A 14 Word Response From The Rebbe

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel archives. I want to share with you an unusual anecdote of a personal nature between Rabbi Mindel and the Rebbe. Rabbi Mindel shared this — what I'm going to tell you now. [Yiddish/Hebrew – unclear.] I heard this; I was there when Rabbi Mindel told this to Rabbi Weinberg, and Rabbi Weinberg said, "We can learn a lot from this, from this story that I'm going to tell you — an amazing story."

And since it's close to Gimmel Tammuz, I'm going to share this story. There are two weeks until Gimmel Tammuz, so I'll have a Gimmel Tammuz program this week, and maybe even next week, before Gimmel Tammuz — also about Gimmel Tammuz — but this week I want to tell this story. Gimmel Tammuz, of course, is a yom kasheh [difficult day]. I can't believe it's already twenty-nine years since Gimmel Tammuz — it's unbelievable, unbelievable. So you'll have to wait until the end of this program — there's a fourteen-line letter at the end — that will be the highlight of what I'm going to tell you now.

Here — most of you are familiar with how the English, Hebrew, Russian correspondence — how did it come about? We already spoke about this many times. He would go in to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe would give dictation. I have all these notebooks — these notebooks were kept in the Rebbe's room. Rabbi Mindel came in with a notebook each time. The Rebbe opened up every single letter and said, "This letter should be answered in Hebrew, this letter in English, this letter in Yiddish, this letter in Russian," or other languages, and Rabbi Mindel wrote it all down — he knew shorthand, and he wrote down all of this that you see right here. There's much, much more — hundreds and hundreds. This is just from myself, fifty years [of this], so these are the letters. And here you find a lot of things that — I'm going to have to share with you maybe another time — insights Rabbi Mindel has into what the Rebbe told him when he was dictating, without — stories the Rebbe told him. He told me that they're all in here, there's hundreds like that. This is amazing, and this is how it looked — I just want to show you this.

So Rabbi Mindel would go in and take dictation, go home, compose the letters — whether the English letters, or Hebrew letters, or Russian letters — and then bring them back to the Rebbe. Sometimes he didn't understand exactly what the Rebbe meant, and he had a hard time. Sometimes the Rebbe would say, after he had written it down, "That's not what I meant," so he had to do it over again — only he had to do it, it's very important. This went on for fifty years, until — when it stopped, it didn't really stop completely, more or less it stopped, because of Rabbi Mindel's own situation — in any case, sometimes the Rebbe erased things, sometimes added things, so he had to go back and type it again, until the Rebbe looked it over and said it's okay. [The letters were] never signed — this is how the letters came about.

So, as I said, the Rebbe opened up every single letter. One letter he opened up, and he was reading it, and reading it, and he started smiling. The Rebbe gave it to Rabbi Mindel and said, "Read the letter." He read the letter and gave it back to the Rebbe. The Rebbe was smiling and said, "Nu, what do you say about this?" And then he said again, "Nu, what do you say?" This is what Rabbi Mindel was telling Rabbi Weinberg, what I heard: "Nu, what do you say about this?" You know, Rabbi Mindel was a chossid — he would never presume to answer the Rebbe. He didn't answer. "Nu" again, "Nu" again — he did not answer the Rebbe.

This reminds me of not answering the Rebbe. I heard once about Rabbi Pekarski [?] — he was a Rosh Yeshiva, in the [19]70s, a big [person] in the big yeshiva in London. He married off his grandchild [?], and after the chuppah they were standing upstairs, by the hall near the Rebbe's room, near the shul. The Rebbe was giving out dollars, and he gave out [one], and then he turned to Rabbi Pekarski and said to him, "Can a hedyot make a melech?" — meaning, whenever [the Rebbe] gives a dollar, he says it should be put toward tzedakah or something, but this time he asked, "Can a hedyot [a commoner] make a melech [a king]?" And he looked at him, and [Rabbi Pekarski] gave no answer. Rabbi Pekarski would not answer — same thing, you don't answer such things, especially when [the Rebbe] calls himself a hedyot — you surely won't answer. And [the Rebbe] waited and waited, until he gave him the dollar — that's what happened.

But what I'm trying to say is that Rabbi Mindel didn't answer the Rebbe when the Rebbe asked him what he thought about this letter. Now, here is what the letter was about: this person writes to Rabbi Mindel, in English, about [a shidduch] — he wrote to Rabbi Mindel because he felt it wasn't for him, and he wrote to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe asked him what he should do. So Rabbi Mindel told him to continue, because sometimes if you continue, you'll come to like [the person], and sometimes the Rebbe says to stop. In this case the Rebbe said continue, so he continued. That's what he writes to [Rabbi Mindel]. A second time, he went again, and he said, "I'm still not sure," and the Rebbe again said continue, and he continued, because the Rebbe said so — not because he himself wanted to. A third time, I think he again said he wasn't sure, but anyway, he married her — he married her not because he was sure, but because he felt that the Rebbe felt this should be his wife.

Now he writes [to Rabbi Mindel] that he is going to divorce. He has complaints — he says, "Because of you I am going to divorce, because you told me three times to continue, and twice I asked you what you say, and you didn't answer." And after three months, they divorced. I mean, what does that mean — you tell someone three times to continue, and after three months they divorce?

So — that reminds [him]. This is a story: Yirmiyahu could have saved Yerushalayim. He had a meeting with the king — I believe Nevuchadnetzar [?] — or the chief general, to spare Yerushalayim and [prevent] the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Instead, he asked the king not to destroy the Beis Hamikdash, but that [the Romans, sic] should not destroy [a certain place] — that there should be Torah in the world. Why did he do it this way? Why didn't he ask that they fulfill [the original request], so there wouldn't be a churban? Because sometimes Hashem makes it so that a person's answer comes out from "the back," and their minds become crooked — and that's the way Hashem wants it — not that they are right or wrong; Hashem wants it to happen like this.

You find this also [elsewhere]. He thought, maybe — I'm not saying this is definitely so, but maybe — that's the way Hashem wanted it. [There is the example of Moshe Rabbeinu,] who hit the rock, and he was blamed, even though he wasn't embarrassed by what happened, because that was the way Hashem wanted it. [There is the example of] Pinchas, when he killed Zimri — Moshe forgot the halacha at that moment; maybe that's the way Hashem wanted it. [There is another example, unclear, relating to the lineage of Moshiach.] We know that a lot of great tzaddikim during the Holocaust stayed — they didn't leave. Why? That's the way Hashem wanted it — there's a purpose in the world. So [the lesson is] that sometimes a person answers or acts in a certain way, and this is what happened.

Now listen to the punchline. I found the letter — fourteen lines — written later to that person, the one who divorced, with blessing. Listen to the answer, listen to the letter:

"This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter. May Hashem grant fulfillment of your heart's desire for good, in regard to yourself and all your family, including the matter which is of immediate concern. More specifically, there is surely no need to emphasize to you the importance of preserving family unity and harmony, especially the praiseworthy act of remarrying one's divorced wife, and how it is connected with a special divine blessing for healthy children — through which the proper channel is, of course, re-establishing the mutual life on the basis of the Torah and mitzvos, as set forth in the Shulchan Aruch. There is also the assurance that when one is determined to do a good thing, one receives special help from Above."

And the Rebbe gives him a big blessing. So sometimes — why did it have to go through this? Only Hashem knows. Why did he have to divorce, and then get married again? Nobody knows — that's the way Hashem wanted it. There are a lot of things the Gemara explains about this — but if you think about it, it looks like a mistake; but this is what it is. And the same thing goes for whatever [the Rebbe] answered this person.

Now, did the Rebbe know they were going to divorce? I don't know. There was a known story — a story with Reb Shop [?] — everybody knows this story — that somebody asked [the Rebbe] about his father, whether he should go to Israel, I think by ship or by plane — I don't remember exactly. The Rebbe said not to go, but he went anyway, by ship [or plane], and something happened — it crashed. So the son came to Reb Shop [?] and said, "The Rebbe said not to go, but he went" — and he asked, "Why didn't you tell me? Of course I wouldn't have let my father go if I'd known it would crash." So Reb Shop [?] said, "I didn't know — but you have to listen to whatever the Rebbe says, because the Rebbe is connected with Hashem." So this is how it [happened] — this person had to remarry again. Fine — did the Rebbe know? I don't know.

So I thought I would share this story with you. I think the same thing happens many times regarding the Rebbe's instructions about checking tefillin — to look over the tefillin. The person writes to the Rebbe, "I looked over the tefillin, and it's kosher." [The Rebbe says], "Look again." "It's kosher." And then later they find there is something wrong. I mean, the Rebbe doesn't say something for no reason — there's always something there. There's a story with a shidduch — I remember once the Rebbe answered a question about a couple — before they got engaged, the Rebbe said that one has to be very, very careful.

So now, a couple of weeks before Gimmel Tammuz, I thought I would share with you this story that Rabbi Mindel told Rabbi Weinberg. Next week we will continue our weekly program. Thank you. Thank you.