RABBI YOSEF YIZCHOK SCHNEERSON
1880-1950
Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn was born in 1880 in Lyubavichi, Russia, the only son of Rabbi Sholom DovBer, the fifth Rebbe of Chabad. As a teenager he worked as his father’s personal secretary responsible for many civic and communal activities. When he was 17, he married a distant cousin, Nehama Dina Schneersohn. He earned a living from the spinning and weaving mills he set up in Dubrovno and Moghilev. After his marriage, he became Executive Director of the newly founded Tomchei Tmimim Yeshiva.
During the Russo Japanese War (1904), he sent kosher food to the Jewish Russian soldiers on the front. At that time, anti-Jewish violence was common and the young Rebbe appealed to Western European governments for support for the Jews. This activism led to his four arrests by the Tsarist police between 1902 and 1911.
His father, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, died in 1920 and Yosef Yitzchok became the 6th Rebbe of Lubavitch, a position he held for 30 years. He became known as the Friedeker Rebbe (Previous Rebbe).
He became the Rebbe at a time of great threat to Judaism in Russia. After the Revolution in 1917, the new Bolshevik government embarked on a course to eradicate all religion in Russia.
A special Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party, Yevsektsiya was created to replace traditional Jewish culture with “proletarian culture,” by destroying the Bund and Zionist parties, and suppressing all Jewish religious practices. It was led by a Jew, Semyon Dimansteyn.
When the Rebbe was 44, Lenin died (1924) and Stalin replaced him as the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Stalin tolerated no opposition and saw Judaism as a threat to his regime. The Yevsektsiya was one of Stalin’s most effective weapons against the Jewish threat. Anyone who persisted in practicing or spreading Judaism was tortured and killed or imprisoned.
Rabbi Schneerson was very outspoken against the atheistic Communist regime. He formed a group with nine other men who agreed to “fight to the last drop of blood” for their religion. They went underground and clandestinely worked to spread Judaism all over the Soviet Union establishing an underground network of Jewish educational institutions for all ages, synagogues and mikvaot (ritual baths). During the 20’sand 30’s, this group of ten men set up 600 underground schools throughout the U.S.S.R. Most lasted weeks or months before they were shut down by the KGB (the Russian intelligence agency).
In 1927, the KGB decided to permanently shut down this underground movement. The Rebbe was arrested and sent to Leningrad’s Spalerno Prison. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. American statesmen and other foreign governments, as well as, the International Red Cross, intervened and the Rebbe’s sentence was reduced to a decade in exile. Continued foreign pressure altered this sentence to three years of exile in Kostrama