82 Years Since the Frierdiker Rebbe Arrived in USA

Transcript

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives.

Today... it's a Rosh Chodesh, it's [the end of Adar Aleph] and it's over, and the other [day] is a Rosh Chodesh too. Sometimes you write a daled instilled with a yud — so Adar Aleph is an aleph, dalet is Hashem, and it's a Yom Tov that we rejoice — rejoicing, wine, yayin.

Now, I once heard a vort that yayin has the same gematria as [a word I'll call "lekka" — unclear]. Yayin is yud-yud-nun: yud is 10, yud is 10, that's 20, nun is 50, that's 70. And [lekka], with a kuf-resh-[?], is 208. So how is it the gematria is different — that's 70 and that's 208? So you drink a little bit more wine — two times 70. Two times 70 is 140 [he says 210] — [lekka] is 208 — so there you have it. So if you drink a little more wine, that's more, so you have another piece of cake, a little more cake, and if not, you drink more wine, until you drink more wine, until you become [unable to tell the difference, "ad delo yada"].

You know, this reminds me — I know of a chossid, he's already niftar, from Illinois [?], who used to come — not every year, but many times — before Kol Nidrei, Yom Kippur. He used to come and he used to be drunk. Once he explained why: why do you drink before Kol Nidrei, Yom Kippur, a day of judgment? He said: Yom Kippur is, to him, like Purim — Purim is, to him, the highest thing, and Yom Kippur is a day of judgment. A drunkard — the Satan, the accuser — doesn't prosecute someone who is drunk. So he wanted, on Yom Kippur, to be like Purim — that's what he wanted.

Anyway, he said — after the last two programs, we had the question whether we should put a letter at the Ohel and get an answer, whether that's the Rebbe's shita, or whether the Rebbe holds that you should [write a letter]. So we explained in the last few programs — baruch Hashem, I got an excellent response, especially from non-Chabad people, and I had very positive phone calls, and I was asked to explain what the Rebbe means, whether you should say [a pan], or whether you should put a letter in the Igeres and get an answer.

This week — or next week — will be 82 years since Tes Adar Beis, since the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America. He came on Tes Adar Beis. As I once spoke of, he had 11 people with him. He went from Riga — he took a plane to Sweden, and from Sweden they took a boat, a ship, to New York. The journey was 13 days. It was a very stormy journey, very painful. The Frierdiker Rebbe was not young, he wasn't well begashmius — he had gone through the most horrific time in Russia, under the Russian Communist regime. He was tortured — we all know the story, he was in prison, we all know the whole story of his mesirus nefesh, his pushing himself, his mesirus nefesh for Torah and mitzvos. And I don't think there was ever a Rebbe who suffered as much as the Frierdiker Rebbe, and as he writes himself, he went through sheva madoreigos Gehinnom.

So he wasn't well, he had a very hard time on the boat. Rabbi Mindel told me this, and he wrote down certain notes. Rabbi Chaikin [?] was there as well, and now he's coming to America, Tes Adar Beis, before Purim. He's coming to a gashmius'dike, materialistic country — they used to call America a treife medina. And he told Rabbi Mindel and Rabbi [Chaikin?], before he arrived, that he's coming to America — "America" comes from the words "am reik," an empty nation. America is like ice, a piece of ice, and we're coming to break the ice of America. People here had no Yiddishkeit, no feeling for Yiddishkeit. In those days you couldn't keep Shabbos — a person had a family, had a job, and if on Friday he said he wouldn't come in on Shabbos, they gave him a pink slip and he had to look for another job. This was in the 1940s. And people told the Frierdiker Rebbe, "You're an old man, you're coming here, you're probably going to become one of us, because you can't be what you want to be here in America." There were no Torah and mitzvos kept here — there was a perverted Torah and mitzvos. And the Frierdiker Rebbe called in the rabbonim, the rabbis, warned them, warned them a few times, quite a few times. The whole Shabbos [situation] — at a gathering of rabbis [unclear], he was screaming about it — the stores were open on Shabbos, women went with pocketbooks on Shabbos, people drove cars on Shabbos.

And then he mentioned — I don't know why he said this — women went shopping for bread on Shabbos. That's how [things were] — I don't know why he used that word, but there was hardly any [observance]; the ignorance was unbelievable in those days. And he's coming to break the ice of America.

Now, speaking about Shabbos, I just want to mention that I heard from Rabbi Altein [?] — he once told me that the Rebbe told him, and he said it's written somewhere, I don't know where, that the shuls, the rabbonim, or Chabad Houses, when they give out a Friday bulletin, a paper before Shabbos, the bottom should always say that one can't drive a car on Shabbos. That's what he told me, and he heard it from the Rebbe. So I just wanted to mention that.

It also reminds me — regarding Shabbos, I had a group in Long Island, adult education, not religious people. They once asked me if they could come for Pesach, to my house, for the Seder. So I was wondering — all of a sudden — what should I do? I mean, they have to go back by car. So Rabbi Groner [?] says that if, let's say, you have 10 people coming, you have to have 10 beds ready for them, and you have to tell them that they can sleep over — you have to have the beds ready, mamash — and if they say no, then you can't have them; otherwise you're causing them to be mechalel Shabbos. Anyway, that's a side point.

So the parsha came before Purim, and the parsha — the Rebbe said, some of this is from the notes of Rabbi Mindel — Haman comes from Amalek. And on Purim we read the parsha of when the Yidden went out of Egypt, Mitzrayim; they went toward Mattan Torah, and Amalek came and had a war with them. What kind of war did he wage? He called out to them mockingly about their bris milah [?]. They were so [proud] to receive the Torah, Amalek says, "I'm also a son of Avraham, I'm also a son of Yitzchak — don't get excited that you learn the whole Torah, you need the mitzvos maasiyos, practically." This is what Amalek called out to them.

So it says "vayezanev bach" — he weakened you. Why does it have to say he weakened you? So Chazal tell us — this is from the Frierdiker Rebbe, I have notes here — he made their hands weak, from tefillin. So the Frierdiker Rebbe asks: it should have said "charafu libam v'roshom" — he weakened their heart, their head — but what does it mean, "their hands weak, from tefillin"? What does it mean? That's what Amalek did.

So he explains: the hands means this — this was the fight that the Frierdiker Rebbe had here also, the mitzvos maasiyos. And one of the mitzvos — everything, everything — he called off, "you want to sing a niggun, that's all" — but one of the ikarim that he said, and he told Rabbi Chaikin [?] — he was here, the Frierdiker Rebbe, eleven years before 1940 — he says, over here he had a problem with Yidden putting on tefillin. Tefillin has to do with hands, and he explained it like this, and I think they've mentioned it before: a person puts on tefillin — he puts on the shel yad, he puts on the shel rosh; he puts on the shel yad first, then puts on the shel rosh; he takes off the shel rosh first, and then he takes off the shel yad. What does it say in the shel yad of a Yid? "Shema Yisroel, Hashem..." — how much we love Hashem. What does it say in Hashem's tefillin, so to speak? It also says how much Hashem loves every single Yid. Just like we put on the shel y