Today is the yahrzeit of Righteous Chana Schneerson.
Today, the 6th of Tishrei, marks the yahrzeit of Righteous Chana Schneerson, mother of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and faithful wife and assistant to Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, Chief Rabbi of Yekaterinoslav-Dnipropetrovsk from 1909 to 1939.
The memory of this woman, who became a symbol of Jewish courage and resistance to the Soviet regime, is revered throughout the world. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish girls, as well as many educational and charitable institutions worldwide, are named in her honor, including the Jewish Women’s International Humanitarian and Pedagogical Institute “Beit Chana” in Dnipro.
Rebbetzin Chana is a symbol of the loyalty and devotion of a Jewish woman, always helping and supporting her husband and family, a role model that inspires Jewish women around the world.
Rebbetzin Chana was born in January 1880 to the family of the Chief Rabbi of Nikolaev, Meir Yanovsky. She received an excellent education and in 1900 married Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson.
During the thirty years that her husband served as rabbi of the largest city in eastern Ukraine, Rebbetzin Chana supported him in every way and was his reliable partner in his holy work. After the establishment of the brutal communist regime and the forced emigration of Jewish leaders, she and her husband essentially led the spiritual resistance of Jews in the USSR. She followed her husband into exile in the remote regions of Kazakhstan, where, thanks to her efforts, the righteous Levi Yitzchak was able to complete his fundamental works, and her courage became an inspiration to millions of Jews.
In 1946, through incredible efforts, the widowed rebbetzin was rescued from the USSR, and she moved to her son in New York. The rebbetzin lived the last seventeen years of her life in Brooklyn. She passed away on the Shabes of 6 Tishrei, 5725 (1964), and was buried in New York.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, spoke of his mother: “Despite all the difficulties and anxieties of daily life, [my mother] took on an additional responsibility—the responsibility of making possible the publication of the Torah of my father, my teacher and my rabbi, so that many Jews could study his explanations of the inner ideas of the Torah in the light of Chabad Hasidism. And all this in order to bring closer the true and complete redemption of Moshiach, our righteous one, which depends on the dissemination of the sources of the Torah to the outside world!”
You can read her memoirs at this link
