Chaya Mushka Schneerson
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Chaya Mushka (Moussia) Schneerson (March 16, 1901-February 10, 1988) referred to by Lubavitchers as The Rebbetzin was the wife of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and last Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Chabad Lubavitch branch of Hasidic Judaism. She was the second of three daughters of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. She was named after the wife of the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn.
[edit] Biography
Born in Babinovitch, near the Russian city of Lubavitch, she lived in Lubavitch until the autumn of 1915 when due to World War I, she and her family were forced to flee to Rostov. In 1920, on the passing of her grandfather, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, her father became the sixth Rebbe of Lubavitch. In the Spring of 1924, due to increasing dangers for the Jews in Rostov she and her family moved to Leningrad. In the autumn of 1927 the Schneersohn family left the Soviet Union and moved to Riga, Latvia.
In 1928 she married Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and went to live in Berlin, Germany, where they studied in the local University. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 they fled to Paris, France. When France was invaded in 1941 they managed to escape from France on the Serpa Pinto, which was the last boat to cross the Atlantic ocean before the U-boat blockade began. They settled in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, where many Lubavitcher Hasidim had already settled. Her younger sister Shaina and Shaina's husband, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Horenstein were trapped in Poland and murdered by the Germans in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
In 1950 her father died. According to the official Chabad biography, Rabbi Menachem Mendel initially did not want to take on the mantle of leadership, but Chaya Mushka (along with many of her father's Hasidim) tried to convince her husband to reconsider, and in 1951 he was formally appointed as the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe. [1]
Chaya Mushka had no children, however once when a child visiting her house asked her, "where are your children?" she answered that the Chassidim are my children.
Chaya Mushka died February 10, 1988, after a brief illness and was buried in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, New York, next to her mother, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina, and grandmother, Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah, and near her father.
After her passing, her husband immediately founded a charitable organization in her name. The organization, Keren Ha'Chomesh (Chomesh is an acronym of Chaya Mushka), serves a variety of causes, primarily those related to women's social and educational programs. A campus of the Beis Rivka girls school was also named in her memory.
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