The Tenth Man and the Rebbe's Legacy 

6/12/26

It was a beautiful spring morning in 2023, on the holiday of Shavuot, the harvest festival that celebrates the giving of the Torah.

We were new to the Island and our community was still in its infancy, less than a year old. Our synagogue room wasn’t ready yet, so a small group of us gathered on the deck of our home for an impromptu minyan and reading of the Ten Commandments.

In Orthodox tradition, we needed ten men for the reading. But we only had nine.

Not a problem, we were told, as a visiting student volunteered to walk the streets of Vineyard Haven in search of a tenth to complete our minyan. Jew hunting, you might call it.

He arrived back shortly afterward with a man he found on State Road. Our new friend had actually grown up Orthodox and raised an Orthodox family in New York. But a few years earlier, he had left that world behind and moved to Martha’s Vineyard to begin a new secular chapter of life.

Vineyard Haven was not exactly where he expected to find himself swept back into a minyan, but he loved the novelty and surprise of it all.

The real reason we met that day, however, turned out to be much deeper. 

Our new friend told me that it had been years since he had shared a Shabbat dinner with his children. Life had taken the family in different directions, and the practical challenges of hosting kosher guests on Martha's Vineyard made visits more difficult, creating an even greater distance over time.

And so it happened that on a peaceful fall evening later that year, we hosted his Orthodox children in our guest room and welcomed their father to join us for Shabbat dinner. It was the first time they had celebrated Shabbat together in years, and it remains one of the most meaningful moments of our lives on Martha’s Vineyard.

Stories like these happen thousands of times in thousands of places around the world, wherever you might find a Chabad House. Beyond the noise of programs, events, and activities, countless lives are touched every day. From the smallest towns to the most beautiful islands, you can count on there being a Chabad House to care for and be there for the local Jewish community.

This week marks the 32nd yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.

It was in a shattered post-Holocaust Jewish world that the Rebbe shared his vision of building Chabad Houses to spread the light of Yiddishkeit around the world, so that every Jew would have a community and that even in the most distant places, no Jew would be on their own.

The Rebbe despised the labels that divide Jews from one another, envisioning instead a Jewish world in which we are all one and feel responsible for each other.

It is perhaps the greatest tribute to his legacy that arguably the only place where you will find Jews of every religious background having a Shabbat dinner together is at a Chabad House.

Chabad on the Vineyard is one small part of the Rebbe’s legacy, just one of thousands of communities bringing the warmth, joy, and meaning of Judaism to Jews around the world.

Hadassah and I, together with our children, are humbled to play a small role in the Rebbe's story. And I hope that his memory will forever remain a guiding light for us and our community.