Tag Archives: Hasidic Jews

Jew of the Week: Chaya Mushka Schneerson

The Rebbetzin

Chaya Mushka “Moussia” Schneerson (1901-1988) was born near Lubavitch, Russia, the granddaughter of the fifth Hasidic rebbe of Chabad. During World War I, the family fled to Rostov, where Chaya Mushka would help to smuggle food and supplies to the city’s underground yeshivas. In 1924, the family was forced to flee again due to antisemitic persecution by the Soviet Communists, this time to Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In 1927, her father Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (who was by then the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe) was imprisoned for spreading Judaism in the USSR. Chaya Mushka herself had played a central role in the “Hasidic underground” of the Soviet Union, making sure that Jews still had access to Jewish services and rituals. Her father even appointed her as his agent, responsible for all matters, while he was imprisoned. She campaigned for his release and helped to get him freed. The family then moved to Riga, Latvia. The following year, Chaya Mushka married her distant cousin Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who would go on to become the seventh and final Lubavitcher Rebbe. After living in Warsaw, Berlin, and Paris, the childless couple fled to New York during World War II. They settled in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which would soon become the “capital” of Chabad. (Her younger sister and brother-in-law were unable to escape and tragically perished in the Holocaust.) While her husband transformed modern-day Judaism in his role as the Rebbe, Chaya Mushka worked behind the scenes to support him in every endeavour. She was affectionately known simply as “the Rebbetzin”, though she never referred to herself this way. The Rebbetzin was famous for her humility, modesty, and deep concern for all of God’s creations. In fact, there was a stray dog near her house on President Street that she always made sure to feed. One winter day in 1972, the Rebbetzin stepped out to get the mail and slipped on ice, breaking both of her wrists in the fall. She was unable to put any pressure on her hands, and could not get up. Incredibly, that same stray dog soon found her and dragged her back into her house, all the way to the phone so that she could call for help! Many other stories are told of her compassion, dedication, and strong resolve. After she passed away, the Rebbe founded a women’s charity in her honour, called Keren HaChomesh (the initials of her name), and there are also many girls’ schools today named after her. The Rebbetzin’s yahrzeit was earlier this week, on the 22nd of Shevat.

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Words of the Week

No matter how engrossed one may be in the loftiest occupation, one must never remain insensitive to the cry of a child.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe (1745-1812)

Jew of the Week: Marc Chagall

The Colour Master

Moishe Shagal (1887-1985) was born in the shtetl of Liozna, in what is today Belarus, the oldest of nine children in a Hasidic Jewish family. Shagal went to a religious heder school until age 13, but wanted to learn a wider breadth of subjects, so his mother managed to bribe a local high school to take him in. (Jews were then forbidden from public schools, and the bribe was a whopping 50 roubles—three months salary—a small fortune for their impoverished family.) This is where he discovered his passion for art. He soon enrolled in Yehuda Pen’s art school in Vitebsk, and was given free tuition since he was so poor. While most Jewish artists in Russia at the time hid their Jewishness, Shagal embraced it. He would later say how Hasidism greatly influenced his artwork, and many of his pieces are deliberately meant to preserve Jewish culture. He wrote that every single one of his artworks “breathed” with the “spirit and reflection” of his childhood home and memories. In 1906, Shagal moved to St. Petersburg and joined a prestigious art academy (using a friend’s passport). A few years later, he left to Paris and henceforth went by “Marc Chagall”. Among his biggest influences were Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and (former Jew of the Week) Pissarro, though he did not want to be associated with any particular type of art. An exhibit in Germany in 1914 first brought him wider renown. He then returned to Russia to get married and start a family. In 1917, while broke and going hungry for days, Chagall was offered a job as arts commissar in Vitebsk. He accepted, and went on to found the Vitebsk Arts College which would go on to become the top art academy in the USSR. A few years later, Chagall moved to Moscow to be the stage designer of the State Jewish Chamber Theater, where he produced some of his most famous murals. In 1923, Chagall moved yet again, back to France, and partnered with Ambroise Vollard. The latter commissioned many of Chagall’s greatest works, including illustrations from the Tanakh. For inspiration, Chagall moved to Tel-Aviv and stayed at the home of Meir Dizengoff, the city’s first mayor. (That home was where the State of Israel would be proclaimed in 1948, and is today known as Independence Hall.) The Holy Land made a huge impact on Chagall, causing him to become something of a ba’al teshuva and return to his Jewish faith. He immersed himself in Jewish studies, and worked diligently on his “Old Testament” collection (which took until 1956 to complete, and was then hailed as being “full of divine inspiration”). Chagall returned to France shortly before the Nazi invasion. He was imprisoned and had his citizenship revoked. Pressure from the United States got him released, and he arrived in New York in the summer of 1941. His favourite hangout was the heavily-Jewish Lower East Side, where Chagall felt at home and spent much of his time socializing in Yiddish. Meanwhile, Chagall worked as a set and costume designer for the Ballet Theatre. He would return to France after the war, and in his later years produced sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, and stained glass. He painted the ceiling of the Paris Opera (covering 2400 square feet and using 200 kilos of paint), and wrote an autobiography, too. Chagall has been called the “greatest image-maker” of our time, and Picasso said that he was “the only painter left who understands what colour is.”

Words of the Week

I did not see the Bible, I dreamed it. Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time.
– Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall’s “Abraham and the Three Angels”

Jew of the Week: Temerl Sonnenberg Bergson

Europe’s Greatest Jewish Businesswoman

Tamar “Temerl” bat Avraham of Opoczno (c. 1765-1830) was born in Poland to a wealthy and deeply religious Jewish family. She married young, but her first husband tragically died soon after. She got remarried to a young businessman named Dov Ber (“Berek”) Zbytkower. He went on to become immensely wealthy, and supplied the Polish and Russian armies. He took on the last name “Sonnenberg”, and was nicknamed the “Polish Rothschild”. Meanwhile, besides being a devoted mother of six children, Temerl was busy supporting the nascent Hasidic movement, founded just a few decades earlier by the Baal Shem Tov. Temerl played a huge role in bringing Hasidism to Poland. In fact, she financed the construction of Warsaw’s first Hasidic synagogue. She paid the salaries of numerous Hasidic rabbis in Poland (along with non-Hasidic rabbis), including the great Simcha Bunim of Peshischa. Temerl was a huge philanthropist and gave to all kinds of other causes as well. In 1818 alone, she donated some 54,000 rubles to Polish charities. After her husband passed away, Temerl took over his business. (In honour of their father, her children changed their last name to “Berekson”, or “Bergson”, which is why she came to be known as Temerl Bergson, too.) She also founded her own new bank. Temerl was one of the top businesswomen in all of Europe at the time. She was so influential that the Russian government gave her special permission to buy an estate, making her only the third Jew to own property outside the ghettos. She continued to do everything she could to assist the plight of the Jews. In 1824, she used her influence to rescind a government decree against Jewish pilgrimages. In fact, some Hasidic leaders came to refer to her as Reb Temerl! (A title traditionally reserved for men.) In her will, she left 300,000 zlotys to charity. Temerl was called the “Polish Hasidah”, and her tombstone states: “To her nation she was a protector against oppression—a helper during distress. To the poor she was a mother. She was a virtuous woman, powerful and famous.” The renowned philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson was her great-grandson.

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Words of the Week

The Sabbath is the day we focus on the things that have value but not a price, when we neither work nor employ others to do our work, when we neither buy nor sell, in which all manipulation of nature for creative ends is forbidden and all hierarchies of power or wealth are suspended.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks