Rabbi Sholom Ber Eber, 78, Documented the Rebbe for Posterity

by Mendel Braun – chabad.org

There are those who stand in the spotlight, and those who help that light reach others. Rabbi Sholom Ber Eber, who passed away on June 29 (14 Tammuz) at the age of 78, belonged to the latter category.

Type “the Rebbe” into any search engine today, in any time zone, and hundreds of videos of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—will surface nearly instantly.

There are videos of Chassidic gatherings, of public prayers, of the hours-long lines during “Sunday Dollars,” when visitors filed past the Rebbe to receive a dollar for charity and a blessing, an encounter that lasted seconds but became a powerful memory that lived on for posterity.

Years before livestreams or digital archives existed, it was Eber, spending his days in a small storefront in Brooklyn, N.Y, meticulously preserving thousands of hours of that footage. The work he did there still fuels the inspiration millions draw from the Rebbe today, 32 years after his passing.

From Tel Aviv to Crown Heights

Born in 1947, young Sholom Dov Ber grew up in Tel Aviv, among a small circle of Russian Lubavitcher Chassidim. His grandfather, Rabbi Eliyahu Eber, served as a mashpia, or Chassidic mentor, in the famed town of Nevel in White Russia. His great-uncle, Rabbi Yehudah (Yuda) Eber, worked for years in the underground Chabad yeshivah system in the Soviet Union. After escaping in 1930, the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, appointed him the rosh yeshivah of the Chabad yeshivah in Vilna, then of Warsaw. Rabbi Yuda Eber and his family were murdered by the Germans in Riga, Latvia, in 1941.

Sholom Ber’s father, Rabbi Nissen Eber, grew up in Nevel amid the Russian Revolution and immigrated to the Land of Israel just before the Holocaust, where he taught for years and inspired generations of students.

“It was as a boy in that environment in Tel Aviv, where my father absorbed much of the Chassidic character that went on to define who he was,” said his son, Rabbi Yossi Eber, co-director of Chabad of West Pasco. “His humility, his generosity, and his sense of urgency were all ingrained deeply in him from those formative years.”

As a 19-year-old yeshivah student in 1967, Eber traveled from Israel to study in the Rebbe’s court at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He went on to marry his wife, Esther Gurwitz, and settled nearby, buying the Ess & Bentch Luncheonette on the corner of Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue, directly across from 770.

Rabbi Chaim Boruch Halberstam, who had run the restaurant before selling it to Eber, recalled the diner’s environment fondly, but remembers Eber’s approach to its business side even more.

“The profits from the first customer each day, he always gave away to charity,” Halberstam said. “It didn’t matter if it was a modest purchase or a major one.”

Preserving for Posterity

Halberstam, who remained life-long friends with Eber, had already begun recording the Rebbe’s farbrengens and streaming them live, building the technical systems that allowed eager communities around the world to hear the Rebbe speak in real time, a rarity in that era. He then began regularly photographing and filming events at 770 and selling copies on cassette and VHS tape.

Halberstam dubbed his operation “World Lubavitch Communications Center”—with the acronym WLCC, and the tagline “spreading Judaism via all means of audio and visual communications.”

By 1982, as demand grew, Halberstam asked the Rebbe if he should open a storefront devoted to WLCC’s work of preserving and distributing the recordings. The Rebbe directed him to a look for a location near 770.

“As soon as I finished reading the Rebbe’s answer, I walked out of 770 and bumped into Sholom,” Halberstam recalled.

Eber had recently leased a storefront down the block and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Halberstam described his plan and the guidance from the Rebbe he had just received.

“When he said he had the empty space, I told him a place for my work has been found,” Halberstam said. “Sholom was enthusiastic, and that is how we became partners.”

Together, the two men recorded the Rebbe, duplicated thousands of audio and video tapes, and cataloged footage so it could reach people far from away from the epicenter in Crown Heights. The partnership in WLCC that began on that sidewalk lasted decades and eventually touched countless people around the globe, an impact that continues to this day.

When the Rebbe began distributing dollars for charity each Sunday in 1986, Eber and Halberstam arranged for photographers to capture each of the thousands of encounters, letting visitors purchase a photo or video afterward—keepsakes to be treasured forever.

“Sholom was never comfortable standing in front of the Rebbe with a camera,” Halberstam says. “But behind the scenes, he was running everything.”

While Halberstam held the cameras, Eber managed the selling, copying, preparing materials and handling whatever the day required.

“Whenever I arrived at the store in the morning, Sholom was already there, deep in the middle of his work,” Halberstam recalled. “He worked tirelessly to make sure the Rebbe’s words reached as many people as possible.”

Eber also spent years tracking down recordings from the Rebbe’s earliest years of leadership, gathering and restoring tapes and film scattered among private collections.

“My father understood that every word, every image and every encounter with the Rebbe was a priceless part of history that deserved to be preserved for generations,” says Rabbi Yossi Eber. “My father worked on this project tirelessly. Today, recordings from those early years have become invaluable treasures.”

Eber also helped produce projects including Maaseh Rav, a collection of stories shared by the Rebbe during farbrengens, and K’tanim U’Pninim, which brought meaningful encounters and lesser-known moments from WLCC’s archives into homes and schools around the world.

‘Tomorrow Was Not Part of His Lexicon’

In 1992, the Rebbe’s health declined and public appearances grew less predictable. Eber helped develop the beeper system that alerted holders whenever the Rebbe appeared in public, allowing them to spend time with the Rebbe.

When Eber noticed the Rebbe needed larger print for parts of the prayers, he arranged to have those pages printed on large paper himself.

After the Rebbe’s passing in 1994, Eber and Halberstam recognized that visitors to the Ohel—the Rebbe’s resting place in Queens, N.Y.—would need somewhere to stay nearby.

Eber helped raise funds, encouraged supporters and personally assisted with payments to get the project built. Since then, millions of visitors have since passed through the welcome center.

Despite his many responsibilities, those who knew Eber describe his warm smile, his genuine interest in every individual, and his generosity.

“My father insisted on helping new immigrants get started when they came to the United States. He gave jobs to yeshivah students who needed it, and gave free photos of the Rebbe to those who couldn’t afford them,” said Rabbi Nissi Eber, who together with his wife Chaya directs the Chabad Jewish Center of FiDi in Manhattan. “He was always offering encouragement to those around him.”

Eber always considered himself a humble soldier of the Rebbe, despite his extraordinary work. Several of his children became Chabad emissaries and encouraged him to attend the annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries as their guest. Eber consistently declined, believing that those who had dedicated their lives to serve as the Rebbe’s emissaries deserved that honor. He never considered himself worthy of standing among them.

“Sholom was a man who saw a need and got it done,” Halberstam said. “He never sat idle. If something needed to be done, it was today. Tomorrow was not part of his lexicon.”

In addition to his wife, Esther, he is survived by their children: Chani Steigman (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Chevy Lepkivker (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Yossi Eber (Trinity, Fla.); Chaya Neuwirth (Bay Harbor, Fla.); Nechama Dina Dubrowski (Tampa, Fla.); Zeldy Stillerman (Islip, N.Y.); and Nissi Eber (New York); and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.