There’s something strange when people die. Stranger still when it’s someone who’s been part of your world for as long as you can remember—someone whose presence stood out in the landscape of your life as you grew up. Even more so when that person had a strong influence on you. It makes one reflect on life and meaning.

This week, two prominent figures in the Chabad community passed away: Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipsker and Charlie Buttons. I had the chance to meet both many times throughout my life. They were very different people, but each, in his own way, shaped how I see things. Only Charlie, though, was there for both my engagement party and my wedding.

This short essay, co-written with a few colleagues who were also feeling this reflective pull, captures my feelings on this Friday afternoon.

The Soldiers of the Rebbe: From the Pulpit to the Subway

They never met on the same stage. One wore a tailored suit, gave eloquent lectures on Kabbalah to packed sanctuaries in Miami, and guided thousands through the world of Jewish thought. The other was a postal worker who sang Shabbos songs on the subway, his hat covered in buttons proclaiming Jewish pride and messianic hope. But in the cosmic choreography of the Rebbe’s mission, both were dancers in the same divine drama.

This past week, we lost two wildly different but spiritually entwined Lubavitchers: Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar and Charlie Buttons.

Rabbi Lipskar was a scholar, a leader, a giant in the world of modern Chassidus. He founded The Shul of Bal Harbour, not just a synagogue but a Jewish beacon in one of America’s most affluent enclaves. He taught Torah with clarity and conviction, bridging Chassidic depth with contemporary relevance. A man who could move seamlessly from the writings of the Baal Shem Tov to the complexities of quantum physics and psychology—always landing back at the soul.

Charlie Buttons—real name Charles Nassofer—didn’t just wear his Judaism on his sleeve; he wore it on his entire hat. A beloved fixture of Crown Heights, Charlie wasn’t known for delivering sermons or speeches—he was known for showing up. He made it his mission to attend every simcha in the neighborhood, even if it meant walking for hours, celebration to celebration. He’d pop in, grab a nosh, offer a beaming mazel tov to parents, bar and bat mitzvah kids, brides and grooms, grandparents—anyone worth blessing—and then move on, often leaving behind a balloon or a trail of joy.

To some, he was a local eccentric. To those who knew better, he was a spiritual foot soldier, one of the Rebbe’s “chassidim” who, though never holding formal rabbinic status, embodied what Lubavitch calls “hafatzat hamayanot”—the spreading of the wellsprings of Chassidic light.

What makes Lubavitch—this global Jewish revival movement started by a handful of refugees and galvanized by a man who never left Brooklyn—so singular is exactly this: it can produce a Sholom Lipskar and a Charlie Buttons. And not as contradictions, but as complements.

The Rebbe didn’t just build an institution. He built an army. His call wasn’t limited to the learned or the pedigreed. It was a clarion to anyone willing to serve. The intellectual. The mystic. The dreamer. The doer. The postal worker. All he asked was commitment—to the Jewish people, to G-d, to making the world ready for redemption.

To walk into 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, is to be surrounded by this sacred chaos. The Israeli backpacker who just shaved for the first time in a year. The Ivy League returnee now studying tractates deep into the night. The woman lighting candles in Times Square. The rabbi debating theology in the White House. And yes, Charlie Buttons beaming from the back row.

This range is not a glitch. It’s the secret.

We live in an age of identity niches, of curated communities where everyone looks, talks, and tweets the same. The genius of Chabad Lubavitch—like the genius of Judaism itself—is that it resists this flattening. It is simultaneously particular and universal, spiritual and practical, ancient and new.

Rabbi Lipskar preached it. Charlie Buttons balooned it. Both lived it, and in their own way were telling the same story: that every Jew matters, that every mitzvah counts, and that the world is not abandoned.

And both, now returned to their Source, leave us with the same charge: to carry the torch. Whether with a microphone or a button-covered cap, whether in Miami or the 3 train, the Rebbe’s army marches on.

Wishing you an uplifting weekend,

Rabbi Mendy & Mussy

p.s. As always, we would love to chat with you over coffee or drinks, about Judaism, or just life - reply to this email.

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