Livenyomin Omar | Episode 10: Rabbi Shimon Eisenbach - "A letter arrived from the Rebbe - and everything turned around"

Interviewer: Hello, everyone. We’re here with a new podcast episode. We have a special guest who has come to us from Eilat in the south: the Rebbe’s shliach and the rabbi of Eilat’s Shahamon neighborhood, Rabbi Shimon Ben Tzion Eisenbach. Welcome.

Guest: Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: We’re glad to have you. As usual, we’d love to talk about the past, the present and the future, if you’re willing. We’ll begin where we always like to begin: with nostalgia, with the enchanting past. First, the basic facts: you’re from the well-known Jerusalem Eisenbach family. How many generations has your family been in Jerusalem?

Guest: Eight generations, perhaps even nine.

Interviewer: I think we’re alike in that respect. I’m also eighth-generation Jerusalem and Hebron—though some say that, a little earlier on, it wasn’t Jerusalem and Hebron. In any case, the Eisenbach family was not naturally counted among Chabad chassidim. Quite the opposite. There’s even a well-known saying that if you throw a stone in Meah Shearim, you’ll hit either a katz—a cat—or an Eisenbach. Today there’s an updated version: if you throw a stone in Jerusalem, does it land on an Eisenman or an Eisenbach?

Guest: It’s always an Eisenbach, either way.

Interviewer: Yes. And you’re the eldest son of Rabbi Tzvi Eisenbach?

Guest: I’m not the firstborn. My sister, Tzira Scheinstein, a"h, was born before me; she has passed away. So today I’m the eldest.

Interviewer: Today you are, yes—the oldest of the children now.

Interviewer: And your father wasn’t alone. There was a group of brothers who all became Chabad chassidim, with your father the oldest among them.

Guest: That’s right. My father was the eldest son. He had two older sisters, but he was the eldest of the boys. Their father was killed al kiddush Hashem by gunfire from the Jordanian Legion in 5708. He was killed on Pesach of 5708 and left eight orphans.

Interviewer: You bear his name.

Guest: I bear his name. Incidentally, he left eight orphans—four sons and four daughters—and each of them has a son named Shimon Ben Tzion. We’re eight cousins, all named Shimon Ben Tzion. Four are Eisenbachs, and the sons of the daughters have other surnames. They’re scattered around the world as the Rebbe’s shluchim.

Interviewer: By the way, wasn’t there a concern about naming a child after someone who had died? That if you redeemed the name, it was all right—something like that?

Guest: There’s a whole story. One of my uncles, who wasn’t a Chabad chossid, was the head of the Grodno yeshiva in Ashdod. When his first son was born, he was unsure, so he asked the Rebbe.

Interviewer: Whether to give him the name. He asked the Rebbe.

Guest: He asked the Rebbe, even though he wasn’t a Chabad chossid, because of the family’s closeness to Chabad Chassidus and to the Rebbe. The Rebbe’s answer indicated that there was no problem and that it was fine. In any event, all eight of the first grandsons born were named Shimon Ben Tzion.

My father was orphaned at about bar mitzvah age. He was born in 5695, and his father was killed in 5708. His mother—my grandmother, Grandma Rivkah, who was known as an eishes chayil—raised all eight orphans alone. It wasn’t like today, when there are funds and organizations looking after people, competing over who can help them more.

Interviewer: Yes, today... Back then, an orphan was an orphan in the fullest sense of the word, and so was a widow.

Guest: She truly was an eishes chayil. She managed to raise all eight orphans, and my father, as the eldest boy, helped his mother a great deal with supporting the household throughout the years. He carried the whole burden on his shoulders—both the financial burden and the responsibility for raising the younger children. They really were...

Interviewer: So in other words, when he became—if we jump ahead to that point in his life—when he became a Chabad chossid, his brothers naturally followed him. To name them, there was Rabbi Shalom Eisenbach, who later emigrated to Canada, the gaon Rabbi Chananya Yosef Eisenbach, and Rabbi Avraham Eisenbach.

Guest: Right, those were the four sons who became Chabad chassidim.

Interviewer: Following your father, essentially.

Guest: Yes. Some of them had been drawn to Ger Chassidus, others to the Litvish world. In any case, my father, Rabbi Eisenbach, was a young man finding his way. He was an orphan, with no father to guide him in a particular direction, so he visited all the chassidic courts. Where didn’t he go? He went to Toldos Aharon and Shomrei Emunim, and he went to Belz. He had a very good relationship with the Vitebsky brothers—I think they were orphans too—and they spent time together. He was often in Tel Aviv, at the Belz court.

Interviewer: Yes. Wasn’t he already a rabbi then? I remember him from my childhood in Shikun Chabad, with his hat creased in a kneytsh and his long coat. It was a real “super kapote,” the whole long outfit.

Guest: Yes, yes. In the photographs from those days you can see him with the hat, the suit and the long coat.

Interviewer: Yes. Then one day, in 5709 or 5710, he found himself at Chabad’s synagogue in Meah Shearim.

Guest: And that was it—he was drawn in. He had searched and searched and searched, and he arrived at Chabad. From the first moment it clicked, and he became...

Interviewer: What was it that really drew him in?

Guest: I don’t know. Chabad... There wasn’t one specific thing. Many Chabad chassidim, for instance, tell you that they heard a Chabad song, or someone heard a maamar, studied a maamar, or perhaps saw a chossid dancing on a table on Simchas Torah. My father never told me what the decisive moment was. He only said, “I came to Chabad, and from that moment I knew I belonged there.”

Interviewer: I see—“This is my place.”

Guest: And of course he connected very quickly. There was hardly any gradual process for him; almost all at once, he became what you’d call Chabad through and through. And of course, he brought all his brothers along with him.

Interviewer: There’s another interesting point to mention. Although our grandfather, Shimon Ben Tzion Eisenbach, had no connection at all...

Interviewer: ...

Guest: ...to Chabad—he was a Jerusalem Jew from the Eisenbach family line—our grandmother Rachel came from a chassidic family. We’re descendants of the Alter Rebbe. She was married into the Halperin family, and her mother was from the Slonim family. Zalk Slonim and Leib Slonim were her uncles.

Interviewer: But back then, even if you had uncles who were great chassidim, that didn’t influence you?

Guest: Right. Nor was it unusual to marry across chassidic groups. My mother, for example, was a Ger chassid, and she married my father, a devoted Chabad chossid.

Interviewer: A family connection to Chassidus didn’t necessarily have an influence, and certainly didn’t determine anything.

Guest: Still, there must have been something—some influence. Just knowing that they were descendants of the Mitteler Rebbe, as they called him then—and later he became known to them as one of the “Baalei HaTanya”—probably gave them something too. But of course it took effort. My father brought in his brother, Shalom Leib. They were fairly close in age and were friends, not just brothers. Then there was Rabbi Chananya Yosef. He had actually been expected to go to Ponevezh, because he was a brilliant child.

Interviewer: A prodigy, yes.

Guest: He was a prodigy whom everyone said was destined for greatness. They told my grandmother that a boy like that had to study at Ponevezh. He was even there for a day or two, but my father and Rabbi Shalom Leibish pulled some kind of trick, got him out of there and brought him to Tomchei Temimim. He stayed there from then on. And of course Rabbi Avrum also came to Tomchei Temimim. That’s how the whole family came into Chabad.

Interviewer: So when your father established his home, he was already completely Chabad.

Guest: Yes, certainly.

Interviewer: Meaning your mother knew whom she was marrying—a Chabad young man, someone who was going to be a Chabad husband.

Guest: Yes. Unlike his friends, who married relatively young, my father married at around 25. By then, he had already received his first letter from the Rebbe.

Interviewer: What did he do until then, before the wedding?

The guest: It’s a long story. He was an ordinary yeshiva student, gradually settling into his studies. Then the waves of aliyah began—people coming to Israel from Romania and Morocco. The Rebbe saw that all the young men needed to close their Gemaras and go save Jewish lives. They needed to become teachers. They recruited young married men if they were capable and experienced, and if not, they recruited yeshiva students too. My father led the whole effort, from enrollment to renting apartments and, later, putting up buildings. Over several years, he became completely absorbed in that work.

>> While he was still a yeshiva student.

The guest: While he was still a yeshiva student, yes. He only found time to get married at 25.

>> Mazel tov.

The guest: By then it was already Phase C. I was born in Phase C, my sister in Phase B—[unclear], in Phase A. Then Shikun Chabad was established, and he was there. He had already married and was living there. But for many years he had worked as a yeshiva student, while the others had already gotten married. In those days people married at 19 or 20, so the rest of that group who had been at the Ir Ganim school, and later at another school called the Asbestonim, had all already...

>> What exactly were the Asbestonim? What kind of neighborhood was it? Why was it called...

The guest: It was a neighborhood in Kiryat Yovel. There were several neighborhoods, and when the immigrants arrived, they needed somewhere to house them all. They built a huge neighborhood that was essentially a transit camp, made entirely of asbestos. People weren’t yet aware of the dangers of asbestos, so all the houses were built from asbestos materials. That’s why the neighborhood was called the Asbestonim.

>> Where had the immigrants in that neighborhood come from?

The guest: Morocco and Romania. No, there were hardly any Yemenites there. Mainly Morocco, though there were immigrants from Romania too. It was the most remote neighborhood in Jerusalem. My father didn’t have a car, so every day he’d take a bus to the school. He’d go to the central bus station, then board another bus, the number 23, for another long stretch, all the way to its last stop in Kiryat Yovel. That was the edge of town, and the school was there. They also built an impressive building for the Chabad school there, and it’s still standing today.

>> The Chabad school, yes.

The guest: They built it. There were three Chabad schools in Jerusalem, including the one in Ir Ganim, where my father started. Rabbi Mordechai Shalom was the principal there. My wife’s mother, may she be well, taught there for many years.

>> Yes, yes, that’s right. And there was the Barzilai school, where Rabbi Naftali was.

The guest: Right. But my father—that was relatively more...

>> Yes, your father was one of the founders of Ir Ganim.

The guest: And Mordechai Shalom—why was he the principal? Because he was the only one with a certificate, the only one who came with a principal’s qualification. He had even been my father’s principal when my father was a child—imagine that. My father, may he be well. Rabbi Mordechai had been my father’s principal when he was a student. I don’t know whether it was called Sanhedrin or Shiluv—it was Yavne, Yavne. He was his principal, and years later he was my mother’s principal when she was a teacher.

>> Yes.

The guest: You see? In any case, my father was the only one who came with paperwork, so to speak. He led the entire effort there. For example, every Shabbos a group of young married men would set out on a Shabbos trek. It took two hours each way to get from Shikun Chabad or Meah Shearim to Ir Ganim. Various groups were trying to draw the children into their schools, so to keep them connected, they walked there every Shabbos, two hours each way, in summer and winter, to run activities for the children.

After Ir Ganim became very, very successful—the school already had close to a thousand students—they decided to open a school in the Asbestonim too, because there was also a very large population there.

>> A thousand students? It reached that number?

The guest: Ir Ganim had a thousand students at the time, and the Asbestonim school later reached another 600. By the way, it’s unbelievable how many thousands of students passed through those schools over the years. One class came in, another graduated. Wherever you went in Jerusalem, or even elsewhere in Israel, you’d meet people who told you they had studied at Ir Ganim or the Asbestonim.

>> Who were they—rabbis and dayanim? I wanted to ask what became of them.

The guest: Some became rabbis and dayanim. There were Shas members of Knesset too—members of Knesset who had studied at the Asbestonim school. There are families living in Beitar today. For example, there’s a rabbi whose wife comes from a family my father reached, and they became fully observant. Today she’s a rebbetzin, and every Shabbos she gives a class to groups of women in Beitar. That’s one kind of story.

On the other hand, many became shopkeepers in Machane Yehuda, people with market stalls. Football players too—the whole Ohana family: Eli Ohana, Tzion Ohana. They all attended the Asbestonim school.

>> You mean graduates of the Chabad school in the Asbestonim.

The guest: Yes. They came from all walks of life. Once I was at a celebration, and Israel’s national team had come to play a game. I heard that Eli Ohana was there, so I ran over to where they were playing. They didn’t want to let me in. I told them, “Tell Eli Ohana that Rabbi Eisenbach’s son wants to meet him.” At that moment the way opened for me. I went straight in and put tefillin on him. It’s unbelievable how many people, including public figures and very famous people, were students at those schools.

The interviewer: On a personal level, as a child you knew your father as a principal. You remember him actively running the school. He was a father who left home early in the morning, before you children even left for cheder, and came back late. What was that like?

The guest: Of course. I was born into it. My whole life, for as long as I can remember, it was always about the school. All day I’d hear my father talking to my mother, may she live and be well, about what had happened at school—one story after another. There were many Hungarian teachers, and since they all lived in the city center, not far from the Asbestonim, they would come to our home to earn some extra income.

For many years, the whole household revolved around the school. More than that: Generally, at Chabad schools, when a break comes—whether the regular vacation or Chanukah or Purim—they lock up the school and return afterward. But with my father, there was no such thing. Purim was spent in the Asbestonim neighborhood. We were never in shul to hear the Megillah on Purim night. My father would take me and the other children to the Asbestonim, and people from all over the neighborhood would gather there, including those who didn’t attend the school. There was a large public Megillah reading, and they would always encourage people to come by showing a film or putting on some kind of program.

The interviewer: Was this even before the Purim mivtza? Or was the Purim mivtza already underway?

The guest: No, the Purim mivtza was already underway. It goes back a long time; it isn’t one of the newer mivtzoim.

It was the same on Chanukah, and on every holiday. There was no such thing as a break. Everything was the school; our whole life was there. And Shabbos—my father had an entire cabinet at home full of Shabbos timers. Whenever a family took it upon themselves to keep Shabbos, my father would send an electrician, pay him, and have a Shabbos timer installed for them. The cabinet would empty out and then be filled again.

The interviewer: So you were thinking about those families on Shabbos too—about what was happening in their homes?

The guest: That was always on our minds. Yes, all the time.

The interviewer: Yes.

And alongside your father, on his staff, were some of Chabad’s finest?

The guest: Not long ago we said goodbye to Rabbi Toibloi. He was one of the teachers, I think he and his brother.

The interviewer: Yes, yes. He and Rabbi Amram?

The guest: Rabbi Amram, his brother.

The interviewer: Yes. The cream of Chabad chassidim were there.

The guest: They were all teachers. They all enlisted in this holy work, some of them in the Asbestonim. Rabbi Eliyahu-Tov, for example, and Rabbi Yosef Marton—you know him?

The interviewer: Certainly. Yosef Marton was one of the great educators. His artistic contribution to the school—all the signs and everything. He was also a gifted mathematician. People know his songs, they know his...

The guest: His drawings. What people don’t know, for instance, is that after he retired, he went on teaching mathematics at a very high level in Jerusalem schools. An extraordinarily talented man. Very much so, yes.

The interviewer: [unclear]

The guest: He really was one of the staff.

Interviewer: Yes, there was an extraordinary team there. I’m also talking about the veterans who were there—there was Yaakov Friedman, Friedman, right?

Guest: There was Schnur, Rabbi...

Interviewer: Rabbi Yaakov Schnur?

Guest: Schnur, who passed away recently.

Interviewer: Ah, there were...

Guest: All of them—essentially, their shlichus was educational. What people are trying to do today is...

Interviewer: Reb Leibel Wolf[?], who was the school secretary, right?

Guest: A very serious group. The core of the group were the teachers. They simply closed their Gemaras and went to do it. They didn’t know exactly how to teach, because in the Hungarian homes they were less familiar with that.

Interviewer: They had to learn teaching methods and all those things, right?

Guest: They knew how to count up to a certain number; everyone knew multiplication and division. But they did what had to be done and produced students with good grades, who received certificates and entered the Ministry of Education system. The Ministry of Education was less strict then than it is today. Today there are requirements; there were requirements then, too. There were inspectors, and there were also difficulties with the exams. There were requirements, and they scrutinized every last detail. They were very particular, with follow-ups and inspections.

Interviewer: And they worked, worked hard. So to succeed spiritually, you also have to succeed materially?

Naturally, when more talented people are under one roof, in one group, tensions arise. I want to skip ahead for a moment to the end. What’s remarkable—and you yourself once pointed this out, even in writing—is that, in the end, as the years went by, everyone became friends again, even though there had been quite a few clashes at the time. Often, things really went back and forth. The Rebbe would always say that Chabad chassidim are like chemicals: the more you spread them out, the more benefit there is, and when they’re gathered together, sometimes it isn’t pleasant. Right?

Guest: Yes, that’s right. It happens in quite a few places. You have a talented, serious group with a lot of energy; on Shabbos they drink mashke, and on Sunday they want to put all the good resolutions they made into practice. So yes, there was friction there too, but baruch Hashem, it’s all behind us now.

Interviewer: Yes, yes. Still, I remember one thing you once told me. You told it to me face-to-face, and later I saw that you even wrote about it in your column. I should say that everyone probably knows your weekly column here on COL, which has been running for quite a few years now... Remind me, how many? Seven years already?

Guest: …

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: Since today, baruch Hashem, everyone is at peace with everyone, and of those fellows who used to clash back then, the ones still in this world—most are already in the World of Truth. I believe that there, too, they’re sitting together, saying l’chaim, and have become friends again, baruch Hashem. Maybe that’s the first lesson worth learning from this: fellows, don’t fight. The day will come when you’ll look back and won’t understand what you were fighting about. So don’t fight now. Be wise.

In fact, something remarkable and unusual happened there—unusual even in the Rebbe’s conduct. For years, the Rebbe received endless letters from the staff and from people connected with the matter. They all wrote to the Rebbe that relations among his chassidim there were not good. In letters to my father and to others, the Rebbe would always add in his own handwriting that things should be done pleasantly and peacefully. The Rebbe wanted matters to work themselves out, but unfortunately they only grew worse over the years.

There was a Jew who was a Ger chossid, Rabbi Avraham Rosenbaum, my mother’s brother.

Interviewer: May she be distinguished for a long and good life.

Guest: He was an avowed Ger chossid, and not just nominally. His family was very, very closely connected to Ger, but in his heart he had an affinity for Chabad. One of the interesting things we all remember is the broadcasts. At the yeshivah, they would get up at 3:00 in the morning. So who would come? If there were unexpected broadcasts that people didn’t know much about, only a small handful would come. But when it was known in advance, as with the Tishrei holidays, when people knew there would be broadcasts at set times, the place was full.

One of the regulars sitting there was that Ger chossid. He lived in Jerusalem, on... I think it was David Street.

Interviewer: David Street.

Guest: There, yes, for many years. And he always... the broadcasts interested him.

Interviewer: Three-thirty, depending on whether it was summer or winter.

Guest: In winter, yes. His ears were pricked up; he felt such a need to hear the Rebbe. Quite extraordinary. In any case, he corresponded with the Rebbe. By the way, he has many grandchildren who are shluchim.

Interviewer: He has a son-in-law, Arshkoff.

Guest: And other grandchildren who became Chabad chassidim. On one occasion he wrote the Rebbe a letter about the situation. He was my father’s brother-in-law, so he knew everything that was going on.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: He wrote the Rebbe about the situation, saying they had to see what could be done there because it was absolutely unbearable. The Rebbe then wrote him a letter, half of which has been published in Igros Kodesh. It’s addressed to Rabbi Avraham...

Interviewer: With the addressee’s actual name.

Guest: Yes, Yitzchak, it says—I don’t know, it says Yitzchak. His name was Avrum Rosenbaum, Avrum Yitzchak, but that’s how it appears in the letter. The Rebbe writes to him there: Regarding what you wrote, if you can do something, how good and pleasant that would be—to bring the matter before rabbis, rabbis in general. If they can be Chabad rabbis, that would be even better. Anything you can do to help would certainly be a blessing. Half of the letter there has been cut off.

Interviewer: So what it says there, essentially...

Guest: I tried everything to reach him, but I couldn’t. He’s no longer with us today; he’s no longer alive.

Interviewer: No, no, he passed away.

Guest: And they never found the other half. Maybe one day they’ll find it, as so many things are found. In any case, he was also one of those who tried to push the matter forward.

Interviewer: And then he tried to take up the challenge, to try to...

Guest: Yes, he tried, but there wasn’t much he could do. As a Ger chossid, he didn’t have much influence over what was happening in our community. Be that as it may, things developed to the point where the Rebbe began pushing the matter forward. Then Rabbi Groner received an instruction from the Rebbe to appoint five rabbis and elders.

Interviewer: Rabbis who held rabbinic positions, or...?

Guest: Not necessarily. Rabbis—even if they weren’t officially rabbis—but he should choose respected figures, people of stature.

And put them in charge of dealing with the matter. It took some time to set up that committee. Then everyone had to be called in, and they appeared before it—both sides, as they say, appeared, and each person told his story, his side.

Interviewer: And the conclusion really was, as you said, that since the two sides couldn’t live together under one roof, someone had to leave. So it was better than sending away a large group. They told him—they told my father: “You’re 100% right, not 99%. But we can’t... this isn’t an institution with such a huge group of teachers. So let’s move you.” Instead, Reb Efraim Wolf promised him a management position at another school, and they settled all the arrangements.

Guest: I was still a child then, but...

Interviewer: How old were you?

Guest: I was—I don’t remember exactly—if it was in 5728, I was around ten.

Interviewer: Ah.

Guest: Eleven. And then my father accepted the decision. After all, the Rebbe had established the committee, and that was what the committee decided, so there was nothing to be done. Toward the end of the year, when my father had time off, he said to me, “You’re coming with me.” Every day we went to [unclear]. He didn’t have a car. He had cabinets there with an entire archive—letters, documents, all kinds of things, personal belongings. So every day we would go to [unclear], fill bags there, take the buses and come home. We did that every day, day after day.

And then—there are things you don’t forget, even though more than 50 years have passed, and I’ll never forget this. Everyone in our building had the usual small mailbox. Because my father was the principal and received a lot of mail, he had a large box, an enormous mailbox, with holes at the bottom so you could peek in and see whether any mail had arrived.

I’ll never forget how we came into the entrance of our building...

Interviewer: Chovel Kaneh?

Guest: Chovel Kaneh. As we came in, my father, as he always did, peeked in to see whether anything had arrived. And suddenly he saw the light blue color of the letter...

Interviewer: That light blue and red—ah, the blue-and-red border, yes.

The guest: Yes. So he—I remember the shout he gave: “A letter came from the Rebbe!” We ran upstairs, and he came down with the key, opened it, and brought out the letter. I remember: washing hands, putting on a gartel, a sense of holy awe—that was how you opened a letter from the Rebbe. And there was this letter from the Rebbe, a plain, simple letter, signed by Binyamin Klein, the Rebbe’s secretary. It said, “To the esteemed [unclear] shlita,” and then, in a single line, “[He should remain] at Asbestonim,” and that he would be mentioned at the Ohel. This was already in August, with only about three weeks until the new school year, and they were already looking for a new principal...

The interviewer: To come run the Asbestonim school. So this was a total shock—a 180-degree turn from that ruling.

The guest: Yes, it was—it’s remarkable, because the Rebbe himself, after all...

The interviewer: Had refrained from doing anything...

The guest: Had appointed that committee...

The interviewer: Had appointed the committee.

The guest: And the Rebbe was always bound by its conclusions—the Rebbe once said that he was bound by the conclusions of rabbanim, too. So this is something very, very unusual in the whole story. And of course, he immediately went to Efraim with the letter to show it to him.

The interviewer: He went to Efraim in Lod, yes.

The guest: In short—we won’t go on at length—but from that day...

The interviewer: Efraim, of course, immediately accepted it.

The guest: Of course! There was no room for interpretation; it was clear. From that day, the whole group—the people among whom there had been friction—understood that all they could do was yield. Some did; others looked for a way out, each for his own reasons, to work in Chabad elsewhere. And from then on, peace and quiet returned.

The interviewer: Right from then, more or less?

The guest: Yes, yes, absolutely. By then, there were almost no male teachers, only female teachers. Even in the boys’ school, the teachers were generally women; there might have been one or two men, but nearly all were women. And the school continued for many more years, until, gradually, the Likud came to power and dismantled the transit camp.

The interviewer: Ah, it dismantled the transit camp, and then there were no residents left, you mean?

The guest: Yes. They offered benefits to all the families. Anyone who wanted to move to an apartment block—that’s what they called it—could get a place for next to nothing. Little by little the neighborhood emptied out, and the school declined along with it...

The interviewer: But weren’t buildings put up on the Asbestonim land?

The guest: Yes, today Malha is there—the Malha Mall, that whole area...

The interviewer: The... zoo?

The guest: The Biblical Zoo moved there, yes. It used to be here, yes.

The interviewer: Right, right, but it’s quite a large area...

The guest: Because when I was young, I remember your father much more as an educator, but no longer—by then he wasn’t with Chabad anymore. He was already working as an educator in...

The interviewer: Had he already retired?

The guest: Retired.

The interviewer: He retired from the Ministry of Education and continued...

The guest: Continued in the recognized private education system, completing his work there...

The interviewer: No, no. He was—he was with Slonim. They asked him to run their Talmud Torah. For years he did wonderful work there.

The guest: Ah, that’s a story in its own right, yes. There are wonderful things there, too.

The interviewer: But that’s completely unrelated. That whole chapter began many years later.

The guest: Yes, yes, certainly.

The interviewer: Yes. I’ll just note that, baruch Hashem, today all of that is in the past, and everyone lives in peace and harmony. Now, you—we mentioned one of the names here, Rabbi Tuvia Bloy. As we said, we’re within two weeks of his passing. How do you remember him? Do you have personal memories of him?

The guest: As for Rabbi Tuvia Bloy, a"h, over the years the relationship was restored and became perfectly good. He would come to our family celebrations. My father—ten days before he passed away; he passed away on Shavuos...

The interviewer: Yes, the following week, just after Shavuos, a year ago...

The guest: Twelve years ago.

The interviewer: Until...

The guest: Yes, yes. And a few days earlier—about ten days earlier—he held a hachnasas Sefer Torah.

The interviewer: By then he wasn’t living in the housing development anymore, right? He lived in Ramat Shlomo.

The guest: Yes, he had lived in the housing development, but he’d been in Ramat Shlomo for years. When Ramat Shlomo was established, he was actually one of the people who established [unclear] Street. He left there...

The interviewer: He was among the first to arrive in Ramat Shlomo.

The guest: And then he brought a Sefer Torah into his home—he brought a Sefer Torah into the shul.

The interviewer: The shul called [unclear] in Ramat Shlomo?

The guest: [Unclear] before his passing, he knew that... I mean, he was—it didn’t take long.

The interviewer: He was ill, and his condition was deteriorating, but no one had told him how much time he had. It might have been months, a year, half a year—each doctor said something different. But his passing was actually very sudden, from an infection. We took him to the hospital after he felt unwell, and then it turned out he had an infection. His immune system was weak, and suddenly he passed away. But a few days earlier he’d managed to complete a Sefer Torah, and Rabbi Tuvia Bloy came to our home, and the two of them talked.

The guest: It’s a shame I didn’t record it. It was so interesting to watch them talking to each other, as though they were eighteen or nineteen again.

The interviewer: Wow.

The guest: They talked, and he had come to write a letter in the Sefer Torah. That’s what he’d come for.

The interviewer: Yes.

The guest: At one point he said to my father, “Nu, may Hashem help you write another Sefer Torah after this one.” My father—they were always quick with a witty reply—asked, “Why only one more? Maybe thirteen, like Moshe Rabbeinu.” That’s how they got started.

The interviewer: And of course, he came during the shivah afterward, too.

The guest: He came to comfort us, yes. You know, I don’t like talking about these things, but over the last twelve years I had a good relationship with Rabbi Tuvia Bloy. There’s a whole archive of what my father related [?], and many things I don’t know exactly what was going on with—various letters back and forth. So I’d often call him. He was the only one who remembered, and he remembered in precise detail.

Yes, so he would tell me all sorts of things—things I’d tried to find out and couldn’t, he really explained to me. Usually I was the one who called him, but there were a few times when he called me. I’m wondering whether to tell this or not, but since we’re already talking, as they say—

One time, I remember, I was sitting at home in Eilat, and suddenly I got a phone call. He introduced himself—it was after Rabbi Chananya Yosef [?] passed away.

The interviewer: A few years ago?

The guest: A few years ago, yes.

It was immediately after the passing. He opened the conversation by saying, “First of all, Buki Menachem, I’m sorry about your great-uncle’s passing.” He said, “Really, I should have written an article about him, as I used to do. That’s how we knew each other,” and so on.

Then he apologized. He explained that someone else had passed away a few days earlier, and that family had pressed him to write a eulogy article. He hadn’t wanted to write about them for a certain reason—I’ll whisper that person’s name to you afterward. So now that my great-uncle had passed away, if he wrote about him, he’d get into trouble with that family. That was why he couldn’t write it.

That was how the conversation began. Then, all of a sudden, he started opening up and talking about the days of the dispute.

I won’t say what he told me, because even if I did, no one would believe me. So it’s better not to say it.

The interviewer: What do you mean? What did he express?

The guest: No, he didn’t speak... He didn’t say... Not regret, not... He talked about it, perhaps...

The interviewer: Looking back on it? You mean he offered a new perspective on...

The guest: Look, we generally don’t talk about things like that. They’re things we want to forget.

The interviewer: Right, right. Yes, he brought it up.

The guest: He raised it and talked about it. I was shocked. The conversation went on with only him speaking, and I couldn’t even get a sentence in. I’m not his age—he was more than twenty-five years older than me. We’re not from the same generation. And he began talking about it, and kept talking, and I couldn’t even... Obviously, I was frozen in place at that moment, right through to the end of the call. And that was how the conversation ended—he spoke about it in a sudden outpouring.

The interviewer: So you felt that he needed to bring up the subject?

The guest: What?

The interviewer: That he seemed to need to bring it up?

The guest: Clearly. He didn’t just feel a need—he actually did it.

The interviewer: Yes.

The guest: He simply spoke about it at length, and I just listened and listened. I didn’t even respond.

The interviewer: I assume it was recorded? Maybe? Or wasn’t it recorded either?

The guest: No, no. I don’t record—I make a point of not recording conversations.

The interviewer: No? There’s an option where every cellphone conversation is recorded whether you want it to be or not.

The guest: Thanks to that, I’ve had a great many conversations with Rabbi Tuvia. I never saved any of them—what I remember, I remember, and what I don’t, I don’t.

In any case, it’s a very, very interesting point. I’m only telling this to say that, baruch Hashem, there are things you never forget, and there are things that work themselves out, baruch Hashem. I want to touch on something for a moment—actually, let’s step away from this internal discussion and talk about the phenomenon itself. We’re talking about Jerusalem—not Jerusalem of 5786, or even 5696. This goes back before 5696, to the twenties, let’s say: the Jerusalem of the Jerusalem Jew. After all, there’s a reason that whenever we Jerusalemites came to other Chabad yeshivos—to Kfar Chabad, or even to Lod—they would laugh at us: “Jerusalemite, Jerusalemite.” It was almost a derogatory term in Chabad, because the Jerusalem Jew walks around with both hands behind his back, looking after himself and his own little patch, his family’s good fortune. “I’ve saved my own soul.” And here a group arose that hadn’t come to Jerusalem from outside, but was from within it, from the very heart of Jerusalem—

Bone of its bone, yes, flesh of Jerusalem’s flesh—and began caring for whom? For people on the margins, as you said, immigrants from the Sephardi communities, who were hardly given a place at all. Not long ago, I saw that there’s a certain shul—not in Israel, actually—where you can’t even come in as an ordinary congregant unless you’re wearing a hat as well as a jacket. There are plenty of stories about that community, but Jerusalemites weren’t so different—not [unclear]. The whole idea that a group of deeply rooted Jerusalemites would suddenly devote their entire lives to helping others, when they couldn’t even be sure what would come of it—that was by no means a given.

To understand it, you really have to go back to the days before I was born. Someone called me recently, a young married man who studies history, and said, “There has to be a book called The History of Chabad in Jerusalem. There’s The History of Chabad in the Holy Land, and histories of this and that, but a history of Chabad in Jerusalem?” He said there’s an enormous amount of material, and you also have to understand everything that happened there. Why? It’s not a story you can tell in a few words. You’d have to set aside special time for it.

But very briefly—Jerusalem had a Chabad community for many years. There was a Tomchei Temimim yeshiva, a very successful and large yeshiva. In certain years it had mashpi’im; it had moved from Chevron to Jerusalem. In the early years, the Jerusalem Chabad chassidim very much wanted to be—very much wanted to be Chabad. There was something appealing about it, something very attractive about being a Chabad chossid.

The guest: And many really did become close, but they kept a certain boundary. There was a line they wouldn’t cross. Then the younger people began to come closer. The young people started leading the way, going further, becoming what you might call “Chabad through and through.” That also created friction between...

The interviewer: The older, more opinionated group and the one that was really active, let’s say.

The guest: Yes, though it wasn’t exactly a matter of opinionated versus active, because the earlier group was active too, and both had strong opinions. The question was whether to move forward.

The interviewer: How did that show itself? Just as an example.

The guest: I often mention this: the first Lubavitcher in Jerusalem to wear a fedora was my father.

The interviewer: Meaning he switched to a kneitsch, as it’s called?

The guest: He switched to a kneitsch, exactly. At his chuppah, he was still wearing a shtreimel.

The guest: After the chuppah, he put on the kneitsch. Apparently his wedding changed something.

The interviewer: In the family?

The guest: I mean, he didn’t have a father to pressure him, but his roots still had their influence [unclear].

The interviewer: Was his father-in-law a Gerer chossid?

The guest: Yes, his father-in-law was a Gerer chossid, but he was quite open-minded. It didn’t bother him at all.

The guest: But the family—my father didn’t have a father, since his father had passed away, but he had uncles: this uncle and that uncle, Uncle Ahar’le, Uncle Yitzchak, Uncle Yankel. They were all very close. If you want to know who got married after my father, just look around Jerusalem: if he wears a kneitsch, he got married afterward. Everyone who married before him wore a shtreimel. It’s tried and tested—except for one person, [Yosef?] Rabinowitz, who married before my father, wore a kneitsch, and married an American woman.

The guest: But that’s not the end of it. If you see someone wearing a kneitsch and someone wearing a shtreimel, you’ll know which one married before my father and which one married after. It caught on with everyone. It was a kind of...

The interviewer: But the Ramach, for example, I think he always wore a kneitsch.

The guest: No, that’s different, because he came from elsewhere.

The interviewer: He wasn’t part of that whole world?

The guest: Right, exactly. We’re talking about the Jerusalemites, those families with generations of roots here—Berl Wolf [unclear] and so on. I mean, I know that [unclear] married later, certainly. Yes, yes, yes. His children are younger than I am too, so I know. Once they got married—within half a year, they were already wearing a kneitsch.

The guest: It was a kind of closeness. There were all sorts of things, not just in this area.

The interviewer: Really, clothing—you have to explain this to anyone unfamiliar with it, because an outsider won’t understand—clothing is everything. In Charedi eyes, in the broader Charedi world, clothing really is everything. Don’t put on tefillin, don’t keep Shabbos—but how you dress? That’s the holiest of holies.

The guest: And it really was an enormous step. I remember once, Yossi Gopin, who’s a shliach in Connecticut and is now related to us as well—my nephew is his son-in-law, and there are other connections too—I was once in Summit [unclear], and he was sitting there at a farbrengen. It was already the small hours of the night.

The guest: I came in, and he didn’t remember who I was. He asked, “What’s your name?”—he didn’t know me. I told him, “I’m Eisenbach.” And he said, “Listen, I was born in Kfar Chabad, but your sister lives in Shikun Chabad—[her husband is] Rabbi Lior Peretz Silberstrom [unclear].”

The interviewer: Yes, that’s right, he’s my brother-in-law.

The guest: So he said, “I came to Jerusalem countless times. And I want to tell you: if anyone turned Jerusalem around, it was your father and your uncle, Shalom Leib [unclear]. The two of them made the revolution.” And really, whenever there was even the smallest thing that needed someone to push it forward, they did it.

The guest: For example, there used to be no communication between 770 and Eretz Yisroel, especially Jerusalem. People didn’t know the customs at all, or what was done. One day, someone came and saw that they were saying Selichos in the shul downstairs in Shikun Chabad, on Motzaei Shabbos. So he said, “Where did this come from? Because actually, only Chab...”

The interviewer: In other words, Rabbi Zalman Slonim was, in effect, a shliach of the Rebbe [unclear].

The guest: Under the Rebbe’s supervision, in Jerusalem.

He was a shliach all those years, for generations.

The guest: By the way, people don’t know how much he sacrificed. He would travel abroad to raise funds, travel to Russia, travel...

The interviewer: And when his son Moshe Slonim was born, I think he first saw him when he was about a year and a half old?

The guest: He wasn’t even...

He wasn’t there for the birth at all. They told him he’d had a son. “Fine, raise him. I’ll come say hello to him one day.” These are things we don’t know today. He truly gave himself over for the Rebbe. And the Rebbe—what the Rebbe meant to him is impossible to describe. Then one day he did something no one believed could be done at all.

To do such a thing—to establish a Charedi housing development outside the walls, what was called “outside the walls,” in Geulah, the name of the neighborhood. It wasn’t like later, when there was Kiryat Sanz and Kiryat Belz. None of that existed yet; everything was still somewhat undeveloped. There were hills there where we used to play, run away...

The interviewer: And he built it.

The guest: He went to a company there called Rassco, which built the buildings, and he came to them and said, “Come and build some buildings.”

Who would buy them? Someone had to buy them. He said, “I’ll take care of that for you.” Today it’s Shikun Chabad—six buildings, each with about 20 apartments, around 100 apartments altogether.

Interviewer: How could you find 10 or 20 Chabad chassidim to buy apartments, even beyond Jerusalem?

Guest: Anywhere at all. So he rallied everyone, and he had a level of credibility you can’t imagine. He went to Rassco and told them, “I’ll bring the buyers. I’ll fill the buildings.” That’s when they came on board and built them. By the way, it’s very interesting: for decades, Shikun Chabad had the tallest buildings in Jerusalem, visually speaking.

They were simply the tallest. Later they built Tovei Ha’ir and other buildings, and there’s Givat Shaul; today things are a bit different. But back then, in physical terms, those were the tallest buildings in Jerusalem. I laugh about it too, because our building was tall.

Interviewer: Right, the tallest.

Guest: And we lived on the top floor.

Interviewer: On a high floor altogether, right.

Guest: Yes. The Rebbe says that physical height reflects spiritual height, as with the Beis Hamikdash.

Interviewer: So you’re saying that out of that difficulty—I mean, other families moved there too. What happened was that Rassco built the buildings, but they couldn’t sell all the apartments to Chabad chassidim. There were other people too, all sorts of people who came...

Guest: There weren’t buildings—about the building my parents lived in, I think there was... Downstairs there was also Chanoch [?], Nachum Beck...

But there was Eisen too, and a few other families, yes.

In any case, Reb Zalman Slonim managed to bring in about 40% Chabad chassidim.

Interviewer: 40%, no more than that?

Guest: On the other hand, the other 60% back then were...

Interviewer: And even though it was 60–40...

Guest: Now there was...

The shul, yes, was called “Knesses Chabad.” That was a thorn in the side of the Litvaks who lived there.

Interviewer: No, in the early period there wasn’t that kind of distinction with the Litvaks. Chabad ran everything.

Guest: Chabad had 40%. The others went to daven at Har Tzvi; each person found his own corner. Near me, for example, there was also a Gerer chossid who owned an apartment, the owner of “Lechem Goldberg.”

Interviewer: Ah, yes.

Guest: Yes, everyone wanted to buy apartments there. Zalman Slonim didn’t sell only to Chabad chassidim, but he did say, “If there’s a Chabad connection, I...”

Interviewer: If they could point to a Chabad connection.

Guest: Yes. So, for example, my grandfather had—“Ides”...

He had that kind of connection, so he bought an apartment. Goldberg’s father-in-law also had some Chabad connection. Everyone had to find some sort of connection, and that’s how the shul filled up.

One very interesting thing, which I don’t want to go into at length, is that the rabbi of our neighborhood—

Interviewer: Was Rabbi Kanovitz.

Guest: Rabbi Kanovitz—no, before him there was Rabbi Chen.

No, not before him, not before him. Gershon Chen was a rabbi in Haifa.

Interviewer: Right.

Guest: Years later he came and bought an apartment in Jerusalem, in Shikun Chabad, when he was getting older.

Then he became known as the rabbi of Shikun Chabad. Rabbi Kanovitz was there earlier. He wasn’t the official rabbi; he had been a rabbi in Haifa, in [unclear], something to do with “Alexander.” He came to live there, and he was a rabbi. But when my mother had a question about a chicken—there was a little blood—she would send me to Rabbi Kanovitz.

Interviewer: Rabbi Kanovitz was there during Rabbi Chen’s lifetime. He was...

Guest: Certainly. Rabbi Kanovitz was the official rabbi, appointed by...

Interviewer: By the religious council?

Guest: He was on the religious council too. He would sit there in the mornings, selling Chumashim.

Interviewer: In the mornings?

Guest: Not just in the mornings. He would even sit in the office selling Chumashim. It was very strange. By the way, he was a very dear Jew.

A Jew who never spoke lashon hara, because the Chofetz Chaim had said he would never speak lashon hara. And Gershon, I think, sometimes—since he was sitting in the shul—would serve as the chazzan. If he went up to lead the davening, I had to... I never heard his voice. I never heard him lead the davening. Perhaps it was only on a yahrtzeit...

Interviewer: No, not just a yahrtzeit twice a year. Why?

Guest: I never happened to see it.

In any case, in any case—that’s one of the things. There was a rabbi, as you say, but you hardly heard his voice. He didn’t do much publicly, time and again, though he would offer intricate Torah discussions. He was basically a quiet man. His children were a bit more... He would answer questions, which is interesting. When people asked him questions, would he answer according to the Mishnah Berurah? Or no, perhaps not—according to the Alter Rebbe’s approach.

Interviewer: Ah, but he wasn’t really... Did the chassidim ask him? They didn’t approach him at all?

Guest: And he—but it’s remarkable that...

Interviewer: That they couldn’t even manage to have a rabbi...

Guest: The rabbi, the rabbi of Shikun Chabad, wasn’t a Chabad chossid either. We won’t get into why.

Things worked out so that, in the early years, Chabad had complete control of the shul. And I have to add one more thing here: I didn’t grow up davening there. Why? Because my father actually davened with Rabbi Zevin.

Rabbi Zevin had instructions in his father’s will that he should daven with a Chabad minyan. When he came to Eretz Yisroel and moved to Jerusalem, they prepared a place of honor for him at Har Tzvi. A delegation came to him: “Come daven with us. Everything is ready—the shtender and all. You’re our rabbi.”

For anyone who isn’t from Jerusalem, I should say that Har Tzvi is still a very large shul. Over the years it even had one floor for chassidim and another for Litvaks. It’s a large shul on Tzefania Street in central Jerusalem.

Interviewer: Yes, yes, in the northern neighborhoods, you might say. And in that respect too, he was held in very high regard.

When they called...

Guest: They knew how to appreciate Rabbi Zevin, so, I mean...

They always, always knew how to appreciate him. And then he said...

He avoided them and would go daven at Baal HaTanya.

Every Shabbos he would slip away and go there. Later, walking became difficult for him, so he...

For many years, he actually had a minyan in his home.

In his home. For 12 years he asked a group of chassidim to come daven there, because of what his father had written in his will. His father had been a rabbi in Bobruisk, and before he passed away, he wanted his son to remain on the path of Chassidus. He saw that his son also had a bit of an attraction to the Zionists, and to... So his father wanted to keep him connected to Chabad. He must have been a very shrewd man. He thought, “What can I tell him to do every day? Learn Chassidus and so on?” He had to daven in a Chabad shul. He wrote that in his will, and Rabbi Zevin kept to it: throughout his life he davened in a Chabad shul. So he asked a group of people to come, and my father was one of them—my father, Chanan Yosef. Sometimes my uncle, Rabbi Avraham [?] Friedman, would come too, and [?] also davened there. Yes, yes, yes.

Interviewer: Interesting.

Guest: My wife—I didn’t know it at the time—we were little children and played in that same shul. Years later, we also became... It’s interesting...

Husband and wife.

Interviewer: Ah, there were people there—there was a group, Rabbi Yitzchak Glitzenstein, the father of...

Right? He lived—I’d say he lived the closest.

What?

He lived quite close.

Yes, yes... All those who lived on Turim Street—Yankev Lizerman.

Yes, him too.

In short, there was a group of about 11 or 12 men. Everyone had to know that if he wasn’t coming on Shabbos, he had to make sure the minyan wouldn’t be short.

It was a one-of-a-kind shul. The whole thing was in his living room, really.

In his living room, which was completely lined, all around...

With sefarim. There wasn’t a single spot, not a wall without books, and even the windows were full of books. We davened there for 20 years. It was a fascinating place; I remember it as a child.

Interviewer: Did Rabbi Zevin speak?

Guest: Of course. There was a kiddush every Shabbos, and every Shabbos he would farbreng...

Interviewer: The kiddush—was it what the Rebbetzin prepared?

Guest: Yes. She would call out to us children not to eat before the adults ate. It was a proper kiddush, with kugel and everything else; they didn’t skimp. Shabbos after Shabbos, he never missed it. Every Shabbos he would farbreng—not for long, just briefly—and say l’chaim. Even when he was in a wheelchair in his later years, that kiddush was sacred to him. There are many, many stories. I’ve already written about different experiences in my columns. But one very interesting thing was that at Rabbi Zevin’s, all of Chabad politics was laid out on the table by the adults who came.

There were drawers full of letters from the Rebbe. Almost every week a letter would arrive: “Take care of this, take care of this, take care of this.”

Yes, he was—at one point, he was actually a member of the Chabad Rabbinical Court, I mean...

He was the Rebbe’s man back then, before they established the Chabad Rabbinical Court.

So whenever something needed to be done with the rabbinate in Eretz Yisroel, he was the person to go to. What he said was treated as holy of holies. And each time, they would go over, look, peek from the side, and then come and ask him what it was about. He was quite involved and would tell them about it. Sometimes he’d get angry: “Where did you see that? Who took it out?” Never mind—quite a few letters were stolen from him there.

And as a child, I remember that whenever they came home...

They would share their experiences. I grew up...

From childhood, with the...

With all of that, we—we spent less time in the Chabad neighborhood.

Later, after Rabbi Zevin passed away and so on, my father went back to davening in the Chabad neighborhood.

In the neighborhood. And then—well, by then I might already have been in yeshiva, actually.

Older, yes.

But in later years, the disputes over the character of the shul reached a point where they came back—with renewed intensity. I’m talking about the seventies and eighties, when there were real battles at almost every davening over who would lead the prayers and which nusach they would use. I remember that already as a teenager, not even as a child—real, actual scuffles there, even fistfights.

Interviewer: By then you were already, I think, a yeshiva bochur. Perhaps, in fact, the shul—after it was built—had always been fully under Chabad control, including in terms of attendance. The residents of the neighborhood who weren’t Chabad chassidim didn’t come to daven there on Shabbos at all, and certainly not on weekdays.

Guest: Well, over the years there were some internal Chabad tensions in the shul, and they took advantage of that. It was through those cracks that they managed to get in.

Interviewer: You’re saying it happened under cover of—I mean, because of the internal disputes?

Guest: There were internal disputes, that’s clear to me. If all the chassidim had stood as one, with one heart, there wouldn’t have been the slightest chance of the others gaining a foothold. But because there were—because they found various cracks, that’s how it started. Then it kept getting worse. By the late seventies, which is the period I’m talking about, there was also a very, very large migration out of the Chabad neighborhood. It became 85% non-Chabad; only 15% remained.

People moved—to Pisgat Ze’ev, to Ramot. Yes, that includes Rabbi Zelik Feldman, Rabbi Eliyahu Persov[?], Shalom, and Rabbi Naftali Lirot[?].

Much later—Rabbi Eliyahu Peretz moved much later, I think. But yes, various people... yes.

The years went by, and one person after another left. Some wanted bigger apartments. There were all kinds of reasons...

Yes, financial considerations, I think, for people. Quality-of-life considerations too, yes. And what happened was that a small handful really remained, fighting with all their might to preserve the shul’s Chabad character. It was very, very difficult. The person at the forefront was the gabbai, [unclear] Knosgel, who bore the brunt of all the insults. Little by little, they began taking control of various things.

They tried to take control—I don’t think they succeeded, in the end...

Unfortunately, they did succeed.

Interviewer: In what respect, do you think—the nusach, who led the prayers?

Guest: First of all, they set up separate minyanim, which was what they wanted. It got to the point where they even had space of their own in the shul. Since he knew he couldn’t fight them alone, and the community had aged as well—those who still lived in the Chabad neighborhood weren’t young anymore; everyone had grown older—he realized he had to negotiate with them somehow. So they negotiated, and little by little he allotted them places in the shul. They had a room of their own, with a cabinet where they held [unclear]. They had their own cabinet, with sweets and all sorts of things in it. They were already starting to take over, to occupy the place, so to speak. But I actually think that caused the opposite to happen—that...

Guest: Suddenly the whole city was in an uproar, and from that day the tide began to turn back. People suddenly started coming; they started talking about it. It stirred Chabad chassidim—even those living in Geulah, Tzefania [?], or Pagi [?]—to start showing up. There was a Chabad presence.

Guest: And there were a few young men there, young married men who had the strength to act. They went up to those young opponents and, one by one, simply told them: “If you try once more to harm Rabbi Chanan Segal [?], or Teichtel, or anyone else here, you’ll face the consequences [?].” From that day, the tide began to turn back. Boruch Hashem, little by little the Chabad House and the farbrengens became established there again. Later, when Chaim started holding farbrengens there, life in the shul returned to what it had been, and it has remained that way to this day.

Interviewer: So you’re saying it was that prank?

Guest: The one I orchestrated—the bottle—was the catalyst for all of it. But it was really with help from Heaven. If those fellows hadn’t taken matters into their own hands, it wouldn’t still be ours today.

Guest: Also, with all the neighborhoods built around it, 90%, 95% of the people davening there are from those neighborhoods.

Interviewer: Right. You know, before we really get to [unclear] and Eilat—and there’s plenty to talk about there—we can’t leave out the historical background. And we can’t leave out your distinguished father-in-law, Rabbi Shmuel Yehuda Leib Weinfeld, whom you’ve mentioned only by name.

Interviewer: I can tell you personally that for quite a few years, going back to my youth, when I had already begun writing for publication, I tried more than once to persuade him to sit down with me. Not even in front of cameras or microphones—just with me, and I would write it up afterward. But no. It never occurred to him that anyone should be able to point to an interview he had ever given.

Interviewer: There’s also a very beautiful story from around the middle of those years, about the moment when he and his brother, after inheriting the great business from their father, decided to part ways pleasantly and peacefully. Not because of a dispute, but so there wouldn’t be one.

Guest: Indeed, if you ask me who my father-in-law is—he is my teacher and rebbe. Just mentioning his name means so much to me. And the first thing I’d want to say about him, something the whole Jewish world could say, is that you cannot speak lashon hara with him.

Interviewer: Really?

Guest: You won’t succeed. You won’t. You sit together at Shabbos meals, you talk, and whenever the conversation reaches gossip, he’s not there. He’s not in that place. You try from one direction, you try from another, and nothing works. A person with such a guarded mouth—it’s something you don’t often see. Beyond that, he is one of the Rebbe’s great soldiers.

Interviewer: How did that show itself?

Guest: I think I recently wrote in one of my columns an amazing story. Rabbi Yitzchak Dov Groner met my brother-in-law, Rabbi Kalman Weissfeld, in Australia and told him, “I have to tell you something about your father-in-law—about your father.”

Interviewer: What’s the story?

Guest: He said, “One day I came to 770 and went in to say hello to my brother, Rabbi Leibel, the secretary. He was on the phone and didn’t even look at me until he finished the call. I asked him, ‘Who were you speaking to?’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you something amazing. Last night Rabbi Shmuel Weinfeld asked the Rebbe a question, and the Rebbe gave him an answer. I figured that if I called him then, it would be the middle of the night in Eretz Yisroel, so I decided I’d tell him tomorrow.’”

“When I came in to the Rebbe in the morning, the Rebbe asked me, ‘Have you already passed on the answer to him?’ I said, ‘No. I figured it was nighttime there, and I’m about to pass it on now.’ The Rebbe said firmly to him—as his brother told me, Rabbi Weinfeld—‘Why did you delay? When you’re told to do something, you have to do it immediately, immediately! You should have given him that answer last night.’”

Interviewer: Amazing, how particular the Rebbe was about this.

Guest: That reflects who he is so well. He’s a man of action, and not only in his own field—publishing, where he printed the Rambam and various booklets and prayer texts—but in general. He worked for decades on the Chumash he published, with all the variant readings of Rashi—and that’s only a small part of an entire undertaking. There’s also “Shai Lamora,” with all its textual variants. The Rebbe instructed him to go into the library, take the materials, photograph all the manuscripts of Rashi and all the editions, and work on them. It was a thirty-year life’s work. He stayed in his room working on it, following the Rebbe’s instruction.

But beyond his own field, where he worked so hard for the Rebbe’s causes, people don’t know just how much of a true soldier he was. For example, all those years he davened in their neighborhood shul. There were several Chabad chassidim there who could easily have walked to Mekor Baruch or the Chabad neighborhood and back. But there was a neighborhood shul that really belonged to everyone. Rabbi Atzo Kalperin was the shul’s rabbi; there was also [unclear] Gabelzman, Michel Katz for most of his life, and several Chabad chassidim. He made sure there were Chabad siddurim there, and a Likkutei Torah class every Friday night. When I came for Shabbos, there was a Likkutei Torah class.

Interviewer: Was it actually in one of the houses there, or was it a shul?

Guest: Under the building, yes. It’s called “Zichron Batya” [unclear], a very well-known shul. It’s small, admittedly, but...

Interviewer: Are there regular, ongoing minyanim there?

Guest: He davened there. And displayed there, too—when they established the shul, he asked the Rebbe for a bracha. The Rebbe sent a letter, a letter of blessing to all the people who davened there, and also sent a bottle of mashke.

Interviewer: So the letter was on display?

Guest: That letter was hanging there.

Interviewer: Perhaps... I’ve lived in Eilat for 40 years. There’s the tourist area and there’s the city itself, the residential area, right?

Guest: At the time, when they asked the Rebbe where to build the first Chabad House, the Rebbe wrote: in the residential area—even though you reach more people in the tourist area.

Interviewer: But the Rebbe wanted them to focus.

Guest: Even now, after 40 years, there are certain parts of the tourist area I don’t know. I’m almost never there. I mean, in my 40 years in Eilat, I’ve been to the sea twice. Once when the mikveh was closed, and once when I was at a hotel for Shabbos, so I immersed in the sea there. I don’t even go to the beach. Then there’s the city—Eilat is a city in every sense.

Interviewer: In every sense.

Guest: People... But when we arrived in Eilat, it was difficult. There were just a handful of shuls, and we started the first classes. The city was still small then, and many people began drawing closer to us. All that work—Rabbi Lichtenstein, Rabbi Lev Kapker; Rabbi Lev Kapker was there, along with another one or two young married men. We were really taking our first steps.

Then I noticed something very interesting. Several people who were already attending our classes and farbrengens would leave the shul, take off their kippahs and put them in their pockets. Eilat wasn’t yet ready for someone to walk around wearing a kippah, unless you were a rabbi or a shliach. Usually, when religious people left the shul, if a man was the gabbai or what they called a “Kaddishnik,” he’d have some kind of hat or cap.

Interviewer: But if he was just a regular member of the minyan, he’d put his kippah in his pocket as soon as he went out.

Guest: People who were beginning to draw closer couldn’t walk down the street with a kippah. I remember that stage. I remember when it changed, when suddenly it started—people began wearing kippahs openly.

Interviewer: Why? Because [unclear], or did something happen?

Guest: It was a process, as it was everywhere in Eretz Yisroel. There was tremendous progress in people drawing closer in cities across Israel that had been far removed, and the same happened in Eilat. I remember the gradual steps. And really, look at it today: there are now 40 shuls in Eilat. I’m the rabbi of a shul, a Sephardi shul, with 300 seats.

Interviewer: And they fill up?

Guest: Yes. On the holidays, of course, it’s packed and they open another shul. But for events, too, it’s sometimes full. I always say I have 597 ears listening to me, because we have 300 seats and three elderly men who hear with only one ear.

Interviewer: That’s a huge shul.

Guest: Yes, and... of course, almost all the people who daven there are from Sephardi communities. They fill the shul, and some of their children are even going to yeshivos now.

Today it’s a full-fledged city, and you can find anything you need for a life of kedushah there. There are products with kosher certification, which didn’t exist in the past. As for educational institutions, today Shas has schools, the religious Zionist community has schools, and we in Chabad have the leading school, with 400 children.

Interviewer: Run by your wife.

Guest: Yes, 400 children study at the Lubavitch school.

Interviewer: Still, life is life. In everyday life, let’s say there’s a family celebration for a sister, a brother-in-law, a sister-in-law, even a cousin, or close friends. You have to think about it. With a sister, of course, there’s nothing to think about, but with friends, I imagine you have to decide whether to attend the wedding or make do with an apology the next day, one way or another.

Guest: No, it’s clear that from Eilat you can’t travel to the vast majority of events. It’s the distance, and it’s the time. Sometimes getting to central Israel takes two days.

Interviewer: Two days.

Guest: On the day you travel, you have to leave early. From the morning you’re already getting organized, squeezing in everything you need to do, because in a few hours you have to set off. Then you arrive... You can’t always drive back at night because you’re tired. If you’re driving, you sleep there overnight, leave the next day and get home around noon. So it takes up two days.

Interviewer: In that respect, you really are abroad.

Guest: Even more so. Sometimes you can take a flight to Cyprus. My son has just gone to Cyprus on a particular mission—an hour there, and an hour later he was already back.

Interviewer: So could you also fly from Is... Are there flights?

Guest: Yes, but we don’t fly very much, because we need to be able to take a car, get there and help out. So we go by car. Sometimes it takes four hours, sometimes five. Sometimes you stop along the way, sometimes you have small children. In a sense, it’s even more remote than being abroad.

Interviewer: It’s far away.

Guest: Yes. They haven’t solved that yet.

Interviewer: Are things peaceful and calm in Eilat today, or is there... There’s an elephant in the room we haven’t talked about, but perhaps we should. As you said at the outset, do those who are at odds today need to know that one day everyone will be at peace?

Guest: Boruch Hashem, in Eilat, boruch Hashem, everything is fine. It says [unclear].

Interviewer: Still, if you’d like to address that point...

Guest: Boruch Hashem, the activity never stops, from morning till night, 24/7, all year long—whether it’s a leap year or not. The whole year is full of activity. Boruch Hashem, wonderful work is being done.

Interviewer: Can you picture a day when you and the rabbi sit together at the same farbrengen table, as Rabbi Levy and Rabbi Eisenbach eventually did?

Guest: I don’t have to picture it, because I even have a photo here on my phone from two or three days ago, when I sat together with the rabbi. He made a siyum on a tractate at the Ari z”l’s hilula.

Interviewer: Right, he does that every year.

Guest: Right. And I sit with him, and we say l’chaim together.

Interviewer: Really? That’s news to me.

Guest: More than that: as I said earlier, I’m the rabbi of a Sephardi shul in the Shahamon neighborhood, but on weekdays I daven at the Chabad House, at a minyan I established 25 or 30 years ago. Rabbi Eisenbach davens at that minyan regularly, and the person standing closest to him at Shacharis is me. I’m literally a meter and a half away from him. We daven together every day.

Interviewer: Well, what do you know? That’s news.

Guest: There’s no beis midrash without something new. I don’t know why this is news.

Interviewer: Wonderful. Well, I’m glad we met, and that you could put the viewers’ minds at ease about that too.

Guest: Yes, though I don’t think they need reassuring. Anyone who knows Eilat knows that, boruch Hashem, everything is fine.

Interviewer: Very nice. What are you hoping for?

Guest: What are we hoping for? The truth is, these days we’re not hoping for anything except the building of the third Beis Hamikdash and the coming of Moshiach. After all, he’ll come from the south, just as with the first Geulah, so too with the final Geulah—and King Moshiach [unclear]... When Rabbi Grossman was asked about this contradiction, since the Geulah comes from that direction—the south...

Interviewer: The south.

Guest: [Unclear]—it says that the revelation itself will take place in the north, in the Galilee, in Tzfas, but the first to see Moshiach will be the southerners.

Interviewer: The southerners?

Guest: Yes, us. We’ll bring him, he...

Interviewer: In our car, as they say—on an optimistic note. Rabbi Shimon Eisenbach, thank you so much for this fascinating conversation. It was truly rich, holy, and very, very interesting. Thank you for coming here to our studio. And of course, we thank Yosef David Suissa, who oversaw the whole production, and Yossi Rivkin, CEO of COL. We very much hope you enjoyed it, and we’ll see you in the next episode.

It looks like the text you pasted is actually boilerplate/UI content from a website (a YouTube transcript tool, complete with a cookie-consent error message, footer links, and pricing blurbs) rather than a description of an app you want to build. I don't want to guess and produce a spec for the wrong thing, so let's get this right.

To write a solid, build-ready spec, I'll need you to actually describe your app idea. Here's a quick template you can fill in (doesn't need to be formal — just give me what you know, and I'll fill gaps with sensible defaults and flag assumptions):

1. Core concept - One or two sentences: what does the app do, and who is it for?

2. Key features (must-haves) - List the 3–7 things the app absolutely must do.

3. User flow - Walk me through what a user does step by step, from opening the app to achieving their goal.

4. Platform - Web app, mobile app (iOS/Android/both), desktop, browser extension, API/backend only?

5. Tech preferences (optional) - Any preferred stack (e.g., React, Next.js, Python/FastAPI, Supabase, Firebase)? Or should I recommend one?

6. Data & integrations - What data does it store/process? Any third-party APIs/services it needs to talk to (e.g., YouTube, OpenAI, Stripe, auth providers)?

7. Auth & users - Does it need login/accounts? Roles (free vs. paid, admin vs. user)?

8. Monetization (if any) - Free, subscription, one-time purchase, ads, API usage-based?

9. Non-functional requirements - Expected scale (users, requests/day), performance needs, offline support, localization/multi-language, accessibility.

10. Nice-to-haves (optional/future) - Things that aren't required for v1 but you'd want eventually.

---

If it's helpful, since your pasted content was about a YouTube transcript tool, I can also just ask: is that actually what you want to build — an app that fetches YouTube video transcripts, supports many languages, translation, AI summaries, and chat-with-video, plus an API for automation? If so, say the word and I'll draft a full spec around that concept (data model, API endpoints, scraping/transcript-fetching approach, AI summary/chat pipeline, consent/privacy handling, pricing tiers, etc.).

Just let me know which direction to go and fill in what you can from the template above.