NEW YORK – At the end of last weekend, the Jewish world – some might say the entire world – marked 25 years since the passing of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and thus far the last leader of the hassidic dynasty. In the quarter-century that has passed since his death, Chabad has become a force of nature in the Jewish world, an immense draw for religious, secular, hassidic, and ultra-Orthodox Jews, and even heads of state.
His presence only grows stronger. The store of video and audio recordings he left behind continue to nurture the next generations, but they don't need the visual experience. Neither do they need the famous portrait of the rebbe that hangs in millions of Jewish homes and has already become an international cultural icon. The rebbe is still, and apparently will always be, the lifeblood of Chabad. But he doesn't belong to Chabadniks alone, and his influence in numerous areas continues to increase.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
The Chabad hassidic sect seeks to emphasize that it is a general "Jewish home" and categorically rejects political involvement. But its army of "diplomats" – thousands of emissaries in hundreds of countries – are making it into a major political force. Last Monday, hours after I landed in New York, I was already visiting the Lubavitcher rebbe's gravesite. Despite the late hour, dozens of Jews and gentiles were there. They came to plea, to pray, to wonder, to sense the atmosphere. There were Sanz, Vizhnitz, and Bobov Hassidim, and even a few from Satmar, alongside traditional Jews, Modern Orthodox Jews, and young secular Jewish boys and girls dressed scantily, as well as a young African American woman with a special supplication.
The next day, at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, known as "770" and the center of the world Chabad movement, I encounter Mendel Alperowitz, a new Chabad emissary in South Dakota, who has extended Chabad's presence to all 50 US states. He was with the emissary from Alaska, Mendy Greenberg. The emissaries to the northern state are nicknamed "The Frozen Chosen."
In a modest room Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the educational arm of the World Chabad movement, awaits me. He started off as an emissary of the rebbe in the 1950s, when he was sent to provide encouragement to Kfar Chabad after a terrorist attack at a school there killed six people. Later, he served as the rebbe's personal chauffeur, and then as his spokesman. Today, at 86, he holds the highest position in the hassidic sect but he remains behind the memory of the rebbe. Chabad opts to write its future with the ink of the past, and the past, for Chabad, provides inspiration for the future.
Rabbi Krinsky grew up in a Chabad family, the son of parents who arrived in the US at the start of the 20th century.
"My parents made a vow between them that if God would bless them with children, they would do everything they could possibly, and more than possibly, do to see that they were 'shomrei Torah ve'mitzvot' [observant Jews.] And they succeeded. They built a very Jewish home in Boston. I'm the youngest of nine children. When the previous rebbe in the '20s and '30s would send the 'shluchim' [emissaries] from Russia and Poland to America, they would always stay with us. So I grew up in this kind of warmth, 'hachnasas orchim' [hospitality], davening, learning. I was going to public school. There were no yeshivas, no Jewish schools in America."
'Do you have a driver's license?'
He first met the rebbe shortly before his bar mitzvah. "My parents decided they wanted to take me out of public school and send me to New York, to Lubavitch. This was in 1946. I came to New York with an older brother of mine, he was still a student. That's when I really saw the rebbe for the first time. I was taken by it. I was mesmerized. I said to myself, I want to be with this person, live with him, learn from him. After the [Sukkot] holidays, I registered at the yeshiva. I was one of just a few boys in the dormitory. Most of the students came from the area, New York.
The rebbe would tell some of the older students, 'If you see Yudel Krinsky, tell him I would like to see him.' So every few days, I would get this message. All the mail would go through him. When it came to my mail, he would put it aside for me. He knew who I was – I didn't know he knew who I was. I used to go to his prayers, stand and listen to him. That sense of awe never passed, even after I had worked for the rebbe for decades. Every time I had to go into his office my hands would shake a little.
"One night, I'm sitting in the beit midrash [study hall], it was after 11 o'clock, when my chaver [study partner] was studying Talmud, and one of the people in the office comes running into the shul [synagogue]: 'Do you have a license? Well, then, quick, the rebbe wants to go, so get a car and take him.' There was a Lubavitcher young man a few blocks away who had a car rental, so I got a car and took the rebbe. Don't ask me how I felt, because I couldn't explain it. From that time on, almost exclusively, I drove him."
Q: Did you feel that the rebbe should engage in politics?
"The rebbe never engaged in politics. I can tell you, being in the office 24/7, for 40 years, all kinds of people, candidates from political parties from all sides, would come to see him. And he would spend time with them, but he never, ever supported any individual candidate."
Q: On the other hand, Chabad is so clearly felt in Israeli politics. How can you explain that?
"You have to ask the Israelis. There was one time that the rebbe supported 'Gimmel' [United Torah Judaism], for some reason. And I think it [the party] went from two [seats] to five and was close to six. Someone calculated that the number of seats the rebbe brought to all the parties was six. There was a religious reason for his intervention."
Q: How have things changed since 1957, the year you started serving as part of the rebbe's staff and head of his news service? How do you engage people in this digital age in a way that is in line with Orthodox teaching and values?
"First of all, people change. The numbers of people change. Today, in my estimation, Chabad-Lubavitch is the largest Jewish organization in the world. You have over 3,500 Batei Chabad [Chabad Houses] all over the world, and along with spreading Torah and mitzvot, our people save people in natural disasters. That's how it was in Nepal and in the big tsunami [in 2004]. They save non-Jews, too, always help. They're very, very successful. It's the most active Jewish organization in the world, the most genuinely concerned. The worry about the Jews' situation, 24/7."
"As far as the digital age – you have no alternative. The internet has a lot of dangers but also great potential. The reality is that it's become part of our lives, so we need to be very careful, and use it for good things. I remember when I started in 1957 with the newspapers, it was tough. There were no computers. If you wanted to send out a press release, you had to type it up and put it in an envelope and put a stamp on it and go to the post office. Today, we're very far ahead because of our involvement with public relations. I remember when the rebbe's addresses were going to be sent by satellite – in 1980! We started very early. You needed massive equipment for it to happen. [Now] you don't have to do anything, you just need a computer, you press a button."
'Don't fight, just bring light'
In 2008, with the series of major terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, it became clear that the work of the Chabad emissaries was not only difficult but also dangerous. Six people were murdered in the Mumbai Chabad House, including Gabriel and Rivka Holtzberg.
Q: How did the Mumbai attack change your organization, in terms of the emissaries?
"There's a lot of things that still go on in terms of security for the shluchim, wherever they are. I can't tell you more about it. We have to pray to God that nothing untoward happens, like what you mentioned before, and we had something in Poway [California] a few months ago."
Q: When you started to work here with the rebbe, a shooting in a synagogue in California – was that something you could have imagined?
"Anything can happen, and you need to be ready for anything."
Q: America is a place that greeted Chabad, that greeted Jews. Seeing anti-Semitic acts in America now, is that something you would have expected?
"In America, every single day there are shootings. Chicago is like a battlefield. We just have to hope and pray that God will protect us. That shooting [in Poway], and the way the shaliach [the emissary, who lost a finger in the shooting] reacted to it, captivated the media and the United States from coast to coast. That week, college students were nailing mezuzas onto the doors of their rooms to show they weren't afraid."
Q: A lot of people blamed the Trump administration for the shooting attacks against Jews. Do you in Chabad think it makes sense to accuse the president of being an anti-Semite?
"I don't understand it at all. You have to ask the Democrats. He's not an anti-Semite. It makes no sense to accuse him of that. You can't understand why they call him that. He's not an anti-Semite and blaming him for the shooting is absurd.
Q: The rebbe never visited Israel. Did he have a spiritual need to visit the Western Wall?
"That's a good question. I had the same question for man, many years and I was asked by many journalists. I wasn't going to ask the rebbe, I didn't have the chutzpah. It wasn't my job. So I wrote the rebbe a note, saying that journalists were asking me this question. He answered me that he hadn't found a dispensation to leave once you go to Eretz Yisroel. If you go, you can leave under only two circumstances: to marry or to study Torah. Since he was already doing those two things, he couldn't come to Eretz Yisroel and then leave."
Q: How worried is Chabad about assimilation? How hard are you willing to fight it?
"If anyone's doing anything about it, it's the rebbe, the shluchim. I don't think there's any other organization that has the expanse and the wherewithal, and people are genuinely concerned. I'm sure they've gone a far way to stem the tide, but it [assimilation] is increasing."
Q: And what about the fight against anti-Semitism?
"I was there the first time [now Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu came to see the rebbe. He had just been appointed an ambassador to the UN. He came to the rebbe during hakafot [Simchat Torah celebrations]. The shul was wall-to-wall human beings. I was standing near the aron kodesh [Holy Ark] and he [Netanyahu] found his way up there and introduced himself to the rebbe. The rebbe spoke to him for 40 minutes, this was in the middle of the hakafot, and everyone was waiting to continue, and this young man came up and 'took' 40 minutes of his time."
"The rebbe told him that the United Nations is a house of darkness. So you have to put on a light. 'A little light casts out a lot of darkness,' so your [Netanyahu's] obligation was to bring light. Not to fight, just make it light. That lives with him [Netanyahu] in his heart. I believe this was the rebbe's approach to anti-Semitism – you can't fight it."
One of the most important world leaders to maintain close ties with Chabad is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rabbi Krinsky says that in conversations with Putin, the Russian leader asked him where in Russia his parents were from originally.
"He said he grew up in St. Petersburg, in a Jewish area, and he was the Shabbos goy. He didn't use that term. [He said] he knew all about it. He said about Chabad, he knows Chabad is very active. He spoke about Chabad like a shaliach."
Q: Everywhere you have Jews, even one, you have a shaliach. You have them in all 50 US states. Will you send one to Iran?
"There were two things the rebbe made conditional before a shaliach goes out to a country. There should be a mikveh, and there should be no political upheaval."
Q: You, all of you, have worked with the rebbe, knew the rebbe, met the rebbe. But you have grandkids who've never seen the rebbe. They'll only hear stories. Don't they also deserve a rebbe?
"I think they do. There are so many writings from the rebbe. His talks and his letters and correspondence – there are 35 volumes of his correspondence covering all kinds of questions and answers [about] almost the whole gamut of life. Then his talks, and there are 1,500 of his articles on hassidic issues. Lots of people have been deeply influenced by them. Secondly, I thank God that in the 1970s I started filming the rebbe at events, despite the high cost. There are also recordings from the satellite broadcasts. Today we can watch these videos and see the rebbe's care and passion. The kids see that and it gets into their hearts."
Q: What was different about the rebbe? Why do Hassidim from sects other than Chabad come to visit his grave?
"The rebbe touched people. I know that the different groups of Hassidim, and the misnagdim – when certain things happen in the world today, especially about the situation in Eretz Yisroel, they ask, 'What would the rebbe say?' Years ago, they wouldn't listen to the rebbe, but now they feel like he's answering the important questions."
Q: Is the legacy of the rebbe that in every one of us there is a little bit of Chabad, given the fact that so many kinds of people are drawn to him?
"I would say 100%. Chabad, especially the rebbe's teachings, helps everyone connect to the essence of Judaism."
