Mrs. Esther Serebryanski was a writer and the first English-language editor of the women’s periodical Di Yiddishe Heim. She was interviewed in August 2013. She passed away in 2025.

My parents, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai and Basya Magnes — educators who devoted their lives for the sake of Judaism — weren’t Lubavitch, but they shared its values. Although my mother passed away when I was twelve, she gave me a strong foundation.

After completing high school, I wandered around; I went to college for a while, and worked here and there. My older sister had gotten married to a Lubavitcher boy, but I was still footloose and fancy-free. One day in the 1950s, she and her husband decided that I had to go see the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and they made an appointment for me.

Now, I’m an independent-minded person and don’t like people doing things for me, especially not my sister, who could be bossy, as older sisters sometimes are. I resented this intrusion into my life and felt that my self-reliance was being attacked. But then I thought: You know what? I would like to meet the Rebbe.

The Rebbe was known all over, and I had even been to some of his farbrengens, so I wasn’t averse to meeting him. My curiosity prevailing over my pained pride, I decided to keep the appointment.

Before the meeting, however, I had to think of a plausible reason for taking the Rebbe’s time. As a single person, marriage was always a topic of conversation. So, I decided to say that since I would like to ask for advice when I met someone, I had come to the Rebbe in advance, in order for him to get to know me first.

The conversation only lasted for five or ten minutes, with the Rebbe asking a few questions that seemed intended to stimulate the direction of my thoughts. Nothing world-shaking transpired; the questions were searching but mundane. And yet seeing the Rebbe had a tremendous impact on me.

Unknown to my sister and brother-in-law at that time, some private questions had been playing on my mind: I knew people who were religiously observant and those who were not observant. In each group, there were people who were fine and good, and people with their weaknesses. What, then, was the underlying difference? Meeting the Rebbe was a decisive factor in helping me find an answer.

I saw how whenever he asked a question, the words didn’t just flop out, like they did when I talked. When he said something, I felt as though the words he spoke had gone through six sieves before they went out, and every move he made was according to the Torah. This isn’t just an anomaly, I felt. Here is a living Torah. I wouldn’t say that I became a chasid then — I still don’t claim to be a chasid — but I knew that the Rebbe was the type of tzaddik that I had only read or heard about. The fact that, in our three thousand years of history, Jewish culture has consistently produced people of such high caliber as the Rebbe brought me to the realization that Judaism must have unique qualities not found in other cultures. As a result of that brief encounter, I remained religiously observant.

I went out with a few different boys after that, and there was one young man who was very interested in me, but I wasn’t sure, and so I wrote to the Rebbe to get his opinion.

In reply, the Rebbe gave me advice that affirmed how I was feeling. If I was going to find someone to marry, I had to feel a little different about that person.

Not long after, a Lubavitcher named Chaim Serebryanski arrived in America. Originally from Russia, he had emigrated to Australia after the war together with his family, and was now looking to get married. Actually, someone had suggested a match for him in Israel, and he was on his way there — until the Rebbe told him to stay in New York.

I wasn’t looking to marry a Lubavitcher — at the time, I was more modern Orthodox — but I was impressed when we met. I appreciated his honest smile and good nature. He also really believed in G-d, which was important to me. That might sound strange; after all, I was only going out with observant boys. But there’s being religious, and there’s being religious in a way that gets to your heart. He was also very active within the Jewish community in Australia, and I saw that his Judaism had that tone of self-sacrifice that I knew from home.

So I wrote to the Rebbe: “I met this young man, and I’m interested. Should I pursue it further?”

“Surely you have discussed your values, including the matter of moving to Australia,” the Rebbe replied, before going on to give his blessing: “If you are in agreement, may the match take place in a good and auspicious hour.”

The matter of hashkafa, or worldview, was very important because while he came from Russia, I was American, and we were different in nuanced little ways that I didn’t fully realize at the time. But in every marriage, you have to adjust, and so long as you have the same basic values and goals, you can come to terms with anything.

Meanwhile, when the subject of moving to Australia came up, I had first told my husband that I would have to think about it, before realizing that it’s not about where we will live, but about whom I am marrying. If he wants to go to Australia, I’ll go — particularly because the Rebbe apparently wanted us to go there, too.

And so, after my husband received the Rebbe’s blessing in another audience, we got engaged.

We didn’t have money to spend, so when we were planning the wedding, I thought we should get married on a Friday. Nobody gets married on Friday, because it’s right before Shabbos, so that was the cheapest day to book the local hall.

“Very good,” said the Rebbe, when we told him about the plan, “I wish others would do that too.” He added that you only are required to have a minyan, a quorum of ten men, at the festive meal, and you can even hold the event in an apartment.

And so, on a Friday in June of 1959, our wedding was held in the apartment of Mendel and Sarah Shemtov, my husband’s cousins. The chupah was in their backyard, and Eli Lipsker, a local musician, played his accordion. The Rebbe sent us a bottle of Dom Benedictine, and Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman, a well-known Torah scholar who was married to my cousin, came in from Chicago and spoke. After the wedding, the first thing I did as a bride was light Shabbos candles, and we had the Friday night meal at the Shemtovs.

A few years ago, our neighbor’s daughter was getting married on a Friday. She was feeling a little distraught about it, but because the Tishrei holidays were coming up and her fiancé was working in Israel, the only available time was on Friday.

On the morning of her wedding, my husband and I saw her dressed in her wedding gown, looking unsettled.

We wished her Mazel Tov, and told her our story, which came as a surprise: She had never heard of anyone else doing this. My husband then brought her a dollar that I had once received from the Rebbe.

The girl’s face lit up. It was years after the Rebbe had passed, but she had been hoping to get some kind of message that she was doing the right thing.

This, she said, felt like the Rebbe himself was participating in her wedding.