Yosef Yitzchak (Joseph Isaac)His Certificate of Naturalization gives his name as Joseph Isaack. Schneersohn (; 21 June 1880 – 28 January 1950) was an Orthodox rabbi and the sixth Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement. He is also known as the Frierdiker Rebbe (Yiddish for "Previous Rebbe"), the Rebbe RaYYaTz, or the Rebbe Rayatz (an acronym for Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak). After many years of fighting to keep Orthodox Judaism alive from within the Soviet Union, he was forced to leave; he continued to conduct the struggle from Latvia, and then Poland, and eventually the United States, where he spent the last ten years of his life.
Early life Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn was born in Lyubavichi, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Smolensk Oblast, Russia), the only son of Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (the Rebbe Rashab), the fifth Rebbe of Chabad. He was appointed as his father's personal secretary at the age of 15; in that year, he represented his father in the conference of communal leaders in Kovno. The following year (1896), he participated in the Vilna Conference, where rabbis and community leaders discussed issues such as: genuine Jewish education; permission for Jewish children not to attend public school on Shabbat; and the creation of a united Jewish organization for the purpose of strengthening Judaism. He participated in this conference again in 1908.The Four Worlds, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, Kehot, 2006, pp. 87–90.
On 13 Elul 5657 (1897), at the age of 17, he married his second cousin, Nechama Dina Schneersohn, daughter of Rabbi Avraham Schneerson of Chișinău, son of Rabbi Yisroel Noach of Nizhyn, son of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Tzemach Tzedek.
In 1898, he was appointed head of the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva network.
In 1901, with financial support from Yaakov and Eliezer Poliakoff he opened spinning and weaving mills in Dubrovno and Mahilyow and established a yeshiva in Bukhara.Encyclopedia of Hasidism, entry: Schneersohn, Joseph Isaac. Naftali Lowenthal. Aronson, London 1996.
As he matured, he campaigned for the rights of Jews by appearing before the Czarist authorities in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 he sought relief for Jewish conscripts in the Russian army by sending them kosher food and supplies in the Russian Far East. He was also active in efforts to provide matzah for Passover to Jewish soldiers on the Far Eastern front.
With rising antisemitism and pogroms against Jews, in 1906 he traveled with other prominent rabbis to seek help from Western European governments, especially Germany and the Netherlands, and persuaded bankers there to use their influence to stop pogroms.
He was arrested four times between 1902 and 1911 by the Czarist police because of his activism, but was released each time.
Upon the death of his father, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn ("Rashab"), in 1920, Schneerson became the sixth Rebbe of Chabad.
Battling the Bolsheviks Following the Communist takeover of Russia, the Yevsektsiya supported anti-religious activity against Orthodox Jewish institutions and practice. As rebbe of a Russia-based Jewish movement, Schneersohn organized activists and religious institutions to preserve Torah study and Jewish observance, including schools, yeshivas, rabbis, ritual slaughterers, teachers and mikvaot.
In 1921, he established a branch of Tomchei Temimim in Warsaw.
In 1924, he was forced by the Cheka (Russian secret police) to leave Rostov due to the Yevsektsiya's slander, and settled in Leningrad. In this time he labored to strengthen Torah observance through activities involving rabbis, Torah schools for children, yeshivot, shochtim, senior Torah-instructors and the opening of mikva'ot; he established a special committee to help manual workers be able to observe Shabbat. He established Agudas Chasidei Chabad in USA and Canada.
In 1927, he established a number of yeshivot in Bukhara.
He also sent teachers and other representatives to Jewish communities in Russia and supported rabbis and institutions through loans and subsidies.
Imprisonment and release
In 1927, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Shpalerna or Shpalerka Prison (latter known as Bolshoy Dom) in Leningrad. He was accused of counter-revolutionary activities, and sentenced to death. A worldwide storm of outrage and pressure from Western governments and the International Red Cross forced the communist regime to commute the death sentence and instead on 3 Tammuz it banished him to Kostroma for an original sentence of three years. Yekaterina Peshkova, a prominent Russian human rights activist, helped from inside as well. This was also commuted following political pressure from the outside, and in July 1927, he was finally allowed to leave Russia for Riga in Latvia,Ami Magazine. No. 245. p. 95. where he lived until 1929 before visiting Mandatory Palestine (now Israel).
Yosef Yitzchak's release from Soviet imprisonment is celebrated each year by the Chabad community.Schneerson, Menachem M. "Yud-Beis Tammuz 5738." Sichos in English: 5738. Volume 1. Vaad Lehafotzas Sichos (Sichos in English). 1978. sichosinenglish.org. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
After his release, Yosef Yitzchak went to Mandatory Palestine where he saw holy gravesites, local yeshivas and Torah centers,Der Morgen Journal, 18 September 1929. and met with rabbis and community leaders from 7–22 August 1929.Der Morgen Journal, 18 September 1929. He visited Hebron ten days before the massacre and, according to Chabad accounts, was the first Jew for many years to be allowed into the Cave of the Patriarchs. Part 1 Part 2 Little information is available about the effect his visit had on the attitude of the local Arabs.
1929: First visit to the United States
Following his trip to the Holy Land, he turned his attention to the United States, arriving in Manhattan on 17 September 1929 (12 Elul 5689) on the French passenger liner S.S. France.Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 17 September 1929, p. 8; Forward, 18 September 1929, pp. 1, 12. Schneersohn was greeted by some 600 people, with security provided by over 100 New York City police officers.Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 17 September 1929, p.2. "May the Almighty bless this great country that has been a refuge for our Jewish people," he said at his arrival.Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 18 September 1929, p.18. The purpose of his visit was to assess the educational and religious state of American Jewry, and raise awareness of the plight of Soviet Jews. Hailed as "one of the greatest Jews of our age,"Joint statement of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada and of the Rabbinical Board of New York, cited in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 18 September 1929, p. 18. he was honored at a 28 October banquet in Manhattan by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jewish leaders.Jewish Daily Bulletin, 28 October 1929, p. 3.
While in the United States, Schneersohn also traveled (among places other than New York) to Philadelphia,Jewish Exponent, 20 December 1929; Philadelphia City News, 27 December 1929. Baltimore,Baltimore Sun, 13 January 1930. Detroit,Detroit Jewish News, 18 April 1930, p. 6. Boston,Jewish Daily Bulletin, 15 June 1930, p. 2. and Chicago.The Sentinel (Chicago), 14 February 1930, p.. On 10 July, he met President Herbert Hoover at the White House.The Sentinel (Chicago), 25 July 1930, p. 11. As the Republican presidential candidate, Hoover had lobbied for his release. Lubavitch followers in America begged their Rebbe to leave Russia and stay in America, but Schneersohn declined, saying that America was an irreligious place where even rabbis shaved off their beards. He left the United States to return to Riga, Latvia, on 17 July 1930.Jewish Daily Bulletin, 18 July 1930, p. 4.
From 1934 until the early part of World War II, he lived in Warsaw, Poland.
1940: Settling in the United States Following Nazi Germany's attack against Poland in 1939, Schneersohn refused to leave Warsaw. After combined efforts of several secular American Jews, the government of the United States of America, which was still neutral, used its diplomatic relations to convince Nazi Germany to rescue Schneersohn from the war zone in German-occupied Poland.Rigg, Bryan Mark, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Yale University Press 2006) He remained in the city during the bombardments and its capitulation to Nazi Germany. He gave the full support of his organizations to assist as many Jews as possible to flee the invading armies. With the intercession of the United States Department of State in Washington, DC and with the lobbying of many Jewish leaders, such as Jacob Rutstein, on behalf of the Rebbe (and, reputedly, also with the help of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,Altein, R, Zaklikofsky, E, Jacobson, I: "Out of the Inferno: The Efforts That Led to the Rescue of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch from War Torn Europe in 1939–40", p. 160. Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, 2002 the head of the Abwehr), he was finally granted diplomatic immunity and given safe passage to go via Berlin to Riga, Latvia, where the Rebbe was a citizen and which was still free. From Riga, the Rebbe left for America by way of Sweden with his wife, his mother Shterna Sarah, Shemaryahu Gurary, his wife Chana and son Berka, Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov and his wife, and Nissan Mindel. They traveled in a small plane to Sweden since boats were no longer permitted out of Riga, landing in Stockholm, and then took a boat to Gothenburg. There, they boarded the Drottningholm which sailed to America, arriving in New York City on 19 March 1940,See video . and where they stayed at Manhattan's Greystone Hotel.Ami Magazine. No. 245. p. 101. Major , a decorated German army officer of Jewish descent, was put in command of a group which included Sgt. Klaus Schenk, a half-Jew and Pvt. Johannes Hamburger, a quarter-Jew assigned to locate the Rebbe in Poland and escort him safely to freedom. They wound up saving not only the Rebbe, but also over a dozen Hasidic Jews in the Rebbe's family or associated with him.
Working with the government and the contacts Schneersohn had with the US State Department, Chabad was able to save his son-in-law (and future successor) Menachem Mendel Schneerson from Vichy France in 1941 before the borders were closed down.Friedman, Menachem, and Heilman, Samuel, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Princeton, 2010; Bryan Mark Rigg, The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers, Kansas, 2016. When Schneersohn came to America (he was the first major Chasidic leader to move permanently to the United States"Schneerson, Yoseph Yitzchak", in Moshe D. Sherman, Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 189.) two of his chassidim came to him, and said not to start up all the activities in which Lubavitch had engaged in Europe, because "America is different." To avoid disappointment, they advised him not even to try. Schneersohn wrote, "Out of my eyes came boiling tears", and undeterred, the next day he started the first Lubavitcher Yeshiva in America, declaring that "America is no different."See video . In 1949, Schneersohn became a U.S. citizen.The Previous Rebbe Accepts US Citizenship - Program One Hundred Twenty Eight - Living Torah. Chabad.org. 17 March 1949; "Out of the Inferno," Reviewed by Efraim Zuroff, The Jerusalem Post, 15 December 2002; Bryan Mark Rigg, The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers, Kansas, 2016.