Watch: JEM Donors 7-Day Trip

By COLlive staff

A group of supporters of the JEM organization went on a life journey through the cities where the Rebbe lived and spent the years of his childhood and youth last week.

They were welcomed in Ukraine by Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzki, chief rabbi of Dnipro, at a lavish breakfast on the eighteenth-floor roof of the magnificent Menorah Jewish Center.

In the first-ever exception for a group of foreigners, the group was given access to cell number 9 in the KGB jail where the Rebbe’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Schneerson, was first held after his arrest in 1939.

Through his contacts with the former KGB (today, SBU), Rabbi Kaminetzki arranged this visit, which turned to be one of the emotional highlights of the trip.

The idea of the “Early Years Experience” came following the major success of the Early Years book, which tells the story of the places where the Rebbe lived and spent the years of his childhood and youth.

After reading the book, members of the JEM Foundation, a group of individuals who are committed to assuring the Rebbe’s voice and image remains accessible and approachable, approached JEM asking if such a trip can be arranged.

The journey began in Nikolayev, Ukraine, where the Rebbe was born and lived for the first six years of his life. Traveling by private flight, the group’s second stop was Dnipro (formerly Yekaterinoslav), Ukraine, where the Rebbe’s father served as chief rabbi for over thirty years.

Dnipro was where the Rebbe’s Bar Mitzvah was held, the family has arranged for relief efforts for Jewish refugees from World War One, and where the bulk of the Rebbe’s tutelage under his father occurred.

From there the group flew to Almaty in Kazakhstan to pray on Rabbi Levi Yitzchok’s kever and completed the journey in S. Petersburg where the Rebbe Rayatz lived for a few years and from where he was arrested and forced to leave Russia.

During the week-long journey, the group experienced seeing original archival documents, films, unknown insights, hiskashrus and Farbrengens, led by the two authors of the book, Rabbis Boruch Oberlander and Elkanah Shmotkin along with the project’s primary researcher Rabbi Levi Greisman.

Rabbi Leibel Schapiro, the Rov and Rosh Yeshiva of Miami Chabad yeshivah shared insights, information and inspiration throughout the experience.

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