Joseph Isaac Schneersohn

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Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1933)

Joseph Isaac Schneersohn ( Hebrew יוסף יצחק שניאורסאהן; born June 21, 1880 in Lubavitch , Mogilev Gouvernement , Russian Empire ; died January 28, 1950 in New York ) was the sixth "Rebbe" (spiritual leader) of the Chabad movement, a Hasidic group within Orthodox Judaism . He is also known as Rebbe Rayatz (an acronym for Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak).

Life and activities

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn was born in Lubavitch as the only child of Rabbi Shalom Dowber Schneersohn (1860-1920), the fifth Rebbe of the Chabad dynasty. At the age of 15, he was made his father's private secretary. In 1897, at the age of 17, he married a distant cousin, Nechama Dina Schneersohn. In 1898 he became head of Jeschiwat Tomche Tmimim. With financial support from Jewish patrons, he founded weaving mills in Dubrovno and Mogilew in order to create jobs for the Jewish population. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he organized kosher food supplies for Jewish soldiers. Between 1902 and 1911 he was arrested four times by the Tsarist police for his activism, but released each time.

After the death of his father, Rabbi Shalom Dowber Schneersohn, in 1920, Yosef Yitzchak took over the leadership of the Chabad movement.

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn was an open opponent of the communist regime and explicitly urged his followers to found religious schools and mikvaot (ritual immersion baths).

In 1927 he was arrested and held in Schpalerno prison in Leningrad. He was accused of counter-revolutionary activities and sentenced to death. A worldwide protest by Western governments and the International Red Cross forced the communist regime to convert the death penalty into a three-year banishment to Kostroma in the Urals. This judgment was also overturned, and in 1928 Schneersohn was allowed to leave for Latvia. From 1934 to 1939 he lived in Warsaw and Otwock in Poland.

After the German invasion of Poland began in 1939, Schneersohn was held in the Warsaw ghetto . As a contribution to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, Wilhelm Canaris organized the liberation of Schneersohn by members of the Abwehr . The Jewish major and later Colonel Ernst Bloch led the command and was able to successfully escape via Berlin and Riga to the USA. Schneersohn probably had no knowledge of his life that he had been rescued by the head of the Abwehr.

There he settled in Crown Heights , New York , where he lived until his death in 1950.

In 1942 he founded the book publisher Kehot - an acrostic poem by Karnej Hod Tora (Hebrew "rays of the glory of the Torah"). The three Hebrew letters give the year תק"ה (5505/1745), the year of birth of the founder of the Chabad movement, Schneor Salman . Kehot currently publishes more than 600 Hebrew titles in the field of Hasidic philosophy. The publisher also publishes in English, Spanish and Russian language With the exception of the multi-volume work Sedej Chemed by Rabbi Chaim Cheskia Medini, Kehot only publishes books related to Chabad Hasidism.

In 1948, Schneersohn founded the village of Kfar Chabad near Tel Aviv in the newly formed state of Israel .

Schneersohn also sent young rabbis to several cities in the United States and Morocco in the late 1940s to support local Jewish communities. He called these rabbis Schluchim (Hebrew "messenger"). This approach was later continued and considerably reinforced by his son-in-law, R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn had three daughters:

  1. Chana, who married Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary in 1921. The couple managed to escape to the USA during the Shoah .
  2. Chaya Moussia (1901–1988), who in 1928 married Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson , who took over the leadership of the Chabad movement after the death of his father-in-law in 1950.
  3. Schaina (1904–1942), who married her cousin Menachem Mendel Horenstein in 1932. The couple were murdered in Treblinka concentration camp in 1942 .

Torah works

The Torah works by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn are combined in the Sefer Ha-Maamarim series . This also includes Sefer Ha-Maamarim Yiddish with Hasidic Torah commentaries from the years 1941–1945, which were not printed in Hebrew as usual , but in Yiddish . Parts of his correspondence were published under the title Igrot Kodesch (13 vol.). In his Sefer Ha-Sichot (6 vol.) And Likkute Dibburim (2 vol.) He published numerous traditions from the Hasidic movement, starting with Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tow up to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's own childhood. He had heard these traditions throughout his life from related members of the Schneersohn dynasty or older Hasidim. Many of the traditional Hasidic stories are provided with practical instructions for the service of God by Joseph Jizchak Schneersohn; Sometimes he also locates it in the context of the theoretical teaching of Hasidism. In his Sefer Ha-Sichronot ("Book of Memories", 2 vol.) He describes many of these stories in a detailed version without theoretical deductions. The anthology of Chabad stories Ozar Sipure Chabad (18 vol.) Makes extensive use of texts by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak.

In the years 1941–1945 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak published the magazine Ha-Kria we ha-Keduscha , which was supposed to make the Jewish communities in the USA aware of the precarious situation of the Jews under the Nazi rule in Europe.

See also

swell

  1. ^ Image of Schneersohn's Certificate of Naturalization
  2. ↑ Yearbook for Research on Antisemitism . Campus Verlag, 1998, p. 309 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  3. ↑ Bryan Mark Rigg: The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers: Rebbe Joseph Isaac Schneersohn and His Astonishing Rescue . University Press of Kansas, 2016, ISBN 978-0-7006-2261-0 ( google.de [accessed January 31, 2020]).
  4. ^ Günter Schubert: The stain on Uncle Sam's white vest: America and the Jewish refugees 1938-1945 . Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37275-4 , pp. 134 ff . ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Information on the daughters from: Yosef Y. Kaminetzky: Days in Chabad. Historic Events in the Dynasty of Chabad-Lubavitch , New York 2002, ISBN 0-8266-0489-7
  6. ^ Rabbi Joseph Jizchak Schneersohn, Sefer ha-Maamarim Yiddish: 5701-5705 , New York 1986, 5th edition, ISBN 0-8266-5706-0

literature

  • Rachel Altein: Out of the Inferno. The efforts that led to the rescue of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn from Lubavitch from war-torn Europe in 1939-1940 , New York 2002, 336 pages with numerous documents, ISBN 0-8266-0683-0

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schneersohn, Joseph Isaac
ALTERNATIVE NAMES יוסף יצחק שניאורסאהן (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chief Rabbi of the Lubavitch
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Lubavitch , Mogilev Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1950
Place of death new York