Thousands Come to Pray at Grave of Lubavitcher Rebbe – or Send Fax

Thousands come to pray to grave of Lubavitcher Rebbe — or send fax. It does not take long to realize that this is not just any cemetery.

A billboard greets approaching visitors who are coming to pray where the Lubavitcher rebbe is buried.

“Let’s Welcome Moshiach With Acts of Goodness and Kindness!” it exhorts.” The large lettering is beside an enormous photograph of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who led the Lubavitch movement for 44 years and died last June at the age of 92.

And before entering the cemetery, visitors can now stop at the newest Chabda house, a small, 1-story edifice recently purchased by a prominent member of the movement and turned into a hospitality center on the edge of the graveyard.

Australian mining magnate and Lubavitch benefactor Yosef Gutnick bought the house in December for $200,000 cash.

It had been the home of a middle-class family in this remote section of Queens called ST. Albans. Today it serves as a stopover for the hundreds of visitors who visit the late Lubavitcher rebbe’s grave each week.

Inside the house, visitors sit in what was previously a child’s bedroom – – teddy-bear decorations still trimming the walls — and watch videos of the rebbe handing out dollars to those who came to see him every Sunday while he presided over his community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

Those who come to the house pray in a room turned into a synagogue by the presence of a Sefer Torah, which is kept in a 7 foot high steel safe covered with an embroidered curtain.

They write down their requests for heavenly intercession on the unlined paper provided, pick up a candle to light at the grave an walk through the kitchen, out the back door and through the postage-stamp-sized back yard.

The Lubavitcher cut through the fence that used to separate the house from the cemetery, and now visitors walk perhaps 100 yards to get to the Lubavitch section of the Old Montefiore Cemetery.

They have access 24 hours a day, a seven days a week, though the cemetery is officially closed after 5 p.m. and on Shabbat.

So that the rebbe’s spirit will have company on Shabbat, when driving is prohibited a few other visitors are likely to come, a minyan of male Lubavitch yeshiva students sleeps overnight Friday’s at the hospitality center and spends Shabbat at the grave.

Inside the house, two industrial-strength fax machines churn out a constant stream of request for blessing from people who are ill, down on their luck or considering marriage.

Any every hour or so Rabbi Abba Refson pulls a thick sheaf of them off of the machines to take them to the rebbe’s grave, where he reads them and places them on top of the pile of notes. The pile is a foot thick, evenly blanketing the 8- foot-square area of the grave site.

All told, about 1,000 faxes come in each day, said Refson, each from someone hoping that the rebbe’s spirit will intercede on his or her behalf in heaven.

The fax machines are hidden behind a screen to protect the privacy of those sending the notes, so that visitors to the bare office do not accidentally read one of the requests.

Refson, a dark-beared, affable young man of 23, is kept busy greeting visitors and answering the incoming calls on the incessantly ringing phone.

He writes down the requests for blessings that callers from around the world dictate, and brings them to the grave. There the requests sent from afar as well as those brought by visitors collect in a Three times a week, the notes are collected from the grave site and burned in a corner of the cemetery.

Visitors came to the house around the clock, some of them in taxis during layovers between flights at the nearby kennedy International Airport.

Chassidim, including Lubavitcher, believe that their deceased rebbe’s spirit hovers over according to Zalman Shmotkin, an aide at Lubavitcher headquarters.

Among the visitors to the Lubavitcher rebbe’s grave at the Old Montefiore Cemetery are Jews and non-Jews, the Pious and the secular, all of whom were touched in some way by Schneerson or his teachings.

“More people come here on a day-to-day basis than were able to come to the rebbe during his lifetime,” said Refson. “The thing I’ve been most surprised by is the number of people who come.”

On the recent Sunday afternoon, the house was crowded with Lubavitch rabbis and other visitors, including two elderly Jewish women who spoke only Farsi, the language on their native Iran.

Refson hurried to get one of the women a “tichel,” or head-covering, from the stock he keeps in the basement, so that she would be properly attired when visiting the rebbe’s grave.

Mourners take off their shoes outside the mausoleum and walk on the pebbled path inside the stone hut, where metal shelves hold dozens of dripping memorial candles.

Schneerson is buried alongside his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, who was the previous rebbe.

Men walk to the graves through a doorway on the right, women on the left, where they read from a special book called Ma’aneh Lashon.

Complied by the second Lubavitcher rebbe, Dov Baer, it contains Psalms; passages from the Zohar, the text of Jewish mystics; and some specially composed prayers.

Even in death, the Lubavitch separate the sexes. The deceased rebbes are surrounded by the graves of men, including their deceased aides and Ari Halberstam, the Lubavitch teen who was murdered last year in a shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Across a narrow path are the graves of Lubavitch women, including the rebbe’s wife and his mother.

Surroundings the Lubavitch section of the graveyard are the graves of non- Lubavitch Jews.

Sitting in the bare room, beneath the eyes of the rebbe looking down from an enormous photograph, Refson explained his role as the host of the house.

“Many, many people who come here, especially irreligious people, start crying” when they visit the rebbe’s grave, he said.

“They don’t understand why themselves. They’re looking for direction, for a way to channel their spiritual reawakening to service to God,” Refson said.

“The most challenging thing for me is meeting so many types of people and helping each one according to his needs.”