The Rebbe Zatzal lost his eleven children in the inferno of the Holocaust. Yet he did not sink into despair, into a whirlpool of grief. No. There were other children who needed him. There were hundreds of orphans, children whose mother and father had been snatched from them. Children that were completely alone in a world that had proven cruel and black to them. The Rebbe became their father. He gave to them completely and unconditionally. The Rebbe took care of the hundreds of child survivors lovingly, tenderly, tending to their spiritual, emotional and physical needs.
The Rebbe arrived on the shores of America in 1947. Shores that were jaded with cynicism and an overflowing dose of skepticism for the survival of Yiddishkeit and Chassidus. Undaunted by the streets filled with naysayers and doubters, the Rebbe began to build. Challenges began piling up almost immediately. Yet the Rebbe continued to build. Yiddishkeit, Emunah baHashem, Chassidus… America was not fertile ground for these lofty aspirations. But the Rebbe still built.
Now the results of the Rebbe’s mesiras nefesh for the Torah are beautifully evident, for all to see. Generations of Torah true sons and daughters, continuing in the path of purity and truth on the shores of America. At last, the soil has yielded and produced magnificent fruit, contrary to all the doom-filled predictions that accompanied the Rebbe as he began to rebuild Yiddishkeit in America.