Rabbi Shmuel Butman was the longtime director of the Lubavitch Youth Organization in New York until his passing in July of 2024. He was interviewed by JEM’s My Encounter twice in 2011 and 2012.
My family left Russia in 1946, eventually arriving in Paris, where we remained for seven years. The Rebbe’s mother, Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson, fled Russia shortly after we did, and for three months in 1947, she stayed with us.
We lived in an apartment on the top floor of a big house in Paris owned by our uncle, Rabbi Zalman Schneerson; he was the brother of my mother, Yehudis Butman, and they were cousins of the Rebbe. We had a dining room and two bedrooms, one of which became Rebbetzin Chana’s. For as long as we lived there, we continued to refer to it as “Rebbetzin Chana’s room.”
The Rebbe, who was still simply known as “Rabbi Schneerson,” had left Europe for the United States years earlier, but that year, he returned to France to reunite with his mother and to bring her back with him to New York. During his stay, the Rebbe would come to our house to visit her twice every single day, in the morning and the afternoon. My mother would serve them tea, and sometimes cake as well.
Aside from our relation on my mother’s side, my family had another connection with the Rebbe’s family. During the war, my family had been living in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan; I was actually born there, in the town of Frunze, which is today Bishkek.
Not far from us was the city of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, where the Rebbe’s parents lived for several months in 1944. The Soviet authorities had arrested the Rebbe’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, for his rabbinic activities, and exiled him to that region. Partly because of his ailing health – he passed away that year – his sentence had been lifted, allowing him and Rebbetzin Chana to move to Alma-Ata.
During this time, my father, Reb Zalman Butman, assisted the Rebbe’s parents with whatever they needed to cover their expenses each week. When the Rebbe came to Paris in 1947, he told my father: “Reb Zalman, I know you supported my father. I would like to know how much it cost so I can repay you.”
But my father turned down the offer: “Rabbi Schneerson,” he said, “I would like to ask you not to speak to me about this. It was a mitzvah, and I don’t want to give it away.” As my father would say, he “merited” that the Rebbe didn’t argue the point and left it at that.
Shortly after the Rebbe arrived, it happened to be my father’s birthday – the first of Nissan – so he walked over to the Rebbe, and requested a blessing in honor of the day.
“You’re in Nissan?” asked the Rebbe.
“Yes, my birthday is today.”
“I’m also in Nissan,” he remarked. The Rebbe’s birthday is on the eleventh of the month. “What year?”
“5663,” replied my father – 1903.
“I’m from 5662,” and then, referring to the daily custom of reciting the chapter of Psalms corresponding to one’s age, he added: “So for eleven days out of the year, we recite the same chapter.”
A few months passed, and the night before they left, a chassid named Reb Michoel Lipsker organized a farewell gathering, a farbrengen. At one point, the Rebbe began asking for everyone’s Hebrew name and their fathers’ names, and then ingeniously explaining how each person’s name fit their character – referencing verses from the Bible as well as passages from Midrash and the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds to support his explanations. As they say in America, people were blown away.
“Rabbi Schneerson,” my father, who was sitting next to the Rebbe, spoke up. “I once heard your father say that ‘my son does better than me.’” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, of course, was not just a prominent rabbi, but also a brilliant Torah scholar and kabbalist.
To this the Rebbe replied: “A father has to say that.”
“And a son has to say that!” countered my father, and they left the conversation there.
Finally, before leaving, the Rebbe gave each member of our family a gift. To my father, he gave a new edition of the Torah Or prayer book, which he had recently published in the United States. It had a machzor in the back, with the High Holiday prayers, and it was the same edition that the Rebbe himself used.
For my mother and my Aunt Sarah, Reb Zalman’s wife, the Rebbe purchased an expensive set of dishes with service for twelve. Until then, we didn’t have a proper set, and the Rebbe must have noticed.
“Children,” my mother used to remind us, “the Rebbe himself went to the store to get these dishes; he chose them, he immersed them” – according to Jewish law, dishes must be immersed in the mikveh before they can be used – “and he shlepped them up to the third floor, to make sure that we would have nice dishes on which to eat!”
Still some of them broke over the years, but a few remain to this day.
My brother Sholom Ber received a book of chasidic discourses, and my older sister Leah got a stamp album. During his stay in Paris, he also used to take the stamps off the letters he received from overseas and give them to her.
Lastly, the Rebbe gave me a tricycle. It had brakes and modern features which were new to us refugees, so all of my friends used to come over to ride it.
We finally came to the United States a few years later, in February of 1954. My mother called Rebbetzin Chana, who told us to come over to her home on 1418 President Street right away. We were also able to have an audience with the Rebbe that very night.
When we walked into his office, there was a broad smile on the Rebbe’s face. “Children, I don’t know if you remember me – but I remember you.”
My mother continued to visit Rebbetzin Chana pretty often, and I would come along and listen to their conversations. When my mother passed away in 1960, the Rebbetzin came to our house for the shiva, as did the Rebbe, together with his wife, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka. The Rebbe stayed for the evening service and then said a few words.
My father knew that in a shiva house, visitors are not supposed to speak until the mourner begins the conversation, and so my father began by asking the Rebbe about the custom to recite the Kaddish sixteen times a day. The Rebbe gave an explanation and then went on to speak for another twenty minutes or so.
We still have the chair the Rebbe sat on when he gave this talk; it’s upstairs in our house, and we don’t use it for anything.
