Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe
The Frierdiker Rebbe
Began	21 March 1920
Ended	28 January 1950
Predecessor	Sholom Dovber Schneersohn
Successor	Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Personal details
Born	9 (21 NS) June 1880 Lyubavichi, Mogilev Governorate
Died	28 January 1950 NS Brooklyn
Buried	29 January 1950, Queens
Dynasty	Chabad Lubavitch
Parents	Sholom Dovber Schneersohn Shterna Sarah
Spouse	Nechamah Dina
Children	Chana Gurary Chaya Mushka Schneerson Shaina Horenstein

Yosef Yitzchak (Joseph Isaac) Schneersohn (Hebrew: יוסף יצחק שניאורסאהן‎‎) was an Orthodox rabbi and the sixth Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Chabad Lubavitch chasidic movement. He is also known as the Frierdiker Rebbe (Yiddish for "Previous Rebbe"), the Rebbe RaYYaTz, or the Rebbe Rayatz (an acronym for Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak). After many years of fighting to keep Orthodox Judaism alive from within the Soviet Union, he was forced to leave; he continued to conduct the struggle from Latvia, and then Poland, and eventually the United States, where he spent the last ten years of his life.

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn was born in Lyubavichi, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Smolensk Oblast, Russia), the only son of Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (the Rebbe Rashab), the fifth Rebbe of Chabad. He was appointed as his father's personal secretary at the age of fifteen; in that year, he represented his father in the conference of communal leaders in Kovno. The following year (1896) he participated in the Vilna Conference, where Rabbis and community leaders discussed issues such as: genuine Jewish education; permission for Jewish children not to attend public school on Shabbat; the creation of a united Jewish organization for the purpose of strengthening Judaism. He participated in this conference again in 1908.

On 13 Elul 5657 (1897) at the age of seventeen he married a distant cousin, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina Schneersohn, daughter of Rabbi Avraham Schneerson of Chișinău, son of Rabbi Yisroel Noach of Nizhyn, son of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Tzemach Tzedek.