The Man Who Took a Sabbatical to Investigate Chassidim

The Inside Story of Chabad in America — Through the Mindel Archives

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel archives. Today I want to say that Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mindel was a big pack rat — an extreme pack rat. He kept every letter from the 1940s: the English letters, the Hebrew letters, the Yiddish letters — that's how he was. I have the archives with all the letters that ever existed; nothing was lost.

He wrote the Igrot Kodesh — most of them are also printed in the Igrot Kodesh. Rabbi Hodakov [?] also wrote some of the letters, but I have all the letters, the Yiddish ones included, and he kept them because he was a pack rat.

Now I just want to say that in the Igrot Kodesh I tried to compare the letters in the Igrot Kodesh with the letters that I have, signed by the Rebbe, and I found that some things were taken out — some paragraphs. Now, I know that if something is private, that's fine, but certain things that I noticed were taken out, I don't know why. Because the original letters that I have — the letters are there — I don't know why it was taken out. Maybe the Rebbe himself said to take it out, I don't know why, but there are a lot of letters where the text is not exactly the way it was originally written to the people.

So I want to say today that in the archives — since Rabbi Mindel was a pack rat, he kept every clipping, every paper from the 1940s — I found a clipping, a paper, written by a Jew, not religious at all, who wrote that he took a sabbatical for seven years. The seventh year, he said, he is not working, and he is going to devote that year to find out what Chassidim are, what a rebbe is, what this whole thing is about — because there are different kinds of rebbes, this is not [the same as] that. He wanted to spend a whole year devoting his time to research what he would see.

So I found that clipping. He wrote like this — I'm telling you, this is the way this man writes:

First he came to the Klausenburger Rebbe, the old [Klausenburger Rebbe]. Whenever he saw him he looked holy — long payos, a long beard. He observed the way he went to daven, to pray. He went to daven every day; it wasn't exactly on time — one day he came in ten minutes later, another time an hour later, different times. And he was moving his hands, his feet; he was very much into davening, singing a lot. Sometimes he walked around, [something] was jumping. He observed what happened. Then he saw a tisch — he called it a "tisch," a farbrengen, by us. He sat down, people sat all around, [the Rebbe] gave a sicha — he spoke maybe five, seven minutes, maybe ten minutes — then he relaxed, there was singing, and he was very much impressed.

Then he writes — I'm telling you, this is the way this man writes — he went to the old Satmar Rav. He saw thousands of people, much more than at the Klausenburger. More or less the same conduct, taught the same way. He writes that the Satmar Rebbe fell asleep while everyone was sitting there — he was sleeping — it was more or less, you know, impressive, he writes.

Then he went to the Bobover, the Bobover Rebbe. In those days they were in Crown Heights, I guess, a little more modern, he writes, because they took care that the clothes — made sure the clothes were clean, cleaner than others. They didn't have white socks, some of them. But on Shabbos he saw something different: around four o'clock in the afternoon the Bobover Rebbe came out and he was throwing apples to the people, distributing them — he said like a baseball pitch — and he writes that whoever caught the apple, he saw, was a lucky man, maybe this is a blessing — this is what he observed.

Then he said he went to Lakewood. He wants to tell us that he saw a lot of people there who were litvish — not [bearded], no beards, only the head of the yeshiva had a beard. The yeshiva bochurim were standing, and he observed that the midday davening wasn't with much singing, and after that, after davening, the bochurim went to play baseball. This is what he writes.

Now here I want to say something — this, by the way, was in the weekly clipping, it's not about Shabbos — I want to say something here: there was the Helmitzer Rav [?] — now, there are a lot of letters from the Rebbe to this Rav — he traveled the entire United States to check mezuzos. It was quite a thing. He lived in Cleveland, then he lived in Williamsburg. He has nine volumes of halacha on the subject, with [all his rulings]. Whenever he traveled he always flew by plane, and he always bought two tickets so that a woman shouldn't sit next to him — always two tickets. He never — when he went down in the elevator he made sure there were no ladies there. It was a special person.

Anyway, so this Helmitzer Rav was in Cleveland — he lived in Cleveland, we lived in Cleveland, so we remember this. He went to Telshe once, and in the afternoon [at Mincha], you know, there's a custom — the chazzan starts the chazoras hashatz, leads up to kedusha, then [does] a type of chazoras hashatz because of some litvish custom, and they daven quickly, they rush through until after kedusha, and that's all — and then everybody says the Kedusha quietly, and they don't [complete] the chazoras hashatz. So he saw that, and after that he saw the bochurim went to play baseball. He got very upset. He went to Rabbi Gifter — I remember — and he said to Rabbi Gifter: "I thought they were going to learn — why don't you have a proper chazoras hashatz, especially after they have a recess? I mean, if you have chazoras hashatz you have to do it [properly]." But this was their approach — this was their way of doing chazoras hashatz. This is the way, this is the custom at some of these yeshivos. This is what happened.

So I just want to mention — as another point — he also writes about this: this person went to Belz. He was in Boro Park. He saw the same kind of tisch, and when they [called out to] him, the gallery was full — like thousands of people — higher and higher, higher in fact, all around. And every single time he didn't speak much, but the Belzer Rebbe did speak — but he looked into a paper, and he spoke from the paper, that's it. That's what he writes.

Now, he says, when I came to 770 I observed a different picture. This was in those years when 770 had the shul upstairs — there wasn't a shul downstairs; upstairs was the shul, a small shul, where the Rebbe [davened], and downstairs there was [an office] — but it was open; there was a sukkah, but it wasn't a proper sukkah. So on Friday, for the farbrengen, someone put a canvas on top to cover it, maybe so it shouldn't rain in, and it was cold. That's how they used to farbreng in the early years.

So he writes that they put a canvas [up], and he saw something different than in the other places. When the Rebbe walks in, he writes: "He does not look holy to me, but when I looked at him, his eyes were very, very sharp." He walked in with no extra movement, not much movement, didn't make a fuss of himself, looked very humble, came in every day at the same time to daven. And it was very strange, he writes — when he looks at people, sometimes they all bend down. He says maybe it's because they couldn't look at his eyes — he doesn't know why. This is how he observed it.

Then he saw a farbrengen. He was there on Shabbos, and he was also at a farbrengen — he thought it was a huge crowd, maybe thousands of people — and [the Rebbe] was speaking, speaking for hours and hours and hours. First he spoke for an hour, maybe more than an hour, and everyone was quiet. And then everybody was saying "l'chaim," people were stretching out their cups, and the Rebbe, in between the talks, he says — and each one, he says, he would acknowledge by moving his head to thousands of people, everyone — this is a sign they drank the wine. And he looked at each and every one, and he didn't start speaking again until everyone finished saying "l'chaim." In the meanwhile they were all singing. That's what he observed.

Then he also noted — he said he saw how [the Rebbe] cared about everyone. He never looked in a paper, sitting maybe six, seven hours, the whole night farbrenging. But the most striking thing is two things: number one, the Rebbe — never, seven hours, six hours — never leaned back once; he was sitting upright the entire time. In other words, that farbrengen he saw was something spiritual — it wasn't like other rebbes who leaned back, who relaxed. This is what he said, this is what impressed him.

Also, before [the farbrengen], he said — he saw the way, he observed that [the Rebbe was] very humble: he tied his finger with the handkerchief, and he closed his eyes, and he swayed in thought — he was like in another world, in a humble way. And this is what made him — this is what made him become religious, from looking at the way this happens. This is — this is the sincerity of the Rebbe that he saw. It was a very interesting clipping that I found in the archives.

Now I want to finish off with a short story that happened after [one of these events]. After Sukkos, the Frierdiker Rebbe used to eat upstairs, in his apartment, on Yom Tov — when Rebbetzin Nechama Dina was alive — ten people at the table. And a bochur used to come and watch the way the Rebbe conducted the table: the Rebbe used to sit [at the head], and on the left side his son-in-law, and on the right side his [other] son-in-law, used to sit at the table. And afterward, the same way, [Rabbi Menachem Mendel] also sat at a table in that manner — that's how it was — and people watched.

So there was a Rabbi Mentlik [?], who was a gabbai of 770. So somebody asked Rabbi Mentlik, "Why don't you ever go upstairs and watch the way they conduct themselves on Yom Tov?" Everybody goes. Rabbi Mentlik, being a chossid of the Frierdiker Rebbe, said, "When the Rebbe is going to sit at that table [i.e., when Rabbi Menachem Mendel becomes Rebbe] — that's when I'm going to go upstairs. Before then, I'm not going to go upstairs." And this is called his kesher — he was connected to the Rebbe, even though it's sometimes not easy to transfer one's connection from one Rebbe to another. But his devotion was so strong that he said, this thought: "I cannot — I want that it should specifically be him there." This is the kesher of a true chossid.

So I would like to say that we should all learn a lesson from this — the connection, the kesher, we should have to the Rebbe. And when we speak of hiskashrus, it means — like this man was moser nefesh [self-sacrificing] [unclear] — just like [unclear] — we should also look at the way it's obvious, like this man became [religious] from watching, from the Rebbe. That's what happened — the way he conducted himself. We should learn a lesson from this.

Next week we will continue our weekly program. Thank you.