Celebrities praise rebbe’s teachings on 25th anniversary of his death

MARCY OSTER

Campbell added that she would “rededicate” herself to the rebbe’s mission of “creating more light and goodness”.

In 2010, Campbell announced that she had embraced the Kabbalah movement, and that it had helped her turn her life around and control her notorious temper.

Singer and dancer Paula Abdul, who is Jewish, also honoured the rebbe in a tweet to mark his 25th yahrzeit (commemoration of his death), promoting his Shabbat candle campaign, which calls on all Jewish women and girls to light Shabbat candles less than an hour before the start of the Jewish Sabbath.

“His teachings to better our world through unconditional love are more urgent now than ever! Join me in his Shabbat candle campaign, spreading light before sundown this evening,” she tweeted late on Friday afternoon.

An estimated 50 000 people visited the resting place of the rebbe ahead of the 25th anniversary of his passing. The pilgrimage to the burial site in Queens, New York, known as the Ohel, took place last week ahead of the anniversary Saturday, the 3rd of Tamuz on the Hebrew calendar.

Schneerson headed the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement from 1950 until he passed away in 1994 – a movement he helped revive following its post-Holocaust re-establishment in New York. Throughout the year, about 400 000 people visit the Cambria Heights site, many of them not Hasidim or even Jewish, to pay their respects, and reflect on his teachings.