The 22nd of Shvat marks the yahrtzeit of Rebbetzin Chaya Mushkah Schneerson, wife of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. An erudite and wise woman, she carried the mantle of her revered position in a humble and unpretentious fashion. COLlive presents customs, Mishnayos and videos to mark the day.
Rebbetzin Chaya Mushkah Schneerson (born 1901), wife of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, passed away on the 22nd of Shevat of the year 5748 (1988). An erudite and wise woman, she carried the mantle of her revered and exalted position in a most humble and unpretentious fashion.
Born in Babinovitch, near the Russian city of Lubavitch, she lived in Lubavitch until the autumn of 1915 when due to World War I, she and her family were forced to flee to Rostov. In 1920, on the passing of her grandfather, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, her father became the sixth Rebbe of Lubavitch. In the Spring of 1924, due to increasing dangers for the Jews in Rostov she and her family moved to Leningrad. In the autumn of 1927 her father was imprisoned in 1927 for disseminating Torah observance, and she participated in efforts to have him released that were ultimately successful. After his release, the Schneersohn family left the Soviet Union and moved to Riga, Latvia.
In 1928 she married Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in Warsaw, and they went to live in Berlin, Germany, where he studied in the local University. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 they fled to Paris, France. When the Nazis invaded France in 1941 they managed to escape from France on the Serpa Pinto, which was the last boat to cross the Atlantic ocean before the U-boat blockade began. They settled in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, where many Lubavitcher Hasidim had already settled. However, her younger sister Shaina and Shaina’s husband, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Horenstein were trapped in Poland and murdered by the Germans in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
In 1950 her father died. According to the Chabad biography, Rabbi Menachem Mendel initially did not want to take on the mantle of leadership, but Chaya Mushka (along with many of her father’s Hasidim) persistently urged him to reconsider, and in 1951 he was formally appointed as the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.
