Menachem Mendel Schneerson (April 18, 1902 – June 12, 1994), known to adherents of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or simply the Rebbe, was an Orthodox rabbi and the Rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century.
As leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, he took an insular Hasidic group that almost came to an end with the Holocaust and transformed it into one of the most influential movements in religious Jewry, with an international network of over 5,000 educational and social centers. The institutions he established include kindergartens, schools, drug-rehabilitation centers, care homes for disabled people, and synagogues.
Schneerson's published teachings fill more than 400 volumes, and he is noted for his contributions to Jewish continuity and religious thought, as well as his wide-ranging contributions to traditional Torah scholarship. He is recognized as the pioneer of Jewish outreach. During his lifetime, many of his adherents believed that he was the Messiah, though not all Chabadniks subscribe to this belief. His own attitude to the subject, and whether he proclaimed it, is hotly debated among academics and scholars of Judaism. During Schneerson's lifetime, the messianic controversy and other issues elicited fierce criticism from many quarters in the Orthodox world, from Israel's Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef to Elazar Shach.
In 1978, the U.S. Congress asked President Jimmy Carter to designate Schneerson's birthday as the national Education Day in the U.S. It has been since commemorated as Education and Sharing Day. In 1994, Schneerson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his "outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity". Schneerson's resting place attracts Jews for prayer.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born on April 5, 1902 (OS) (11 Nisan, 5662), in the Black Sea port of Nikolaev in the Russian Empire (now Mykolaiv in Ukraine). His father was rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, a renowned Talmudic scholar and authority on Kabbalah and Jewish law. His mother was Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson (née Yanovski). He was named after the third Chabad rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Tzemach Tzedek, from whom he was a direct patrilineal descendant.
In 1907, when Schneerson was five years old, the family moved to Yekaterinoslav, where Levi Yitzchak was appointed Chief Rabbi of the city. He served until 1939, when he was exiled by the Soviets - who were anti-religion - for five years to Kazakhstan for his activities on behalf of strengthening Judaism in the Soviet Union. Schneerson had two younger brothers: Dov Ber Schneerson, who was murdered in 1944 by Nazi collaborators, and Yisroel Aryeh Leib Schneerson, who died in 1952 while completing doctoral studies at Liverpool University.
During his youth, he received a private education and was tutored by Zalman Vilenkin from 1909 through 1913. When Schneerson was 11 years old, Vilenkin informed his father that he had nothing more to teach his son. At that point, Levi Yitzchak began teaching his son Talmud and rabbinic literature, as well as Kabbalah. Schneerson proved gifted in both Talmudic and Kabbalistic study and also took exams as an external student of the local Soviet school. He was considered an illui and genius, and by the time he was 17, he had mastered the entire Talmud, some 5,422 pages, as well as all its early commentaries.
Throughout his childhood, Schneerson was involved in the affairs of his father's office. He was also said to have acted as an interpreter between the Jewish community and the Russian authorities on a number of occasions. Levi Yitzchak's courage and principles guided his son for the rest of his life. Many years later, when he once reminisced about his youth, Schneerson said, "I have the education of the first-born son of the rabbi of Yekaterinoslav. When it comes to saving lives, I speak up whatever others may say."
Schneerson went on to receive separate rabbinical ordinations from the Rogatchover Gaon, Joseph Rosen, and Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, author of Sridei Aish.
In 1923, Schneerson visited the sixth Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, for the first time. He met the rabbi's middle daughter Chaya Mushka, who was a distant cousin. Sometime later, they became engaged but were not married until 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. Taking great pride in his son-in-law's outstanding scholarship, Yosef Yitzchak asked him to engage in learned conversation with the great Torah scholars present at the wedding, such as Meir Shapiro and Menachem Ziemba. Menachem Mendel and Chaya Mushka were married for 60 years and were childless.
Menachem Mendel and Yosef Yitzchak were both descendants of Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, known as the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Rebbe of Chabad. Schneerson later commented that the day of his marriage bound the community to him and him to the community.
In 1947, Schneerson traveled to Paris to take his mother, Chana Schneerson, back to New York City with him. Schneerson would visit her every day and twice each Friday to also prepare her tea. In 1964, Chana Schneerson died.
On February 10, 1988, Schneerson's wife Chaya Mushka died. After the traditional year of Jewish mourning had passed on her Yahrzheit, the widowed Schneerson moved into his study above the central Lubavitch synagogue on Eastern Parkway.
After his wedding to Chaya Mushka in 1928, Schneerson and his wife moved to Berlin in the Weimar Republic (now part of Germany), where he was assigned specific communal tasks by his father-in-law, who also requested that he write scholarly annotations to the responsa (also known as teshuvot) and various Hasidic discourses of the earlier Rebbes of Chabad-Lubavitch. Schneerson studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and reportedly in his philosophy class he scored the highest grade in the history of the university. He would later recall that he enjoyed Erwin Schrödinger's lectures. His father-in-law took great pride in his son-in-law's scholarly attainments and paid for all the tuition expenses and helped facilitate his studies throughout.
During his stay in Berlin, his father-in-law encouraged him to become more of a public figure. However, Schneerson described himself as an introvert and was known to have pleaded with acquaintances not to make a fuss over the fact that he was the son-in-law of Yosef Yitzchak.
While in Berlin, Schneerson met Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and the two formed a friendship that remained between them years later when they emigrated to America. He wrote hundreds of pages of his own original Torah discourses, and conducted a serious interchange of halachic correspondence with many of Eastern Europe's leading rabbinic figures, including Joseph Rosen. In 1933, he also met with Chaim Elazar Spira, as well as with Talmudist Shimon Shkop. During this time, he kept a diary in which he would carefully document his private conversations with his father-in-law, as well as his kabbalistic correspondence with his father, Levi Yitzchak.
In 1933, after the Nazis took over Germany, the Schneersons left Berlin and moved to Paris, where Menachem Mendel (known as "RaMash" before accepting the leadership of Chabad) continued his religious and communal activities on behalf of his father-in-law.
While in Paris, he took a two-year course in mechanical and electrical engineering at a vocational college. After this, he studied mathematics at the prestigious Sorbonne University.