Schneour Zalman Schneersohn[1][2] (Gomel, Russia, 1898 – Brooklyn, New York, 1980) was a French Hasidic Chief Rabbi, before moving in his late years to the United States. He was very active in France during World War II, when he took charge of homes for children, to save them from the occupier, while giving them a Jewish education.
Schneour Zalman Schneersohn was born at Gomel[3] in Russia (currently in Belarus) in 1898[4]. He[5][6] belonged to the hassidic dynasty of Lubavitch, and was at one time approached about taking the job to be the seventh Rebbe[7] (that post will fall to his cousin, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994).
He is the son of Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, grandson of Levi Yitzchak Schneersohn, great grandson of Baruch Shalom Schneersohn (1803 or 1805–1868 or 1869), the oldest son of the Tzemach Tzedek (the third Rebbe of the Lubavitch Dynasty, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn 1789–1866). His mother, Liba Leah, was the granddaughter of Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev (1740–1810), one of the main disciples of Dov Ber of Mezeritch (1704–1772), himself one of the main disciples and successor of the Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), the founder of Hasidism[8].
He arrives in France in 1935[9], and heads in Paris the ‘’’Association des israélites pratiquants’’’ (AIP) (Kehillat Haharedim) en 1936[10][11][12], which was founded in 1910, with the goal to «gather together the Jews having kept their attachment to the forms of religious life, as they became crystallized over many centuries in Central Europe[4].» Léon Poliakov underlines the lack of understanding of the consistorial authorities that he encounters at the time, and their antagonism[4] : «his orthodoxy, of an absolute intransigence, or his working methods, as flexible as they were, were disconcerting, not to mention his manners and his dress which did not appeal to his French colleagues. As far as he was concerned, he gave to the terms "French rabbi" a quite particular resonance.» Thus he needs to work with a select committee, and focus his attention on the teaching of children, opening up eight Talmudé Tora regularly attended by several hundreds of children, despite the dearth of his available resources.
It's the same concern for children and their education that guides Chief Rabbi Schneersohn during the German occupation. From February 1940 to March 1944, he opens up a series of homes for children, in cooperation with the AIP and the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants):
The rabbi who arrived in Marseille beginning 1941 remains there for one year with his organization, the AIP. In the middle of a park, in a large house called la Maison de Beaupin, he takes care to put up children abandoned by their parents following their arrests. Moreover, in his apartment located in a very nice district of Marseille, he sets up a workshop for foreigners thus saving them.
In his book on Jewish Résistance in France, Lucien Lazare[26] thus describes the role and the approach of Chief Rabbi Schneersohn :
"Having moved to Vichy, then to Marseille, the AIP had gathered together a community of sixty or so persons, composed of a Synagogue, a welfare office, a Yeshiva, a home for children and a workshop for vocational placement[27]. Chneerson intended his services to Orthodox Judaism. Placed in the marginality of the Jewish organizations, the AIP was the expression of a particular category of the Jewish identity. Very popular before the war in Central Europe and Eastern Europe as well as in Palestine, Hasidism counted fervent followers within the community of the Jewish immigrants in Paris. Rejecting at once Emancipation, Zionism and Socialism, Chneerson only conceived Jewish existence in the jealous observance of rites and put up an impenetrable barrier against the influence of the environment and modernity. His experience of secular persecutions had taught him to respond by establishing a community with unfailing cohesion, devoting itself to the study of sacred texts and the observance of the Mitzvot in the enthusiastic atmosphere of the hassidic tradition. It is in this framework that he himself and his follower felt safe, leaving it to Providence. Chneerson had not discerned the novel and fatal character of the nazi threat, and the AIP was particularly vulnerable to the deportations."
The AIP helps the internees in the camps. Grynberg[28] writes that the AIP has at its disposal a monthly budget of 200 000 francs to give aid to the internees in the camps. This sum comes from for half from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and for half from private gifts.
The future historian Léon Poliakov becomes his secretary, in 1943[29][30][31], and founded with the cousin of Chief rabbi Schneersohn, Isaac Schneersohn, the Shoah Memorial, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Paris, France). Poliakov will tell in 1997[32] that he got acquainted with of Chief Rabbi Schneersohn when he was looking for a rabbi to officiate at his father's funerals. Later, at Marseille, he meets, on the Canebière, Chief Rabbi Schneersohn who offers him the position of secretary. Their collaboration lasts several months and Poliakov gives up following ideological differences – he opposes the idea to contact Joseph Goebbels[33] – and religious differences.
In "L'Auberge des musiciens"[34], Léon Poliakov describes Schneour Zalman Schneersohn ("red beard, limping slightly in his caftan according to the Polish custom") and his activities at Marseille:
"About a hundred or so persons prayed in the oratory of the rue Sylvabelle in a rich-looking building in of the most beautiful neighborhoods at Marseille [...] [There] two large rooms and a hall in the first floor, a kitchen and two rooms in the mezzanine [...]. The rabbi taking refuge with his family on the first floor. The kitchen doesn’t stay empty either: furtive shadows appeared in the evening and vanished in the morning; these are escapees of the internment camps of Vichy to whom the rabbi gives refuge. One of the rooms of the first floor serves as an office and as a function room – a never-ending stream of Jewish miseries -, the other, the office of the rabbi, is at the same time a synagogue and a classroom; there weddings are celebrated and divorces are settled and even financial disputes."
In his private diary, Raymond-Raoul Lambert, who heads the UGIF-Sud writes on 17 August 1943: "The 28 (28 July 1943) I go, with Simone and the children, to visit a home for children close to Voiron, headed by an orthodox rabbin who resembles Rasputin. In such a milieu I feel Christian and Latin."[35] The Israeli historian Richard Cohen thus explains[36] Lambert's reaction:"It's about rabbi Isaac Chneerson [sic][37] who was responsible of an ultra-orthodox charitable organization (Association des Israélites pratiquants de France, Kehillath Haharedim), affiliated to the 3e Direction de l'UGIF (Santé). The "assimilated" response by RRL [Raymond-Raoul Lambert] is not surprising, considering the content of the letter by the latter (2 August 1943, YIVO: RG 340, dossier 3) which deals into the details of his fantastic project to establish a Jewish State based on strictly orthodox principles."
In a recent book entitled Les enfants de la Martellière, Delphine Deroo reconstitues the life of this institution.[38] She doesn’t hide her admiration for the work of Chief Rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn:
"To each threat corresponds a defense. To the wish of physical and spiritual elimination of the "Jewish Race", these men and women opposed themselves as Jews, assuming with pride their endangered Jewishness. And this moral resistance, that on my part I encounter in the insistence of rabbi Chneerson [Schneour Zalman Schneersohn] to strictly observe the religious laws – showing for him the very essence of his directly threatened Judaism -, strikes me and dazzles me by its strength and by its heroism."
After the war, rabbi Schneersohn contributes to the blossoming of the non-consistorial orthodox Judaism at Paris, from his operation base at 10, rue Dieu, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris close to Place de la République.
Several personalities later will assert the influence of his teaching, including Olga Katunal[39], according to whom « Zalman Schneurson » was her greatest teacher[40], and Henri Atlan who, at the end of his book Entre le cristal et la fumée (1979) quotes his «Teacher» without naming him.
Schneour Zalman Schneersohn is close to rabbi David Feuerwerker, whose sons study with him, rue Dieu. Rabbi Feuerwerker is present, with his family, when Schneour Zalman Schneersohn and his wife board the train for Le Havre, when they leave for United States.
In the 1960s, Schneour Zalman Schneersohn immigrates to the United States, and continues there his task as a teacher, in Brooklyn, New York. The Yeshiva that he heads there comprises a training program in computer science, to give a trade to his students, which places him, at the time, at the avant-garde.
He dies at New York, on 2 July 1980 (18 Tammuz (Hebrew month) 5740).
In a recent book (2010), Heilman & Friedman state[41] that it is plausible that what made the futur Rebbe of Lubavitch Menachem Mendel Schneerson and his wife Chaya Mushka Schneerson decide to go settle at Paris in 1933 was the presence there of cousins: Schneour Zalman Schneersohn, Isaac Schneersohn and Édmée Schneerson. In the 1960s, it would be Schneour Zalman Schneersohn's turn to go settle at New York, where his cousin, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was the Rebbe of Lubavitch.
During the winter of 1947, Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson arrived at Paris. She has not seen her oldest son, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the futur seventh and last Rebbe of Lubavitch, since his departure from Leningrad to go to Riga where he rejoined his futur father-in-law, rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Lubavitch. That was 20 years earlier.
Lubavitch hasidim go to welcome Menachem Mendel at the airport, but his flight is delayed by four hours. They decide to wait for him at the residence of rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn, Menachem Mendel's cousin. Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson stays by Schneour Zalman Schneersohn.
A telegram from the Rebbe of Lubavitch, Yosef Yitzchok, intended for his son-in-law Menachem Mendel is received, with the words in Hebrew: "Boruch atah b'bo'echa" ("Blessed are you in your coming"). Rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn concludes that Menachem Mendel has arrived. Soon after, a taxi drops Menachem Mendel in front of the residence.[42].
A farbrengen is arranged. Menachem Mendel recalls that Joseph didn’t see his father Jacob for twenty-two years.
Menachem Mendel remains at Paris during three months, from the month of Adar until the Festival of Shavuot. During these three months, he pays a visit to his mother twice daily, in the morning and in the evening.
On the Shabbat days and on the days of Festivals, he walks from his hotel to be with his mother. They share then their meals.[43]
On the eve of the departure of Menachem Mendel Schneerson and of his mother Chana Schneerson for New York, Schneour Zalman Schneersohn arranges in his house a big farbrengen.[44].