Embargoed until Thursday of this week, when I land in Israel for the rededication of Beit Hatfustot. Editors please contact me at YosefA@aol.com if you are using the piece.

Reclaiming The Rebbe For All Jews 

By Yosef I. Abramowitz 
Twelve years have passed since Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, died at age 92.   He stepped onto the stage of history as the seventh and final Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1951, a year after the passing of the previous Rebbe and father-in-law, and six years following the end of World War II.  

To understand the Rebbe as simply the leader who transformed a small sect of Hassidim into perhaps the most vigorous element within the Jewry is to miss his contribution to the entire Jewish people.  The Rebbe was the greatest proponent of Jewish unity and peoplehood in the second half of the 20th century.  While he called for more Torah and Mitzvot, the Rebbe’s ability to non-judgmentally affirm every Jew no matter their religiosity serves as testimony to his love of all Jews as part of the larger whole of the Jewish people.    Operating from a first floor modest room of a converted small hospital building that has famously become known as “770�, the Rebbe possessed an urgent energy about everything.   He assumed the leadership of Chabad at age 49 and childless, meaning he understood that his eventual passing of the mantle of leadership would never be to a dynastic heir but back to his followers.  

    
  Like the Jewish people, Chabad is everywhere, in far flung communities and in the State of Israel. There are 4,000 full-time Chabad emissary families and more than 3,300 associated institutions in 71 countries, including 112 campus Chabad houses, and 50,000 daily visitors to Chabad.org.  Decentralized, but with a core organizational DNA that was fashioned by the Rebbe, Lubavitch has been able to continue to flourish in the dozen years since it became clear that Moshiach and the Rebbe were not one and the same. 

    
Ahad Ha’am, the modern secular father of the concept of Jewish Peoplehood, wrote in his seminal essay “Moses� (1904) that you can learn about the essence of a people by the leaders it chooses to embrace and highlight. Whether Moses ever existed in history was not of interest to Ahad Ha’am; what mattered most were the characteristics of who the Jewish people hold up to be an ideal leader.  Moses cared for each Jewish person, stood up for the Jewish people to both Pharoah and to God, lived modestly and was the ultimate teacher of Torah.  Holding him up as a role model for future generations says something affirmative about the values of the Jewish people. 

    
Two years before Ahad Ha’am’s “Moses� essay appeared, Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born in Ukraine. Upon his birth, a telegram was sent to his home by the fifth Rebbe with extraordinary instructions to his parents on raising him, including for his mother to wash her hands ritually before nursing the future leader.  His childhood was punctuated with anti-Jewish actions and pogroms, and his parents’ response, which was to always care for people who were needy.  

    
The Rebbe inspired his flock repeatedly with traditional teachings about Moses. As Moses the shepard went out to bring back a wandering baby goat, so too should every Jew reach out to another.  A mitzvah of Peoplehood is to care about all Jews, no matter who they are, where they live or their level of observance. The Rebbe, more than any other figure of our generation, exemplified this characteristic.  

    
In the image of Lubavitch, the Rebbe is put forward as a religious leader.  Yet in an age when most Jews are not religious, it is important that we reclaim and celebrate the Rebbe  as a leader who promoted global Jewish Peoplehood.   
 
Mutual responsibility (areivut), Jewish education (chinuch), love of the Jewish people (ahavat yisrael) and social justice (tzedek) are the hallmarks of the Jewish people and these were exemplified by the Rebbe’s life and teachings. These values are not claimed by one part of Judaism but belong to all Jews.  As should the Rebbe himself. 

At a midnight meeting with the UJA leaders on March 4, 1962, the Rebbe fielded questions for hours about priorities for the Jewish future and his response to the Shoah.  

    “Education now is a question of saving a soul, saving a human being for the Jewish people and saving him for humanity,� he implored.  Lubavitch, like the rest of the Jewish people, was decimated after the Shoah and the Rebbe shared with the UJA leaders his secret for revitalization:  Turn the trauma into a mandate for Jewish education.   “Hitler was not interested so much in annihilating the body of Jewishness as he was interested in annihilating the spirit.� Therefore, he taught, make Jewish education a priority and accessible for all Jews.

        President Bush is sitting on a well-intentioned but ill-conceived congressional proposal for an executive order declaring January to be the annual Jewish History Month.  April and May is chock full of Jewish holidays, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt 3,300 years ago to the birthday of the State of Israel.  The 11th of Nissan also falls then, which is the birthday of the Rebbe. 

    Jewish History Month should begin each year on the Rebbe’s birthday in appreciation for his role in modern Jewish history and for the historic challenges he called upon the Jewish people to meet.  Few Jews agree with everything the Rebbe taught or that Chabad does; yet it would be a mistake to let those issues undermine what all Jews can learn from the Rebbe’s dedication to the Jewish people and to Jewish education. Celebrating the Rebbe as a hero of Jewish Peoplehood also says something about our own generation’s values.  The purpose of Jewish history, through the Rebbe’s eyes and our own, is to draw wisdom and courage from the past and change the course of the future of the Jewish people and the world.  All Jews, no matter what their background, could support this.  And when that happens, maybe we will collectively merit Redemption. 

   

    Yosef I. Abramowitz, CEO of Jewish Family & Life!, served on the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission’s Student Committee, co-chaired Kol Dor’s campaign to have Cheshvan celebrated as global Jewish Social Action Month and was the last journalist to spend time with the Rebbe prior to his stroke in 1992.  He blogs daily at www.Peoplehood.org .