The 2025 book Undaunted: How the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Josef Yitzhak Schneersohn Saved Russian Jewry, Reimagined American Judaism and Ignited a Global Jewish Renaissance, covers an enormous amount of ground, all of it backed by extensive endnotes. Rabbi David Eliezrie, senior Chabad shliach in Yorba Linda, Cal., combines biography, politics, diplomacy, revolutions, religious trends and more in this life of the Rebbe (the sixth Rebbe, Josef Yitzhak Schneersohn, not to be confused with his son-in-law, who became the seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson).

Sections about the Rebbe’s life in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, especially interested me. The book shows how the three million Russian Jews, released from the antisemitic restrictions of Czar Nicholas II, responded to the promising but savage new world. They splintered in wildly different directions.

The tragic result of those bitter divisions: The Russian Revolution resulted in a Jewish civil war, more deadly than any disputes among Hasidim and Haskalah supporters, Yiddishists and Hebraists, Orthodox and secular, Zionists and their opponents. The Rebbe’s life intersected with every faction of that internecine conflict—an ongoing Jewish civil war.

Diverging paths after the 1917 Russian Revolution

Besides those who remained traditional, others immigrated or transitioned to more secular identities and moved to cities for economic and social opportunities. Some, intoxicated by revolutionary zeal and malice, formed the Yevesektzia, the anti-religious Jewish section of  the Communist Party. Others became operatives of the secret police, known as the Cheka, that was executing the Bolsheviks’ Red Terror strategy and still others became leaders of the Communist Party itself, such as People’s Commissar of Military Affairs Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein).

According to R’ Eliezrie, the Chabad leaders recognized the threat—but had the vision to see what the future held for those leading the revolution and its new wave of oppression. He writes,

The Rashab (the shortened acrostic name of the fifth rebbe; his son was known as the Rayatz before he became the sixth rebbe) understood that Communist rule would begin an oppressive period for the Jews. Still, he said, the regime would not last forever, forecasting the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. . . .

The Rashab also predicted to his son that the Communist Jews who had formed the Yevesektzia . . . would be the greatest threat to their fellow Jews. But he also foresaw their eventual fate. “The Jewish group that combats Judaism will be broken and their leaders killed. In the meantime, we will suffer from their evil actions and denunciations.” Their downfall began in 1930, when Stalin dismantled the Yevesektzia, killing and exiling many of its leaders and activists.

Rebbe in the claws of the Jewish chekists

The sixth Rebbe’s interactions with the secret police, known as the Cheka until 1922, then the GPU in 1922-1923 and the OGPU 1923-1934, often involved Jewish “chekists,” as the agents called themselves. In one incident, an official named Bashkov met the Rebbe at his hotel room. Bashkov revealed he had studied at a........

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