The First Rebbeim

About this book

Every dynasty begins with fire. In a small White Russian town, a young genius named Schneur Zalman set out to do something no one had done before: to build a path to God on the union of the mind and the heart. He called it Chabad. He would be imprisoned twice, flee before Napoleon's armies, and die on the road in a Russian winter, but the movement he founded would one day reach every corner of the earth. THE FIRST REBBEIM tells the story of the three founders of Chabad: The Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, who gave Chasidism a mind. The Mitteler Rebbe, Rabbi DovBer, who gave the movement the town whose name it still carries. The Tzemach Tzedek, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, the root from which almost the whole later dynasty grew. Written for teens and adults alike, these are narrative lives, told with reverence and with honesty. Each one closes with a candid note on what history records and what tradition remembers, so the reader always knows where the documented record ends and cherished tradition begins. This is Book One of four in the Giants of Lubavitch series.