12-13 Tammuz
The birthday of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880), and anniversary of his release from a capital sentence and imprisonment in Soviet Russia (1927)
To listen to a recording of Rabbi Cheski's grandfather telling the story of 12-13 Tammuz, please click here.
To learn more about 12-13 Tammuz, please click here.
The twelfth of Tammuz (this year: July 11, 2022) is the birthday of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of blessed memory. It is also the day when the Rabbi received a notice of freedom from his exile in Kastroma, Russia.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was targeted by Soviet authorities for his activism on behalf of Jewish education and Jewish religious and communal life. He was the only Jewish leader who chose to remain in Russia following the communist revolution, and he built a network of underground yeshivot and a Jewish support system that functioned clandestinely through all the years of communism. At grave risk to himself and to his Chasidim, the Rebbe kept the moribund embers of Jewish life alive.
In 1927, he was arrested in his home in Leningrad on accusations of counter-revolutionary activities and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to three years in exile to the isolated town of Kostroma in central Russia.
But his arrest and exile drew wide attention, and international pressure compelled Soviet authorities to commute his sentence shortly thereafter. Because it was a legal holiday when the Rebbe received news of his freedom, he only went free on the following day, 13 Tammuz. Thus, both 12 and 13 Tammuz are celebrated as a holiday of liberation by Jews everywhere..
He returned to Leningrad, but was forced to leave Russia, and later that fall, he arrived in Riga, Latvia, from where he continued his work for Russian Jewry.