הרב שלום דובער שניאורסון

Rav Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (20 Cheshvan 5621/1860–2 Nisan 5680/1920), the Rebbe Rashab, was the fifth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, founder of Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim, and the great systematizer of Chabad chassidut. Born in the town of Lubavitch, the second son of the Rebbe Maharash, Rav Shmuel Schneersohn, he was beloved of his grandfather the Tzemach Tzedek, who chose both his name and the appellation “Rashab.” At twelve he was already writing down his father’s maamarim. In 5635/1875 he married his cousin Shterna Sarah, daughter of Rav Yosef Yitzchak of Avrutch, a son of the Tzemach Tzedek. When the Maharash was niftar in 5643/1882 the chassidim looked to him though he was not the eldest, and he began saying maamarim of his own; out of honor for his elder brother he took the nesiut fully upon himself only on Rosh Hashanah 5654/1893.

On 15 Elul 5657/1897, at the sheva brachot of his only son Rav Yosef Yitzchak, he founded Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim in Lubavitch — the first Chabad yeshiva, in which chassidut was fixed as part of the daily sedarim beside Gemara and halachah. He called its talmidim “temimim” and the “soldiers of the house of David,” and set out their derech in Kuntres Eitz HaChaim, requiring full clarity in the sugya before pilpul and daily hours in the learning of chassidut. In 5672/1912 he sent seven chosen talmidim to Chevron, purchased Beit Romano, and founded there the Toras Emes yeshiva, re-established after the war in Yerushalayim, where it stands to this day.

He also carried the burdens of all Russian Jewry: the long fight against anti-semitic decrees that would force rabbanut and cheder to secular schooling, and — together with Rav Chaim of Brisk, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, and other gedolim — the campaign that turned back the great grant that would have funded the maskilim’s school network. In the Beilis trial he guided the halachic side of the defense and asked the advocate Gruzenberg to close his plea with Shema Yisrael; in the wars he arranged kosher food and matzot for Jewish soldiers and relief for refugees, and in 5678/1918 founded the Ezra press, which printed the siddur Tehillat Hashem. The Chofetz Chaim said of him that the words of the Lubavitcher Rebbe are holy.

Over thirty-eight years he delivered some two thousand maamarim, among them the long hemshechim that are the deepest sustained expositions of Chabad thought — Yom Tov Shel Rosh Hashanah 5666 (“Samech Vav”) and B’Shaah Shehikdimu 5672 (“Ayin Beit”) — learned in Chabad yeshivot today with his Kuntres UMa’ayan, Kuntres HaTefillah, and Torat Shalom. In 5676/1915, as the front neared Lubavitch, he moved to Rostov-on-Don, where he was niftar on 2 Nisan 5680/1920, leaving the nesiut to his son with the words: I am going up to heaven; the writings I leave to you. His resting place, moved by chassidim to Rostov’s Jewish cemetery, is visited daily by chassidim from all over the world.