A Photo of The Previous Rebbe Poland 1938

The Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Joseph Issac (Yosef Yitzhak) Schneersohn (1880– 1950) was the epitome of self-sacrifice and keeper of the Jewish flame in the brutal Soviet regime that broke him physically but not spiritually. A prolific author and diarist, he spent hours writing his Chassidic discourses and memoirs. The Avner Institute would like to present a dramatic photograph dated 1938 of the Previous Rebbe, who is seated pensively in a hotel, in a suburb in Poland, while immersed in his customary learning and writing.

With special thanks to the Lishinsky family of Ramat Gan, Israel, for sending us this photo in it's original format.

We would also like to present a profound excerpt by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, director of the Ask the Rabbi team of Chabad.org, who quotes the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s admiration for his father-in-law.

Good Shabbos
Menachem

"He Was Self-Sacrifice"

"Those who seek out self-sacrifice will find it eventually. But my father-in-law didn't seek self-sacrifice—he was self-sacrifice, wherever it was needed, in whatever form it might come.

And so, whether under Russian oppression, among Polish Jewry or in the freedom of America, in all three stages of his leadership, in all he did his entire being was there, to its very core."


(Yud Shevat 5734; Tammuz 12, 5735;
Likutei Sichos vol. 18, pp 300-307)

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman