By Yochanan Gordon
As I write this article, we have just kindled the sixth Chanukah candle, which is the night 36 years ago when my paternal grandfather passed away. I wrote about him extensively the other week. The trajectory that my grandfather had set me on has made me uniquely positioned to act as a liaison between the world of the yeshivos and that of Chabad, which I had always seen as a calling of mine in life.
We all agree that Chanukah is a yom tov. However, not all of us see the significance in holidays such as 19 Kislev, which was observed a week before Chanukah, and the 5th of Teives, which we will mark in just five days from the writing of this article. Although these became festive days as a result of an event that took place in the life of the Chabad Rebbeim, they are significant for all Jews. The Friediker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, wrote in a letter that he penned after being informed of his liberation, “G-d has not merely liberated me on 12–13 Tammuz, rather all those who love the Torah and those whose connection to Yiddishkeit is in their being called Yidden. So whether you are a card-carrying member of the Chabad sect, an enthusiast, or the furthest thing from it, the joyous days on the Chabad calendar are universally significant. The story of 5 Teives in a nutshell: The Friediker Rebbe had two sons-in-law who survived the Holocaust, one of whom was Rabbi Shmaryahu Gourary and the other Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who would go on to succeed the Rayatz one year after his passing on 10 Shevat 1951. The Friediker Rebbe never officially appointed a successor and although there is historical evidence that he had intended for the Ramash, as the Rebbe was known then, to succeed him, his Rebbetzin for one reason or another had favored Rav Gourary. And although shortly after the Rebbe’s succession even Gourary had accepted the Rebbe as the leader of the Chabad movement, his son Barry Gourary decided to protest on his father’s behalf and help himself to many volumes of sefarim from the famed Schneerson library, which he sold for hefty sums of money to auction houses and collectors.
Gourary claimed that as the closest relative to the Friediker Rebbe, the books of his grandfather, the previous Rebbe, were his right to take. The Rebbe addressed this in a sichah at the time saying that if he actually felt that they were rightfully his then why did he break into the library like a bandit under the cover of night?
The Rebbe had frequently fasted during the court proceedings and spent an inordinate amount of time petitioning by the graveside of the Friediker Rebbe. The pivotal testimony that the judge himself would later say sealed the case for Agudas Chasidei Chabad against Gourary was when Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka was questioned whether the books belonged to her father, and she replied that the books belonged to Chabad by virtue of the fact that her father belonged to Chabad.
While many outside of Chabad saw this as a territorial dispute that had sadly made its way into a U.S. District Court in 1987, the Rebbe saw this as an attempt by his nephew Barry Gourary to undermine his right to the Chabad throne.
We have to remember that the Rebbe initially was not interested in succeeding his father-in-law. In fact, until that point in his life, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was an extreme introvert and had on more than one occasion expressed his willingness to spend a lifetime outside of the public eye in intense Torah study and pietistic seclusion.
In 1992 in his final public address before he would suffer an incapacitating stroke, the Rebbe, passing the baton to the chassidim to finish his life’s work towards bringing Moshiach, said, “Everything that I had done up until this point in order to bring Moshiach was for naught and in vain.” Clearly, the Rebbe was extremely self-critical and took very seriously anything that seemed to delegitimize his connection to the Chabad leadership. So why is this victory important for anyone who isn’t a Lubavitcher? The Lubavitcher Rebbe revolutionized Judaism on a global level. Where many Jewish leaders and organizations sought to merely survive after the Holocaust claimed a third of our entire people, the Lubavitcher Rebbe sought to rebuild on a scale never before seen in Jewish history and he succeeded. He succeeded by sending emissaries to far-flung outposts across the world who continue to act as his hands and feet, engaging Jews of all observance levels and backgrounds in Torah study and mitzvah performance and to in turn pass on what they have learned to those less knowledgeable than them.
We take the work of shluchim for granted. But many are unaware that in the late 1950s the Rebbe had to plea with his chassidim to leave Crown Heights and in some cases travel to places that they weren’t aware even existed on a map. The Rebbe dedicated many farbrengens emphasizing the critical need for chassidim to engage with Jews the world over in order to revolutionize the world and bring Moshiach. He assured shluchim and their wives that he would go along with them on their shlichus and would bestow upon them blessings at every juncture of their lives.
Ultimately, it was the Rebbe’s unordinary righteousness that compelled his adherents to go wherever he had sent them in turning this world into G-d’s garden. The day of Hei Teives is the day when a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was the rightful heir and successor to his father-in-law on account of whom Jews could travel to the ends of the earth and daven with a minyan and be given a hot kosher meal and a comfortable place to stay. Didan natzach!
Yochanan Gordon can be reached at ygordon5t@gmail.com. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.
