The Rebbe Rayatz shared ideas for making order out of chaos on American shores
After his imprisonment in the Soviet Union and his exile from his beloved chassidim behind the Iron Curtain, Rav Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitch Rebbe, didn’t fall into despair. With indefatigable energy, he left for the United States, to help those left behind, and to galvanize Jews there to forge a Torah society in the New World.
The return of Rabbi Schneersohn to America (he has recently left the country, after less than a year’s sojourn) would be a gain to the spiritual strength of Judaism here, and would strengthen the ties between the Jewries on both sides of the Atlantic.
—Isaac Rosengarten, Jewish Forum, August 30, 1930
Following the Bolsheviks’ rise to power and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Rav Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, known as the Rebbe Rayatz and the Frierdiker Rebbe, valiantly tried to keep the flame of Yiddishkeit and chassidus alive under increasingly adverse conditions.
In 1924, he moved his court from Rostov to Leningrad. Through a sophisticated network of personal emissaries and dedicated chassidim, he maintained clandestine religious schools and Tomchei Temimim yeshivos, as well as shuls, mikvaos, and availability of kosher food. The Joint Distribution Committee transferred funds to the Rebbe that he used to help many individuals and communities survive the Communists’ draconian antireligious measures.
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