Livenyomin Omar | Episode 4: Rabbi Chaim Kaplan

Interviewer: Hello and welcome. We’re here with a new podcast episode, this time in Tzfas. I’ve come all the way north to meet my friend from our youth, Rabbi Chaim Kaplan, director-general of Kiryat Chabad and its institutions, the Rebbe’s shliach, and a member of the board of Agudas Chassidei Chabad International. We’ll unpack all those titles and what they mean. Chaim, shalom aleichem.

Guest: Aleichem shalom.

Interviewer: Welcome to the holy city of Tzfas. It’s a privilege and an honor to have you on this special podcast.

Guest: It was a privilege and an honor for me, too, to walk with you just now, before we sat down here, on a whirlwind tour of a series of stops in the empire you’re running these days.

Interviewer: Just a taste, a tiny taste, of the Rebbe’s shlichus in Tzfas.

Guest: We’ll talk about that taste. We’ll talk about everything we got a taste of during this past hour’s visit.

Interviewer: I do want to go back to what I said about us being friends from our youth. First and foremost—the most important thing, perhaps the most important year of our youth—we shared a room during our year in the 5749 kvutzah. It was the toughest kvutzah there ever was, and we were roommates that year. But let’s go back a little further and start at the beginning. In 5748, we were both in the same class, first year.

Guest: With Rabbi Derenfeld.

Interviewer: With Rabbi Derenfeld, at the yeshivah in Lod.

Guest: Yes, yes.

Interviewer: You’re the second son in the Kaplan family. Your brother, as those who know him will know, is the scholarly chossid Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kaplan, who has done extensive editorial work on the Tanya.

Guest: He finished in Lod, and I arrived right after him.

Interviewer: As soon as he left Lod and moved up to the senior yeshivah, you came in after him. That was a year when...

Guest: I was a young boy, before my bar mitzvah.

Interviewer: You entered the first year even before your bar mitzvah. And I met you as the son of the scholarly chossid Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, director-general of the umbrella organization for Chabad institutions. Your father was one of the leaders of Chabad in Israel, as they say in journalistic language. He came to the yeshivah in Lod every year—every week, really—to farbreng there with many people, drawing on the Rebbe’s strength.

Guest: In those days—my children’s grandfather, my wife’s grandfather.

Interviewer: Because you married into Rabbi Leikim’s family.

Guest: Rabbi Leikim, yes.

Interviewer: But back then, you had come from Tzfas to the center of the country, and you knew—as we all did—that we had someone to rely on. Nothing had happened yet, not even Gimmel Tammuz. We were in the year...

Guest: That was the defining event of our first year.

Interviewer: The defining event of our first year was Gimmel Tammuz. We remember it: we were sitting there, and Rabbi Posner was standing at the entrance to 770, shouting out that anguished cry. That scene.

Guest: Every year, at farbrengens, I remember it and say that I owe Rabbi Posner a debt for that. He left a searing chassidic impression on my heart. I remember every second, every sound that came from his mouth at that moment, at that hour. The hour of the Rebbe’s... funeral.

Interviewer: “There’s a funeral now,” he shouted. “Our mother’s funeral is taking place now.” That’s what he shouted.

Guest: Yes, we have to remember it well. So much of it remains before my eyes—that cry. That’s what I remember.

Interviewer: Engraved on my heart.

Guest: Right.

Interviewer: But I want to—our paths parted then, because you moved from Lod to Tzfas, and I moved to Kiryat Gat.

Guest: And we met again by the Rebbe.

Interviewer: We met by the Rebbe. First of all, we met there every Tishrei, but later we met during our kvutzah year, when we were together practically 24 hours a day throughout that difficult year. I do want to pause here for a bit, because about two years later you yourself went through a serious upheaval. What happened could take us deep into the pain of that loss. But here was someone who grew up—and we’ve just been on what you rightly called a tasting tour, because it was twenty minutes of running between the various places and institutions we visited, and every few steps you pulled out another answer the Rebbe had given your father, another special response or letter from the Rebbe. You knew your father was at the height of his work, right at the forefront of Chabad Chassidus in Israel, with everything that entailed, and suddenly something happened. I’m saying that I don’t want to get into what happened, how it happened, or why it happened.

But I want to go straight from that sequence of events to ask you: What did it do to you, knowing that your father hadn’t budged an inch—truly, not an inch? Over the years, I’ve learned the whole story too, and I know that everything, down to the smallest detail, was done without the slightest deviation or even a raised eyebrow, with the Rebbe’s express written permission. But what did it do to you socially, among your friends, when suddenly they looked at you as if to say, “Oh, you’re Rabbi Kaplan’s son?” As if—what? I don’t even know whether they called you “Rabbi Kaplan’s boy.”

Guest: I don’t think anyone spoke quite like that. Look, first of all, I don’t think I claimed any special standing as “so-and-so’s son.” I tried to be myself.

Interviewer: To develop your own independent personality, right.

Guest: And as much as I could, I didn’t let it stand in the way of doing what I thought I needed to do. In the background, as you said—and we won’t go into the whole episode now—I experienced the entire process. It was Pesach, right?

Interviewer: Right.

Guest: It was during the yeshivah break. I was at home and followed the whole process from the side that knew what was really happening. I experienced it and knew in real time what you learned over the years: what had actually happened there. So if I had a problem, it was with how people reacted, not with the substance of what had happened...

Interviewer: That made it easier for you, you’re saying?

Guest: I wouldn’t say easier, but I dealt with it, baruch Hashem. I don’t think... Look, these days people go looking—there’s a tendency now to look for what you might have gone through...

Interviewer: And what it left inside you. Who knows? Everyone’s trying to be Freud.

Guest: Yes. I try to put it behind me and keep going. I hope and believe it isn’t what drives me or dictates how I go about my work: fulfilling the Rebbe’s will and the Rebbe’s shlichus. Even with people whom I know didn’t act properly back then—baruch Hashem, I bear them no grudge and have no strained relationships. I live in peace with everyone, including people who were behind parts of that maneuver.

Interviewer: I’ve seen that. I’ve seen how you somehow calmed all those waves, or rose above them, and I’ve seen it over the years. That’s why I don’t even think it would be right for this to be the opening: it isn’t who I am, and it isn’t what I do.

Guest: It’s the corridor leading to the main hall.

Interviewer: Let’s put it that way: it’s the corridor leading to the main hall. Still, since we have this opportunity, I want to ask: You say you saw it happening in real time. Did you see moments of crisis for your father in those days?

Guest: I didn’t see moments of crisis. He knew, far better than I did, that everything he had done was right and precise. Look, when people make accusations against you, nobody likes it. It’s uncomfortable for anyone, and I’m sure he had difficult moments too. But when a person knows—look, when someone isn’t sure of himself and is unsettled inside, every falling leaf and every passing breeze can wear him down. When a person has firm foundations within and knows that what he’s doing is right, it still isn’t pleasant. Nobody likes having people say this or that about him. But the stronger a person knows himself to be inside, the less even unusual storms can shake him. So it wasn’t merely some outward show of strength. People really saw my father as a man of steel, a strong man, and that was true—but it came from inner strength. He was the last person you could say was putting on a front, concerned with appearances, or performing for others. There was no show with him. He was a strong man because he had an inner truth in every area of life, in everything he did.

And, to touch for a moment on the kind of person he was: if we had been outside Chabad, this man would have been expected to become one of the great roshei yeshivah. He was a Torah scholar through and through. He came entirely from a world of Torah learning, and he wrote Torah books and other Torah works.

Interviewer: In his spare time—though he didn’t have any, right. On the other hand, in Chabad, as in Chabad, someone like that is specifically expected to come down into the world of action, on the most practical level possible. You pointed out buildings to me and told me how he bought them and what he said to the people involved. That was a conflict he lived with all the time. I mean, on Shabbos, suddenly he would—yes, now he would be davening at length. How did that work?

Guest: First of all, without a doubt, at his core he was a Torah person, a decisive person, a person of intellect and reason. So naturally he loved to learn. If it had been up to him—I mean, he spent all his free time in his office, sitting at a small desk, writing and learning. I don’t know how much of that was Torah study in the conventional sense; it certainly included that. But there was also simply learning Torah for its own sake—he enjoyed learning. So whenever he had a free moment, he would sit and learn in his office. On Shabbos...

Interviewer: Oh, yes.

Guest: He was, as you said, made of different stuff, and he got involved very quickly... Around that time, I actually had two things going on with him. I came back to Israel—we all came back after Tishrei. I told my children: I myself got married just half a year later, like so many in the group, because we were the children of the summer of ’73, as the Israeli song goes.

It was that kind of trauma; there had been no plan. And at the time, first of all, I had a long correspondence with him that I still have to this day.

Interviewer: About what?

Guest: About establishing a follow-up institution for the group. I mean, I had... back then, in those days...

Interviewer: Bring it out.

Guest: It’s more important today than ever.

And we really discussed it. It didn’t come to anything, but...

Interviewer: I have a few plans like that tucked away myself.

Guest: I’m telling you, I still have the correspondence to this very day, on faxes. But just a few months later, a particular situation came out of it—Agudas Chassidei Chabad [unclear] wanted to establish an institution of its own. I remember exactly where I was sitting: at Uri’s house, may he be well, at 10 Kaneh Street in Jerusalem. The phone rang—I didn’t have a cell phone; who imagined such things back then?—and there were two people on the line: your father, calling from Israel, and Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, the chairman of [unclear], may Hashem grant him long life. Both were on the line, and they spoke to me about a whole plan: I would come to New York—I was a bochur then, not yet at the shidduch stage, as they say; I was a bochur studying at the center [unclear]—I would come there and run it, and I would receive room and board, everything I needed, and a salary. And G-d intended it for the good: it never came to pass. I heard him speak about that plan more than once.

Interviewer: You heard about it from him?

Guest: Yes, certainly, certainly. It was part of that, how shall I put it, awakening, when he tried every possible way to set things straight, pave a path for them, do something... Let’s say it didn’t happen. In later years, Pardes Chabad came about—that was, in a sense, another way he tried to instill real Chassidic content, a strong backbone. A certain line of thinking had begun to take shape: if you weren’t—let’s call it by its name—if you weren’t, let’s say, a maskil, you weren’t chassidish, you weren’t connected, you weren’t truly connected to the Rebbe, or something like that. And that point pained him very, very deeply, because he saw what kind of education was needed here. It wasn’t just about appearances or anything like that; he genuinely wanted to educate people here. That had begun even earlier, and he paid a very heavy price for it, because he saw where things were headed. He was a man who... Let me preface this: he had his own connection, because the Rebbe was his entire life. He never spoke about it. What I mean is, that was something personal to him. His correspondence with the Rebbe was never made public.

Interviewer: Not public—but at home?

Guest: He didn’t talk about it.

Interviewer: He didn’t talk about his affairs.

Guest: He lived...

Interviewer: He lived it.

Guest: I’m saying, these things were his own—Chassidus, the Rebbe, his work. They were deep, inward things that resided within him. When it became something outward, where everything started at the external level and went outward, with no connection to inner substance or truth, he couldn’t bear it. That bothered him in itself, even before the damage it caused Chabad in the eyes of the wider public.

Interviewer: The very thing itself came first.

Guest: The thing itself—it isn’t Chassidus. Chassidus is an inner truth, and from there it spreads outward. Something that starts on the surface, at the external level, and goes outward has nothing to do with Chassidus. Then comes the question of its effect on young people and on the wider public. But it bothered him at the most basic level, because it didn’t start in the right place. That was what troubled him. And that was what he was always seeking: to bring things back, to turn inward—not just inward into Chabad, but inward toward its inner life. To do the real, essential things that touch every chossid inside: sound beliefs, a Chassidic understanding, a solid Chabad approach, not just what looks good on the outside.

Interviewer: And he paid a heavy price?

Guest: Yes, my brother, a very heavy price. In the very community he had built with his own nerves, and in the institutions he had established there, he became—he became an outcast. I won’t use stronger language, though others would say it was even worse. What happened in Tzfas... I always... You can look at anything from different angles. Tzfas has qualities no other place in the world has. One of them, which we can mention here, is that people—whether because of the socioeconomic situation, or the spiritual atmosphere, or because Tzfas is a city of spirituality and Kabbalah, or because, as the books say, Tzfas is the easiest place to study the secrets of Torah and remain hidden—for whatever reason, the people of Tzfas are less caught up in material things and more engaged with spiritual matters. That’s fundamental; it’s in the DNA, even today.

Let’s say one of the great advantages of this wonderful community is that, ultimately, in Tzfas people aren’t preoccupied with someone else’s car, someone else’s kitchen, or a third person’s home. People live their lives with what they have. Now, we haven’t become perfectly righteous, and everyone has an animal soul too. So naturally—you know what? Unlike other communities, both within Chabad and outside it, where there are many disputes over money, in Tzfas you’ll hardly find any. So what does the animal soul do? It finds its way into disputes, so to speak.

Interviewer: Over spiritual matters.

Guest: So... that’s what I’m saying...

Interviewer: The ego looked for somewhere to...

Guest: Right. So, so, so that’s why—let’s say everyone knew Tzfas. I’ll tell you a story about Tzfas from years ago... We had another friend, a classmate, whose... it was his bar mitzvah, right around that time... Rabbi Even-Israel came to the bar mitzvah, as a relative... And I remember, at the end of the bar mitzvah...

Interviewer: A relative of yours?

Guest: No, the bar mitzvah was for Yehoshua Raskin, another classmate of ours, a member of our group.

Interviewer: Right, they wrote in the group—they wished him mazel tov in the group.

Guest: Right, because it was his birthday, his bar mitzvah, and Rabbi Even-Israel, a"h, came with his son Meni, who later studied with us in yeshiva.

Interviewer: Studied with us in yeshiva, yes.

Guest: And I remember, at the end of the bar mitzvah, Rabbi Even-Israel was standing with my father and called over his son Meni...

Interviewer: This was also back in the good years and the bad years, when everything was Steinsaltz, Steinsaltz for everything—and there wasn’t any dispute there either, nothing, right.

Guest: No. And he called his son and said, “Meni, I want you to meet the only shliach who still hasn’t managed to start a dispute in his city.”

Interviewer: You don’t say!

Guest: That was... because Tzfas really, truly was—people look at it differently today—Tzfas was a symbol and an example of a splendid community. Unfortunately, we had a truly, truly difficult period here. Today, after years have passed, and I’m here, I won’t say we didn’t pay a price—we did. Maybe I’m not paying a price; maybe I am. But perhaps because of the situation, I always like to see the good in everything. So I say: there are disputes everywhere. Sadly, to our shame, here the dispute took on Chassidic clothing. But it’s a dispute like those found anywhere, and we try to rise above it and move on.

Interviewer: You’re stirring some thoughts of teshuvah in me, because in Lod, where I live—I’m thinking of the Chabad community in Lod. I personally live in Ramle, but it’s called Lod—

Guest: There’s no conflict there, but it could be that people are too caught up in material things. We need to start examining our actions.

Interviewer: Maybe there were various things there in the past, but today, “He leads me beside still waters.” We should praise the local rabbi, Rabbi Yakubovitch; there really is peace and quiet. But I suppose you’re saying that if things aren’t right spiritually, they won’t be right materially, so... There was a period here...

Guest: There certainly was a very turbulent period, an extremely turbulent and difficult one. And yes, I once saw a sicha in which the Rebbe says that the Rambam writes that the sages and prophets did not yearn for the days of Moshiach so they could rule over the whole world or have the nations bow down to them, but so they could be free to study Torah and its wisdom. You can infer from that that there are people who appear to be sages and prophets and shout “Moshiach,” but whose goal is to rule over the whole world. So, in one sentence, that sums up what this community went through: severe upheavals, definitely a hard period—hard periods here. But I think that today, after all that, there are people with completely different views—views I consider completely mistaken—but relations between people are generally peaceful, as long as no one tries to inflame tensions.

Interviewer: On that tour you just took me on, you also brought me into the community’s main shul, and I saw people from all sides nodding hello to you, as they say.

Guest: I say hello to everyone. There may be some who don’t answer. But I say hello to everyone, live peacefully with everyone, and try to avoid conflict. That’s what we try to do on our side. Unfortunately, there are people who enjoy it, both back then and today, but we make every effort to prevent it. Our aim—a shliach of the Rebbe needs to live in peace with his community. He can’t educate his community; he can’t change his community. He needs to live in peace with the community and carry out his shlichus. That’s what I’m trying to do.

Interviewer: Yes, that’s what you tried to learn from your father. In any case, our conversation has its ups and downs, but there’s no getting around this. It was—you’ll correct me—it was on the eve of Lag BaOmer that your father...

Guest: Gimmel Tammuz.

Interviewer: 5758.

Guest: 5758. Were you a young married man here then? Were you living here?

Interviewer: A bochur... not a bochur anymore—yes, I was a bochur then.

Guest: Look, I was trying to remember whether you were already married when I... I had actually started the year as a maggid shiur, after teaching for a year in Brunoy with other friends from our class. I started that year as a maggid shiur in Detroit with my friend Chaim Feldman. I began there in the middle of Menachem Av, and then my father called me urgently: “We’re opening a yeshivah for young shluchim. We need manpower; you need to come here.”

Interviewer: So you came here as a member of the staff of the Young Shluchim Yeshivah.

Guest: Right. I’ll add that my mother, with a mother’s concern and love, said that I really had a good life there, and I was with good friends, too. Rabbi Menachem Lando was there with me; we were maggidei shiur together.

Interviewer: Another classmate of ours.

Guest: Yes, right. It was really a pleasure there. It’s truly a place cut off from all...

Interviewer: Civilization.

Guest: You can really just be there... I was teaching in peace. The previous year had been harder. We’d truly started the year wonderfully, and my mother said, “Things are good for him—what do you want from him?”

Interviewer: My father said one sentence: “The Rebbe didn’t send me alone; the Rebbe sent the family to Tzfas. And if I need him to come, then he needs to come. Tzfas needs him.”

Guest: Was that the Young Shluchim Yeshivah’s first year?

Interviewer: That year—you had just opened the yeshivah at Rosh Hashanah. It was actually the last project he established in Tzfas.

Guest: The last project.

Interviewer: And I happened to be here on the yeshivah staff. I was here that whole year, really quite close to him, relatively speaking...

Guest: So you got to be much closer to him that year.

Interviewer: A little, definitely. I was here when the incident happened. For anyone who doesn’t know, what happened was that he traveled to Belarus for a ceremony marking...

Guest: I’ll say it—the dedication of the building.

Interviewer: Exactly, the laying of the cornerstone...

Guest: The laying of the cornerstone and the dedication of a Torah scroll. First of all, he was very involved in Jewish life in Russia, even under the Communists. He was actually one of the shluchim. He had an American passport, and he traveled there many times under their rule...

Interviewer: Yes, as a tourist, carrying out the shlichus of helping Jews throughout...

Guest: But he had a warm connection with them, and he left a tremendous impression on many people. And that wasn’t all. Even after he returned to Israel—as we discussed, he was a Torah scholar; that was who he was. One reason they asked him specifically to travel was that it was a complicated trip from Israel to abroad...

Interviewer: To America, and from there to Russia, because you couldn’t fly there from Israel...

Guest: They were looking for people who could give Torah answers to baalei teshuvah who were becoming involved and were looking for depth and substance. I remember they wanted to study Kabbalah, and that’s why they sent him. When he returned, he continued giving a class by telephone, a regular class in Russian. He would call from home to Ezras Yisrael in America, and they would connect him to Russia. He gave classes that were recorded and distributed throughout Russia. Incidentally, over the years they were edited for the publication Maayanos, which Rabbi Leibel Altein put out, if you remember. Some of it was even reviewed and appears in the additions to Likkutei Sichos. So he had a connection to Russia, and a special connection to the community in Minsk. He helped the people there a great deal, and the shliach there was very, very...

Interviewer: May his memory be a blessing.

Guest: Rabbi Yossi very much wanted him to come to that event. It was a cornerstone-laying and the dedication of a Torah scroll, but several of the shluchim who were helping Rabbi Gruzman were also arriving there at that time. They wanted to sit down together and discuss how to complete the work and help establish the community. So he traveled...

Interviewer: I’ll tell you a defining story from the trip there...

Guest: Yes.

Interviewer: I drove with him to the airport in Rosh Pina, where you fly to Tel Aviv. On that drive—the last drive I took with him—he said, “I’m setting off on a trip that makes absolutely no sense.” And he spelled it out: “I’m taking a flight to Tel Aviv, to Sde Dov...”

Guest: Yes, Sde Dov.

Interviewer: “That’s the airport. From there I take a taxi to Ben Gurion Airport, where I have a wait of two or three hours or more. There’s only one flight a day from Sde Dov, so I have to wait several hours for the flight to Moscow. I fly to Moscow...”

Guest: From Moscow to Minsk.

Interviewer: “In Moscow they’ve arranged a car for me—a ten-hour drive from Moscow to Minsk. I’ll be there for the event during the day, and then I’ll make the whole trip back.” He told me, “There’s no logic to this trip. None at all—not sleeping for 72 hours. This trip makes no sense! But I saw how much it mattered to the shliach in Minsk. When I couldn’t travel a day earlier directly to Minsk, he moved heaven and earth. A shliach at the ends of the earth, all alone—it matters so much to him. So I won’t sleep for those 72 hours, so that he’ll feel good.” That was the last sentence I heard from him, on the drive from which he...

Guest: You went with him because you were simply driving him to...

Interviewer: I brought the car back from Rosh Pina, and then, yes...

Guest: And what happened was that on the way between Moscow and Minsk, near Lubavitch, there was an accident...

Interviewer: A truck—a truck simply hit the car. There were two bochurim in the car with him who had come from Minsk to accompany him.

Guest: To pick him up, basically.

Interviewer: They picked him up. They were sitting on one side of the car; he was sitting behind the driver, and that was the side that was hit. They came out with scratches and minor injuries. He and the driver did not survive the accident.

Guest: They died at the scene. So it happened...

Interviewer: Right.

Guest: And when did you find out? Gradually... But Rabbi Chitrik, my uncle, came here...

Interviewer: Rabbi Chitrik came to your home to tell you. He had apparently received the phone call from there.

Guest: Right. Now I want to tell you something personal again. As a former classmate and all, I came to pay a shiva call. By the way, I told you I had come, and you told me it was the same route. I did make that trip: on the way back I rode with Mendy Wolf, who brought me back to the center of the country, but on the way there I flew with my brother-in-law Shlomo Kesselman from Sde Dov to Rosh Pina. When I told you that, you said to me...

Interviewer: That it was Dad’s last flight. You didn’t tell me then about the message he had also given.

Guest: But that message...

Interviewer: Stayed with you? Stayed with you as a charge?

Guest: I took it with me, yes, absolutely. I remember that when I came to pay a private shiva call, at that time of grief—after I came into your home, your mother’s home—a delegation of leaders of Chabad communities from around the world arrived. They had come especially to Israel to comfort you. I remember the substance of what was said there. Rabbi Shemtov was there, a very close friend of his, and Rabbi Krinsky... What Rabbi Krinsky said then—he said, there’s a verse at the end... one has to be careful with that verse, “[unclear].” He drew a direct parallel to the terrible tragedy that had happened. And after he spoke, everyone was deeply moved... They were all looking to you. In that moment, I think, they saw what they told you when Reb Chamel took Rabbi Shemtov and drew you aside for a conversation, telling you that you had a role to fulfill.

Interviewer: Yes, yes.

Guest: They said it in writing and they said it aloud. That was, in fact, one of the reasons they came.

Interviewer: To make sure that was what would happen.

Guest: You see, Rabbi Krinsky and the others actually had a kind of explicit instruction from the Rebbe for a situation like this. There weren’t many such cases before Gimmel Tammuz, but in the few that occurred, the Rebbe established a very clear rule. Briefly, there was Rabbi Kranz, a shliach in Virginia, who passed away young. He was a classmate and good friend of my father, zichrono livrachah...

Interviewer: Where was he?

Guest: He was a shliach in Virginia.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: And the Rebbe immediately said that his wife and children should continue the shlichus. So that was the first instruction of this kind. But the second time it happened, when Reb Yudel Hecht passed away, the Rebbe said, “There is already a precedent in Lubavitch.” The Rebbe didn’t present it as something new—“What do we do now, all of a sudden?” Rather, the Rebbe immediately said there was already a precedent in Lubavitch, and that the established practice was for the wife and children to continue the shlichus. Another time the Rebbe spoke about this publicly, in an edited sicha from 5744, was after Reb Yitzchak Ginsburg passed away. The Rebbe said at a farbrengen, while he was alive, that the children continue the shlichus. It’s in the edited sicha from that farbrengen—the well-known sicha.

Interviewer: And in one of those cases, the Rebbe also instructed them to announce it immediately, as it were. So, given the existing precedent, they felt duty-bound to act. The role of the Chabad leadership was to carry out the Rebbe’s instructions and guidance, and the Rebbe had indeed instructed them to do so. They came right away and wanted to announce immediately that this was what would happen. That was part of the trip, and...

Guest: And you find yourself stepping into your father’s enormous shoes, with everything that comes with those shoes, for many years.

Interviewer: Yes, yes, stepping into the shoes—but I must say, managing to do it successfully.

Guest: Yes.

Interviewer: Not drowning, at least so far.

Guest: Boruch Hashem. And you—let me put it this way. I say this sincerely, because we’ve known each other for many years: the fit wasn’t far-fetched. It was, truly, a tremendous undertaking.

Interviewer: Not entirely out of character?

Guest: No, no. In terms of your character, your whole approach, as they say in Yiddish—the way you approach things, your thoroughness, what you aspire to. And you can see it today. Things already look the way I saw they could. You wanted to finish by talking about the yeshiva there, what we see...

Interviewer: Yes. What we saw before and what we’ve seen since—it’s all an enormous blessing, through the Rebbe’s strength. There’s no worldly explanation for what we have today in Tzfas.

Guest: Yes. I don’t think I should be the subject; Tzfas should be the subject.

Interviewer: There’s no worldly explanation for Tzfas becoming—I don’t think I should be the subject—there’s no worldly explanation for Tzfas becoming the largest Chabad educational center in the world, and that’s a fact. It makes no sense by ordinary reasoning. The Rebbe wanted Tzfas to be a center from which Torah would go out to the whole world, for Tzfas not to be...

Guest: But you have to explain that sweeping statement.

Interviewer: Here’s what I mean: it’s the largest educational center.

Guest: Of course. Explain it now.

Interviewer: Look, beyond all the institutions here in Tzfas—from day-care centers to a kollel for married men, and everything a Chabad community needs—there are institutions here that serve the entire country and the entire world, on a scale found nowhere else.

Guest: You told me your daughter studies here in the seminary.

Interviewer: Yes. We spoke about the range of views and approaches here in Tzfas, but there are three junior yeshivos, four senior yeshivos and three seminaries here. They serve not just the local community but the Chabad community throughout the world.

Guest: Why Tzfas? Why should this happen in Tzfas? In Kfar Chabad I’d understand it; in Crown Heights I’d understand it. Why Tzfas? It’s only through the Rebbe’s blessings.

Interviewer: I’ll touch on another institution that began here and is connected with Tzfas. We all know it, and we’re preparing for the summer now. Incidentally, this is something very interesting that the wider public is less familiar with: Gan Yisroel of the Holy Land.

Guest: Right. Something you initiated—as though you didn’t have enough work, you decided to establish Gan Yisroel of the Holy Land.

Interviewer: This connects to another point you raised earlier. After Gimmel Tammuz, there was a feeling, an atmosphere, that chassidishkeit was just outward display, let’s call it that, and that it belonged to a particular camp and a particular style. We looked for every way to restore—to instill and restore—chassidishkeit in the younger generation as something fundamental, genuine and internal. It has an outward effect too, but it begins inside. That’s the story of how Gan Yisroel was founded. Boruch Hashem, it’s thriving, and children throughout the Holy Land benefit from its enormous network of summer camps. It’s connected with Tzfas, but the credit belongs to the people who pour all their energy into it: the staff and management, who really work all year long. They spend half a year wrapping up the previous summer, and then begin preparing for the next one.

Guest: But how did it come to Tzfas?

Interviewer: How did it come to you, exactly?

Guest: So how did it happen in practical terms? Many other shluchim were called into the effort. But I’ll tell you how and why it came to Tzfas.

Interviewer: When the Rebbe sent my parents to Tzfas, on Rosh Chodesh Shvat, the Rebbe came out of 770 to see them off. That’s unusual, isn’t it? A couple setting out on shlichus—the Rebbe accompanied them outside and stood waiting until they left for the airport. The Rebbe gave my father, I think, a siddur, and my mother a dollar and a siddur. And to my eldest brother Mendy, who was a one-year-old baby, he gave a letter for the children taking part in the Gan Yisroel summer camps. The Rebbe said, “He’s going on shlichus too, so when he grows up, he’ll give it to the children in Gan Yisroel in the Holy Land.” Those words of the Rebbe, in writing—all that the Rebbe gave them—linked Gan Yisroel, the Holy Land and Tzfas. And we see the fruits of that today.

Guest: Today it’s for both boys and girls.

Interviewer: Both [unclear] and [unclear]. It’s grown so much that some people already feel they’re naturally in charge, as though it belongs to them, and they have complaints about the money, about the prices.

Guest: Look, one of the best investments I’ve made is Gan Yisroel. We’re now entering its 22nd year, [unclear]. People complain about how much it costs them—it has cost me far more than all of you combined. I’ve invested millions of shekels in Gan Yisroel over 20, 21 years of summer camps, but it’s worth every shekel. It’s holy work. When I see—and you see—the chassidishe spirit and the way... Someone told me, “Look, now they’re setting up another one.” Yes, they’re copying us.

Interviewer: Let as many people as possible copy it. That’s it. I really wanted to ask you: the branches opening around the country, actual Gan Yisroel branches—are they essentially just local branches? Are you happy to see them? Do you say, “Anyone who competes with me and tries to do what I do, even better…”

Guest: I can only wish them well. This isn’t my business. I did this for… not for a livelihood, not for money, and not to keep myself busy. I did it for the Rebbe’s children. Anyone willing to compete with me and do something similar is more than welcome, as long as the content is there. That’s why we’re here. I have to say, on a personal note, Gan Yisroel is very deep in my heart. Beyond the fact that my sons had the privilege of being counselors and staff members—and various other things, please G-d—my brother-in-law, Itzik Marton, composed a whole series of songs that became the soundtrack of Gan Yisroel. They really gave it its direction, its light, its warmth, and its deep, genuine chassidic vitality. To this day, at our Shabbos table and at so many others…

Interviewer: So when you ask where it comes from, it’s clear to me: it’s the Rebbe’s shlichus. That’s how the Rebbe saw it. From the very day Chabad’s shlichus in Tzfas began, the Rebbe accompanied it, and the Rebbe’s blessings accompany us. It’s success from Above, the Rebbe’s success. And then, as the years went by, you decided one day that everything you were doing in the various institutions wasn’t enough: you would establish a new yeshiva, a new yeshiva ketanah.

Guest: How many years has it been now?

Interviewer: It’s now completing its sixth year.

Guest: Completing its sixth year. And this past year you established a yeshiva gedolah.

Interviewer: First of all, it wasn’t that I suddenly decided to establish a yeshiva. Baruch Hashem, I don’t work alone. We have a board, and everything we do is accompanied by our board. But when it comes to the yeshivos—the yeshiva ketanah and the yeshiva gedolah—perhaps the best thing I’ve managed to do in the last 10 or 15 years was bring my brother, Rabbi Zalman, here. He had essentially headed a yeshiva like this in Montreal, very successfully. I think that, in the end, the statement that the Rebbe didn’t send me alone but sent the family spoke to him very strongly too. He came here with his family, undertaking shlichus in the old-fashioned way: leaving another country and coming here with his wife and children. He’s the one carrying out this remarkable transformation of the yeshiva ketanah and yeshiva gedolah, really taking them to new heights. But I called it “establishing a yeshiva gedolah” because it raised such a commotion around you. Some people did not look favorably on the very existence of this yeshiva gedolah. It almost turned into another all-out war, a repeat of those days we were just talking about.

Guest: Look, as I said, people found—or looked for—a spiritual reason for a dispute. Baruch Hashem, we went through a period that was perhaps genuinely less pleasant, when people tried to stop us by force, or through strong-arm tactics. But that isn’t what will deter us…

Interviewer: And you never thought for a moment, “Maybe we really should stop here until the time is right, until the anger dies down,” or however you want to put it?

Guest: The right time isn’t “when the anger dies down.” The right time is when it’s right to do the right thing. The timing doesn’t determine whether something is right or wrong. Because when something is right—look, I don’t think there’s any doubt, and everyone knows it; even the heads of the other yeshivos are crying out that we need more yeshivos gedolos. That’s one thing. Second, baruch Hashem, my brother Zalman and the team he brought to the yeshiva ketanah are there to establish a proper, good new yeshiva in the north of the country. There’s a need for a yeshiva gedolah suited to the students who live in this area and want to study here. It isn’t going to hurt anyone, so it’s needed. That’s one thing.

Interviewer: It really isn’t meant as a poke in the eye to anyone, G-d forbid.

Guest: G-d forbid. For 28 years I’ve been careful not to cause anyone pain. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do what needs to be done. My measure, as best I can manage, has never been whether something bothers someone. That isn’t a reason to do it or a reason not to do it. If something is needed and should be done, we’ll do it, without ignoring the background noise. The reason this arose and grew was that our students in the yeshiva ketanah begged us. And this is not standard: bochurim who had already spent three years in the same place, together with their parents, asked us, “Open a yeshiva gedolah too. There’s a pressing need for one.” Look, the head of the Chabad yeshiva gedolah in Tzfas gave an interview and made waves throughout the chareidi press in Israel: we have to open more yeshivos gedolos. He did excellent work with tables showing how many yeshivos ketanos had opened, while not enough yeshivos gedolos had opened. We need more yeshivos gedolos. This isn’t just a need I’ve identified from what I see on the ground. Check how many yeshivos ketanos have opened in the last 40 or 50 years, and virtually no yeshivos gedolos. So it’s essential; it’s what the moment calls for, right now. I should mention that the Rebbe wrote this to my father in a letter—I don’t know in what context—but on one occasion he said: “Just as there is a network of schools in the Holy Land, so there should be a network of all the educational institutions in Tzfas under your direction.” That was the Rebbe’s wording.

Interviewer: “United”?

Guest: Yes, yes, yes—a network of institutions. And in Tzfas, I actually have it in writing from my father that the school network, the Talmud Torah, is not under the network, or Tzfas…

Interviewer: Oh, really?

Guest: It is. And when there were attempts and disputes at the time over turning the seminary here into an independent local seminary, I remember discussing it with the administration of Beis Rivkah. I told them, “Look, it may be true that you have responsibility for all the seminaries in the Holy Land. But perhaps Tzfas is different. The Rebbe wanted all the institutions here to be an independent network under the Chabad institutions in Tzfas.” So it’s important to us that there be a network here encompassing all the educational institutions, including a yeshiva gedolah suited to our students. It’s what the moment calls for; it’s the right thing to do. It isn’t supposed to hurt anyone in any way. It won’t hurt anyone, and it will continue and flourish, with Hashem’s help, with pride and distinction.

Interviewer: I do want to touch, at least briefly, on two more institutions I chose. I knew one of them from the past, but now I’ve seen it firsthand: Otzar HaSTaM. It’s really an institution in its own right, first of all because of everything that goes on there—the production of sifrei Torah, tefillin, and mezuzos. I think you told me during the visit that there are 25 scribes, 25 sofrim, sitting and working. I saw signs there saying, “Do not disturb. Quiet.” I once read about a street in Jerusalem where a sofer worked, and the Jerusalem municipality put up a sign at the entrance to that street: “Sofer at work. Please do not disturb; keep quiet.” At the entrance to that floor, it says, “Scribes’ room. Please keep quiet; do not disturb.” So it’s quite a production operation. I saw with my own eyes the mezuzos that come out of there, the sifrei Torah, all of it. But there’s also a visitors’ center where people learn about the whole subject of sifrei Torah, tefillin, and mezuzos through…

Guest: That was established several years ago.

Interviewer: That too, already…

The guest: 15 years, 15 years ago. The story in brief: Tzeirei HaShluchim, which my father founded—I mentioned earlier that it began as a department of the Chabad yeshiva housed in the Old City—was moved after a few years to this campus, then called “Beit Gesher.” We rented the campus for the yeshiva until, a few years later, we bought another hotel, the Pisga Hotel, and moved the yeshiva there. That left this building standing. What do we do with it? It was rented, not ours. Then I met a close friend whose children attended the yeshiva, and he said, “Let’s do something with it.” That’s how the idea came up. Over the years, my father had received answers from the Rebbe about helping people in the community find a livelihood, if possible. That, too, is part of my responsibility here as a shliach. So the first idea was to establish a center for producing STaM—Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzos—to give scribes organized, formal work, with everything that goes along with it, including regular hours. That was the first thing. The second was supervision. When you buy a STaM item today, you want to know what you’re getting. There’s nothing in the world that requires oversight and supervision as much as STaM does, and no field in the world with as little oversight and supervision as STaM. We wanted to change that somewhat. That was the second purpose, as part of Mivtza Mezuzah and the concern that people should have kosher mezuzos and kosher tefillin. The Rebbe asked and urged so many times that tefillin and mezuzos be checked; they are a vessel for all the other blessings. So this was needed. We established a center that doesn’t simply sell you products it doesn’t have. Our center sells only what it produces, under the supervision of Rabbi Shmuel Lieberman, who lives across from the center. He is there, constantly going among the scribes and supervising their work. STaM items produced there are kosher, backed by accountability and supervised. That’s the second element of this institution. And then, since people were already coming to buy them, and since we were doing it properly, why not create a center where they could learn what tefillin, a mezuzah and a Sefer Torah are?

The interviewer: Those are three of the Rebbe’s important mivtzoim. And we built a visitor center, as you saw, with amazing technology.

The guest: When we built it 15 years ago, people told me, “A visitor center needs renovating every seven years.” Not just renovating—you have to replace it completely. We’ve hardly changed ours; we just have to keep it running, and people still come. Look, we’ve been through difficult years for tourism in Tzfas—COVID, wars and so on—so tourism here isn’t at its best. But my father once received a fascinating answer from the Rebbe. My father wrote the Rebbe a letter. I don’t remember the precise wording, but I think he wrote that tourism in the Holy Land was not being used as it should be, to the extent that it could be, either materially or spiritually. That’s what my father wrote. The Rebbe corrected the wording to say—I don’t remember it exactly, but the substance was—“It is alarming how little use is made of tourism in the Holy Land,” neither materially nor spiritually. He wrote that he wanted to bring someone in to work on it—[unclear].

The interviewer: Wow. So using tourism for matters of holiness—if we put it in simple terms—is part of the Rebbe’s concern for Eretz Yisroel, for the Holy Land. In other words, the Rebbe wasn’t concerned only with the land and its borders, but also with its actual development.

The guest: I always quote one of the letters my father received from the Rebbe. The Rebbe added something by hand at the end. It was the first letter on the subject, sent to the young men of the kollel when the kollel was founded. At the end, the typed text said, “With blessings for much success,” and the Rebbe added by hand: “For Tzfas and its affairs, and particularly those of Chabad.” And I always say, whenever I meet with city leaders or anyone else, that this was the Rebbe’s outlook. There are many different communities, and each community naturally tends to look after its own neighborhood and its own concerns.

The interviewer: Tzfas and its affairs, and particularly Chabad—that was the Rebbe’s outlook: the whole city, all of Tzfas and everything concerning Tzfas, and particularly Chabad’s concerns. That’s the shlichus, not just specific matters.

The guest: But today, as you showed me on the way—hotels, since we were talking about tourism, all kinds of hotels that used to be…

The interviewer: And that became a Chabad concern?

The guest: Yes, yes, an affair of Tzfas. Only recently did I learn the details of this. I always knew… he would always repeat it. As I’ve told you, I heard almost nothing from my father himself, because matters connected with the Rebbe were very…

The interviewer: These were things you only discovered later, when you simply opened folders and saw them.

The guest: Or I heard what other people had heard. But he didn’t sit down to tell stories. He didn’t sit at a farbrengen and say, “The Rebbe once told me,” or “Once I went in to see the Rebbe.” There was almost none of that. He didn’t boast about it or try to use it in any way. If he needed to bring something to bear on a particular issue, he would present the facts precisely as they were. He didn’t, G-d forbid, make light of its importance—it was his whole life—but it was his life on the inside. It wasn’t something to boast about or score points with. So I heard from Rabbi Leizer Zeitlin, our mashpia here, of blessed memory and a dear friend, that the Rebbe once said that Kfar Chabad was the Frierdiker Rebbe’s estate; Nachlas Har Chabad was a continuation of Kfar Chabad; and Tzfas was [unclear]. At times the Rebbe even called it “Kfar Chabad II.”

The interviewer: Yes, okay. You saw that, and he said the Rebbe told this to Rabbi Yosef Waldman, Yosef Waldman…

The guest: Yosef Waldman, right. So that was the information I had about it. Again, I personally didn’t hear it from my father; I heard it in his name. Only very recently, a few weeks or months ago, I came across a letter my father wrote to Rabbi Yosef Waldman. We should explain for younger people who may not know him: Rabbi Yosef Waldman was involved in the whole project of the Rebbe’s explanations of Rashi’s commentary on the Torah [unclear]. A practice developed: Rabbi Yosef Waldman was not actually a Chabad chossid, but he was devoted to the Rebbe’s sichos on Rashi. Before each Shabbos, he would write to the Rebbe because he wanted to know which passage in Rashi the Rebbe would focus on. A system then developed for the Rebbe’s discussion of Rashi to be made available through him, yes. Now, one of the hats my father wore was as a member of the Vaad Lechizuk. Together with his friend from his youth, Rabbi Leibel Schapiro of Miami, and Rabbi Zalman Chanin—may they both live long and good lives—he founded the Vaad Lechizuk and renewed the publication of Likkutei Sichos, [unclear]…

The interviewer: Yes, that whole story is well known. So my father was a member of the Vaad Lechizuk. He also worked on it in Eretz Yisroel. A short time later the Rebbe sent him to Tzfas, but he remained a member. I remember that as a child, I knew that when he came back from New York, a new volume of Likkutei Sichos had come out. I joke that, as a child, what I noticed was that he came back with the new volume and with the pins he’d received at the Vaad Lechizuk offices as a member. That’s how I saw it as a child. But in connection with that role, when the Rebbe sent a group a few years later—people don’t always keep track of the sequence.

The guest: Yes, all right, snow in summer.

The interviewer: The Rebbe sent my parents to Tzfas to establish Chabad in Tzfas. Within three years of that—two and a half years later—the Rebbe… the first group…

The guest: The first one, [unclear], the second to [unclear]?

Interviewer: So when the groups arrived, they sat and learned in the kollel. The first group included eight couples and three bochurim. We mentioned one of them, Rabbi Zeitlin a"h. The second was Rabbi Kramer a"h, and the third, may he live a long life, is Rabbi Yankel Reis. They were bochurim, and when the kollel's study schedule ended at five o'clock, the married men went home, while the bochurim stayed. My father always believed in projects: give someone a project. He did an amazing project with my brother, Rabbi Mendy, on explanations of the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch. He once gave me a project that I didn't do, but I still have the binders and index cards he prepared for me: to find and develop the Alter Rebbe's original insights in the kuntreisim in Likkutei Pesachim. I have a card he prepared. So he wanted a project for the young married men and the bochurim. He said, “Let's prepare explanations of Rashi's commentary.” He asked all the young married men to sit down, each take a sicha on Rashi, and condense it in the style of an explanation of Rashi. In the end, of all of them, he chose Rabbi Eliyahu Friedman and said, “This is the one.” He became the editor—in practice, he was the editor of the Biur Lepeirush Rashi that came out, first in two volumes and then in five volumes. So I see a letter he wrote to Yankel. He writes: “Your love for the Rebbe's sichos on Rashi, the part and share you have in them, and your connection to matters of Rashi are well known. We've now prepared the Biur Lepeirush Rashi for publication. I thought the committee would pay the actual costs, but they have a problem and can't pay them. Now, since I know the Rebbe told you to visit Tzfas, saying that it is your portion, I suggest you join the two portions together and help me fund the book's publication.” So here I see that when he traveled to Eretz Yisroel, the Rebbe told him to visit Tzfas because it was his portion. And if it's his portion, then the blessing is here in Tzfas.

Guest: Yes, we saw that in this blessing. We haven't yet spoken about—there's so much to talk about—the magnificent taharah center you established. That's truly worth noting. As they say in journalism, it's definitely worth an article. Though, by the way, it's a bit under the radar...

Interviewer: It's worth an article, but it's the kind of thing that's generally done under the radar.

Guest: Yes, so perhaps they have platforms where it could be done beautifully and with dignity. Rabbi Chaim Kaplan, my dear friend, my friend since our youth, I've had the privilege of learning and hearing so many fascinating and illuminating things from you.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

Guest: I was glad we met, and above all, glad we talked. I hope people enjoy listening. With Hashem's help, until the next podcast. With Hashem's help, we'll be back, as they say.

Interviewer: Thank you very much for being with us for this episode as well. My thanks to Yosef Dovid Sabeisa, who edits the music. Thanks to Yossi Rivkin from [unclear]. Thank you for watching, and we'll meet again in the next episode.