The one private audience I had with the Rebbe was before my Bar Mitzvah. Having heard many stories about him, it was a special opportunity to finally be able to meet such a great person.
He asked about where I went to yeshivah, and I told him that I didn’t go to Lubavitch.
“That’s okay,” he said, and, after I told him about the yeshivah I attended, he went on to ask which tractate of the Talmud I was learning, and about my studies on the secular front. He also asked about my Bar Mitzvah speech, and while I only said a line or two, I got the impression that he was interested in what I had to say, and interested in me as a person.
Although I didn’t learn in a Lubavitcher yeshivah, I do follow the customs of Chabad, and in fact my family has been deeply involved in Chabad for several generations.
When my father, Sholom Nelson, was growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, Lubavitch did not yet have a yeshivah in America, and so he went to Yeshivas Chaim Berlin for elementary school. But after the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe came to America in 1940 and opened a yeshivah, he immediately transferred to Lubavitch, where he was one of the first six students to enroll. He found that they offered a sense of inclusion, that they welcomed everybody and cared about every single student.
My father also became quite close with the Previous Rebbe’s family. He recalled that the Previous Rebbe used to sit near the window in 770, and when he saw my father walking by outside, he would occasionally ask for him, or send a message to him through his secretary, to see how he was doing.
After turning sixteen, in 1945, my father was one of the very few boys in the yeshivah with a driver’s license. At some point, a car was donated to the yeshivah, and when someone needed a ride, my father would be called on to do the driving. He would sometimes drive the Previous Rebbe’s older son-in-law, Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary, who was the head of the yeshivah, as well as his younger son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who would eventually become the Rebbe.
Often, he would also take their wives, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka and Chana, and even the Previous Rebbe’s wife, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina. There were times he had plans to go out with his friends, but he would forget all about them once he got a call that the Rebbetzins wanted a ride somewhere. They would go out and enjoy public areas, going to parks, taking walks, and watching the water. Sometimes, he would drive them through Manhattan, or along the West Side Highway so that they could see the city lights.
It was a very interesting time for my father, in which he was able to become acquainted with the future Rebbe and his family. And, even after he assumed the position of Rebbe, this personal connection continued, while they also maintained a more traditional Rebbe-chasid relationship.
Once, in the early fifties, my father found out that the Rebbe wanted him to learn shechita, that is, how to
