Inspiring a Nation with stories

Rabbi Lipszyc's story of the week #49 Dedicated in honor of Shneurs birthday. In the last story, I mentioned the nature of the prison camp in Montgomery, Alabama where I was the contract Rabbi for about six years. In story number 13 (which I wrote, at the time out of sequence, in honor of Yom Kippur) I told an amazing story of how one of the inmates took on to keep the Shabbat, and in keeping with the Talmudic saying that “more than the fact that we keep the Shabbat, the Shabbat keeps us,” in the merit of his keeping Shabbat, the prison authorities inexplicably chose to send him home. As is the case with many stories, when it gets passed along from person to person, it tends to change beyond recognition. The real story happened exactly how I recorded it. However, I recently saw a printed version that had no relation to the true story. The reason I make mention of it, is that I believe an injustice and an unwarranted defamation of character had been perpetrated in that retelli...

Rabbi Lipszyc's story of the week #49 Dedicated in honor of Chanie's birthday Although I lived in Birmingham, every Tuesday I would travel (1 1/2 hours each way) to Montgomery. I would give a class for the inmates of Maxwell prison camp and afterwards give a class to a group of yuppies in one of their homes. When the Rebbe asked that every shliach should expand their activities by opening a new Chabad House, I spoke to my biggest supporter in Montgomery, who was in real estate. He had just built a whole new complex of offices and had empty units, so he kindly donated the space of one unit so that I could adhere to the Rebbe’s request. Since I could not yet afford to hire another shliach for Montgomery, I myself manned this new Chabad House. I would spend every Tuesday there. The rest of the week, I would “call forward” the Montgomery Chabad House phone to ring in my Birmingham office. I was thus available to the Montgomery community 24/6. Of course, I also had it listed i...