Yud-Beis Tammuz — Liberation of the Frierdiker Rebbe
Hebrew: י״ב–י״ג תמוז | When: 12–13 Tammuz | Year of event: 5687 / 1927
The Arrest and Liberation
On Sivan 15, 5687, agents of the Soviet GPU arrested Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn — the Frierdiker Rebbe, sixth Rebbe of Chabad — in Leningrad. The charge: counter-revolutionary activity and organizing Jewish religious life in defiance of Soviet law. He was sentenced to death, then to exile in Kostroma, and finally — through intense international pressure — to full freedom.
On the 12th of Tammuz, 5687 — his birthday — the death sentence was commuted to three years’ exile. On the 13th, the exile was converted to immediate expulsion from the Soviet Union. He left Russian soil and eventually made his way to Riga, then Warsaw, then ultimately New York. The 12th–13th of Tammuz is observed as the yom geulah — day of liberation.
A Yom Geulah for All of Israel
The Frierdiker Rebbe was unequivocal: this liberation was not his personal salvation but the salvation of Torah, of Jewish continuity, of the very possibility of Yiddishkeit under Soviet oppression. He had refused to sign a declaration that he would cease his religious activities — the one condition the Soviets would have accepted for an earlier release. “I will not sign even if they kill me,” he declared. His liberation was thus a vindication of that refusal: kiddush Hashem.
The Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson) would emphasize each year that the lesson of Yud-Beis Tammuz is mesirus nefesh — total self-surrender for Torah and Yiddishkeit — not as an abstract ideal but as a lived reality. One need not face physical threat to live mesirus nefesh; the question is: do I hold back from what my Jewish soul demands out of social or professional comfort?
Connection to Yud-Tes Kislev
The two great Chabad liberation days — Yud-Tes Kislev and Yud-Beis Tammuz — are understood as two chapters in the same story: the divine authorization for hifatzat hamayanot, the spreading of Chassidus outward. The Alter Rebbe’s liberation was the heter (permission); the Frierdiker Rebbe’s liberation was the chiyuv (obligation). The time for inner reservations had passed.
How It Is Celebrated
Like Yud-Tes Kislev, this day is marked with a farbrengen. The focus is on stories of mesirus nefesh from the Soviet era — the underground yeshivos, the secret mikva’os, the Chassidim who were exiled to Siberia and continued to farbreng. These are not merely historical memories; they are a living charge.
In the Corpus
The Rebbe addressed Yud-Beis Tammuz extensively in Likkutei Sichos and Hisvaaduyos. A recurring theme: the akeidah-quality of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s willingness to be killed rather than compromise — and how this prepared the ground for Chabad’s extraordinary postwar expansion.