Shimon shemtov biography

In the Genes

Rabbi Shemtov was born in Philadelphia in 1968, the fifth child of Rabbi Avraham and Batsheva Shemtov. His father was personally appointed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson ztz”l, to represent Chabad-Lubavitch in Washington.

Rabbi Shemtov was a young boy when his father started commuting from Philadelphia to serve in the nation’s capital in the 1970s, and remembers his first introduction to the political world.

“When I was about 14,” he recalls during a conversation in Washington, “I began to help my father organize programs for 11 Nissan — the Rebbe’s birthday and a prominent day in Chabad that is dedicated to chinuch,” an event that today is called Education and Sharing Day.

“Senators and congressmen regularly attended the program in honor of that occasion and that was the first time I interacted with senior political officials.”

As a yeshivah bochur, Levi Shemtov would occasionally travel to Washington to help his father wi