Gimmel Tammuz 5754: Media coverage

00:00 Speaker 1 Chabad. He really composed it. It’s a niggun with a specific meaning—that is, a melody composed by a Chabad Rebbe, whose every musical phrase and motif, as they call them, alludes to something lofty and sublime. The idea this niggun addresses is the question of why the soul descended into this world, and it ends with the answer: Hakadosh Boruch Hu desired a dwelling for Himself in the lower realms. These meanings aren’t expressed in words; usually they accompany a wordless melody. We’ll start with words, with discussion. Let’s begin with a little background on Chassidus and mysticism, and I’ll turn to you, Professor Idel. How did it begin? How did the relationship between Chassidus and messianism begin in the first place? Was one a response to the other, or were they connected from the outset?

00:53 Speaker 2 In my opinion, Chassidus represents a certain kind of messianism. Messianism had apparently existed for several hundred years before it: a messianism that sees the individual as his own redeemer, his own moshiach, and perhaps afterward as a moshiach for others as well. This way of thinking emerged in the first generations of the Chassidic movement, though one can also speak of a more historical, outward-looking messianism in that period. But in those first generations, the balance between the two models—the personal messianic model and the model of a moshiach for others—leans toward personal messianism. This is, in fact, a way of thinking that developed in the Middle Ages, in philosophical circles and also in certain Kabbalistic circles. It did not take center stage from the seventeenth century through the middle of the eighteenth century. Only with Chassidus did this tendency gain much greater momentum, and it has continued within Chassidus to this very day.

02:07 Speaker 1 How do these two models connect—messianism for oneself and messianism for others—with the earlier sources? In other words, what do they draw on, and where do Shabbetai Tzvi and personal messianism fit in?

02:21 Speaker 2 Actually, it’s very difficult to distinguish between personal and collective messianism, because a moshiach who has not redeemed himself will not be able to redeem others. That’s a fairly straightforward assumption that appears in quite a few sources. Moshiach is not a military leader without spiritual qualities who suddenly appears and performs miracles. Rather, one can generally see a kind of development that begins with one form or another of study and spiritual progress. At a certain point there is a revelation, there is action. From that perspective, these are not two opposites. In my opinion, it’s a kind of development that can find expression in collective messianism, but does not have to.

03:10 Speaker 1 I’ll turn to you, Professor Aritzky[unclear]. Regarding Chabad in its early days, how did they understand messianism and their Chassidus?

03:21 Speaker 7 Yes. In the first generations—perhaps I would say under the first four Rebbes—the model Professor Idel presented certainly applies, I think, to Chabad Chassidus. That is, the emphasis is much more on the individual’s spiritual redemption than on the question of historical, collective, political redemption. They speak very little about the latter. Moreover, one has to understand that because Chabad Chassidus places a distinct emphasis on the Divine presence everywhere—“no place is devoid of Him,” “the whole earth is filled with His glory”—the emphasis is much more on the Divine presence in every place and at every time than on some one-time irruption from above, a transcendent irruption into reality. So, to a large extent, you’ll find very little discussion of collective historical redemption among the first four Rebbes.

04:14 Speaker 1 So what did it mean to be—say I were a Chabad chossid in the first generations, under one of the first Rebbes. What was the experience of being a Chabad chossid? If it wasn’t this expectation of Moshiach now and the whole spectacle we’re familiar with.

04:27 Speaker 7 First of all, you already mentioned the idea of making a dwelling for Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the lower realms—that is, sanctifying this reality itself, right from the earliest stages. This has implications in our own time: there was an effort not to create a sharp, clear separation between the sacred and the mundane, between sacred time and ordinary time, between a sacred place and an ordinary place.

04:54 Speaker 1 Tell me what that means in practice. You wake up in the morning as a Chabad chossid. How do you make a dwelling in the lower realms? I don’t know.

05:00 Speaker 7 On the one hand, I live a life of Torah. On the other hand, I read works that enable me, through spiritual intent, to draw G-dliness down. I’ll give you an example, since you want something practical. Even the present Rebbe, the last Rebbe, said to hold Torah classes specifically on weekdays, not only on Shabbos and Yom Tov, so as not to create a situation in which Shabbos and Yom Tov are sacred while the other days are secular. Similarly, there’s an expression that began already in the early generations of Chabad—I know it from the third generation; perhaps it goes back further, but the Rebbe used it here: “Make this place Eretz Yisroel”—here in Brooklyn, here in Lubavitch. “Make this place Eretz Yisroel.” In other words, don’t draw a sharp distinction between the sacred place, the sacred center—the navel of the world, the axis mundi—and the rest of the universe. G-dliness extends everywhere; holiness extends everywhere. But I think that a fundamental change took place in Chabad’s fifth generation. With the fifth Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, at the beginning of the century, there begins—not yet a distinctly messianic tension, but a discussion, a very detailed messianic theory about the miraculous, spiritual Moshiach. And here the reason seems almost clear to me: a false messianism arose—namely, Zionism.

06:21 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:22 Speaker 7 From his perspective, that was false messianism. The Rebbe at the beginning of the century was the most outspoken theological opponent of Zionism in that entire generation. He essentially formulated Orthodox anti-Zionist ideology and theology at its strongest. Now, when there is false messianism, I cannot remain silent in the face of it. You propose a messianism of nature; I propose one of miracles. Yours is earthly; mine is spiritual. Yours is gradual; mine comes in the blink of an eye: “Suddenly the Master will come to His Temple.” In other words, the discussion, the theory, began as an antithesis to Zionism. Not that it hadn’t existed before—it had—but it found expression in response to Zionism.

06:57 Speaker 1 I wonder what you think, Moshe. I’m switching to first names. Does this response to Zionism seem inevitable for chassidim? I mean—

07:10 Speaker 8 It depends how you define Zionism. If Zionism had been an ideology alone, perhaps it could have been ignored, because the Orthodox Jewish world was not always inclined to get involved in politics. Often, undesirable developments were simply ignored. But since this was already a movement and not just an ideology, the conflict was effectively unavoidable: one side was setting out to move, while the other wanted to stay where it was. In that situation, you simply couldn’t avoid offering a reason not to become part of the competing movement.

07:58 Speaker 1 So you’re describing a kind of escalation since the beginning of Chabad, with the question of messianism becoming increasingly prominent and more intense, reaching, as I understand it, some sort of peak during the Holocaust—a feeling that from there, things could only improve. I want to try to connect that period with today. What exactly happened? And afterward we can talk about the present, about this Rebbe and what this messianism is. I just want to establish the background.

08:26 Speaker 7 Now to what I would call the third stage. If the first stage was, let’s call it, the neutralization of individual messianism, and the second was a collective messianic theory, the third stage is already one of messianic urgency. This happens with the sixth Rebbe, the previous Rebbe, and it really doesn’t begin only during the Holocaust. Here is a man who goes through hardship and suffering, and exile after exile. He lives through the pogroms in Russia and the Communist Revolution. He is exiled to Latvia, then to Poland, then to the United States—which, in his eyes, is the lower hemisphere, lower in a metaphysical sense too, not just a physical one. Then comes the Holocaust of European Jewry, the great collective catastrophe, and he reaches a conclusion we also know from other cases: there cannot be another descent. From here there must be an ascent. And then he issues the calls, “Immediately to redemption”—“Immediately to repentance, immediately to redemption.” If you translated “immediately to redemption” into English, it would almost be “Moshiach now.” Granted, here it is couched in repentance, but it is almost “Moshiach now.” This really is the third stage of messianism in the wake of disaster, in the wake of catastrophe. I assume we’ll speak later about the fourth stage, that of the present Rebbe, and what you called the escalation.

09:38 Speaker 1 Yes. Do you think, broadly speaking, that this is a matter of such clear leadership by one person each time, who, uh, takes it up a level? Or does the entire Jewish public, or the entire Chabad community, become ready for something like this each time? In the end we reached a point where sometimes you look from outside and say, “Is this Purim, or is it reality?” I mean, people are proclaiming a king. That isn’t entirely clear to Jews. So I’m trying to understand how one leader, however charismatic, intensifies things at each stage. How do you think that happens in the day-to-day life of—I’m asking you too, Moshe, because I want to understand this about messianism in general. What happened with Shabbetai Tzvi? Was it one person, or was it a community?

10:23 Speaker 9 I tend, of course—and let’s call this a personal inclination—to see an individual as someone who can change a great deal, rather than leave it to all sorts of forces that are very hard to explain to drive the process. Though we shouldn’t ignore external events either. But it seems to me that, in an already existing movement—and that’s the point: Sabbateanism was a movement that arose in the course of the revelation. Chabad, by contrast, is a completely different phenomenon. It’s one in which the interaction is very, very strong. The general expectations—

11:03 Speaker 10 Interaction between what and what?

11:05 Speaker 9 Between the community of chassidim and the Rebbe, the tzaddik. In other words, there is a very strong kind of osmosis here, where you can’t draw the line and say who started the process. Perhaps the very question of who started it is simplistic. This process may be part of a certain mentality that both the tzaddik and the community share, and each draws on the—let’s call it the momentum or the signals he receives from the other. In the structure of this Chassidic movement, which is very tightly knit, there’s no room to speak of an individual versus a community as though they were separate and could cancel each other out. Quite the opposite. You can see a kind of continuous movement in which each draws on—

12:13 Speaker 1 And nourishes the other.

12:14 Speaker 9 And nourishes the other.

12:14 Speaker 1 It reminds me a little of Shir Hashirim, of “I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride,” which, as I understand it, is the first verse expounded in this Rebbe’s inaugural address. And those relationships in Shir Hashirim, relationships of love, are very explicit. There too, you can’t really say who began it. We’ll end the introduction here, listen to another niggun, and then turn to the Rebbe himself.

12:39 Speaker 9 Your phrasing is even more wonderful than you realize. What I mean is this: on the one hand, we’ve already said that the present Rebbe received this idea of “immediately to redemption”—or, in the words of the previous Rebbe, “Moshiach will come in our generation”—from his predecessor. He didn’t create it. That’s why, whenever he said “the leader of our generation,” he meant the previous Rebbe. We are still in his generation, the generation in which Moshiach will come. But look: his first discourse, his first divrei Elokim chayim, which is what established him as Rebbe, was on “I have come into My garden, My sister...” And Rabbi Shach’s son told me that when Rabbi Shach received the text of that discourse decades ago, he said, “He thinks he’s Moshiach.”

13:17 Speaker 1 Wow.

13:17 Speaker 9 Was Rabbi Shach right? I don’t know. It may be that Rabbi Shach read it in isolation. But for the son-in-law succeeding his father-in-law, who had already said, “Moshiach will come in our generation,” and who had to carry on from there, the question is how to read the mystical message in it. That is exactly tied to the question: did he bring this from the previous generation, or did he create it? Did it arise from pressure from the chassidim over the last twenty years, or did the Rebbe nourish it and the chassidim nourish it? I agree entirely with what Moshe said here. It’s hard to put your finger on it. Let me ask you: if there had been no Gorbachev, if there had been someone else, would there have been perestroika? You can give definite answers to those questions. Perhaps it would only have happened twenty years later.

13:56 Speaker 1 It’s interesting to ask these questions. Let’s hear some music.

16:21 Speaker 11 “My soul thirsts for You.” The words are from Psalm 63: “My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and weary land without water. So I have beheld You in the sanctuary, to see Your strength and Your glory.” A familiar Chabad interpretation of this verse says, more or less—if I may put it in my own words: If only, when I am in the sanctuary, in the Beis Hamikdash, perhaps in the days of Moshiach, I will thirst and long for You as I do while I am in a dry and weary land without water. That, of course, also fits the relationship of love we described earlier. I hope that during the broadcast we’ll be able to speak with Rabbi Menachem Brod of Tzeirei Chabad. Perhaps he’s already with us on the phone. Rabbi Brod, are you with us?

17:11 Speaker 12 Hello, good afternoon.

17:12 Speaker 11 Good evening.

17:13 Speaker 12 Good evening.

17:14 Speaker 11 We’ll switch to a conference call by phone. Here in the studio are Avi Ravitzky and Moshe Idel. I’m Ruth Calderon.

17:22 Speaker 12 Yes, hello, everyone.

17:23 Speaker 13 Hello.

17:24 Speaker 14 Hello.

17:25 Speaker 11 We want to speak now about the Rebbe himself. To try to understand—and I also want to ask you personally what you think, how you feel right now. This is a time for different thoughts, I would venture to say, and a different kind of pain. Would you like to begin by saying something before the questions?

17:47 Speaker 12 Look, there’s a lot one could say. The feelings this week have been very difficult, very tumultuous. I don’t remember a week like this in my life. On the one hand, there is the natural personal pain, even more than that of sons who lose their father. The Rebbe was, and still is, a figure who shaped and continues to shape our whole lives, our entire being. He is our guide, our leader, the man who, in effect, shaped all our ways of thinking and living. The man we were always accustomed to looking up to, as he led and guided and we followed him, feeling happy that we had merited to be led by such a person. And now we have to stand and see the Rebbe beneath a mound of earth. That is a very hard feeling. At the same time, this week has also demanded that we think very deeply about things we previously stood for, believed in, and thought would happen in a certain way, only to discover that they are happening differently. After the initial shock and blow, we began to see things we hadn’t seen before. Perhaps because, when the sun is shining, you don’t see the light of the candles. But all along we tended to interpret the Rebbe’s words to mean that what happened this week would not happen—that he would lead us straight to the Geulah, without any interruption, without a passing. It has become clear that although he certainly longed and hoped for the Geulah to come in that way, he also prepared us for another possibility and, in fact, gave us all the tools and ways to go on and cope with the present situation. These are things we suddenly began to see this week. All of this is so fresh and so new that it still needs to be absorbed—

20:09 Speaker 12 And processed, and adjusted to.

20:13 Speaker 3 I want to say that I think there is a great deal of empathy here in the studio for how you are feeling, and in that sense, we share your grief. I feel that it isn’t only sympathy for someone else’s mourning; I, too, am very saddened by the loss of such a great man.

20:31 Speaker 12 Look, the Rebbe wasn’t only the Rebbe of Chabad chassidim. The Rebbe was—

20:36 Speaker 3 I understand that by that definition, I’m really like everyone else—everyone else is also a Chabad chossid. But wait a second, I want to say that in that sense I really do share in it, but I want to ask a simple question. As an Israeli Jewish woman living here, I listened carefully to what he said, as far as I could understand it. Explain to me plainly what this whole matter of Moshiach was about. I mean, is it simply as I’m hearing it—that this man spoke, or others spoke about him, as Moshiach ben David, who would arise and lead us to the Geulah? I want to understand whether I’ve got it right, because all along I felt there might be something more vague behind it.

21:23 Speaker 12 Well, we have to clarify a few things here. First and foremost, you can analyze the concept of Moshiach in sociological and academic terms. But if we’re talking about the classical belief in Moshiach as it exists among the Jewish people, and as it is also defined in the Rambam’s halachic writings, we’re talking about an event that will one day take place. A descendant of King David will come, a person of whom Yeshayahu says, “The spirit of Hashem will rest upon him,” and he will bring Geulah and set the entire world right. And I assume that everyone who defines himself as religious believes this, even if he gives it no concrete meaning and doesn’t identify any particular person with that belief. He believes that Moshiach will come one day.

22:13 Speaker 3 That’s something I’d be glad to examine here in the studio, for example. How do you respond to that statement?

22:20 Speaker 4 First of all, hello, Rabbi Brod. This is Avi Ravitzky, and we’ve already spoken about this. I share in your grief—in our grief—and I must say that I greatly appreciate what you’re saying and the way you’re approaching this. In many ways, I would say, it confounds the predictions of various sociologists of religion. On the one hand, there were those who said that when something like this falls apart, people either convert to Christianity, leave Israel, or throw off the yoke of observance. On the other hand, it also confounds the assumption that, when this happens, people will insist all the more that he is Moshiach and must rise from the dust, as happened only on the movement’s fringes. I truly appreciate your response. At the same time, I want to ask how you regard things you said in the past, both publicly and in private, on this subject, and the written commitments made by your colleagues, including in Kfar Chabad, which very much implied that someone who denies that the Rebbe personally is Moshiach is like someone who denies Hashem and His Torah. You know those quotations better than I do. There were statements saying that if it happened—well, it simply could not happen. If the Rebbe were to pass away and not be Moshiach, it would call into question the entire line of Chabad Rebbes. I greatly admire your ability to adjust, which shows the vitality of a religious person in facing change and crisis. But now I’m asking the theoretical question: How do you actually regard the things said in the recent, very recent past?

23:50 Speaker 12 Look, as I mentioned, we’re now at a stage of examining things. And since I also have an official role, I have to make a distinction and say that nothing I’m saying now represents the movement as a whole. These matters have not yet been settled or worked through at the level of the movement. I’m expressing my personal views.

24:15 Speaker 4 If you noticed, I was careful not to quote things we discussed in private, only things that were issued officially.

24:22 Speaker 12 Yes, but what I’m saying now is that I’m speaking strictly as a private individual, thinking things through—perhaps thoughts that are still unformed. I will certainly raise them in other forums where these matters will be discussed. I feel that we erred, and I’ll tell you where we erred. We erred by allowing the public to understand that certain things which were our own feelings and understandings carried the same weight as the Rebbe’s own words. Let me explain. The Rebbe did indeed say things that were very, very explicit and very stirring, and he asked us to convey them to the entire Jewish people. What he said—and there is no doubt about it, and it will not change—is that we are the generation standing on the threshold of the Geulah. This will be the generation in which Moshiach comes. We need to prepare for him, because it is going to happen now. I believe that with complete faith. And perhaps the Rebbe’s passing—because we know that the passing of tzaddikim brings atonement—is the last thing needed to clear the way, perhaps of things holding it back. Now the Rebbe will act in the heavens so that it happens and the Geulah does indeed come. I think, and we all think, that there is no question we must continue saying this to every Jew and preparing the generation, preparing the Jewish people, for the Geulah that is to come.

25:48 Speaker 5 Rabbi Brod, if I may—

25:49 Speaker 12 The second point is identifying the Rebbe as Moshiach, with all the interpretations that went along with it—that he would live forever and things of that sort. Here we went too far. It’s not that these ideas had no basis or that they couldn’t have been said, but they should have been expressed more cautiously, not as an absolute, final determination, as though they were the very heart of the matter. That is how I feel.

26:15 Speaker 5 Rabbi Brod, if I may. First of all, I truly admire you for saying this, and saying it on the radio, too. That’s one of the things I deeply believe in about the Rebbe’s approach, and one of the things I so appreciated about him: that he used tools like radio, and many others, to make things accessible—or to remove the divide between things beyond our world and our own world. But I want to use your question to ask the two colleagues here in the room to take up your challenge. How do you, as Jews, understand the concept of Moshiach? Is it entirely a symbol or a metaphor, or is it quite literal, as the Gemara says—[unclear]—that he could appear? What do you think? Which of you would like to begin?

27:13 Speaker 6 Well, I’ll tell you that I think when you read the Rambam’s laws concerning Moshiach, the belief and hope that the Rambam expects—

00:04 Naked. After discussing it with Miriam, I asked the doctors for time to consult. As soon as Shabbos ended, I hurried to call the Rebbe’s office in New York. The Rebbe’s secretary answered. I introduced myself and said it was urgent. “Everything is urgent,” the secretary said. “It’s about surgery!” I shouted into the receiver, and I’m sure that in New York, seven thousand kilometers away, they heard my voice without the telephone. “Stay on the line,” the secretary said quickly. He set the receiver on his desk and went in to the Rebbe. I waited impatiently, frantic with worry. After a few minutes that seemed like an eternity, the secretary returned and said, “Reb Haber, tell me exactly what the medical problem is. Ask the doctors to tell you precisely, and call me back.” I ran to the doctors and asked for the medical details, including all the professional terms. They were rather surprised. After all, it isn’t every day that someone as ignorant of medicine as I am asks them for a precise medical report. But they gave me everything, and with that information I ran back to the phone. I relayed it to the secretary; he went in to the Rebbe, and a few seconds later returned and said, “Tell the doctors not to perform any surgery. We are waiting for good news. All the best.” I ran back to the ward, where the doctors were waiting for my signature. First I asked to speak with Miriam. She heard the Rebbe’s answer and accepted his words without question. Now I had to explain it to the doctors. “The Rebbe said not to perform the surgery,” I told them. They chuckled. “With all due respect to your Rebbe, we’re the doctors, not him. We’re here and he’s in New York, and we know what to do. What needs to be done right now, this very minute, is surgery. Understand? Surgery. Now.” “I’m sorry,” I told them quietly, “I can’t do that. The Rebbe said no surgery, so there will be no surgery.” They were convinced that although I looked like a twentieth-century American

01:53 and spoke English as a native language, I had only come down from the trees that morning with my Rebbe. “You know what?” the chief doctor said. “We’ll wait another half hour at most and see what happens.” Meanwhile, Israel Haber relates, I sat to the side, opened a Tehillim and began to daven. Suddenly, while my lips were murmuring a prayer, I saw doctors running in and out of the room where Miriam lay, carrying monitor screens. I jumped up in alarm and ran toward them. What was happening? Had something serious, G-d forbid, happened to Miriam? One of the doctors took me aside and said, “Look, Mr. Haber, there’s something here we don’t understand. Shortly after we gave you the medical information and you went to call your Rebbe, the monitor beside your wife showed that everything was fine, that there was no fetal distress at all. We thought it made no sense, that it couldn’t be, and that the monitor must be broken. So we brought other monitors from all the other departments, from other floors of the building, but every one showed the same result. Everything that had been wrong was gone. We’ve never encountered anything like it. We simply can’t believe it.” And I, who had only just come down from the tree with a Tehillim in my hand, knew exactly what had happened. But I was stunned. And the doctors? They still weren’t convinced. “We’ll wait another twenty-four hours,” they said, “and see how things develop.” The truth is, Israel Haber relates, I had heard stories like this many times about other people, from other people. I never would have imagined that something like this could happen to me too—and now it had. And you have to understand: I’m not someone who runs around telling his friends that angels rise from my Rebbe’s fingernails every morning. I’m a rational, practical American, and Miriam is exactly the same sort of person. She too was stunned to see that something she had heard about more than once was happening to her. Suddenly the problem disappeared. Our Meir Moshe was born

03:41 healthy and whole, one day before the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s birthday. It was 10 Nissan 5737, 1977. And back to Almost Shabbos. The next story took place in a yeshiva abroad. The identities of the people involved are known. They are normal people, not given to hallucinations. In that yeshiva, alongside Gemara and Shulchan Aruch, they also studied mussar. Several times a day, early in the morning and in the evening, the students would sit and study mussar works. There was one American student who never opened the mussar books. Instead, he would sit with a small book in his hand, completely absorbed in it. When this happened day after day, the mashgiach approached him and saw that the student was studying Tanya, written by the Alter Rebbe, the founder of Chabad Chassidus. It is considered the foundational work of Chabad Chassidus. When the mashgiach asked why he wasn’t studying the books everyone else was studying, the student gave an evasive answer. He said he had seen this book in the yeshiva’s bookcase, had been captivated by it at first sight, and had therefore decided to study it. But when he saw that his answer did not satisfy the mashgiach, he asked to speak with him privately. The story he had to tell was astonishing. “I have a sister,” the young man began, “who was born healthy and whole. She attended school until she was about sixteen. But gradually my parents began to notice that she could no longer speak as she used to, until she reached the point where she could not speak at all. What didn’t my parents do? They went to the best doctors, the leading professors, and nothing helped. They all said unanimously that she had no vocal cords and that the chances of her ever speaking were close to zero. One day, my cousin suggested going to a specialist in England. At first my parents objected strongly, saying they had already seen the best doctors and nothing had helped. But it seems my cousin

05:31 managed to give them hope again, and they decided to try. My cousin arranged for them to stay with a well-to-do Jew, a Chabad chossid who lived near that doctor. But that doctor, too, had a bitter disappointment in store for them. ‘There is no chance your daughter will be able to speak,’ he told them, and my parents left utterly dejected. One evening before their return, my parents sat with their hosts and told them what the specialist and the other doctors had said: there was no chance, and it was a waste of time. The head of the host family suggested that my parents try something else, something unusual that they had not thought of before. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘your daughter’s cure is beyond the doctors, since she has no vocal cords. Why don’t you write to the Lubavitcher Rebbe?’ My parents tried to avoid it, but the Chabad chossid said it would be a shame not to try. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was known for the many people who had been helped through his blessings. ‘Try it, and perhaps you’ll see for yourselves.’ With obvious reluctance, my parents decided to try. ‘Maybe,’ they said. ‘Who knows?’ Some time later, my parents and my sister stood before the Rebbe in yechidus. Suddenly, the Rebbe asked my parents to leave the room. Half a minute later, my sister opened the door to the Rebbe’s room and said in her own voice, ‘Father, Mother, you may come back in.’ It turned out that the Rebbe had asked my sister to promise that, if she was healed, she would work in education. When she agreed, the Rebbe sent her to call my stunned parents.” “So that’s why you decided to study Tanya in particular?” the mashgiach interrupted. He had been sitting there the whole time, listening to the story open-mouthed. “No, no,” the young man replied. “The next time I came with my parents to the Rebbe, he asked me to study Tanya. Well, after the open miracle that happened to my sister, how could I not do as he said?” The letter was indeed in his handwriting, but the signature was not his. Then he remembered that four years earlier, at the end of the Six-Day War, a friend who had injured his hand in the war and found writing difficult had asked him to write a letter to the Rebbe. So he, the journalist, had already written to the Rebbe. What is striking is that over those four years, hundreds of thousands of letters had passed through the Rebbe’s hands, yet he had seen fit to keep this letter in his desk drawer. And from the press: newspapers reported this week that the singer Bob Dylan was among those who visited the resting place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, during this hour of Almost Shabbos we have told just a tiny fraction of the stories about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory. And there is much more we have yet to tell, and that will still be told. Stories like these and others appear in three volumes of collected stories about the Lubavitcher Rebbe that have just been published. Thank you for joining us this hour. Thank you to producer Aryeh Tzuberi, music editor Avraham Zigman, and technician Itzik Lashad. I’m Menachem Michelson, wishing you a restful Shabbos, a Shabbos of good stories. And in the background, the Chabad Choir. Farewell.

07:31 During the Six-Day War, one of his friends, who had injured his hand in the war and found writing difficult, asked him to write a letter to the Rebbe. So the journalist had already written to the Rebbe. What is interesting is that over those four years, hundreds of thousands of letters passed through the Rebbe’s hands, yet he saw fit to keep this letter in his desk drawer. And from the press: newspapers reported this week that singer Bob Dylan was among those who visited the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, during this hour of Almost Shabbos, we have told just a tiny part of the stories of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory. And there is more that we have not yet told, and more will be told. Stories like these appear in the three volumes of collected stories about the Lubavitcher Rebbe that have just been published. Thank you for joining us this hour. Thanks to producer Aryeh Tzuberi, music editor Avraham Zigman, and technician Itzik Leshed. I’m Menachem Michelson, wishing you a restful Shabbos, a Shabbos of good stories. And in the background, the Chabad choir. Goodbye.

00:00 Speaker 1 Kfar Chabad is in deep mourning on the day after the Rebbe’s passing. At the direction of the leading chassidim, the day will be devoted—will be devoted to studying Mishnayos for the elevation of the Rebbe’s soul and to studying his books. Our correspondent Beni Lis was in Kfar Chabad.

00:13 Speaker 3 When we arrived at the central synagogue in Kfar Chabad late in the morning, the worshippers were still praying quietly. It felt like a house of mourning. Chassidim who suddenly found themselves without a leader. No instructions had been given about what to do today, but the chassidim decided to devote the day to reciting Mishnayos and studying the Rebbe’s books. That is how they express their pain and their profound sense of loss.

00:39 Speaker 4 It’s very hard, but we believe the Rebbe—the Rebbe will come here, really, at any moment. We’re waiting. How? What? I don’t know.

00:49 Speaker 3 The struggle has not yet begun. It will take place between the younger chassidim and the elders of Chabad. The younger chassidim still believe that the Rebbe is Moshiach. They have even put up notices quoting passages about the resurrection of the dead and Moshiach.

01:02 Speaker 4 It is written: “And the wise man at that time shall be silent.” There’s nothing to say.

01:11 Speaker 3 The house in Kfar Chabad is an exact replica of the Rebbe’s house in Brooklyn, built by the chassidim in the hope of enticing the Rebbe to come to Israel. Some of the chassidim are disappointed that they did not succeed in persuading the Rebbe to come here, and their sense of loss is immense. Who will now lead the thousands of chassidim? Is there a suitable candidate to lead a worldwide movement like this? Who will control the budgets? The institutions? Did the Rebbe leave a will that answers all these questions? In Kfar Chabad, there are no answers.

01:39 Speaker 5 It’s hard. It’s hard for us.

01:43 Speaker 1 And now, to the efforts to expand the coalition. It isn’t going so well. Meretz won—

01:47 Speaker 2 most of his injuries.

00:14 Speaker 1 Good evening, and greetings to you. These are our main stories tonight. The prevailing assessment is that the Rebbe will not name the person who will succeed him, but he is appointing people to head the Chabad movement’s institutions around the world. In the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, many believe he will return as Moshiach. Others are preparing to rebuild the movement, which was weakened during the final months of the Rebbe’s illness. Eli Melech, [unclear] from New York.

00:37 Speaker 2 Lubavitcher chassidim who were unable to witness the burial of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson last night have been arriving since early this morning at Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, passing by the fresh grave. And in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, outside the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s home, some still refuse to accept what has happened. The Rebbe is Moshiach, and he will come soon. Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the Rebbe’s close secretary, who in recent weeks expressed reservations about the Moshiach cult and whom some mention as a possible successor to the Rebbe, is extremely cautious in his answers to the media’s questions.

01:14 Speaker 3 The Jewish people believe in the resurrection of the dead, the eventual resurrection, which is a cardinal principle of our faith. And yes, we believe that that will happen at the given time. What these people are doing in the street is incomprehensible to me. I don’t know if they know what they’re doing. It’s an aberration in my eyes.

01:38 Speaker 4 Do you consider that sacrilegious?

01:39 Speaker 3 Totally sacrilegious, yes.

01:41 Speaker 2 And in the neighborhood this morning, people are praying at the entrance to the Rebbe’s home, praying for the elevation of his soul in the synagogue, and refusing to talk about a successor. The Rebbe is with us, and his spirit is with us.

01:52 Speaker 5 The Rebbe is with us. The Rebbe lives with us. Our lives are the Rebbe’s life.

01:56 Speaker 6 The Rebbe is still with us. The Rebbe will continue to be with us. He gave us a way of life, a way of life that is our responsibility to ourselves, our responsibility to our community, our responsibility to the entire Jewish people, and our responsibility to the entire world. That is going to continue.

00:01 Speaker 1 Chassidim now need to reorganize their religious and halachic affairs. I’m sure they’ll do it successfully, because even when Moshiach dies, belief in Moshiach doesn’t die. The expectation of Moshiach is a deep emotional need for some people, perhaps for most of us, and it will continue even after the Rebbe is gone.

00:27 Speaker 2 I’m sure that even for a confirmed secular person like you, somewhere in the past weeks or months, there was a little something fluttering inside that said: Wait, maybe they’re right? Maybe there’s another world and resurrection? Maybe there’s [unclear]...

00:40 Speaker 1 Yes, you know, certainly. Every Jew has that within him, and every person longs for redemption—for the redemption of the soul and the redemption of the world from sin and suffering. But, you know, it’s like an Israeli soccer fan hoping Israel will win the World Cup. It won’t happen in our lifetime, as they say, not in our lifetime. But look, the truth is that we really should share in the chassidim’s grief. Mocking a belief is an empty thing that comes from an empty soul. No, we shouldn’t judge them by their beliefs but by their deeds. And Chabad’s deeds—I know some people on the left say they’ll join the Greater Israel movement, that they’re right-wing, and so on. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they did good things. They cared for Judaism and strengthened Judaism throughout the world. They worked to bring hearts closer together. They didn’t have the kind of hatred and violence that you find, say, among the Satmar chassidim. They were... and they had a great deal of joy and optimism. I very much hope that joy and optimism, that zest for life and faith that lifts the soul to joy, will remain with them after the Rebbe’s death.

02:05 Speaker 2 Did you ever meet him?

02:06 Speaker 1 No, I never met him. I never even received a dollar from him, and I never experienced his radiant, charismatic personality, as people describe it. But from what I heard and read about him, I loved his concern for Judaism and for Jews. That’s what matters most to me as a Jew.

02:30 Speaker 2 Thank you very much, Amnon Dankner.

02:32 Speaker 1 And may we merit to see the coming of Moshiach.

02:34 Speaker 2 Amen. He sounded like someone who had become religious. And here we met Rabbi Avraham Bishmut[?] from Tzfas. He runs institutions for Chabad chassidim in Tzfas, and of course he has an explanation for this phenomenon. Let’s hear Rabbi Bishmut[?].

02:49 Speaker 6 I don’t understand this, but apparently a directive has just come from the Association of Chabad Rabbis to stop the dancing, though they need to express their view. They are Chabad chassidim; for years they understood, believed and lived with the Rebbe’s words that he is Moshiach. And now, as the verse says, “Then all the peoples of the earth will see.” This is the most important moment. This is the most fitting moment for Moshiach to reveal himself, and indeed they are greeting it with joy and dancing in the streets, even though he has departed from his body.

03:22 Speaker 2 The people standing beside me and listening to my broadcast want me to stress that it’s a small group that is dancing and rejoicing, and that’s true. They are the exception. Most, as I said, are standing quietly and mourning. But these chassidim, Chabad chassidim, continue to believe—and you’ve surely heard this already—that the Rebbe who has died, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, is Melech HaMoshiach. He has died, but he will return. Here is Avraham Goldberger, who has been here in Brooklyn outside the Rebbe’s home since word of his death arrived, a little before two in the morning. Let’s hear from him too.

03:55 Speaker 7 My wife was there at six-thirty with my little daughter, who is six, and my daughter asked her, “How can this be? We said the Rebbe is Moshiach, and now suddenly the Rebbe is lying here outside under a sheet, with two candles?” So my wife told her that the Rebbe’s situation is exactly like what happened at the giving of the Torah at Sinai. The Jews waited forty days for the Torah, and in the last twelve hours before Hakadosh Boruch Hu was to give Moshe Rabbeinu the Torah, Satan came and showed them Moshe Rabbeinu as though he were dead. Suddenly the whole people became confused. It’s the same with the Rebbe’s situation right now. What we are seeing is exactly the second, or minute, or hour before Hakadosh Boruch Hu reveals the Rebbe as Melech HaMoshiach. Hakadosh Boruch Hu has no difficulty taking someone’s spirit and giving it back to him.

05:05 Speaker 8 Fortunate are those who believe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s funeral will take place at four in the afternoon, New York time, at Montefiore Jewish Cemetery in Queens. Certainly many thousands of Chabad chassidim will come to accompany the Rebbe on his final journey. The streets around that famous building, whose replica stands in Kfar Chabad, have already been blocked off for many hours by the New York police. That’s all for now from Aryeh Golan at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York.

05:41 Speaker 9 Thank you very much, Aryeh Golan. Those were the voices Michael Tuchfeld heard today in Kfar Chabad.

05:46 Speaker 10 There are no words. I have nothing to add. We need to do what the Rebbe told us to do: strengthen Judaism. And soon we will merit Moshiach—the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach. I think we need to strengthen everything the Rebbe told us to do. The entire Chabad movement, all the supporters of Chabad throughout the world, will continue doing what the Rebbe said. And as I said, I’m certain that even today, as the Rebbe said, Moshiach can happ—can come. I believe with complete faith in the coming of Moshiach, that he may come any day. The feeling is terrible. I’m sure the Rebbe will look after us from Above, and I hope Moshiach comes soon and everything will be all right.

06:35 Speaker 11 As for how I feel, I’m full of faith. I’m not prepared to accept this. I’m full of faith that this still isn’t the end and that Moshiach will indeed reveal himself very soon. This is just another sign that Moshiach is on the way. What I mean is that I still hope to see the Rebbe alive and here in Israel. That’s it. You asked me what I felt; that’s what I felt. Logically, there’s no explanation for it. That’s what I truly feel in my heart.

06:59 Speaker 12 I have no spirit left at all. I’ve worked with photographs of the Rebbe for the past twenty years. I was a photographer there from 1972, and I photographed him all the time—from 1972, meaning for twenty-five years I photographed him constantly. I simply can’t believe it.

07:26 Speaker 3 Shortly before our broadcast, we call New York and speak to Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, an assistant to Rabbi Krinsky. Hello, Rabbi Shmotkin.

07:36 Speaker 4 Hello.

07:37 Speaker 3 Can you describe what’s happening now at the Rebbe’s headquarters, a few hours before the funeral?

07:43 Speaker 4 Thousands of chassidim are moving about there, and their numbers are growing by the minute as they arrive from all over the world. By “chassidim,” I mean people from every walk of life—not just Chabad chassidim, not just religious Jews, not just Jews. People from all over the world are in shock and mourning the tremendous loss the world has suffered today, which has taken so much from us. And everyone is praying, hoping and waiting for the day when we will be reunited with the Rebbe at the coming of Moshiach and the resurrection of the dead.

08:37 Speaker 5 Rabbi Shmotkin[?], is there room for all those people? Where are they gathering?

08:44 Speaker 4 As many as can fit into the shul go in, and the rest are in the streets. Everyone tries to get as close as possible, but of course there’s only so much room. Those who can’t get close stand on a nearby street or one a little farther away.

09:11 Speaker 5 What will become of Chabad Chassidus now? How will things be run?

09:16 Speaker 4 Listen, everyone is feeling profound emotional pain right now. And of course, every chossid knows in his heart and mind that we must continue all the work the Rebbe began, guided us in, and devoted his life to. Everyone knows that this is the Rebbe’s wish. We have enough instructions, teachings and understanding from the Rebbe for hundreds of years.

09:57 Speaker 5 Some say, Rabbi Shmotkin[?], that Chabad is now facing a severe crisis, perhaps even the breakup of the movement.

10:06 Speaker 4 The Rebbe’s work and activities will never, G-d forbid, fall apart. And as for the crisis, it isn’t a crisis for Chabad, but for every Jew throughout the world.

10:19 Speaker 5 That’s all on this subject. Now to other matters. This day goes on.

00:00 Speaker 1 He was undoubtedly a leader, a unique figure among the Jewish people. Beyond all the disagreements concerning [unclear] the Labor Party, he built a movement with tremendous influence on Jewish life in many places, and many of that movement’s activities are ones we all welcome. I hope a worthy successor will be found to carry those positive elements of the Chabad movement forward into the next era as well.

00:33 Speaker 2 At present, no minister from the Israeli government is scheduled to travel to the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s funeral.

00:39 Speaker 3 As mourning spread through the Charedi world, most of the Charedi public offered condolences to Chabad today. At the same time, there were also voices expressing satisfaction that the messianic hope had been dashed. Our correspondent Yiftach Elazar reports on the different reactions.

01:00 Speaker 4 In the plaza of Chabad’s Gutnick Center in Jerusalem, the chassidim move in an unending circle, awaiting the imminent revelation. The home of the Gerer Rebbe is very close by, and Gerer chassidim gather by the fence and watch in astonishment. “What’s the celebration about?” a Chabad chossid says to them. “You’ll see. Moshiach will surely come.”

01:18 Speaker 5 Moshiach will be revealed when they prepare the shrouds for him and bring him the coffin; then Moshiach will be revealed. That is what one author wrote two hundred years ago. So all the possibilities are open.

01:31 Speaker 4 Still waiting.

01:32 Speaker 5 Still waiting.

01:33 Speaker 4 Publicly, the various factions of the Charedi community competed today to offer condolences to the mourning Chabad movement. The Ministry of Religious Affairs issued a statement in the name of Israel’s rabbis and dayanim, calling on the chassidim to take comfort and unite in continuing to realize the spiritual legacy the Rebbe left them. The National Religious Party, speaking for religious Zionism, bows its head before the spiritual leader it calls the glory of the generation. Shas, busy with coalition negotiations, also found time to express sorrow and added a wish that we merit the revelation of Moshiach Tzidkeinu soon. Even associates of Rabbi Shach, the leader of the Litvish community and a longtime opponent of Chabad, conveyed condolences despite the ideological disagreements. Only on the Charedi street, where politics imposes no obligations, could one also hear a little gloating over Chabad, which today lost its Moshiach.

02:29 Speaker 6 Kol Yisrael from Jerusalem. Good morning. It is five o’clock, and here is the news with Eddie Raban. The Rebbe of Lubavitch was buried after midnight at Montefiore Cemetery in the Queens borough of New York. His coffin was interred near the grave of the previous Rebbe of the Chabad chassidim.

02:51 Speaker 7 Good morning. The time is five—5:25. Maariv has reached our desk, and yes, Maariv has a special edition. Yedioth is arriving too; it will be here in the studio in a second. Maariv’s special edition is its second edition. It carries a photograph of the funeral. Maariv waited so it could include a photograph of the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s funeral, and indeed, the second edition has one. Yedioth Ahronoth did not put out two editions. It waited and then released a single edition, which arrived just a tiny bit late. It, too, has the same photograph from the international photo agency AP, showing the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s coffin surrounded by chassidim and police officers as it was taken for burial last night in New York. The photograph was taken near his home. Maariv devotes ten news pages to the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s life and the funeral. On its front page, Maariv writes: “Crowds surged toward the coffin of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson during the funeral procession held last night in New York in pouring rain. Confusion in Chabad: Thousands of chassidim struggled to believe the Rebbe had passed away; they drank and danced while awaiting his return to life. Others accepted the decree and performed the ritual tearing of their clothes. Thousands flocked to Ben Gurion Airport in an effort to get a seat on a flight to New York. The Rebbe left a will but did not name his successor. Members of the movement expect a succession struggle. Messages of condolence came even from his opponents.” In addition to ten news pages, Maariv devotes almost half of today’s paper to the Rebbe’s passing: articles, surveys, and tributes. We have one here by Rabbi Shmuel Avigdor, one by Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, one by Emunah Elon, and many others. The Rebbe of Lubavitch has passed away, and Maariv devotes a large part of the newspaper to his death.

05:09 Speaker 8 Good morning. The time is 5:30. Here is a news update. Israel is demanding that the Palestinians prevent gunfire from Khan Younis toward IDF forces stationed in the area. The Rebbe of Lubavitch was buried after midnight at Montefiore Cemetery in the Queens borough of New York. His coffin was interred near the grave of the previous Rebbe of the Chabad chassidim.

05:29 Speaker 7 Good morning. The time is 5:35. You are listening to First Light, the first current-affairs program on Reshet Bet. Here in Studio Three in Tel Aviv, we continue to bring you music and go through the newspaper headlines with you. We turn to Yedioth Ahronoth. As we mentioned, its front page has a color photograph from the international photo agency AP showing the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s coffin being carried out of his home. Around it are chassidim who just want to touch it, and around them are police officers watching as the chassidim touch the coffin. Another headline in Yedioth Ahronoth: Rabin in Jericho tomorrow. Arafat demands renewed Israeli approval of the understandings on Jerusalem. The head of Military Intelligence met with the Jordanian mediator. Yedioth Ahronoth also reports a rise on the stock exchange. The indices rose by a little more than two percent. Only the Arrow missile manages, in Yedioth Ahronoth, to push the Rebbe of Lubavitch a little further back. Yedioth Ahronoth devotes its first news spread to the successful Arrow launch, with commentary by Ron Ben-Yishai below: “Certainly a reason to celebrate.” Further on, Yedioth Ahronoth also continues its extensive reporting on the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s funeral. It quotes Rabin on his passing: “A great, great leader has died.” And Communications Minister Shulamit Aloni says: “It’s a bit exaggerated.” Tzadok Yehezkeli, Yedioth Ahronoth’s correspondent in New York, reports: “The shock. We’ve been dealt a terrible slap in the face. This didn’t go according to the script. After all, the Rebbe told us he would bring the Geulah. I demand that it happen, but I can’t shut out a terrible thought: What if we’ve been fooled?” The headline of this major article is “They hoped for Moshiach’s resurrection.” Good morning. It is 5:41, and we are looking at the newspaper headlines. Maariv and Yedioth Ahronoth are spread out before us. As we said, Maariv, like Yedioth, devotes a substantial part of its paper to the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s passing. A headline in one of its reviews of the Rebbe’s passing: “The Air—

07:40 Speaker 7 The Air Force has lost more pilots to Lubavitch than in all the wars.” Maariv also quotes reactions from public figures in the country. We already read Rabin’s in Yedioth: “This is a great loss for the entire Jewish people.” Peres says of him: “A great man, a Torah scholar.” Shulamit Aloni: “A loss of perspective.” Netanyahu says of him: “He will be remembered for the chassidus.” Burg—Avraham Burg—says: “Despite the small and foolish chassidim.” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef says: “He was a true genius.” And Ariel Sharon: “The Rebbe had piercing steel eyes.” Maariv, by the way, is giving its readers a color poster. Its center spread has become a color poster of the Rebbe of Lubavitch. Anyone who wants to frame it and hang it at home: Maariv is giving them a picture of the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s piercing eyes. Yedioth Ahronoth is also covering the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s passing, but Yedioth Ahronoth has other news as well.

02:12 Speaker 1 Stand by, stand by.

02:19 Speaker 2 Good evening to those watching us on Channel 33 of Israeli Television. Good evening, Professor Avi Ravitzky.

02:26 Speaker 1 Good evening.

02:27 Speaker 2 Here on this channel, we will bring you the funeral procession of the Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The procession—the coffin is now leaving the Rebbe’s home at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and it will make its way to the Montefiore Jewish Cemetery in Queens, where the Rebbe will be buried later. The procession will be a quiet one. There will be no eulogies, and as far as we know now, filming will not be permitted inside the cemetery either. Elimelech Ram, you’re watching the procession in Brooklyn.

03:16 Speaker 1 Yes, I’m still in Brooklyn, and there’s still no sign that the procession is about to leave. As you can see, there are a great many people, a great many chassidim, some of whom have come from overseas. They’re waiting for several more planes to arrive from overseas, full of Lubavitch chassidim, but those planes will probably arrive after the funeral procession is over. They’re scheduled to reach the New York airport in about four hours.

03:47 Speaker 2 So the people who left Israel this afternoon will already be attending the shivah for the Rebbe, rather than the funeral procession.

03:56 Speaker 1 That seems likely. The funeral procession is supposed to leave shortly—within about half an hour, I’d say. But they may decide to postpone it. I don’t know what the ruling is in this case. Perhaps a person can be buried at night, after dark. If so, the procession may be delayed.

04:20 Speaker 2 Elimelech, has the Rebbe’s coffin already been brought out of the house?

04:23 Speaker 1 No, it hasn’t been brought out yet. They’re supposed to bring it out of the house, and it will pass through the crowds of mourners. Right now, people are passing before it inside the house—not everyone, of course, but some of the selected elders or prominent members of the Lubavitch movement.

04:42 Speaker 2 Elimelech, perhaps you could describe briefly what we can expect when the coffin leaves the Rebbe’s home there in Brooklyn, on Eastern Parkway?

04:51 Speaker 1 Well, the coffin will be brought out and carried on shoulders through the mourners, until it is placed in a vehicle that will lead the funeral procession to Montefiore Hospital in Queens. That—

05:11 Speaker 2 The cemetery.

05:11 Speaker 1 It will be quite moving, I’m told. People will want to touch the coffin, to be near it, and there will probably be some rather sad scenes here.

05:24 Speaker 2 One last question, Elimelech. The Rebbe’s death was expected. He had been unconscious for three months. I assume this funeral procession had been planned in advance.

05:36 Speaker 1 I’m not so sure. From following what was happening with the Rebbe over the past three months, I can say that none of them—not the elders, not the people close to the Rebbe in his court—imagined that the Rebbe might pass away. In fact, the funeral procession was planned this morning, New York time, at a meeting attended by Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who was a close secretary of the Rebbe of Lubavitch. Rabbi Krinsky is mentioned as one of those who might perhaps take up the mantle of leadership of Lubavitch Chassidus. He met with the heads of the New York police and several of his own people, and they planned the procession. The problem, they say, is that the cemetery is simply small—very small—and cannot hold the tens of thousands of mourners. We’ve been told that only twenty-five people will actually attend the burial. They are not allowing the media to cover the burial at the cemetery. Incidentally, it may well be—the pictures we’re seeing on the screen now are a Lubavitch initiative. This satellite feed was commissioned by Lubavitch, and the crew covering and filming the event was hired especially by Lubavitch. So perhaps a camera from that crew will be permitted to film the burial, simply for the historical record.

07:26 Speaker 3 Thank you very much, Elimelech. We’ll return to you in a few minutes, I assume, if the proceedings aren’t delayed, when the funeral procession begins and leaves the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s home at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn for Montefiore Cemetery in Queens. And now to you, Professor Avi Ravitzky. Perhaps this is the place to mention first that the Rebbe of Lubavitch suffered his stroke during a memorial visit to that same Montefiore Cemetery in Queens more than a year ago, if I’m not mistaken.

08:03 Speaker 4 Much more than a year ago. You’ve touched on an interesting point, because throughout the years of his leadership, the Rebbe saw himself, in effect, as an emissary of the previous Rebbe. When he used the expression “the leader of our generation,” he meant the Rebbe who was no longer alive. He would go there often and sit for hours to draw inspiration. If you wrote asking for a blessing, he would answer, “I will mention you at the gravesite”—meaning the resting place of my father-in-law, who is the real Rebbe. There was, in other words, a sense of drawing from the past, as though he himself were a temporary stand-in. So we are still in the continuation of the previous generation. I had an opportunity to say on the news that the messianic expectation had already begun with the previous Rebbe. From the present Rebbe’s perspective, he was simply continuing that same generation. The previous Rebbe said Moshiach would come in our generation. That generation has not yet ended.

08:56 Speaker 3 So the Rebbe of Lubavitch, who passed away today, was in fact continuing the path of his father-in-law, the previous Rebbe, and it is still not known who the next Rebbe of Lubavitch will be.

09:07 Speaker 4 Yes. All that speculation, as you can imagine, is irresponsible. No one knows whether there is a will. Then there’s the question of whether they will want to choose an elected council, or wait, or put off a decision, or appoint an acting leader—hopefully without unnecessary power struggles. I don’t think any prediction on the matter is more than a trial balloon.

09:29 Speaker 3 It seems to me that the Chabad movement once went ten consecutive years without a leader. In other words, there is a precedent for Chabad functioning, continuing to function, without a leader.

09:40 Speaker 4 Yes, there is a precedent. But that precedent did not involve the passing of someone in whom messianic hopes had been placed, and about whom some on the fringes of the chassidic movement say that he will return. So this is a similar situation, but also a fundamentally different one.

09:58 Speaker 3 We’ll interrupt you for a moment, Professor Ravitzky. We’re returning to the pictures from Brooklyn, to the chassidim gathering near the Rebbe’s home, waiting for his coffin to leave for the cemetery. According to the plan, the funeral procession was supposed to begin in a minute or two, but it looks as though it’s being delayed. Elimelech, if I’m right, the funeral procession is delayed.

10:30 Speaker 5 There is activity—there certainly is activity. I just want to point out that over the past hour or two, the weather has remained very overcast. There has been rain as well.

10:38 Speaker 3 Yes, you can see the wind there, by the way.

10:40 Speaker 5 There was pouring rain, and people kept standing in it. You can see the police; there is a very large police presence here. I assume the route of the funeral procession will first be cleared by the police, who will accompany it. For several hours now, the streets leading to Montefiore Cemetery in Queens have been closed to traffic and cleared for the procession to pass through. I’d say we can see some activity. As you can see, the police are also beginning to get into position, but the coffin has not yet been brought out.

11:31 Speaker 3 We’ll wait.

11:32 Speaker 5 The funeral has not yet begun.

11:33 Speaker 3 Elimelech, I suggest we wait and follow the pictures. In the meantime, we’ll continue our conversation with you, Professor Avi Ravitzky. What, essentially, is the disagreement between the Chabad movement and the other religious movements in Judaism? The Chabad movement.

11:50 Speaker 6 Well, first of all, this does not begin with a dispute. We are talking about a movement about two hundred years old that has a particular tradition. After the founder of Chassidus, the Baal Shem Tov, and his student, the Maggid of Mezritch, different Chassidic movements developed, each with its own approach. Philosophically, theologically and mystically, Chabad Chassidus places great emphasis on understanding, rational thought and Torah study. At the same time, it sees the Divine presence everywhere: “There is no place devoid of Him,” meaning, “The whole earth is full of His glory.” In other words, G-d is present everywhere. He is not only beyond reality, transcendent and remote; His light, His sparks and His presence are found everywhere. But you are talking about a tradition that developed over seven generations.

12:43 Speaker 7 Yes, so let’s turn to this generation, our generation. What Chabad chassidim are saying today, both in New York, in Brooklyn, and here in Israel, in Kfar Chabad, is that the Lubavitcher Rebbe has passed away, but the King Moshiach is destined to come. In other words, the Rebbe will be revealed as King Moshiach. That sounds to me like a view that does not quite fit with Judaism.

13:07 Speaker 6 Look, first of all, one group is saying that, and I hope it is not the majority. Now, when religious people speak, you have to listen carefully. As with any worldview or culture, you have to listen to their manner and their language. After the Rebbe became ill, a group of rabbis gathered in North America and issued a declaration, almost a halachic ruling, that before us is a king of the House of David to whom Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s oath applies—that his light will never be extinguished—and that he must live forever, a soul in a body. This was not, in the first instance, a prediction of the future. It was a cry. It was a prayer. “It cannot happen to this man in whom we placed our hopes, this man who is supposed to bring us from exile to Geulah.” We are trying to convince ourselves, others, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We cry out, “This cannot happen.” Sometimes, when we say something, what we mean is that we hope for it, that we pray for it.

14:07 Speaker 7 So you’re saying that only a minority faction within Chabad says that the Lubavitcher Rebbe will return and be revealed as King Moshiach?

14:16 Speaker 6 Look, it is rather early to start proposing sociological divisions, but certainly. You could already hear today, on the program “Erev Chadash,” a Chabad rabbi who spoke in a very measured, restrained way. He said, “The continuation of the Rebbe’s work lies with his students, in what we will do,” and, of course, we await Moshiach. But he did not necessarily speak about this Rebbe’s resurrection. He did not say, “The Rebbe has not died.” On the other hand, we heard some young people speaking differently. We have to wait and see. A person cannot be held accountable for what he says in his grief when a death has just occurred; he often cries out, “It cannot be, he is not dead.” If, two years from now, there are people who say, “He is not dead; he will rise tomorrow, and so I am putting history on hold. I am doing nothing, creating nothing,” that will be a dangerous development. I do not think you can judge people in a moment of grief.

15:13 Speaker 7 And does this make for a dispute, at least today, among different factions within the Chabad movement over whether King Moshiach will be revealed, or whether they must come to terms with the Rebbe’s passing?

15:26 Speaker 6 No. Certainly everyone hopes Moshiach will come soon.

15:30 Speaker 7 Some people danced in the streets today, and others wore mourning clothes.

15:34 Speaker 6 Yes, of course. I am saying that everyone hopes and believes Moshiach will come soon. But are they committing themselves to the claim that he is the person who has just died, or are they actually saying that he has not died, and therefore drinking whiskey and dancing? That is apparently a dispute that is beginning to take shape. I hope the balance between the majority and the minority is as I have tried to describe it.

15:55 Speaker 7 Meanwhile, let’s return for a moment to what is happening now in Brooklyn. The time on the East Coast of the United States is 4:35 in the afternoon. The funeral procession was supposed to begin a few minutes ago, but it has been delayed. When the procession leaves the Rebbe’s home, there will be a short ceremony here, on the street and avenue opposite the house, and then it will proceed toward Montefiore Cemetery in Queens. As we have already heard, Chabad Chassidus is very well organized when it comes to communications. At Chabad headquarters here in Brooklyn, there is a sophisticated radio and television station capable of broadcasting around the world. They broadcast continuously on both radio and television, and I assume this funeral procession is being carried on the Chabad networks’ channels throughout the world, and of course to us here in Israel, in Kfar Chabad. Elimelech, is the funeral procession about to begin?

17:12 Speaker 8 Quite possibly, because a few minutes ago, while you were speaking with Professor Ravitzky, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani arrived here, wearing a large kippah and accompanied by members of the city council. If I am not mistaken, he entered the late Rebbe’s home to pass before the coffin, and the funeral procession may begin immediately afterward.

17:35 Speaker 7 And will New York City Mayor Giuliani be the only official representative of New York, or of the state or the United States, to attend?

17:45 Speaker 8 I assume there will certainly be senators and members of the House of Representatives, Jewish and non-Jewish, from New York, who will also attend the funeral. In any case, for now, the person we have seen arrive is Giuliani, the mayor.

18:02 Speaker 7 And we will continue to wait for the funeral procession to set out and for its transmission on the Chabad network’s channels. I should mention that we are receiving this broadcast through several satellites. One satellite carries it from New York to the West Coast of the United States, then another carries it to Australia, and from there, through several stations in Australia, it comes back to us in Israel. That was the only satellite available to us during the hours of the funeral procession, and fortunately it began operating just a minute or two before we went on air here on Channel Three. Professor Ravitzky, we mentioned Chabad Chassidus’s keen awareness of the media. I can hear voices from New York.

18:56 Speaker 9 Now you can hear me? Okay. No, because-

19:00 Speaker 7 We’ll disregard the communication between the Chabad network in New York and the Chabad network elsewhere. I mentioned Chabad Chassidus’s keen awareness of the media. Is that unusual among Chassidic movements?

19:16 Speaker 9 Look, there is no doubt that—

19:17 Speaker 7 In other groups, I think it exists to a much lesser degree.

19:21 Speaker 9 There is no doubt that contemporary Chabad Chassidus has made use of the tools of modernity, including the media, and of modern tools more broadly, far more than other Chassidic movements. Perhaps you can see the two extremes when you compare Satmar Chassidus, which we have encountered over the past week, with Chabad Chassidus. In Chabad Chassidus there is a wholesale demonization—sorry, in Satmar Chassidus there is a wholesale demonization of modernity. All of modernity is the work of Satan. So when Chabad chassidim in New York began broadcasting lessons in Tanya, the foundational work of Chabad Chassidus, on the radio, Satmar chassidim attacked the very use of that medium, saying it was impure because impure things were broadcast on it. There is no need even to mention television. The Chabad chassidim and the Rebbe did more than defend themselves. The Rebbe said that radio is, by its very nature, an instrument of holiness, because it overcomes the limitations of time and place; it can reach toward the infinite. The fact that fools use it for impure things means, on the contrary, that our task is to sanctify it. There is a conception here of sanctifying all of reality, including all modern means of communication.

20:40 Speaker 10 Are you talking only about radio, or television as well? I mean, you include television too.

20:44 Speaker 9 The broadcasts produced by Chabad chassidim themselves are on television, on tapes and via satellite. This is a Chassidic movement that believes modernity should be put to use. Perhaps all of it was created so that the word of Hashem, the word of truth, could be carried from one end of the world to the other. And it is no coincidence that hopes for Geulah are stirring precisely in an age of modernity.

21:10 Speaker 10 Professor Ravitzky, Chabad Chassidus is a very rich movement. It has branches all over the world. Who funds it?

21:18 Speaker 9 Look, I don’t know those details, but actually

00:06 Speaker 1 Now.

00:07 Speaker 2 Are you going to the funeral?

00:08 Speaker 1 Probably. They asked me to, and the director of the Prime Minister’s Office asked me, on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, to represent Israel together with my colleague, the honorable Rabbi Bakshi-Doron. Rabbi Bakshi-Doron asked me to represent him. If I can make it, I’m leaving now on a special charter flight; Chabad chassidim asked me to join them for the funeral. I’m very moved, to tell you the truth, because I knew the man and loved him, and I also have a special place in my heart for him. Two years before my election, he actually announced that he saw me as the man for the position of Chief Rabbi. So I feel a very strong sense of obligation and connection to him. My late father-in-law, Rabbi Frankel of Tel Aviv, was bound to him by deep ties of affection. I’m very, very moved. What I can say to them is that I earnestly ask them to unite, preserve his spiritual legacy, and continue his projects. It hasn’t even been a week since we welcomed the 1,001st child from Chernobyl to Israel. What Ahavas Yisroel, what concern for others. Without his vision, none of these projects would have happened. I very much hope that Chabad will return to itself, to that great spirit of Ahavas Yisroel it once had.

01:29 Speaker 2 Thank you very much, Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, on his way to New York for the funeral. Thank you.

01:36 Speaker 1 Thank you.

01:42 Speaker 11 Five After the News with Tzvi Lider.

01:51 Speaker 2 This evening, the program will naturally address the question of whether Chabad has a future. Listeners who wish to take part are invited to call the telephone number that will be announced after the four o’clock news here on Reshet Bet. The culture segment on Half the Day. Yigal Ravid, hello.

02:13 Speaker 12 Hello.

02:19 Speaker 11 Daily Show, a midday culture and entertainment supplement.

02:26 Speaker 12 Today, following the passing of the Rebbe of Lubavitch, we want to mention an exhibition of photographs by Yonatan Turgovnik, an Israeli studying in New York, who documented the Chabad community in Brooklyn. The exhibition is on display at the gallery at 28 Yefet Street in Jaffa. Yonatan’s exhibition opened two weeks ago, and we spoke with him then about the photographs, about Lubavitch Chassidus, about the Rebbe, and about everything he saw and that you can still see. We’ll say in a moment until when.

02:57 Speaker 13 I began photographing around the time the Rebbe of Lubavitch suffered his first stroke. That was really a period when many changes began in this movement. In fact, the less he appeared before his people, the more widely his image, his portrait, was circulated, while he himself appeared before them less and less. So there’s this whole matter of a community that chose to advance its religious goals through publicity, television, modern communications media, including live satellite broadcasts to the entire world, on the one hand. On the other hand, they’ve retained their manner of dress, their way of life, all sorts of ceremonies and traditions, and their communal life in the heart of a predominantly Black neighborhood in New York. What I discovered is that this is a community that, in my opinion, is very confused, a community that does need some kind of leader in order to survive. And when their leader is ill and on the verge of death, I don’t think they really know how to get a hold of themselves, and they have no successor to that leadership.

04:10 Speaker 12 Yonatan Turgovnik speaking about his photography exhibition. The exhibition is on display at the gallery at 28 Yefet Street in Jaffa, and the photographs can be viewed until June 23.

04:28 Speaker 11 For now, the daily news bulletin. Hello, this is the one o’clock news from Channel Seven. The Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, passed away last night at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. He was ninety-two years old. His funeral will be held today in New York. Thousands of his chassidim are now preparing to fly there to attend the funeral. Despite the news of the Rebbe’s passing, many of his chassidim continue to maintain and believe that the Rebbe will soon be revealed as King Moshiach. The Rebbe of Lubavitch was known for his work, more than any other figure, to spread Judaism throughout the world, in Arab countries and behind the Iron Curtain. At the Rebbe’s behest, thousands of chassidim worked to bring assimilated Jews closer to the observance of mitzvos. The Rebbe was known for his determined opposition to withdrawal from territories of the Land of Israel. He also worked to prevent official recognition of Reform conversions. In reactions to the Rebbe’s passing, the Prime Minister said that the Jewish people had lost an important Torah scholar. The Foreign Minister sent his condolences to Lubavitch Chassidus. “All of Religious Zionism bows its head and mourns the passing from this world of a tzaddik and spiritual leader, the glory and splendor of the generation, who spread the message of Judaism to every corner of the globe.” That is the wording of the National Religious Party’s statement on the passing of the Rebbe of Lubavitch. The Knesset also expressed its sorrow at the news.

05:56 Speaker 14 He inspired people to study, to teach, to observe, to practice and to fulfill, throughout the world. Wherever there are Jews, the hand of the Rebbe of Lubavitch reached them through his shluchim and breathed life into Judaism. And today it is truly hard to accept this painful news, even though, admittedly, there had been a sense that it was coming. But alas for those who are gone and cannot be found again.

06:25 Speaker 15 Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau intends to travel to the funeral.

06:29 Speaker 16 First of all, I’m flying now to the funeral.

06:32 Speaker 15 Are you going to the funeral?

06:34 Speaker 16 Probably. They asked me to, and the director of the Prime Minister’s Office asked me, on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, to represent Israel together with my colleague, the honorable Rabbi Bakshi-Doron. Rabbi Bakshi-Doron asked me to represent him. If I can make it, I’m leaving now on a special charter flight; Chabad chassidim asked me to join them for the funeral. I’m very moved, to tell you the truth, because I knew the man and loved him, and I also have a special place in my heart for him. Two years before my election, he actually— When the Rebbe’s body arrived at the hospital, they reacted with shock, shock and heartrending grief.

07:21 Speaker 17 And still in New York: the Rebbe of Lubavitch had been hospitalized for many long weeks at Beth Israel Hospital there. Here is the hospital’s recorded announcement.

07:32 Speaker 18 This is a recorded message from Beth Israel Medical Center. Beth Israel Medical Center is saddened to report the passing of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson. The Rebbe passed away this morning, Sunday, June twelfth at one fifty AM as a result of the stroke he suffered on March tenth, the day he was admitted to Beth Israel. Any further information on this very sad occasion should be obtained from the Lubavitch World Headquarters. Thank you.

08:06 Speaker 17 The Rebbe died as a result of a stroke he suffered, the recorded message at Beth Israel Hospital in New York explains with sorrow. Hundreds of Chabad chassidim hoping to fly to the funeral in Brooklyn have already arrived at Ben Gurion Airport. Geva Krauz[?] is calling us from the airport. Hello, Geva.

08:24 Speaker 3 Hello, Netanel. Nearly a thousand of the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s chassidim are now crowding around the counters here in the passenger terminal, hoping to get a ticket to New York. The pressure and confusion here are tremendous, and it doesn’t seem that anyone knows exactly what is happening. We heard from Yossi Segal, the treasurer of Tzeirei Chabad, what is expected to happen over the next few hours. Let’s hear what he said.

08:43 Speaker 4 Right now, two planes are leaving at two-thirty. Two charter planes at two-thirty. The number of people will be about, I hope, up to a thousand, eleven hundred. I don’t know. We don’t know how many they’ll hold. I still don’t know myself.

08:55 Speaker 3 How many people do you estimate will leave for New York for the funeral altogether?

09:00 Speaker 4 I don’t know whether many more will manage to get there in time for the funeral itself, but I’m sure that in the near future, within a day, over the course of today, several thousand people will make arrangements. I already know that. There are flights tonight for people who are leaving, people who can’t make arrangements to leave immediately. They may arrive after the funeral, but they are expected to leave. Altogether, it’s thousands of people.

09:18 Speaker 3 Did you have plans in advance for such a possibility?

09:20 Speaker 4 G-d forbid, absolutely not.

09:22 Speaker 3 So the flights are supposed to leave here in about an hour and a half, but judging by the commotion here, that doesn’t seem particularly likely. That’s all from Ben Gurion Airport, where hundreds of Chabad chassidim are still arriving.

09:40 Speaker 17 Thank you very much, Geva Krauz[?]. The government is now convened for its weekly meeting, and there too they are responding to the news of the passing of the Rebbe from Brooklyn. Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister have issued statements of mourning. Hello to political correspondent Udi Segal at the government complex.

09:56 Speaker 5 Good day. The cabinet meeting ended a short while ago. Following this sad event, Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced that he shares in the grief of the family and the Chabad chassidic community over the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. “The Rebbe’s passing is a loss to the entire Jewish people. A great Torah scholar and outstanding leader has passed away,” says the statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. The statement speaks of his work to bring different parts of the Jewish people closer together. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also shares in the grief of Chabad chassidim. Peres said the Rebbe was a leader of great stature, an outstanding man who worked to instill the heritage of Israel among the Jewish people. At the cabinet meeting itself, which took place after this news was received, the ministers heard briefings from security officials on the situation and the—

10:43 Speaker 6 Thank you, Udi Segal, in Jerusalem. In the shadow of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s passing, last-minute attempts continue to reach a compromise that would allow Shas to return to the coalition. Meanwhile, the attention of most of the chareidi parties has shifted to the Rebbe’s passing. Our correspondent Yiftach Elazar reports on the various reactions.

11:03 Speaker 7 Hello, Netanel. The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s passing came as a bolt from the blue to the chareidi world. His opponents and detractors alike are united in expressing condolences, each in their own way. The Shas faction is still occupied with coalition talks, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef postponed his decision this morning on whether to send Shas to the opposition benches following the failure of the talks so far. Shas expresses deep sorrow over the passing of one of the leaders of Judaism, but adds a pointed remark: may we merit the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu soon. The National Religious Party calls the Lubavitcher Rebbe a spiritual leader and a tzaddik who was the glory of his generation, and its statement says that the entire religious Zionist community bows its head. Even in the home of Rabbi Shach, leader of Degel HaTorah and a longtime opponent of Chabad Chassidus, they express sorrow over the Rebbe’s passing despite their ideological disagreement with him. And Chabad chassidim in Jerusalem, of course, still do not know how to respond.

11:56 Speaker 5 We will not eulogize him. It cannot be that the Rebbe has passed away. We still believe that he will reveal himself at any moment, and… we refuse to accept the news that he has passed away.

12:06 Speaker 7 In Jerusalem’s chareidi neighborhoods, people are trying to pick up the pieces at this hour. Back to you, Netanel. That’s all from here.

12:13 Speaker 6 Thank you, Yiftach Elazar. Now, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born on 11 Nissan 5662, 1902, in the Russian town of Nikolayev, to a family descended from the third Rebbe of Chabad. He received devoted attention from the Chabad leader of the time, the Rebbe Rashab, and studied primarily with his father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson. At the age of twenty-seven, he married Chaya Mushka, daughter of the previous Chabad Rebbe. Rabbi Schneerson graduated with honors in naval engineering from the Sorbonne in Paris, and during the Holocaust he fled France and reached the United States, where his father-in-law, the Rebbe, also arrived. When his father-in-law passed away in Shvat 5710, 1950, Chabad chassidim appointed him their leader. From the time he assumed that role, the Rebbe worked tirelessly to spread Judaism throughout the world on an unprecedented scale. There was scarcely a country or city anywhere in the world where Jews lived that a Chabad shliach, at the Rebbe’s instruction, did not reach them and work to strengthen their religious and spiritual life. In Arab countries, communist Eastern Europe, and Russia, the Rebbe’s shluchim also worked—sometimes underground, always with devotion—to bring more Jews closer to Judaism and the observance of mitzvos. Alongside his immense Torah scholarship in all areas of Kabbalah, Jewish thought, mussar, and Chassidus, the Lubavitcher Rebbe drew thousands of world leaders who sought his advice and guidance. Countless scientists, artists, writers, journalists, and businesspeople said they learned more from a short conversation with him than from all their previous experience. His chassidim told hundreds of stories of wonders, of successes and escapes from death that they attributed to his advice and guidance. The Rebbe was revered enormously by his chassidim and held in boundless affection by the wider public. Under his leadership, Chabad became the face of Judaism for many Jews who had been distant from any trace of Jewish life. His deep love for every Jew found expression in the sincere concern evident in all his maamarim and talks. With his passing, we have lost

14:30 Speaker 6 the most famous Jewish figure of the past generation, who did more than anyone—and perhaps more than anyone ever has—to spread the Jewish faith.

14:42 Speaker 8 That was Yigal Amitai, reviewing the life of the Lubavitcher Rebbe from the studio. Rabbis, writers, and intellectuals gathered this afternoon at the Moriah Hotel in Jerusalem for a conference that will launch a campaign aimed, in practical terms, at bringing down the government. Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria, head of the Bnei Akiva yeshivos in Israel: Before we discuss the conference and its significance, I would like to hear your response to the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s passing.

15:09 Speaker 9 Yes, this is a very, very hard blow for us. Such a towering personality—the likes of whom truly has not arisen in recent generations. The scope of his activity in world Jewry was extraordinary. A genius in the revealed Torah and a genius in its hidden teachings. A person with superhuman capacities, superhuman spiritual powers. A man of thought and a man of action together. Not merely a great leader of Chabad Chassidus, but someone who set world Jewry in motion—not only Chabad Chassidus. He mobilized, organized, guided, and sent shluchim to every corner of the world, raised the standing of Judaism, and brought those who were distant closer. Truly, when you begin to count the scope of his activities, it is astonishing—such tremendous creative power, tremendous. I visited him twice, and I was so struck by the man himself: his warm gaze, his kindness, his quick grasp, his phenomenal memory, and such clarity, such breadth, and such ability in everything. I heard something beyond the natural order. And on top of all that, the ability to lead so large a community, for whom a word from his mouth or a glance from his eyes meant the world. This is truly a hard loss, a very hard loss. Very hard.

16:56 Speaker 10 Rabbi, I have to ask you a question that is difficult to avoid. How should we regard the fact that a substantial group among the Rebbe’s chassidim believed, claimed, and said that he, the Rebbe, was Moshiach?

17:11 Speaker 9 As for this matter of Moshiach: First, let us take the idea at its foundation. This idea already appears in ancient holy books—that the soul of Moshiach is present in every generation, and if the generation is worthy, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will give clear instructions and send him on his mission of Geulah. There were great figures of earlier generations of whom this was said. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, for example, is mentioned as having had such a soul; and the holy Ohr Hachaim, the Baal Shem Tov. There were truly great figures in whom people saw, as they said, a spark of the soul of Moshiach, and so on. If the generation had been worthy, this would have been revealed. But if someone were to tell me that—if they were to say that the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s soul was the soul of Moshiach, I have no need to object to that at all.

18:15 Speaker 9 I do not have to be a staunch opponent and say no. It could be. But the mission that Hakadosh Boruch Hu assigns to Moshiach must be a mission from Hakadosh Boruch Hu: He gives him instructions and reveals his soul to the world. As long as Hakadosh Boruch Hu has not done that, it has not happened. Why did the Rebbe not object to what the chassidim were doing around him? Perhaps, out of a desire to strengthen belief in Moshiach, he did not mind their saying what they thought. But he himself never declared that he was the one. And, of course, some criticize him for not explicitly coming out against it. In fact, at first, when people began talking about it, he even spoke out against it, and he gave instructions that a certain booklet be withdrawn. How things developed afterward is hard for me to understand. In any case, here too one can say that this was a great soul on whom Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed an immense mission. Had we merited it, perhaps he would have undertaken that mission. But now that we have not merited it, it is our fault that we did not merit having such a great soul lead the Jewish people and bring them to great heights. Yes.

00:01 Speaker 1 That isn’t working out. We’re turning to Chana, who called us, among the many listeners who called. Hello, Chana.

00:08 Speaker 2 Hello.

00:08 Speaker 1 You’re seventeen.

00:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

00:10 Speaker 1 Where are you from?

00:11 Speaker 2 Jerusalem.

00:12 Speaker 1 I see you’re a Chabad chossid.

00:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

00:15 Speaker 1 How are you feeling today?

00:18 Speaker 2 It’s hard to explain. You can surely understand how hard this is. Today is very, very hard. When I got up this morning, my sister, who lives in the United States, had called my parents and told them. Once they knew, they wanted to tell me, but I heard it on the radio. That was even worse.

00:43 Speaker 1 Did it come as a surprise?

00:45 Speaker 2 Very much so.

00:46 Speaker 1 Even though there have been reports over the past several months that the Rebbe’s condition was worsening.

00:52 Speaker 2 I just want to explain: even though his condition had worsened, you have to understand, someone who did so much—it’s not something you can accept so easily. It’s very, very hard. We weren’t prepared for anything like this.

01:12 Speaker 1 And you hear on the radio, as you were telling me, that there are quite a few people in Kfar Chabad who are happy today.

01:19 Speaker 2 I want to explain that. Ever since the Rebbe first became ill a few years ago, there have been people who were waiting for the Rebbe to be revealed as Moshiach. You have to believe in it. They based what they said on commentators in Yalkut Shimoni and on what the Rambam says. There were also people who believed the Rebbe was presumed to be Moshiach, and there were people somewhere in the middle who were confused. The people who are happy today believe that one of the commentators says they will even prepare the coffins of the dead for Moshiach’s [unclear].

02:00 Speaker 1 But you’re not one of those believers.

02:02 Speaker 2 I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m confused now too, especially after this announcement. Right now I’m completely frustrated. I don’t understand. Today is just hard. But I do understand that there’s always faith. That doesn’t change. Throughout the generations, people have always known that Moshiach can come.

02:19 Speaker 1 Chana, when you say you’re confused, you mean there’s a struggle between, say, two things inside you, or three or more. What is struggling inside you?

02:32 Speaker 2 All sorts of things. It’s just that we don’t really understand. I think the main confusion is that people simply don’t understand the whole matter of Moshiach.

02:40 Speaker 1 No, I’m asking about your confusion. When you say, “I’m confused,” between what and what?

02:45 Speaker 2 I’m confused about everything. Some people tell me, “The Rebbe is Moshiach. I believe that.” Others say the Rebbe can’t be Moshiach. And there’s the whole question of a Divine revelation—when Moshiach comes, who can be Moshiach? Can people say before the Divine revelation that someone is Moshiach, or do we have to wait until after the Divine revelation and only then say that someone is Moshiach?

03:13 Speaker 1 In any case, amid all that confusion, today is a hard and sad day for you.

03:17 Speaker 2 Very. But even with the sadness, we always believe, as people have believed throughout the generations, that Moshiach can always come—even today.

03:26 Speaker 1 Chana, thank you for calling.

03:30 Speaker 2 You’re welcome.

03:38 Speaker 5 One-thirty. Yitzchak Eitan with the headlines.

03:41 Speaker 1 Many Chabad chassidim are flocking to the funeral of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which will take place this evening in New York.

03:47 Speaker 6 Hello. This is a special news bulletin following the passing of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe passed away early this morning in a New York hospital. He will be laid to rest later tonight, at eleven o’clock Israel time. Tens of thousands of his chassidim are filling the area around the Rebbe’s headquarters, waiting anxiously. Large police forces have prepared for the occasion. A short while ago, we spoke with Itzik Mayer there.

04:12 Speaker 7 At three-thirty in the morning, New York time, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s casket arrived back at his beis midrash, which you had the opportunity to visit, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Thousands of chassidim were there, having come from all over Brooklyn, particularly Crown Heights itself. Many of the chassidim began dancing and saying that the Rebbe would rise again now and be Moshiach. They danced to the song, “Long live our master, teacher and Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.” The other chassidim stood there crying. It was an extraordinary shock to Chabad chassidim and to the entire Jewish and religious community in New York. According to reports over the past several months, the police had a contingency plan for a funeral. Officers came from every part of New York—cars and buses full of police—and streets are being closed one after another.

05:14 Speaker 6 In Kfar Chabad, too, there was of course shock at the news of the Rebbe’s passing. Chassidim gathered in the synagogue named for the Lubavitcher Rebbe and recited chapters of Tehillim. Despite the reports from New York and the hospital’s official announcement of the Rebbe’s passing, some chassidim refused to believe that Moshiach had indeed passed away. Some even broke into song and dance to mark what they call the day of the Geulah. Today is Gimmel Tammuz. The Rebbe said that Gimmel Tammuz is one of the things. And it turns out that precisely on Gimmel Tammuz, on this very day, there is a stage of the Geulah. We’re talking about this event and thinking that a disaster has struck Chabad chassidim, a disaster has struck the Rebbe. That isn’t true. The Rebbe is alive right now. The entire Chabad chassidic movement is alive.

06:10 Speaker 8 Hundreds of Chabad chassidim are crowding the avenues of [unclear].

06:12 Speaker 9 All the residents of Kfar Chabad, believers in the Lubavitcher Rebbe, please.

06:15 Speaker 10 We believe there will be some kind of miracle. We can’t—it’s impossible. The world can’t exist without the Rebbe. And we’re too much in shock right now to express what we feel. It’s simply a shock.

06:31 Speaker 9 Are any of you planning to travel to New York for the funeral?

06:33 Speaker 10 I don’t think women are traveling, because I don’t think women go after— My whole body is shaking. I can’t explain how it feels. It’s terrible. He’s someone we’ve grown up with from a very young age, believing everything he said, seeing the miracles before our eyes.

06:50 Speaker 11 A nightmare, a nightmare.

06:54 Speaker 12 There is Moshiach. It’s like the sun: first it sets so that afterward it can rise. It’s the same here. Moshiach has to go through this state so that afterward he’ll be revealed.

07:05 Speaker 9 That was Itzik, an elementary school student here in Kfar Chabad. As we heard, he’s deeply imbued with faith. Dov Mendelson has spent much of his life here in the village. He agreed to address something many others would not: the future, the next step. The big question—one of several we still haven’t had answered—is who will succeed the Lubavitcher Rebbe?

07:28 Speaker 6 No power struggle is expected, because no one thinks he can be the Rebbe’s successor. So there won’t be any power struggle. There are rabbis, and whatever the rabbis rule is what will happen.

07:38 Speaker 9 But still, someone needs to lead in the Rebbe’s place in the coming days and beyond.

07:43 Speaker 6 There’s no replacement for the Rebbe, as I told you. There are rabbis. They’ll sit down and decide. There will probably be a gathering of all the rabbis from around the world. They’ll sit, discuss it and decide, and that’s what will happen.

07:54 Speaker 8 What am I hearing in the background there, Yariv? Was there singing and dancing when you recorded him?

07:58 Speaker 9 Yes, singing and dancing in the background. Inside the synagogue they sat and drank wine. But we could also see people off to the side with tears in their eyes, people who couldn’t join those celebrating. I don’t know whether to call them celebrants. Some of them spoke of celebrations, of being just hours away from the Geulah, but others couldn’t join in.

08:21 Speaker 8 Yes, there was—one second. Were schools closed today, or did classes go on as usual?

08:25 Speaker 9 Today, nothing in this place was operating, in any sense. Across from us is Gittel’s kiosk. It has been closed since the news broke. The minimarket is closed; the school wasn’t operating. The whole place has essentially gathered around the synagogue and waited for more information. People passed by the notice board here. It had the latest fax from New York, which still said the Rebbe’s condition was good. They read the words again and again, and there was a very long line around that fax. People hadn’t really taken it in. In the last few hours, there’s been another phenomenon here that we should mention. Charedim from extremist groups have been coming here, many of them Chabad chassidim whose beliefs are extreme. They tell us, almost patronizingly, like psychologists observing from the sidelines, “We came to watch.”

09:11 Speaker 3 I wanted to see how the public was reacting.

09:14 Speaker 9 Do you have a personal interest in this?

09:16 Speaker 3 Out of curiosity. Do I hold that—no, I don’t hold that way. I hold that while he was alive, I believed he was worthy of being Moshiach, but the generation did not merit it, and so he passed away. And the singing now, in my opinion, is not... It comes from sheer frustration.

09:32 Speaker 9 Chabad—the Chabad chassidim here in the area say there are Midrashim that say... Moshiach will rise from the dead.

09:37 Speaker 3 He will rise.

09:37 Speaker 9 And that this is the way it will happen, and afterward he will rise. In other words, there will be a few hours of despair and frustration—

09:42 Speaker 3 I, too, believe in that Midrash. It could happen. I see that they only emphasize that possibility, and when you ask them what will happen otherwise, they don’t answer. I’m a thinking person. I look at it and say: it could happen, but if it doesn’t, we need to think about what comes next. Those are the voices we’ve been hearing in the last few hours.

09:56 Speaker 8 Yarin Ben Yehuda, thank you very much to you and the team.

09:58 Speaker 9 Thank you.

09:58 Speaker 8 And I hope we’ll speak again toward five o’clock, certainly on Erev Tov Yisrael.

10:02 Speaker 9 Certainly.

10:03 Speaker 8 Hello to Israel’s consul in New York, Colette Avital.

10:06 Speaker 4 Good morning.

10:07 Speaker 8 It’s early morning where you are.

10:10 Speaker 4 That’s all right. We’ve already been working for several hours here.

10:14 Speaker 8 At what hour of the night did you hear the news?

10:18 Speaker 4 The Rebbe passed away at 1:50 our time, which was almost nine in the morning for you. I heard about it half an hour later.

10:27 Speaker 8 Before we talk about how you’re preparing for the funeral, tell me what the networks in New York are reporting.

10:35 Speaker 4 First of all, the networks are only reporting the news itself and the crowds heading toward the hospital. The funeral arrangements aren’t yet known for certain. It appears the funeral will be today at four in the afternoon our time, which is eleven at night for you. We informed the government while it was in session, and we received a call saying that the government had asked the ambassador in Washington and me here to represent it at the funeral.

11:02 Speaker 8 Because many people from Israel won’t manage to get there. I hear that thousands of chassidim are crowding the counters at Ben Gurion Airport, and from what you’re saying, the timetable is very tight.

11:11 Speaker 4 Look, there’s complete confusion here. We mustn’t forget that there hasn’t been a funeral like this in forty years, so no one knows exactly what the arrangements are or how things will work. And people—even though they knew this would happen—it’s hard to say they prepared anything. I know that yeshiva students kept watch in shifts, day and night, near the hospital, and this is evidently a very hard blow for them.

11:41 Speaker 8 Did you know him?

11:43 Speaker 4 I didn’t know him personally. By the time I arrived here, he was already very ill, and even if he hadn’t been ill, I doubt he would have received me for a meeting. It was very difficult in general to get a meeting with him. But I certainly visited the court there several times and met with his secretaries, Rabbi Krinsky and Rabbi Klein. I’ve been in contact with them recently because, if you remember, there was an attack here on yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge, and we worked quite closely with both the students and the families who came from Israel. And afterward, sadly, there was a funeral, which I also attended. So our ties with them have become a little closer lately.

12:28 Speaker 8 How does the Israeli government, through its representative in New York, deal with an organization that declares itself Zionist, yet whose leader repeatedly refused to visit Israel?

12:39 Speaker 4 You’re right, and Rabbi Schneerson, of blessed memory, indeed never visited Israel. He himself did not visit. At the same time, he did establish a village in Israel and founded a great many institutions, and his connection with Israel was very active. It would be hard to say that we work closely with the organization, but the ties are there. His people come to the consulate every Friday. The organization also has a contact person specifically for Israelis. He’s friendly with us—a young rabbi who came from Israel—and we try to...

00:01 Speaker 1 The body of the rabbi, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who was ninety-two, was brought here from Beth Israel Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for the past three months.

00:13 Speaker 2 And is the body at headquarters now?

00:16 Speaker 1 The body is somewhere inside the building, probably in his room, the room where he lived above Chabad’s main synagogue.

00:25 Speaker 2 And are people filing past the body?

00:28 Speaker 1 No, entry inside is prohibited. People are gathered outside; some of them are dancing.

00:35 Speaker 2 Dancing?

00:35 Speaker 1 Dancing and singing, yes, singing songs about Moshiach. According to their belief, we are now in the very moments when he is supposed to reveal himself. Others aren’t dancing; they’re trying to understand what is happening. I think people still haven’t really grasped or absorbed what has happened here. Only the few who managed to arrive and see the Rebbe’s body being brought from the hospital reacted with shock, and with heartbreaking grief.

01:10 Speaker 2 Ben, are you seeing people there breaking down, bursting into tears and losing control?

01:17 Speaker 1 No, not at this stage. Apart from the few who saw the body, I think the crowd still hasn’t absorbed what has happened here. We mustn’t forget that these are people who didn’t really believe this was even possible—that they would have to part with their rabbi, and...

01:40 Speaker 2 Yes, after all, in Chabad tradition, the anniversaries of the passing of the previous Rebbeim are also days of celebration. So I want to ask you, practically speaking, do they know yet when the funeral will take place?

01:50 Speaker 1 I’m almost certain the funeral will take place tomorrow—that is, today for you, Sunday—at some point, probably toward the end of the day, to give as many people as possible time to come from as many places as possible.

02:05 Speaker 2 Ben Caspit, Ma’ariv’s correspondent in New York. Thank you very much.

02:09 Speaker 1 Goodbye. They need to gather, and then they’ll decide when the funeral will be.

02:16 Speaker 10 We’re waiting. I know that back home in Israel, thousands of Chabad chassidim are making arrangements to travel to the funeral in New York.

02:23 Speaker 1 They won’t postpone the funeral. It will be on Sunday, while it’s still daylight, probably in the afternoon, around four or five.

02:30 Speaker 10 Today, in short.

02:31 Speaker 1 Today. The funeral will be today, and I don’t think they’ll put it off another day.

02:34 Speaker 10 Not even to wait for those chassidim who want to attend.

02:38 Speaker 1 According to halachah, one may not leave the deceased unburied overnight, so they will have to hold the funeral today.

02:46 Speaker 10 What else can you tell us about the preparations?

02:48 Speaker 1 Right now I can’t say anything, because the Chabad committee hasn’t met yet. In the morning, in another two or three hours, they’ll probably know exactly when the funeral will be and exactly where it will go. They will probably bury the Rebbe near his wife’s father.

03:02 Speaker 10 Itzik, how are the news media in New York responding to this story? Is it getting extensive coverage?

03:09 Speaker 1 Right now it’s getting fairly extensive coverage. It hasn’t reached television yet. Television coverage will probably begin in the morning, when the news broadcasts start. It’s Saturday night here now, and there are various programs on television, but from around six in the morning it will probably be on the news more.

03:24 Speaker 10 Itzik Meir Hager, who lives opposite the late Rebbe’s home. Thank you very much for calling us.

03:28 Speaker 1 Thank you very much.

03:29 Speaker 10 Goodbye. Goodbye.

03:29 Speaker 1 Goodbye. Goodbye. Bye, bye.

03:31 Speaker 10 And we remind you of the number for the Hakol Diburim voicemail box: 055-331-466. You’re invited to respond there to anything said on the program. It’s now eleven-thirty, and we’re going to the newsroom in Jerusalem. The news update, please.

03:55 Speaker 2 The Lubavitcher Rebbe, leader of the Chabad chassidim, will be laid to rest in New York at four in the afternoon, Eastern Time. The governor of New York State and the mayor of New York City will attend the funeral.

04:09 Speaker 11 Kol Yisrael’s Reshet Bet, at midday.

04:15 Speaker 2 Hello, it’s twelve o’clock. In the studio are Karmit Guy and Yitzhak Eitan. Here is the news. Hundreds of Chabad chassidim have already arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport to fly to New York for the funeral of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who passed away last night at Beth Israel Hospital. El Al has allocated two special flights. Other airlines are also flying chassidim to the funeral. According to the plan, the Lubavitcher Rebbe will be laid to rest in New York at four in the afternoon, Eastern Time. The governor of New York State and the mayor of New York City will attend the funeral. Thousands of his chassidim are gathering around the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s home. He will be buried beside the grave of the Rebbe who preceded him. The Chabad leader was ninety-two when he died. For the past three months he had been unconscious after suffering a stroke. Heavy mourning has descended on the Chabad community in Israel and the United States. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was regarded as one of the greatest leaders of American Jewry and of the Orthodox Jewish world. He was born in Ukraine, where he received a Torah education. As a young man, he studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Berlin and marine engineering at the Sorbonne in Paris. When the Nazis occupied France, he emigrated to the United States, where he became the leader of Chabad forty-two years ago. He developed Chabad’s network of educational institutions in many Jewish communities around the world. Chabad chassidim reached remote communities in China and Morocco and maintained contact with the Jews of the Soviet Union under Communist rule. Chabad has more than a thousand educational centers worldwide. The Lubavitcher Rebbe particularly encouraged women to acquire a profession and practical education. Inspired by him, Chabad chassidim used every available technology to spread the message of Chassidus: telephone lines, newsletters, video broadcasts and Mitzvah Tanks. The farbrengens at the Rebbe’s court were broadcast by satellite to Chabad communities around the world. The Rebbe would distribute a dollar to his chassidim and to those seeking his advice. Many of his chassidim who were businesspeople made large donations to his court. Kings, presidents and heads of state came

06:05 Speaker 2 to meet with him and seek his opinion on various matters. Israeli prime ministers, cabinet ministers, IDF generals and members of the Knesset visited his residence. Israel’s third president, Zalman Shazar, who was a Chabad chossid, visited him in New York. The Lubavitcher Rebbe declined to move to Israel, but his chassidim built an exact replica of his New York residence here in Kfar Chabad. For many years, the Chabad movement in Israel was considered nonpartisan, but in recent years the Rebbe became involved in the political debate. He took a firm line, opposed the Camp David Accords, supported an advance into West Beirut during the Lebanon War, and rejected any concession of territory in the Land of Israel. He waged an uncompromising campaign against an amendment to the Law of Return. Four years ago, he instructed his associates Eliezer Mizrahi and Avraham Verdiger not to support the government Shimon Peres was trying to form. His chassidim proclaimed him Moshiach, and a sharp dispute broke out over this between Chabad and the Orthodox Jewish community, particularly its Lithuanian branch. The leader of that branch, Rabbi Elazar Shach, said that talk of Moshiach in this context was heresy and idolatry. The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote many works on halachah and published Likkutei Sichos, the collected talks from his school of thought. He had no children. Rabbi Shach’s household said that the leader of Degel HaTorah had warned of many negative developments within Chabad Chassidus, but did not discount the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s good work in bringing Jews closer to Judaism. Rabbi Shach criticized the movement because he feared a decline upon the Rebbe’s death, when his chassidim would realize that their belief in his being Moshiach had come to nothing. The prime minister said that a Torah scholar, among the greatest men of action on behalf of Jews around the world, had passed away. The Lubavitcher Rebbe worked tirelessly for his fellow Jews, especially in communities behind the Iron Curtain and in Islamic countries. Knesset Speaker Shevach Weiss expressed condolences, on his own behalf and on behalf of all members of the Knesset, over the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres shares the grief of

07:57 Speaker 2 Chabad chassidim over the passing of their leader, and says that their Rebbe was a leader of great stature, a Torah scholar who worked devotedly for the Jews of the Soviet Union and to restore Jewish heritage among the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world.

08:15 Speaker 12 Twelve-oh-five. Hello. Nili Amir is producing the broadcast; the technician is Arik Sidelsky. In the studio is Karmit Guy. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson passed away last night at the age of ninety-two. Beth Israel Hospital in New York, where he had been hospitalized, had recently issued a recorded update on his condition every day. Today, the announcement of his passing was released in the same way.

08:34 Speaker 13 "Beth Israel Medical Center is saddened to report the passing of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson. The Rebbe passed away this morning, Sunday, June 12 at one fifty AM as a result of the stroke he suffered on March 10, the day he was admitted to Beth Israel. Any further information on this very sad occasion should be obtained from the Lubavitch World Headquarters."

09:04 Speaker 12 Chabad chassidim proclaimed the Lubavitcher Rebbe King Moshiach. The Rebbe never said anything that explicitly contradicted the idea that he was Moshiach. He stated that in every generation there is a person who sees far beyond the people of his generation, who is the leader of that generation. In the previous generation, the Rebbe said, it was the previous Rebbe of Chabad. The clearest hint, the words that started it all, came in remarks the Rebbe made about three years ago. “What more can I do so that the entire Jewish people will make a commotion, cry out and act to bring Moshiach in actuality?” the Rebbe asked. In Kfar Chabad, there is deep mourning. Michael Tuchfeld is there. Hello, Michael.

09:54 Speaker 14 Hello, Carmit. In Kfar Chabad, there is a mixture of grief and disbelief. The passing of the 92-year-old Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson has left the Chabad movement deeply shaken. Already, at this hour, chassidim are streaming to the airport. Two planes are due to depart—two jumbo jets are due to leave now for the funeral, which, as we said, will take place at four o’clock. The procession will leave from his home, from the Chabad complex at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. As we said, two planes—nearly a thousand people—are already on their way to New York. For three months the Rebbe lay unconscious, connected to life-support equipment. Two years ago he suffered his first stroke, which paralyzed the left side of his body. Three months ago he suffered another stroke and lay unconscious, never regaining consciousness. During that time his condition worsened; his weight dropped to just 35 kilograms. Around the world, Chabad chassidim refused to accept that their king, their Moshiach, was about to die. And this morning in Kfar Chabad, too, we heard expressions of disbelief at his death and an extraordinary conviction that he would come back to life. No one is talking about a successor, or about the struggle that may perhaps take place within the movement’s leadership. Let’s hear what our microphone picked up this morning in Kfar Chabad, beginning with Yosef Yitzchak Aharonov, secretary-general of Tzeirei Chabad, as he hurried to the airport.

11:08 Speaker 15 There’s no way to describe it. We—we have no words. I have nothing to add. We need to do what the Rebbe told us to do, to strengthen Yiddishkeit, and soon we will merit Moshiach, with the Rebbe at our head.

11:21 Speaker 14 What will happen to the Chabad movement now?

11:25 Speaker 15 The Chabad movement will remain as the Rebbe established it and will continue in that direction. And soon—today, even—we will merit the Geulah with Moshiach.

11:34 Speaker 14 When did you receive the news of his passing?

11:36 Speaker 15 At a quarter to nine this morning.

11:38 Speaker 14 And what did you feel? What was your reaction?

11:41 Speaker 15 There are no words. You’re pressing me, but I have no words. I think we need to strengthen everything the Rebbe told us to do. The entire Chabad movement, all the supporters of Chabad around the world, will continue to do what the Rebbe said. And as I said, I’m certain that even today, as the Rebbe said, Moshiach could come. I believe with complete faith in the coming of Moshiach, every day, that he may come.

12:14 Speaker 14 What’s happening?

12:15 Speaker 15 It feels terrible, and right now we’re simply trying to get to New York for the funeral. I have no words.

12:24 Speaker 14 What will happen to Chabad now?

12:26 Speaker 15 Nobody is thinking about that. I’m sure the Rebbe will take care of us from above, and we hope Moshiach will come soon and everything will be all right.

12:33 Speaker 14 Isn’t there a kind of rupture, a crisis, after the belief that the Rebbe is Moshiach—and now the Rebbe has passed away?

12:38 Speaker 15 Personally, at least, I believe that what the Rebbe taught us throughout all these decades—that path will guide the chassidim going forward as well. Moshiach will come soon, and the Rebbe will be back with us.

12:53 Speaker 14 How do you feel?

12:54 Speaker 16 I feel full of faith. I’m not prepared to accept this. I’m full of faith that this still isn’t the end, and that Moshiach will indeed be revealed very soon. This is another sign that Moshiach is on the way.

13:06 Speaker 14 What do you mean, this still isn’t the end? There’s been an official announcement of his passing. Everyone knows he has passed away. What do you mean?

13:11 Speaker 16 I mean that I still hope to see the Rebbe alive and well here in Israel. That’s it. That’s how I feel. You ask me what I felt? This is what I feel, even though it makes no logical sense. There’s no explanation for it. This is what I truly feel in my heart, as surely as you see me standing here. My children, too, when they heard the news this morning, said, “What? That can’t be. Don’t let them say it, because if they say it, it’ll be real.” That’s what my six-year-old daughter said. And she, too, believes the Rebbe will be well, because we can’t—we can’t be without the Rebbe.

13:36 Speaker 17 I have no spirits at all. I worked with photographs of the Rebbe for the past twenty years. I was a photographer there from 1972, and I’ve been photographing him all the time since ’72. That is, I’ve been photographing him for twenty-five years. I simply can’t believe it.

13:57 Speaker 14 But, but, but there was time. He lay in the hospital for so long, unconscious. Surely, in the end, this was expected.

14:02 Speaker 17 No. Why was it expected? Why? How could anyone expect it? Who could know what would happen? What do you mean, “expected”?

14:07 Speaker 14 You could have prepared for the possibility of his death.

14:10 Speaker 17 We didn’t prepare at all. Nobody here prepared. Nobody prepared for his death.

14:15 Speaker 14 What will happen in Chabad now? Will there be a struggle over the succession, a war?

14:17 Speaker 17 No struggle, no struggle. There won’t be any struggle. Why should there be a struggle? There’s no one to fight, and there won’t be a struggle.

14:25 Speaker 14 Who will be the next Rebbe?

14:26 Speaker 17 We don’t—we don’t know. We don’t know.

14:28 Speaker 14 Will Chabad have a Rebbe?

14:29 Speaker 17 I don’t know.

14:31 Speaker 3 The Rebbe—until now there have been miracles, great miracles beyond nature, and the Geulah, too, will be beyond nature. And I’ve seen wonders, too. They—they prepared coffins, prepared coffins, and here, too, it has already reached that point, so I’m happy.

14:46 Speaker 14 You’re happy today?

14:47 Speaker 3 I’m happy. Yes.

14:47 Speaker 14 What are you happy about?

14:49 Speaker 3 Today was the anniversary of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s liberation in Russia, and today, too—today is the final Geulah.

14:55 Speaker 14 But the Rebbe passed away today.

14:58 Speaker 3 He passed away according to the natural order, and that’s what they were saying up until three months ago, too. Now, thank Hashem, it will be revealed, with Hashem’s help.

15:07 Speaker 14 How do you feel today?

15:09 Speaker 4 I—I still don’t believe he has passed away. I don’t believe it at all. Why have miracles happened until now? I—I don’t believe it, I’m telling you.

15:19 Speaker 14 “We don’t believe it.” “The Rebbe will take care of us from above, and this isn’t the end.” “I hope to see the Rebbe alive and well.” We heard that woman say, “We can’t be without the Rebbe.” “He passed away only according to the natural order.” “The Geulah is beyond nature.” “Great miracles.” These are some of the things we heard today in Kfar Chabad. As we said, the movement has been deeply shaken. Chabad now stands at a crossroads, and no one knows which way it will turn or what the future holds.

15:42 Speaker 5 Thank you.

15:42 Speaker 14 I just want to thank the team here with me in Kfar Chabad: Rubi Abuksis, Yaakov Aviram and Guy Ben-Weiss[?].

15:47 Speaker 5 Thank you very much, Michael Tuchfeld. The chief rabbis, the prime minister, the finance minister, the speaker of the Knesset, the coalition chairman and many others have issued statements of mourning on the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. What is happening in New York, at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn? They are preparing for the funeral procession, which, as far as is now known, will begin at four in the afternoon Eastern Time, eleven at night Israel time. Beni Avni spoke a short while ago with Shalom Ber Hecht at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn.

16:16 Speaker 6 You’re at 770 Eastern Parkway right now, the international headquarters of Chabad. What’s happening there at this moment?

16:24 Speaker 5 Right now, the Rebbe’s secretaries are in a meeting together with members of the chevra kadisha. The Rebbe’s holy body was brought to 770 from the hospital about an hour ago, and it is now in the Rebbe’s room.

16:48 Speaker 6 Who—who accompanied the convoy of cars? Were there many chassidim accompanying it?

16:54 Speaker 5 No. The convoy from the hospital included a Hatzalah ambulance and police. Those who were there at the hospital also returned to 770 along with the body and the secretaries who were with them. Members of the chevra kadisha, and the doctors and medical staff who had been with the Rebbe at the hospital, also returned to 770.

17:24 Speaker 6 I hear it’s been decided that the funeral will take place at four in the afternoon, your time.

17:28 Speaker 5 It’s not one hundred percent certain, but it seems that right now they’re thinking four o’clock, yes.

17:33 Speaker 6 Yes. And how many people are expected at the funeral?

17:38 Speaker 5 More than a hundred thousand.

17:40 Speaker 6 More than a hundred thousand from all over the world, or just from the area?

17:43 Speaker 5 From all over the world, yes.

17:44 Speaker 6 …

17:45 Speaker 5 From all across America, from all over the world. We’ve just had calls from Holland, from Israel, from Australia, England, France. People have called from wherever they are in America. Chabad chassidim have already called to say they’re coming, that they’ll be here for the funeral.

18:02 Speaker 6 What are those chassidim who believed the Rebbe would never die feeling?

18:07 Speaker 5 Well, it’s hard to explain right now, because what we’re feeling now is shock. It doesn’t matter what people thought or believed.

18:16 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

18:17 Speaker 5 Right now everyone is in shock. There’s such grief and anguish that you can’t describe it. It’s a pain that reaches the very depths of our souls.

18:34 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

18:34 Speaker 5 We’re not thinking now about the details of what people thought and said. Everyone is standing here crying, saying Tehillim. They’re out here in the street, and hundreds upon hundreds of chassidim are outside right now. It’s four in the morning.

18:50 Speaker 6 Oh my G-d, yes.

18:51 Speaker 5 And every moment, hundreds more are arriving. Soon there will be thousands of people here in the street, and there are hundreds inside 770 as well. We’re in the office now. Representatives of the police, the city, and the governor’s office are here. They’ve all come here now.

19:12 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

19:12 Speaker 5 To help with the funeral arrangements. Right now we’re focused on paying the proper respects, and afterward we’ll think about the other things.

19:24 Speaker 6 Will the mayor of New York come to the funeral?

19:27 Speaker 5 Yes. I just heard from his deputy, who’s standing beside me now, that he’ll be at the funeral. Governor Cuomo will be there too.

19:35 Speaker 6 Yes.

19:36 Speaker 5 There’s also a representative from the governor’s office here. She’s standing beside me now and says that yes, the governor will be there too.

19:42 Speaker 6 His body will be buried in the cemetery beside his late wife’s body.

19:47 Speaker 5 No, not beside his wife’s body. She is buried near the previous Rebbe, but we don’t yet know the exact spot.

19:55 Speaker 6 My condolences.

19:56 Speaker 5 Thank you very much.

19:59 Speaker 7 That was Sholom Ber Hecht from Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn. As we heard, flights are leaving Israel for New York so people can attend the funeral. As far as we know now, it will take place at four in the afternoon, New York time, but the exact time has not yet been set. They may adjust it to allow time for the chassidim from Israel to arrive. An El Al plane is leaving for New York in two hours, and there are other flights and other arrangements under way. Ilan Roeh, hello.

20:24 Speaker 8 Hello, Carmit.

20:25 Speaker 7 What other details do you have?

20:26 Speaker 8 So far, there is one flight. One flight is scheduled to leave at 2:30. El Al organized it fairly quickly. Already this morning, a request came from Kfar Chabad to provide a plane for chassidim who wanted to attend the funeral. The airline began looking for a plane and crew. The flight leaves in about two hours, as we said, at 2:30, on a special El Al Boeing. The plane has 450 seats, but El Al has already said that more people than it can carry are at the terminal. El Al has no solution for them at the moment, because there is no other plane that can take off for New York right now. The plane will arrive in New York at two in the morning, Israel time. The chassidim will stay there for fourteen hours and then return immediately on a direct flight to Israel. El Al declined to give details of the arrangements made regarding fares. They spoke only of a special arrangement made with Kfar Chabad. They described a very large gathering of Chabad people at the terminal, and said that there are currently no planes available to enable more chassidim to travel to New York. El Al is trying to find a solution, but none is in sight right now. Those are the details at this stage.

21:31 Speaker 7 Do you have figures for how many people want to go?

21:34 Speaker 8 No. They spoke of far more than 450. They said the terminal was flooded with Chabad people.

21:38 Speaker 7 Is it possible to make arrangements with foreign airlines?

21:41 Speaker 8 That’s the thing. El Al said that right now, no foreign airline can arrange a plane quickly enough. They simply wouldn’t arrive in time. Even if they flew via Europe, they wouldn’t get there in time for the funeral.

21:51 Speaker 7 Thank you very much, Ilan Roeh. Please let us know when you have more details.

21:55 Speaker 8 Certainly.

21:56 Speaker 7 Guy Kotev went to speak with Chabad chassidim in Jerusalem.

22:03 Speaker 9 There is an atmosphere of bewilderment at Chabad institutions in Jerusalem. A short while ago, several dozen people gathered at the shul on Yirmiyahu Street. Most Chabad chassidim have traveled to Kfar Chabad, and some will fly to New York to attend the funeral. A few people remained near the shul, mainly young men and Vizhnitz chassidim who came to show their solidarity. The young men I spoke with

00:00 Speaker 1 Heavy mourning has descended on Chabad chassidim in Israel and the United States, and the Rebbe of Lubavitch will be laid to rest today in New York. A time for the funeral has not yet been set, and in Kfar Chabad they have already begun arranging flights for chassidim who want to attend the Rebbe’s funeral. Our broadcast van is also taking up position there, and very soon we’ll hear what is happening. We remind you: if you are a Chabad chossid and want to tell us what you are going through at this hour, call us. Five four two zero six seven three, Tel Aviv area code, five four two zero six seven three.

00:37 Speaker 2 Moshiach. There is no historical way to understand what is happening around us, except that salvation grows out of the depths of the fall.

00:45 Speaker 13 In the later period, Chabad chassidim tried to explain the messianic trends by saying that everything showed we were in the birth pangs of Moshiach. The collapse of the Communist bloc, the establishment of the State of Israel—in their view, it all pointed to Moshiach drawing closer. Alongside the messianic developments that made him a highly controversial figure, the Rebbe intervened directly in Israeli elections on one occasion, instructing his chassidim to vote for Agudas Yisroel. The Rebbe expressed his political views in an exceptionally rare interview with Israeli television.

01:18 Speaker 2 The good side of this is that, for as long as there is no official government, matters are in Mr. Shamir’s hands. I hope he will stand firm for the wholeness of the Jewish people and the wholeness of the territories, the wholeness of the entire Golan, together with the wholeness of the Torah—for these depend on one another.

01:44 Speaker 13 The wholeness of the Jewish people, the wholeness of the territories, and the wholeness of the Torah depend on one another, the Rebbe of Lubavitch said during a difficult period in Israeli politics, a period without a government. At the time, he expressed support for Yitzhak Shamir. But suddenly, at the height of his momentum, he suffered a stroke. For years, according to his chassidim, the Rebbe had made a practice of visiting his father-in-law’s grave. They said that there he would recount the requests for kindness people had brought to him. They said he would become absorbed in somber thought there. In any event, toward the end of 1992, the Rebbe suffered a stroke there at the grave and never recovered. In the first period after the stroke, he appeared from time to time, and this naturally brought joy to all his chassidim. But the possibility of the Rebbe’s death had suddenly become something they had to confront—not necessarily in a secular way, but perhaps by finding an interpretation that would rule out that possibility, like that of Rabbi Shmuel Butman, who is in charge of Chabad Youth in the United States.

02:38 Speaker 14 The life of a tzaddik is not physical, flesh-and-blood life. It is spiritual life, and so his body does not function like yours and mine.

02:50 Speaker 13 But the Rebbe’s condition continued to deteriorate, and these interpretations, although initially accepted throughout Chabad, could no longer hold off some pressing questions. For example, the Rebbe had left no successor—a son or other relative—and, as far as was known at that stage, had left no instructions regarding any other successor either. The absence of a central authority had already been causing divisions and the formation of camps within the movement for some time. But now the prize was no longer just ideological supremacy; there was a struggle for spiritual authority itself and for financial responsibility over a movement that handled millions of dollars each year. All of 1993 was marked by uncertainty, while the “Welcome, King Moshiach” campaign became part of everyday life, like Chabad’s other campaigns. The combination of that campaign and the reality brought no shortage of mockery from the secular public at the movement’s expense. 1994 began as 1993 had ended, but shortly afterward came the final collapse, the collapse from which the Rebbe did not rise again. He was hospitalized, and the grim reports followed one another: he was unresponsive; he was brain-dead. These were very difficult weeks for Chabad, until his death. And the Rebbe’s death raised a question harder than any that had been asked before: What would become of Chabad? How great would the rupture be? Would the movement even survive? In other words, how would Chabad contend with the death of the person it had called, with complete faith, King Moshiach?

04:17 Speaker 15 Me, how should I put it? I wasn’t a chossid. I was, again, how should I put it, a follower of a great man on the other side, Menachem Begin, of blessed memory.

04:28 Speaker 16 So you’re comparing the two?

04:30 Speaker 15 I’m comparing the two as people. As people, both were persecuted, and both, how should I put it, built an empire. And I—there’s no comparison, not as people and not as... how should I put it, anything else. I’ll never believe this will fall apart. Rather, it will grow stronger, take root, and be a guiding light for thousands of Jews, because of all he accomplished and everything he did for the Jewish people.

05:08 Speaker 16 Hello. Thank you for calling us.

05:10 Speaker 15 Thank you.

05:11 Speaker 16 And may you know no more sorrow.

05:13 Speaker 15 Amen and amen.

05:16 Speaker 16 And we, though it is an abrupt and unnatural transition, have to go to a commercial. A commercial.

05:23 Speaker 17 The leader of Chabad chassidim, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, passed away last night at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. He was ninety-two. For the past three months he had been unconscious after suffering two strokes, followed by pneumonia and kidney failure. Heavy mourning has descended on Chabad in Israel and the United States. The Rebbe of Lubavitch will be laid to rest today in New York. A time for the funeral has not yet been set. In Kfar Chabad they have begun arranging flights for chassidim to attend the Rebbe’s funeral. That is all for now.

05:56 Speaker 13 Yesterday I walk into—

05:57 Speaker 17 The Rebbe of Lubavitch. Hundreds of chassidim have already registered for special flights scheduled to leave Israel for Brooklyn, New York, later this morning for the Rebbe’s funeral. Chabad’s leadership is calling on chassidim to be at Ben Gurion Airport by eleven o’clock, and El Al has told us that it is now arranging a large number of flights for those traveling to the funeral. We spoke with him previously on this program about this same subject. The circumstances, of course, have changed. Avi, hello.

06:27 Speaker 18 Hello.

06:28 Speaker 17 When did you receive the news of the Rebbe’s death?

06:31 Speaker 18 Well, people here are talking a lot about this today, and I wanted to speak precisely at this time, because this is a time of testing. Although throughout the past few months the Rebbe’s condition was not one in which people would expect King Moshiach to be revealed, we had, and still have, complete faith that the Rebbe is indeed King Moshiach. Despite these reports, we are going to see a good surprise in this matter.

07:04 Speaker 17 Meaning?

07:05 Speaker 18 Meaning that the Rebbe will indeed be revealed as King Moshiach. We expected him to rise from the condition he was in until a few days ago, though it also seemed impossible by the ordinary course of nature for a man in his nineties to rise from that condition and lead the entire people at full strength.

07:26 Speaker 17 But that expectation, Avi, was disappointed.

07:28 Speaker 18 Huh?

07:29 Speaker 17 That expectation was disappointed.

07:30 Speaker 18 Well, it is written about what will happen before King Moshiach is revealed. If you remember what happened with Eliyahu Hanavi and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, very few of the people had remained faithful to Hashem, and most had turned toward the prophets of Baal. Eliyahu Hanavi arranged for everyone to stand there and see where salvation would come from.

08:00 Speaker 17 Yes.

08:00 Speaker 18 From Hashem or from the prophets of Baal.

08:01 Speaker 17 Yes, Avi.

08:02 Speaker 18 Just a second.

08:03 Speaker 17 We know the story.

08:04 Speaker 18 Yes, but it is written—

08:04 Speaker 17 Even though we’re secular, we—

08:06 Speaker 18 Just a second, just a second.

08:07 Speaker 17 Remember what we learned as children.

08:08 Speaker 18 Yes, of course, but it is written that when Moshiach is revealed—

08:12 Speaker 17 Mm-hmm.

08:12 Speaker 18 The situation will be reversed. The people who want to demonstrate faith in Hashem and the Geulah will be standing there, and the fire will be lit, seemingly, on the other side.

08:26 Speaker 17 Avi.

08:27 Speaker 18 Still, that—

08:27 Speaker 17 Avi, Avi, we can’t get into an in-depth halachic lesson right now. In any event, you’re saying this is a time of testing for a Chabad chossid.

08:34 Speaker 18 Yes.

08:34 Speaker 17 So where exactly is the test? If your faith is as firm as it was even after the Rebbe’s death, what are you contending with? What is the danger to your faith?

08:44 Speaker 18 First of all, the certainty that the Rebbe is indeed King Moshiach did not come from something some chossid or anyone else made up. Rather, these are things the Rebbe made clear to us.

09:02 Speaker 17 Right.

09:02 Speaker 19 Whether it was—whoever it might be, whether a politician or not, the Rebbe received everyone and blessed everyone. And there was never a blessing the Rebbe gave that did not come true. I myself—my brother was supposed to undergo a very difficult operation, and my mother was very alarmed, very frightened of it. He was a very small child, and we turned to the Rebbe, my mother and I. It was just when we were flying to the Rebbe before a holiday, and my mother—and there the Rebbe blessed him and gave him a dollar. When we arrived at PICA[?] with my brother for the operation, he no longer needed it. And we—I am certain that was only in the merit of the Rebbe’s blessing.

09:33 Speaker 20 Nava, so you believe that although he passed away like any other person, he will nevertheless return as Moshiach?

09:39 Speaker 19 Yes, I believe it with all my heart. First of all—

09:41 Speaker 20 And will there be a resurrection of the dead at all?

09:44 Speaker 19 Uh, I’m not so well versed in the resurrection of the dead, but I think it will happen and Moshiach will come, because—there’s never been anyone like the Rebbe. He lived in a way that was beyond nature. His whole way of life was beyond nature. The Rebbe would stand for hours and hours, even when he was an older man, handing out dollars.

10:00 Speaker 20 He was above nature, but he passed away like any other person.

10:03 Speaker 19 But he’ll return. He’ll return. That’s part of the process of Moshiach, and I’m sure of it. Just as he lived in a way that was beyond nature, so too his Geulah and the way he returns will be beyond nature.

10:16 Speaker 20 When will he return? Will it be soon, in our days?

10:19 Speaker 19 I hope so. It depends only on us, as the Rebbe said. It depends on us, only on us. The Rebbe truly did everything he could. It depends on us.

10:27 Speaker 20 And what will happen when he returns?

10:29 Speaker 19 What will happen? Well, as they say, Moshiach will come and, of course, the Beis Hamikdash will be built. And they say life will be the same, except that everything will be spiritual and we won’t need all the material things.

10:42 Speaker 20 So if he’s going to return, Nava, perhaps there’s no need to appoint a successor at all.

10:47 Speaker 19 No, I haven’t heard that anyone is trying to appoint a successor.

10:49 Speaker 20 There’s no replacing him.

10:51 Speaker 19 No. No, for now there isn’t. I don’t think there ever will be, either. Nevertheless, Chabad will remain completely united. Even now, while the Rebbe is not with us for a time, Chabad will always stay together and united. Always.

11:03 Speaker 20 You know that a movement like this still needs some kind of spiritual leader.

11:07 Speaker 19 Uh, it does, that’s true.

11:10 Speaker 20 And that leader will remain the Lubavitcher Rebbe, even though he has passed away?

11:13 Speaker 19 I think so, and I’m sure of it. It will be the Rebbe—that is, the Rebbe will return.

11:19 Speaker 20 So in that case you aren’t so sad, because you know he’ll return.

11:21 Speaker 19 I am sad. I am sad, and I’m definitely sad. But I know that beyond the sadness, this is the path. It’s part of the path by which Moshiach will be revealed: first Moshiach will pass away, and then Moshiach will come.

11:33 Speaker 20 Tell me a little about what’s happening where you are in Kfar Chabad. How are people behaving this morning?

11:37 Speaker 19 I actually went out this morning, but we have a phone number we can call to hear how the Rebbe is doing. My mother and I called this morning and heard that yesterday the Rebbe had felt very unwell and his condition had been very serious, but they had gotten through it. My mother sat saying Tehillim and praying for the Rebbe to get well. I was sitting in my room when a friend called and told me. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t. I said—I couldn’t believe it; it didn’t sink in. I went outside. You can feel it, you can just feel it in the air. You really can. I—

12:12 Speaker 20 What are people doing? Walking around crying?

12:14 Speaker 19 I think people are saying Tehillim in the shul for the elevation of his soul and thinking about what each person needs to do to bring it about. They aren’t just sitting there. Of course they’re praying and crying too, but everyone is doing whatever they can.

12:29 Speaker 20 Are they going on with life as usual, or stopping work and all their ordinary activities?

12:35 Speaker 19 They’re bringing these other things into their ordinary lives. They sit and say Tehillim, do more, pray more. Each person adds whatever they need to do, but they aren’t bringing life to a halt.

12:47 Speaker 20 You’re seventeen.

12:48 Speaker 19 Right.

12:48 Speaker 20 Did you go to school today?

12:50 Speaker 19 I have a matriculation exam today.

12:52 Speaker 20 And are you going to take the exam?

12:53 Speaker 19 Probably. It depends what the Ministry of Education decides to do.

12:56 Speaker 20 What subject is your exam in?

12:58 Speaker 19 Literature.

12:59 Speaker 20 Do you think you’ll be able to concentrate?

13:01 Speaker 19 I’ll try as hard as I can.

13:05 Speaker 20 Nava, thank you very much for calling us.

13:07 Speaker 19 Thank you very much.

13:08 Speaker 20 Goodbye. Goodbye.

13:11 Speaker 3 Honestly, though, you know, people can say a lot of things. It’s easy to say grand words, but I’ll tell you the truth about what I’m feeling. I’m thinking more about how to strengthen those who are going through a hard moment, and to tell them to hold fast to their faith and see. That concerns me more than the other things.

13:34 Speaker 4 Avi Piamenta, thank you very much.

13:35 Speaker 3 All the best, and may we see the true and complete Geulah soon.

13:44 Speaker 20 And now to Rabbi Yisrael Lau.

13:46 Speaker 5 Yes. Good morning.

13:48 Speaker 20 Are you also stunned by the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe?

13:51 Speaker 5 What was the question, sorry?

13:53 Speaker 20 I’m asking whether you, too, are stunned and can’t believe it.

13:56 Speaker 5 Yes, it’s hard to believe.

13:57 Speaker 20 From the Rebbe’s chassidim.

13:59 Speaker 5 That expression, “The heart finds it hard to believe and refuses to believe,” is very apt in this case. For years now, since he became ill, and especially in recent months, there was a sense that he was such a spiritual figure, that such a miracle was taking place around him, that ordinary clinical realities simply didn’t apply to him. He was always very detached from material things, particularly in recent years. But—

14:28 Speaker 20 So even you, Rabbi Lau, a rational person after all, believed on some level that he would not pass away?

14:34 Speaker 5 No, I didn’t think about it in those terms. And I also never addressed the question of who the King Moshiach is. I never expressed an opinion on that. On the contrary, in all my speeches, including at Chabad events such as 14 Kislev and the like, I always spoke about meriting the great day when we would all march, led by the Rebbe, to greet our righteous Moshiach, may he come speedily in our days, amen. So—

15:07 Speaker 20 But you didn’t think that the Lubavitcher Rebbe himself was Moshiach.

15:10 Speaker 5 I never said such a thing. I am full of admiration and wonder at his great personality, his magnetism, his extraordinarily broad horizons, and especially the fact that we owe this man so much for preserving the Jewish spark. I don’t think anyone, at least in the last century, did as much as he did to preserve that spark. Russia, North Africa, Yemen, Tehran, Lapland, remote places, Melbourne, Cape Town.

15:49 Speaker 20 What will happen, Rabbi Lau, to this movement, the Chabad movement, which was ultimately built around one person, around one person’s charisma?

15:57 Speaker 5 There is one example, though it’s hard to compare the two: Breslov Chassidus. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov did not leave a successor. In the case of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, at least as things appear now, he left no biological children, but he left many orphans. I believe those orphans will unite around the Rebbe’s messages, because the body of books he left behind, the fruit of his ideas and thoughts, is enormous. There is so much to study and examine there; I think it will be enough to give their lives direction.

16:35 Speaker 6 But is there still a chance that this movement will fall apart without a strong leader?

16:40 Speaker 5 I believe—I want to believe it won’t, because it would be a shame. Think of its work: just a week ago, we received the thousandth child from Chernobyl. Without the Rebbe’s vision and his urging, things like that would not have happened. I believe some form of collective leadership will emerge, a committee or a supreme council of Chabad Chassidus’s leading thinkers and doers, to carry on the Rebbe’s work in the spirit of his vision.

17:10 Speaker 6 Do you have words of comfort for the Rebbe’s chassidim, who are already in deep mourning today?

17:18 Speaker 5 I think they can take some comfort from the fact that today the entire Jewish people, and people beyond it, are coming together in appreciation, perhaps even admiration, of the Rebbe’s extraordinary personality. It’s no secret that in recent years the Rebbe and those around him came under considerable attack. Today may offer some balm for the pain that caused them. I must also say, among the thousands of things to his credit, that even when he was attacked in very harsh terms, including when he was conscious and able to speak, he not only said nothing in reply to those who insulted him—he was among those who hear themselves insulted and do not answer back. He also did not allow his chassidim to respond, in writing or verbally, and certainly not with verbal or any other kind of aggression. They can find much comfort in that too, because nothing diminished his character.

18:20 Speaker 6 Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yisrael Lau, thank you very much.

18:23 Speaker 5 Thank you. All the best.

18:24 Speaker 6 Advertisement.

18:25 Speaker 7 Earlier we also heard a message of condolence from Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. And now Udi Segal, our political correspondent, brings us a statement from Prime Minister—I believe it’s Yitzhak Rabin. Is that right, Udi?

18:33 Speaker 8 Yes, Kobi. Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin shares in the grief of the family and the Chabad chassidic community over the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Rabin said that the Rebbe’s passing is a loss for the entire Jewish people. “A great Torah scholar has passed away, an outstanding leader and one of the foremost men of action on behalf of Jews around the world and in remote communities. For two generations, the Rebbe worked tirelessly for the welfare of Jews, especially in Diaspora communities formerly behind the Iron Curtain and in Islamic countries,” the statement said. “He worked to bring together people from all parts of our nation, with differing views, distant and close. His unique personality and his work will serve as an example to us all to strive for what unites us and to seek what binds our people together, in Israel and throughout the Diaspora.” That is the wording of the Prime Minister’s Office statement on the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

19:22 Speaker 7 That was the statement from Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. Udi Segal, thank you very much. I want to remind those who would like to respond of the phone number—Chabad chassidim, people who met the Rebbe: 03-681-3345, 681-3345 in the Tel Aviv area code. We’re—

19:40 Speaker 9 Yitzchak Eitan. The leader of the Chabad chassidim, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, passed away last night at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. He was ninety-two. For the past three, three months he had been unconscious after suffering two strokes, followed by pneumonia and kidney failure. Deep mourning has descended on the Chabad chassidic community in Israel and the United States. The Lubavitcher Rebbe will be laid to rest in New York at four in the afternoon, New York time. In Kfar Chabad, they have begun arranging flights for chassidim to attend the Rebbe’s funeral. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was considered one of the great leaders of Judaism in the United States and of Orthodox Judaism worldwide. He was born in Ukraine, where he received a Torah education. As a young man, he studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and marine engineering at the Sorbonne in Paris. When the Nazis occupied France, he emigrated to the United States, where he began to lead the Chabad chassidic movement forty-two years ago. He developed Chabad’s network of educational institutions in many Jewish communities around the world. Chabad chassidim reached remote communities in China and Morocco, and maintained contact with Soviet Jews during the era of Communist rule. Chabad has more than a thousand educational centers worldwide. The Lubavitcher Rebbe particularly encouraged women to acquire a profession and practical education. Inspired by him, Chabad chassidim used every technological means to spread the message of Chassidus: telephone lines, newsletters, video broadcasts, and mitzvah tanks. The farbrengens at the Rebbe’s court were broadcast by satellite to Chabad communities around the world. The Rebbe would distribute dollars at farbrengens to his chassidim and to people seeking his advice. Many of his chassidim who were businesspeople made large donations to his court. Kings, presidents, and heads of state came to meet him and ask his opinion on various matters. Israeli prime ministers, cabinet ministers, IDF generals, and members of the Knesset visited his residence. The third president, Zalman Shazar, who was a Chabad chossid, visited him in New York. The Lubavitcher Rebbe declined to move to Israel, but his chassidim built him an exact replica of his New York residence here in Kfar Chabad.

21:48 Speaker 9 For many years, the Chabad movement in Israel was considered nonpartisan, but in recent years the Rebbe became involved in the political debate. He took a firm line, opposed the Camp David Accords, supported advancing into West Beirut during the Lebanon War, and rejected any concession of territory in the Land of Israel. He waged an uncompromising struggle against the amendment to the Law of Return. Four years ago, he compelled his associates Eliezer Mizrahi and Rabbi Verdiger not to support the government Shimon Peres was trying to form. His chassidim proclaimed him Moshiach, and on this issue a sharp and heated dispute broke out between Chabad and the Orthodox community, particularly its Lithuanian branch. The leader of that branch, Rabbi Elazar Shach, said that talk of Moshiach in this way was heresy and idolatry. The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote many books of halachah and published the Likkutei Sichos from his school of thought. He had no children. The prime minister expressed sorrow at the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and said that a great Torah scholar, one of the foremost men of action on behalf of Jews around the world, had passed away. The Rebbe worked tirelessly for his fellow Jews, especially in communities behind the Iron Curtain and in Islamic countries, and worked to bring together all parts of the nation, distant and close. The Speaker of the Knesset expresses condolences, on his own behalf and on behalf of all members of the house, on the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Speaker Shevach Weiss sent a telegram of condolence to Chabad chassidim this morning. That concludes the news from Kol Yisrael.

23:18 Speaker 10 We’re still covering the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It is an extremely traumatic death for his followers, particularly in Israel and the United States. And now we’re speaking with Professor Rachel Elior, professor of Jewish thought, mysticism, and Chassidus in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University. Hello, Professor Elior. Professor Elior, are you with us? Let’s listen to a little music; we’ll be with her in a moment. His followers admire him and heed his every word. Still, was there some difference between that conventional relationship and the degree of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s charisma?

23:54 Speaker 11 Yes. Every chassidic community, by its very definition as such a community, has a rabbi at its center, either a rabbi or a tzaddik. But not every chassidic community regards its rabbi as Moshiach during his lifetime. I think this phenomenon characterized Chabad in recent years and made it exceptional.

24:15 Speaker 10 How did that develop? Why was it specifically the Lubavitcher Rebbe whom his chassidim honored by proclaiming him Moshiach?

24:20 Speaker 11 I don’t think it was a matter of honor at all. I would say it’s a little more complicated, and if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it was essentially the chassidic movement’s tragic response to the Holocaust. They thought more or less along these lines: If we’ve already lived through this terrible Holocaust, in which millions of people were wiped out, let’s try to find some meaning or significance in it. The only meaning they could see was something like the birth pangs of Moshiach or the war of Gog and Magog—that is, the great calamities that precede the Geulah. Since we’ve already experienced the calamities, presumably the Geulah is at hand. That expression, “the birth pangs of Moshiach,” is like the pains of childbirth: just as a child is born at the end of labor, so Moshiach is born at the end of those birth pangs. Then they looked around and thought that the only person suited to fill that role was the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This came—it had been developing among them for many years before it became known to the public. In the twenties—this was already right after the Holocaust—it began, and in the fifties and sixties it remained quiet. In recent years, in recent decades, it reached wider public circles as well.

25:28 Speaker 10 We expected, Professor Rachel Elior, that this death would cause a very deep crisis of faith for those people who did not believe he would pass away. But now we hear that, like a phoenix, the chassidim are rising again. The few we spoke with during the previous hour of the broadcast said, “The Rebbe will return. He has died, but he will come back with the resurrection of the dead.”

25:51 Speaker 11 Look, what you’re encountering here is a clash between a rational system of values and a mystical, visionary, utopian one. They believe in things that are not accepted—or not judged—by rational standards. They believe he is superhuman, that he is Moshiach, that he is a person not subject to the laws of this world. After all, they always believed he would not die, either. Now that he has died, they say, as believers have always said, that he will return. Look, Breslov chassidim also think their Rebbe will return, that he is destined to return. They call themselves “dead chassidim,” and they have no other Rebbe because they are certain that their Rebbe, who died in Uman two hundred years ago, will come back.

26:30 Speaker 12 And that is what will happen to the Chabad chassidic movement.

26:32 Speaker 11 Not to everyone. I think it will go something like this: A small handful will continue to believe that the Rebbe is Moshiach, that he is eternal and immortal, and that he will return from the dead. It will be only a small handful. Others will try to develop a theology that explains the gap between what they hoped for and what has happened. In other words, why that Moshiach did not merit to fulfill his messianic vision and, like everyone else, passed on to another world. The great majority will adapt to reality as it is and try to carry on in accordance with his books, his recordings, and his videos. They have a great deal of material that can help them continue to keep his image alive as a leader.

27:14 Speaker 12 And yet, it is hard to ignore the fact that over the past several decades, this movement has been built to a very large extent around the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s charismatic personality.

27:27 Speaker 11 Every Chassidic community, every Chassidic community, is built around the charismatic personality of a central Rebbe.

27:33 Speaker 12 And when that charismatic figure passes away, isn’t there some concern that the whole community will fall apart?

27:40 Speaker 11 No, no, no, no. There is absolutely no concern about that, I’m telling you. I think there is a question of the center and the margins. There will be people on the extreme margins who may take some unusual actions because of the crisis, but they will be only a marginal group. Others, as I said, will respond by developing theological ideas that try to explain the gap between what they hoped for and what has happened. Others will believe that he will return, but those, too, will be marginal groups. The great majority will go on living and find someone to organize things, an administrative replacement, not a spiritual one.

28:09 Speaker 12 Not a spiritual successor.

28:10 Speaker 11 Not a successor. There is no direct heir here, and even if there were, he and they became entangled in the messianic question, and they believed he was Moshiach. They also did not want to, or could not, appoint a successor to him. You understand? In this particular case, the Rebbe of Lubavitch also has no heirs to continue the dynasty. He has no children or direct relatives, so there is no one to appoint. But—

28:32 Speaker 12 Forgive me, Professor Elior, for the very secular question, but how can believers, however steadfast, believe that a person who ages like anyone else, has had two strokes, developed pneumonia and suffers from kidney failure is nevertheless superhuman?

28:51 Speaker 11 Look, in Chabad’s language, the whole idea of faith is that it is beyond reason and intellect—beyond reason and mind. These are not logical things, not things that meet rational standards. They believe what they want to believe. They believe in his eternal nature, his superhuman nature and his exceptional standing. But that has always been the way of faith. It tries to hold on to what has no rational justification, to what lies beyond rational justification. Perhaps the question should be the other way around: What was it about this man that could lead his followers to regard him in this way?

29:24 Speaker 12 And what was it about him?

29:26 Speaker 11 Apparently, some extraordinary combination of a charismatic personality, with a great deal of charm and tremendous sensitivity to the needs of a very large community, together with vision and an immense ability to build a vast organization. Beyond the messianic issues of recent years, Chabad is a vast educational and religious organization engaged in public outreach. They took it upon themselves to be responsible for the entire Jewish people. We know this from things like the mitzvah stands for IDF soldiers, which people find amusing, but it goes far beyond that, into work that is not widely known. They sent shluchim and supported people in communities across the globe, in places of great danger and places far removed from publicity or any outward prestige. They did this with genuine self-sacrifice from the early 1950s onward, including in Soviet Russia, including in the camps. They truly saw themselves as responsible for preserving the entire Jewish people.

30:18 Speaker 12 And to conclude, Professor Rachel Elior, the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, is not the death of the Chabad movement.

30:25 Speaker 11 No, it is not the death of the Chabad movement. His death brings great sorrow and is a great tragedy, but I have no doubt they will carry on. They have an immense legacy spanning seven generations, a vast library, great love, and the will to continue and preserve these things. They will shake off their grief, carry on and develop a new path, religiously and socially. And if there is no one person who is a leader by the grace of G-d, as they saw the Rebbe of Lubavitch, a group of people will form a temporary alternative leadership until they regain their bearings or until something new takes shape.

30:58 Speaker 12 Professor Rachel Elior of the Hebrew University, thank you very much.

31:01 Speaker 11 You’re welcome. Goodbye, thank you.

00:00 Speaker 1 Absolutely. Our mobile broadcast units, in any case, are now preparing to broadcast from communities of Chabad chassidim. In the meantime, we’ll tell you about the man, the Lubavitcher Rebbe—an outline of his personality and life story. A report by Michael Tuchfeld.

00:16 Speaker 2 The most famous Jew in the world, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—whose eightieth birthday U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared a national day of celebration, and who declined President Carter’s invitation to the White House, saying that if he left Brooklyn, it would only be to go to Israel—also knew how to make Chabad the most talked-about, best-known and most media-visible Jewish movement ever. The Lubavitcher Rebbe knew how to win the hearts of world leaders, heads of state, kings and presidents. At the same time, he aroused the opposition of broad segments of the charedi community and the courts of rival Rebbes. The Rebbe never followed the lines accepted by all charedi groups, but he managed to soften the radicalism that some saw in his words through his gracious manner, the great warmth and love that always radiated from him. The idea of Moshiach, which has shaken Chabad and occupied the world’s media in recent years, was perhaps the culmination of the personality cult built around him. In February 1992, some five thousand enthusiastic chassidim gathered at Chabad’s stronghold, 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, and sang with all their might: “Long live our master, teacher and Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.” The Rebbe never said anything that explicitly contradicted the idea that he was Moshiach. He stated that in every generation there is a person who sees far beyond his contemporaries, the head of his generation. In the previous generation, the Rebbe said, that person was the previous Rebbe of Chabad. The clearest hint, the words from which it all began, appeared in remarks he made about three years ago. “What more can I do so that the entire Jewish people will make a commotion, cry out and act to bring Moshiach in actuality?” the Rebbe asked. “Do everything you can to bring Moshiach down, immediately, right now.” The only thing I can do is hand the matter over to you. Do everything

02:25 Speaker 2 in your power to actually bring our righteous Moshiach immediately, right now. It is no wonder, then, that Chabad ideology, based on the idea that the Geulah will come in our own time—Moshiach now—so readily came to embrace the belief that the Rebbe himself is Moshiach. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Rebbe of the Lubavitch dynasty, was born in April 1902 in the town of Nikolayev, Russia, one of Chabad’s traditional centers. He was the son of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, a great Torah scholar and staunch opponent of the Communist regime who regularly found himself in confrontations with the NKVD, and Chana, the daughter of the town’s rabbi. From the time of his birth, it was clear that he would be a Chabad Rebbe. Even his name, Menachem Mendel, after his great-grandfather the Tzemach Tzedek, one of the most prominent Rebbes of all time, hinted at it. Expectations of him were so high that his mother was instructed to wash her hands each time she came to nurse him. In his spare time—that is, after eighteen hours a day of Torah study—the young prodigy also studied at a gymnasium and received a government graduation certificate. After marrying Chaya Mushka, daughter of the Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, he continued his studies in mathematics, the humanities and philosophy in Berlin. He also earned a degree in naval engineering from the Sorbonne in Paris. For some reason, these studies disappeared from Chabad’s official biographies. Such subjects are not considered particularly suitable for a Chabad chossid. They suited the young Menachem Mendel very well, though his broad horizons were more than once a thorn in his opponents’ side. Even during his years as Rebbe, he encouraged women, for example, to study and gain an education. After the Nazis reached Paris, he fled to the United States, where he joined his father-in-law, the Rebbe. A year after his father-in-law’s passing, in 1951, he assumed the leadership of Chabad. From then on, he regularly visited his father-in-law’s gravesite, known as the Ohel, where he would pray and make requests on behalf of the Jewish people and the hundreds of thousands who came to him to receive a dollar and a blessing, and to spend time in his presence. It was there, beside

04:29 Speaker 2 the grave, that he suffered the stroke less than two years ago that paralyzed half his body and whose effects he endured until his death. In his forty-two years as Rebbe, he turned Chabad into a universal chassidic movement, drawing secular Jews closer on the one hand and provoking the anger of many charedi circles on the other. A deep gulf, whose roots go back two hundred years, has separated the chassidim, with Chabad at their head, from the Litvaks since the days of the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, and the Litvak leader Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna. In the early years of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s leadership, someone brought Rabbi Soloveitchik of Brisk a maamar by the Rebbe about the number seven. The Rebbe was the seventh in the Chabad dynasty, and the number seven has great significance in Judaism: Shabbos, the Shemittah year and more. The Brisker Rav read the maamar and told those around him, “This madman thinks he is Moshiach.” It was an early sign of the storm that would erupt among the Litvak community over the veneration of the Rebbe, beginning with claims that he was the Moshe Rabbeinu of the generation and ending with claims that he was King Moshiach. In recent years, Rabbi Shach was the Rebbe’s fiercest opponent. They were two charismatic figures whose dispute brought about an all-out war within the charedi community. It was not merely a disagreement over outlook, and the divide between them crossed lines of halachah and tradition. Litvaks and Chabad chassidim do not marry one another, and some Litvaks will not even drink wine touched by a Chabad chossid, for fear that it is forbidden wine. A few years ago, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as he is commonly called, permitted people not to sleep in the sukkah. Rabbi Shach was furious and attacked him for uprooting words of Torah. The Litvak leader’s attacks intensified as the veneration of the Rebbe as Moshiach grew. He called Chabad a messianic sect and warned against the Rebbe and against Chabad. “Stay away from them,” Rabbi Shach declared, “and may Hashem soon send us our righteous Moshiach, without our having to contend with false messiahs.” The Rebbe generally refrained from responding to the attacks, but when the matter touched on the Land of Israel, he did not remain silent. In January 1982,

06:28 Speaker 2 he was outraged by Rabbi Shach’s statement that it was possible to live another two thousand years without the Golan Heights.

06:35 Speaker 3 All this, G-d forbid, was said about Israel. That we should sit for two thousand years without the Golan Heights. No one has said such a thing—no one has said such a thing—that the exile, G-d forbid, could continue for another two thousand years.

06:59 Speaker 2 No one had said until now that the exile, G-d forbid, could last another two thousand years, the Rebbe said. He described Rabbi Shach as a Jew surrounded by a group of flatterers and jesters, turning him into an enemy of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel and the State of Israel were foremost in the Rebbe’s thoughts. He befriended the country’s leaders, and there has not been a prime minister or president who has not visited him since he became Rebbe. The Rebbe opposed giving back any part of the Land of Israel. During the Yom Kippur War, he supported taking Damascus, and during the Lebanon War, he favored entering West Beirut. To him, the Camp David Accords were an unforgivable crime.

07:33 Speaker 3 [unclear]

07:50 Speaker 2 There is no place for shouts of joy and dancing, he said the day after the agreements were signed. Surely the man who did this regrets it, he added, alluding to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whom he knew and esteemed. Arik Sharon once asked the Rebbe why he did not adopt the slogan “Follow me” and move the Brooklyn community to the territories awaiting settlement. The Rebbe replied that he was like the captain of a sinking ship of an assimilating Diaspora, who must not abandon it before the end. On another occasion, he said that Jerusalem is wherever Jews are. That did not stop his chassidim from building in Kfar Chabad a precise replica of the Rebbe’s stronghold in Brooklyn. The only issue that caused Chabad chassidim to lose their gracious manner was the proposed amendment to the Law of Return, the “Who Is a Jew” law. After the latest failure to pass the amendment in the Knesset, the Rebbe said that the dictatorship exercised by the State of Israel over a Jew’s conscience and soul was worse than the one in Russia.

08:45 Speaker 4 Whether he is a Communist, whether he is a Christian, whether he is an Arab, whether he is [unclear]. G-d forbid [unclear]. This is a form of democracy. What is democracy [unclear]?

09:05 Speaker 2 The majority in the Knesset, the Rebbe stated, relies on communists, Christians and Arabs. Is that democracy? The Rebbe’s prominence was the result of a well-oiled publicity and media operation. Chabad spreads Judaism by every sophisticated means: a telephone service, mitzvah tanks, radio, video, multimedia, leaflets and newspapers. The Rebbe’s talks—the farbrengens, as they are commonly called—are transmitted by cable and satellite to every corner of the globe. Chabad representatives can be found in almost every remote corner of the world, at the Rebbe’s behest, of course. They build a small Jewish community, and sometimes the Chabad shliach is the only Jew there. Thus they can be found in China, Morocco, the Andes, Australia and Lapland. Chabad was the only movement that managed to preserve a spark of Jewish tradition in the Soviet Union under Soviet rule. As befits a worldwide movement, Chabad enjoyed seemingly inexhaustible financial resources. Some of the world’s wealthiest Jews, who attributed their extraordinary success to the Rebbe’s blessing, donated enormous sums to Chabad. As his illness worsened, the finest doctors were rushed to his bedside, including doctors from hospitals in Israel. The Rebbe underwent various forms of treatment, and recently his condition improved. In recent months he was brought in a wheelchair to a small balcony built for him above the beis midrash, and took part in several events and prayers. As noted, the Rebbe was paralyzed on one side of his body and was unable to speak. This frustrated him greatly, and on more than one occasion, heavy, heartbreaking sighs could be heard from his room. Some say that the passing of his wife several years ago hastened his illness. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, an impressive figure whose penetrating, kindly eyes knew how to find a place in the hearts of those he met, ended his life leaving behind a remarkably organized Chassidic movement, but no successor. The Rebbe and his wife had no children. In fact, he was the last scion of the Schneersohn dynasty and the house of Lubavitch. His passing does not necessarily put an end to Chabad’s dream of Moshiach. It is possible that no struggle over succession will develop at all, since his chassidim will hold fast to the belief that the resurrection of

11:02 Speaker 2 the dead will take place in forty years, according to tradition, and then King Moshiach will be revealed. In Chabad’s stronghold in Brooklyn, in Kfar Chabad in Israel, and in every corner of the globe where the name of the Rebbe and his movement is known, people will struggle for a long time to come to terms with the loss of the Rebbe. Only faith in the coming of Moshiach and the resurrection of the dead will guide the leaders of the Chassidic movement, which now stands at a crossroads. For the first time since its founding, it is not at all clear where it will turn.

11:29 Speaker 5 I believe. Hey, the coming of Moshiach, the coming of Moshiach, I believe. Hey, the coming of Moshiach, the coming of Moshiach, I believe. I believe, I

12:45 Speaker 6 Chabad chassidim who want to contact us and tell us what they’re feeling today are welcome to call the Kol Shidurim studio at 03-542-0673. This number is for Chabad chassidim who want to speak here on the program about the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. 542-0673, Tel Aviv area code.

00:08 The leader of Chabad chassidim, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, passed away last night at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. He was ninety-two. For the past three, three months he had been unconscious, after suffering two strokes, followed by pneumonia and kidney failure. A pall of mourning has descended over Chabad in Israel and the United States. The Lubavitcher Rebbe will be laid to rest in New York at four in the afternoon, New York time. In Kfar Chabad, they have begun arranging flights for chassidim to attend the Rebbe’s funeral. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was considered one of the greatest leaders of American Jewry and of the Orthodox Jewish world. He was born in Ukraine and received a Torah education there. As a young man, he studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and marine engineering at the Sorbonne in Paris. When the Nazis occupied France, he emigrated to the United States, where he became the leader of Chabad forty-two years ago. He developed Chabad’s network of educational institutions in many Jewish communities around the world. Chabad chassidim reached remote communities in China and Morocco, and maintained contact with the Jews of the Soviet Union under Communist rule. Chabad has more than a thousand educational centers worldwide. The Lubavitcher Rebbe particularly encouraged women to acquire a profession and a practical education. Inspired by him, Chabad chassidim used every technological means to spread the message of Chassidus: telephone lines, newsletters, video broadcasts and mitzvah tanks. The farbrengens at the Rebbe’s court were broadcast by satellite to Chabad communities around the world. The Rabbi would distribute a dollar at farbrengens to his chassidim and to people seeking his advice. Many of his chassidim who were businesspeople made large donations to his court. Kings, presidents and heads of state came to meet with him and ask his opinion on various matters. Israeli prime ministers, cabinet ministers, IDF generals and members of the Knesset visited his residence. Israel’s third president, Zalman Shazar, who was a Chabad chossid, visited him in New York. The Lubavitcher Rebbe declined to move to Israel, but his chassidim built an exact replica of his New York residence here in Kfar Chabad. For many years,

02:15 the Chabad movement in Israel was considered nonpartisan, but in recent years the Rebbe became involved in the political debate. He took a firm line, opposed the Camp David Accords, supported an advance into West Beirut during the Lebanon War and rejected any concession of territory in the Land of Israel. He waged an uncompromising campaign over amending the Law of Return. Four years ago, he instructed his associates Eliezer Mizrachi and Rabbi Werdiger not to support the government Shimon Peres was trying to form. The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote many books on halachah and published the Likkutei Sichos of his school of thought. He had no children. The prime minister expressed sorrow at the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and said that a great Torah scholar, one of the great men of action on behalf of Jews worldwide, had passed away. The Rebbe worked tirelessly for his fellow Jews, especially in communities behind the Iron Curtain and in Islamic countries, and worked to bring together all parts of the Jewish people, those distant and those close. The speaker of the Knesset expressed condolences, in his own name and on behalf of all members of the Knesset, on the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Speaker Shevach Weiss sent a telegram of condolence to Chabad chassidim this morning. That concludes the news from Kol Yisrael.

00:07 Speaker 1 The coffin of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who died this morning at the age of ninety-two, was taken to the cemetery. Outside, the chassidim are dancing.

00:14 Speaker 2 Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was brought in the early hours of the morning to the home where he lived in Crown Heights. The Rebbe died at the age of ninety-two, three months after suffering a stroke. The Chabad chassidim gathered outside the Rebbe’s home refuse to believe that Moshiach has died.

00:29 Speaker 3 At every moment, our faith remains with the Rebbe to the very end. The Rebbe worked throughout the world, works throughout the world, and will work throughout the world.

00:02 Speaker 1 In three hours, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who passed away before dawn, will be laid to rest in New York. His chassidim are in mourning and bewilderment. Thousands are filing past his casket at this hour; many are singing and dancing, refusing to believe that he has indeed passed away. The Lubavitcher Rebbe has passed away, and that is our lead story this evening. Thousands of chassidim have gathered outside the Rebbe’s home in Brooklyn to recite Tehillim. At this hour, they are filing past his body inside the house. Our correspondent Elimelech Ram is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Here is his report.

00:50 Speaker 2 At 1:50 a.m., New York time, the Rebbe passed away after many weeks of suffering, unconscious and connected to life-support machines. His chassidim immediately brought his body to his home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and hundreds upon hundreds gathered outside. The synagogue was full, and prayers were held there for the elevation of his soul. But even today, hundreds of his chassidim believe that he is King Moshiach and that the day is near when he will come back to life and lead his chassidim to the Geulah.

01:19 Speaker 11 No, this is the final stage of the revelation now, when he’s already coming to 770. The Rebbe said that 770 has the same numerical value as “Beis Moshiach.” Here, the Rebbe is coming from Beis Moshiach and bringing us all to the Land of Israel, to the Third Beis Hamikdash.

01:33 Speaker 12 He isn’t dead, he’s alive.

01:35 Speaker 11 Alive—and long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.

01:38 Speaker 2 But there are others who accept the verdict. The Rebbe has died; now they must choose a new leader and rebuild the Chabad movement, which faces the danger of a split and of losing its place within the Charedi Jewish world.

01:52 Speaker 13 This is the hardest day and hour of our lives. It’s a black day for the chassidim. It’s impossible to take in what has happened, and we’re just hoping that, at last, something good will happen. But for now we are in mourning. And if there are people who cannot bear the pain, I think that’s understandable. Still, the main thing is that the Rebbe’s chassidim understand that, at this hour, the responsibility is on us to do what he wants of all of us. That means fulfilling the mission he gave us: to go out into the world and make this bitter, dark world into something better.

02:53 Speaker 14 The movement faces a split. There is no doubt that the Rebbe’s confidants, among whom there has been rivalry—at times open, at times violent—will struggle for primacy.

03:03 Speaker 15 here in Israel and the whole world.

03:06 Speaker 13 Right, the Hillah Hillah that we’re saying, that Yechia Melech.

03:08 Speaker 15 Yeah, Yechia Melech.

03:09 Speaker 13 Right? That’s, that’s the Hillah Lashem.

03:11 Speaker 15 No, that’s not a Hillah Lashem.

03:12 Speaker 13 Why? What’s that?

03:13 Speaker 15 Shut up! Get out of here!

03:14 Speaker 13 So why aren’t you celebrating it? Why aren’t you dancing?

03:16 Speaker 15 Shut up! There is no revelation today, no purpose to creation, no—there’s no purpose to this entire world if, if there is no holiness today.

03:27 Speaker 14 In about three hours, the funeral procession will leave here for Montefiore Cemetery in Brooklyn. The rabbi will be buried beside his father-in-law, the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, who is buried there. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, has no heirs, no children. Kaddish will be recited by all those accompanying him. There will be no eulogies, either. After a brief ceremony, the funeral gathering will disperse, but the Lubavitch movement is in crisis—a crisis whose end is nowhere in sight. Elimelech Ram, Brooklyn.

04:01 Speaker 16 Now to Chabad here in Israel. Deep mourning descended on Kfar Chabad when news of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s death became known. Many chassidim immediately arranged to travel to New York for the funeral. Our correspondent Chazi Machlev was in Kfar Chabad today.

04:14 Speaker 17 Kfar Chabad, the main center of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s chassidim and the headquarters for spreading his teachings in Israel and around the world. For the residents here, the unthinkable happened this morning. The death of King Moshiach has brought feelings of pain and bewilderment to Kfar Chabad.

04:31 Speaker 18 It’s something very hard and incomprehensible, simply impossible to accept. It’s impossible.

04:39 Speaker 3 What we believe is that he will come back to life and be revealed very soon.

04:46 Speaker 17 From the village’s central synagogue, unexpectedly, it must be said, powerful singing bursts forth. The chassidim are singing with devotion, as they always do, perhaps to strengthen themselves after receiving the bitter news.

05:00 Speaker 16 We believe the Rebbe is Moshiach, and he will come today and redeem the Jewish people.

05:06 Speaker 17 Is that why you’re singing?

05:07 Speaker 16 That’s why we’re singing.

05:08 Speaker 17 But you know that in Judaism, one is commanded to mourn.

05:12 Speaker 16 The Rebbe didn’t— The Rebbe is alive and well. The Rebbe has not passed away; he’s alive and well.

05:16 Speaker 17 His funeral will take place today in New York.

05:17 Speaker 16 No funeral. The Beis Hamikdash will be built today, the Beis Hamikdash will be built.

05:20 Speaker 17 The Chabad movement was built around the charismatic figure of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. What will become of the religious empire the Rebbe led for the past forty-three years?

05:29 Speaker 16 It will continue and flourish.

05:31 Speaker 17 And who will take the Rebbe’s place?

05:32 Speaker 16 There are no successors.

05:33 Speaker 4 No successors.

05:33 Speaker 17 At the headquarters of Tzeirei Chabad, they immediately began arranging flights for those who would attend the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s funeral. Tens of thousands are calling to find out whether the news of his death is indeed true. Thousands want to fly.

05:47 Speaker 16 Flying back—we’re not talking about that.

05:49 Speaker 17 Indeed, it is doubtful whether anyone at Ben Gurion Airport’s terminal remembers a sight like this. Crowding, pushing, shouting—the main thing is to get that coveted ticket. At moments like these, passports, exit visas and dollars are quickly pulled out. Whatever it costs, the Rebbe’s chassidim say, as long as we can be at the funeral of the leader of the generation. And if not at the funeral, then at least for the shiva.

06:12 Speaker 16 To our correspondent Moshe, then, in Kfar Chabad: Is there still that sort of carefree atmosphere we saw, of celebration and drinking?

06:26 Speaker 17 It’s hard to call the atmosphere here carefree. First of all, good evening. I’m standing at the entrance to Beis Menachem, the synagogue named for the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It’s hard to call the atmosphere here carefree. There is certainly an atmosphere of mourning in Kfar Chabad. I would even say that people here are stunned, despite the fact that, by every medical standard, this day was expected to come. They refused to believe this day would come. They simply attributed superhuman qualities to the Rebbe and were certain that this would not happen to our righteous Moshiach.

06:53 Speaker 16 Moshe, we saw the crowds pressing around the counters at the airport. I understand they took every possible means of air travel to get to New York.

07:00 Speaker 17 The truth is that there was one plane, a 747 jumbo jet, chartered by Chabad people. It carried more than four hundred people to New York so they could arrive in time for the funeral. But people left here, from Kfar Chabad, by every possible route—including, by the way, people who flew to London and then took a Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic faster than any other plane, so they could arrive by the time the funeral procession leaves in New York.

07:28 Speaker 16 What are they saying in the village? On the one hand, we hear “King Moshiach,” “the Rebbe hasn’t died at all.” On the other hand, we heard from [unclear] in New York that the movement faces a split. What are you hearing in the village?

07:39 Speaker 17 Here in the village, people are talking about the fact that there is a problem. Chabad has a serious problem. One thing I would say: there is a consensus here across the board. Even if someone has ambitions to succeed the Lubavitcher Rebbe, there is no one who can replace him on that scale. There is no one who can succeed the Lubavitcher Rebbe, because he truly was an extraordinary personality. Even we secular Jews certainly recognize that. But it is absolutely clear that anyone who tries, or claims, to succeed the Lubavitcher Rebbe will not come close to the stature of that personality.

08:14 Speaker 16 Menashe Raz in Kfar Chabad. And now, a portrait of the Rebbe. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was considered one of the great leaders of Judaism in the United States and around the world. He was born in Ukraine, where he received a Torah education. He acquired a general education at the University of Berlin and at the Polytechnic in Paris. He came to the United States in 1941, and forty-three years ago began his tenure as leader of the Chabad movement. He developed a network of Chabad institutions wherever Jews were found, including in countries where Jews faced hardship. Heads of state came to his court to seek his advice on various matters. His beis midrash was open to all and became a vast spiritual center. Our correspondent Nitzan Chen sketches a portrait of him.

08:51 Speaker 5 A scion of a Chassidic dynasty, the seventh in the Chabad line, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was, in the eyes of his chassidim, the embodiment of perfection, a figure worthy of being Moshiach. He put a spiritual movement with 1,500 branches spread across thirty countries on the map of world Jewry. Chabad, more than any other Orthodox community, emphasized the messianic mission of the Chassidic movement. The Lubavitcher Rebbe always took an interest in what was happening in the world beyond his court in Brooklyn. The end of the Cold War, glasnost, China’s rapprochement with the West—all these were mentioned in his talks as signs of Moshiach’s approaching footsteps. Jews of every stream and camp, alongside heads of state, waited in line for hours in Crown Heights to receive a dollar and a blessing from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. “The most famous Jew of his generation,” Newsweek wrote of him this week in an issue devoted entirely to the Rebbe’s ninetieth birthday.

09:43 Speaker 6 He is revered by his followers as father, guru, king, miracle worker, perhaps even Messiah.

09:52 Speaker 5 The Lubavitcher Rebbe was a staunch hawk. He opposed any concession of territory in the Land of Israel, yet his foot never set down on the Holy Land. “Only when the Geulah comes will I go to the Land of Israel,” he told his chassidim. An exact replica of his home in Brooklyn was built for him in Kfar Chabad. 770 Eastern Parkway: in gematria, “Beis Moshiach.” For years he was careful not to intervene in Israeli politics. Only once did he depart from his practice, when he instructed his many chassidim to vote for Agudas Yisroel and strengthen the right in the 1988 elections. In a rare television interview, the Lubavitcher Rebbe explained his reasons.

10:26 Speaker 7 I do not take part in politics, and in principle I hope that the prime minister will very soon be Moshiach Tzidkeinu. But in the meantime, until Moshiach comes, there needs to be an approach that recognizes that none of the territories can now be given up. In my opinion, that is the way to peace, because without it there will be no peace.

11:02 Speaker 5 The Lubavitcher Rebbe never said explicitly that he himself was Moshiach, but neither did he emphatically deny it. When he assumed the leadership of Chabad forty-three years ago, he wrote in his first maamar: “The period of exile has ended. Our generation is the first generation of the Geulah.” In 1992, he instructed his chassidim to prepare for the coming of Moshiach, a declaration that signaled the beginning of messianic fervor. The soldiers of Tzivos Hashem, as Chabad’s young people call themselves, launched an extensive publicity campaign to proclaim Moshiach king. The official coronation was set for 27 Adar, the date of the annual farbrengen of the founder of the Chabad dynasty.

11:39 Speaker 8 Long live our master, teacher and Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.

11:44 Speaker 5 About a year ago, some ten thousand chassidim in Brooklyn burst into a mighty song: “Long live our master, teacher and Rebbe, King Moshiach.” But by then the Rebbe’s health had deteriorated, and the lower half of his body was paralyzed. He did not move or speak. In his penetrating gaze, his chassidim saw the Rebbe’s consent to their proclaiming him King Moshiach. Months later, deep disagreements still divided supporters of the messianic campaign from its opponents within the Chabad community. His longtime adversary, Rabbi Shach, called the Lubavitcher Rebbe a false messiah, a heretic, a successor to Shabbetai Tzvi.

12:19 Speaker 8 Long live the Rebbe, King Moshiach.

12:20 Speaker 9 In our Tel Aviv studio is Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin. We’ll speak with him in a moment. Meanwhile, on the screen before us is the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s home at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. The body of the Rebbe, who passed away this morning at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, has been brought here. The funeral is scheduled to begin in about three hours. As planned, it will proceed to Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s father-in-law is buried. Here is the scene: thousands of chassidim crowding around the home of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who has passed away. Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin is with us in our Tel Aviv studio. How do you explain, Professor, the scale of this reverence for the Lubavitcher Rebbe?

13:07 Speaker 10 The scale of the reverence is self-explanatory. The man was worthy of this immense reverence. He had extraordinary qualities. He was a great man in many fields: in Torah study, in his immense breadth of knowledge, in his sharpness, in his general education, and in his exceptional ability to lead.

13:26 Speaker 9 Do you share the assessment that a split in the Chabad movement is now likely?

13:30 Speaker 10 Uh, it’s hard to speak of an actual split, because for a split you would also need another kind of leader, or someone who could bring together an alternative leadership, and that does not appear to be on the horizon either. There has, admittedly, long been a debate within the Chabad movement between the more messianic group, as it is called, and the others, who are less extreme on this issue. That debate will certainly continue, but I think it will probably subside somewhat. The central motive was their certainty that they were carrying out the Rebbe’s wishes and instructions. Since the Rebbe had instructed them to do everything possible to bring the Geulah closer, to bring Moshiach, they felt obliged to take every possible action.

14:15 Speaker 9 How do you explain the—

14:15 Speaker 10 The great despair, if it still exists.

14:18 Speaker 9 Yes. How do you explain, Professor, why he did not appoint a successor, or at least designate someone to take his place?

14:24 Speaker 10 Uh, apparently it was because of his strong belief that the Geulah would come very soon, so there was no need to worry about that. And in Chassidus generally, it was not customary to make arrangements for successors in that way. It had never been done in this movement.

14:39 Speaker 9 And what do you make of this belief that he is actually Moshiach? That he did not die?

14:44 Speaker 10 Uh, what do you mean by what do I make of it? If you’re asking whether people really think that, they do.

14:49 Speaker 9 Do you believe th—

14:49 Speaker 10 And it is not unique. It happened in earlier periods, with other figures as well. In the Chabad movement, too, there were people in the past who thought along those lines. One can explain it in a certain sense. One can understand such a thing.

15:03 Speaker 9 Do you yourself, as an academic, believe it?

15:06 Speaker 10 I don’t think I’m being asked about my personal beliefs on this matter. And it isn’t relevant to my being an academic either. A person thinks for himself.

15:17 Speaker 9 One last question, uh, Professor Havlin: Is there anything about this messianic phenomenon that recalls Shabbetai Tzvi’s movement?

15:24 Speaker 10 Uh, what do you mean, recalls it? I think that, generally, people always go too far with the very label “messianic.” Uh, it is part of Jewish belief, one of its fundamental principles. You could say that all Jews are messianists in a certain sense. But when you place too much faith in a particular person as the one who will be Moshiach, then it takes on a somewhat different character. As for the matter itself, it may be worth mentioning an observation I once made in a book. The Rebbe responded to that very observation in a very long sicha, which was published under the title “A Question on the Most Essential Matter.” I noted at the time that at the beginning of the tenure of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s father, Chabad had been without a Rebbe for ten years. The Rebbe explained this in his own way, drawing on Kabbalah, Chassidus and halachah: that there had, in fact, been no break in the continuity.

16:15 Speaker 10 But the fact was that for ten years there was no Rebbe in Chabad.

16:19 Speaker 9 You don’t see anything dangerous in what is happening around him?

16:22 Speaker 10 It isn’t dangerous. Chassidus is not necessarily bound to a Rebbe, because Chabad was historically distinguished from most other Chassidic movements by the fact that its chassidim were less dependent on the Rebbe. The guiding principle in the Chabad movement was that a person must be responsible for himself, do everything with his own hands, and attain his achievements himself. The Rebbe can only point him in the right direction and guide him, unlike in other movements, which relied much more on the Rebbe’s mystical power and the like.

16:54 Speaker 9 Professor Havlin, thank you very much for coming to our studio. That concludes this story, and now to a completely different subject.

00:13 Speaker 1 This is Educational Television. We now go to the Erev Chadash studio.

00:29 Speaker 2 Good evening. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, was ninety-two when he passed away early this morning in New York. Naturally, much of our program today will deal with the death of the man whom very many people believed to be Moshiach himself. We’ll bring you reports from Kfar Chabad; from the airport, where people gathered in hopes of getting a ticket and flying to the funeral, which will take place late tonight; and from New York, where chassidim danced in the streets, wept, and prayed for his resurrection. Joining us in the studio will be Professor Avi Ravitzky and Rabbi Yaakov Gloiberman, one of the leaders of Chabad in Israel. Once again, good evening. This is Erev Chadash and Galei Tzahal news. First, Gil Yerushalmi, please.

01:34 Speaker 9 Good evening. The funeral of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, will take place in New York tonight at eleven, Israel time. Thousands of Chabad chassidim crowded Ben Gurion Airport today to fly to New York and attend the funeral. The Rebbe’s body is now lying in the main Chabad synagogue in New York, where chassidim are gathering and reciting Tehillim. News of the Rebbe’s passing stunned chassidim in Israel and around the world and caused great confusion. Alongside expressions of profound mourning, chassidim in Kfar Chabad and Tzfas went out into the streets dancing and singing about Moshiach the King.

02:09 Speaker 2 Thank you, Gil Yerushalmi. We’ll begin, of course, with the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. To help us understand what it means, we’ve invited Rabbi Yaakov Gloiberman, one of the leaders of Chabad in Israel. Good evening.

02:20 Speaker 10 Good evening, and blessings to you.

02:21 Speaker 2 And in our Jerusalem studio, Professor Avi Ravitzky. Good evening to you too.

02:24 Speaker 11 Good evening.

02:25 Speaker 2 I’d like to invite you both to watch a report by Chaim Avraham, who went to the airport and Kfar Chabad this morning. Here is what his camera captured. We’re still waiting for the report to come in.

02:47 Speaker 12 What are you saying? But I can tell you one thing: the Rebbe will live forever.

02:55 Speaker 13 My name is Menachem.

02:56 Speaker 2 Menachem what?

02:57 Speaker 13 It doesn’t matter.

02:59 Speaker 2 And your name—what, please?

03:00 Speaker 13 Menachem. I don’t believe that the Rebbe has died. I just called my mother and asked her about it, and she said that, just as we say about the coming of Moshiach that it’s unbelievable, that—we say that until Moshiach actually comes, we’re already looking forward to him and waiting. And the Rebbe will rise and reveal himself.

03:24 Speaker 2 A profound spiritual shock struck Chabad chassidim when they learned of the passing of their spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing. Some were stunned by the fresh news. Some tried to lift their spirits by talking together, praying, and reciting Tehillim, while others found a little comfort in a drink and a song. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. Long live the King, the King, the King! Long live our master, teacher, and Rebbe, Moshiach the King, forever and ever, with Hashem’s help. At Chabad’s center in Kfar Chabad, they could not keep up with requests for flights to the funeral in Brooklyn, and at the airport there was a battle for every ticket. How many do you think will leave?

04:08 Speaker 14 Two jumbo jets.

04:09 Speaker 2 What?

04:10 Speaker 14 Two, two jumbo jets.

04:11 Speaker 2 Two jumbo jets?

04:12 Speaker 14 Yes.

04:12 Speaker 2 Full?

04:13 Speaker 14 Yes.

04:14 Speaker 9 It’s too painful for us to put into words for you. I don’t know what to say.

04:17 Speaker 2 No, just how you feel.

04:18 Speaker 9 The worst feeling there can be in the world. The greatest tragedy has happened to us. Do you understand? Our great father is gone. That’s it, enough! Enough!

04:29 Speaker 2 Perhaps some people know, though they can’t quite bring themselves to say it, that the Rebbe may have died. But the story isn’t over yet.

04:35 Speaker 15 I’m sure the Rebbe knew what was going to happen, and the Rebbe won’t leave us. We still hope that before we even leave for New York, Moshiach will come, the Rebbe will reveal himself, and the Rebbe will be with us on the way back.

04:50 Speaker 16 I’ll show you clear proof that everyone here believes. Simple, clear proof.

05:11 Speaker 2 Rabbi Yaakov Gloiberman, what was the Lubavitcher Rebbe to you?

05:15 Speaker 3 Look, this is a day of profound mourning and sorrow for us and for the Jewish people, a terribly difficult day.

05:21 Speaker 2 But personally?

05:22 Speaker 3 He was a father. Today we are orphans, orphans without a father. He was everything to us—not only to us, to the whole world.

05:31 Speaker 2 You see, the secular public has some difficulty understanding the bond between a chossid and his Rebbe. We don’t know that kind of bond.

05:36 Speaker 3 Look, the Rebbe—

05:37 Speaker 2 Between a father and son, between a man and a woman, between friends.

05:42 Speaker 3 “Rebbe” is an acronym for “head of the Jewish people.” He was the address for every problem, whether it was a medical problem, trouble getting married, or any kind of business problem. You turned to him for everything, and we received answers at every step.

05:59 Speaker 2 When did you hear of the Rebbe’s passing?

06:03 Speaker 3 I received the news this morning at nine. Actually, I had already been told at three in the morning that the Rebbe’s condition was extremely serious, and I truly haven’t slept all night, not until now. Because he’s a father. He’s part of us. It’s like a body and soul.

06:16 Speaker 2 What reactions were there among Chabad chassidim when—

06:20 Speaker 3 Look, these reactions aren’t limited to Chabad chassidim; everyone is reacting this way. It’s very hard. It’s hard to come to terms with the situation and hard to understand it. I want to stress something: I heard earlier on the radio that there would be a program with Tzvi Lider asking, “What will become of Chabad in the future?” Chabad has a glorious past, Chabad has a glorious present, and Chabad will have a glorious future. The Rebbe loved every Jew, whatever their circumstances. Wherever you go, you’ll see the Rebbe’s shluchim. They are the Rebbe’s future.

06:54 Speaker 2 There’s something we saw in the report that I, at least, can’t understand. The Rebbe has died; you say your father has died, and the chassidim are drinking vodka.

07:01 Speaker 3 Look, many people traveled to the United States today. I myself was supposed to go to the United States for the funeral. As it happened, the head of the delegation, Rabbi Lau, was sent by Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres as the representative of the State of Israel and Israel’s rabbis, to represent the people in the United States. I stayed here, with a flight scheduled for midnight tonight.

07:25 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:26 Speaker 3 Then a woman approached me and cried so much, telling me how the Rebbe had worked miracles and wonders for her family. I told her, “Take the ticket. Change your ticket to tonight.” What could I do? And some—

07:37 Speaker 2 How do you explain people dancing?

07:39 Speaker 3 People dancing. There is such a thing as the hilula of a tzaddik, when his soul—it is written that tzaddikim, even after they pass away, are alive. The Rebbe lives and will live forever. He ascended to heaven to hasten the Geulah. What’s interesting is—

07:53 Speaker 2 But you always believed the Rebbe would not ascend to heaven, that the Rebbe was Moshiach the King. Is this a day when cracks appear in that belief?

08:00 Speaker 3 Look, there are no cracks in that belief. On the contrary, I maintain that our faith must grow stronger. The Rebbe, in his many sichos and recordings—

08:10 Speaker 2 How can it grow stronger?

08:11 Speaker 3 Just a moment, Amnon. Through all the recordings, and through his books—he published hundreds and hundreds of books—the Rebbe always worked and cared to hasten the Geulah. That was his mission. And the Rebbe brought thousands of Jews closer, in Israel and around the world. Wherever you go, what do you see? Jews who have come closer in Morocco, in Tunisia, everywhere.

08:34 Speaker 2 But the Rebbe is gone. I’m not sure you grasp the fact that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is gone.

08:39 Speaker 3 It is written that Moshe Rabbeinu was the first redeemer and will be the final redeemer. There is an extension of Moshe Rabbeinu in every generation—a spark of him.

08:47 Speaker 2 Some believe he will rise again. Do you share that belief?

08:50 Speaker 3 Of course, with Hashem’s help.

08:50 Speaker 2 Now, soon? He is the true Moshiach?

08:53 Speaker 3 There’s one thing I want to tell you. There’s an interesting story here. Today is Gimmel Tammuz.

08:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:57 Speaker 3 This happened on Gimmel Tammuz. In 5745, 1985, the Rebbe—after all, his books are all in print—wrote there that today is Gimmel Tammuz, the day the previous Rebbe of the Chabad chassidim was informed that he would be released from prison.

09:11 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:11 Speaker 3 In Russia.

09:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:13 Speaker 3 The Rebbe says here that when we look in the books, we find an event that occurred on Gimmel Tammuz during the first conquest of the Land of Israel by Yehoshua: “Then Yehoshua spoke: Sun, stand still in Givon, and moon, in the Valley of Ayalon.” So the Rebbe says here that this will be the time for the beginning, with Hashem’s help, of the approaching Geulah, speedily in our days.

09:32 Speaker 2 Yours is known as an optimistic Chassidic movement. You said you have no doubt, and you quoted something that strengthens you. Is there fear in your heart on a day like this?

09:38 Speaker 3 There’s no fear at all. It just hurts, hurts, hurts. I’m telling you the truth. Thousands of Jews would call me to write letters to the Rebbe, and thousands of Jews received help.

09:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:49 Speaker 3 Today we’re in a situation that’s hard to describe. The entire Jewish people—the Jewish people simply need to do complete teshuvah very soon.

09:55 Speaker 2 Rabbi Goldberg, thank you. I invite you to join me in listening to a conversation with Ben Caspit, Maariv’s correspondent in New York, who is on the phone now and will report on what is happening in New York at this very hour. Good evening, Ben Caspit.

10:07 Speaker 4 Good evening to you.

10:08 Speaker 2 How did the chassidim learn of the Rebbe’s passing? How did the news spread? When did they find out?

10:14 Speaker 4 The first reports began spreading after midnight. The pagers known as “Moshiach pagers,” distributed by the hundreds and thousands in Crown Heights, began sending out instructions to say Tehillim and pray at around one-thirty. Shortly before two in the morning, a message came through on the pagers saying “Shema Yisroel,” followed by “Boruch Dayan Ha’emes.” That was the final confirmation that the Rebbe was gone.

10:45 Speaker 2 Where is the body now?

10:47 Speaker 4 The body is now in the Rebbe’s room at Chabad headquarters, in the large shul in Crown Heights.

10:53 Speaker 2 Are chassidim filing past him? Are chassidim filing past him?

10:57 Speaker 4 Yes. About two hours ago, perhaps a little more, people began filing past the body. The body is wrapped in shrouds. What is striking is how completely different people’s faces look going in and coming out. You can easily tell that those going in do not yet know what has happened. Those coming out are usually crying, with red eyes, in shock.

11:30 Speaker 2 Ben Caspit, perhaps this is not the time to ask these questions, but are people in Chabad already talking about a will? About a successor? Is anyone talking about the future? Have you seen signs of fear about what might happen?

11:44 Speaker 4 I wouldn’t necessarily call it fear, at least not on the surface. It is more confusion, bewilderment. Chabad is known for how actively rumors spread within it. Already, at this very moment, there are some rather frantic rumors about a will, including a will in which the Rebbe asks to be buried in a particular place. There are even rumors that a successor has been named. In my estimation—

12:15 Speaker 2 What name? What name are people mentioning?

12:18 Speaker 4 The rumors do not mention a name, only that the Rebbe appointed a successor. But as I said, they have no—

12:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:27 Speaker 4 —basis at this stage.

12:29 Speaker 2 Ben Caspit, I’m just telling viewers here in Israel—you won’t be able to see the report, but perhaps you can hear it—that we are about to show a report you prepared in New York three months ago, on the Rebbe’s birthday, when the Rebbe was already in the hospital and the chassidim had gathered around him. You prepared it for Ilana Dayan’s program Uvda, and we received it courtesy of Uvda. Here is what your camera captured then of the chassidim around the Rebbe.

13:10 Speaker 5 The situation is difficult, the situation is grave. But the faith and hope in the heart of every Chabad chossid that the Rebbe is Moshiach outweighs all the fears and worries. So we expect that even before the Rebbe’s birthday, before the great day, the bright day, we will find ourselves in Jerusalem with the true and complete Geulah.

13:32 Speaker 2 “Even before his birthday” means now—his birthday is tomorrow.

13:37 Speaker 5 Yes, his birthday begins this evening, and we hope that before his birthday begins, the Rebbe will rise from his sickbed and take us out of exile into the Geulah.

13:47 Speaker 6 We are asking everyone, men, women and children, to stand up and together scream: Long live the king!

13:56 Speaker 2 Long live the king.

13:59 Speaker 6 Long live the king!

14:01 Speaker 2 Long live the king.

14:02 Speaker 6 Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.

14:08 Speaker 5 Yalkut Tehillim says that Moshiach will reach a state in which he will be considered as dead, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu will have to create him as a new creation. So just as we saw the miracles of the splitting of the sea, the manna coming down from heaven, and our victory over the thirty-one kings in Eretz Yisroel, after which we conquered Eretz Yisroel, we have no doubt that it is no problem for the Rebbe to get up from his bed and take us all to the Holy Land.

14:40 Speaker 7 Professor Avi Ravitzky is with us in our Jerusalem studio. Good evening.

14:43 Speaker 5 Good evening.

14:44 Speaker 7 A religious group that believes with such faith and such innocence that a man is Moshiach, that he will, in fact, never die—how will it accept that he has passed away?

14:55 Speaker 5 First, allow me to express my sorrow at the loss of a great leader. The group is, of course, facing difficulty, a crisis, profound pain. But contrary to various expectations or predictions, I think people’s capacity to adapt, both emotionally and in religious and theological terms, is much greater than we expect. A person faces bereavement, faces a terrible loss. They will, of course, have to reorganize their lives, because we are talking about people who, for more than forty years, did not really have to make any decisions independently, either personally or collectively. They had someone to guide them. Now it is different. But Hakadosh Boruch Hu showed them kindness in that this happened gradually. It was not an immediate trauma or an immediate loss; the loss happened gradually. Some people had begun to adjust to it in their hearts. You saw how the rabbi you just spoke with responded to it in a measured, clearheaded way, while grieving. I imagine Chabad will not be able to continue on the same scale or with the same ability to attract media attention that it has had until now, but it will certainly continue.

16:08 Speaker 7 In other words, the Rebbe’s final kindness to his chassidim was his long decline.

16:14 Speaker 5 Look, that sounds—

16:14 Speaker 7 It gave them time, gave them time to adjust to the idea that he was passing away.

16:21 Speaker 5 That is a harsh way to put it, but in essence I certainly agree. We need to understand something. We always thought—and most historians wrote—that messianism grows in times of distress and crisis: after the expulsion from Spain, during the Holocaust, after the destruction. The messianic anticipation in Chabad over the last generation was exactly the opposite. It was not a messianism born of distress or decline. On the contrary, it was: reality is smiling on me. Moshiach is not at odds with reality; he emerges from it.

16:53 Speaker 7 Perhaps that is precisely what makes this harder now. This is an optimistic movement, and when something like this happens to a movement whose message was optimistic and which drew the masses through that optimism, how can it carry on?

17:05 Speaker 5 The message was undoubtedly optimistic. What is more, he thought that since in Eretz Yisroel there was safety for four and a half million Jews, and in the United States there was an exile under a benevolent government unlike any before it, and so on and so forth, things should keep moving forward. That is why this is so difficult. A crisis and a setback were certainly not expected. Nevertheless—

17:23 Speaker 7 Can he have a successor?

17:24 Speaker 5 One moment, just one moment. Nevertheless, more than a year ago, some very wise and thoughtful people took the approach of the rabbi you just spoke with. For example, when the book Moshiach in Every Generation came out from within Chabad, they did not say that he would die. But what they said implied that, if he were to die, he would be like the potential Moshiachs of previous generations.

17:46 Speaker 7 Professor Ravitzky, I must ask you one question nonetheless: Do you believe the Lubavitcher Rebbe can have a successor? Until now, people have refused to address that question. Can he have a successor?

17:55 Speaker 5 Look, if there is a will, then whoever is named in it will be the successor. It is hard to imagine a charismatic leader who would even come close to his stature. There might be an interim replacement, and you know, sometimes the interim arrangement becomes the most permanent one. Collective leadership is also possible. I hope they do not become embroiled in power struggles.

18:12 Speaker 7 Thank you, Professor Ravitzky. In one sentence: Can the Lubavitcher Rebbe have a successor, or is he Chabad’s last Rebbe?

18:17 Speaker 8 Right now we are talking about it, and we do not know. I just wanted to respond to Professor Ravitzky and tell him: The Jewish people believe in the Torah of truth, and every day we say, “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Moshiach,” speedily in our days. And if the Rebbe promised that Moshiach is at the door, then we are certain he will arrive very soon. And you believe that too, and may we merit it soon.

18:38 Speaker 5 Thank you very much.

18:38 Speaker 8 Thank you very much. Thank you very much.