The wedding anniversaries of all the Rebbeim are significant, however, the day of Yud-Daled Kislev is even more unique: It is the day that marked the beginning of our connection to the Rebbe, the nossi of our generation.
It was a mere few weeks after the liberation of the Frierdiker Rebbe on Yud-Beis Tammuz 5687. The Frierdiker Rebbe was to leave the Soviet Union and only his family members were granted the necessary papers to come along. When the Frierdiker Rebbe submitted the list of his household to the Soviet authorities to issue exit visas from Russia, they objected to one name only.
“Do you really need to bring a future son-in-law from here?” they asked.
The Frierdiker Rebbe replied, “Such a son-in-law can’t be found elsewhere!”
The Rebbe and Rebbetzin’s shidduch was already several years in the making. Since the Rebbe’s early visits to the Frierdiker Rebbe in Rostov years earlier, talk began regarding the proposed shidduch, and as the years progressed, the Rebbe began to be identified by the Frierdiker Rebbe as “hameyu’ad lihiyos chassano,” the future son-in-law of the Frierdiker Rebbe.
The roots of the shidduch go back even earlier, to the Rebbe Rashab. Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah related that she had heard from her husband, “For Mussia, we need to look into the sons of Reb Levik.”
However, with the difficult situation in Russia, the wedding never materialized. One year after moving to Riga, the Frierdiker Rebbe decided that the time was ripe.
For the Chassidim in that generation, this was much more than a wedding.
The previous years had brought untold hardship and suffering to the Chassidim and to the Frierdiker Rebbe. The once glorious yeshiva in Lubavitch was now fragmented in underground units spread throughout the country. Many Chassidim languished in prison; Yiddishkeit in the Soviet Union had been all but decimated. Just a year and a half earlier, the Frierdiker Rebbe himself had been imprisoned.
Even though the Frierdiker Rebbe had now immigrated to the free world, he was geographically separated from the vast majority of his Chassidim. The financial situation was precarious. What would the future hold?
It was time to rebuild. This wedding would mark the beginning of a new era.
For Chassidim in our generation, this was also much more than a wedding.
The wedding anniversaries of all the Rebbeim are significant, as the Rebbe explained in sichos. However, the day of Yud-Daled Kislev is even more unique: It is the day that marked the beginning of our connection to the Rebbe, the nossi of our generation. As the Rebbe said, “Dos iz der tog vos hot mir farbunden amit eich, un eich mit mir—this is the day that connected me to you, and you to me.”
In simple terms, this day holds the beginnings of dor hashvi’i.
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