t was 8 o'clock on a Wednesday evening, late in June 1975. The main hall of 770 Eastern Parkway was filled with excited attendees who had been notified of this surprise gathering only four hours earlier. Little did they know that within the next two hours, the Rebbe would launch two more of his iconic mitzvahcampaigns: the kosher campaign and the âfamily purityâ campaign. These would be numbers seven and eight in the now-famous ten-point mitzvah campaign for spreading Jewish awareness and observance.
The first campaign was launched back in 1967 when the Rebbe encouraged Jewish men to put on tefillin in response to the fearful situation in Israel at the time. What followed was the miraculous and historic victory now known as the Six-Day War. And again, leading up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Rebbe launched several more mitzvah campaigns, including the mezuzah campaign, tzedakah campaign, and Shabbat candle campaign.