She’s Not Just the Rebbe’s Wife but My Rebbetzin
She’s Not Just the Rebbe’s Wife but My Rebbetzin
A stolen picture from my Rebbe’s bedroom lay in front of the world to see.
Stop chaining up my Rebbetzin! Seeing the screen, hearing the rumors, I wanted to scream, but chose not to, for would it even matter? For far too long, the Jewish women are shamed into society’s ambitions for them to conform and step into line. For centuries, each different religion and civilization that bumped into Jews had a focused and centered purpose to change Israel and the Jewish people. Why can’t we be beautiful just the way we are?
Hair covering is a Jewish tradition that has been done since the beginning of creation. When a woman steps under the Chupah, marriage canopy, and her husband says, “Harei at mekudeshes li,” meaning “You are hereby sanctified to me,” it’s a complete triangle that has formed, each couple standing on G-d’s Shoulders, so to speak, as he uplifts us in this sacred, wholesome bond of cherished togetherness.
What does a beautiful, confident Jewish woman mean? It’s going back to her roots, smelling the kugel, cholent, knishes, and enjoying Bubby’s kitchen, which captures the five senses, or perhaps, for real, it’s allowing one’s heart to beat to the rhythm of her internal calling to be a Jewish woman with all her integrity kept intact.
In our Chabad Lubavitch circles, the shluchim were always there for the regular person, whether Jewish or Noahide alike. “A Jew is a Jew is a Jew” always echoed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s table, and that meant to the far places of the universe, on one’s long trek in need of something, one always will see a Chabad house. The joke that seems to be the whisper of each community is that if there were a planet beside Earth that was habitable, Chabad would have its first little Chabad house and welcome the newcomers.
Their stolen picture, a moment in time worth a fortune of words and meanings, but not to be touched, not to be shared, it was sacred, kadosh, holy. The Rebbe was to Chabad and to many, our Moses, our Moshe Rabbenu. To look at his privacy was simply wrong!
“It is what it is,” I thought. Scrolling through my phone, and there it was again, another post with the same stolen picture and the same agenda. I don’t think many who share this perspective realize their own agenda. What was their agenda? Then the whispering began that the Rebbetzin wasn’t so religious. Maybe it was too hard for her to be observant?
I stopped scrolling, feeling helpless, defeated, for my Rebbetzin was being bashed, and there wasn’t anything I could do. As I was about to close my phone, a big Macher Jewish journalist even added his own point: it’s better if she doesn’t cover her hair at all. He added with an arrogant stealth and an ugly wit and said, “It shows true love and a genuine independence that has come from the Rebbe, and that he accepted her for who she is as a non-observant woman.”
These words stung; it wasn’t true, but here was the perfect example of a Jewish journalist wanting to feel accepted without taking the plunge, or making the effort needed to be a Torah-observant person. Perhaps, I thought, he wanted to be accepted on his own level of observance and was portraying that onto the stolen photograph of the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin. Hundreds of comments started pouring in. Was it true? Did she not cover her hair? Did the Rebbe love her just for herself, even if she struggled with her observance?
The final straw! There were over hundreds of comments of wonderings about this special and most beloved couple. Ogling over the picture, once so sacred, it now felt tarnished and ruined. Each person, in their curiosity, was making up things as if they knew them. I dared myself to reach out to this journalist. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings; perhaps it was the Jewish mother within or the overbearing, caring Chabad Rebbetzin that compelled me to reach out on Messenger, rather than commenting on his page. I introduced myself and told him that I knew his family and wanted to share a few things with him. What I never mentioned to him, but was obvious, was that it was ironic that his own mother covered her hair in a gorgeous sheitel, and he doubted that the Rebbetzin could do the same.
Holding my breath, not wanting to ruffle his feathers, but with all that was at stake, I pushed forward! I told him first that his post was a stolen picture taken from the Rebbe’s private bedroom, and as the Rebbe is a private person, he should respect that and take it down. Sadly, I waited in vain, but understood that he wasn’t yet such a mentch.
Continuing the conversation after a few minutes’ break to see if he would take or change the post, I saw that he did not. “My second point is that you think it’s okay in marriage to be on two different pages. The Rebbetzin’s hair was covered by a French wig, the most stunning for the time, made for actors and actresses, also known as a sheitel, in this photo.”
When the Rebbe was mourning the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka at her passing, someone asked sincerely but with chutzpah, “What was the Rebbetzin to you?” meaning, “How did you look at her?” He exclaimed without a second thought, “She is my Pnimi,” which can be translated as “my essence, my soul, my deepest self.”
I also told him that if the Rebbetzin was this to the Rebbe, she wasn’t just a tagalong, a woman he met, who struggled with her observance, but rather his very soul, his self-respect in his careful observance seemed, so to speak, that one could even say stems from her as the Fredikar Rebbe’s daughter, and perhaps she is the true guide. She didn’t need to break herself, mold herself to fit her customs, traditions, and role as a wife of the Chabad movement and Rebbetzin to Chabad women; she lived and breathed and loved her true observance. She was the daughter of the Fredikar Rebbe: a role she cherished and adored.
I continued gently, hoping he would reconsider his harsh post. It is a woman like the Rebbetzin, who, if she felt burdened by observant Jewish life, wouldn’t have been involved in editing with letters, talks of the Rebbe, and many behind-the-scenes activities that helped to uplift the newly inspired Jewish community that came out from the shadows of Auschwitz, including her own family.
I call her my Rebbetzin because the close Jewish community of Crown Heights knows that the Rebbetzin was not just the Rebbe’s wife, but had a very purposeful life as a role all on its own. For example, I cringe every time someone who doesn’t yet know me calls me “The Rabbi’s wife.” What I want to say and choose not to “Is that what I am? Am I not the Rebbetzin of my community? Am I not a true leader in my own right? Do I not stand together, building, schlepping, sweating, doing the hard things to develop and nurture Jewish life, especially in these challenging times?
He kept repeating to me that she doesn’t have to mirror public expectations, and her independence as a woman who is not yet religious shows a great partnership. He also expressed that she had expressed herself differently within the framework of Halacha, Jewish law.
He wanted to be the one to finish the conversation, but I couldn’t leave it this way. “If the Rebbe wanted to have a Jewish home with Torah, traditions, customs, and values, then he would have a true partner who would embolden and embellish that in their home, not a woman who couldn’t keep up and felt burdened and smothered by it. It wouldn’t be a happy home; a married couple needs to be in the same ballpark, level, room, so to speak, not on a different plane. How would they raise their community and help the many families that came to their home for help and advice?
Why would the Lubavitcher Rebbe bring hardship to his marriage by marrying someone not his equal? She would have made it that much harder to implement smoothly many things to a community that needed strength from the Holocaust. If it’s true what I am saying and from the many sheitel machers, wig people, that the Rebbetzin had gone to over the years, and she is wearing a gorgeous french wig, then in many ways she might even be on a higher level than our Rebbe, because she is called his “Pnimi,” his soul. Isn’t there beauty to this too?
Why is the Rebbetzin only special and beautiful and has true independence if she is not religious? Why is she special if she was not on his level? Why is this empowering? Why does this narrative feel emboldened to you?”
I ended the conversation and felt saddened that this is what is happening to our most beloved couple, the Rebbe and Rebbeitzin, our hero and heroine of our generation, dragged into the mud.
However, it made me realize that as I reached out to many friends and other Chabad Rebbetzins, the conversations, the admiration, her strength, courage, and greatness were just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps these conversations are so necessary, even if we must agree to disagree. The Rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson, was a legend and remains so.
There was none like her, and her kindness, wit, humor, gentleness, were shared by Chassidim, but not just any Chassidim but the Chassidic women, the Rebbetzins, each woman behind her man, the woman that is the foundation of the Jewish home, and that happens when both partners share their Jewish values, traditions, customs, and Jewish observance only then can it be a complete home, a purposeful home, a strengthened home that is sturdy from the foundation upward.