Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born on 11th April 1902 in Nikolaev, Russia and died on 12th June 1994 in New York, USA. He was known as The Rebbe and was a prominent Hasidic rabbi who was the seventh and last Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He was fifth in a direct paternal line to the third Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. In 1950, upon the passing of his predecessor, his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, he assumed the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch. He led the movement until his passing in 1994, greatly expanding its worldwide activities and founding a network of institutions, as of 2006 in 70 countries, to spread Orthodox Judaism. Menachem received mostly a private Jewish education, before studying under his father. Although not attending soviet schools, he did however take exams as an external student and performed well. He married Chaya Mushka Schneerson in 1928, in Warsaw, following which the newly weds moved to live in Berlin. Menachem was said to have studied extensively in both Berlin and Paris but records of achievement as sketchy. After moving from Berlin in 1933, when Adolf Hitler took over and started instituting anti-Semitic policies, he moved to Paris. He learned to speak French, which he put to use in establishing his movement there after the war. The Chabad movement in France was later to attract many Jewish immigrants from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. It was in 1941 that Menachem escaped France on one of the last boats to cross the Atlantic before the U-boat blockade began. He joined his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York and spent some time working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn died in 1950 and it wasn’t until 1951 that Menachem succeeded as leader, after actively refusing the nomination. Menachem believed that the American public was seeking to learn more about their Jewish heritage. He stated, "America is not lost.” Menachem placed a tremendous emphasis on outreach and made great efforts to intensify this program of the movement, bringing Jews from all walks of life to adopt Orthodox Judaism, and aggressively sought the expansion of the baal teshuva movement. He organised the training of thousands of young Chabad rabbis and their wives who were sent all over the world to spread the message. In addition, Menachem oversaw the building of schools, community centres, youth camps, Chabad houses, and built contacts with wealthy Jews and government officials around the world. Strangely, Menachem rarely left Crown Heights in Brooklyn, except for frequent lengthy visits to his father-in-law's grave-site in Queens, New York. He moved into his study above the central Lubavitch synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in 1989, a year after the death of his wife, following the traditional period of mourning. It was from this synagogue that he directed his emissaries' work and involved himself in details of his movement's developments. Such influence from a single place! In 1991, he declared to his followers: "I have done everything I can to bring Moshiach (the Jewish Messiah)), now I am handing over to you (the mission); do everything you can to bring Moshiach!" A campaign was then started to bring the messianic age through "acts of goodness and kindness," and some of his followers placed advertising in the mass media, such as full-page ads in the New York Times urging everyone to prepare for and hasten the messiah's imminent arrival, by increasing in their good deeds. The timing for Menachem was not unreasonable, as he suffered a serious stroke in 1992, which left him unable to speak and with right sided paralysis. Rabbi Menachem M Schneersohn died of heart failure in 1994 at the Beth Israel Medical Centre, having finally agreed to hospitalization. He was unable to verbalize and say anything to confirm or deny his followers' longed-for dream, that he be the actual long-promised Jewish Messiah. However, some believe that he will be the Messiah, and that he will lead the Jewish people to redemption. He was laid to rest on 12th June 1994, next to his father-in-law, the sixth Rebbe, at Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, New York. After his death, a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to bestow on Rabbi Schneerson the Congressional Gold Medal. On November 2, 1994, the bill passed both Houses by unanimous consent, honouring Rabbi Schneerson for his "outstanding and enduring contributions toward world education, morality, and acts of charity". Bill Clinton spoke these words at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony: “The late Rebbe's eminence as a moral leader for our country was recognized by every president since Richard Nixon. For over two decades the Rabbi's movement now has some 2000 institutions; educational, social, medical, all across the globe. We, (The United States Government) recognize the profound role that Rabbi Schneerson had in the expansion of those institutions.”