Schneerson, Menachem M.

Schneerson, Menachem M.

SCHNEERSON, MENACHEM M. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994) was the seventh-generation leader of the Habad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement in the period following World War II who played a significant role in the modern Jewish world. He was born in Nikolayev, Ukraine, to Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Schneerson (1878–1944) and Chana Yanowsky (1880–1964). In 1909 the family moved to Yekatrinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk) where Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, a noted Talmudic and qabbalistic scholar, was appointed Hasidic chief rabbi.

Menachem Mendel was named for his paternal ancestor the third Lubavitcher Rebbe (1789–1866), grandson of Rabbi Schneʾur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), the founder of the Habad-Lubavitch school of Hasidism. He was given a traditional Jewish education with private tutors and also studied at the Talmudic Academy (yeshivah) in Yekatrinoslav, headed for a time by the Vilna Talmudist Rabbi Haim Ozer Grodzinsky (1863–1940). Menachem Mendel was regarded as a brilliant scholar with a wide grasp of languages and general studies as well as of Jewish thought. He came in contact with the leading Talmudist Rabbi Joseph Rozin (1858–1936), the gaon (genius) of Rogachov, whose writings he would often quote.

In the 1920s he began to associate closely with his relative Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880–1950), the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was endeavouring to preserve traditional Jewish observance in the secularist USSR, and was consequently arrested in 1927 and expelled from Russia.

Schneerson, Menachem M. article

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