Dr. Anne Lewinsky
When I was a nineteen-year-old medical student, in 1973, I married my husband Sid. But three years later, when I was beginning my medical internship, I still hadn’t gotten pregnant. Many of our friends already had children, and I began to get distressed.
A couple of the other medical interns I was working with, Fiona Messel and Rodney Undertslak, happened to be religious Jews, and they recommended that we go to see Rabbi Mendel and Mashi Lipskar, who were the Chabad emissaries in South Africa.
“Speak to them about getting a blessing for children,” they suggested.
With the Lipskars’ encouragement, we began observing the laws of family purity. In 1979, around Passover time, we also started keeping kosher. We had the mezuzot in our home checked by a scribe, to ensure they were in good condition. We also put up more mezuzot, so that every single door in our house that required one had a mezuzah.
That same year, with the help of Rabbi Sydney Katz, our community rabbi in Pretoria, we began preparing to go to New York to see the Rebbe. Rabbi Katz was a good friend of Rabbi Yosef Wineberg, who was an important person in the Chabad community, so accommodations were arranged for us to stay with the Winebergs over Shavuot.
Unlike Sid, who had gone to a Jewish day school, I hadn’t grown up in a particularly religious home, so it was all very dramatic for me. I’d never even been in a synagogue with such a stringent separation between women and men, and being surrounded by so many orthodox women – and babies, and more babies – was quite confronting for me.
Fortunately, Freidy Wineberg, the daughter of our hosts, really helped me. She took a shine to me, and I to her. We went to synagogue together, sitting in the front row so that I could actually see what was going on, and Freidy explained the service to me.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Wineberg took Sid under his wing, and they sat just two or three meters away from the Rebbe for the services.
On the second day of Shavuot, there was a public gathering led by the Rebbe, followed by another event at the conclusion of the holiday, where the Rebbe gave people wine from his cup. Several times, as the Rebbe looked around the synagogue, he gazed right in our direction, and he often looked at Sid as well. It was all a wonderful experience.
Our personal audience with the Rebbe was after the holiday. Rabbi Wineberg took us to 770 fairly late at night, around 10:00 PM or so, and when we arrived, there was a queue of people. After some time waiting outside the Rebbe’s office, we were eventually called in.
