Eduardo Bensignor flew to New York from his home in Argentina with three friends and his rabbi, joining thousands of others who have come to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of the Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, who died in June 1994.
“For me it’s important because he’s like our spiritual guide,” Bensignor said on Monday. “Everything that changed and moved in my life was because of his learnings.”
Between Sunday and Tuesday, the Chabad organization said it expected 50,000 visitors to the Cambria Heights grave site of the Rebbe, as he is widely known. The site, known to followers as the Ohel, is located at Old Montefiore cemetery
The Rebbe “was undoubtedly was one of the most significant and influential Jewish leaders in the second half of the 20th century,” said Ezra Glinter, the author of an upcoming biography of Schneerson. “His influence definitely reached pretty much every Jewish community in the world.”
According to Chabad.org, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement is a branch of Hasidism, with roots in 18th century Russia. Schneerson was born in Ukraine in 1902. He and his wife Chaya Mushka arrived in Staten Island on June 23, 1941, after a year on the run from Nazis in Europe.
Joseph Telushkin, the author of “Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History,” said Schneerson became the seventh Rebbe, or spiritual leader of the movement in 1951, just six years after the end of World War II.
According to Telushkin, that relatively brief passage of time was noted by Jonathan Sacks, the late chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.
“He (Sacks) said, ‘if the Nazis hunted down every Jew in hate, the Rebbe wanted to seek out every Jew in love.’ So he wanted to rebuild a community that had really lost such a large percentage of its members.”
In part, Telushkin said, the Rebbe succeeded by creating emissaries –…
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