The Rashab—Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn רבי שלום דובער שניאורסאהן — רש״ב
the fifth rebbe of Chabad; he founded Tomchei Temimim—the yeshiva that carried the court through the twentieth century
The son of the Maharash. He did not take the leadership at once: after his father's death in 1882 the court lived several years without a rebbe, and he took it up yielding to the chasidim's requests.
Tomchei Temimim, 1897. Before him Chabad youths studied wherever they could. He founded a yeshiva where Talmud and Chasidut are studied together and on a timetable—and this proved his chief work. The yeshiva produced a stratum of men who twenty years later went underground and for forty years held Jewish life together in the Soviet Union, paying for it with the camps.
How he taught. His maamarim run not as separate discourses but as hemsheichim—series stretching a year and more. The best known is Ayin Beis, begun in 1912: several hundred chapters on one theme.
Against. He spoke against Zionism and against the Bund—on different arguments but from one ground: the people is held by Torah, not by a movement. With Agudah, founded in the same year, he also did not agree.
In 1915, when the front came near Lubavitch, he left for Rostov-on-Don. There he died on 2 Nisan 1920; the court never returned to Lubavitch.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Hemshech Ayin Beis, begun in 1912 — a series of discourses years long
Documents of the period
- The charter and first years of the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva, 1897 — the school that carried the court through the century
Scholarship
- The Jewish Encyclopedia and later accounts of the Chabad underground — the yeshiva's graduates in the Soviet underground
Basis: documents and evidence.