Sonia Rozenblum

Sonia Rozenblum was born to her parents, Menachem Mendel and Sheindal Gourarie (Gurary or Gourary) on the 29th of Tammuz 5656 (July 1896) in the city of Kremenchug, Ukraine. Her father was one of three brothers, all successful businessman and devoted followers of the fifth Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn (henceforth the Rebbe Rashab).1 Members of the Gourarie family had been Chabad Chasidim of learning and stature since the movement was founded a century before by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi.2 Despite the privilege of wealth, the Gourarie’s in no way considered themselves exempt from the rigors of the Chabad path of serious intellectual commitment to the study of Torah, Chasidic texts and devotional prayer, and the renowned Chasid, Rabbi Yisroel Levin of Nevel, was hired to educate their children in the true Chasidic spirit.3 Apparently, Sonia was tutored alongside her younger brother, Shmaryahu, who would later become Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s son-in-law.4 As we shall see, the present letter indicates that by the time she was twenty, Sonia was intimately familiar with Chasidic texts in current circulation, and fully immersed in the intricate depths of Chabad thought...

http://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/1744944/jewish/Emotive-Int...