A Crown Heights Story – The Life of Rabbi Asher Heber

By Brocha Chana Metzger for COLlive.com

We mark my father’s first yahrzeit on 8 Nissan. He lived in Crown Heights for nearly eighty years. I don’t know of anyone else who lived there for that long, nor how many witnessed the arc of Lubavitch history as he did.  My father was not one to brag about his experiences, and very few are familiar with his life story. While his father, my Zaidy Leibish Heber, was known to relate stories of his time with the Rebbes and Rebbetzins, my father was shy about sharing them. We kids used to pester our father for tales of old, but he usually brushed us off in his humble fashion. Occasionally, a memory would emerge, surprising us with its astonishing detail. Thankfully, the grandchildren often had better luck extracting stories from their Zaidy than we ever did.

My father’s story began in prewar 1939 Paris, where the Rebbe and Rebbetzin were Kvatter at his Bris in the shul on Rue de Rosier where The Rebbe and Chassidim daavened at the time. My father was named Asher HaLevi Heber.  The Rebbetzin gifted him with a beautiful caped white outfit which he can be seen wearing in many of his baby photos.

The Hebers became Chassidim of the Rashab as Polish refugees in Russia, prior to World War One. Twenty-five years later they were amongst a small group of Lubavitchers living in Paris. The Frierdiker Rebbe once spent Yud Tes Kislev in Paris and farbrenged with The Rebbe, my grandfather, R’ Leibish Heber, and a few others at the table. Months before the bris, the Frierdiker Rebbe sent a telegram to my grandfather in France, informing him that his daughter and son-in-law would be arriving to live in Paris.  Zaidy set about finding an apartment for them, and with great devotion, assisted the Rebbe in his many activities. They learned together daily in shul. It has been said that my grandfather was a chossid of the Rebbe, long before he became Rebbe. There are many stories from that era, but one that stands out relates directly to my father; One day the Rebbe asked my grandfather to go on an important mission. Zaidy responded that he would love to, but he was alone at home watching the newborn baby Asher. The Rebbe responded, I will watch him while you go  — so off he went, and the Rebbe watched my father instead.
(I wonder if the Rebbe ever babysat for anyone else…)

The Hebers miraculously managed to escape Europe when my father was nine months old, before the Nazis invaded Paris. (The story of that escape is a moving one that my father related in JEM’s video productions.)

The family moved to the US and by 1941, they were living in Crown Heights. My father lived out his childhood in an apartment building on Eastern Parkway, opposite 770. The vast majority of Chabad Chassidim of New York lived in Brownsville and the Lower East Side during the 1940s. Thanks to the Hebers’ apartment location and my grandmother’s legendary hospitality, little Asher was often out of a bed,  guests in his place, having come to Crown Heights to the Frierdike Rebbe. He described sleeping on blankets piled on the floor behind the door for days on end.

My grandfather’s sister, Nacha (Heber) Rivkin, and her husband Rabbi Berel Rivkin, were already living in the neighborhood (they were on the committee of Chassidim who found the Rebbe’s house on President Street). Nacha was the Rebbetzin’s closest friend from their days as girls back in the towns of Lubavitch and Rostov. This close connection brought my father into the Rebbe’s family orbit countless times during those early years. In fact, the Lubavitch community was so small, my father was one of only three little boys running around at 770 during the early 1940s. Rebbetzin Moussia and her family would give him milk and cookies in the kitchen while his father davened. He remembered the Rebbe and Rebbetzin visiting his home for family simchas. He spoke of the time he had his tonsils removed and Rebbetzin Moussia visited him with gifts of jacks and a little chalkboard. When he ‘got lost’ at a family wedding, it was the Rebbetzin who found “Asherke” and comforted him until his parents were located. My father always told us that the Rebbetzin “Moussia” was an exceedingly private person, not at all keen on attention. We know that he was reticent share too much and that many more stories were left untold. But we do know that having children around in the wake of the war was rare in the community. So many had perished in the Holocaust, or had yet to reach these shores. Little Asher, his siblings, and the handful of other children were treasured as symbols of hope for the future.

We loved to listen to stories of my father’s school years, and as a bachur learning in 770. He recalled the dedication of Lubavitch Yeshiva’s “Bedford and Dean” building. Government officials showed up, as did many non-Jewish neighborhood families, including the Irish kids that would sometimes start up with them. Everyone gathered in their finest, on their best behavior. Since Zaidy contributed towards the building campaign, he was granted a key, which Little Asher was thrilled to show off to his friends.

Then we have the Gan Yisroel lore which we have heard from so many boys who attended camp while my father was head counselor. Hundreds have shared their fond memories of the positive impact he had on them. The Rebbe’s visits to Gan Yisroel were a high point and you can see my father standing near The Rebbe in the photos. It was during one of those summers that my father headed back to the city, seeking the Rebbe’s blessing for his engagement to my mother, Nechama, who was the singing counselor in Camp Emunah. On that day, during the Yud Beis Tammuz Farbrengen, the Rebbe asked if Chosson/Kallah were present. When he learned that they were, he asked that a glass be broken in their honor, right then and there, a vort bym Rebben. I believe it was the first time that this minhag was enacted.  And once in a yechidus audience, when my father omitted Halevi on his note, the Rebbe noted in characteristic humor “Daacht zich ahz HaLevi is merr chashuv foon Heber” – I think one can assume that ‘HaLevi’ is more prominent than ‘Heber’.

Of course, my father related many stories of his Crown Heights youth beyond Chabad life. They tell of people, of times, that seem so alien to life there today. Across Kingston Avenue, at the corner of Eastern Parkway, O’Reilly’s Pub stood where Kehos now stands.  One Shabbos, little Asher disappeared, only to be found watching a baseball game on the pub’s prized, rare television, along with the pub’s Irish owners and patrons. There were memories of wagons pulled by horses still making deliveries, trolley cars on Kingston Avenue, and food kept cold in the ice box. The old lady who lived upstairs would panic when she needed to use the telephone, as operating these newfangled devices was a daunting prospect. Young Asher would come to her rescue.

As a young couple, my parents watched the construction of the Verrazano Bridge from their top-floor apartment on Kingston Avenue and Empire Blvd. They were witness to the real estate “block busting”, attempts to scare people out of the neighborhood. They remember how the Rebbe was adamant that the community remain in Crown Heights, even while others fled to other parts of Brooklyn and the suburbs. Then and later on, in the bad old 1970s and 1980s, the Rebbe again insisted that we remain, in harmony alongside our Black neighbors, as “Kan Tzivah Hashem es HaBrocha”. G-d’s blessing was here, in Crown Heights.

For over forty years, my father was a legendary educator, a “Rebbi”, at Manhattan Day School. Countless students credit him with being a great influence in their formative years. My mother worried about him traveling on the crime-ridden subways and city of that blighted era. Every day she tried to block out those concerns so that she could go about her day and not beg her husband to abandon his work in chinuch. As one of my father’s former students related during his “Zoom Shloshim” (can you believe that’s a THING?!), there were many times when Rabbi Heber arrived at school having been roughed up or mugged en route. I remember hearing about similar incidents upon his return home.

In his later years, the neighborhood once again experienced a seismic shift. “Gentrification” arrived in Crown Heights, along with Hipsters and Yuppies and sky-high real estate prices. But it was the boon in kosher dining that my father seemed to appreciate most. He delighted in taking his grandkids out for a good time, a burger, a pizza, some bonding time with Zaidy. These were his retirement years, during which he was content to stay home on Montgomery Street reading (he had a voracious appetite for knowledge, history in particular), blogging about Chabad and Israel, and spending time with his family.

But then Covid happened, ripping my beloved father from us, along with so many of his friends. He rests at the Ohel now, near the Rebbe, near my sister Rivkie, near his brother Shmuel and so many Crown Heights friends.

My father’s story is a Crown Heights story. He was there during the Frierdiker Rebbe’s final years, there when the Rebbe assumed leadership, there as a bachur and as a chosson and as a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather. He saw the neighborhood change, and then change again, and again. He lived the Rebbe’s blessing — Kaan Tzivah Hashem es Habrocha. The blessing that is Crown Heights.

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The Heber family welcomes memories of Rabbi Asher Heber, particularly from his youth, from the Gan Yisroel years, from former students at Manhattan Day School. Thank you.

הרב אשר בן יהודה אריה הלוי ע”ה
ח ניסן תש”פ

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