And then she said, “I am so happy and appreciative that you have made this bar mitzvah for my grandchild. You see it is so important to me because my family is descended from a great man whom you may have heard of named Rabi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov.”
She went on to say that they were direct descendants of the Baal Shem Tov’s daughter. (Their family name is Bratslavsky, and the mother-in-law’s maiden name was Umansky; these names are from Breslev and Uman, two cities where the descendants of the Baal Shem Tov lived.)
I was deeply moved. I stood up and told the crowd that my family are direct descendants of Reb Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, the successor of the Baal Shem Tov and the master of Reb Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad. Our great-grandfather, Reb Zushe Freidman, a rebbe in Odessa, was a direct descendant of Reb Ysrael of Ruzhin’s sister.
I explained that I now understood the true concept of shlichut. The Rebbe, sitting in New York, had sent a descendant of the Maggid to kindle the flame of yiddishkeit and bring back a lost descendant of the Baal Shem Tov to Torah. It was now that the whole concept of kiruv and the way in which the Rebbe viewed every Jew became clear. As the Rebbe used to say many times, every Jew has the greatest yichus, because every Jew is the descendant of our forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and our foremothers, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah.
When we see a Jew on the street, even one who doesn’t look like a Jew, we should remember that he might be a second or third cousin of ours, and his great-grandfather looked just as frum as we do. We should ask ourselves, “If, G-d forbid, my grandchild should go off the derech, wouldn’t I want someone to do everything in his or her power to bring him back?” That is how the Rebbe felt about every Jew.
More than 20 years later, I see the fruit of that Chanukah outreach. Both the young boy and his younger sister have gone on to become founding members of the Chabad Centers in Tampa, Florida and Portland, Oregon.
Now, every year, when I light the menorah on a cold winter night in Anchorage, I think of the words the Rebbe told me and my family the last time we saw him, before he fell ill in February 1992. We were standing in line with thousands of people to receive his blessing and a dollar.
The Rebbe was not feeling well and we did not want to hold up the line. We decided to just pass by, to receive his bracha and move on. When we approached the Rebbe, he gave us a dollar to give to charity in Alaska and he gave us a bracha for success. As we were about to leave, he stopped the line and called us back. With a big smile he told us in Yiddish, “Eir zolte machen varem – you should warm up Alaska!”
It is through the public menorah lighting, and all of our other activities throughout the year, that we warm up the coldness of Alaska, kindling the flame of many, many “Frozen Chosen,” Jews who are warming up to Yiddishkeit.
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Anchorage, Alaska is a vibrant and growing Jewish community served by the Esformes Jewish Campus of Alaska, which includes the Lubavitch Jewish Center, Gan Yeladim Early Learning Center, Daily Talmud Torah After School, Sunday School, Camp Gan Israel, and the Alaska Jewish Museum. The community has a state-of-the-art mikvah, and a great selection of kosher food items in several grocery stores.