Julien Cohen is a prominent member of Porto's Jewish community and a central figure in the Birkat Cohanim held on the main days of prayer at the Kadoorie synagogue. He is French, closely linked to Chabad Lubavicth and lived for years in Saint Petersburg. As fate would have it, Cohen crossed paths with the Frierdiker Rebbe of blessed memory.

On the 15th of Sivan, 5687 (1927), the Frierdiker Rebbe was arrested by the Soviet regime, accused of ‘counter-revolutionary activities.’ He was apprehended after midnight, from his apartment at Machovaya 22 in Leningrad, now called Petersburg. As always happens historically and everywhere, the Jews lost that property.

For a century, the apartment which was used by the Frierdiker Rebbe for tefilos, farbrengens, and yechidus, was inhabited by local non-Jews. However, two years ago, the apartment was purchased by Julien Cohen, transforming it back to a place for limud haTorah and chassidishe farbrengens.

In July 2024, in honor of Yud Beis Tammuz, Anash.org spoke with Julien and heard from him how he managed to verify the apartment’s location and purchase it.

“The apartment came to me in the most miraculous and effortless way,” Cohen shared, “all the factors were suddenly aligned. I often visited the building in the past, because I knew of the rich history that happened there, that the Frierdiker Rebbe lived there and was arrested from that apartment complex, though, at that time, I was not certain exactly which apartment belonged to the Frierdiker Rebbe.

“One time, while I was there, I met the building’s real estate agent. I told him that I was looking for a specific apartment, one that was owned by a very holy rabbi. A few months later, a realtor from the office called and said he knew I was looking for the apartment of a special rabbi, and that something came up that he wanted me to come see.”

We went to meet the seller who had done all the research to confirm the location of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s apartment. He had looked in the state archives and did all the necessary investigation so that he would buy it. All that was needed was to review the documents.

In the building archives in the government files, they found a map with a drawing from 1930 of all the apartments. There, apartment 12 – from which the Frierdiker Rebbe was arrested – later became apartment 10, and today it is numbered as apartment 67.

Part of the research in locating the apartment included using the testimony of Reb Mendel Morosow, the son of Reb Chonye Morosow, the Frierdiker Rebbe’s secretary. The memories he recalls of his visit when he was 12 years old and visiting the apartment include describing an outside door that enters directly into the apartment, locating the rooms of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s son-in-law, the Rashag who married the eldest daughter of the Frierdiker Rebbe, and the room of Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, a room for yechidus and a davening room.

“I read through the memoirs of Rabbi Althaus and Rabbi Morosow,” Cohen shared. “I looked through all the government archives, and also met with shliach Rabbi Ifrah Abramov of St. Petersburg who is the rabbi of the prisons and he checked all the information. I then went to Chabad and told them the apartment is for sale, but no one was ready to purchase it.

“In a huge hashgacha pratis, a woman contacted me needing to exchange a large number of Euros into Rubles. I therefore had the cash to purchase the apartment immediately, which I did in a 24-hour sale.”

One week later, on the anniversary of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s arrest, Cohen held a grand farbrengen in the newly acquired apartment. Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan, known as ‘The Tzaddik of Leningrad’ for his years of Mesiras Nefesh in Leningrad under communism, flew in from Moscow to see the apartment and join the first farbrengen and minyan in the house after 97 years of silence.

The Frierdiker Rebbe (Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn) and Rebbe Menachem (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson) are deeply and directly connected. They were cousins. Both were direct descendants of the third Chabad Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek. Besides, Rabbi Menachem Mendel married the Frierdiker Rebbe's second daughter, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson, in 1928.

After the Frierdiker Rebbe passed away in 1950, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson formally accepted leadership a year later to become the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe did transform Chabad from a small, insular Hasidic community devastated by the Holocaust into one of the largest, most influential global Jewish organizations in the world.

Under his leadership from 1951 until his passing in 1994, he engineered a radical shift in traditional Orthodoxy by turning the movement outward. Instead of remaining isolated, Chabad built a vast, international network focused on Jewish outreach (kiruv), education, and community revival.