Farbrengen of 5 Teves 5766, Kfar Chabad

00:00 Speaker 1 And in addition, the Rebbe Gorvitch [?]—well. Besides the fact that things were good for the Rebbe, that things were good for Yaakov, Yaakov wonders: What brought about this good fortune? It came from Yosef, as it says, “He saw the wagons” that Yosef sent. They had been in the middle of studying eglah arufah, and so on and so forth. Then the verse concludes, “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” We saw that, besides the positive outcome for the Rebbe in the matter of the sefarim, the Rebbe involved the chassidim in the entire matter. In other words, this was not just something personal to him; it concerned the chassidim. It is known that that year the Rebbe gave an instruction that came as a surprise—no one knew why. The Rebbe asked for an album about Chanukah to be published. It came out in English as Let There Be Light, and it was a whole book about the large Chanukah menorahs around the world. At the time, people said that the Rebbe connected it to the matter of the sefarim. In other words, since there were certain difficulties concerning the sefarim, and the issue concerned the chassidim—there was talk, perhaps, that Chabad was not active enough, and so on—the Rebbe had the Chanukah book published to counter that accusation. Just one campaign showed how much Chabad does. Now think: If we had to publish books about the campaigns of the entire year, when just eight days were enough to produce a thick volume, imagine what it would take to convey all the activity of the whole year. So what did we see? The Rebbe connected the matter of the sefarim with the chassidim, as the Rebbe... as we see in our verse. True, “the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived”—Yaakov was happy—but a few words come before that. Yaakov’s happiness was connected to Yosef being alive and well. And so we are honored to welcome the attorney who was deeply involved in the matter of the sefarim, and from whom we will hear more this evening.

03:03 Speaker 2 That’s just preparation for you, so you know.

03:05 Speaker 1 Huh?

03:05 Speaker 2 That’s just preparation for you. What? You want to speak during the breaks? But say l’chaim—bring him something for l’chaim.

03:38 Speaker 1 And so... the whole significance of 5 Teves expresses both sides: Yosef’s part and Yaakov’s part. And thank Hashem, the Rebbe never expressed his friendship and his public appreciation as he did on 5 Teves. “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” The Rebbe was happy—happy in himself, and happy that he had chassidim. And this is a day of which it is said, “These days are remembered and observed.” Let us all say l’chaim: may things be good for the Rebbe and good for the chassidim. L’chaim, l’chaim.

09:33 Speaker 6 Once he had an idea about...

09:44 Speaker 7 L’chaim, l’chaim. Everyone should say l’chaim, come on. Hey, bring it over. This is a farbrengen here. All right. L’chaim, l’chaim. Once, when Rabbi Butman passed by the Rebbe at the dollar distribution, there was an event for which he was the emcee. The Rebbe told him, “You know, an emcee doesn’t speak; an emcee’s job is to invite other people to speak.” Anyone who knows Rabbi Butman knows exactly why the Rebbe said that to him. Now, since this is 5 Teves, it is connected with sefarim. There were many instructions concerning the sefarim of 5 Teves, the Rebbe’s library, buying sefarim and selling sefarim, and so on. And the Rabbi had the merit of publishing quite a few sefarim after 5 Teves. So let us welcome the mara d’asra, Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi shlita.

11:27 Speaker 8 L’chaim, l’chaim. L’chaim to this farbrengen in honor of 5 Teves, known in Lubavitch as Didan Notzach—“ours prevailed.” Everyone remembers the whole affair, the anguish at the beginning, and the great joy over the victory afterward, when the non-Jewish judge agreed that the sefarim and everything connected with them belonged to the Rebbe. At the time, as chassidim farbrenged and discussed the whole matter, they spoke of a certain accusation against it, on whatever level that may have been. We won’t go into all those intricate arguments now. But it was like a document that had been challenged and was then upheld by a beis din. The Rebbe always explained that confirmation following a challenge makes a document much stronger than it was before the challenge. And through all the back-and-forth over this matter, all kinds of things about the Rebbe came to light—personal matters, things we had not known before. Through statements by both the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin, we came to learn deeply personal things concerning the Rebbe and the chassidim, things we had never imagined or known before. One of the principal people who worked toward this outcome, which brought the Rebbe such nachas—the victory of Didan Notzach—is our guest this evening, attorney Lewin, as his name is pronounced in English. His connection with Lubavitch goes back several generations. His grandfather was Rabbi Aharon Lewin, the rabbi of Rzeszów. The Rzeszów Rav was known in Poland as one of the great Torah scholars, a man deeply connected with Chassidus, and also one of the great communal activists. As I recall, there are even letters from the Frierdiker Rebbe to him from the period when the Rebbe was still in Poland, in Warsaw. He was a member of the Polish Sejm. Later, his father was Dr. Yitzchak Lewin, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Lewin, who was known in America as one of the leading rabbis, among the leaders of Yeshiva Rabbi Yitzchak

14:11 Speaker 8 Elchanan. As far as I know—and this is not the place to speak at length about it—he had a special connection with the Frierdiker Rebbe and later with the Rebbe. He had the merit that his son, the grandson, was one of the leaders and generals in bringing about this great nachas for the Rebbe. That is certainly a special merit and a special matter, and we are delighted to have him with us this evening to tell us about all the arguments and proceedings of that time, and what he had the merit of hearing from the Rebbe. And of course, may this lead to [unclear], and may there be Didan Notzach—not only in this matter, but a general Didan Notzach in every matter, up to the revelation of Moshiach immediately, right now. Let us invite Dr. Lewin, attorney Lewin. I don’t know whether he will speak in English or Hebrew, but in any case, the audience is very, very happy and wants to hear what he has to tell us. Attorney Lewin, please.

15:32 Speaker 9 Thank you very much. I am very happy to have the opportunity this year to spend the holiday of 5 Teves here with this distinguished gathering in Kfar Chabad. The Rabbi told you about my family background—about my grandfather, who was not only a tremendous Torah scholar and was elected to the Polish Sejm, but was also close to Chassidus in Poland, even if he himself was not a chossid. And my father, may the memory of a tzaddik be for a blessing, came to the United States when we fled Poland. I was only three years old when we fled. We traveled through Lithuania and Russia to Vladivostok, from Vladivostok to Japan, and from Japan we came to the United States. My father was among the first in the United States to call the public’s attention, and to write in the newspapers, about what was happening to the Jews of Europe. He wrote about the destruction of European Jewry, worked on communal affairs, and saved thousands of Jews through his actions and his writing. I also learned something when I had the merit of representing Chabad in the matter of the sefarim in the Frierdiker Rebbe’s library and appearing in court over it. On one occasion, when documents were obtained for me from the archives in Brooklyn concerning the rescue of the Frierdiker Rebbe from Europe and his arrival in the United States, they also found a letter written by members of Agudas Chassidei Chabad in 1940, when people in the United States were working to save Jews and rabbis in Europe. They sent me a copy of this letter, which said that Agudas Chassidei Chabad was asking the United States State Department to grant nonimmigrant visas to several well-known rabbis in order to save them from the Holocaust. Among the rabbis listed in that letter, I found the name of my father, may the memory of a tzaddik be for a blessing, Rabbi Yitzchak Lewin, along with his wife and their son Nathan. So I thank you, the Lubavitcher chassidim, because through a letter like that and efforts like it, you truly saved Jews from the Holocaust, and also

19:30 Speaker 9 I’m older now, and after all these years I have the opportunity to give thanks for everything that happened to save us in those days. I’m here now, and I was invited to speak with you about the trial over the books. Wherever I go in the world—a few months ago I was in China, in Shanghai, where the Chabad House had two hundred people for Friday and Shabbos—they ask me, in China and in Russia and everywhere else I travel, to speak about the celebration of 5 Teves and about this trial, which ended in a great victory: Didan Notzach. That has truly been a singular privilege for me. I’m a lawyer. With Hashem’s help, I had the privilege of studying at Yeshiva Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan in New York. Afterward I was admitted to Harvard Law School, and apparently I did well on the exams, because I was invited to be a clerk to a Supreme Court justice. I told the justice that I keep Shabbos and that I couldn’t work on Friday afternoon, on Shabbos or on Yom Tov. I was worried, because I had been told that all the clerks at the Supreme Court worked six days a week, from Monday through Saturday. I told Justice John Harlan, “I can’t work then.” I was afraid because in 1960, when I finished at Harvard, the New York law firms were closed to people who kept Shabbos. Lawyers at those firms told me, “If you keep Shabbos, you can’t be a lawyer. Ask your rabbi for a dispensation to work on Shabbos, because you can’t be a lawyer without working on Shabbos.” But Justice Harlan immediately told me that if I was willing

22:44 Speaker 9 to work on Sunday, there was another clerk who would work on Saturday. As it turned out, that other clerk was the grandson of a Christian clergyman, the Archbishop of Pennsylvania. The justice was proud of it. When visitors came to his office while we were sitting there, he would introduce us and say, “I have two clerks here. One is the grandson of the Archbishop of Pennsylvania, and the other is the grandson of the best-known rabbi in Poland, the Reisha Rav.” That’s how it was. Afterward I did well at a firm in Washington, and this matter of the books began for me. I had done a few things connected with Chabad, and apparently the Rebbe had heard about me. Then one night—I don’t remember which night it was—the phone rang. I picked it up, and Rabbi Krinsky was on the line. He told me they had discovered that a man was taking books at night from the library at 770 Eastern Parkway, and they had caught him on surveillance video. What should they do with him? Should they report him to the police and have him arrested? It was one in the morning, and I asked him, “Who is he?” He told me that he was the son of Rabbi Gourary, of blessed memory, and the Rebbetzin’s sister, and that he was selling the books in Switzerland and Israel to collectors of rare books and antiques. I told him, “Well, perhaps you should come to Washington and we’ll discuss what to do? Don’t report him to the police right away.” He came a day or two later. He was the only client who ever came to me with a page from the Shulchan Aruch, from Choshen Mishpat, to show me that when someone will not obey a ruling of a beis din, one is permitted to go to the civil courts to obtain an injunction against him, so that he would not be able to sell those books. They were truly very rare and precious books and other items that he was selling. He had a list of four hundred such books to sell to collectors of antiques. We decided to bring just that matter—the injunction against selling the books—before a court in the United States. Since he lived in New Jersey and Agudas Chassidei Chabad was in New York, we could begin the case in federal court, rather than a New York state court. That is how we began.

26:01 Speaker 9 On the first day, when we filed the claim with the court, he had the opportunity to choose a lawyer and contest it. When I filed the claim, a judge was immediately assigned by lottery. We were told that the judge would be a non-Jewish judge named Charles Sifton. Charles Sifton was a very exacting judge. He thought things through, was measured, and handled matters with care. But he was away on vacation the day we brought the case, so we appeared before another judge, a Jewish judge. As soon as I entered his chambers, I saw an old page of the Rambam on his wall. The judge’s name was Glasser. We sat down, and he asked, “Why isn’t this matter being brought before a beis din of rabbis? Why is it before me in court?” I told him, “As far as we’re concerned, if you issue an injunction against the sale of these books, we agree to bring the rest of the matter—who owns all the books and the entire library, the family or the community—before a beis din.” But the lawyer representing him answered, “No. We are here in court, and we want the court to decide the entire question of ownership of this library.” We really had no choice. If that was what he wanted, he could raise it in court. That was how the whole case, the entire trial over ownership of the library, began. Barry Gourary’s mother also joined the case on her son’s side; Barry was the one who had taken the books.

29:33 Speaker 9 After that beginning, I had my first opportunity in my life to meet the Rebbe and speak with him about the case. Attorney Shostak from Philadelphia, who was also working with us, and I had a meeting with the Rebbe for an hour or an hour and a half to discuss the case. At the outset, the Rebbe asked whether we wanted to speak in Yiddish or English. I said that, since I had spoken Yiddish at home, I was prepared to speak Yiddish. But Shostak said he didn’t understand it, so we spoke with the Rebbe in English the whole time. We immediately saw that the Rebbe had grasped the entire matter before the court. He said to us at the start, “How can this man have the opportunity to claim ownership of the library in court if he took these books like a thief? He went there at night, entered the place where the books were kept and took them without saying anything, without presenting any claim to a beis din or a court. His claim should be thrown out, because he really acted like a thief, and a thief has no right to make such a claim.” And I really thought there was no

32:49 Speaker 9 There was some doubt about whether that was right, and we presented that argument to Judge Sifton when he returned from vacation. I was thinking today about the name Sifton: samech, yud, pei, tes, vav, nun. In gematria, samech is sixty, yud is ten, pei is eighty, tes is nine, vav is six, and nun is fifty. That comes to 215. Now, what is the gematria of “Didan Notzach”? 216. Well, one—that’s Reuven and Shimon like Ephraim and Menashe. A difference of one doesn’t matter in gematria, so “Didan Notzach” is Sifton. “Judge Sifton” comes to 615 in gematria, and “Praise to Agudas Chassidei Chabad” also comes to 615. “And rejoicing and gladness” comes to 614. Again, it’s just one short. I also thought about the name Sifton. What was the Frierdiker Rebbe’s name? Yosef, right? And Yosef is in the name Sifton: yud, vav, samech, pei. When you take out those letters, only nun and tes remain. My name is Nosson, but in the United States, and here too, friends call me Nat. Even people here in Israel write me letters addressed “Hello, Nat”—nun, tes. So what happened with this judge? He really saw—by the time he had this case, he had already divorced his first wife, who was the daughter of Reinhold Niebuhr, a well-known theologian. He was very interested in all the matters we brought before him in this case. He later said that, in his opinion, it was the most interesting case he had had in all his years as a judge. And this case also gave me a chance to use Yiddish, because there were several

36:29 Speaker 9 witnesses who gave their testimony in Yiddish. Chaim Lieberman had been in charge of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s library when it was first being assembled, while he was still young. He remained with the Frierdiker Rebbe throughout their time in Poland. He was rescued in 1940 and came with the Rebbe from Poland to Sweden, and from Sweden to the United States in March 1940. Afterward, he continued acquiring books for the library. The Rebbe wanted it to be a library not only for Torah scholars, for people studying Talmud and halachah and everything else. He even wanted to include antisemitic books, because he wanted the library to be as large as the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which was the most important Jewish library in those years. When the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived in the United States, he did everything he could to obtain the library and bring all its books to the United States. He wrote letters saying that ownership of the library belonged to Agudas Chassidei Chabad. At our trial, those representing Barry, Barel[?], claimed that this was false—that the Rebbe had written something untrue only because he wanted to save the books. Our argument was: “Keep far from falsehood.” There is no possibility that the Rebbe would lie. That was our argument. If he said it belonged to Agudas Chassidei Chabad, then it belonged to Agudas Chassidei Chabad. That was the truth. But after some time, we saw that Chaim Lieberman, who had acquired the books, was on Barry and his mother’s side, claiming that the library belonged to the family. Nevertheless, after the Frierdiker Rebbe’s passing, he wrote letters seeking to add

40:12 Speaker 9 to the library. For us, that proved that it was not a family library but a communal one, because those books were sold to public libraries, not to private individuals who might buy them. They were books that had come out of the Holocaust, left behind and found in Europe, with no owners remaining because the owners had been murdered by the Nazis. So the books were sold, and Lieberman bought them for this library in 1951, 1952 and 1953, after the Frierdiker Rebbe’s passing. One thing that happened at the trial: he spoke in Yiddish, and his testimony was translated from Yiddish into English. Each time, I asked him a question in English; they translated my question from English into Hebrew—from English into Yiddish. He answered in Yiddish, and then they translated it into English before I could ask another question. It is very hard for a lawyer to wait. If I understand Yiddish, I want to ask the next question immediately. It’s hard to hold back, and several times the judge said to me, “Levine, wait a moment. I haven’t heard the answer yet.” Once, while Lieberman was testifying, we had found something at his apartment, not far from 770. Some yeshiva students had been assigned to help him, because he was ninety-two or ninety-three—I don’t remember exactly. They found there, they told me, in his toilet, in the bathroom, a letter that he had apparently wanted to flush away. They sent me what they had taken from there, and I put it together. It was a copy of a letter

43:24 Speaker 9 from Lieberman to the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization, asking to buy some books for five or ten cents each in 1951 or 1952. A day or two later, they said the boys had found another copy like it. They sent it to me, and I put it together. Another week later, they sent me what they had found burned in an ashtray in his apartment—another letter of the same kind. So when he testified, I asked him, “Lieberman, haven’t you been trying to destroy the documents that go against you? Didn’t you want to throw away this letter?” And I showed him the one from the toilet, from the garbage. He said, “No, no, it isn’t important. It was just a letter I didn’t need, so I threw it away.” “But two days later there was another letter like it?” And I showed it to him. “That isn’t important. It’s another letter.” “Then why, a week later, was there yet another letter you burned, which was found in your apartment?” “Well, I just threw it away. I don’t need that letter.” I said to him, “But wasn’t it because you wanted to get rid of all the evidence against you? This letter shows that you’re lying.” He said, “No. If I had wanted to get rid of the letter, I would have thrown it in the toilet. I wouldn’t have burned it; I would have thrown it in…” Things like that happened during the trial, before the judge. The second time I had the opportunity to speak with the Rebbe was, I think, about an hour after the judge did not accept the first argument I had presented to the court. We had a second meeting with the Rebbe, and he told us then that the testimony, the most important thing in this trial… He said that because

46:17 Speaker 9 The judge—not me. The rabbi is asking me why the judge didn’t accept the first argument. I think the judge saw that this was an interesting matter, and he really wanted to hear all the testimony and decide who owned the library. Even though the first argument was sound—in my opinion it was sound, and the Rebbe said so too—if the judge had accepted it, the whole trial would have ended and he would not have heard all the testimony about who owned the books. So it was interesting to the judge. There were two sides, each saying, “It is all mine.” Why shouldn’t he hear the testimony? It took three weeks, I think. And it wasn’t just interesting to him. I had never had a trial where every bench and every seat in the courtroom was full from beginning to end. Every day buses came from Crown Heights, and those who were able to get a seat in the courtroom sat there and listened. I didn’t even know at first, but every day someone translated what was happening in court into Hebrew and sent it by fax. There was no email then, but they faxed it from Brooklyn in the United States to here in Israel—I think to Kfar Chabad or other places. Years later, when I met Rabbi Berel Lazar, who is now the Chief Rabbi in Moscow, he told me that he had been the young man whose job it was to translate what happened in court into Hebrew and send it from the United States to Israel. The second time I had the privilege of meeting with the Rebbe, he had the transcript, the entire record of everything that had happened in court. He knew everything that had happened and that Judge Sifton had not accepted that argument, but

49:12 Speaker 9 He immediately said that the most important thing was the letter the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to Professor Marx. Professor Marx was the professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary who was in charge of the library there. The Rebbe wrote to Professor Marx in English about the manuscripts and books “registered under the names of the Rebbes, members of Agudas Chassidei Chabad,” stating that they belonged to Agudas Chassidei Chabad, “the official owners of this property.” We were talking about several thousand books, rare, old books, and “these books are the property of Agudas Chassidei Chabad of America and Canada.” And the Rebbe said: How could the judge not accept what the Frierdiker Rebbe had put in writing about this? And he was right. In the end, the whole case took a year and a half, from the day we filed our claim with the court until 5 Teves. The judge ruled that the Rebbe had indeed held those books in what, in legal terminology, is called a trust. That was the ruling. Before it came out, we also spoke with the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin several times. The Rebbetzin’s deposition was taken. It actually took place in her apartment. Under American law, it could have been held in a lawyer’s office, but they agreed to hold it in her apartment. I remember it as if it were today, because it was something memorable: how they tried to get her to testify that the books belonged—had belonged—to her father. And when they asked her at the end of the deposition, “Surely you agree that the books were owned by your father?” she said—and this was perhaps the most dramatic moment of the entire trial—she

52:37 Speaker 9 said: “My father belonged to the chassidim of Chabad. He had no property of his own; rather, my father belonged to the chassidim of Chabad.” And that was the end of the deposition. We brought that to court as well, and the judge heard what she had said. I have many memories of that trial. After we won on 5 Teves, they appealed to the Court of Appeals. A few months later, the Court of Appeals ruled that Judge Sifton had been right and that the library belonged to the entire Lubavitch community. That was the issue. I knew then that this was the library the Rebbe had begun working on in 1920. But before that, there was the library the Bolsheviks had taken from him when the new government came to power in Russia. To this day, efforts are being made to bring that library to the United States. After the Supreme Court ruled that it might be possible to bring a case against a government in the courts here—not here, in the courts of the United States—a lawsuit was brought against the Russian government over that library. It began in California because Rabbi Kunin is there and works on this matter. The judge in California ruled that, under American law, there was only one place where the case could be brought: Washington. The case moved to Washington, and now I also represent Agudas Chassidei Chabad in the matter of that library, the first library, against the Russian government. Gorbachev had actually promised to give back the library. But before he had the opportunity, he left office. Some of those who came after him agreed and some did not, but now they say they will not return either the library or the manuscripts from when the Rebbe fled, which were found in

56:12 Speaker 9 Poland. The Russian army happened to be the first to find those manuscripts, and now they are in Russia because that is where they were taken first. It has all been a privilege for me, and through this matter I began representing Chabad on other issues as well. A few years later, I had a case before the Supreme Court about the menorah in Pittsburgh, in front of Pittsburgh City Hall. We succeeded there, before the Supreme Court. There were Jews and others who tried to remove the menorah Chabad had donated to the city of Pittsburgh, and also to remove a Christian nativity scene that stood at another building there. The Supreme Court ruled six to three in favor of the menorah, and five to four against the Christian symbol. So the Jews won and the Christians did not. I’ll tell you one more thing. That was in 1989. We won in the Supreme Court in Washington in July 1989. Before December, the mayor of Pittsburgh, who was Catholic, died. A Jewish woman took his place, and she immediately said she was removing the Chanukah menorah. She agreed to let the Christmas tree stand, but there would be no menorah. That same year that we won in the Supreme Court, we had a case against Pittsburgh during Chanukah, in December, so that we would be able to put up a menorah in front of City Hall, because the mayor of Pittsburgh, the Jewish woman, did not want it there. That year, the first night of Chanukah was on Friday, so we had to act early. On Monday we were in court in Pittsburgh, and I presented all the evidence. She opposed it and made her arguments, and the judge, who was not Jewish, said, “I need to think about this tonight. Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you what I decide.”

1:00:06 Speaker 9 We came back to him on Tuesday, and he said, “I have decided that the menorah has permission to stand in Pittsburgh.” I thought, surely we had won. I had another case in California, so I traveled there. When I arrived, I heard that she had gone to another judge in Pittsburgh, who had issued what American law calls a “stay”: the first judge’s ruling would not take effect until there was another appeal. Well, I thought, we can take this to a panel of three judges. So I filed a petition with the three judges and said: Chanukah begins on Friday. I need a decision by Friday. I was in California and heard nothing. No answer, no contact, nobody telling me anything. Wednesday passed, then Thursday. I flew overnight from California to Washington—what they call a “red-eye” in the United States—and thought to myself: All right, I’ll submit my argument to a Supreme Court justice, because there’s no time left. When we reached Washington, it was five in the morning. I called my secretary; she came to the office, we prepared everything, and at nine in the morning we submitted the petition to the Supreme Court. It went to the justice assigned to that circuit. He was liberal, but he had ruled against us in July because he thought putting up a menorah violated the Constitution. Still, he was liberal on matters of freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and I said we have the freedom to speak about religion. At first he said he did not want to take the case because the three judges in Philadelphia had not yet ruled. Later, by then it was afternoon, the three judges ruled against us. I went home, but there was

1:03:33 Speaker 9 I had a Catholic assistant who stayed at the office, and he called me at three in the afternoon and told me that the three judges had ruled against us. So I said, “Go back to Justice Brennan at the Supreme Court.” Half an hour before the Chanukah candles were to be lit, an order came out—a ruling from that Supreme Court justice that the menorah was allowed to stand. It was half an hour before Chanukah began and the Shabbos candles were lit. And that woman, Sophie Masloff, the mayor, took it to the full court, and they ruled six to three that the justice was right and the menorah was allowed to stand. The miracle that happened on Chanukah in ’89 happened again in Cincinnati four years ago, in the same way. On Friday we submitted our case to a Supreme Court justice, and he overturned the lower-court judges’ decision, ruling that the menorah could stand in Cincinnati too. So we see—I see miracles every year on Chanukah. This year, too, we’ve had a few issues with municipalities in the United States that didn’t want to give permission to put up a menorah. But in the end, we win and put up the menorah. And that was the Rebbe’s directive: he told all the shluchim that they should put up large menorahs. Now I see them going up throughout the United States, and they’re succeeding in this. So I say, I have many memories connected with 5 Teves and what followed, but I had the privilege of representing Chabad in this matter. I was also thinking about this week’s parsha, where it says that when Yaakov’s sons returned to him, “They told him, saying, ‘Yosef is still alive, and that he rules over all the land of Egypt.’” Yosef is still alive. The Frierdiker Rebbe’s name was Yosef—Yosef Yitzchak. Yosef is still alive. But people ask a great deal about this verse. They ask:

1:06:55 Speaker 9 What is the meaning of the words “and that he rules over all the land of Egypt”? Why is the word “that” in this verse? The verse could have said, “They told him, saying, ‘Yosef is still alive, and he rules over all the land of Egypt.’” Why does it say “and that he rules over all the land of Egypt”? But from everything I’ve seen since 5 Teves, and in the nearly twenty years after 5 Teves, I see how Chabad and Lubavitch have grown. There are shluchim throughout the world, with all the good deeds they do and everything they do for the benefit of our people, for the benefit of the Jewish people. Yosef is still alive. The Frierdiker Rebbe is alive now! As the Rebbe said during a farbrengen, when he knew—or was told—that they were taking his books, the Frierdiker Rebbe’s soul is still alive. Because he rules over all the land of Egypt. What? How is he alive? Because he rules over all the Land of Israel. In the face of what exile tells us, Chabad rules throughout the land of Egypt. It is the Rebbe’s soul, and “Yosef is still alive.” He is alive because he rules in the land of Egypt: through things like 5 Teves, all the miracles with the menorahs, and all the great things the shluchim do throughout the world. Chabad keeps growing, acting and succeeding in every corner of the world. That is how Yosef is still alive. That is truly the sign of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s vitality—Yosef’s vitality. Thank you very much.

1:13:39 Speaker 10 L’chaim, l’chaim! As the lawyer has just promised me, that was only the first part of his talk. He wants to give it in installments, so he’ll continue shortly. In the meantime, we’ll hear from someone who had the privilege of being there on 5 Teves 5747: Rabbi Schneur Zalman Gurevitch, director of the Chabad House in Be’er Sheva. Then we’ll have the privilege of hearing the lawyer again. He also said that if anyone has questions—or a question—he can answer any questions from the audience. Please, Rabbi Gurevitch. No, in the meantime. L’chaim. L’chaim.

1:15:05 Speaker 11 As the Rebbe mentioned at the first farbrengen in the first year after 5 Teves 5747, the Rebbe described it as “those days are remembered and reenacted.” He said that when they are remembered, they are consequently reenacted. That is really the whole point of a farbrengen in general, and especially on this day: “These days are remembered and reenacted.” I had the privilege of coming to 770 for the kvutza in 5746. We were there for a year beforehand, before 5747, before Didan Notzach. So those who spent that year, 5746, at 770 naturally felt and experienced Didan Notzach in 5747 in a special way. The whole affair had actually begun in the summer of 5745. We arrived in Elul 5745, but the trial itself began in Kislev 5746. Today, of course, these events are widely known and documented in minute detail—details that perhaps even we didn’t know then, but that have been published over the years and in various collections. What I wanted to convey, at least, was the feeling, the experience of those days there: the difficult days of the trial and, of course, the Didan Notzach that followed. Already in the summer of 5745, the first time the Rebbe spoke about the matter, and then at the farbrengen of 12 Tammuz, which was broadcast throughout the world, one could hear the Rebbe’s tone and words and see his face. It was no small matter. It touched the very essence of the soul. Over the years, the Rebbe spoke with pain about many subjects—Who Is a Jew, the integrity of the Land of Israel, and various other matters. But in this matter, both the words we heard and the expression on the Rebbe’s face—it was truly frightening to see and hear. These were things we had never heard before. And in 5746, there was a Shabbos

1:18:04 Speaker 11 before the trial began. I think it was 9 Kislev. Between the sichos, the Rashag approached the Rebbe, and suddenly the Rebbe began speaking with him for many minutes. You could really see an expression on the Rebbe’s face that was frightening. We couldn’t hear what the Rebbe was saying, but we could see that he was speaking about something that touched the very essence of the soul. Naturally, this affected the general atmosphere in those days. There was an awakening to say Tehillim, and on one day they also held a partial-day fast. Especially once the trial began on 19 Kislev, the Rebbe went to the Ohel every day throughout the trial—every single day. On the other hand, the Rebbe had prefaced all of this on Shabbos Vayishlach, when he delivered the maamar Margela Befumei. There the Rebbe speaks about how today our avodah must be carried out only with joy, and there is no place for fasting or self-mortification. So in those days it was like a pendulum, swinging between the difficult atmosphere and the joy. Every night there were long farbrengens that lasted until morning. It was truly a case of “joy lodged in my heart on this side”: on one hand, the directive to be joyful, because only joy can annul all the harsh judgments; on the other, we felt the gravity of the atmosphere and how deeply the Rebbe took the matter. We saw it day after day in his trips to the Ohel, and in other remarks we would hear each day, or hear about from the secretaries. In any case, people made a great effort to increase the joy as well, and there were many farbrengens that went on until morning. Gradually, a few bochurim began singing the Didan Notzach niggun, and they would sing it for hours and hours, right through the night. The first people would already be arriving for Shacharis, and they would still be dancing. After the trial proceedings themselves ended, we waited for the verdict. Perhaps

1:20:46 Speaker 11 The lawyers were more up to date on how things were progressing, and on when an answer would or wouldn’t come. In any case, for the bochurim in 770, the day and hour it came were a complete surprise. I remember the guys there saying that this is probably how Moshiach will come, too: we prepare and talk about it so much, and in the end it arrives out of the blue, on an ordinary day. The joy that erupted at that moment needed no instructions or directives. It was spontaneous joy, with dancing and celebration that went on for days and nights. It reminded me a little of the stories we’d heard from the previous generation about 12 Tammuz—how the chassidim rolled through the streets when they heard about the Frierdiker Rebbe’s liberation. That was the feeling: this was truly a festival of Geulah, a liberation after a period of imprisonment. Perhaps not physical imprisonment, but it really had been a difficult period for the Rebbe and the chassidim. So this tremendous joy burst out spontaneously, and it received encouragement and strength from the Rebbe. The Rebbe delivered a sicha every day, and the very next day the Rebbe noted that these were special days and that people should send in panim. People began sending in panim, and the Rebbe went to the Ohel with some seven or eight sacks full of them. And so it continued, day after day. It began with the very first sicha, on 5 Teves itself, when the Rebbe dwelt on the verse in Parshas Vayigash, “And the spirit of Yaakov their father revived.” It sounded as though the Rebbe was speaking about “the spirit of Yaakov their father revived.” The Rebbe explained at length that the whole point of Yosef’s experience was, “G-d sent me ahead of you to sustain you in the land.” Although the name used there is Elokim, which signifies gevurah, it is precisely through the trials, the gevurah and the limitations that one ultimately comes to sustenance: “He sent me ahead of you…”—“And the spirit of Yaakov their father revived.” A year later, on the first anniversary of 5 Teves, in 5748. There’s a saying I heard from elder chassidim: whenever there’s a question, you should ask what the bochurim say, because they’re better at getting at the truth. And they—

1:23:35 Speaker 11 knew better how to get at the truth. At the time, nobody knew how this day would be received or how we were supposed to celebrate it. Should we make a big fuss over it? Would there be a big celebration? On 5 Teves itself, the Rebbe turned toward the chazzan about whether to say Tachanun or not. What would happen? Perhaps not many people know or remember how the first farbrengen of 5 Teves 5748 began. It was on Shabbos, and the sichos printed today are versions edited by the Rebbe, so they don’t preserve the exact words with which the Rebbe opened the farbrengen. But on that Friday, there was a great deal of activity as people prepared for the day. The bochurim made a very large sign that they wanted to hang on the western wall, where the pyramid-shaped bleachers stood. It said in huge letters: “The bright day of 5 Teves,” “Didan Notzach,” “This is the day Hashem has made,” along with various other verses and slogans. Some of the gabbaim were concerned about whether it could be hung, whether it shouldn’t be hung, and how the Rebbe would react. I remember that a group of us bochurim waited. We hadn’t received official permission to hang it, so we waited until the very last moment, after candle-lighting, when it would no longer be possible to take it down, and hung it there on the wall. Some said people should stand on the bleachers to hide the sign. There were arguments about it all Shabbos. The Rebbe came into the farbrengen and opened by saying that this day had been established as Didan Notzach. The Rebbe began the farbrengen by saying that this day had been established as a day of Didan Notzach—or, as the sign hung on the wall proclaimed, that today was Didan Notzach. The Rebbe then spoke throughout the sicha about how these days are remembered and reenacted, and therefore this day is…

1:25:47 Speaker 11 And the Rebbe spoke at length, explaining the whole essence of the day: it is a day connected to all of the Jewish people, because the ruling was that the library belongs to the Jewish people as a whole. So this day is an auspicious day for the entire Jewish people. But what was the practical directive? As people note today, the Rebbe also mentioned buying books. But if we look at that sicha—and certainly if we were privileged to hear it at the time, especially if we connect it with what happened after the first Didan Notzach in 5747, after the first seven days—we see that sometimes we may focus on the less important detail. The substance of that entire sicha is that if you want to know how to celebrate the Didan Notzach of the sefarim, you have to look in the sefarim themselves and see what they say. There the Rebbe explains that, according to what the Rosh writes, today one can fulfill the obligation to write a Sefer Torah by buying sefarim; one does not actually have to write a Sefer Torah. That is because the heart of the mitzvah is, “Write down this song for yourselves and teach it to the Children of Israel; place it in their mouths.” The main thing is the learning. In the past, when there were no printed books, people would study from a Sefer Torah, so Sifrei Torah had to be written for people to learn from. But today, when there are many printed sefarim—the Chumash, Shas and the works of the Rishonim—one can buy sefarim and learn from them, thereby fulfilling “teach it to the Children of Israel.” One can fulfill the requirement of learning that way. The Rebbe says there that, by conventional thinking, when someone acquires something precious, wins a valuable prize or receives something very important, they lock it in a safe, guard it carefully and keep it shut away. By contrast, when it comes to a Torah sefer,

1:27:53 Speaker 11 the main thing is not to shut it away in a safe or put it in a cabinet. The main thing is to learn from it. You needn’t worry that it will get torn, because learning from the sefer is the whole purpose of buying sefarim. Later, the Rebbe also said that since this was the five-hundredth year since the birth of the Beis Yosef, a discount should be offered on the Beis Yosef and other sefarim, and that people should buy sefarim and establish libraries. But the heart of the sicha was that the main point of the sefarim’s Didan Notzach is to learn from them. And that ties in with those days everyone remembers, when 770 was full beginning immediately on 12 Teves. I remember that first day, 12 Teves, at seven in the morning: the zal in 770 was so full that anyone arriving a few minutes late couldn’t find a seat. Some groups of bochurim came from a yeshivah, I think in California, still caught up in the excitement of the singing. They entered 770 singing “Didan Notzach” and suddenly saw a very different zal from what they’d been hearing about on the way there and before: everyone was sitting and learning. It was already clear then that the Rebbe was emphasizing learning and preparing for Yud Shvat, thirty days before the occasion. The preparation was through actual learning, and the Rebbe spoke in very clear terms that left no room for clever interpretations or evasions. The Rebbe asked that each person submit an explicit report from his yeshivah stating what he had learned and what he had been tested on. The Rebbe announced that if someone’s name did not appear in the report, he would accept no excuses or explanations: it would simply mean that he had not learned. And as for bochurim saying they weren’t ready for a test, the Rebbe dismissed that entirely.

1:29:52 Speaker 11 How could it be that a bochur whose whole purpose is to sit and learn has the yeshiva administration write that he wasn’t ready for an exam? How could that be? In other words, the Rebbe brought it down to the most practical level, to actual practice: if someone didn’t submit a report that he had learned, that meant he hadn’t learned. That point came up again in the first sicha on 15 Teves, where the Rebbe said that the main thing in Didan Notzach is learning from the seforim. It came up again on 2 Kislev, when they brought the seforim back and many people and bochurim were waiting outside. The Rebbe came out and cried, “How can this be? Instead of sitting and learning from the seforim, you’re standing here counting the birds?” The Rebbe also pointed to the secretaries standing there by the car: “And you too, and you too, and you too?” In other words, the Rebbe brought it down to practice. On the one hand, he spoke about learning and things that had been discussed many times before. But specifically after Didan Notzach, the Rebbe made it a matter of actual learning: everyone should set times to learn, and learn in a way that he could be tested on it and submit a report. If he learned but didn’t take the exam, then let it be known that he hadn’t learned. He pointed to the people there, showing that he meant every single person, including the secretaries themselves. So that was apparently the practical action, and that was also the atmosphere in those weeks between 12 Teves and Yud Shvat: the learning that took place in those days and the exams they took. “And these days are remembered and observed.” May we truly merit the great Didan Notzach, the Rebbe’s final Didan Notzach: to leave, to take all the Jewish people out of exile, immediately, right now. L’chaim!

1:35:00 Speaker 12 Okay, l’chaim, l’chaim! As we promised, the attorney will continue speaking and telling us about it. He asked me that if any of the fellows have questions, they should give them to me in writing and he’ll try to answer them. But I have a question: of all the times you had yechidus with the Rebbe, could you tell us some details you haven’t told us? Okay. It’s not so easy, what? Okay, please.

1:35:40 Speaker 3 It isn’t so easy, but I’ve just been asked about this library: why does it contain not only what belongs in everyone’s library, seforim for Torah study, but also books of heresy? From what I’ve heard, the Rebbe—the Frierdiker Rebbe—wanted the library to contain material with which to answer a heretic. Researchers and people who needed to know how to respond, or to learn about history and things like that, could come to the library and learn from it. It wasn’t his intention that everyone should have access to every book and read everything in the library. That’s why it also collected books of heresy, books about antisemitism, and things like that. I was also asked what spiritual message the Rebbe had in wanting the seforim to belong to the community. It certainly wasn’t only a matter of money or anything like that. The library is rare, and the seforim are important and valuable. But in my opinion, from what I heard from him and what I’ve read, he considered all this content—everything inherited from the Frierdiker Rebbe—to be a spiritual matter. The contents of the library were important not just because the library was valuable, but because it had been assembled as the Lubavitch library over many years. We brought testimony at the trial that throughout those years, notices appeared in newspapers and were circulated throughout the world, asking anyone who wrote a book on Judaism, or had books they wanted to give somewhere, to give them to the library of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. So the library held Lubavitch’s inheritance, the spiritual substance contained in the books. I mean, among a Jew’s possessions, nothing is more important than books from which people learn. And so I think the Rebbe wanted what the

1:39:42 Speaker 3 library represents not to pass solely as a private inheritance to the family, but for every chossid to know that this is the inheritance—this is what the Rebbe collected for the chassidim. As the Rebbetzin said, the Rebbe belongs to the chassidim, and the library belongs to the chassidim too. Other things about the... As I’ve said, everywhere I go in the world, people ask me what happened in my conversations with the Rebbe. I remember that when we spoke, every word was important. We spoke then about the trial, and he asked questions about how the trial was proceeding and about the law in the United States. From his questions, we knew that he understood how the trial worked. Well, there’s another question: Where did the yechidus with the Rebbe take place? It was at 770, in his office there. I came there, and we spoke in the office. I’m also being asked whether it’s true that they asked the Rebbe whom he meant, or what he understood, when he spoke about “the Nasi of our generation.” We didn’t discuss that. We discussed the request to take his deposition. He told us that, in his opinion, it was not appropriate to question the traditional spiritual leader of Chabad about such matters, which were material matters—a dispute over ownership of seforim. It was not befitting his position, his high standing, to question him about these matters in a lawyer’s office. So we submitted arguments against taking that deposition. In the end, attorney Hellerstein agreed that it was not appropriate to question the Rebbe about these matters, and he withdrew his request. Under

1:43:33 Speaker 3 the law, we told him, the judge might have allowed an attorney to question him. But ultimately Barry’s attorney saw that it would not help him and that it really wasn’t a proper thing to do. Okay, I don’t have... If you have more questions, I’m ready to answer them. But, yes. Did the Rebbe have to come to court? No. Because... no, there was never even a thought that the Rebbe would come to the courtroom itself. What was considered was questioning him either in his apartment or in an office—asking him questions in front of a stenographer, which would constitute a deposition. But I don’t think they asked him to come to court. They didn’t even request it, so he didn’t come.

1:45:09 Speaker 4 When you did your work, did you do it strictly as a job, or did you do it with the feeling of a chossid?

1:45:21 Speaker 3 He’s asking whether I did the work with the feeling of a chossid. The truth is, as I said at the beginning, I come from a non-chassidic family. I was told that when I started this work, they invited me to Crown Heights for a farbrengen and to take part in all the celebrations and such things. And they told me the Rebbe said, “Let the lawyer remain a lawyer; don’t make a chossid out of the lawyer.” They were told to let Eric be Eric, not to try to turn me into a chossid. As you can see, I’m truly proud of the connection that my family and I have with Chabad and Chassidus, and I enjoy being here with you at this farbrengen. But the truth is that I’m not from a chassidic family, and so I’m not a chossid. What can you do? I’m a choss... What, not a chossid? I am a chossid—but not formally, as they say. Okay, good, thank you. L’chaim! L’chaim. Are you bringing that too? Okay, thank you very much.

1:50:15 Speaker 5 I want to point out the details of this story, as told in the Gemara and in Midrash Rabbah, so we can see what a person can learn from it and what he needs to guard against. A clever person should not think that this does not apply to him. And one must not explain away a crooked thing, because [unclear] the ruling he had made; but when the incident actually happened, as Midrash Rabbah relates, things were different. What is it that we need to guard against? Every Jew—apart from those who have transformed their yetzer hara into good—has these two forces within him. As it says in Tanya, one soul is connected with the yetzer tov, and the other with the yetzer hara. We have to be on guard when these two spirits within a Jew contend with one another. The yetzer tov tells him that he must follow [unclear], follow the Rema, and follow what is written in the holy [unclear]. But then the other side comes along and begins looking for excuses: “That isn’t really forbidden,” and “I have my own calculation about this,” and “People don’t take it that way,” and “Here it says so explicitly, while there it says [unclear]”—all kinds of rationalizations. These are the sorts of things the yetzer, the spirit within [unclear], can put into a person’s mind, which he…

00:05 Speaker 1 Ah, come here. L’chaim, l’chaim. The truth is that 5 Teves is not a time for speeches. So I’ll just quote a little of what happened. You’re all grownups. We are now nineteen years after Didan Natzach, since 5747, when 5 Teves fell on a Tuesday. We all remember that the Rebbe came down for Minchah and said a sicha afterward. It was a short sicha, and the Rebbe quoted the verse from that Tuesday’s Chitas. At the end, after Yaakov was told all of Yosef’s words and saw the wagons he had sent, it says: “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” That was the point the Rebbe spoke about then. When we heard it, we understood that there were two things here. First, we had merited that the Rebbe was happy. “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived”—in the plain meaning of the verse, Yaakov felt good. For all those years when Yosef was not with him, things had not been good for him. He worried and did not know whether Yosef was alive. When he learned that Yosef was alive and well, “the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” Yaakov felt good. That was a very important point for a chossid in everything surrounding the books and our arrival at 5 Teves: the Rebbe felt good. “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” Nasi is an acronym for “a spark of Yaakov our father.” The main thing is that the Rebbe is happy, without getting into the details of everything that happened during that time. What a chossid wants is for the Rebbe to be happy. So 5 Teves is a day on which the Rebbe himself testified, “This is good for me.” “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” As the Rebbe explains in many sichos about the verse “And Yaakov lived,” Yaakov’s good years are expressed by the word “lived.” “The spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” This is an important point for a chossid: what is on his mind

04:20 Speaker 1 in his speech and actions is that the Rebbe should be happy. But there is another point here. In fact, “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived” is the end of the verse. Before that, the verse says that Yaakov heard Yosef’s words and saw the wagons Yosef had sent, and then it concludes, “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” In other words, besides—just a moment—besides the Rebbe being happy, Yaakov being happy, Yaakov also shows what brought him that happiness: it came from Yosef. He saw Yosef’s wagons, and then [unclear], and the verse concludes, “And the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” We witnessed that, besides the Rebbe being happy with the outcome concerning the books, the Rebbe involved chassidim in the whole matter. It was not just a personal matter for him; it was connected to the chassidim. It is known that that year the Rebbe gave a surprising instruction, and people did not know why: he asked for an album about Chanukah to be published. It was initially called “Let There Be Light,” and it was a whole book about the large public menorahs around the world. There were indications that the Rebbe connected this to the situation with the books. In other words, since there was a problem concerning the books, that problem was connected to the chassidim. People had said [unclear] about the Rebbe, and so on. To remove that accusation, the Chanukah book was published, showing how much Chabad accomplishes through just one mitzvah campaign. Think about it: if we had to publish books about the campaigns throughout the whole year! For these eight days alone, we managed to produce a thick volume. Imagine how many activities there were throughout the year. So what evidence is there that the Rebbe connected the matter of the books with the chassidim? As we see in our verse. True, “the spirit of Yaakov our father was revived”—Yaakov

07:25 Speaker 1 felt good. But a few words come before that. Yaakov’s happiness was connected with Yosef. That is what made him happy. So we welcome the attorney who was deeply involved with the books, Rabbi Spengler [?].

08:30 Speaker 2 And so the whole meaning of 5 Teves expresses both sides: Yosef’s part and Yaakov’s part. And, thank G-d, the Rebbe never [unclear] his uniqueness or the public’s appreciation of him. When one celebrates 5 Teves, “the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” The Rebbe is happy—that is a good thing in itself—and happy because there is a reason. So this is a day of which it is said [unclear]. Let us all say l’chaim: may things be good for the Rebbe and good for the chassidim. L’chaim, l’chaim.

14:15 Speaker 3 One at a time. Let the rabbi say l’chaim. No, these things go here. L’chaim, l’chaim. Once, Rabbi Kuku [?] passed by the Rebbe at the dollar distribution. He was the emcee at an event, and the Rebbe told him, “You know, an emcee doesn’t speak. An emcee’s job is to invite other people to speak.” Anyone who knows Rabbi David [?] knows exactly why the Rebbe said that to him. Now, since Didan Natzach is connected to books, there were many instructions concerning the books, the Rebbe’s library, buying books and selling books, and so on. And the rabbi merited to publish quite a few books after Didan Natzach. I am honored to invite the rabbi [unclear]. This is [unclear] in Williamsburg; there is nothing like it. We also remember all the [unclear], and the great joy over the victory that followed, when the non-Jewish judge agreed that the books and everything connected with them belonged to the Rebbe. At the time, as people held farbrengens and spoke about the whole matter, they were upset and complained about it. But however it happened—we are not getting into those details now—after [unclear], the Rebbe always explains that a challenge that follows an examination makes the document much stronger than it was before the examination. And through all the back-and-forth and everything surrounding the matter, many important things about the Rebbe came to light, things we had not known before—both from the Rebbe’s statements and from the Rebbetzin’s statements. Through this, we saw and understood that inner matters concerning the Rebbe and the chassidim were revealed to us, deeply personal things we had never thought about or known before. One of the main channels of blessing in this area

18:08 Speaker 3 of the Rebbe’s victory, of Didan Natzach, is our guest this evening: Mr. Nathan Lewin, as he is called in English. His connection with Lubavitch goes back several generations. His grandfather was Rabbi Lewin, the rabbi of Reisha, known as one of the great Torah scholars and chassidim, and also a leading communal activist. As I recall, there are letters concerning him, and the Rebbe visited him during the period when the Rebbe was in Berlin; he was a friend of his grandfather. Then his father was Dr. Yitzchak Lewin, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Lewin, known in America as one of its leading activists and a leader at Yitzchak Elchanan. As far as I know—and this would be the place to elaborate—he had a special connection with the Rebbe and celebrated with the Rebbe. He merited that his son became the captain and general of this great undertaking on the Rebbe’s behalf. That is certainly a special merit, and we are happy to host him this evening so he can tell us, reveal to us, the discussions that took place then and what he merited to hear from the Rebbe. And of course, may this lead to Didan Natzach—not only in this matter, but to victory forever in every matter, culminating in the revelation of Moshiach, the descendant of the House of David. I will ask Dr. Lewin, Mr. Nathan Lewin—I don’t know whether he will speak in English or Hebrew. In any case, everyone is very, very happy and wants to hear what he has to tell us. Dr. Lewin, please.

20:25 Speaker 4 Thank you very much. I’m very happy to have the opportunity this year to spend the holiday of 5 Teves here with this distinguished gathering in Kfar Chabad. The rabbi told you about my family background, about my... My grandfather was not only a tremendous Torah scholar who was [unclear] in Poland; he was also close to... even to the Gerer Rebbe himself. He was not a chossid, but he was close to Chassidus in Poland. And my father, of blessed memory, came to the United States when we fled Poland. I was only three years old when we fled. We traveled through Lithuania and Russia to Vladivostok, from Vladivostok to Japan, and from Japan we came to the United States. My father was among the first in the United States to call the public’s attention to what was happening to the Jews in Europe. He wrote in the newspapers about the destruction of European Jewry, worked on communal affairs, and through what he wrote and did, saved thousands of Jews. And I learned something myself when I had the privilege of representing Chabad in the matter of the books belonging to the Frierdiker Rebbe’s library, and of coming to court over it. At one point, when they obtained documents for me from the archives in Brooklyn about the rescue of the Frierdiker Rebbe from Europe and his arrival in the United States, they found a letter written by Agudas Chassidei Chabad in 1940, when rabbis in the United States were working to rescue Jews and rabbis in Europe. They sent me a copy of this letter, which said that “Agudas Chassidei Chabad requests that the United States State Department grant nonimmigrant visas to several well-known rabbis in order to save them from the Holocaust.” Among the rabbis listed in that letter, I found—on the copy they sent me—the name of my father, of blessed memory, Rabbi Yitzchak Levin, his wife, and their son Nathan. So I thank you, the Chabad chassidim, because through a letter like that and efforts like those, you truly saved Jews from the Holocaust. And I too,

24:24 Speaker 4 now, at my age, so many years later, have the opportunity to give thanks for all the rescues that took place in those days. I’m here now because I was invited to speak with you about the court case over the books. Everywhere I go in the world—several months ago I was in Shanghai, China, where the Chabad House had two hundred people for Friday night and Shabbos—they ask me, in China, in Russia, and everywhere else I travel, to speak about the holiday of 5 Teves and about this case, which ended in a great victory, Didan Notzach. It was truly a singular privilege for me. I am a lawyer, thank G-d. I had the privilege of studying at Yeshiva Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan in New York, and afterward I was accepted to Harvard Law School. Apparently I wrote a good, candid application, because I was invited to serve as a clerk to a Supreme Court justice. I told the justice that I observed Shabbos and could not work on Friday afternoon, on Shabbos, or on holidays. I was afraid, because I had been told that all the clerks at the Supreme Court worked six days a week, Monday through Saturday. I told Justice John Harlan that I could not do that. And I was afraid because, in 1960, when I graduated from Harvard, the law firms in New York were closed to Shabbos-observant Jews. Lawyers at those firms told me, “If you keep Shabbos, you can’t be a lawyer. Ask your rabbi for a dispensation so you can work on Shabbos, because it’s impossible to be a lawyer and not work on Shabbos.” But Justice Harlan immediately told me that if I was willing to work on Sunday, there was another clerk who would work on Saturday. And what

27:51 Speaker 4 happened was that the other clerk was the grandson of a Christian clergyman, the archbishop of Pennsylvania. The justice would proudly say, when he brought visitors into his office and introduced us as we sat there, “I have two clerks here. One is the grandson of the archbishop of Pennsylvania, and the other is the grandson of the most famous rabbi in Poland, the Reisha Rav.” That’s how it was. Afterward, I began working at a firm in Washington, and that was how the matter of the books began for me. I had done a few things connected with Chabad, and apparently the Rebbe had heard of me. One night—I don’t remember which day it was—the telephone rang. I answered, and it was Rabbi Krinsky. He told me that they had discovered someone taking books at night from the library at 770 Eastern Parkway, and they had caught him on surveillance video. What should they do with him? Should they report him to the police and have him arrested? It was one in the morning, and I asked, “Who is it? What happened?” He told me that it was the son of Rabbi Gourary, of blessed memory, who was the Rebbetzin’s brother, and that he was selling the books in Switzerland and Israel to collectors of rare books. I said to him, “Well, perhaps you should come to Washington and discuss what to do. Don’t report him to the police right away.” A day or two later, he came. He was the only client who ever came to me with a page from the Shulchan Aruch, from Choshen Mishpat, to show me that in a case like this, where a person would not obey a ruling of a beis din, it was permitted to go to a civil court to obtain an injunction against him, so that he could not sell the books

31:15 Speaker 4 which were truly very rare and valuable books and other items that he was selling. He had a list of four hundred such books that he was selling to collectors. We decided to bring only the request for an injunction against the sale of those books—only the injunction against their sale—to a court in the United States. Because he lived in New Jersey and Agudas Chassidei Chabad was in New York, it was possible to begin the case in federal court rather than a New York state court, and that is where we began it. On the first day, when we filed the claim with the court, he had an opportunity to choose a lawyer and contest it. When I filed the claim, they immediately assigned a judge by lottery. We were told that the judge would be a non-Jewish judge named Charles Sifton. Judge Sifton was a very meticulous judge. He thought things through and took them very seriously. But he was away on vacation the day we came to court, so we appeared before another judge, a Jew. As soon as I entered his chambers, I saw an old page by the Rema hanging on the wall. His name was Glasser. We sat down, and he asked, “Why aren’t you bringing this matter before a beis din of rabbis? Why is it before me in court?” I told him, “As far as we’re concerned, if you issue an injunction against the sale of these books, we agree to bring the rest of the matter—who owns all the books and the entire library, the family or the community—before a beis din.” But the lawyer representing

34:34 Speaker 4 He answered him and said, “No. We’re standing here in court, and we want the court to hear the whole question of who owns this library.” We really had no choice. If that was what he wanted, he could make that claim in court. And that is how the whole proceeding began, the whole trial over ownership of the library. Barry Gourary’s mother also joined the case on her son’s side. And after that beginning, I had the first opportunity in my life to meet with the Rebbe and speak with him about the case. Attorney Shestack from Philadelphia, who was also working with us, and I had a meeting of an hour, an hour and a half, to discuss it. At the start, the Rebbe asked whether we wanted to speak in Yiddish or English. I said that I had spoken Yiddish at home and was happy to speak Yiddish. But Shestack said he did not understand it, so we spoke with the Rebbe in English the whole time about the case. Right away, we saw that the Rebbe grasped everything that had happened in court. He said to us at the outset, “Why does this man have the opportunity to claim ownership of the library in court when he took these books like a thief? He went in at midnight, entered the place where the books were kept and took them without saying anything, without presenting any claim to a beis din or a court. His claim should be thrown out, because he really behaved like a thief. And a thief has no right to make such a claim.” I thought there was no question that this was right, and we presented that argument to Judge Sifton when he returned from vacation. Well,

37:57 Speaker 4 I was thinking today about the name Sifton: samech, yud, peh, tes, vav, nun. Its gematria is 215: samech is sixty, yud is ten, peh is eighty, tes is nine, vav is six, and nun is fifty. And what is the gematria of “Didan Notzach”? 216. One is Reuven, Shimon, Ephraim, Menashe. A difference of one does not matter in gematria, so “Didan Notzach” is Sifton. And “Judge Sifton” has a gematria of 615. And [unclear] Agudas Chassidei Chabad—what does that add up to? 615. “And rejoicing and gladness” adds up to 614—again, just one short. I also thought about the name Sifton and the name Yosef. Yosef is contained in the name Sifton: yud, vav, samech, peh. When you take out those letters, only nun and tes remain. My name is Nathan, but in Africa and here too, friends call me Nat. Even people here in Israel write me letters beginning, “Dear Nat”—nun, tes. So what happened with this judge? By the time he had this case, he had divorced his first wife, who was the daughter of Reinhold Niebuhr, a well-known theologian. He was an expert in theology, and Judge Sifton was very interested in everything we showed him in this case. He later said that, in his opinion, it was the most interesting case he had had in all his years as a judge. I also had an opportunity to use Yiddish in the case, because several witnesses gave their testimony in Yiddish. Chaim Lieberman, who had helped assemble the Frierdiker Rebbe’s library from its beginnings, was in charge of it when he was young. And throughout the time

41:36 Speaker 4 he was with the Frierdiker Rebbe in Poland. He was rescued in 1940; together with the Rebbe, he came from Poland to Sweden, and from Sweden to the United States in March 1940. After that, he continued acquiring books for the library. The Rebbe wanted it to be a library not only for Torah scholars, for people studying Talmud and halachah and everything else. He even wanted to include antisemitic books, because he wanted the library to be as large as the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which was the most important Jewish library in those years. When the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived in the United States, he did everything he could to bring this library and all its books to the United States. He wrote letters saying that ownership of the library lay with Agudas Chassidei Chabad. At our trial, Barry Gourary’s representatives said that was false—that the Rebbe had written something untrue only because he wanted to save the books. Our argument was: The Rebbe would say something untrue? There is simply no possibility that the Rebbe would lie. That was our argument. If he said that it belonged to Agudas Chassidei Chabad and to the Chabad chassidim collectively, then that was the truth. But after some time, we saw that Chaim Lieberman, who had acquired the books, was advising Barry and his mother, and he claimed that the library belonged to the family. Nevertheless, he had written letters to add books to the library after the Frierdiker Rebbe’s passing. For us, that was proof that it was not a family library,

45:19 Speaker 4 but a communal one. Those books were sold to communal libraries, not to individuals who might have bought them, because they were books from the Holocaust. They had been found in Europe and no longer had owners, because their owners had been killed by the Nazis. So the books were sold, and Lieberman bought them for this library in 1951, 1952 and 1953, after the Frierdiker Rebbe’s passing. One thing that happened at the trial was that he spoke in Yiddish, and his testimony was translated from Yiddish into English. Each time, I had to ask him a question in English. They translated my question from English into Yiddish. He answered in Yiddish, and then they translated it from Yiddish into English before I could ask another question. It is very hard for a lawyer to wait. If I understand Yiddish, I want to ask the next question immediately. It is hard to hold back. Several times the judge said to me, “Lewin, wait a moment. I haven’t heard the answer yet.” While Lieberman was giving his testimony, we learned something. He lived in an apartment not far from 770, and they had given him a few yeshiva students as helpers because he was ninety-two or ninety-three—I don’t remember which. They found there—I was told they found in his toilet, in the bathroom—a torn-up letter that he had wanted to flush away. Apparently they sent me what they had taken from there, and I put it together. It was a copy of a letter from Lieberman to the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization about buying several books for five or ten pounds per book in 1951 or 1952. A day or two later, they said the boys had found another such copy. They sent it to me, and I collected it. After

48:41 Speaker 4 A week later they sent me what they had found burned in his apartment in [unclear][?]—another letter like that. So when he was giving his testimony, I asked him, “Lieberman, weren’t you trying to destroy the documents that were against you? Didn’t you want to throw this letter away?” And I showed him what had been found in the toilet, in the trash. So he said, “No, no, it’s not important. It was just a letter I didn’t need, so I threw it away.” “And two days later there was another letter like that?” I showed it to him. “That’s not important. It’s another letter.” “Then why, a week later, is there yet another letter you burned, which they found in the apartment?” “Well, I threw it away. I don’t need that letter.” I said to him, “But wasn’t it because you wanted to get rid of—to destroy—all the evidence against you? This letter shows that you’re lying.” So he said, “No. If I’d wanted to get rid of the letter, I would have thrown it in the toilet. I didn’t throw it away—I mean, I would have thrown it away. Thrown it…” There were exchanges like that during the trial, before the judge. The second time I had the opportunity to speak with the Rebbe was, as I said, after the judge did not accept the first argument I presented in court. We had a second meeting with the Rebbe, and he told us then that the testimony was the most important thing in this trial. He asked me why the judge had not accepted the first argument. I think the judge saw that this was an interesting matter, and he really wanted to hear all the testimony and determine who this library belonged to. The first argument, even though it was valid and correct—and in my opinion it was correct, and the Rebbe also

51:36 Speaker 4 said so—but if the judge had accepted that argument, the entire trial would have ended, and he would not have heard all the testimony about who the books belonged to. And indeed, the judge found it interesting. There were two sides, each saying, “It’s all mine,” so why shouldn’t he hear the testimony? It took, what, three weeks? Actually, it wasn’t only interesting to me. I had never had a trial where every bench, every seat in the courtroom, was full from the beginning of the trial to the end. Every day, buses came from Crown Heights, and the people who had the right to sit in the courtroom and listen were there, listening. Also, I didn’t even know at first, but every day they translated what was happening in court into Hebrew and sent it by fax. There was no email then, but they sent it by fax from the United States, from Brooklyn, to here—to Kfar Chabad, I think, or to other places in Israel—in Hebrew. A few years later, when I met Rabbi Berel Lazar, who is now the Chief Rabbi in Moscow, he told me that he was the young man whose job it had been to translate what was happening in court into Hebrew and send it from the United States to Israel. The second time I had a meeting, when I had the privilege of meeting the Rebbe, he already—there is a transcript, a full record of everything that happened in court, and he knew everything that had happened, that Judge Sifton had not accepted that argument. But he immediately said that the most important thing was the letter the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to Professor Marx.

54:15 Speaker 4 Professor Marx was a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary and was in charge of its library. The Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to Professor Marx in an English letter about the manuscripts and books “registered under the names of the rabbis, members of Agudas Chassidei Chabad”—that they belonged to Agudas Chassidei Chabad, “the official owners of this property.” They were the owners of this library, with several thousand books, old books that were very valuable, and “these books are the property of Agudas Chassidei Chabad of America.” Yes, and the Rebbe said, the Rebbe said, “It’s impossible that”