Weekly Chasidic Story #916 (s5775-39 / 28 Sivan 5775)

The Rebbe and Science Fiction

"I was thrilled when the Lubavitcher Rebbe told me he'd written to Isaac Asimov and had gotten a reply."

Connection: Seasonal -- the 21st yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe is on Shabbat, 3rd of Tammuz (2015: June 20)

 

The Rebbe and Science Fiction

Part 1: 1995-1996

William Morrow & Company published Toward a Meaningful Life, by Rabbi Simon Jacobson, the first widely-distributed book of the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Among the many responses received by Rabbi Jacobson was a letter from a woman named Nechama Cohen describing how, when she was a child of five, she had met the Rebbe in 1946, "When he was not yet the Rebbe and ... walked freely around the neighborhood [of Crown Heights, Brooklyn]." Below is an extract from a second letter that describes subsequent "sidewalk conversations" with the Rebbe.

Part 2: 1945-1950

"As a young Jewish girl who was born into a traditional family in Crown Heights in 1940, and who had the great merit and good fortune, thank G-d, to know the Rebbe as a beloved childhood friend, reading Toward a Meaningful Life brings tears to my eyes and overwhelming feelings both of joy and loss to my heart. I have been deluged with memories of events that I'd forgotten for approximately 50 years….

"I knew the Rebbe first as "Mister," and then when I learned that Mister was not his name (as I thought it was when I was 5), I asked him his name. But I just couldn't get the name that he told me - he must have been saying Schneerson - so he told me that we had similar names, and could I say Menachem. That I got immediately, so he told me to call him Mr. Menachem. So I did.
"It was not until I saw a picture of him, taken about 1950, that I realized that my beloved Mr. Menachem was also the Rebbe. I had been praying for the Rebbe forever, or so it seemed, but I never knew that I was also praying for one of the dearest friends I ever had….

"Mr. Menachem always asked me what books I was reading. When I was seven - Spring of '48 I think - I discovered Science Fiction in the public library on Schenectady Avenue. I loved it. I gave him rave reviews of two [of its most famous] authors, Robert Heinlein [1907-1988] and Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). He was intrigued by the idea of teaching children science through fun-to-read novels. I always told him he should read them, that he would love them. He always told me that he only read Jewish books.

"One day, a year or more later, I told him about Asimov's book 'Foundation.' If you haven't read Asimov's Foundation Series then I should tell you it's about a secret foundation set up by a 'psycho-historian' named Hari Seldon. The purpose of psycho-history and the Foundation was to perfect the Universe. And that is basically what I told him.

"Anyway, Mr. Menachem later told me that he read the book - which floored me - and told me to concentrate on Asimov, not Heinlein. (And he was right.) He then went on to tell me he'd written to Asimov and had gotten a reply.* I was thrilled - that Asimov thought enough of him to write back (I already told you I didn't know who I was talking to. At that point I had no concept of what he truly was, much less what he would become.) He was corresponding with Asimov, and as far as I was concerned that was even better that writing to Jackie Robinson [a star baseball player at the time for the Brooklyn Dodgers], which I think I told him.

"Then he asked me what I thought of the idea of setting up a foundation. I thought it was better than Asimov and Robinson combined and told him so. He then told me he was setting up a foundation. I was so excited I started jumping up and down, telling him I wanted to join, please, please please. He said I could. Well, he did set it up, and I did join for a while. He was talking about Chabad and his shluchim…Maybe other things that I haven't found out yet. Who knows?"

Kol tuv-All the best.
Nechama Cohen
Tamiment, PA

Part 3: 2010-2014

[Translated from the Hebrew:]

I [David Boas] first read the above story in an email from Rabbi Simon Jacobson a few years ago. I've told it to others a few times since then. The last time was a few weeks ago, whereupon someone challenged that it is not true. I called [from my home in Jerusalem] a contact of mine in Brooklyn, told him the story, and asked him to try to verify it. He spoke with Rabbi Simon Jacobson, who told him that it is true that he received such a letter, in 1996. After that, he tried to establish personal contact with the woman, but he never succeeded.

My contact then decided that he would do whatever he could to locate the woman. He works for JEM [Jewish Educational Media], an organization that among its other fine projects, seeks to record video testimony from seniors who had personal contact with the late Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory. To find and record Nechama Cohen would be a genuine coup.

Eventually, he somehow managed to obtain her current telephone number. She was living in Pennsylvania. For two weeks he rang her number regularly, but no one ever answered.

Finally, on Monday, January 27, there was a click and a male voice said 'Hello.' It turned out that he was a local policeman. Nechama Cohen had passed away at age 74 that very day in the hospital, and he had entered the apartment to search for details about her relatives. What he discovered was that that she dwelled alone and had no living relatives. Because of this, following official regulations, he had arranged to have her body sent to be burnt the following day. Now, thanks to the chain of Heaven-guided events, this would not take place.

The JEM man contacted the nearest Chabad emissary, who was able to arrange for the next day, the 27th of the Jewish month of Shvat (1/28/14), a kosher Jewish burial for the newly departed friend of "Mr. Menachem" in her childhood a half century earlier .

~~~~~~~~~~~
Sources: The English letter (part 2), as adapted by Yanki Tauber, was printed in The Week in Review in 1996 (vol VII no 23). Part 1 is his introductory editor's note. Part 3 is from a letter to me from Rabbi David Boas of Jerusalem.

* From Turning Judaism Outward, by Chaim Miller, p.470, note 48:

"It is known that he [Asimov] replied to over 90,000 of the 100,000 thousand letters that he received over his professional career. Unfortunately, most of Asimov's correspondence before 1965 has not survived, since he threw it away. If a copy of the Rebbe's letter to Asimov does exist, it probably is in the Nissan Mindel archive, which has not yet [2013] been opened to researchers."

Editor's note:From //chabadtalk.com

"I've heard from a [Chabad] Azimov (distant cousins of Isaac) that the Rebbe did have contact with Isaac via the shluchim in Massachusetts ."

Connection: Shabbat, 3rd of Tammuz, is the 21st yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Biographical note:
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe: [11 Nissan 5662 - 3 Tammuz 5754 (April 1902 - June 1994 C.E.)], became the seventh Rebbe of the Chabad dynasty after his father-in-law's passing on 10 Shvat 5710 (1950 C.E.). He is widely acknowledged as the greatest Jewish leader of the second half of the 20th century. Although a dominant scholar in both the revealed and hidden aspects of Torah and fluent in many languages and scientific subjects, the Rebbe is best known for his extraordinary love and concern for every Jew on the planet. His emissaries around the globe dedicated to strengthening Judaism number in the thousands. Hundreds of volumes of his teachings have been printed, as well as dozens of English renditions.

~~~~~~~~~~~


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