Though often overlooked because of the impact and fame of his charismatic successor, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn—was one of the most impactful figures in 20th-century Jewish history. And he’s the subject of a new biography, Undaunted by Rabbi David Eliezrie, who joins JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin for this week’s episode of “Think Twice.”
Eliezrie, the founder and leader of North County Chabad/Congregation Beth Meir HaCohen in Yorba Linda, Calif., has written the first scholarly biography of Schneersohn. He acknowledges that although he was considered a major figure during his lifetime, the sixth rebbe has been eclipsed by the seventh, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. But the transformation of Chabad from a small sect of Chassidic Jewry to its current status as one of the most important forces in modern Jewish life was only made possible by the sixth rebbe’s successful struggle to save Soviet Jews and reimagine American Judaism.
The story of this rebbe, as Eliezrie notes, is a saga that encompasses the key struggles of 20th-century Jewish history. Displaced from its traditional home in the Russian town of Lubavitch by the First World War, Schneersohn and Chabad found themselves the center of resistance against Communist efforts (led by Jewish Bolsheviks) to eradicate Judaism. Eliezrie’s book tells the story of, despite ill health, threats, imprisonment and a death sentence against him handed down by Moscow, the rebbe stubbornly insisted on fighting to keep Jewish education and practice alive in the Soviet Union.
After a narrow escape from the Nazis at the start of the Second World War, the rebbe came to the United States. There, he first supported efforts for the rescue of European Jewry, which was opposed by the American Jewish establishment that feared offending President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also chose, unlike other Orthodox movements who felt maintaining their own communities was the priority, to emphasize outreach and bringing Judaism and Jewish learning to all Jews, regardless of their affiliation and observance. In this way, Eliezrie says, he helped transform American Jewish life and set the stage for his successor’s subsequent successful revolutionary international outreach campaign.
Perhaps just as important was Schneersohn’s willingness to put aside past disagreements with Zionism after the birth of the modern State of Israel in 1948. Though not formally Zionist and opposed to secular nationalism replacing Judaism, the rebbe took a stand that opposed the Haredi world’s efforts to remain separate from modern Israeli society.
As a result, as Eliezrie says, “We want to be engaged with that society. The previous rebbe told his followers everybody has to share in the defense of the country, that we have to go to the army.” The author notes that surveys of American Jewry show that the largest percentage of American Jews who identify as Zionists are actually those who affiliate with Chabad synagogues.
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