photographer: Michael Feigin

Last Wednesday, residents of the tranquil town of Monsey, New York 30 kilometers northwest of Manhattan, saw an unusual sight. A convoy of black official cars, escorted by police, crossed the town and stopped next to the Jewish cemetery. A bearded, elderly man stepped out of one of the cars accompanied by a ring of security guards, that walked to the grave of the Ribnitzer Rebbe – Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz.

The man surrounded by bodyguards was none other than Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Leiberman, who arrived in New York a few hours earlier after a visit to Washington during which he met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and briefed ambassadors of UN Security Council member states a short time later.

Yossi Gestetner, an ultra-Orthodox blogger from New York, wrote about the visit on his website. Gestetner wrote that local police prepared for the visit a few days in advance, and that the area of the grave became a sterile zone. Lieberman, who got to walk on the the grave of the Tzadik, stayed at the site for 12 minutes and left.

Those close to Lieberman confirmed that the foreign minister visited the plot of the grave of the Rebbe, and even added that this was not his first visit to the site.

“This is a Rebbe that in the past lived in the same place that the foreign minister was born in, in Moldova,” Lieberman’s advisor said.

“The family of the foreign minister was close to the Rabbi, and he even blessed him at his Bar Mitzvah.”

According to the Chabad Moldova website, Rabbi Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz was born in Romania at the beginning of the last century, but lived in Ribnitzer, Moldova, for almost 30 years. During the Second World War, Jews made up 40 percent of the population of the town, and the majority were murdered in the Holocaust. The Rabbi survived the Holocaust, and remained the only Rebbi in the area of the Soviet Union.

According to the official website set up in his memory, the Rebbe was known as a miracle worker. Jews from all over the country would travel to visit him, and gain his blessing. Even KGB officials were scared of him and brought their children to him so that he would bless them. He lived in Moldova until the beginning of the seventies, and and that made aliyah to Israel, where he lived in Jerusalem. After a few years, he left for the U.S. He died there in 1995 when he was over 90 years old.

(Haaretz)