הרב מנחם מענדל שניאורסון

Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson (11 Nissan 5662/1902–3 Tammuz 5754/1994), known to his chasidim simply as the Rebbe, was the seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. He was born in Nikolaev in the Russian Empire, the eldest son of Rav Levi Yitzchak Schneerson — later rav of Yekaterinoslav, a master of halachah and kabbalah — and Rebbetzin Chana. A direct descendant of the third Rebbe of Chabad, the Tzemach Tzedek, he was named for him. He learned mainly from his father, was known in his youth as an illui, and received semichah from the Rogatchover Gaon, Rav Yosef Rosen, and from Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, author of the Sridei Aish.

In 5689/1928 he married in Warsaw the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, daughter of the sixth Rebbe, Rav Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. The couple lived in Berlin, where he attended university studies, and from 5693/1933 in Paris, where he completed a degree in electrical engineering. Fleeing the Nazi occupation, they escaped through Vichy France and Lisbon and reached New York on 28 Sivan 5701/1941, joining his father-in-law at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights. The sixth Rebbe placed him at the head of the movement’s central institutions — Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Machneh Israel, and the Kehot publishing house — and in 5703/1943 his first sefer, Hayom Yom, was published.

After the histalkut of Rav Yosef Yitzchak in 5710/1950 he refused the leadership for a full year; on 10 Shevat 5711/1951, the first yahrtzeit, he delivered the maamar Bati LeGani and formally accepted the nesiut. Over forty-four years he built Chabad, a chasidut nearly destroyed in the Holocaust, into a worldwide movement: the network of shluchim and Chabad houses he established grew to thousands of educational and communal institutions across dozens of countries, and he proclaimed the mivtzoim, campaigns to encourage Jews everywhere in the keeping of mitzvot. He answered an ocean of letters — some 13,000 are printed in the Igrot Kodesh — received individuals for yechidut deep into the night, and in his later years handed each visitor a dollar for tzedakah on Sundays, speaking briefly with the thousands who waited in line. In all his years of leadership he never left New York.

His published Torah — the sichot and maamarim delivered at his farbrengens — fills more than four hundred volumes. In 1978 the United States Congress designated his birthday as Education and Sharing Day, and in 1994 he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. The Rebbe was nistalek on 3 Tammuz 5754/1994; his Ohel in Queens, beside that of his father-in-law, and the beit midrash at 770 draw Jews from all over the world to daven.