinking about an underground network to educate youth, I remembered my own youth and the incredible Jewish man, Bernard Halon, from the Chabad community in Brooklyn who came to my suburban NJ community to teach me for my bar mitzvah.

Before that, I was connected to Chabad in a way I didn’t even know, but had the previous rebbe’s fingerprints on it. As Ashkenazi Jews do, I’m named for my grandfather who died a year before I was born. As a young adult, I was given his tefillin which was one of the few of his possessions that my father was able to keep and pass along.

Sometime later I went to have them checked, and was curious to learn that they are Chabad tefillin. I didn’t know there was such a thing. I didn’t know – and still don’t – why my grandfather would have had Chabad tefillin. When the previous rebbe took the mantle of Chabad after his father, the Fifth Rebbe, died, Chabad was firmly planted in Russia. Lubavich – the shtetl of its origins – was some 1000 kilometers from my grandfather’s town, Przeworsk, Poland.

Yes, Chabad had chasidim in other parts of the world outside Russia, but between the distance, and that I am not aware of any Hasidic leaning of my grandfather and his family, nor was Chabad indigenous to southern Poland where they were, why my grandfather had Chabad tefillin is a mystery, but clearly it’s part of my heritage. Probably more of us have these connections to Chabad than we are aware.

Mr. Halon was the one who taught me about the significance of tefillin. Little did we know that years later I would inherit my grandfather’s Chabad tefillin.

My grandfather was a teen in Poland when the previous rebbe succeeded his father, the Fifth Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Dovbder Schneersohn, becoming the Sixth Lubavitch Rebbe and the last one to reside in Lubovich.

The story and life story of the Sixth Rebbe spanned seven decades, straddling two centuries, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel. It saw Chabad’s presence and influence reach five continents after migrating from Lubavitch to Rostov, then St. Petersburg, being expelled from Russia to Latvia, then to Poland, and eventually Crown Heights, NY.

When someone of my generation thinks of the Rebbe, one naturally is inclined to think of the Seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. His is the image we have that still adorns banners and books, the Chabad “brand” if you will.  That’s one thing that makes “Undaunted” so significant because in it, author Rabbi David Eliezrie documents the previous rebbe’s life in a way never done before. It’s not just weaving together stories and historical perspective in a narrative that’s engaging.  It’s documented in about 150 pages of sources.

In the last decade of his life, the previous rebbe lived in the United States establishing a new world center for Chabad at 770 Eastern Parkway. The previous rebbe responded to the post-Holocaust migration of Jews, establishing and strengthening Jewish communities worldwide. His impact was immediate. Upon arrival in the US he declared in Yiddish, “America iz nisht andersh,” America is no different, and understood that despite growing secularism of American Jews, they were ripe and it was necessary to infuse traditional Jewish life sending emissaries, schluchim, across America and around the world.

Particularly noteworthy was the remarkable increase of Jewish schools across America in the last decade of his life. Between 1940-1950, 97 Jewish schools opened in America, nearly four times of the number of schools that opened in America in the previous 20 years. A third of the 97 schools were opened by the Sixth Rebbe, laying the foundation for Chabad’s ongoing presence among the flourishing of American Jewry.

It’s hard to be in a Jewish community anywhere in the world today, and even in places with no Jews, and not feel the presence of Chabad. Indeed, much of that presence is due to the Seventh Rebbe. But it’s impossible to see any of this today without recognizing the vision and leadership of the previous rebbe, R. Yosef Yitzchah Schneersohn, which makes understanding his life, and “Undaunted,” all the more significant.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)