“Every Jew is a messenger of the Almighty to restore the connection of the people of Israel with their tradition and roots. This is the duty of every Jew, regardless of their personal level of Torah knowledge. Even if your knowledge is not great, go out and share it with those who have not yet received it.”
For the Israeli reader and for Jews around the world, it is important to understand one basic thing in the story of Menachem Mendel Schneerson: his connection with Ukraine is not a decorative footnote, but the starting point of his entire biography. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was born on April 18, 1902 in Nikolaev, grew up in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro, and came from a family deeply embedded in the Jewish leadership of the south of present-day Ukraine, before passing through Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, and New York to become the seventh Chabad Rebbe and one of the most influential figures in modern Jewry.
If you look at the biography not from the end, but from the beginning, its route looks extremely specific.
April 18, 1902 — birth in Nikolaev; 1909 — the family’s move to Yekaterinoslav after his father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, was appointed city rabbi; March 1915 — bar mitzvah in Yekaterinoslav; November 1928 — wedding in Warsaw; 1933 — Paris; June 23, 1941 — arrival in New York; January 17, 1951 — official assumption of the role of the seventh Rebbe; June 12, 1994 — end of earthly life. This sequence is important not only for the dates. It shows that the “American Rebbe” grew out of a specific Ukrainian Jewish space.
The Ukrainian roots of this story are much deeper than just a place of birth.
Nikolaev in this biography is not a random city from the metrics.
On his maternal side, Schneerson’s grandfather, Rabbi Meir Shlomo Yanovsky, was the chief rabbi of Nikolaev. On his paternal side, his father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, became the rabbi of Yekaterinoslav in 1909 and later the chief rabbi of the city, where he served for decades. Thus, the future Rebbe grew up not just in a religious family, but in a home that was at the very center of Ukrainian urban Jewish life at the beginning of the 20th century.
That is why Ukraine for him is not only the geography of birth but also the first school of public leadership. Chabad.org directly links the Rebbe’s childhood with the family’s move to the large Ukrainian city of Yekaterinoslav, where his father became the spiritual leader of the local community.
By his bar mitzvah in 1915, Menachem Mendel was known for his scholarship and piety, and the family environment itself combined strict religious tradition, communal responsibility, and intellectual openness.
There is also a more dramatic Ukrainian line.
In the early Soviet years, his father became one of the most prominent religious figures of Jewish USSR. After the departure of the sixth Rebbe from the USSR in 1927, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak essentially became the most prominent direct heir of the early Chabad Rebbes on Soviet territory until he was arrested in 1939. Menachem Mendel later spoke of him as a man who took responsibility for spreading Judaism in this country. For the topic of Ukraine, this is fundamental: the Schneerson home in Dnipro was not just a home of scholars, but a home of resistance to the spiritual devastation of Jewish life.
Another strong, though less known, Ukrainian stroke concerns the family during the war years. Materials from the Jewish community of Dnipro directly state that Dov-Ber Schneerson, the Rebbe’s brother and the second son of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, was among the victims of the Nazis on the territory of a psychiatric hospital in Igren near Dnipro. This is an important point: Ukraine in the history of the Schneerson family is not only a homeland and community but also a space of personal family tragedy.
From Yekaterinoslav to New York
After the Ukrainian stage, Schneerson’s biography enters the European and then the global dimension. In November 1928, he married Chaya Mushka, the daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, in Warsaw. After that, he lived and studied in Berlin, and in 1933 moved to Paris. This European phase is no less important than the Ukrainian one: it explains why the Rebbe’s personality combined not only Hasidic depth but also an interest in science, technology, modern culture, and languages.
He left Europe already in the pre-war catastrophe. On June 12, 1941, he and his wife boarded the ship Serpa Pinto in Lisbon, and on June 23, 1941, on the 28th of Sivan 5701, arrived in New York. Almost immediately after arrival, his father-in-law, the sixth Rebbe, appointed him to head Chabad’s social and educational programs. This was not yet a formal position as head of the movement, but it was here that his organizational revolution began.
Formal leadership came later.
After the death of the sixth Rebbe in 1950, Menachem Mendel Schneerson long resisted accepting the title, but eventually, on January 17, 1951, became the seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. Sources agree on the main point: it was after 1951 that Chabad began to transform from a relatively small Hasidic environment into a global system, and the Rebbe himself became a central figure for hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of people who perceived him as a spiritual authority far beyond the narrow Chabad circle.
What exactly he organized Chabad, not just “expanded” it
Here it is important not to slide into the general formula “he made Chabad global.”
In fact, the mechanism was quite specific. Immediately after arriving in the USA, the Rebbe was put in charge of the educational and social direction of the movement’s work. This work was carried out through Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch — the educational center, through Machne Israel — the structure of public and religious mobilization, and through Kehot — the publishing center. The Rebbe himself said in the early 1950s that his father-in-law “chose him” for the implementation of the tasks of Merkos and Machne Israel, and these institutions should not be allowed to weaken.
In other words, under him, Chabad became not just a school of ideas, but a system of institutions.
The second element is the emphasis on education.
Even in early letters and speeches around Merkos, the focus is constantly on schools, including for girls, on youth circles, on literature, on teaching not only “our own,” but also the widest possible Jewish circle. Even before he became Rebbe, this logic was already visible: building a living network of schools and educational centers instead of passively waiting for people to return to tradition on their own.
The third element is shlichut, that is, the system of emissaries.
The Rebbe did not build a centralized pyramid only from Brooklyn. He built a network of emissary families who went to specific cities and countries and opened local centers there. The Chabad House is the nerve center of all the educational and public programs of the shaliach, and the Rebbe constantly demanded the expansion of existing centers and the opening of new ones where Jews live. Therefore, the network grew not as an abstract brand, but as thousands of local homes, schools, synagogues, dining rooms, youth programs, and crisis assistance.
The fourth element is the ability to translate Hasidic tradition into the language of the modern world.
Already after 1951, the Rebbe spoke about the role of American Jewry, about personal responsibility, about historical mission, and at the same time did not limit the work to one country. His early steps to strengthen the network in North Africa, and then a broader deployment of the global system, show that he thought of Chabad not as a community “for its own,” but as a global infrastructure of Jewish presence.
The result is known quantitatively. According to Chabad.org, today 4,900 emissary families work through 3,500 institutions in 100 countries and territories. And the US Congress in the 1994 Gold Medal Act directly spoke of a center of “more than 2,000 educational, social, and rehabilitation institutions” that grew around his work. This is an important figure for your text: the global Chabad network is not a metaphor, but an institutional fact.
What Ukraine remembers about him today
Ukrainian memory of Menachem Mendel Schneerson is not based on random publications, but on documents, city toponymy, archival editions, and living community practice. And this is fundamentally important for such an article: Ukraine remembers him not only as a global Rebbe but also as its native son, whose biography begins in Nikolaev and continues in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro. This memory is especially noticeable today in two cities — Nikolaev and Dnipro, and in each of them, it is fixed in its own way.
The first and strongest layer of memory is archival. The State Archive of the Nikolaev Region published a register of metric books, which directly states that the book of the Nikolaev synagogue with birth records for 1902–1903 is stored as fund 484, inventory 1, case 1486. This is not yet the published birth record of Schneerson himself, but it is an accurate archival roadmap to it. For serious research, this is a key argument: Ukraine preserves not only the memory of the Rebbe but also the documentary fabric of his origin. That is why the conversation about his connection with Ukraine relies not on retellings, but on real archival funds. Here your initial archival framework is also very important.
The second layer is memorial-research. In 2019, the State Archive of the Nikolaev Region presented the book “Our Fellow Countryman Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The History of the Lavat-Yanovsky-Schneerson Family in Nikolaev”. The official page of the archive directly states that the book outlines the biographies of three generations of the Lavat-Yanovsky-Schneerson family, “whose fates were closely connected with Nikolaev,” and gives a brief outline of the life and spiritual activity of the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe. This is a very strong detail: it is not about a private brochure of enthusiasts, but about a publication that the state archival institution itself brings into the public space. That is, Ukraine not only knows that Schneerson was born in Nikolaev but also formalizes it as part of its own local history.
The third layer is urban toponymy, that is, memory inscribed not on an archival shelf, but on the everyday map of the country. In Nikolaev, Schneerson Street exists as an active city address object: this is visible from the official materials of the Nikolaev City Council’s Department of Education, where “vul. Schneersona (Karl Liebknecht)” is mentioned. For the article, this is important not only as a formal fact of renaming but also as a sign that the Rebbe’s name has become part of everyday city reality — not external, but local, Nikolaev name. In your archival text, it is separately recorded that the renaming refers to February 19, 2016 and is formalized by a city order.
But if Nikolaev primarily preserves the place of birth and archival memory, then Dnipro today preserves already living and active memory of Schneerson. Here his name is present not only in stories about the family but also in the urban environment. The Dnipro History Museum has a separate page about Menachem Mendel Schneerson Street, where the date of renaming is indicated — November 26, 2015. On this museum page, a detailed biographical reference is given: birth in Nikolaev, the family’s move to Yekaterinoslav, his father’s service in the city, the beginning of leadership in Chabad in 1951, and Schneerson’s role in creating the emissary institution. This is not only internal religious memory but part of officially accessible urban historical navigation.
Even more importantly, Schneerson’s name in Dnipro exists not as a museum plaque, but as part of active Jewish infrastructure. The official page of the Jewish Lyceum No. 144 named after Levi Yitzchak Schneerson indicates its address as 1 Menachem-Mendel Shneerson St., Dnipro, and also reminds that the school moved to this street back in 1993, when the former Minin Street received a new name. This means that Schneerson’s name is embedded not only in memory but also in the everyday educational life of the Dnipro Jewish community. Every day it exists there as a real school address, not just as a memorial formula.
The fourth layer is community memory, and here Dnipro is especially indicative. In April 2025, a farbrengen was held in the “Alter Shul” synagogue on the occasion of the 123rd anniversary of the birth of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The community material states that the event was dedicated specifically to the anniversary of the birth of the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Rabbi Adam Smilyansky separately reminded that it was thanks to the Rebbe that his personal shaliach in Dnipro became Shmuel Kaminetsky, who created the modern community of the city. That is, the memory of Schneerson in Ukraine here lives not only as respect for the past but also as an explanation of the origin of the very modern Dnipro Jewish world.
In January 2026, Dnipro again marked this memory in an even more large-scale form. A large farbrengen dedicated to Yud Shevat was held at the Menorah Center, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the moment when Menachem Mendel Schneerson assumed leadership of the Jewish people and the title of Lubavitcher Rebbe. The DJC publication emphasizes that at this evening, the chief rabbi of Dnipro, Shmuel Kaminetsky, told how he arrived in the city in 1990 by direct order of the Rebbe to revive Jewish life. This is a very important link: in Ukraine, Schneerson is remembered not only as a person of the past but also as someone whose decisions continue to work through current rabbis, schools, and institutions.
There is also another level — educational. Already on February 1, 2026, special events were held at the Dnipro Jewish Lyceum for Yud Shevat, where students were reminded that it is on this date that the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe is remembered and the beginning of the leadership of the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson is celebrated, “whose teachings continue to inspire the Jewish people around the world today.” This is an especially strong stroke: the memory of him in Ukraine is transmitted not only through adults and archivists but also through the school environment, that is, it becomes part of the upbringing of a new generation of Ukrainian Jews.
Therefore, it is most correct to formulate it this way. Ukraine today remembers Menachem Mendel Schneerson in several modes at once. Nikolaev preserves him as an archival fact, family history, and city name. Dnipro preserves him as part of its city map, active educational infrastructure, and living religious memory. And this is perhaps the most important conclusion: the memory of Schneerson in Ukraine is not reduced to one memorial plaque or one archival reference. It exists simultaneously in documents, in books, on the city map, in street names, in school addresses, in farbrengens, in school programs, and in the language of the modern community.
Chabad in modern Ukraine
Modern Chabad in Ukraine is not one center and not one loud surname, but a branched network of communities, schools, synagogues, humanitarian projects, and emissary rabbis who began arriving in the country immediately after the collapse of the USSR.
It was in the 1990s that one after another, the shluchim of the Lubavitcher Rebbe arrived in Ukraine, and from that moment not just “the revival of religious life” began, but the systematic restoration of Jewish infrastructure: from kindergartens and schools to community centers, yeshivas, programs for helping the elderly, and supporting families. For understanding the legacy of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, this is fundamental: his Chabad model did not remain an American or Israeli story but literally returned to the land where his childhood and youth passed.
The main support center of this network became Dnipro. It was here in 1990 that the Rebbe sent Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky and his wife Chana as his emissaries. Since then, Kaminetsky has become one of the central figures of Jewish revival in Ukraine. His arrival in Dnipropetrovsk effectively opened a new era for the city community: a large institutional structure began to be built around him, which later turned Dnipro into one of the strongest Chabad centers in Eastern Europe. On the Ukrainian Chabad map, Dnipro is not just one of the cities, but a factual organizational hub from which educational, humanitarian, and coordination processes have been going on for many years.
At the same time, the northeastern line began to be built. In Kharkiv since September 1990, Rabbi Moishe Moskowitz has been living and serving. His arrival is associated with the beginning of the return of the choral synagogue and the restoration of school and community infrastructure. For the Kharkiv community, this was not just the arrival of a new spiritual leader, but the start of a real institutional assembly of the community after the Soviet break. In Zhitomir in 1992, simultaneously with the return of the synagogue, the family of the young rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm arrived. Over time, Zhitomir became one of the main centers of the western and central Ukrainian Jewish space, and Wilhelm himself became one of the notable figures in the Chabad and educational life of the country. These two lines — Kharkiv and Zhitomir — clearly show that Chabad in Ukraine was not built only around the capital or around Dnipro. It immediately grew as a network of strong regional communities.
A special place is occupied by Kyiv, where several important figures and directions must be distinguished. On the one hand, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine indicates that Rabbi Raphael Rutman became the Rebbe’s emissary in Ukraine in 1993, and in Kyiv participated in the creation of two schools and a junior rabbinical college. This is a very important line of institutional construction: it is about the Kyiv educational base of Chabad, which began to take shape already in the first post-Soviet years. In the capital today, there is also the Kedem community, headed by Pinchas Vyshedsky, who previously worked in Donetsk. That is, Kyiv is not one center, but a node where different Chabad lines, communities, and leaders intersect.
On the other hand, separately and necessarily in this section, Moshe Asman must be named. He is associated with the Kyiv Chabad environment and with the Brodsky Synagogue, which in recent years has become one of the most notable symbols of Jewish life in the capital. Asman is one of the most public and recognizable figures of Jewish Ukraine, especially after the start of the full-scale war. It is through him that the Kyiv line of Chabad has gone far beyond the internal community life: into humanitarian work, into international appeals, into the public representation of Ukrainian Jewry. He cannot be simply placed in line with city rabbis as another regional emissary. In the modern Ukrainian reality, Asman is already a separate metropolitan and national level.
The southern and central direction of the network also developed in stages.
In Zaporozhye, Rabbi Nochum Ehrentreu, after working in Minsk and Dnipro, was appointed chief rabbi of the region in 1997. In Kremenchug, Rabbi Shlomo Salamon came to Ukraine in 1998 and became the rabbi of the city. In Odessa, one of the key leaders of the south became Rabbi Avraham Wolff: from 1992 to August 1998, he was the rabbi of Kherson, and then in August 1998, he headed the Odessa United Jewish Community. This biography is especially indicative because it demonstrates not static, but movement within the Ukrainian Chabad network: emissaries worked in one city and then moved to another, strengthening already larger centers.
After this, the network continued to expand in the early 2000s. In Poltava, Rabbi Yosef Segal has been living and serving since July 4, 2001. In Krivoy Rog, Rabbi Leron Edery has been working since 2002. In Chernivtsi, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Glitshtayn was sent to Bukovina as the chief rabbi of the Chernivtsi region in 2003, and already in 2004, he organized the creation of the community and the restoration of the synagogue. In Sumy, Rabbi Yechiel Levitan moved in 2004 and became the chief rabbi of the city. All these names are important not as a directory for the sake of a directory, but as proof of scale: by the early 2000s, Chabad in Ukraine was no longer a series of separate missions, but a stable national system of presence.
One cannot forget about the east of the country. In Luhansk, Rabbi Shalom Gopin arrived in 1999, after which a school, kindergarten, and other programs were opened in the region. This is especially important in historical perspective: Chabad in Ukraine managed to take root even in those regions that later found themselves at the epicenter of war and occupation. Therefore, the modern map of Chabad in Ukraine is not only a map of active synagogues but also a map of lost, evacuated, or destroyed centers, behind which there are still specific shaliach families and decades of work.
If you put this picture together as a whole, the main thing is visible. Chabad in modern Ukraine is a network that was built in waves: 1990–1992 gave the first key cities — Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zhitomir; 1993–1999 strengthened Kyiv, Zaporozhye, Kremenchug, Odessa, Luhansk; 2001–2004 expanded the presence to Poltava, Krivoy Rog, Chernivtsi, and Sumy. And next to this broad regional map stands the special Kyiv figure of Moshe Asman, who represents not just one city center, but the public face of a significant part of Ukrainian Jewry in wartime.
This is how this section should sound: not as a general paragraph about “the revival of Chabad,” but as a living map of people, families, cities, and dates. Because in the Ukrainian case, Chabad is primarily a network of specific emissaries who came to specific cities and for years rebuilt Jewish life.
Kyiv and Moshe Asman: a separate line within modern Jewish Ukraine
If Dnipro in the history of modern Chabad in Ukraine is the main institutional center, then Kyiv and Moshe Reuven Asman is a completely different, separate level.
Asman is important not only as a city rabbi and not only as a person associated with the Brodsky Synagogue. He has become one of the most notable public figures of Jewish Ukraine in general: from a religious, humanitarian, media, and partly diplomatic point of view. And that is why in the text about Chabad in modern Ukraine, he cannot be left in the status of “another Kyiv rabbi.”
His biography itself explains why he stands out so much from the general row. According to his official office, Moshe Asman was born in 1966 in Leningrad, in his youth was associated with the movement of Soviet refuseniks, and in his teenage years was even publicly named by the Soviet press as “an enemy of Soviet power.” In 1987, he was able to leave for Israel, where he studied at a Chabad yeshiva, later served as a chaplain in the IDF, and worked with the Children of Chernobyl project, helping children from the Chernobyl zone. For the Israeli reader, this is especially important: Asman is not only a Ukrainian rabbi but also a person with Israeli experience, who then returned to the space of the former USSR as a religious leader and organizer.
The key date for the Ukrainian plot is 1995.
It was then, according to the official biography of his office, that Asman was sent to Kyiv to return the historic Brodsky Synagogue to the Jewish community and to reassemble a full-fledged community life around it. The synagogue was built in 1898, lost for religious life during Soviet times, and after the collapse of the USSR became an object of struggle for return to the Jewish community. Asman did not come there to a ready-made platform: the theater still remained in the building, there was no full-fledged community infrastructure, and the task was not just to “open the synagogue,” but to turn it into a real religious and public center of Kyiv.
This is a very important point. In the case of Asman, the Brodsky Synagogue is not just a place of service. It is his main Kyiv project and symbol.
After the theater left the building in 1997, Asman led the restoration work, and three years later the synagogue reopened. He directly explained his plan this way: he did not want to build a “European museum synagogue,” he wanted to make a Jewish home and a Jewish community center. It is this formula that makes him a special figure: he envisioned the Kyiv community not as a facade religious institution, but as a living center capable of gathering people, returning them to practical connection with Judaism, and building a system of assistance, education, and identity.
Around the Brodsky Synagogue under Asman, not only a prayer but also a social environment grew.
Since 1995, he and his family have been restoring Kyiv’s Jewish life through community programs, school education, food for the needy, religious services, and assistance infrastructure. Even if part of these formulations comes from his own team, independent media confirm the general vector: the Brodsky Synagogue under Asman became not just a place of worship, but a full-fledged center of the Kyiv Jewish community. This is important for the section on modern Chabad: here the typical Chabad logic is visible — not separately “rabbi,” separately “synagogue,” separately “social assistance,” but all at once, in one node.
After 2014, his role became even wider. It was after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbas that Asman created the Anatevka settlement near Kyiv — as a place for Jewish families who became internally displaced persons.
The project was named after the famous shtetl from the world of Sholem Aleichem, but it was rooted in Ukrainian reality: it was not a literary decoration, but a real response to the wave of forced relocation. In Anatevka, houses, a wooden synagogue, schools, and space for hundreds of people appeared. For understanding the scale of Asman’s figure, this is very important: he turned out to be not only a rabbi of a city synagogue but also the creator of a separate community settlement for Jews displaced by the war from their usual lives.
After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, it was this ability to quickly translate the religious community into emergency rescue mode that made Asman one of the most notable figures of Jewish Ukraine. The Brodsky Synagogue, serving the Kyiv Chabad-Lubavitch community, became a transit point for Jews fleeing from combat areas, and Asman himself was the person behind the evacuation efforts. His official office today states that the structure under his leadership helped evacuate more than 40,000 Ukrainians and continues to conduct large-scale humanitarian work; this figure is best presented as an estimate of his office, but the fact of wide evacuation and humanitarian activity is confirmed by independent publications.
It was during this period that Asman stepped out of the framework of a purely religious leader and became the media face of a significant part of Ukrainian Jewry.
Over the past three decades, he first led the Kyiv community, and then became a notable figure already at the national level; during the full-scale war, he traveled to the front line, made international appeals, visited Washington, and abroad raised the issue of Russian aggression against Ukraine. His frontline trips, viral support videos, and his role as a person who made the community a center of assistance not only for Jews but also for civilian structures and those in need in general. For your article, this is the strongest stroke: Asman is not a cabinet rabbi and not an internal communal administrator, but a field, military, humanitarian, and public leader.
There is also another important aspect — his place in the system of military and public representation.
In April 2023, the ceremony of appointing Rabbi David Milman as a chaplain for Jewish servicemen of Ukraine took place precisely in Asman’s office in the Brodsky Synagogue. This is symbolic: Asman’s Kyiv platform has become not only a place of prayer and assistance to refugees but also a point from which Jewish religious life intersects with the Ukrainian army and the state system of military service. For the section on Chabad in modern Ukraine, this is a very valuable detail because it shows how the community has integrated into the reality of a warring country.
That is why Moshe Asman in the section on modern Chabad in Ukraine is better written about not in one line, but as a separate phenomenon. He combines several roles at once: a Chabad rabbi by origin and school, the restorer of the Brodsky Synagogue, the creator of the Kyiv community center, the initiator of Anatevka, the organizer of evacuation and humanitarian assistance during the war, and one of the most notable international voices of Ukrainian Jewry. If Dnipro gives Chabad in Ukraine its institutional backbone, then Asman’s line gives it a metropolitan, public, and in many ways human face.
Why this is important right now
For Israel and world Jewry, the story of Schneerson is not only the story of one genius but also the story of how Jewish life can return from almost complete destruction.
Nikolaev, Yekaterinoslav, Soviet persecutions, war, exile, emigration — all this could have remained only a tragic tale of a lost world. But in the case of Schneerson, something else happened. From the Ukrainian Jewish experience grew a global religious network; and decades later, this network itself returned to Ukraine — already in the form of rabbis, schools, communities, and memorial work.
That is why the formula can be harsh and clear: Menachem Mendel Schneerson is not just a great Jewish leader born on the territory of present-day Ukraine. He was a man whose family, spiritual, and early public biography grew out of the Ukrainian Jewish space; and his legacy today is again present in Ukraine both as memory and as a living institutional network.