the Lubavitcher Rebbe הרבי מליובאוויטש
seventh Rebbe of Chabad, creator of a worldwide network of emissaries
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born in Nikolaev in 5662, studied Torah with his father, the kabbalist Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, and mathematics and engineering in Berlin and Paris. In 5701 he and his wife reached New York, and in 5711, a year after his father-in-law's death, he accepted the leadership of Chabad.
His idea was simple and vast. Instead of gathering Hasidim around a court, he sent them out: a young couple moves to a city with almost no Jews and stays for life. So the «shluchim», the emissaries, came into being; today there are thousands in more than a hundred countries. He himself barely left New York for forty years and never visited Israel, yet ran the network by letter and instruction.
He launched the «mitzvah campaigns» — tefillin, Sabbath candles, public menorahs in city squares. He championed Soviet Jewry and insisted that every Jew be cared for unconditionally, without asking how observant they were.
He spoke insistently of the nearness of redemption, and some followers declared him the Messiah — a controversy that outlived his death in 5754.