State lawmakers celebrated and remembered the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, on Monday, April 4, around the time he would have turned 120 years old. Schneerson was born on April 5, 1902, the 11th of Nissan in the Nikolaev, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire, which is present day Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
The day-long event was hosted by Assemblyman David Weprin (D – Hollis, Queens) and was attended by several state lawmakers on one of the busiest days of the legislative year, while waiting for a resolution to come down from legislative leaders that a final state budget was agreed upon.
The resolution honoring the Rebbe’s birthday each year is always memorializing an additional day of education for each year the Rebbe, who passed away in 1994 at age 92, would have been.
“It’s days of education for the Rebbe,” said Rabbi Shmuel Butman, the head of the Crown Heights-based Lubavitch Youth Organization. “Many have wondered why is it days of education? You can commemorate something else as well. The Rebbe wanted the education of every child. He made it a point that he was not only talking about the education of the Jewish child, but about the education of every child.
“Look what’s happening in the world today. The Rebbe said he wanted every child to know that there is an eye that sees and an ear that hears and that the world is not a jungle. How would the world look if world leaders would adhere to that? If they [children] were educated from the time that they were young, the world would be a different one.
“[During] prayers every Shabbos in shul we say a special prayer for you. We say, ‘Those who serve the public faithfully, we ask Almighty God for a great blessing for all of you.’ The blessing should extend to you and your families in everything that you need including that you should pass the budget successfully,” Butman concluded.
As is tradition for Butman, after he gives the invocation in the Assembly and the Senate, he pulls out a pushka and asks lawmakers to put a few coins in the charity box. None of the lawmakers object to this practice.
This tradition dates back more than 30 years, as Butman recalled during his invocation.
“In 1991 I went to Washington and I opened the U.S. Senate,” Butman said. “Before I did that, I went to see the Rebbe. The Rebbe said to me that I should take with me a pushka, and that while I was offering the invocation I should put $1 into the pushka.The Rebbe said, let them see what you are doing and let them know what money should be given for. I’m going to put $1 in the pushka as the Rebbe asked me to do. Later on, if anyone wants to join us in putting $1 in the pushka it would be greatly appreciated. I don’t want you to think that this is a fundraising campaign because if it were, we would ask you for more than $1 and you’re dealing with a budget anyway of more than $1. This is an act of goodness and kindness.
“Almighty God has made you the custodians of law and order and all the good things for the state of New York. By extension, all of America is looking up to you. You are a light not only for America but a light for the entire world,” Butman concluded.
One speaker picked up on the idea of this being a tradition in the state legislature.
“This is one of the longest-running New York state traditions,” said Rabbi Israel Rubin, the director of the Capital Chabad in Albany and a shaliach of the Rebbe. “You know, there is law and justice and there is also tradition. Tradition doesn’t sound as important as law and justice and the statutes. In his book on the Hagaddah, which is the first book the Rebbe, published in 1942, he says that tradition is sometimes even more important than law and justice and a real law. He gives an example of the order of the Four Questions, which begins with the question of matbilin [dipping], which is only a custom and tradition, not a biblical command like chametz, matzah and maror.”
While all lawmakers signed onto the resolution, Weprin noted three other Assembly colleagues in his remarks including one of the newest members in the lower house, Brian Cunningham (D–Crown Heights), Helene Weinstein, chairwoman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, who represented Crown Heights many decades ago as well as Clyde Vanel (D–Cambria Heights, Queens) the location of the Ohel, where the Rebbe is buried.
Weprin wanted to emphasize the connection between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Moshe Rabbeinu at 120.
“The symbolism of 120,” Weprin said, “is that when people wish other people good health and long life, they say ‘until 120,’ and that’s because that was the age of Moses when he passed away. So, we wish everybody that they should live to be 120.”
The state Senate also passed a resolution dedicating 120 days of learning in honor of the Rebbe.
“The relationship between the Jewish community and the Black community, people on the outside try to sow division but we have much more in common than we do different,” said Senator Zellnor Myrie (D–Crown Heights, Brooklyn). “One of the things that stands out to me about the legacy of the Rebbe is his work with then-Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm. We have in this two-year pandemic undergone food insecurity unlike what we have ever seen. The Congresswoman has credited her conversations with the Rebbe and the creation of federal programs we take advantage of to this day to help feed people all over this country. That would not be possible without the legacy of the Rebbe and the legacy of our communities working together. I’m very proud to be here to celebrate his 120th birthday.”
Another tradition on the day remembering the Rebbe’s life through education, is handing out shmurah matzah to state lawmakers. It is important to note that the matzahs are three boards to a box and do not exceed the value of the amount of goods lawmakers can receive as a gift.
“We have Ukrainian matzahs and Rabbi Butman arranged to have the matzahs especially for the Assemblymen and women,” Rubin noted.
In 1978, the U.S. Congress asked President Jimmy Carter to designate Schneerson’s birthday as the national Education Day U.S.A. It has been since commemorated as Education and Sharing Day. In 1994, he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his “outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”
By Marc Gronich
