On Tuesday April 1st 2025, during the hours when Newsmax reached a historic market value of $32 billion after going public on the NYSE, the network dedicated part of its mid-day program to the Rebbe’s advice for emotional health.
Opening the special segment, anchor Bianca de la Garza explained to her viewers that “the Lubavitcher Rebbe is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of all time.” His birthday in April is “celebrated as the United States Education and Sharing Day,” and he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his “outstanding and lasting contributions in the field of education, morality and acts of charity.”
As La Garza turned to introduce her “special guest” who spent “five years researching four decades of private counseling of the famed American Jewish Sage,” she paused. “Our viewers may not understand what type of work went into this. I mean 20,000 personal letters studied. Incredible.” La Garza then asked the bestselling author to share some of the “core tenets” of emotional health he discovered in the Rebbe’s counseling.
Reporting on the interview, journalist Michael Katz described the conversation on the network’s news site:
“Levi Shmotkin, the author of Letters for Life—which chronicles the inspiration derived from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, whose 123rd birthday would have been April 9th—told Newsmax the story of Israeli fighter pilot Menachem Eini, who was taken hostage by Egypt in 1970. Upon his return after 40 months in captivity, Eini sought Schneerson’s counsel in New York because of the emotional toll being a hostage took on him.
“’He comes back [to Israel], he feels devastated, he feels dead inside and, of course, reading this after Oct. 7, you’re thinking about what you’re seeing on the ground with all these hostages coming back home,’ Shmotkin said. ‘And a friend of his told him, Why don’t you go visit this Lubavitcher Rebbe, this Jewish stage in Brooklyn. So he spends 45 minutes [with Schneerson] going through his time in captivity. And at the end, the Rebbe gives him a tool. He says, ‘Why don’t you write a book about your time in captivity?’
“’Unfortunately, you won’t be the last hostage of Israel, and future hostages will gain from having read the suffering and pain that you went through. It will make their experience easier to navigate.’
“‘I wrote this before Oct. 7,’” Shmotkin said, “‘and I’m reading it today and shudders go through me. But there’s a broader lesson here for all of us. If we go through a powerless experience of suffering, whether it be an illness, a broken relationship, a loss of a loved one, and we feel helpless, we feel down, we feel lost, so, of course, the first step is the step of healing of connecting to the story.
“‘But the next step is to try to find some higher purpose, how that can help someone else going through a similar suffering, whether it’s a hostage or an illness, that allows us to heal in a way that’s entirely different than just keeping it to ourselves.’”
As Pesach approaches, it is noteworthy that in his letters for Pesach the Rebbe would often wish every Jew to experience:
“True freedom—freedom from all worries, both physical and spiritual, freedom from anything that hinders serving HaShem with joy and gladness of heart, and to be able to take this freedom and joy for the entire year.”
To get a copy of Letter for Life, click here.
