10 Shevat

The 10th of the month of Shevat on the Hebrew calendar is the Yarzeit of the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson in 5710 (1950), and also the inauguration date of his son-in-law, the 7th and final Rebbe of Lubavitch, Menechem Mendel Schneerson (their memories should be for a blessing) one year later in 5711 (1951). I would just like to share a brief biography of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (RYY) in their memories:
RYY, the only son of the 5th Rebbe, R Sholom Ber, was born in 1880 in Lubavitch Russia. Recognized as a great prodigy at a young age, he became the head of the Yeshiva in Lubatvitch at the age of just 15. The effects of the Revolution took a great toll on his father, and RYY was pressed into the leadership after R Sholom Ber's death in 1920. As Rebbe, RYY established a wide range of underground educational organizations in order to keep the flame of "yiddishkeit" burning despite the oppression of the Jewish Section of the Communist party. In 1927 he was jailed as a counter-revolutionary. In jail he survived repeated torture and death threats, and his death sentence was finally commuted on 4 Tammuz (about the beginning July), and he was released 8 days later. For much of the rest of his life he had to go in a wheelchair. He quickly left Russia to more friendly parts of Europe (for the time being), including Warsaw and Riga (in Latvia), before finally emigrating to the US in 1940. There, beginning with less than a minyan (10 men), he reestablished the Lubavitch Hassidic dynasty, while continuing to front underground activities in Russia. Until the lifting of the Iron Curtain almost 50 years later, Lubavitch was the only religious Jewish presence in Communist Russia. In Crown Heights, Brooklyn he established the Chabad Printing House, the Chabad Educational Arm, and numerous other organizations that served as the basis for his successor's, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, wide ranging outreach programs. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak is remembered as the paramount example of self-sacrifice in the quest to help and another Jew and another human being; a quality that all of his students and disciples continue to strive for to this day.