Shabbat, October 31, 2026

The fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn (known by the acronym "Rashab"), was born on the 20th of Cheshvan of the year 5621 from creation (1860).

After the passing of his father, Rabbi Shmuel of Lubavitch, in 1882, Rabbi Sholom DovBer assumed the leadership of the movement. Over the next 38 years, he wrote and delivered some 2,000 maamarim (discourses of Chassidic teaching) including the famed hemshechim (serialized discourses) which contain his profound analytical treatment of Chabad Chassidism. In 1897, he established the Tomchei Temimim yeshivah in Lubavitch, the first institution of Jewish learning to integrate the "body" (Talmudic and legal studies) and "soul" (philosophic and mystical) of Torah into a cohesive, living whole; it was this unique form of education and Torah study that produced the "Temimim" -- the army of learned, inspired and devoted torchbearers who, in the decades to come, would literally give their lives to keep Judaism alive under Soviet rule.

In 1915 Rabbi Sholom DovBer was forced to flee Lubavitch from the advancing WWI front and settled in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. In his final years, he began the heroic battle -- carried on under the leadership of his son and successor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn -- against the new Communist regime's efforts to destroy the Jewish faith. Rabbi Sholom DovBer passed away in Rostov in 1920.

Links: Want it All; To Know G-d and On Ahavat Yisrael -- two maamarim by Rabbi Sholom DovBer.

An international religious leader, philosopher, and respected moral voice, he was the author of over 30 books, served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013 and took his seat in the House of Lords in October 2009.

Born in London in 1948, he was planning to become a lawyer until the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—directed him to the rabbinate. He was a towering figure, who counseled social and political leaders and others. His voluminous writings brought relevance and eloquence to thousands of Torah topics. Even after his retirement, he continued to write, teach, lead and inspire until his passing at the age of 72.

On this day in 2024, Rabbi Zvi Kogan, a Chabad emissary to the United Arab Emirates, was abducted and killed by Islamic terrorists. His wife, Rivky, who was pregnant with their daughter at the time, is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who were murdered in their Chabad House in Mumbai, India, by Islamic militants in 2008.

The killing came a little more than a year after the murder of more than 1,200 Jewish men, women, and children in Israel by Palestinian terrorists on Simchat Torah, Oct. 7, 2023. Thousands of mitzvahs, most notably involving kosher, were done in Rabbi Kogan’s memory.

Read: The Muder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan

It’s G-d’s world. Everything He gives is good, the sweetest good.

But it is often a good far too great for us to understand. We imagine it is not good, because that’s the only way to make sense of it with our small minds.

Yet the truth is, He gives us all the good we can handle. If we could take more, He would give us that as well.

Trust Him. Trust is the capacity to embrace blessings larger than your mind can hold.