Prologue: From England to New York, and Back
In February 1958, a young man took leave of his father at the port of Southampton, England. He was twenty-two years old, and about to embark on the SS United States, bound for New York City. His father turned to him with a tear in his eye. “Please,” he exclaimed, “come back!”
Back then, a transatlantic voyage was not undertaken lightly, and the older man was by no means certain he would ever see his son again. But the thoroughly British yeshivah student had made the decision to sail across the ocean and study in close proximity to the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. The trajectory of Anglo-Jewish life—in the broadest possible sense—would turn out to be intertwined with his lonely journey.
Just thirty-two months later, in November 1960, the young man’s return was reported in the flagship newspaper of British Jewry, The Jewish Chronicle: “Rabbi S.F. Vogel, a pupil of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson, has taken up the position as Executive Director of the Lubavitcher Foundation, London.”
In the Rebbe’s bright orbit, Vogel’s English sense of decorum and tact had been augmented with Chassidic charisma and warmth, and even a dash of American audacity. His competence in Talmudic reasoning had been augmented with the sophistication of Chassidic philosophy. Indeed, his very sense of self had been dismantled and transformatively reconstructed. He left England as a scholar and a seeker; he returned as an ambassador and a leader. Over the course of the next forty years and more, Lubavitch Foundation of Great Britain would hardly cease making news.
Rabbi Shraga Faivish Vogel was an intellectual and an activist, a visionary and an institution builder, a teacher and a fundraiser; a man of ideas, words, and action. These qualities enabled him to win hearts and minds among British Jews of all affiliations. Above all, Vogel was the Rebbe’s pupil; a perpetual student who sought to grasp the Rebbe’s thoughts in his own mind and to effectively communicate them to others. He passed away on Sunday night, the 10th of Cheshvan, 5785 (November 10, 2024), in London.
I - “Lubavitch Is Something Else”
Vogel was born in 1936 in Salford, England. His father, Yaakov Koppel, had migrated to England from Romania when still a very young child. Together with his wife, Dobra Baila (nee Feingold), Yaakov Koppel gave his children a solid Jewish education. In 1951 he enrolled Faivish in the Manchester Yeshivah, headed by Rabbi Yehudah Zev Segal (1910-1994), who had studied at the Yeshivah of Mir, Lithuania (now Belarus).
Though the yeshivah wasn’t affiliated with any chassidic group, it was there that Vogel first encountered Chabad-Lubavitch in the guise of Rabbi Yitzchak Dubov (1886-1977). The Russian-born Dubov had studied at the Tomchei Temimim Yeshivah in Lubavitch, during the tenure of Chabad’s fifth leader, the Rebbe Rashab (1860-1920). After filling rabbinic posts in several towns during the early Soviet era, he eventually made his way to Manchester, where he served as rabbi of a small synagogue and taught at the yeshivah. Dubov was very learned in the classical rabbinical sense, but also exuded a radiant simplicity. This radiance, Vogel understood, had something to do with Dubov’s Lubavitcher education, something to do with the teachings of Chabad Chassidism.
But what was Lubavitch? And what was Chassidism? Vogel was both mystified and mesmerized.
Each year, Dubov celebrated Yud Tes Kislev—the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism—in his synagogue. With the yeshivah’s permission, Vogel and a number of his classmates attended. Dubov sang the Padah Beshalom melody, recited a chassidic discourse, and told the story of how Chabad’s founder, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, was arrested, imprisoned, and liberated. The setting was frugal, but the experience was rich. Vogel never forgot it and soon began attending Dubov’s classes on Tanya, the cornerstone of Chabad thought.
Though he found Tanya difficult to understand, he knew that there was something deep here, something which would change his understanding of the Divine, and of what it meant to live as a Jew. Seeking illumination, Vogel addressed a letter to the Rebbe, and soon received a reply directing his attention to three specific sections of Tanya. Two of these (chapters 5 and 6) speak of the “wonderful union” with G‑d that is achieved through Torah study. Without it, one’s life and existence becomes detached from G‑d. With it, one’s vitality and existence flows directly “from the sanctity of the Holy One, blessed be He, from the inner dimension of the sacred.”
The Rebbe’s third citation was to chapter 3: Contemplation of G‑d’s all-encompassing and all-pervasive presence—before which “all is considered as nothing”—as the path to an emotional awe, akin to bashfulness, in the face of G‑d’s utter transcendence.
It was not just the content of the Rebbe’s letter that moved Vogel, but the fact that his questions had been taken seriously. “This was an amazing thing,” he later recalled, “that a youth could write to such a great personage, to the Lubavitcher Rebbe!”
During this period, Vogel gave much thought to the different ideologies that were current among Jews in England at the time. Some were inclined to secular Zionism, others to the traditional orthodoxy of Agudah. Mizrachi seemed a middle-way of sorts. He frequently engaged in debates with his friends on these topics, and also asked questions of older people in the community. Within this context, he later reflected, “I was trying to understand what Lubavitch is.” “Lubavitch,” he ultimately came to realize, “is something else.”
II - A Lonely Path to a Life-Changing Decision
After several years, Vogel enrolled in the Gateshead Yeshivah, where he was recognized as one of the top students. His study partner there was Avrohom Gurwicz, son and eventual successor of Rabbi Leib Gurwicz (1906-1982), who headed the yeshivah at the time. Although the attitude of the faculty to Chassidism was ambivalent at best, Vogel was beginning to feel more and more connected to the world of Lubavitch.
The Rebbe’s main representative in England at the time was Rabbi Bentzion Shemtov (1902-1975), an indomitable spirit who’d been imprisoned in the Soviet Union for his utter commitment to the continuation of Jewish life and learning. Shemtov emerged with a restless energy that never abated. He was always traveling, promulgating the teachings of Chassidism and raising funds to support Chabad institutions and activities. Periodically, he would visit Gateshead and teach a semi-clandestine class in a private home.
As Vogel recalled, “Rabbi Shemtov taught Shaar Hayichud Veha’emunah,” the section of Tanya devoted to the oneness of G‑d, explaining “the Baal Shem Tov’s innovative teaching that the word of G‑d is revitalizing the world at every single moment … This was such a transformative teaching. I felt I had discovered a new world … I began to attain a slight understanding of [Chassidism’s] philosophical axioms, which are abstract, deep, and conceptual.”
Vogel now tried to study Chabad texts on his own, but for all his skill as a Talmudist, he quickly realized that he was out of his depth. Once again, he wrote to the Rebbe. In his reply, the Rebbe directed Vogel to seek out Rabbi DovBer Levin (1925-1988), a chassid who had come from Russia via Paris and Belfast, and was then working as a shochet [kosher butcher] and cantor in Sunderland, about fifteen miles from Gateshead. Vogel approached him, and Rabbi Levin began teaching him fundamental discourses from Likutei Torah, by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi.
In a letter addressed to Rabbi Levin at about this time, the Rebbe wrote: “I was pleased by what you wrote concerning the expanding circle of your protégés … especially since young people in general, and yeshivah students in particular, eventually become influencers themselves, whether in a smaller circle or a larger one, and every effect achieved with them is doubled many times over, with the passing of time, in their own protégés.”1 In the case of Faivish Vogel, these words were especially prescient.
After studying with Levin on a weekly basis for approximately two years, Vogel publicly revealed his dedication to Chabad teachings: As a member of the top class at Gateshead, he was asked to deliver a Torah talk in honor of the festival of Shavuot. After committing an entire discourse from Likutei Torah to memory, he stood up before the faculty and students of the yeshivah. “Since Shavuot is the yahrzeit of the Baal Shem Tov,” he began, “it is appropriate to share a teaching by the disciple of his disciple, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi.”
Vogel’s talk received a mixed reception. While his friends remained loyal, members of the yeshivah faculty were less than enthusiastic about his embrace of Chabad. “The time had come,” Vogel decided, “to follow things to their logical conclusion, and find a way to travel to study at the Lubavitcher yeshivah in New York, in close proximity to the Rebbe.”
It was difficult for his parents to make peace with the idea, and some of Vogel’s friends also sought to dissuade him. Undaunted, Vogel scraped together the 63 British pounds he needed to pay his passage; the sale of his bicycle got him two pounds, the rest was made up by wages earned teaching in the Sunderland Hebrew School, along with loans and gifts from several generous individuals. It was a lonely and difficult decision. Nevertheless, when he set out from Gateshead for the last time, a large group of students accompanied him to the train station.
III - Laying the Groundwork in Post-War London
Even as Vogel was setting out for New York, the Rebbe was laying the groundwork for a new kind of Jewish activism in the United Kingdom. While there had been a Chabad presence in the island nation for decades, it had never been organized on a formal basis. This would change in 1959, when the Rebbe dispatched the Russian-born Rabbi Nachman Sudak (1936-2014)—who was already engaged to the aforementioned Bentzion Shemtov’s daughter, Fradel (b. 1939)—to serve as his permanent emissary in London.
Sudak had declared himself ready to settle wherever the Rebbe directed. London was the Rebbe’s decision. As a diligent and unworldly rabbinical scholar, Sudak was committed and idealistic but had little idea how to establish a new religious movement in a country he had never visited. At this early stage, the templates of Chabad programming that have become so familiar simply didn’t exist yet. When he asked the Rebbe directly, “What should I do in London?” The Rebbe put the ball back in his court: “What should I tell you? There are thousands of things to do!” The first step, he said, was to open a branch of Chabad’s Central Organization for Education (Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch). The rest would follow.
When Sudak arrived in London it was already home to a large and well established Jewish community, many synagogues and a handful of Jewish schools. Indeed, it was the largest center of European Jewish life not overrun by the Nazis, and its unbroken history stretched back to the 16th century. In the post-war era, however, upward economic mobility and integration into British society went hand in hand with a steep decline in religious commitment and participation.
As the 1960s got underway, young British Jews felt increasingly unable to square modern life with the traditions of their ancestors. The vast majority had attended state schools, with Jewish instruction (known as “cheder”) provided in local synagogues on Sundays and after school hours. As one historian explained: “Instructors were untrained and illpaid. Questions were unwelcome, discipline severe. There was yelling and thumping and little enlightenment.”2
Once old enough to make their own choices, many graduates of these institutions defaulted to minimal levels of Jewish practice and engagement. The result was a widening gap between mainstream British Jewry—helmed by such august and distant institutions as the United Synagogue, the Chief Rabbinate, and the Board of Deputies—and the nascent but growing Haredi communities, which protected and incubated pious commitment to Torah study and observance by turning inward.
Laid on Sudak’s shoulders was the unspoken task of closing this gap. As has always been the Chabad way, this would primarily be accomplished through education, and the Rebbe had already begun laying the groundwork. In the autumn of 1958, he had written to Mr. Solomon Perrin, a businessman and community activist in London, expressing joy that a deposit had been made for a building “wherein will be concentrated all of the affairs of Lubavitch.”
“It is superfluous to underscore,” the Rebbe continued, “that this a very great achievement, and I hope it will have far reaching positive results, with energetic, expanding, significant, and tangible activities … In England as a whole … invigoration and fortification will be introduced to Jewish life, and into pure and holy education especially.” The Rebbe also advised that the building should be named Lubavitch House, and included a contribution to its costs.3
By the time Sudak arrived in London as the Rebbe’s new emissary, a base of communal support had already been established, along with a central institution for him to lead. Yet, with the Rebbe’s exclamation echoing in his ears—“there are a thousand things to do!”—he knew he needed to build a team worthy of the task.
IV - Learning and Teaching in the Rebbe’s Orbit
“The sky was clear and blue, but the cold was frigid,” Vogel would later recall of his first day at Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters—770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, NY.
Though exhausted from the transatlantic voyage, he wanted to set his eyes on the Rebbe that very day. The Rebbe could be seen, he was told, when he attended afternoon prayers at 3:15 p.m. The Rebbe entered the room, Vogel recalled, and “glanced at me for a moment, probably two or three seconds. He prayed the afternoon prayer, then left. That was it. He gave me no special recognition. Nothing. But let me tell you something. That was beautiful. I saw the Rebbe praying for the first time. No swaying. Nothing. This was an expression of unchanging essentiality … Never before did I experience such a sense of awe and respect towards another person. This was not because the Rebbe inspired fear. This awe, rather, rose up from my inner self.” The Rebbe’s eschewal of all pomp and ceremony exposed a rigor and authenticity that was axiomatic and unaffected.
Within a week or so of arriving, Vogel entered the Rebbe’s room for a personal meeting, known as yechidut, and declared his aspiration to become “connected” to the Rebbe. “If you wish to be connected to me,” the Rebbe responded, “you should study my chassidic teachings.”
This directive would stand at the core of Vogel’s relationship with the Rebbe for the rest of his life. For him, Chassidism wasn’t simply a culture, a way of life, or an activist movement. Rather, Chassidism was a program of study; a quest for intellectual clarity, eloquent communication, and transformative application in personal and social life. “Each word that the Rebbe said in a yechidut,” Vogel explained, “was extremely meaningful. These words were engraved within us and remained a vital source of sustenance throughout our entire lives.” There was a deep sense of combined intimacy and purposefulness, he explained. The Rebbe, he felt, was preparing each student “to fulfill the mission that G‑d had ordained for them.”
About three weeks after Vogel arrived, he was present at the legendary farbrengen held by the Rebbe to celebrate the festival of Purim, 1958. Vogel remembered that the formal discourse went on for more than an hour, and began with a Talmudic quotation. “I followed [what the Rebbe was saying for] the first five minutes.” After that, “I was just looking at him. It was a spectacle to behold! It was enthralling … But the esoteric topics and the speed with which the Rebbe spoke were beyond me.”
Later that evening, the Rebbe gave a series of talks on the special nature and purpose of the Chabad yeshivah. Vogel found himself “totally absorbed in everything … these were ideas that I was able to grasp.”
***
The atmosphere in the Rebbe’s orbit was electric. The youthful exuberance of the yeshivah students joined with Chabad’s long tradition of philosophical mysticism, producing an intellectual environment that was both challenging and euphoric. This was quite a culture shock for a young Englishman who had spent years in the more inhibited halls of the Manchester and Gateshead yeshivahs.
A few months after his arrival at 770, Vogel participated in a farbrengen with other students, led by one of the younger members of the faculty, Rabbi Sholom Marozov (1923-2006). Marozov sat down at 9:30 p.m. on Lag BaOmer and farbrenged until four or five in the morning. Spirits were imbibed and also expressed—in words, song, and dance. “Reb Sholom Marozov’s talks were peppered with quotations from the Talmud, from the central codes of Jewish Law, and, of course, from Chassidus. It was an eye opener.”
At the end of that farbrengen, feeling a new sense of openness, Vogel joined other students in a heady dance. One of his new friends was Leibel Raskin (1934-2004), who later served as the Rebbe’s representative to Morocco. In the midst of the dance, Leibel “put his hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘You understand now, here it’s a little different (farshteist, do iz abisel anderesh)!’”
Vogel spent months studying Shoresh Mitzvas Hetefillah, a weighty chassidic treatise on the theological significance of prayer. His study partner was Yisroel Friedman, who would later head the Oholei Torah Talmudic Seminary. They were the same age, but their backgrounds and personalities were quite different. “Among the students,” Vogel said, “Reb Yisroel was a giant, and it was a tremendous blessing that I got to study with him. He stood me on my feet. His ability to explain ideas was a wonder … This was the most soul-stirring period of my life, and the most significant one in terms of understanding chassidic philosophy.” Friedman’s tongue was as sharp as his mind, and when it came to the battle for understanding, “he took no prisoners.”
Even more impressive than Friedman’s intellectual prowess, Vogel emphasized, was his spirited struggle to remake his inner self in accord with the teachings of Chassidism. “He was the most difficult man, in my eyes … He was the most erudite, articulate, exacting, and demanding. He demanded from himself. He struggled with himself. He was open with that struggle and he invited me into it … He pulled me into it. So, there was no peace. But it was the greatest experience I have ever had.”
In this space of study and spiritual struggle, Friedman and Vogel forged a friendship that would endure until the end of their lives.
Equally formative was Vogel’s participation in the “Wednesday hour.” Each week, the intense schedule of Torah study was interrupted, and the yeshivah students dispersed to teach Jewish children enrolled in public school, who otherwise had little exposure to their Jewish heritage. This entailed an abrupt and difficult transition from the immersive environment of 770 into the arena of activism. “It accustomed me to put personal aspirations aside,” Vogel explained, “to move from one situation to another,” and maintain a sense of equilibrium, underwritten by the knowledge that “I am not created, except to serve my Master.” At one moment, G‑d’s purpose is that you should stay in the yeshivah and study. At another moment, G‑d’s purpose is that you should go out and teach.
V - “The Challenge of Our Times and All Times”
Due to his felicity with English, and, increasingly, with the subtleties of chassidic thought, Vogel was tapped to teach an informal Tanya class at Yeshiva University High School. When attendees raised questions about the relationship between Torah and modern science, he transcribed them and submitted them to the Rebbe. Among several fascinating responses, the Rebbe wrote that while “fifty years ago it was agreed” that there are “ninety-six” chemical elements, “it is now ‘agreed’ that each of them is constituted of several components. As to how many kinds of particles there are,” he continued, “this is not yet known at all. Some hypothesize that there are four elements: Matter, Antimatter, Positive, Negative.”4
This is a rare and striking example of how the Rebbe drew on his knowledge of subatomic physics to point towards new opportunities for synthesis between the timeless eternity of Torah and the modern discoveries of science. For Vogel, this bridging of intellectual worlds was not only memorable, but instructive.
After about two years in 770, a marriage match was suggested for Vogel with Dusia Charitonow. She hailed from Nikolayev, Ukraine, where the Rebbe himself was born. Her father had been conscripted into the Red Army, never to return. Her mother—who had brought her four daughters to the United States—sought the Rebbe’s opinion on the young man, and was informed that he was destined to be sent as an emissary to London.
The wedding was scheduled for the 16th of Elul, 1960. In a private audience, Vogel asked the Rebbe to officiate. But the Rebbe didn’t respond. After inquiring again through Rabbi Hodakov, the Rebbe’s chief of staff, the Rebbe’s response—an inquiry—was relayed: When would the new couple travel to London? Vogel replied that they were ready to travel at the first opportunity. Hearing this, the Rebbe said they should set out for London following the festive month of Tishrei, and confirmed he would officiate at their wedding.
Vogel was part of a cadre of young emissaries sent by the Rebbe to London within a relatively short span of time. Sudak—who would serve as “Principal” of Lubavitch Foundation of Great Britain for the rest of his life—had arrived the previous year, and Aron Dov Sufrin (1930-1997) was already in place as Director of Education. For decades to come, these three would lead Chabad-Lubavitch in the United Kingdom as an administrative board (“the hanhala”), discussing and deciding everything together on a weekly basis.
Within the next few years, Rabbis Aaron Cousin (b. 1938), Yitzchak Sufrin (b. 1940), and Shmuel Lew (b. 1940) also arrived, taking the helm of various educational and outreach efforts directed at a diversity of demographics. This group of activists, together with their wives, set out to bring confidence, vitality, and dynamism to a staid and stagnant Anglo-Jewry. Lew’s domain was campus education and youth engagement. Cousin became headmaster of a new primary school for boys and also directed the tefillin campaign launched in 1967. As the organization expanded, Sufrin coordinated the administration of all its different branches. Vogel, as Executive Director of Lubavitch Foundation, quickly emerged as the movement’s leading spokesperson and the architect of its bold intervention on the stage of Anglo-Jewry.
The preface to Challenge—a landmark volume published by Lubavitch Foundation in 1970—sums up the approach championed by Vogel and his colleagues as “uncompromisingly Orthodox,” yet “permeated with warmth” and “intellectual awareness of the problems of the Jews in the world as it is.” Chabad’s philosophical tradition, they confidently declared, can “meet the challenge of our times and all times … To those who have the honesty to ask profound questions, we submit fundamental answers.”
Within weeks of Vogel’s arrival in London, The Jewish Chronicle was reporting on plans for “intensification of adult lectures in English and Yiddish at the Lubavitch House; a drive to visit private homes; and a drive to enroll more children in the Talmud Torah and day school.” The following week, his address at a social event for Jewish college students was also covered.
Vogel’s stature swiftly rose as a sought-after and eloquent speaker. When he appeared on the BBC TV program “Let Me Speak” in 1965, a Jewish Chronicle critic wrote that he “came over very well” and “answered Mr Muggeridge’s questions forcefully—perhaps too forcefully at times—and fluently.” Viewers, complained the critic, might be unaware that Lubavitch was “not representing” the views of all Anglo-Jews. Yet, he concluded, “the programme was better than many others I have seen about Judaism … At least the group knew what it was talking about.”
The Muggeridge TV interview brought Vogel into people’s living rooms through a distinctly contemporary medium of mass culture. In an instant, it swept away preconceptions about Chassidic backwardness and insularity, creating a new receptivity to the fresh outlook that Lubavitch was introducing.
VI - Funding and Building “the Rebbe’s Dream”
Alongside a busy schedule of educational programs and speaking engagements, Vogel was tasked with raising funds to support the expanding network of Chabad institutions and activities in the United Kingdom. Vogel came to see fundraising as integral to the work of community building. A strong community, he understood, can only be built through the commitment of individuals. In the same breath that he asked people for financial support, he invited their personal participation. To this end, Vogel and his colleagues made regular home and office visitations, knocking on doors unannounced.
Sandy Weinbaum—who went on to direct the UK branch of Chabad’s children’s club, Tzivos Hashem—recalled how her father, Bentzion Rader (1925-2017), became involved with Lubavitch. One evening, Rader told his family about “a very interesting meshulach (charity collector)” who had come to see him. After successfully soliciting a donation, the visitor asked: “Do you have time to learn Torah with me?” Radar was fascinated by this. He was “a very young man,” he reported, and “his name was Faivish Vogel.”
The next time Vogel asked if Rader had time to learn, he got an affirmative reply. “He started coming to our house once a week to learn with my father,” Weinbaum remembered. “My mother joined in as well, and slowly things started to change at home.” They were already quite engaged in Jewish life, and regularly attended their local synagogue. But now they began keeping Shabbat at home as well, and kosher standards were adhered to with increasing diligence.
Within a short time, the Raders were working very closely with Vogel. In addition to advancing the cause of Lubavitch Foundation in general, they were especially active in the production of Challenge and several other publications. As was the case with many other British Jews, Vogel advised the Raders to visit the Rebbe in New York. They soon established deep personal relationships of their own, and enrolled their three children in Chabad educational institutions.
About a year after Vogel’s arrival in London, in January 1962, the inaugural dinner of “The Friends of the Lubavitch Foundation” was held. Dayan M. Swift of the London Beth Din presided. The guest speaker was Rabbi David Hollander, President of the Metropolitan Board of Orthodox Rabbis of New York. Three hundred guests attended, including many notable representatives of the London rabbinate. At the second annual dinner, Vogel announced plans for a £130,000 community center. (That price tag is equivalent to 4.5 million dollars in 2025.)
Today, the “Chabad House” is well established as a multipurpose operational base for a wide array of educational and activist programming, both on-site and off-site. Back then, however, this concept did not yet exist. The first incarnation of this now ubiquitous model was pioneered and launched as London’s “Lubavitch House.”
A 1964 letter addressed by the Rebbe’s secretary—Rabbi Hodakov—to Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin (1888-1978) of Jerusalem reveals the significance of the project in the Rebbe’s eyes. “The new building for the Lubavitch House institution,” Hodakov wrote, “is an utmost necessity. It will be of tremendous benefit for the advancement of Jewish education in particular, and for the strengthening of Judaism throughout England as a whole.”
By this stage, the project had already been brought to the attention of Sir Isaac Wolfson, a Jewish philanthropist who had grown up in Glasgow, Scotland. The son of a cabinet maker who had emigrated from Poland, Wolfson was a religious Jew who believed that money should not be hoarded by those who succeed in business. He donated vast sums to all manner of institutions, from Heichal Shlomo—the official seat of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, named for his father—to Wolfson Colleges at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 1962 he was appointed President of the United Synagogue.
Hodakov’s letter informed Rabbi Zevin that Wolfson had already “expressed great interest in the matter … but all possible support and encouragement for his good decision is necessary … Since we have heard that your honor has great influence on the aforementioned individual, we request that you hasten to petition him to settle the affair in the best fashion, which will be to the credit of the community and to his personal credit too.”
Wolfson soon announced his support for the construction of the new Lubavitch House. In 1968, he attended the opening as a guest of honor. “In recent years,” he explained, “the Lubavitch movement has become ever more widely acclaimed, and has won ever greater support.” Many of its supporters, he went on, “appeared to have little in common … except their response to the attraction, the pull, which the Lubavitch movement has for them.”
This pull, according to Wolfson, stemmed from “the very spirit” of the “movement itself” and “the three pillars—Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge—on which it is built.” He lauded Lubavitch for “presenting itself as a movement for the regeneration of our people,” for entering into “a perfectly harmonious partnership” to promote the tefillin campaign “together with the Chief Rabbi and the United Synagogue,” and for creating a new kind of educational center that can stand as “a guide for others.”
Another guest of honor at the opening ceremony was Immanuel Jakobovits, who had recently been appointed Chief Rabbi. Jakobovits had previously served as a rabbi in New York, and had a private audience with the Rebbe before returning to England to take up his new office. As he related to Vogel at the time, he told the Rebbe, “I will help your representatives in England.” To this the Rebbe responded: “My representatives will help you.”
Wolfson took the opportunity to highlight this new cooperative spirit, especially complimenting Rabbi Jakobovits for echoing Lubavitch in throwing “added light” on the “need to provide more intensive Jewish education.”
“I can tell you from my own experience,” Wolfson said, referring to the still dominant cheder system, “that only a few short hours a week … is absolutely inadequate.” The new Lubavitch House, by contrast, provided the necessary alternative: “You take children when they are still tiny tots, through nursery, kindergarten, primary and secondary schooling, providing evening classes … adult education, study groups and the like.” Under a single roof, he said, you have a double slogan: “It’s never too early to begin—It’s never too late to make up for lost time.”
The architect, David Stern, wrote that “the planning problem was almost insuperable” due to the scope of “the Rebbe’s dream” … “Classrooms; kitchens and dining halls … ; an assembly hall, gymnasium, synagogue; a library and community center … ; a banqueting suite, administrative and school offices; a bookshop … ; club rooms and junior synagogue … ” The result, marveled The Jewish Chronicle, was “a miracle of compression.”
The new building was modern and functional, constructed of concrete, gray brick, steel, and glass. But, as the architect noted, “it has a soul.” It was a physical manifestation of Chabad’s successful blend of spirited tradition with of-the-moment sophistication and versatility. It also symbolized a new paradigm for the future of Anglo-Jewry; confidently deepening its commitment to serious Torah education and observance, while also becoming increasingly accessible, integrated, welcoming, and engaging.
A public message from Chief Rabbi Jakobovits, penned in 1969, lauded the Lubavitch Movement’s “impetus to Anglo-Jewry’s religious life, and in particular to Jewish education” as “a hopeful ray of brightness in a scene otherwise still beset by much sordid darkness … I am particularly heartened by the achievements of the Movement in establishing several vibrant educational and communal centers to enrich the religious life of Anglo-Jewry.”
As the dynamic orchestrator of this Jewish educational transformation, Vogel’s personal reputation also rose. When the prestigious Oxfordshire Jewish boarding school, Carmel College, was in search of a new headmaster, the Chronicle reported that “some governors favour Rabbi Vogel, executive head of the British branch of Lubavitch.” Another potential candidate being suggested was Norman Lamm, who would be elected President of Yeshiva University in 1976.
VII - Setting People Thinking … As a Start
No one could have guessed it at the time, but there were actually two Chief Rabbis who participated in the inauguration of the new Lubavitch House in 1968. A special reception for students was addressed by Rabbi Zalman Posner (1927-2014), of Tennessee. A photo from that occasion shows a young man listening to the speaker in an attitude of intense thoughtfulness; head cocked, brows drawn, and chin in hand. He was the leader of the Cambridge University Jewish Society and his name was Jonathan Sacks.
Two years earlier, in 1966, the Chronicle had reported on some unusual events at the University of Cambridge: One Saturday evening a student answered a knock on the door “to find a short figure in a black hat, black coat and black beard, and with shining eyes behind gleaming spectacles … ‘Would you like to come to a party?’ said the figure.”
This figure was none other than Faivish Vogel. “That’s the only way to do it,” he told the reporter, “you’ve got to knock on their doors and make yourself known.” On that Friday, the reporter wrote, “half-a-dozen chassidim” had “set off with half a case of whisky and an unlimited supply of enthusiasm.” They had been invited by Sacks to celebrate Shabbat with members of the Cambridge Jewish Society, and were now in search of more students to participate in some spirited singing and debate.
“The student was too dumbfounded to ask questions. He put on his coat and followed, and found himself at a melava malka,” a meal marking the departure of Shabbat. According to the Chronicle, he “did not regret the encounter,” finding himself “greatly stimulated by the Lubavitch attitude.”
“Once we set people thinking,” Vogel is quoted as saying, “we’re happy. We can’t hope to do more than that—as a start.” That Shabbat in Cambridge was indeed the start of a relationship that would be highly consequential, for Sacks personally, and for Anglo-Jewry in its totality. New vistas of thought and study were opened for him, setting his life on a new course.
In the summer of 1968 Sacks traveled to the United States, where he was given an audience with the Rebbe. After answering some philosophical questions Sacks posed, the Rebbe started to question him about what he was doing to increase the involvement of his fellow students in Jewish life. “Nobody finds themselves in a situation,” the Rebbe told him. “You put yourself in a situation.” Sacks regarded this as the moment that “changed my life.” He was suddenly able to see himself as a leader. Rather than a mere subject of circumstance, the Rebbe taught Sacks to be an agent of history.
After completing his degree at Cambridge, Sacks studied at a Chabad yeshivah in the Holy Land. He then returned to England, married, wrote a doctoral thesis on the rabbinic concept of responsibility for others, and earned rabbinic ordination.
Throughout, Sacks maintained a very close relationship with both Vogel and Lew, often studying with them and celebrating Shabbat in their homes. At their suggestion, he visited the Rebbe again in 1978, seeking advice as to whether he should begin a career as an academic, an economist, or a barrister. The Rebbe’s response was that he should train rabbis and become a congregational rabbi himself. In 2019, Sacks explained just how decisive the Rebbe’s intervention was:
When I came back, I have to say it was quite an ordeal, because what the Rebbe actually wanted was against the United Synagogue by-laws. You couldn’t be a Rabbi of the United Synagogue and have some employment elsewhere (in my case, in Jews’ College, training rabbis.) And yet my own rav, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, who would not, by anyone, I think, be thought of as a chassid or a chabadnik, as soon as he heard what the Rebbe had said, he said, “Okay since the Rebbe said it, it has to happen.” And he phoned-up Chief Rabbi Jakobovits and told him that if it was against the United Synagogue by-laws, the United Synagogue would have to change the by-laws … And that is how I came to be, eventually, head of Jews’ College and training the rabbinate for Anglo Jewry.5
Between 1984 and 1990, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks served as Principal of Jews’ College, while leading Golders Green Synagogue and then Western Marble Arch Synagogue. In 1991, he was inducted as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, succeeding Rabbi Jakobovits. “When I was faced with a question of whether or not to accept the invitation to become Chief Rabbi,” Sacks recalled, “I set out the pros and cons and I asked the Rebbe, “Should I accept the offer, if it is made?” And the Rebbe, without writing a single word, put in the typographical symbol for invert word order: ‘Should I’ became, ‘I should.’”
The first book ever published by Sacks appeared in 1986, under the title Torah Studies. It was released by Lubavitch Foundation and was a groundbreaking collection of essays based on the Rebbe’s talks on the weekly Parshah. Vogel and Sacks would first study the original Yiddish essays together. Sacks would then reconstruct the teaching in English. In his own words, his goal was to “sketch the mood and thrust of the original ideas, full as they are of detail, nuance and subtlety that verge on the untranslatable.” In the introduction, Sacks credited Vogel and Lew for their encouragement and help, and dedicated the volume to their friendship and inspiration.
Years later, this work would provide the blueprint for Sacks’ popular Covenant and Conversation series. As he commented in the introduction to Torah Studies: “The very forms of these talks — their intellectual rhythms of question and answer, their reasoning and rigour — mirrors a central feature of Chabad, that through a mental journey we affect both emotion and action … in perceiving reality we become our real selves.”
VIII - At the Cultural Avant-Garde
Alongside his visits to student societies up and down the country, Vogel was also attracting attention among writers, actors, and other cultural figures. A case in point was Wolf Mankowitz, a prominent and prolific playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. In 1966, he provided scripted commentary for a video production about the work of Lubavitch, and later told journalists he would make “an hour-long television film” about Chassidism if only he had sufficient funding.
While writing a play based on the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah, Mankowitz visited the Rebbe in New York. It was soon after the Six Day War, and he was struggling with the question of Jewishness in an age of cultural and political emancipation. An introductory essay to the play includes a somewhat exoticizing reconstruction of his conversation with the Rebbe, before formulating the essence of his question: “What, indeed, is the point of Jews remaining Jews either by their own efforts or by those of their enemies? Why must Samson pursue his painful individuation?”
Echoing the Rebbe’s exhortation that “man’s best course is to follow, unquestioningly, the Torah,” Mankowitz concludes that “the sole reason why the Jews may have been Chosen” must lie in “the ethic and aesthetics of the Mosaic Code,” which are “the primary Jewish contribution to the development of Man.” He continues: “If the centers of civilization are destroyed in one holocaust, if Jerusalem itself with the last vestiges of the Temple and the national identity of the Jewish Israelis are all wiped out, somewhere, somehow, nomadic Jewish wanderers far from the centers of destruction will preserve the Code, and when ten of them meet in the desert of glass the civilizing process will begin again.”
For Mankowitz, Vogel and his fellow chassidim were such nomadic bearers of the seed of civilization. For him, they were not throwbacks from the Jewish past, but avatars of Judaism’s immortal ethic and aesthetic, which transcends the vagaries of time. When Lubavitch House was opened in 1968, Mankowitz co-hosted a cultural salon as part of the celebration. “This Lubavitch center,” he declared, “is a place created by Jewish energy for the promulgation of everything that is essential and permanently Jewish.” On another occasion he quipped, “If I were a good Jew, I should like to be a good Lubavitch Jew.”
In April 1970, The Jewish Chronicle reported on a party held at a private address in London’s exclusive Mayfair district, marking the launch of the newly published Challenge: An Encounter with Lubavitch-Chabad. “Rabbi Vogel was there with several colleagues from Lubavitch House, yet the atmosphere was more that of a grand literary party than a Chassidic kumzits.”
A photograph shows Vogel in conversation with the property developer Arnold Lee, who was the evening’s host, and Jeannette Kupfermann, an actor and writer who was married to the Viennese-born Holocaust survivor and expressionist painter Jacques Herbert Kupfermann. She would go on to earn a graduate degree in anthropology for her study of the Lubavitch Chassidim of Stamford Hill, the London neighborhood where Lubavitch House was built.
In her subsequent book, The MisTaken Body, Kupfermann noted “a phenomenal increase” in the use of the mikvah among Jewish women in London, despite a wider “context of religious decline.” She went on to explain this in terms of a renewed recognition of the insufficiency of “ad-hoc ritual,” which “can never provide for the same integration of the individual into the world as does a total systematic religion.”
Among other literary luminaries who were present that evening in 1970 was Bernice Rubens. Later that year she would become the first woman, the first Jew, and the first person born in Wales, to win the Booker Prize, for her novel The Elected Member. The anti-hero at the novel’s center is the troubled son of a rabbi, echoing Rubens’ own path as the product of a very traditional Jewish family trying to find her way in a society that was at once familiar and foreign.
For figures such as these, caught between the particularities of their Judaism and the ostensibly universal discourse of modern culture, Vogel was somehow able to bridge a vital gap. With his charm, eloquence, and intelligence, he manifested not only Judaism’s timelessness, but its of-the-moment relevance too.
Vogel sometimes caused controversy with his forays into the Anglo-Jewish cultural scene. But he wasn’t deterred. Back in 1968, when Chaim Topol was starring in the London production of Fiddler on the Roof, Vogel visited him backstage and presented him with a pair of tefillin. A picture of the rabbi and the actor was published in the Chronicle, eliciting condemnation from Orthodox ideologues who thought this amounted to some sort of sacrilege.
“I sent a report to the Rebbe,” Vogel later recalled, “and attached the critique of Lubavitch that had been published, asking if I had acted properly.” The next letter he received from the Rebbe included a handwritten blessing: “You should have much success in the holy work, and not be intimidated at all in the face of etc., for G‑d is with us.”
“The Rebbe did not write G‑d is with you,” Vogel emphasized, “but included himself with me in the situation … This feeling of comforting embrace raised our spirits and gave us renewed energy.”
In 1971, the novelist and playwright Herman Wouk flew from Washington to address Lubavitch Foundation’s annual dinner. Wouk’s grandfather was a Lubavitcher from Minsk, and the grandson remained a steadfastly observant Jew even after attaining vast literary success. Before shipping out to war with the United States Navy, back in 1943, his mother had brought him to receive a blessing from Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. Later he would enjoy close relationships with several Chabad emissaries. But he had not met with the Rebbe himself, face to face, until Vogel suggested it.
Wouk arrived in London fresh from his very first encounter with the Rebbe. He took the opportunity to reflect on the “extraordinary intensity” of the Rebbe’s personality: “Here is a man who carries the weight of a world—if not of the world—on his soul. This is a feeling that never quite leaves you all the time you speak to him, though he speaks simply, clearly, and even humorously.”
“The Jewish people and the Jewish destiny,” Wouk continued, “are my life. In my considered judgment, Lubavitch has made, is making, and will continue to make a substantial contribution to the coming renaissance and redemption of the Jewish people, and on that basis are entitled to your support.” According to a Jewish Chronicle report, Wouk’s appeal helped raise £110,000 “towards the cost of the second phase of the new Lubavitch building in Stamford Hill.”
IX - Into the 1980s: Fervor, Expansion, Openness, and Optimism
In 1977, a multi-page feature on “The Chasidim of Stamford Hill,” ran in a Chronicle supplement. The Chabad-Lubavitch community is described as “a new plant” in Anglo-Jewry’s “unyielding soil,” which nonetheless, “has struck strong roots.” From its center in London, where its community “consists of some 200 families” it “has spread to Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.” The reporter was most struck by the sight of crowds, several hundred strong, listening for “six hours or more … far into the night” to the Rebbe’s public farbrengens broadcast live from Lubavitch International Headquarters, in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Weekday farbrengens typically began at 9:30 p.m., which would be 2:30 a.m. in London.)
During the preceding decade, Stamford Hill had undergone a major transition. Take for example, the case of “the New Synagogue.” Constructed on Egerton Road in 1915 by one of the five founding congregations of the United Synagogue, it was a bastion of the decorous and distinctly English mode of Orthodox liturgical practice known as minhag anglia (literally: English custom). Now, however, many of its congregants were moving to “newer and more salubrious ‘Jewish’ districts.” Their exodus made way for the “noticeable move of Chasidim from other parts into the mainly superannuated property of the district.” By 1977, “London’s Bobov Chasidim” had already acquired many properties on Egerton Road, with plans to build a yeshivah, complete with dormitories, as well as a study hall and a mikvah. They would purchase the New Synagogue itself, a Grade II listed building, in 1987.
As a general rule, according to the Chronicle feature, “the Chasidim” are “inward-looking,” asking only “to be left to go their own way.” In contrast “stands the outgoingness, the ahavas yisroel (love of Jews), of Lubavitch.” Even while participating in Stamford Hill’s turn towards a more overtly fervent tradition, the Chabad-Lubavitch community remained an oasis of openness, where all sorts of Jews felt comfortable. In large part, this was attributable to “the young and personable executive director at their London headquarters, Rabbi S. F. (Faivish) Vogel.”
One young intellectual who became involved in Chabad during the early 1970s was Naftali Loewenthal, then a graduate student studying under Professor Chimen Abramsky at University College London (UCL). Abramsky was a scholar of both Jewish history and Marxism, renowned for his vast personal collection of books, and for his unparalleled bibliographical expertise. His father was one of the leading rabbinical figures of the twentieth century, and had been sent to the Siberian Gulags as punishment for his “counter-revolutionary” (i.e. religious) activities. Chimen had a close relationship with his father, yet lived the life of a socialist intellectual, far removed from any rabbinical aspiration.
Nevertheless, Loewenthal recalls his professor coming to Lubavitch House to hear a live broadcast of the Rebbe speaking. Unsurprisingly, it was Rabbi Faivish Vogel who had invited him. Vogel and Abramsky apparently became acquainted via the legendary diamond dealer and book collector Jack Lunzer (1924-2016), who created the Valmadonna Trust library of rare Hebrew books, incunabula, and manuscripts. Unlike some of the newer Lubavitchers in attendance, Chimen was fluent in Yiddish, and soon “found himself providing … an English summary of the Rebbe’s Yiddish words during the intervals between the talks.”6
Vogel’s relationship with Lunzer proved extremely instrumental in the mid-1980s, when rare books began disappearing from Chabad’s Central Library in New York. One of those books, a manuscript Haggadah crafted in 1760 by Chaim ben Asher Anshel in the town of Kittsee, near Pressburg, was purchased by an acquaintance of Lunzer’s in Switzerland. Beginning with this lead, Vogel ultimately located some thirty additional volumes that had made their way into the European rare book market. At Vogel’s word, the Rebbe’s secretariat wrote checks to fund their retrieval; the Kittsee Haggadah alone carried a price tag of $140,000.
In the spring of 1985, an exhibition was held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. “Maimonides: A Model for our Times” displayed rare early editions of works by the great medieval rabbi, marking his 850th anniversary, courtesy of Lunzer’s Valmadonna Trust. Organized by the Office of the Chief Rabbi in conjunction with Lubavitch Foundation, it opened with a discussion between Chief Rabbi Jakobovits and Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, Principal of Jews’ College. Rabbi S. F. Vogel was in the chair.
A photo of Lord Gowrie, Minister of State for the Arts, viewing the exhibition together with Jakobovits and Vogel ran in The Jewish Chronicle. “The large turnout,” Vogel told reporters, “proved that there was a desire for Jewish learning in this country.” In a nod to chassidic custom, the audience was invited to echo his optimism with “a l’chaim in vodka,” offering “a toast to the spirit of Maimonides.”
X - Visibility and Voice on the National Stage
Over the course of decades of intensive work, Vogel’s connections with rabbinic, business, cultural, and political leaders gave Chabad-Lubavitch national visibility and voice.
When thousands of Jews fled Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, many parents entrusted their children to Chabad representatives who airlifted them to Europe. Their ultimate destination was the United States, but until they could obtain the necessary papers, Vogel was tasked with hosting some 200 children in England. Vogel called Greville Janner, a Jewish member of parliament, and asked him to persuade the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, to grant temporary permission for the residence of these refugees in the UK. When Whitlaw asked who would guarantee their stay would remain temporary, Janner responded: “Rabbi Vogel of the Lubavitch Foundation.”
Notably, Vogel emphasized, Janner was a member of the Labour party, while Whitelaw was a member of the Conservative party. Visas were granted for a period of one year, and Vogel mobilized other institutions to help host the children. Some of the boys were hosted at Carmel College, others were enrolled at London’s Hasmonean School, while most of the girls attended the Lubavitch Girls School in Stamford Hill.
Back in 1972, that school had been visited by Margaret Thatcher, in her capacity as Minister of Education. In 1976, as leader of the opposition, she sent a congratulatory telegram to the seventh anniversary dinner of Lubavitch Foundation of Glasgow, Scotland. One of Vogel’s aims was to secure state-funded status for the Lubavitch school system. Unfortunately, although other government grants were secured along the way, this did not begin to come to fruition until 2003. But Vogel was equally interested in promoting a public educational agenda, extending outward into British society more broadly.
By the mid-1980s the Rebbe was increasingly speaking of the Torah’s universal ethical message, and of the obligation on Jews to communicate it to their gentile neighbors. To this end, Vogel spearheaded the production of a series of short films designed to be used by schools in social studies curricula. As explained by Naftali Loewenthal, “Each sequence set out a moral question, followed by a variety of responses,” and “there is nothing overtly Jewish in any way about the characters or images.” Topics ranged from practical dilemmas of financial and sexual ethics to more abstract discussions “about the meaning of life and the existence of G‑d.”7
Among the chief supporters of Lubavitch during this period was the politically connected lawyer, developer, and philanthropist Godfrey Bradman. A 1988 profile of Bradman highlighted his friendship with Vogel, along with a Megillah reading he organized at Claridge’s, the luxury hotel in Mayfair. “I thought it would be a way of interesting people who wouldn’t normally read the Megila [sic] and wouldn’t necessarily go to the synagogue,” Bradman explained. “Afterwards there was a kosher breakfast and dancing … I have a lot to thank Feivish Vogel for. He showed me the road.”
Bradman didn’t only invest directly in Lubavitch, but in a host of other organizations devoted to various social, medical, and environmental causes. His social consciousness was explicitly shaped by his ongoing engagement with Jewish practice and learning. “He found a Talmudic justification,” reported the Chronicle, “for his clean atmosphere campaigns, by quoting the prohibition of a permanent threshing floor within 50 cubits of the city limits because the wind-born chaff might damage the health of the city dwellers.”
Vogel and Bradman both made efforts to raise awareness of the Torah’s view on the value of human life in an era when abortion was increasingly coming to be seen as a social question rather than a moral one. At Vogel’s suggestion, Chief Rabbi Jakobovits drew up a memorandum setting out the halachic opposition to terminating pregnancies for “social” reasons. The memorandum was mailed to 2,200 Jewish doctors. According to the Chronicle, Bradman also discussed the issue directly with the prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, when hosting her for lunch.
In 1989, Bradman took part in a meeting between the leaders of Lubavitch Foundation and Prime Minister Thatcher. A photo in The Jewish Chronicle showed Rabbis Vogel and Sudak presenting her with a silver menorah as “a tribute to religious freedom in Britain.” Also pictured is Anthony Steen, a Jewish member of the governing party at the time.
Later, in 1992, Thatcher recorded a personal tribute to the Rebbe, saying that she “wished to honor leadership itself … I honor the rabbi, the work he’s done, and the example he’s set, and the inspiration therefore that he has given to many many people, and will continue to give.”
Epilogue: Worlds Converge in a Life of Ideology and Activism
Throughout his career, Vogel’s activism and fundraising was powered by his ideological drive to share Jewish knowledge and teach Torah. He taught weekly classes on Friday evenings at Lubavitch House, and during some periods taught Chassidic thought in the Lubavitch Senior Girls' School. He also studied one-on-one with many individuals. In the case of Binyamin Cohen, a young man growing up in a typical anglo-Jewish household a couple of doors down from Vogel’s own home, this proved transformative. Vogel made time to study Tanya with him. Today, Rabbi Binyamin Cohen serves as the head of the Chabad yeshivah in Melbourne, Australia, where he has raised several generations of students himself.
Vogel was famous for his by-invitation-only “Sunday shiur.” This bi-weekly class was primarily attended by philanthropic supporters, and by other influential individuals such as academics, doctors, and lawyers. Channa Pruss, a daughter of Vogel who served as his secretary in the eighties, recalls that the discussion would often turn to recent teachings from the Rebbe or to the Rebbe’s opinion on current events.
In addition to expanding Chabad’s activities in the United Kingdom, she explained, Vogel was deeply committed to furthering the reach of the Rebbe’s message and perspective. This extended especially to questions relating to security and Jewish identity in the Holy Land, and his advocacy on these issues sometimes brought him into direct conflict with the strongly held opinions of Chief Rabbi Jakobovits. Despite such differences, the two men remained respectful colleagues and continued to work together on the various projects already described.
A closer intellectual partner for Vogel was the next chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who would be installed in that office in 1991, and whose entire career was shaped by a deep association with Lubavitch. In 1981, Sacks participated in an International Symposium on Jewish Mysticism, along with Rabbis Immanuel Schochet, Yitzchak Block, and Adin Even-Israel (Steinsaltz). The symposium was organized by the aforementioned Bentzion Rader, but the vision was provided by Vogel. Proceedings were published as To Touch the Divine, with acknowledgment made of “Rabbi N. Sudak and Rabbi S.F. Vogel,” along with the latter’s old study partner, “Rabbi Y. Friedman, [of] New York, U.S.A.,” for “their guidance and assistance in the compilation of this volume.”
Two decades later, in 2000 and 2001, Vogel organized events at Brandeis University and King’s College London. Under the banner “Worlds Converge,” he brought scholars from within Chabad and university-trained scholars into fruitful dialogue. Reflecting on her participation in these events, Dr. Ada Rapoport-Albert of University College London told The Jewish Chronicle: “It confirms just what I like about Chabad, it wants to engage people who are not part of it, even people like myself who are not part of the Orthodox world but are intimately connected with Jewish tradition.”
In 2003, Vogel organized a conference on the ethical role of religion in society. “The problem we confront today,” he explained, “is that in the eyes of many people, the intensification of religion seems the reverse of progress. We’ve got to argue why real monotheism, in the framework of the Noahide laws, is the solution for mankind.” Of course, the concern to communicate Judaism’s moral ethic in ways that would be universally resonant was shared by Sacks, who attended the “Religion for Humanity” event to deliver “a major address on faith.”
Vogel’s relationship with Sacks stands as an important indicator of his successful and enduring influence on Anglo-Jewry as a whole. Three decades after first returning from New York City as “a pupil of the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Vogel saw the installation of one of his own pupils as Chief Rabbi. In the intervening years, he had influenced many other individuals who would similarly go on to become educators and communal leaders across the Jewish world.
Equally important was his pioneering launch of new kinds of communal institutions, and his catalyzation of new kinds of encounters, or convergences—meetings that thrive on difference, forging unexpected intellectual exchanges and personal relationships. Perhaps more than his erudition, eloquence, organizational prowess, confidence, and charisma, it was Faivish Vogel’s capaciousness that enabled him to set Anglo-Jewish life on a new foundation.
Rabbi Shraga Faivish Vogel passed away on the 10th of Cheshvan, 5785 (November 10, 2024), in London, UK. The above profile was published to mark his first yahrzeit.
In addition to The Jewish Chronicle newspaper, whose archived copies contain hundreds of references to Vogel and his work, this profile draws on interviews conducted by the author with Rabbi Shmuel Lew, Rabbi Faitel Levin, Dr. Naftali Loewenthal, Mrs. Channa Pruss, Rabbi Yitzchak Sufrin and others. Further sources include: 1) A three-part feature published in the Hebrew language Kfar Chabad Magazine, issues 1965, 1966, and 1967. 2) “Soul Interviews with Rabbi Faivish Vogel” by Eli Friedman (available on YouTube). 3) Interviews conducted with Vogel by Dovid Margolin and generously shared with the author. 4) Bentzi Avtzon’s “Homesick for Lubavitch” interview with Sandy Weinbaum.
Join the Discussion