Russia-the cradle of Chabad. Here Chabad was planted and nurtured; blossomed, flourished and struck its deepest roots. From Liozna and Liadi, from Lubavitch to the furthest reaches of the Pale of Jewish Settlement, Chabad was renowned, revered and cherished.
The Early Years
By the early years of this century, Lubavitch emissaries had reached the furthest corners of the Czarist empire. Sent by Rabbi Sholom Dovber (known as the Rebbe Rashab, 1860-1920, fifth leader of Chabad), they visited and inspired Jews in even the remotest communities. The unlearned descendants of the "Cantonists"-Jewish children torn from their families to spend their lives as soldiers of the Czar, oriental Jews in Bukhara, the mountain Jews of Georgia and Daghestan, all welcomed Chabad emissaries sent to teach them Torah and raise their standards of Jewish practice.
The First World War plunged Eastern European Jewish communities into chaos, uprooting large populations and disrupting the traditional Torah education system. Then came the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
The Revolution and the Stalin Era
The Revolution opened a frightening new era. Religious education of the young was banned, practice of Judaism was systematically obliterated, and observant Jews-particularly chassidim-were persecuted, arrested, exiled, tortured and shot. To circumcise a child required enormous courage; dbserving Shabbat and kashrut became virtually impossible for the Jewish masses-who had been largely Torah-observant before the Revolution.
"Schneersohns Don't Run..:' Most Jewish leaders took advantage of any opportunity to leave the country. But the destiny of Chabad was inextricably bound up with Russian Jewry. The Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950), son of the Rebbe Rashab, once told a Czarist police officer: "The Schneersohns don't run away!" True to his word, he stepped into the gap as the only Jewish leader to remain active in the Soviet Union.
The Foundation: Throwing himself into the task at hand, the Previous Rebbe proceeded to build a widespread network of underground institutions-through the length and breadth of that vast land.
Any vestiges of Jewish religious life in the Soviet Union today trace back directly to those foundations.
On a dark night in Moscow, in the winter of 1924, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Lubavitch, made a covenant with a group of young men. They vowed to fight to the end to preserve their religion for the Jews of the Soviet Union, even if it meant losing their lives.
Under the Rebbe’s leadership, an organized underground of hundreds of Cheder elementary schools, Yeshivas and Mikvas sprung up, from St. Petersburg in the west to Tashkent in the east, these dedicated men and women managed to keep the spark of Yiddishkeit alive in hundreds of towns and cities across the land.
The communists persecuted, chased and harassed the Rebbe and his operatives. Often within days, a new Mikva would be filled with cement. A report would arrive of a teacher sent to the firing squad, his young students sent to Siberia. But there always seemed to be another Chosid ready to fill his shoes.
Through the years of communism, hundreds of Chassidic activists were executed. Thousands more were arrested and sent to Siberia for years of hard labor.
In 1927, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak himself was arrested and sentenced to capital punishment. Through the intervention of the Governments of United States Germany, and Latvia, and petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of Jews across the Soviet Union, the sentence was commuted. The Rebbe was banished from Russia.
In 1939, the Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, father of the seventh Rebbe, was imprisoned in Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine for his counterrevolutionary work. Among other crimes, he had personally stood up to Premier Stolypin, and refused to follow the Premier’s orders to certify government-baked Matzos as Kosher for Passover.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was exiled to a remote area of Kazakhstan. He died of his suffering, in exile, in 1944. He was buried 2,000 miles from his home, in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
New Start
In 1950, his son, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, at 48 years old, became the Rebbe. Under his guidance, the struggle intensified. Not a day would go by when the Rebbe would not struggle for the Jews of Russia.
