Which Ballot Do You Cast? The Chabad Outlook on Elections | Rabbi Menachem Brod #018

00:00 Speaker 1 The elections are in two days, and to help make some sense of the Chabad perspective, what does the Rebbe say about the subject? Is it important to vote? Who should we vote for? I sat down for a fascinating conversation with Rabbi Menachem Brod, editor of Sichat HaShavua. Throughout the episode, you’ll be able to see images of the Rebbe’s written responses that Rabbi Brod mentions in our conversation. This episode personally gave me a lot of clarity on the subject, and I invite you to listen too. I’m Meir Vishnapsky, and you’re listening to On Chabad Education. Rabbi Menachem Brod, good week.

00:29 Speaker 2 A good and blessed week.

00:30 Speaker 1 Welcome, and thank you very much for your time.

00:33 Speaker 2 My pleasure.

00:33 Speaker 1 Great. So, today we’re going to talk about the elections. We’re two days away from the elections, recording on Motzaei Shabbos, and I’m coming to this confused myself. I mean, as Chabad chassidim we get so many messages on our phones, and there are so many things being published. In this episode, I’d like us to try to bring some perspective, sort things out a little, and understand the Rebbe’s perspective on elections.

00:55 Speaker 2 Maybe I’ll give away a little spoiler: I’m not going to say who to vote for.

00:59 Speaker 1 That’s a shame. A lot of people will be disappointed.

01:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:02 Speaker 1 No, but that’s true, and I think it’s part of the confusion. So let’s start. First, for anyone who doesn’t know you—I remember you from a young age as Chabad’s spokesperson, and today you’re also the editor of Sichat HaShavua. Tell us a little about yourself: how did you get into spokesperson work and writing? Then we’ll get to the heart of the matter.

01:26 Speaker 2 Even when I was in yeshiva, I was involved in writing up the Rebbe’s sichos. The Rebbe’s sichos appeared in Yiddish, and people who couldn’t read Yiddish had a hard time with them. Here at the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad, around 5739, I think, an initiative began to translate the sichos into Hebrew. It came out in a very limited, duplicated edition, but there was still an audience receiving it. They asked several bochurim to translate, and I was one of them. It turned out I had some talent for it. After that, we spent a year on shlichus in Migdal HaEmek, where an initiative had started the year before. At that time, the Rebbe would hold farbrengens on Motzaei Shabbos, rather than on Shabbos.

02:13 Speaker 1 What years are we talking about?

02:14 Speaker 2 This was after the heart incident. After the heart incident, the Rebbe began holding farbrengens on Motzaei Shabbos rather than on Shabbos, because it was too much exertion on Shabbos. Until around the middle of the summer of 5745, the Rebbe held farbrengens on Motzaei Shabbos, so you could listen and immediately—

02:31 Speaker 1 Live.

02:32 Speaker 2 You could listen live, and you could also put together a sort of summary. That’s how this initiative began, with the bochurim in Migdal HaEmek—the first group, who had arrived a year before me. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Ginsburg, a”h, wrote up the sichos at the time, and it was called Tochen HaFarbrengen. We would prepare it within two or three days and distribute it throughout the country.

02:55 Speaker 1 By Tuesday, you already had the sicha that—

02:57 Speaker 2 There was a summary.

02:58 Speaker 1 A summary, yes.

02:58 Speaker 2 A summary of the sicha. It was a booklet containing the gist of the sicha. After that first group finished and went on kevutzah, and we came to take their place, I was asked to continue the project, and I started writing from time to time. Later, when I arrived for kevutzah, there was also a sheet being published called Likrat Shabbat. It was issued by the Committee for Hebrew Speakers.

03:25 Speaker 1 That was here in Israel?

03:27 Speaker 2 In New York.

03:27 Speaker 1 Oh, in New York.

03:28 Speaker 2 Yes. It was a sheet put out by the Committee for Hebrew Speakers and distributed mainly through the mivtzoim. That had also started before I arrived. When I came, the bochur who had been doing it went back to Israel, and they asked me to write it. That year I also wrote the diary—the diary of 5741. From there, it developed to the point where I began working at Tzeirei Agudas Chabad, in charge of publishing and publicity. Until then, there had been no such position at all. If something needed to be put out, they’d turn to Moishele, to Berel, to Yankel: “Write something, put something together.”

04:04 Speaker 1 So something more organized took shape.

04:05 Speaker 2 And then a department was created—a publishing, editing and distribution department.

04:10 Speaker 1 What kinds of things were you working on then?

04:13 Speaker 2 Everything. Leaflets, materials for the holidays—things began to develop.

04:18 Speaker 1 Okay, and from there it also led to Sichat Ha—

04:21 Speaker 2 A few years later, the idea for Sichat HaShavua came up. Yes.

04:25 Speaker 1 Today it’s in a great many shuls in Israel, across all sorts of communities and backgrounds.

04:30 Speaker 2 In Israel and around the world.

04:31 Speaker 1 Yes, it’s well known around the world too. Is it in Hebrew, or in other languages?

04:35 Speaker 2 No. There are various translations, or publications inspired by it that aren’t exactly translations. But as for Sichat HaShavua itself, some shluchim receive an edition from us adapted to their needs, with their advertisements and addresses. They print it locally.

04:51 Speaker 1 Meaning that if a shliach has a large Hebrew-speaking community, he can distribute it there.

04:55 Speaker 2 He places an order and receives a print-ready PDF with all his details—whatever he needs, whether it’s his advertisements, his news, and so on.

05:06 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:07 Speaker 2 And some are happy to print the edition as it is, without any customization. So they simply print it locally. A great many people also receive it as online subscribers and so on.

05:17 Speaker 1 When do you start? On what day do you write what’s going to come out this coming Friday? It’s Motzaei Shabbos now. When do you start writing it?

05:25 Speaker 2 Usually on Sunday, sometimes on Thursday. This week, for example, we moved it up to Thursday because Election Day is a day off.

05:32 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

05:33 Speaker 2 Tuesday is usually the day the issues are sent out, and since the distribution companies will be closed, people might receive them late if we don’t move things up. So we did it on Thursday.

05:44 Speaker 1 You already wrote it.

05:45 Speaker 2 We wrote it and printed it. The issue is ready. That’s it.

05:48 Speaker 1 Nice. Okay, so how do you actually sit down to write something like that? You know it reaches so many different kinds of people. You said it goes out in Israel and around the world, printed and sent out. How do you decide what to write? Of everything that happens during the week, how do you choose what to write about that week?

06:03 Speaker 2 It varies a great deal. Sometimes it’s a topic in Judaism or Chassidus. Sometimes it’s connected to a date. Sometimes I write about a subject that’s made the headlines. Actually, the whole idea for Sichat HaShavua came about because, almost a year after our wedding, we moved to Bat Yam. I was living in Tel Aviv then and was looking for somewhere close to work where I could also do some shlichus. If I live in Kfar Chabad, broadly speaking, that doesn’t do anything for anyone, right? But if I live in Bat Yam, I can contribute on Shabbos, in the evenings, and so on. I didn’t have any formal role in Bat Yam, but just by living there, you become involved.

06:54 Speaker 1 A chossid creates an environment.

06:56 Speaker 2 Yes. So I began to get to know the phenomenon of what you might call “shul Jews,” something I hadn’t really encountered before. In your mind, a shul is where religious people come to daven. But you go into shuls in Bat Yam and see a huge crowd that isn’t religious. People come in, put on a kippah, and then leave. Suddenly you realize that many of them may go home afterward, make Kiddush and watch television, and drive to the beach the next day. You begin to understand that there’s a huge population of Jews who aren’t really immersed in a world of Yiddishkeit. Their point of contact with Yiddishkeit is Friday night: they come to shul, while throughout the week they’re exposed to the media and everything that comes with it, and hardly exposed to anything else. Maybe the rabbi’s sermon—that’s it. The truth is, I’d been thinking for years that perhaps we should do something in Israel similar to the sheet we’d made in New York. The idea kept developing, and Chabad Houses did begin distributing sheets. They would take copies of Likrat Shabbat, which came out in New York, and duplicate them using all sorts of very crude technical methods, and the results were—

08:16 Speaker 1 In those days, it didn’t come out well.

08:18 Speaker 2 It didn’t look good or respectable. And then something else happened around that time: a campaign began against the wave of people returning to Jewish observance.

08:28 Speaker 1 What years are we talking about?

08:29 Speaker 2 We’re talking about the mid-1980s. A very strong campaign began, and the media threw its full weight behind it, giving it every bit of support it could. All kinds of organizations sprang up—a group to prevent a chareidi takeover, and others like it. They presented a very definite picture of what becoming observant supposedly looked like: a person becomes chareidi, cuts himself off from his family, doesn’t work, and so on. That’s how they created the impression that becoming observant was a disaster. And when you tried to get a different picture into the media—to say, “Come and meet families who live well and—”

09:15 Speaker 1 In peace, and—

09:16 Speaker 2 “—work, and stay close to their families, and everything”—we felt that avenue was blocked. The media was simply closed to it. Maybe once in a while you could slip something in. So I said to myself: Look, huge numbers of people come to shul and then go home. They’ve davened; they’ve said Lechu Neranena and Hodu. But they haven’t been exposed to another perspective. That’s how the idea took shape: to make a sheet that would be distributed on a mass scale to shuls. A Jew coming to shul could read it there or take it home, and find both Jewish content and a perspective on current events from our point of view.

09:54 Speaker 1 Right.

09:54 Speaker 2 And on the back page, he could read stories about baalei teshuvah who were interesting people, people doing all sorts of things. He wouldn’t be left with that image of a baal teshuvah as someone who cuts himself off. There was a song back then—what was it called? Arik Einstein sang about Uri Zohar: “I’ve Lost a Friend.”

10:16 Speaker 1 Right.

10:17 Speaker 2 That was the feeling.

10:18 Speaker 1 Right, that he was gone.

10:20 Speaker 2 So we decided to put the idea into practice. Even in our wildest dreams, we didn’t anticipate such enormous success. We were talking about perhaps reaching twenty or thirty thousand copies.

10:36 Speaker 1 Amazing.

10:36 Speaker 2 But before long it reached a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred thousand copies. Only financial limitations held us back, because demand was always much greater. You go into a shul and see that Sichat HaShavua disappears immediately, and people are looking for it.

10:51 Speaker 1 Yes, there’s no question that it’s part of what you find on the table today. Well.

10:56 Speaker 2 This year we’ll mark forty years. The first issue of Sichat HaShavua appeared before 19 Kislev 5747.

11:03 Speaker 1 Wow.

11:04 Speaker 2 So it’s forty years for us, yes.

11:06 Speaker 1 Is there anything special you’re planning...?

11:08 Speaker 2 I don’t know. About a year and a half ago we marked the two-thousandth issue, so I don’t know how much more excitement I can muster. We’ll see.

11:14 Speaker 1 Well, to our subject. Actually, when I was in shul this week, I read what you wrote about elections. I’m glad we’re sitting down together—let’s try to bring some clarity to this. I think we should start at the beginning. What is the Rebbe’s basic view on elections? Should you vote or not? I work with young men of yeshiva age, and some of them are voting for the first time. They ask me, “Am I supposed to travel three hours from Tzfas to my polling station just to vote?” What is the Rebbe’s view? Let’s try to clarify it.

11:48 Speaker 2 Well, we need to distinguish between two things. First, the Rebbe was very particular that Chabad not identify with any political party.

12:00 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

12:00 Speaker 2 In other words, Chabad isn’t identified with any party.

12:04 Speaker 1 How far did that go? The Rebbe never...

12:09 Speaker 2 The Rebbe did not agree to Chabad being identified with any party. When you see a Chabad chossid, you know he’s a Chabad chossid. He isn’t Shas, Agudah, Mafdal, Degel, or Ben-Gvir. He’s a Chabad chossid. He comes in the name of Chabad, not in the name of any party. He has no affiliation with a political party. The Rebbe also explained that the Hebrew word for “party” is related to the word for “division,” while Chabad belongs to all of Klal Yisroel, to the entire Jewish people. So it cannot be identified with something associated with division.

12:39 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

12:40 Speaker 2 We’re sitting here in Kfar Chabad, and Kfar Chabad paid a very heavy price for this. There’s a letter in which the Rebbe writes: “When Chabad chassidim came to the Holy Land some years ago, they were broken and battered physically, and had nothing in the way of money or the means to settle and adjust to normal life. Yet all of them, even those born under Soviet rule, wore beards and were meticulous about every detail of rabbinic law, and so on. They asked the religious party in the Holy Land for advice and assistance.”

13:15 Speaker 1 Which party was that then—Agudah? When was this?

13:17 Speaker 2 Probably Agudas Yisroel, or perhaps others. “The party’s representative...” It could also have been Mizrachi.

13:23 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:23 Speaker 2 I don’t know exactly whom he meant. “The party’s representative made it a prior condition that every one of the newcomers take out a membership card in that party. This was even before the Knesset elections. They said explicitly that if the newcomers did not comply, they would not help them—and, of course, they kept their word.”

13:42 Speaker 1 So—

13:42 Speaker 2 Then the Rebbe says that when they approached others—he probably means the people of Mapai—“they, by contrast, helped as much as they possibly could, without any conditions, even in matters contrary to their party’s program and their party conscience. If only certain politicians in the religious parties would attain that standard as well.” Kfar Chabad really suffered, because in those years everything was allocated according to party affiliation. They said outright: “You want help?”

14:09 Speaker 1 Become—

14:10 Speaker 2 “Become members of the party. Take out a membership booklet.” But the Rebbe insisted that they not do so.

14:17 Speaker 1 Throughout all the years?

14:18 Speaker 2 Throughout all the years. Kfar Chabad, and Chabad chassidim in general, were not to be identified with a party or be party members.

14:23 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

14:25 Speaker 2 As a result, the village really was in very difficult circumstances. They didn’t help it.

14:29 Speaker 1 In the early years, too?

14:30 Speaker 2 In the early years. In fact, it was the attack here in Kfar Chabad in 5716, at the vocational school, that put Kfar Chabad on the map. Suddenly people began to be more receptive to it. The ones who helped were Shazar and other people from other parties. The religious and chareidi parties are more helpful today, but in the past they didn’t help. Their attitude was, “You’re not ours; you don’t vote for us. Why should we allocate funding to you?”

15:02 Speaker 1 And the reason is what you said: when someone sees Chabad, a Chabad chossid, or someone coming in Chabad’s name, he knows that person isn’t identified with any party, because—

15:10 Speaker 2 Yes. He knows the person hasn’t come for votes or for politics. He’s come out of a desire to help you, out of Ahavas Yisroel—to bring you light, joy, all good things. He has no ambition or intention of reaping any political or party benefit from it.

15:30 Speaker 1 Let me take that to the other extreme. If we’re nonpartisan, maybe we shouldn’t vote at all. I’m deliberately taking it to the extreme.

15:37 Speaker 2 Okay, that’s where we need to distinguish between the two things.

15:39 Speaker 1 Yes.

15:39 Speaker 2 On the one hand, I’m not partisan. On the other hand, I’m a citizen, and since I’m a citizen and there are elections and I’m told to choose, to vote, the Rebbe says I must. It isn’t merely that I can. The Rebbe says I must.

15:55 Speaker 1 That’s the Rebbe’s wording in a letter.

15:56 Speaker 2 In very explicit words. The Rebbe begins by relying on the Frierdiker Rebbe’s directive in 5709 concerning the first elections.

16:05 Speaker 1 Here in Israel?

16:06 Speaker 2 What?

16:06 Speaker 1 The first elections in Israel?

16:07 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. It appears in the Frierdiker Rebbe’s Igros Kodesh. He writes: “The elections took place in the winter of 5709.” The Rebbe writes: “In response to your letter of 17 Cheshvan, in which you ask about participation in the elections for the government in Eretz Yisroel: It is certainly incumbent on every person eligible to vote not to forgo this right.” That’s what the Frierdiker Rebbe writes. He continues: “And whom should one join? One should endeavor to join the group of those who are most G-d-fearing, but not those whose entire concern is to create conflict and division between people while waving the banner of Torah and reverence for Heaven.” So you can already see that participation is obligatory, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I must follow the usual frameworks or conventional categories. Rather, I need to really consider—

16:57 Speaker 1 Whom to choose.

16:58 Speaker 2 Where, where am I really contributing to Judaism, to the things that I, as a Chabad chossid, want people to work on and advance, and so on? That was the Frierdiker Rebbe. In those years, when elections began to be held after the Frierdiker Rebbe’s passing, after the Rebbe accepted the nesius, we see the Rebbe following the same approach. So already in 5710[?], there were elections, and the Rebbe wrote: “In response to the question asked by many, please publicize my opinion, suggestion, and request: to participate in large numbers in the elections and vote for chareidi lists, in a way that will ensure the largest possible number of chareidi representatives.”

17:38 Speaker 1 Right. So already here we see the Rebbe saying the same thing, continuing that approach.

17:41 Speaker 2 Right, and later on, too, this came up again and again. In every election, the Rebbe said to participate and vote. Now, in those years the Rebbe also engaged in debates with various zealots who came and said, “How can you vote? You’re supporting it, you’re a partner in it, you become…”

17:58 Speaker 1 Zealots meaning—

17:59 Speaker 2 Satmar, Neturei Karta[?], and various others. Now, with these things you can find arguments without end. But the Rebbe takes a very, very clear line. The Rebbe says—

18:07 Speaker 1 Actually, wait. How does he address the argument? What’s the basis of their claim?

18:10 Speaker 2 If I vote and lend my support, then whatever happens in the country, I’m a partner in it.

18:15 Speaker 1 In other words, things happen that are contrary to Torah and mitzvos.

18:17 Speaker 2 So I’m a partner in it; I supported it. That party is part of a coalition, part of a government, so to speak.

18:25 Speaker 1 It’s a package deal.

18:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:26 Speaker 1 So what is the Rebbe’s response to that?

18:28 Speaker 2 The Rebbe says: If you’re a zealot, why not go all the way? Don’t take an identity card; don’t take payments. The Rebbe doesn’t write this, but later there were child allowances, too.

18:41 Speaker 1 Right.

18:42 Speaker 2 Don’t take child allowances. The Rebbe says: You pay for water. Where does the money for the water go? You buy a stamp at the post office. Where does the money for the stamp go? So be a zealot; cut yourself off from everything. Drink spring water. Right, and—

18:56 Speaker 1 Live in Eretz Yisroel with nothing.

18:58 Speaker 2 And be cut off. But you can’t, when it comes to your material life, live in the country and try to enjoy everything it provides—

19:07 Speaker 1 Right.

19:07 Speaker 2 —and then, when it comes to matters of Judaism, matters of Torah and mitzvos… After all, beyond all the fine words, there’s an election here. One hundred and twenty members will enter the Knesset. Right? Now, say you look at the left, you look at the Arabs, and you want them to have one seat less. You see how he speaks, how that Arab is a hater of Jews. You see a left-wing politician talking about how Chabad needs to be thrown out of the schools, out of the public sphere. You want to weaken him? How do you weaken him? How can you make sure there’s one fewer of them there? The arithmetic is very simple: one gets in, one gets pushed out. You have to get someone else in. I’m not even talking about the positive side. I’m talking about the negative side. To reduce the harm, the only way is to get someone in. So he isn’t perfect; he isn’t exactly my ideal cup of tea. But he’s a thousand times better than the other one. He’ll push that other person out.

20:13 Speaker 1 Because I put a ballot in.

20:14 Speaker 2 Because I put a ballot in and got a representative elected who keeps Torah and mitzvos, who is more or less G-d-fearing, but who is certainly much better than the alternative. He is certainly much better than that Arab who hates Jews. So if I don’t do that, then afterward, what am I doing getting upset that he speaks that way against religion, against the Jewish people, and against security? In quotation marks, you did that; you allowed him to get in.

20:38 Speaker 1 Right. So in effect we’re always voting—even if I say I’m not voting, I—

20:41 Speaker 2 More than that: vote, and encourage others to vote.

20:45 Speaker 1 To that extent—

20:46 Speaker 2 Encourage others—everyone you have influence over.

20:48 Speaker 1 But, but again, vote.

20:49 Speaker 2 Vote.

20:50 Speaker 1 Not to say, “What, the Rebbe—”

20:51 Speaker 2 Vote. The Rebbe also never said… Now, as for the question of whom to vote for, the Rebbe used certain expressions, and there was some change in them. At first the Rebbe said to vote for the most chareidi lists.

21:05 Speaker 1 Right, that’s an expression. I’m from Jerusalem, so it’s an expression I’ve heard more from Jerusalem people.

21:09 Speaker 2 There are parties that use it all the time and quote that particular phrase. But later the Rebbe changed it. In 5741, the Rebbe changed the wording. The Rebbe wrote to vote for those who are “chareidim for the word of Hashem.”

21:21 Speaker 1 Okay.

21:22 Speaker 2 In other words, just because someone is called chareidi doesn’t necessarily mean he is chareidi for the word of Hashem. We’ve also suffered at the hands of chareidi parties when it came to the struggles over Who Is a Jew or Eretz Yisroel. The chareidim weren’t necessarily in favor of the Rebbe’s position, while other parties fought harder for those issues. So when we speak about chareidim, it has to mean chareidim for the word of Hashem: who really follows the things that are Hashem’s word, who follows Torah, halachah, and the Rebbe’s approach, both in matters of Judaism and in matters of security.

21:57 Speaker 1 So what do we have with these things? It’s all a matter of priorities. When it comes to choosing a party—let’s say that, in the end, to vote I have to make the effort, take a day off, use that day to go to—

22:09 Speaker 2 You have to do it even if you need to travel from Tzfas to Eilat. Right.

22:12 Speaker 1 Right. So I travel to Eilat, or wherever I need to go, and stand in line because I need to vote, because that’s what the Rebbe wants from us. I get there, go behind the voting screen, whatever it’s called, and look at the ballots. What do I prioritize? What are the things the Rebbe addressed that I should put at the top of my list? Of course, the landscape changes too. The political landscape has changed since we received the Rebbe’s instructions on this subject. But which things did the Rebbe address? I hear a lot about the most chareidi party, and about the issues of shleimus. Could you expand a little on how I should look at it?

22:46 Speaker 2 First of all, it’s clear that a chossid—and, in general, a Jew who keeps Torah and mitzvos—should not vote for a party that isn’t religious.

22:54 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

22:55 Speaker 2 The Rebbe speaks about chareidi lists, about those who are chareidim for the word of Hashem. A nonreligious party doesn’t meet that definition.

23:03 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

23:04 Speaker 2 Now, when we start talking about the parties within what are called the chareidi lists—there’s another thing, too, and that’s the electoral threshold.

23:11 Speaker 1 Ah.

23:12 Speaker 2 At the time, when Eliezer Mizrahi[?] wanted to run on an independent list, there was discussion of raising the electoral threshold. So the Rebbe wrote to him, “It depends on the conditions of the electoral threshold.” Right. In the end, people thought that the change to the threshold wasn’t significant enough. In any case, for several elections now the threshold has been raised. It’s risen to a level where—at the time there were parties with one seat, one seat or two seats—they raised the threshold so that—

23:50 Speaker 1 It’s only four anyway.

23:52 Speaker 2 It may be a little under four, but broadly speaking it’s four. With fewer than four seats, you don’t get in. And the implications are very, very consequential. In fact, the reason we have a right-wing government for this four-year term is that a party that had been a large party didn’t cross the electoral threshold: Meretz.

24:15 Speaker 1 Right.

24:16 Speaker 2 Meretz didn’t cross the threshold. That brought down the left. It gave the right sixty-four seats and made it possible to form a coalition. In other words, the electoral threshold is critical. In 5752, when Rabin came to power and brought about the Oslo Accords, it was because—even though, by the number of voters, the right had more—

24:38 Speaker 1 So, in 5752.

24:38 Speaker 2 In 5752, yes, ’92. The right had more votes—the right and the religious parties.

24:44 Speaker 1 Right.

24:45 Speaker 2 What happened? Three parties didn’t cross the threshold. Tehiya didn’t get in. Tehiya had been a large party.

24:51 Speaker 1 I’m not familiar with the details.

24:51 Speaker 2 The Tehiya party—Yuval Ne’eman, Geula Cohen. They had three seats, and they didn’t make it. There was a party led by Levinger and a party led by Mizrachi. Together they wasted, let’s say, four or five seats that were lost. In more recent years, too, Bennett ran in an election and didn’t make it, and because he didn’t make it, we entered a political spiral. In other words, today a party that has four seats in the polls—even if it has four in every poll—is in very serious danger. Very serious danger. Because if voter turnout changes, if turnout rises—

25:35 Speaker 1 Right, because essentially you take the pie and divide it by twenty-four.

25:37 Speaker 2 If the electoral threshold suddenly rises, those four seats are no longer four seats; they’re less, and the party doesn’t make it in.

25:43 Speaker 1 Is there guidance from the Rebbe on this issue you’re discussing?

25:45 Speaker 2 I said that the Rebbe told Mizrachi it depends on the electoral threshold.

25:49 Speaker 1 I see.

25:50 Speaker 2 And you don’t have to be a great genius here, either. There’s a goal. There’s a difference between a demonstration and an election. At a demonstration, I stand there, protest and shout. Some people think an election is a demonstration: “I’ll cast a blank ballot,” or whatever.

26:05 Speaker 1 Right, to prove a point.

26:06 Speaker 2 To prove a point. You prove nothing. That ballot goes in the trash. Nobody pays attention to it; it means nothing. You staged a protest to make yourself feel better. But in practice, you could have helped elect a Jew who observes Torah and mitzvos. You could have helped elect a Jew who supports Eretz Yisroel, and instead you helped elect someone from the other side. The Rebbe says that every reduction in the lists of those who are devoted to Hashem adds strength to the lists of those who oppose Hashem and His Torah.

26:37 Speaker 1 Meaning, the fewer parties there are of people devoted to Hashem—

26:40 Speaker 2 Right. You have less strength, one less vote here and one more vote there. That’s the balance. There’s no playing games here, and that’s why the electoral threshold is critical. Under no circumstances can you play around with it. You must not vote for parties where there’s a doubt—even a slight doubt—that they’ll pass the threshold. So all these new parties, with all their various trends, need to be taken off the table. They’re nice people, and that’s all well and good. This is what the Rebbe fought for. By the way, in the early years, the Rebbe fought for a united religious front. The Rebbe wanted Agudah, or Agudas Yisroel, and Mizrachi to run together, and in some places they did. In some municipal elections they ran together. There was a ballot marked beis-gimmel-daled.

27:26 Speaker 1 Essentially, to unite all the religious parties into one group.

27:28 Speaker 2 And then—

27:29 Speaker 1 That was also—

27:30 Speaker 2 There are long letters in which the Rebbe discusses the advantages of this: campaigning would not be directed against one another, but toward bringing in people from outside, and votes would not be lost. The Rebbe lists a long series of benefits to joining together. Now, whenever people join together, there’s always, “But he’s this, and he’s that.” People wrote to the Rebbe, “What, join with Mizrachi?” And the Rebbe said yes, yes, run together. The Rebbe also spoke about a technical bloc. No, you don’t have to be married to them forever. You get elected together, enter the Knesset, and then each goes on as an independent faction.

28:03 Speaker 1 From all this, it sounds like the Rebbe did, in fact, take action within politics. I mean, it wasn’t—if we go back to where we started—

28:12 Speaker 2 As a leader of the Jewish people, the Rebbe is concerned that Jewish interests have strong representation. But not out of identification with, or any attachment to, a particular party—out of responsibility for the entire Jewish people. In those letters, the Rebbe speaks about the zealots who, ultimately, just want to put themselves at ease, to feel good about themselves: “I’m not involved; I’m not part of it.” The Rebbe says this is a matter of “I saved my own soul,” while you abandon the Jewish people as a whole.

28:41 Speaker 1 So let’s go back for a moment to the positions the Rebbe expressed that matter to us when we look at the ballots. The integrity of the Land, the integrity of the Torah, the integrity of the Jewish people—there are many things. Can we prioritize them? Because they’re all important.

28:58 Speaker 2 The Rebbe did speak about matters of Judaism, Torah and mitzvos. The Rebbe says that if a religious list is short one vote, and because of that a law contrary to the Torah is passed—because there wasn’t enough strength to prevent it—then the responsibility falls on everyone who withheld that vote.

29:21 Speaker 1 Everyone who didn’t vote.

29:22 Speaker 2 Yes. So the Rebbe cares that a law contrary to the Torah should not pass. Matters of what’s called the integrity of the Torah are important to us. The second issue is the integrity of the Jewish people—the question of “Who is a Jew?” There was one year when the Rebbe also wrote that anyone who votes for those who register non-Jews as Jews, and for their associates, bears responsibility for everyone so registered.

29:48 Speaker 1 Okay.

29:49 Speaker 2 There were parties that were also connected to the Interior Ministry, and the Rebbe demanded that they leave the coalition when the flawed “Who is a Jew?” law was passed and when its correction was blocked. They explained why they wouldn’t, saying they could do more from within, and so on. The Rebbe fought very strongly against supporting them. So this issue of the integrity of the Jewish people really is very—

30:19 Speaker 1 The integrity of the Jewish people, “Who is a Jew?”—just to clarify, that means making sure that in the official registration—

30:24 Speaker 2 That someone registered as a Jew is actually Jewish, and that Reform conversions and other things like that don’t enter into it.

30:29 Speaker 1 That really has a direct bearing on our existence as a people.

30:32 Speaker 2 Yes. Otherwise, you—

30:34 Speaker 1 Blur the distinction.

30:34 Speaker 2 There are people walking around whose identity cards say “Jewish,” when in fact they aren’t Jewish.

30:36 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

30:37 Speaker 2 And the third thing, and this—

30:39 Speaker 1 So we’ve mentioned the integrity of the Torah—matters of Torah and mitzvos—and the integrity of the Jewish people—

30:42 Speaker 2 The question of “Who is a Jew?” And the third thing is the integrity of the Land. But it’s not so much the integrity of the Land as it is security.

30:50 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

30:50 Speaker 2 The Rebbe’s main point was that withdrawals, concessions and all those things are simply a danger—a real, existential physical danger to the Jewish people from our enemies. And here there’s something very interesting: although the Rebbe was not politically involved, there were two occasions when the Rebbe intervened. One was in 5749—

31:12 Speaker 1 When the Rebbe—what do you mean by “intervened”?

31:13 Speaker 2 The Rebbe instructed people to vote for Agudas Yisroel. If you’d like, I can talk about that later.

31:18 Speaker 1 Yes.

31:19 Speaker 2 The second was in 5750, which was really a continuation of the 5749 election. As a result of Chabad’s efforts, Agudas Yisroel grew much stronger: it jumped from two seats to five.

31:32 Speaker 1 Wow.

31:32 Speaker 2 Almost six, in fact. Then Shamir’s government was formed, and a move was brewing that came to be called “the dirty trick.”

31:43 Speaker 1 Right.

31:43 Speaker 2 To bring down Shamir and form a government headed by Peres, with—

31:47 Speaker 1 With the religious parties.

31:48 Speaker 2 And the religious parties supported it. Then the Rebbe was compelled to intervene. He had expected it to be stopped another way, but when he saw that it wasn’t, the Rebbe conveyed his message through the journalist Oded Ben-Ami, who came to see him. The Rebbe said unequivocally that he wanted Shamir to remain prime minister and that they should not lend a hand to this move. Once it became known that the Rebbe had a very clear position on the matter, two Agudah Knesset members, Eliezer Mizrachi and Verdiger, announced that they would not support the government. Now, the whole plan depended on having sixty-one seats with them; without them, there were no sixty-one seats. There was a tremendous uproar. But the Rebbe stood firm on this, even though it was also seen as a kind of affront to Agudas Yisroel’s Council of Torah Sages, which had supported and approved the move, and suddenly the Rebbe came and thwarted it.

32:48 Speaker 3 And it really did fall through because of those two votes.

32:50 Speaker 2 That fell through, yes, so Shamir remained prime minister in any case. Then people came to try to convince the Rebbe: they were promising to amend the Who Is a Jew law. Peres was promising to amend the Who Is a Jew law. Yes, just let him form a government. And the Rebbe said that he must not be allowed to form a government, even for one day, because it posed an actual danger from the Arabs. When they came and said, “What about Who Is a Jew?” the Rebbe said, “Not Who Is a Jew, and not Peres. I am setting aside Who Is a Jew, because this is a matter of pikuach nefesh in the most literal sense.” So you saw where the Rebbe placed the emphasis once talk of withdrawals and concessions began. The Rebbe placed the main emphasis on building up, as much as possible, the forces that would oppose withdrawals and concessions and support a firm stance in the face of the Arab world and all the dangers around us. Those are the considerations a Chabad chossid needs to have foremost in mind when voting: who can help most in practice? Not through declarations or protests, but in practice. Strengthen the forces that will give more weight to those who oppose withdrawals and concessions and favor a firm stance, as well as the matters of Who Is a Jew, the integrity of the Torah, religious legislation, and all those things.

34:32 Speaker 3 So if the Rebbe—now, in general, this is our own independent choice, because the Rebbe never said whom we should vote for. We are nonpartisan. When you get there, make the decision yourself; weigh the considerations yourself. You can consult a rabbi about something like this, but that is the approach. If I’m a young avreich today, trying to think it through and hearing lots of slogans and lots of things, these are the considerations I need to keep in mind. Those are the general principles.

34:56 Speaker 2 Interestingly, a leader of the Mafdal at the time—the Mafdal was what was called the national-religious movement, religious Zionism—once went in to the Rebbe and asked why the Rebbe said to vote for the most religious list. “That’s us,” he said. The Rebbe told him, “I didn’t say whom to vote for. I said to vote for the most religious list. Make sure my chassidim interpret that to mean you.”

35:26 Speaker 3 Well, that’s for you to work on...

35:29 Speaker 2 On the contrary, you be the most religious list. I told the chassidim to vote for the most religious list. Be the ones my chassidim will understand they should vote for.

35:39 Speaker 3 Yes, personally, I—

35:40 Speaker 2 Now you’re asking what each person should do individually? So—

35:43 Speaker 3 Yes, I’m always trying to bring it down to—

35:45 Speaker 2 So every community has a rabbi, a mashpia, and so on, and you can consult them. But generally speaking, there are parties in that area. Yes.

36:01 Speaker 3 Yes.

36:02 Speaker 2 Right now, I think there are four parties one could consider. Yes, someone will tell you that one of them is out of the question. Fine, okay. You really do hear these different voices within Chabad: one says this, another says that, another says something else. But in the worst case, even the party you least want to support is still better than not voting.

36:23 Speaker 3 Yes, I don’t know if it’s the lesser evil, but there’s no perfect choice here. We’re not voting for some representative who takes everything all the way.

36:30 Speaker 2 And people always say you go into an election—excuse the expression—like you go into the bathroom: you hold your nose and do what needs to be done. I’m not looking here for an ideology I identify with one hundred percent. I’m not looking for the greatest tzaddik. How does an election campaign work? They tell you, “What? How can you vote for him? He did this and that, and he did this, and he did that.” Well, what am I supposed to do? Whom should I vote for? So yes, nobody is perfect. Everyone has shortcomings, but at the end of the day you have to choose one of them.

37:08 Speaker 3 There’s a difference, because we see that Chabad really has no representative in the Knesset, never has, and apparently won’t.

37:15 Speaker 2 And shouldn’t have one.

37:16 Speaker 3 Yes. But at the municipal level, we do see small Chabad lists on local councils, there to serve a particular community. Is there a difference between the two in the Rebbe’s instructions?

37:31 Speaker 2 The truth is, it’s a fairly complicated subject and not entirely clear. In practice, throughout the years Chabad wasn’t represented—

37:43 Speaker 3 Even in places with many Chabad chassidim.

37:44 Speaker 2 Yes, it wasn’t represented politically, let’s call it that. Take Kfar Chabad, for example. There’s a regional council here, and Kfar Chabad sends representatives to it. So there are representatives on the regional council, but not as a party—simply as residents.

38:01 Speaker 3 Yes. In other words, they’re wearing a different hat.

38:04 Speaker 2 It started in Tzfas. It started in Tzfas, where Rabbi Kaplan, they say, received approval to run in the elections to represent the Chabad community.

38:17 Speaker 3 Which today we have in the community, the—

38:19 Speaker 2 But that started a certain drift.

38:22 Speaker 3 …

38:22 Speaker 2 And I don’t know whether that drift has already gone too far, because with these things you always say, “Wait, if they did that there, I can go one step further, and then another step further.” So maybe you say, Tzfas? Okay, that’s a large community of several hundred Chabad families. But fine, I only have fifty Chabad families. That’s a community too. And I only have ten—that’s a community too. There really has been a drift. And the worse thing is that people started bringing the name of Chabad and the Rebbe’s name into it.

38:50 Speaker 3 Yes.

38:51 Speaker 2 …

38:52 Speaker 3 Meaning in the advertising, or in that sort of thing.

38:53 Speaker 2 Yes. In the last local elections, there were advertisements that were simply outrageous, that took Chabad and turned it into an election tool. More than that, they made extensive use of Chabad activities, of Chabad’s mivtzoim, to say, “Look what I do—vote for me.” So tomorrow, when a Chabad chossid comes and offers to put tefillin on with you, or comes to you in the hospital with Chanukah candles, you’ll see him as a representative of a party. That certainly isn’t appropriate. So in these matters there has been a certain drift and a crossing of boundaries. The problem is that when things are black and white, you know what’s black and white. Once you enter the gray area, it becomes very hard to set boundaries.

39:47 Speaker 3 Regarding lists for the Knesset: you mentioned this a little with the Mizrachi. Could you briefly go into the cases that were exceptions, when the Rebbe did intervene or say to go with a particular party and help it? Could you give a quick overview of those cases? Were there several, or was there one? How did it work?

40:06 Speaker 2 There was one case. One case, in 5749.

40:15 Speaker 3 Which parties were there? I mean, what did the political map look like then?

40:18 Speaker 2 What happened there—one second, I’ll find it. Yes. What happened in 5749 was that it was a very turbulent period, amid the bitter campaign that certain figures in Bnei Brak had launched against the Rebbe.

40:39 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

40:41 Speaker 2 It came to a head over the newspaper Hamodia. A sicha of the Rebbe would appear there every week as a paid advertisement. The man—

40:51 Speaker 3 Hamodia is a mainstream chareidi newspaper.

40:52 Speaker 2 Hamodia was the newspaper of Agudas Yisroel, which included both Litvaks and chassidim, but the people who controlled Hamodia were specifically the Litvaks.

41:02 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm. Today it’s more Ger.

41:04 Speaker 2 Today it’s more Ger, more Ger, yes. There was a man in Kfar Chabad, Rabbi Tuvia Peles a"h, who initiated the publication of an advertisement in Hamodia containing a sicha of the Rebbe. A sicha of the Rebbe every Shabbos. The opponents began fighting against it, and it became a struggle—but the struggle was broader than that. It was a very heated public struggle. It reached the point where they threatened that if Hamodia continued publishing the Rebbe’s sicha, they would establish a separate newspaper. And that is how they established Yated Ne’eman. This led to a split ahead of the elections: the Litvaks broke away from Agudas Yisroel and established Degel HaTorah.

42:01 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

42:02 Speaker 2 Now a situation arose where, uh, together they had four seats, and now that they were splitting up, each one was looking at roughly two seats, with the danger that it might not even pass the electoral threshold. So rebbes in the chassidic community approached the Rebbe and asked the Rebbe to help, because, in effect, “We fought for you, we fought for Chabad, we fought for the Rebbe, and now we’re in a fight for the very survival of Chassidus.” And there really was a danger that if Degel HaTorah succeeded and Agudas Yisroel fell, it would be a victory not only politically and in party terms, but in terms of the whole balance of relations within the chareidi community. It would mean that the chassidim had been dealt a blow and the opponents of Chassidus had won.

42:52 Speaker 3 That also means a lot of control over budgets.

42:55 Speaker 2 No, beyond budgets.

42:55 Speaker 3 I mean, in general.

42:56 Speaker 2 Beyond budgets, there was the possibility that Chassidus, the entire chassidic community—

43:03 Speaker 3 Yes.

43:03 Speaker 2 Would suffer a very, very severe blow, and the opponents of Chassidus would become the dominant, controlling force. So the Rebbe gave an instruction. It was received on Friday, Chol Hamoed Sukkos 5749—Rabbi Chadakov received the instruction, sorry, or rather the instruction came from Rabbi Chadakov, the Rebbe’s personal secretary, to Ephraim Wolf, who was the—

43:31 Speaker 3 One of the communal activists here.

43:32 Speaker 2 The representative of Agudas Chassidei Chabad. And the message was as follows: “The Rebbe, shlita, asked me to convey to you”—this is Rabbi Chadakov conveying it to him, yes—“that you may publicize that, exceptionally, on this occasion, there is an instruction from the Rebbe, shlita, to conduct a major campaign on behalf of Agudas Yisroel, and that the Chabad rabbis and Chabad activists, and so on and so forth, should throw themselves into it, so that as many people as possible vote for Gimel.” They should put themselves into it, so that as many people as possible vote for Gimel.

44:05 Speaker 3 All the way.

44:06 Speaker 2 Yes. So Chabad really entered the campaign. A headquarters was set up—

44:09 Speaker 3 Do you remember that?

44:10 Speaker 2 Of course I remember.

44:12 Speaker 3 What, what—

44:13 Speaker 2 A headquarters was set up. For the first time in our lives, we had to put our skills in publicity and editing and so on toward something—

44:24 Speaker 3 Toward something party-political.

44:25 Speaker 2 A political party, and we—

44:28 Speaker 3 Was it noticeable?

44:29 Speaker 2 Was it noticeable?

44:30 Speaker 3 I’m just—I’m asking.

44:31 Speaker 2 Of course it was noticeable.

44:31 Speaker 3 Wow.

44:33 Speaker 2 Everyone pitched in—all the Chabad Houses and all the communities. And we even took from Agudas Yisroel their budget for the, for the... Sorry, not their budget. They didn’t really pay much money. We took their entitlement to campaign broadcasts. Today it’s all done on—

44:55 Speaker 3 Social media.

44:56 Speaker 2 Social media. But back then, each party was allocated airtime for campaign broadcasts, according to its size and standing, which it could use on television. Agudas Yisroel had never used that. It didn’t want to broadcast on television. Why would it need television? Its audience didn’t watch television.

45:14 Speaker 3 Yes, right.

45:14 Speaker 2 But we wanted to reach the wider public, so we took those minutes from Agudas Yisroel and made campaign broadcasts.

45:21 Speaker 3 Wow.

45:21 Speaker 2 We made broadcasts that also incorporated Chabad and everything. We spoke about various things, about the unity here as well. There was also an alliance with Poalei Agudas Yisroel. Werdiger was a representative of Poalei Agudas Yisroel, which had almost disappeared. And—no, in any case, a very, very strong campaign was conducted. Contrary to all expectations, Agudas Yisroel, which it wasn’t even clear would pass the electoral threshold, or how many seats it would come close to—what?

45:51 Speaker 3 You said each one was expected to get two.

45:53 Speaker 2 Yes. It came close to six seats.

45:55 Speaker 3 Wow.

45:55 Speaker 2 It fell just a little short of the sixth, but five got in. But the Rebbe stressed that this was exceptional.

46:03 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

46:04 Speaker 2 And after the election, there was an instruction to Tzach [?], to Rabbi Aharonov, to pass on to all the shluchim—a message to notify all the Chabad Houses that from then on they were to return to Chabad’s traditional nonpartisan position and to the work of spreading Yiddishkeit and Chassidus, and no longer involve themselves in party politics.

46:27 Speaker 3 Wow, so the Rebbe really directed that. The Rebbe said it wasn’t...

46:29 Speaker 2 Yes. They wanted to—they wanted to. “Now let’s...” “Come on, let’s keep going.” They were completely stunned. Places like Eilat, Bat Yam, all sorts of places where there’s no chareidi community—suddenly thousands of votes came in from there.

46:45 Speaker 3 From Morocco.

46:45 Speaker 2 They had no idea where it was coming from. Suddenly they grasped Chabad’s strength on the ground. But it was an exceptional, one-time thing.

46:54 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

46:56 Speaker 2 And the second time Chabad got involved was what I mentioned earlier, in 5740—when, in 5750, there was that idea of the “stinking maneuver,” and the Rebbe thwarted it.

47:10 Speaker 3 When the Rebbe—with Mizrachi [?], when the Rebbe...

47:11 Speaker 2 With Mizrachi [?] and Werdiger [?], yes.

47:12 Speaker 3 Those are the two times the Rebbe really intervened at that level.

47:15 Speaker 2 Right.

47:16 Speaker 3 So if we can sum up this subject of elections and how we look at it as chassidim, from the standpoint of our outlook.

47:23 Speaker 2 What we see is that, in the Rebbe’s eyes, elections are a very, very practical matter. It’s not about declarations or demonstrations. It’s simply about getting as many seats as possible for lists of Jews who observe Torah and mitzvos, who are concerned for the word of Hashem and will advance the issues important to us: the integrity of the Torah, the integrity of the Jewish people, and the integrity of the Land of Israel. That’s why voting is an obligation. And the Rebbe also says we’re obligated to influence everyone we can influence to go and vote too. It also follows, of course, that you have to vote for parties that are certain to get in. There were also instructions from the Chabad Rabbinical Court making it clear that you have to vote for parties certain to pass the electoral threshold, and not go on an adventure with parties that may or may not get in. As for which of those parties, that’s less—yes, less critical. Broadly speaking, all those belonging to what’s now called the right-wing bloc—one may be better, another less good, but everyone has their own considerations. So to my mind, that matters less. Someone may come along and tell you, “No, no, no, only this one.” Fine, only that one. I’m not going to argue with him. But certainly we have to vote for parties of Torah-and-mitzvah-observant Jews that are part of that bloc. Okay, to con—I saw a video on my way here. I think a reporter came to ask the Rebbe about the elections during the dollar distribution, and the Rebbe said, “I don’t take offense”—“I don’t get involved in politics,” but, with Hashem’s help, when Moshiach comes, then the prime minister—yes, then it will be a matter of choosing Moshiach, and so on. As someone who deals so much with—No, no, you’re—

49:15 Speaker 2 Right. That was what I mentioned earlier about Oded Ben-Ami, when he came to the Rebbe in 5750. He asked the Rebbe what he thought of the situation, with no government in Israel at the time. So the Rebbe said—that was after the “stinking maneuver”—yes. So the Rebbe said that the good thing about the current situation was that Shamir was currently prime minister and his approach should continue. He began, after all, “I don’t get involved in politics, but the good thing about the current situation, in which there is no government, is that Shamir is prime minister, and his approach should continue. And I hope Moshiach will come immediately, but until Moshiach comes, it should be his approach, Shamir’s: to stand firm and the possib—” and so on. That part was cut out there. But I wanted to ask you: as someone for whom current affairs are, in the end, something you live with through writing and editing Sichas Hashavua, do you feel that the Jewish people are in a different place today, compared with previous years, when it comes to looking toward the coming of Moshiach? You’ve written more than two thousand issues. Do you feel people are a little more ready to receive these ideas, these subjects and concepts? If you look, for example, at the Rebbe’s sichos from the earlier years of the 5740s, you see that the Rebbe had to argue with chareidi Jews, with Torah-and-mitzvah-observant Jews, about the very idea that we need to ask for Moshiach, demand Moshiach, pray for Moshiach. You see the Rebbe debating with them. Some argued that we shouldn’t tell Hakadosh Boruch Hu what to do, and all sorts of things like that. That shows you where the public’s thinking was at the time. And the Rebbe changed that. I mean, today you—today there isn’t

50:58 Speaker 2 There was an argument about this. Today, the entire Jewish people, across every group—Sephardim, Ashkenazim, religious Jews, Litvaks, religious Zionists—everyone is talking about Moshiach, talking about Geulah, talking about the need to daven for the Geulah and count down to it. You can see it in music. There isn’t a singer who isn’t releasing songs about Moshiach, about longing for the Geulah, and so on. So there has certainly been a very great change in awareness. And with what has happened in recent years—the dramatic turnaround from the terrible massacre, the terrible blow of Simchas Torah three years ago, to a situation where we are striking all our enemies decisively, with wondrous miracles—people feel that something is happening here, that there is some kind of Divine process unfolding. So we all hope that, G-d forbid, we won’t have to go through another descent. Even if a descent, G-d forbid, would be for the sake of an ascent, we’ve had enough of these descents. We want to keep ascending, straight toward the Geulah. With Hashem’s help. This is, after all, an educational program. We’ve talked a little about outlook, but let’s come back to education. Do you have a tip, or something personal you could share with us as we wrap up? Maybe I’ll tell you something I’ve carried with me for many years. A Jew from Kfar Chabad passed away, and his family was sitting shivah. I came to the shivah. This was a family of immigrants from Morocco who came to Israel in the late 5710s as part of a group. They had been in contact with Chabad in Morocco, and they came to live here in Kfar Chabad. Most of them became part of the Chabad chassidim, but they arrived

52:57 Speaker 2 under very, very difficult conditions—poverty and so on. At that shivah, one of the deceased’s brothers told us that when his parents arrived in Israel, they were so poor they didn’t even have money to feed the children. So people told his father, “Listen, send the boy to study in Lod.” There was a Talmud Torah there with a dormitory. “They’ll feed him there and give him clothes—everything.” So he sent him there. “I was there on my own, without my parents. Nobody paid attention to me, and I did nothing. For three years I didn’t learn; I didn’t do anything. I sat in class and simply didn’t learn. I was,” as he put it, “a complete ignoramus.” After three years they brought him back to Kfar Chabad. Things had improved a little for the family, and he arrived at the Talmud Torah and went in to see the principal. The principal was a Jew named Rabbi Abba Levin, a”h. A very dear Jew. He was my teacher, and I remember him fondly as an extraordinary educator. Perhaps I’ll tell you something about that if you’d like. At any rate, he said, “I went in to see him, and he began talking with me. ‘What have you learned?’ and so on. Before long he saw that I knew nothing. He said to me, ‘Never mind. Come, sit down, and we’ll learn together.’ He opened a Gemara and began teaching me the Mishnah, right there in the principal’s office. Yes, he taught me the Mishnah. Then he said, ‘Come on, summarize what we learned.’ I summarized it for him. He started learning the Gemara with me. We learned the Gemara. ‘Summarize it for me,’ and I did. ‘Let’s learn Rashi. Let’s learn Tosafos. Summarize the Tosafos for me. Let’s learn another Tosafos. Summarize it for me.’ I did. He said, ‘Good, very good. You’re going into class.’ He wrote a note, folded it, stapled it shut, and told me, ‘Go into Rabbi Moishe Alperin’s class and give him

54:52 Speaker 2 the note.’ I left his office and said to myself,” he told us, “‘I have to know what’s written in that note.’ I pulled out the staple, looked at the note, and it said, ‘Dear Rabbi Moishe Alperin, please accept this student into your class. I am certain he will be among the top students in the class.’ I closed the note, put the staple back, handed it to the teacher, and sat down in class. I sat down in the middle of the lesson and didn’t understand a thing. My natural instinct was: Fine, I know how to spend my time in class. I wanted to go back to what I’d been doing for three years. But then I said to myself, ‘What? The principal believes in me so much. Wow. Could I let him down? Absolutely not.’ So I worked and worked. It was terribly hard, because I wasn’t up to speed at all. There’s a difference between sitting alone in a room with the principal and learning with him, and being in a classroom. It was very, very hard for me. But the thought that I couldn’t let the principal down stayed before my eyes the whole time. By the end of that year, I was one of the top students in the class.” Wow. So that shows what happens when you believe in a child. Yes, you mentioned Abba Levin. Abba Levin. He was our teacher in the grade before— He taught you here in Kfar Chabad? Yes, yes, in the second-to-last grade, I think seventh grade. He was a very, very gentle Jew, with truly noble character. He was a wonderful baal korei. Now, we were mischievous children. In all the preceding years, the routine had been that we misbehaved and got hit, and that was how things went. When we came to his class, we carried on with our antics. He tried as much as possible to handle it kindly, but it wasn’t really working. Then one day,

56:51 Speaker 2 he wanted to begin the lesson, and the class started laughing. It wouldn’t settle down. He tried: “All right, come on, are you finished?” Every moment someone else did something, and there was shouting and laughter. At a certain point he couldn’t restrain himself anymore. When another child did something, he got up and slapped him. We all froze. Abba Levin gave someone a slap? It was a shock. He seemed stunned by what he himself had done. He went back, buried his face in his hands, and cried. In front of everyone. In front of the whole class. Wow. That crying affected us a thousand times more than all the blows we’d received from the other teachers. By the way, one day he came over to me personally and said, “Listen, I see—I understand what’s going on with you. You grasp the material very quickly, and then you start getting bored. Let’s make an agreement: Once you know what we’re learning, you can leave. Go do whatever you want.” And that’s how it was. That’s how it was. Wow. Sometimes, you know, a single act by an educator can say so much, even years later. I’m sure all the usual tips have already been said, but this story is the most powerful thing I can tell you. It’s a story about something that actually happened. Rabbi Menachem Brod, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Yasher koach. All the best. You’ve helped me put a lot of things in order. May Hashem help it put things in order for others, too. Yes. Have a good week, and may we have successful elections. By the way, there’s a sicha—I think it was in [unclear]. There were elections then, and on the Shabbos before the elections the Rebbe asked—he said that since there is that note that fell from Heaven, saying that what a chassidic farbrengen can accomplish, even the angel

58:42 Speaker 2 Michael cannot accomplish, and since this week we are facing significant events in the Holy Land, then if the angel Michael cannot bring it about, we will bring it about by saying l’chaim at a farbrengen. So, with Hashem’s help, yes—let’s say l’chaim, that there should truly be success for the Jewish people, for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and for the concerns of the Torah in the Holy Land. [unclear] Amen. Yasher koach! Thank you very much. All the best.