Netanyahu, Rivlin eulogize Lubavitcher Rebbe on 25th anniversary of his death
President calls longtime leader of Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement ‘a rare species of leader, full of love for Israel’; PM says rabbi influenced him personally
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin on Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.
The rabbi “was a rare species of leader, full of love for Israel, and concern for everyone and for the individual. Despite the years that have passed, we greatly miss his character and personality,” Rivlin wrote on Twitter.
“Today we mark 25 years of missing the Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who changed the world and had such a great influence on me. We will always remember him,” Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page.
The rabbi headed the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement from 1950 until his passing in 1994, a movement he had helped revive following its post-Holocaust re-establishment in New York.
An estimated 50,000 people visited his resting place in Queens, New York, ahead of the anniversary. Throughout the year, approximately 400,000 people visit the Cambria Heights site, many of them not Hasidim or even Jewish, a spokesman said.
הרבי מלובביץ׳, שמחר נציין 25 שנים להסתלקותו, היה מנהיג מזן נדיר, מלא אהבת ישראל ודאגה לכלל ולפרט. למרות השנים שעברו דמותו ואישיותו חסרים לנו מאוד.
אני רוצה לברך את חסידיו הממשיכים בדרכו, שיקדשו שם שמיים ויביאו את אור האמונה והאהבה לכל יהודי ולכל אדם בכל קצוות תבל. @JEMediaOrg pic.twitter.com/jrzIGv6UAO— ראובן (רובי) ריבלין (@ruvirivlin) July 5, 2019
In Britain, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis eulogized Schneerson as “one of the great rebuilders of Jewish life after the tragedy of the Shoah,” whose “teachings and insights remain as fresh and relevant today as they have ever been.”
Moshe Ya’alon of the Blue and White opposition party in a tweet called the Rebbe “one of the greatest leaders of the Jewish people in our generation. He also said Schneerson’s “directive of ‘Ahavat Yisroel’ [love for fellow Jews] is more important today than ever.”
