The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn obm, (also known by his initials as the Rebbe RAYYATZ) was an intrepid leader who confronted the challenges of maintaining and advancing Jewish life during the turbulent years that saw the fall of Czarist Russia and the rise of the new Bolshevik regime, and during the darkest days of World War II. He then launched a renaissance in Jewish life and Torah in – and from – the United States following the ravages of the Holocaust.

As a young man, during the 1904 Russo-Japanese War, the sixth Rebbe spearheaded the effort to bring matzo to Russian soldiers serving on the front in the Far East. Following the pogroms in the Pale of Jewish settlement, he traveled to Germany and Holland where he successfully enlisted the intercession of world leaders. Because of these activities on behalf of the Jewish community he was arrested by the Czarist regime four times between 1902-1911.

By the time he became the Rebbe in 1920, following the death of his father the Fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe (The Rebbe RASAHB), Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok was already recognized as a towering Jewish figure through his activities at the 1917 and 1918 Assemblies of Jewish Leaders in Moscow, as well as through his myriad efforts on behalf of beleaguered Jewish communities throughout Russia.

Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the Rebbe RAYYATZ defied the Soviet regime, and especially its notorious Jewish Yevsektzia, by fearlessly stoking the embers of Yiddishkeit under the lethal Communist boot. At the same time, recognizing the diminishing opportunities for Jewish learning under Soviet rule, he established a formidable Torah learning center in Warsaw, to which he eventually relocated in1934.

The Bolsheviks considered Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok a direct threat to official Soviet atheism, and had him arrested in Leningrad, and sentenced to death in 1927. Thanks to major foreign intervention, the death sentence was commuted to exile in the Ural Mountains, and ultimately to relocation in Riga where he, yet again, established a new Talmudical Seminary in 1929.

It was also in 1929 that he visited New York for the first time where he presciently planted the seeds for revitalizing Jewish life on American shores.

During the Nazi conquest of Poland and the devastating bombardment of Warsaw, the Rebbe RAYYATZ worked mightily to rescue as many Jews as possible before escaping to New York, where his first order of the day was the creation of a relief fund for European Jews, especially those in the Baltics and the USSR.

From his new headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, the Sixth Rebbe established a series of educational, publishing and outreach efforts that continue to serve as the fountainhead of Chabad-Lubavitch activity to this very day. They include the Central Talmudic Academy Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch, Machane Israel, Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch, Beth Rivkah, Beth Sarah, and Mesibos Shabbos.

Additionally, the Rebbe RAYYATZ, recognizing the dire spiritual situation in North Africa and Australia, launched a network of Jewish schools to serve those communities, thereby enabling them to flourish to this day.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn passed away on Shabbat, 10 Shevat 1950, at which time the mantle of leadership was passed on to his son-in- law and successor, The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson who played a pivotal role in the success of the Rebbe RAYYATZ’s efforts.