In a small, but simple mitzvah, the pilgrims pray and leave the departed rabbi notes.
Their missives will eventually be collected and burned, fleeting reminders of the devotion the Lubavitcher leader Rebbe Menachem Schneerson commands years after his improbable life came to an end.
Friday and Saturday mark the 25th anniversary of his death. To commemorate it, Jews of many backgrounds are doing what they’ve done since he passed away at the age of 92, traveling far and wide to visit his final resting place in Queens.
Sapir Avrahami, 24, flew into the city on Wednesday from Tel Aviv.
“I came here for the rebbe. I believe that what I wish here, it will come true,” she said of the hand-written prayers she left at his grave. “It’s very spiritual. I wished for everything. Everything.”
Schneerson’s grave, located inside a mausoleum at the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Cambria Heights, draws 400,000 visitors a year, according to representatives from Chabad-Lubavitch, a group the rebbe led for years. This time of year, the anniversary of his death, draws the largest single throng, about 50,000 visitors who will bring with them an estimated 800,000 prayer notes.
Like Schneerson — someone known for living a spare life — the structure built to commemorate him is simple: gray stone walls surrounding two stone markers and a white stone pit, where people leave their notes to the rabbi.
As spartan as his physical life was, Schneerson’s nine decades were an epic existence by any standard. Born to a rabbinical family in the Black Sea port city of Nikolaev before the Russian Revolution, he gained a reputation as a learned scholar in his teenage years.
As the Nazis came to power in Europe, he lived in Berlin and Paris, eventually escaping to the U.S. in 1941. Armed with his religious education and training as an electrical engineer, Schneerson became the director of three Chabad groups in America and worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the wiring of U.S. naval vessels.
In 1951, he became the leader of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, which had been devastated by the Holocaust.
Schneerson, who was regarded by some of his followers as the messiah, was known for encouraging charity, promoting peace and keeping the door at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, the home of the Lubavitch movement, open to all who sought an audience with him.
Jacques Sarfatti, 57, flew in from Sao Paulo, Brazil on Thursday morning to pay his respects. He has been coming for 15 years and said the line to visit Schneerson’s grave gets longer each year.
“It’s a moment to have some thoughts, to receive some blessings,” he said. “I think it brings peace, it brings trust.”
