A tribute to Chabad visionary Rabbi Shraga Faivish Vogel

For nearly 40 years, until Rev Sufrin’s passing in 1997, this was the three-man ‘Hanhola’ (official leadership) directly running the Lubavitch institutions in London and overseeing and guiding all the work of Chabad in the UK. Rabbi Vogel’s fundraising success was the key to the growth of Lubavitch, and the high level of international achievement of the alumni and alumna of its schools.

Rabbi Vogel’s fundraising work had his own stamp, unusual at that time in Anglo-Jewry but perhaps more common now. A supporter of Lubavitch might well be invited to the exclusive ‘Sunday Shiur’ at the home of Dr Sam Peltz, in which Rabbi Vogel, often accompanied by Chabad shaliach and educator, Rabbi Shmuel Lew, would present brilliant expositions of Jewish teaching, focusing with great clarity on their relevance for the here and now. The fundraising dinners he organised also focused on the importance of Jewish teaching in the modern world, with prominent guest speakers such as Elie Wiesel, Chaim Potok and Rabbi Lau, Israeli Chief Rabbi.

Rabbi Vogel may have pioneered in this country the businessman’s ‘Lunchtime Shiur’, in which a group of professionals and dynamic businesspeople meet for a sandwich lunch with a teacher providing the Torah intellectual ‘food’. In 1985, Rabbi Vogel set up a Thursday lunchtime shiur in the Welbeck Street office of Colin Gershinson. It continues now in zoom, run by myself.

Rabbi Vogel’s ability to link Jewish teaching with contemporary life, the general clarity of his vision of Judaism, and his great personal charm inspired many leading individuals to establish their own personal relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe and become beacons of Chassidic Orthodoxy in their own right, such as Peter Kalms, Bentzion Rader and many others.

Working with students has always been an important part of Lubavitch outreach, and it was natural that Rabbi Vogel should seek to strengthen this in the UK. He created and funded the Lubavitch Council for Universities and Colleges and would sometimes accompany Rabbi Shmuel Lew on his visits to Cambridge, Oxford, and many other universities.

Around 1968 an important meeting took place which was to change the history of Anglo-Jewry. In Cambridge Rabbi Lew met the philosophy student Jonathan Sacks (later, Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks). Jonathan began to host in his room the Lubavitch study meetings in Cambridge. He later travelled to New York and met the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who – as he often recounted – changed the direction of his life, towards the rabbinate instead of the academic path. He then spent some time in the Lubavitch Yeshivah in Kfar Chabad, Israel.

Back in England, a firm friendship developed between Jonathan and Faivish. Perhaps the two men were joined by their shared sense of inner drive and energy.

They then began an important project together: translating the Rebbe’s teachings. At that stage the Rebbe’s talks were only published in Yiddish, which Jonathan Sacks did not know well. He came to Rabbi Vogel’s home in London’s Stamford Hill, where they would study one of the Rebbe’s talks. Jonathan would take the text home, and write it up in his beautiful English style, adding an introduction and adapting it for the English-speaking public. After being checked by Rabbis Vogel and Lew, this would be printed as an essay on the Sedra of the Week, and sent out to an ever-growing mailing list. Later Rabbi Lew took over the enjoyable role of explaining the Yiddish text to the future Rabbi Sacks.

Eventually these essays became the volume, Torah Studies (1986) which has been republished many times. It was the first substantial presentation of the Rebbe’s thought in English, and Rabbi Sacks’ Introduction mentions his debt to Rabbis Vogel and Lew. Before the English edition appeared, in 1982 a Swedish translation of this book by Tuvia Litzman was published in Stockholm, and that was the first significant work by Rabbi Sacks to be published.

Rabbi Sacks’ intellectual involvement with the thought of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, enhanced by his close personal friendship with Rabbi Vogel, was a significant factor in his development as a brilliant, charismatic leader of Anglo-Jewry.

A particular shared interest between Rabbis Vogel and Sacks was the fact that in the early 1980s the Lubavitcher Rebbe began emphasising Maimonides’ idea that the Jewish people had the responsibility to communicate the Seven Noahide Laws to non-Jewish society. Rabbi Vogel became heavily involved in this endeavour. In 1985, together with Dr Michael Sinclair, he produced a video for use in non-Jewish schools presenting some basic themes of the Seven Noahide Laws. Rabbi Sacks too made the idea of communicating the Seven Noahide Laws central to his life’s work, as seen in several of his books.

Rabbi Vogel’s sense of vision, inspired and encouraged by the Rebbe, managed and directed the spread of Chabad Houses in Britain in the 1980s. Previously there had been centres in North and North West London, Manchester and Glasgow, augmented in the 1970s by Ilford and Leeds. With strong input by Rabbi Vogel in the 1980s Chabad Houses were established in Birmingham, Bournemouth, Brighton, Edgware, Oxford and Wimbledon, and the Chabad Research Unit, initially in Central London. Many others followed.

Rabbi Vogel’s perspective of the meeting of Jewish thought with the modern world led him to organise a number of significant Conferences. The first was a five-day Symposium of Jewish Mysticism (1981) in London and Oxford, addressed by Rabbis Adin Steinsaltz (Even Yisrael), Zalman Posner, Professor Yitzhak Block, among others. The conference was graced by a special letter from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Later Rabbi Vogel organised two similar conferences called ‘Worlds Converge’ in Brandeis University (2001) and Kings College, London (2002).

Rabbi Shragai Faivish Vogel provided an important positive perspective on what Lubavitch spirituality and Jewish teaching in general mean in our modern world. His legacy continues for Anglo-Jewry and the world-wide Lubavitch movement.

He is survived by his wife Rebbetzin Dusia Vogel, sons Rabbi Hershy Vogel, Rabbi Yosef Vogel, Rabbi Mendy Vogel, and Yanky Vogel; daughters, Baila Dubrawsky, Sorele Bukiet, Channa Pruss, Rivka Goldschmidt, Hindy Drizin and Chayele Rosenberg, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Rabbi Shragai Faivish Vogel: born April 22. 1936. Died November 10, 2024