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Rabbi YY Jacobson - What Did the Rebbe Do Before Kol Nidrei?

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Author: Rabbi YY Jacobson
Categories: Religion Education
Tags: religion, education
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-16 08:10 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: The video's central message is that the Lubavitcher Rebbe's private act before Kol Nidrei—reading and keeping a letter from a dying mother of twelve—shows deep personal care for individuals, and that a Jew who reaches out should be met with warmth and attention. The speaker, Rabbi YY Jacobson, presents this as a personal story told to him by Reb Fivel Shapiro, linking it to the Rebbe's pre-Kol Nidrei custom of blessing yeshiva students and his unexplained absence before Kol Nidrei.

Key Points

  • Fivel Shapiro, a Belgian (Antwerp) businessman, went to Brooklyn's Crown Heights for a Purim farbrengen in the early 1970s and tried to give the Rebbe a handshake at about 2–3 a.m. after the gathering.
  • Two bochurim told him not to greet people because the Rebbe was sitting through the night; the Rebbe nonetheless took his hand and brought him into his private room.
  • The Rebbe showed him a letter written in the early 1960s by his mother, Rachel, who was 36, dying of breast cancer, and had twelve children aged one to fourteen; she asked the Rebbe to pray for them to grow up as people of Torah and mitzvos.
  • The Rebbe refused to give Fivel the letter, telling him to daven Kol Nidrei and Kipper that night, and the letter stayed in the Rebbe's file.
  • Fivel says the Satmar Rav had told his father that when he could not handle a situation, he sent people to the Rebbe, which led his mother to write to him without telling her husband.
  • The speaker recalls that the Rebbe blessed yeshiva students before Kol Nidrei and then went to his room; the speaker speculates, as his own interpretation, that the Rebbe may have gone to read this or a similar letter before Kol Nidrei.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions: The only concrete advice in the transcript is the Rebbe's instruction to Fivel to daven (pray) Kol Nidrei and Kipper that night, and Fivel's father's advice to always greet whoever you meet, which Fivel was trying to follow. The speaker does not give a step-by-step method.
  • The mother's letter was signed "Rachel," and the speaker says Fivel's mother died when he was 12, leaving seven boys and five girls; Fivel's oldest brother was 14.
  • The Rebbe's Erev Yom Kippur custom, as described by the speaker, was to bless yeshiva students in the manner of the Birkat Kohanim, with additional words, and the speaker says he never learned why the Rebbe went upstairs before going to shul.
  • The speaker presents the connection between the Rebbe's pre-Kol Nidrei room visit and the blessings as his own interpretation of a personal memory, not as a proven fact.
  • Fivel admitted he never asked the Rebbe how he knew who he was and never said his name, and he still struggled with that question.

Bottom Line

The story frames the Rebbe's pre-Kol Nidrei behavior as an act of personal attention to an individual's suffering, illustrated by a private moment that Fivel Shapiro still cannot fully explain.