Lehisraanen Episode Three: Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Levin

00:00 Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to “Lehisraanen,” the podcast that brings you the vitality of Beis Chayeinu. On the podcast, Rabbi Nachum Goldschmid sits down with chassidim who were at the Rebbe’s side in 770, and who saw and experienced the most special moments throughout the year. Together with them, we’ll refresh our memories and hear what they went through and experienced. Our guest on the third episode is Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Levin of Tel Aviv, who will share what he saw, heard and experienced. Rabbi Levin had the privilege of being with the Rebbe in the early years and of serving as a link between the Rebbe and leading Torah figures. We’ll hear all his stories in this episode. The podcast is available on all podcast platforms, on the Drive, and—available as soon as it goes up in our Telegram group and on the Lehisraanen WhatsApp channel. The podcast is hosted by Rabbi Nachum Goldschmid and produced by Aharon Freiman. Rabbi Shmulik Kaplan helped produce this episode. Thank you very much, and yasher koach. Thank you for listening. Enjoy. Lehisraanen.

00:54 Speaker 2 Sholom aleichem. Welcome. We’re back with another episode of the Lehisraanen podcast, where chassidim talk about their experiences, their memories and their time at 770, Beis Chayeinu. Today, it’s a great honor to interview Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Levin. Rabbi Levin, tell us about your missions, your memories and your many years at 770. But first, let’s start at the beginning: where do you come from? What’s your background?

01:21 Speaker 1 Well, my father was... His father was a Litvish rabbi who received semichah, and he served as rabbi in several towns in Russia or Belarus. He studied in Volozhin—that is, he received semichah from the rabbi of Volozhin. One of the places where he served as rabbi was Mariupol. At that time... Rabbi Levik was chief rabbi in Yekaterinoslav, and I think Mariupol, or another town where my grandfather served as rabbi... He was rabbi in three towns. One was Izman [?], which I know was in Belarus; then Mariupol; and I’ve forgotten the name of the third. But in any case, it came under... Rabbi Levik was the—

02:19 Speaker 2 District rabbi.

02:20 Speaker 1 Head of the... the district rabbi, yes. My grandfather was under his authority. So quite often, when he had questions and needed to consult someone on matters of halachah, he would go to Rabbi Levik. I think he stayed there overnight.

02:34 Speaker 2 In Yekaterinoslav.

02:35 Speaker 1 [unclear]. And Rabbi Levik would also come to the places where he was the district rabbi, as you put it. And although... Now, Reb Itche der Masmid used to travel around. It’s well known that he traveled—

02:57 Speaker 2 As a shadar.

02:57 Speaker 1 Yes, he traveled to many places to draw boys from other yeshivos over to Tomchei Temimim. Once, on 19 Kislev, he came to the place where my grandfather was.

03:13 Speaker 2 What was your grandfather’s name?

03:14 Speaker 1 My father... I’m named after him too.

03:16 Speaker 2 Avraham Shmuel.

03:17 Speaker 1 Avraham Shmuel Levin.

03:17 Speaker 2 Avraham Shmuel.

03:18 Speaker 1 He was Litvish, but that didn’t mean what it does today. Reb Mendel Futerfas knew him and told me several times, “Zayde, your grandfather was a G-dly Jew, a fine Jew, a genuine Jew.” In a moment I’ll read you something that shows who he was. So Reb Itche der Masmid came and held a farbrengen in his shul, which wasn’t a Chassidic shul, and he urged my father to come to Tomchei Temimim. My father was somewhere between bar mitzvah age and fifteen, I think. My grandfather was sitting in the next room learning Gemara on 19 Kislev, and he heard Reb Itche der Masmid telling my father to come to Tomchei Temimim. That was a case of [unclear].

04:11 Speaker 2 Wow.

04:12 Speaker 1 He liked the idea, but he didn’t say anything. Afterward, Reb Tzvi Hirsch [unclear] spoke to him—to my grandfather. My grandfather said, “Things are very, very difficult now. I would have liked to send him to Slabodka, but that’s impossible now. So go to Tomchei Temimim. Whether you’ll be able to learn there, I don’t know, but one thing I’m sure of: you’ll remain a yerei Shamayim.” That too. Anyway, that’s how my father came to Lubavitch. He was in the classes with Motel Schusterman and Reb Yoel Shimon Kalmanson. His chavrusa was Reb Nachum Volosov, the father of Reb [unclear]’s father. Where did they learn? Huh? Where did they learn? On Market Street, in all sorts of clandestine locations, I think. In any case, my father told me a few things. Once, my grandfather had been to see Rabbi Levik, and when he came back, he said at home—he had a daughter named Leah, Reiza Leah, I think, or Leah—my grandfather said, “We should think of Rabbi Levik as a match for Leah.” That’s what he said. In other words, his own rabbi was [unclear]; I know that to this day. So he knew how to recognize quality. He recognized who Rabbi Levik was. Now, there was another very nice story. My father told me it involved Rabbi [unclear], but I think it was Rabbi Levik. He told me it was a rabbi—he said [unclear]—and I think he meant Rabbi Levik. Once, either Rabbi [unclear] or Rabbi Levik was in that town, and the next morning he davened Shacharis in the shul where my grandfather was. There was a bris there, and the father—

06:33 Speaker 1 The baby’s father offered him sandakaus. To the rabbi? To the rabbi. So the rabbi told him, “Give it to Rabbi [unclear].” Or if it was Rabbi Levik... I don’t know who it was. That’s how he knew how to recognize people. Yes, yes, yes. Anyway, well, that’s where I... When did you come to America? Yes, America—that was... My father had already come to America. What? My father came to America with the [unclear], if you know what... Yes, of course. Yes. He had... That is, he left Russia as a [unclear]. Huh? As a... Yes, as a [unclear]. Where had he been until then? He had... Look, all right. Yes. He showed mesirus nefesh. They caught him and held him in Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where they tortured him terribly. They knocked out fourteen of his teeth. They told him, “Listen, we’re giving you a list of ten people. We’re looking for these ten people, and we know you know who they are and where they are. We’re giving you two weeks. Come back and tell us, and if you don’t, we’ll shoot you immediately.” Either you turn them in, or we kill you. Yes. Wow. Yes, and don’t think you can get away, because we’re watching you. He left there not knowing what to do. He was beside himself; he cried and cried all the time. He didn’t know what to do, but he couldn’t turn them in, G-d forbid. So I think he made a neder that if Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought him from distress to relief, he would say Tehillim all day long, something like that. Because as I remember him, he said Tehillim every day, Tehillim all the time. So...

08:48 Speaker 1 And that’s what happened. There was a miracle. He managed to fulfill his obligations. We arrived in the United States and went to... We arrived in Boston, where Rabbi Sol Golden [?] and Hershel Folkman [?] were, and I went to kindergarten there. I think first grade too. Later he moved to [unclear], a place called Louisville, Kentucky. Anyway, the first time I came to see the Rebbe was... I went in; it was around Parshas Ki Seitzei, Kislev 5709, in one of the halls. What I remember is that it was around the middle of May. I was still before bar mitzvah, but the first time I got there, when I went in, all I could see was legs. Everyone was up on the... Did you come with your father? No, with someone else. That was the first time I saw the Rebbe, but you didn’t yet understand. I didn’t understand, and that was fine. Then I went a second time, around [unclear]. I remember when the Rebbe taught the niggun “Rachamana d’Anei La’aniyei, Aneinu.” I don’t remember when that was. 5706, in the winter. In the winter, in the evening, I was teaching in cheder. 5706. 5706. Yes, could be. I was there then. What I remember is that when the Rebbe taught it, he also distributed mashke, which they poured into [unclear]. Yes. Then he taught the niggun, and everyone sang it. It was still at three, and everyone... The Rebbe said to dance, so they danced. The Rebbe was giving out mashke, and everyone was dancing to the new niggun, “Rachamana.” And I remember that someone approached the Rebbe... Give me my hat. Please. Someone approached the Rebbe like this and made a request. The Rebbe looked at him and said... I don’t know who it was. [unclear]. Yes. So that’s it. About how many people were there then? Maybe a hundred. That was really...

11:42 Speaker 1 What happened just now, I remember well; we’ll get to it in a moment. So, you were already after your bar mitzvah that winter? In the winter, in the winter. That was still before my bar mitzvah, but afterward... In 5716 you were still before your bar mitzvah. Yes, 5716, 5716. I had my bar mitzvah. Yes, the bar mitzvah was in Tammuz [?]. So I arrived and entered Tomchei Temimim after my bar mitzvah, at age fifteen, and I was at [unclear]. I was studying at [unclear] then. And before I forget, I want to tell you something very, very interesting that I remember. I spoke with the person it happened to. I couldn’t find it in the written account. There’s a man named, uh, Rakefet [?], I think, Rabbi Rakefet [?]. He’s in Jerusalem now; he’s already elderly. He was a boy from America. He grew up and studied there—an American boy, as they say. When he was a young man, they sent him to Lakewood.

13:02 Speaker 9 Near Tzfas.

13:05 Speaker 1 So he really connected with it. But his parents were a little modern and wanted him to have something as well—

13:16 Speaker 9 An education.

13:16 Speaker 1 An education. So they took him and enrolled him at Yeshiva University, where Rabbi Yosef “Yoshe Ber” Soloveitchik taught. He connected with him and became one of his leading students, right to the very end. To him, Rabbi Soloveitchik was his rebbe. He really was a leading student. So he tells this story. I also saw it in a podcast—I mean, on YouTube. I saw the story and then called him. I spoke with him and asked whether it was true, because I hadn’t seen it in the written account. Just listen to this. He said, “Yes, it’s one hundred percent true. One hundred percent.” This is how he tells it. When he was a young man, a student in about his third year—or his second year—he says, he grew up among Litvaks. Their impression of rebbes, of Chassidic rebbes, was that they were good for saying l’chaim, songs, blessings, being a tzaddik—but studying pilpul, really learning, that was—

14:26 Speaker 9 For other people.

14:27 Speaker 1 Other people, other people. He says that around Tu BiShvat [?], word suddenly got around that the new Lubavitcher Rebbe was already recognized as a great scholar. He spoke [unclear]. So I said to my friend—we were young; he said he was eighteen—“Let’s see what this fellow is like. Let’s go check him out.” We saw an announcement that there would be a farbrengen there on such-and-such a day. He says it was 19 Kislev. He arrived with his friend, and there weren’t many people there then. They stood directly in front of the Rebbe, face to face. He says, “I don’t know whether the Rebbe knew why we’d come, or whether he looked at us and immediately—”

15:20 Speaker 9 Understood.

15:21 Speaker 1 “Understood. But I remember it as if it were today, and I’ll never forget it. He saw us and said, ‘In another week, another week—soon it will be Chanukah. On Chanukah there’s the well-known question of the Beis Yosef: Why do we celebrate for eight days, when the miracle was only for seven? There are many, many answers. But I want to offer an answer of my own.’ The Rebbe said, ‘The kohanim who entered the Beis Hamikdash and found the flask of oil were chassidim, not misnagdim. What’s the proof?’ He explained, ‘Imagine they’d been misnagdim. They go in and find the flask of oil, and for them everything has to be orderly and calculated. We have enough here for one day. After that, we’ll have to make the three-day trip to the Galilee and come back. There’s a Shabbos in between, another interruption. We’ll light for one day and then have a break. So why light now? Let’s do this properly and in order.’”

16:53 Speaker 10 Wait until we have enough oil.

16:55 Speaker 1 Yes, enough oil for another seven days, for all eight days. Then it’s orderly; there’s no problem. That all makes sense, the Rebbe said. But with chassidim, [unclear].

17:08 Speaker 10 Everything is done for the sake of—

17:09 Speaker 1 [Unclear.] He says the Rebbe was looking at them. I asked him about it, and he said, “It’s one hundred percent true.” I couldn’t find it in the sicha. Anyway, that was with Rabbi [unclear] there. Now—

17:26 Speaker 10 Let’s go back to your years at [unclear].

17:28 Speaker 1 So I was at [unclear], and what’s very interesting is—I arrived in 5722, at Pesach 5722. Back then, the farbrengen area still hadn’t been opened up toward Kingston. Nothing. It was really very small. You could see and hear everything.

18:05 Speaker 10 A small place.

18:06 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, I know. Reb Yitzchak Reichfeld [?], who now puts together Dvar Malchus—there was a story about him this Shabbos, in my conversation with Rabbi Meir Plotkin. He told a story about Reb Yitzchak Reichfeld [?], about how the Rebbe once came in at night—

18:22 Speaker 10 And looked at him while he was learning.

18:24 Speaker 1 While he was learning. I remember him too. He was very thin, very thin, when he worked on Dvar Malchus—that’s how I remember him. Besides, he’s the only one to whom the Rebbe gave a written approbation. But another thing I remember as if it were today: at a farbrengen, he was a bochur standing on the benches with all the other bochurim. In the middle of the farbrengen, the Rebbe looked at him and said, “Chaver mayner, zorg dich.”

18:54 Speaker 10 Chaver mayner.

18:54 Speaker 1 Chaver mayner.

18:55 Speaker 10 “My friend.”

18:56 Speaker 1 Friend. Anyway, something very, very interesting happened there. You know, there are many things we knew nothing about at the time. Now that the letters and everything else are available, truly remarkable things are coming to light. There was something I saw at a farbrengen twenty years ago that I didn’t understand. Every so often I would think, “What was that? What was that?” Oy, Eibershter.

19:32 Speaker 10 Master of the Universe.

19:35 Speaker 1 And I saw an interview with him. It was Zalman Schachter. Zalman Schachter and Shlomo Carlebach were among the first bochurim to study at 770. They were brilliant students. Zalman eventually left the path, as we know. But I think [unclear] did several interviews with him. He says there that he connected more emotionally with the Frierdiker Rebbe than with the Rebbe. But the Rebbe also drew him close, and he had—

20:22 Speaker 10 A very strong connection with him too.

20:23 Speaker 1 Yes. Even after he’d left the path and everything. People told me that he was a friend of Shlomo’s, and when he came to Shlomo Carlebach’s funeral, he started knocking on the coffin: “Shlomo, Shlomo...”

20:43 Speaker 10 So even personal things the Rebbe said could be heard.

22:07 Speaker 1 Yes. Here I couldn’t hear what they said, because it was in the middle of the farbrengen. But I did see and hear this: he approached the Rebbe and spoke with him, and the Rebbe said, “Nein, nein,” as he spoke to him. Then the Rebbe poured him—

22:35 Speaker 10 Poured him—

22:35 Speaker 1 A cup, a ganze kos.

22:37 Speaker 10 A whole cup, a full cup.

22:38 Speaker 1 And it was too much for him. He couldn’t handle it; he drank it all on an empty stomach.

22:45 Speaker 10 Meaning, he drank the entire cup and immediately fell over, fainted.

22:48 Speaker 1 That’s it, that’s it. And that was the last time he came to the Rebbe. He didn’t come to the Rebbe again after that. Then he began to slide further and further, until... Every so often I’d think, “What was that ‘Nein, nein’? What was it?” Then I saw an interview with him. Someone interviewed him, the way you’re interviewing me now, about his background. In the middle, the interviewer asked him, “Listen, you grew up in Chabad, in [unclear]. What was your connection with the Rebbe and all that?” He started telling him, and then the interviewer asked, “Why did you break off contact?” He said, “I’ll tell you why. Once I came to him. It was the time of the hippies, and there were all sorts of new things.” Shlomo Carlebach had started taking drugs for a period. He said he needed to reach the hippies, who were taking drugs all the time. He needed to feel—

24:10 Speaker 10 What they felt.

24:10 Speaker 1 What they felt, so he could draw them close. So he started doing the same thing, but in the end he fell. Zalman also said he’d gotten involved in what’s called transcendental meditation. The Rebbe’s meditation is really—

26:27 Speaker 10 “Remember me.”

26:28 Speaker 1 “Think of me.”

26:29 Speaker 10 “Think of me.”

26:30 Speaker 1 He said, “I’m telling you”—that’s what Zalman said—“at first, you have no idea what that did for me.” He said, “What he told me there was that however far I’d fallen, I hadn’t fallen out of the nest. I was still in the nest. I hadn’t fallen out of the nest.” And he actually cried. That’s what I learned afterward. Anyway, that’s one of the experiences I—

26:54 Speaker 10 It’s interesting: the Rebbe was, so to speak, looking at his soul, at the connection—

26:59 Speaker 1 At his soul. You see.

27:03 Speaker 10 So you remember that from the 1950s, when he was with the Rebbe.

27:06 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

27:07 Speaker 10 So until what year were you at Bedford?

27:10 Speaker 1 I was at Bedford until 5722. In 5722 we finished at Bedford. After Bedford, there were three places you could go.

27:29 Speaker 10 Before 770.

27:32 Speaker 1 To Newark, or Montreal, or Eretz Yisroel.

27:35 Speaker 10 Well, there was already one in Eretz Yisroel.

27:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

27:37 Speaker 10 Not Morristown?

27:38 Speaker 1 No, before Morristown.

27:39 Speaker 10 It was still there.

27:40 Speaker 1 Newark was before Morristown.

27:42 Speaker 10 Yes.

27:42 Speaker 1 There was Newark.

27:44 Speaker 10 Montreal.

27:45 Speaker 1 Montreal and Eretz Yisroel. Yes. Rabbi Noach Tratman[?] called me. He knew my father and all that, and he invited me to Kfar Chabad.

28:00 Speaker 10 To come to Kfar Chabad.

28:01 Speaker 1 So I came to Kfar Chabad. That same year, 5722, on the night after Yom Kippur, Sholom Ber Golda came up to me—Sholom from the [unclear]. No, not him. Not him. Someone else, named Shlomo Ber. He knew me. He said that [unclear].

28:30 Speaker 10 He had broken his leg.

28:31 Speaker 1 And he couldn’t be there to serve. He wanted me to take his place. I was a bochur of seventeen or eighteen then. Fine, so I did it. I wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t know what it meant.

28:44 Speaker 10 What was it? At the house, you mean?

28:46 Speaker 1 Where the Rebbe would eat after Yom Kippur, that’s where.

28:49 Speaker 10 Ah, just at the meal after Yom Kippur.

28:51 Speaker 1 This was still before 5730.

28:53 Speaker 10 No, I understand. It was just that one time, at the meal upstairs in [unclear].

28:57 Speaker 1 I used to come to the sedarim. I’d come after, when people were allowed to go into the meal, but I had never been a waiter.

29:06 Speaker 10 To be a waiter—and that was on the night after Yom Kippur, 5722.

29:10 Speaker 1 5722. What I remember is that Rabbi Shmuel Votin was sitting there, and Mottel—Mottel Ber Rivkin, um, um, Mash—

29:22 Speaker 10 Mash Ber.

29:23 Speaker 1 Mash Ber Rivkin.

29:24 Speaker 10 Ber Rivkin.

29:25 Speaker 1 Ber Rivkin, and others. And Yitzchak Horgan, and a few more. I don’t remember them all. Maybe [unclear]—no, no, he stayed in—and Rabbi Shmuel Dovid may have been there too. Anyway, the Rebbe was sitting, say, where you’re sitting now, and I was sitting here, at the—well, at the, at the—

29:46 Speaker 10 What, opposite him?

29:48 Speaker 1 At the far end here, at the far end. I could see it wasn’t for me. I didn’t eat. It was after Yom Kippur, and I needed to eat something. I didn’t eat; I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t eat. Everyone else was eating. I think Malka was there with me then, too. I simply couldn’t eat. And they asked—Reinis, the shliach Reinis, was there too—they asked me to bring the Rebbe soup. I said, “Absolutely not. I can’t. I need—”

30:18 Speaker 10 You hadn’t seen—

30:19 Speaker 1 And I couldn’t. I asked that anything that had to be brought to the Rebbe, I shouldn’t be the one to do it. I just couldn’t. And I said, “This isn’t for me.” You know what that means? It was just—it was. Anyway, I went back there, but I didn’t know what would happen. Even before the Rebbe arrived, I was sitting there. Toward the end, as I remember it, Mottel Ber—Mash Ber began asking the Rebbe something about the tekios. He asked something about the tekios, and the Rebbe said, “By my father-in-law, that wouldn’t have happened.” That, I think, is what he said.

31:09 Speaker 10 I didn’t see the father-in-law.

31:11 Speaker 1 I saw more. So it was [unclear] “by my father-in-law.” Maybe he was referring to the Frierdiker Rebbe or something, but the Rebbe said it to him several times, as if he was taken aback by it.

31:27 Speaker 10 Not necessarily those exact words.

31:29 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. No, no, I don’t remember exactly, but it was something quite striking. Anyway, at the end, after they had made a minyan there without me, I went in. You know, the whole time I’d been looking for a way to get out of there, to—to be away from there. I was in the kitchen, dealing with the dishes and all that. Suddenly someone ran over to me—I think it was Malka—and said, “What are you doing here? The Rebbe is waiting for you! The Rebbe won’t start bentching until you come, until everyone is there.” So I went in and sat down, and that was it. Well, as I was telling you, I—

32:19 Speaker 10 You traveled to Eretz Yisroel that year.

32:20 Speaker 1 After Shabbos Bereishis, yes. Shabbos Bereishis. I traveled to Eretz Yisroel after Shabbos Bereishis. Something very interesting happened that Shabbos Bereishis, and I heard it too. I heard it because, as I told you, you could hear everything. I remember it to this day; I heard it very clearly. Reb [unclear] of Minsk, for example, was [unclear]. I think he was a friend of Rabbi Moishe [unclear], who was here in Eretz Yisroel at first. Anyway, he was [unclear]. I remember him going up to the Rebbe between one [unclear] and the next, when people could already speak to the Rebbe. He asked the Rebbe why Sefer Hamaamarim 5711 hadn’t been printed. It was in kuntreisim; it hadn’t been published as a book yet. [unclear] I remember the Rebbe saying to him, “[unclear] 5711 [unclear]?” You and 5711—

33:30 Speaker 10 An expert.

33:30 Speaker 1 An expert. Fine. Anyway, before I went there, the bochurim—Yerushalmi, Jacobson from my class, and a few others—said to me, “You’re going to Kfar Chabad. Be careful: stay away from Reb Shlomo Chaim, because he’s a separatist, and don’t become a separatist yourself. If you get close to him, you’ll become one. Be careful.” I was an innocent, naive bochur. What did I know? That was how it was. But before I traveled, I went in to ask for a parting bracha. As was customary when traveling. I had been in yechidus with the Rebbe in Tammuz for my birthday, and I went in again for a parting bracha.

34:24 Speaker 10 A yechidus before you traveled to Eretz Yisroel.

34:27 Speaker 1 That was how it was then. So I went in and told the Rebbe that I was traveling, and so on. I’ve told this story many times, and it’s even been recorded, but it bears telling again.

34:42 Speaker 10 Of course, yes.

34:43 Speaker 1 So I went in to the Rebbe, and he looked and saw that I was going to Kfar Chabad. Then he said, “I want to make an agreement with you.” He didn’t use that exact word, but he said he wanted to make an agreement, so it was an agreement.

34:57 Speaker 10 “In that case, I want to make an agreement with you.”

35:00 Speaker 1 “You’ll write to me every month, and [unclear] before Erev Yom Kippur.”

35:08 Speaker 10 Thursday.

35:09 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. Before Erev Yom Kippur. And he looked at me with half a smile and said, “Don’t write to me about the weather. Write to me about what you’re learning.” And he gave me brachos. Fine. I arrived in Kfar Chabad, and as my friends had instructed me, I had to keep my distance from Reb Shlomo Chaim, and that’s what I did. I mean, I just didn’t approach him. I said “Sholom aleichem,” as one normally does, but I kept my distance. That was it. A month or two went by. After the first month, I wrote to the Rebbe. I didn’t expect an answer, but I was very surprised to receive one. In it, the Rebbe wrote [unclear], and that I should learn diligently, and there were brachos. Incidentally, every time I wrote to him, he answered me, either like that or with what they call a general-personal letter. Even when it was a general letter, he would add something in the margin in his own handwriting, something. After two months, I asked him something about avodah, and the Rebbe told me, “[unclear].” I’d have to look at it again. The point is that the moment I received it, everything my friends had said was set aside.

37:19 Speaker 11 All the warnings.

37:20 Speaker 1 The warnings and all that. I went and became close to him.

37:26 Speaker 11 Did you tell him it was the Rebbe’s idea?

37:28 Speaker 1 What?

37:28 Speaker 11 Did you tell Shlomo Chaim that—

37:29 Speaker 1 I think so. Yes, yes. I became close to him, very, very close. To this day, I very much regret not speaking with him more about avodah. I didn’t work on avodah; I was more involved in maamarim and so on. I regret that very much. I saw many times that when I was learning something in a letter the Rebbe had written to me, I’d bring it to show him. He’d say, “Wait.” His hat was there, and [unclear], and I think the two of us would go—

38:08 Speaker 11 To wash up.

38:08 Speaker 1 And he would stand there and look at it. He’d actually stand. Now I’ll tell you something else. I won’t mention names, but I remember this. A group arrived from [unclear]. The bochurim in that group have standing today—have had it for years.

38:39 Speaker 11 They’re prominent people.

38:40 Speaker 1 Yes. They had arrived then, and apparently before they traveled they had been very, very close to Reb Shlomo Chaim. Very close. After they arrived from [unclear], they apparently received warnings about him. Once they got there, they distanced themselves from him completely. They would sit at his farbrengens, but before that they used to sit right next to him and even talk with him. He gave a Tanya class every day at seven, and if you talked or disturbed it, it would drive him out of his mind. And there they were, talking and disturbing him. I don’t know if they did it deliberately or just like that. He felt it. In the middle, he couldn’t take it anymore. They were disturbing him, and he stood up like this. He began to cry and said, “What do you want from me? What do you want from me?” He said it in Yiddish. “What do you want from me? You want me to be connected to the Rebbe? But the Rebbe [unclear] was my father. What do you—how do you expect me to? He’s my father.” He cried and cried, and then, in an instant, he became serious and forceful. He began to say, “But you should know one thing: however connected you think you are to your Rebbe today, I am ten times more connected to him than you are. What makes you connected to him? Do you daven? What do you want—what makes you connected? What? Ten times more than you.” It was something, I’m telling you. It was—it was something.

40:40 Speaker 12 That was part of it; he had it coming.

40:42 Speaker 1 Yes, but today you can see that it was—after all, why did he distance himself? He didn’t—he said he didn’t allow people to travel to the Rebbe whenever they wanted. He was—

40:52 Speaker 12 And today you can see it in Igros Kodesh.

40:53 Speaker 1 Clearly, if he had wanted to, he could have—he took all the arrows. He didn’t tell them that. He took all the arrows.

40:59 Speaker 12 He didn’t leave them to deal with it. He writes about it, and he took it upon himself.

41:01 Speaker 1 Certainly, he took all the arrows. And I was very, very close to him. There was something special about him, and I still remember that day of his very sharply. It isn’t enough to look at Chassidus the way he did. In any case, when I would get a letter from the Rebbe, you have no idea what it did to me. It was adrenaline. How do you say it—adrenaline? Adrenaline. It gave me—I really was—it gave me a push for days afterward. I could work, and there were no distracting thoughts. None, none, none. You’re on an entirely different level. Now, I started learning Chassidus with Reb—who was it? Boruch Kesselman. He taught us Shulchan Mesillas Yechidah. He knew it inside out. He was wonderful, wonderful—a wonderful man.

41:59 Speaker 12 By the way, today is his yahrtzeit.

42:01 Speaker 1 Oh, yes?

42:02 Speaker 12 It’s on 7 Shvat.

42:02 Speaker 1 Oh! So how did it work then? I would ask him a lot of questions about Chassidus, and he told me that all the subjects in Chassidus, in all the sefarim—don’t think they’re scattered everywhere; it’s all in Shulchan Mesillas Yechidah. He said Shulchan Mesillas Yechidah was considered a compendium of Chassidus. That, too, is a—a compendium.

42:30 Speaker 12 That’s the one by [unclear].

42:31 Speaker 1 By [unclear], yes. So that was Shulchan. And I wanted to learn Chassidus. What did I do? I went and reviewed the whole of Shulchan Mesillas Yechidah by heart, to myself. It took weeks, and it really—it made a mark. I began reviewing maamarim Shabbos after Shabbos and all that. And I was—and I would receive all kinds of letters from the Rebbe, as I told you.

43:11 Speaker 12 Did you write to him every month?

43:11 Speaker 1 Every month, yes. I told him which chapters I had reviewed, which chapters of Shulchan Mesillas Yechidah I had learned by heart for myself. Nobody knows that. I’m saying it now. But one time, I remember it as if it were today, I received—I didn’t know it was a letter that many people got. I thought it was something personal to me. He sent it to me. It turned out that many people received it through [unclear]; the Rebbe had sent that maamar to many people. But at the time, all I knew was that he had sent it to me. I received a maamar from the Rebbe, and I was immersed in maamarim then. I would review one maamar after another, and suddenly the Rebbe sends me—I thought it was just for me. What can I tell you? For three days, or maybe the whole week, I don’t know, I didn’t feel anything else. I was so absorbed that I didn’t even want to eat. No, no, no.

44:22 Speaker 12 In practice, nothing else matters.

44:24 Speaker 1 Exactly, absolutely. You lose track of the time. Of course, that Shabbos I reviewed the entire maamar and kept it with me. But it did something to me that—I wish I had that today.

44:42 Speaker 12 Until you came to Eretz Yisroel.

44:44 Speaker 1 I’m glad you brought that up. I want to explain something very interesting. It was still 5727, and I wanted to go for Pesach to—to—no, it was already later that year—no, it was still 5727, yes. For a year and a half already I had wanted to go to the Rebbe. Not so much to my family—to the Rebbe. I wanted to be with the Rebbe. So the Rebbe sent me a letter. That letter is printed in Igros Kodesh, in volume [unclear], and he tells me this: “Since in Elul there will be a charter flight here, and a group will be coming...” There were many, many—first of all, he tells me, “We’ll speak with Anash.” And since in Elul there would be a charter flight, and there were several [unclear]—it’s there in the letter, you know, about the group—he said to wait until then and that we would speak with Anash. And I liked that.

45:43 Speaker 12 That you would speak.

45:44 Speaker 1 With Anash. Now I’ll tell you why that affected me so much. It was still 5727. In Iyar 5727, for five hours, everyone was completely frantic. They hadn’t done anything yet.

46:05 Speaker 12 They were afraid.

46:06 Speaker 1 They were afraid, yes. And there were many who needed to know what to do—all the foreigners; there were many foreigners besides me. Weinberg’s father and the others, all of Anash, asked the Rebbe what to do. The Rebbe sent back: “There is no need to be afraid. Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” My mother also asked me to come, and I got a notice from the embassy, because I was an American citizen. At Lod—nothing had happened at Lod yet—there would be a free plane for citizens. I got that notice. I tore it up, of course, but I was very calm. They asked me, “Why are you so calm?” I said, “The Rebbe told me Elul, so I know nothing is going to happen.” What was there to worry about?

46:58 Speaker 12 You said something about your mother asking?

46:59 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. I only said that my mother—and everyone else—but I was calm. What was there to worry about? But then it began. It was a Monday. About two weeks before that, something happened: [unclear] came into the zal and told us, “Since there’s an order from Civil Defense, they say that—”

47:25 Speaker 12 They called it HAGA.

47:26 Speaker 1 HAGA, yes. Yes, right. They were afraid of what might happen, and they were allowing people to dig mass graves.

47:37 Speaker 12 A mass grave.

47:38 Speaker 1 To dig. So he said, “They’re giving permission now, in the middle of seder. Anyone who wants to go dig can go over there, to the side.” Of course, I didn’t go. Well, Monday came. It started on Monday. At eight in the morning I went to the post office to send my parents a postcard, and on my way back someone came up to me and said, “Did you hear?” I said, “What?” “It started.” I said, “What started?” “The war started.” I came back and saw, as soon as I entered the zal, before Shacharis, that they were still sticking things onto the windows so they wouldn’t— It was quite an experience. That night there was no light. If someone wanted to—

48:36 Speaker 13 Go up.

48:37 Speaker 1 Oh, yes. And if someone wanted to sleep, he would make [unclear]. It was something. And afterward, where the zal is now—in my day there was a sign there—they went up onto the roof to see what was happening. You could see the smoke in the air. What I remember is that early Tuesday morning, around five, I got up. Who could sleep at all? So I got up to go to the mikveh and then Shacharis, and nearby was Rabbi Zalman Guri—Zecharya Guri.

49:23 Speaker 13 Zecharya Guri.

49:24 Speaker 1 Zecharya Guri. Guri was a bochur then, and he had gone to [unclear] in the zal, and he still couldn’t speak to us. So I asked him—after all, I had slept—I asked, “Nu, what’s happening? What’s happening?” Because before I went to sleep, we kept hearing that MiGs were being brought down, MiGs, that the IDF—

49:50 Speaker 13 Barrages.

49:51 Speaker 1 The IDF—

49:51 Speaker 13 Was attacking.

49:53 Speaker 1 The IDF was attacking, and they had brought down many MiGs. So I asked him, “Nu, how many MiGs? What’s happening?” I asked Zecharya, “How many MiGs?” And he answered like this. I said, “What, three hundred?” “Three thousand,” he told me. “Three thousand.” What I want to tell you is this: as I told you, Reb Shlomo Chaim couldn’t bear it when he was saying Tehillim—

50:28 Speaker 13 People talking.

50:29 Speaker 1 ...to speak. Now, during the Six-Day War, there was no regular schedule. There was no schedule, but he wouldn’t give up his Tehillim at seven. So we sat there, where the zal used to be—where I think the dining room is today. I think... maybe it’s different now. But he sat there and began.

50:59 Speaker 13 Tehillim.

51:00 Speaker 1 Tehillim. And [unclear] was outside. He came over there, and there were windows, so you could hear everything outside. He was pacing back and forth, shouting something over and over. Reb Shlomo Chaim didn’t catch the words—just the noise. He didn’t know where it was coming from. He got upset and said, “What are you doing making all that noise?”

51:32 Speaker 13 Go into the pits you dug.

51:34 Speaker 1 “Go into the pits you dug yourselves.” Then Wednesday came, and the news arrived that Jerusalem had been captured. I remember all the Jerusalemites started dancing. He came into the middle and said, “What? We’re in the middle of a war! Why are you dancing? What are you singing for? Why are you dancing?”

51:58 Speaker 13 Soldiers were still [unclear].

52:00 Speaker 1 Now, that’s... yes. Um...

52:10 Speaker 13 How did he react afterward, when the Kosel was liberated?

52:12 Speaker 1 Oh, that was completely different. Ah. Okay, okay. So I traveled to the Rebbe.

52:29 Speaker 13 Tishrei, Elul—the month of Elul.

52:32 Speaker 1 Elul, Elul... 5728. Yes, 5728. I was there. Yes, I was there in 5728. I remember I hadn’t been to the Rebbe for two years. And... how did I actually come to travel? In Elul, the Rebbe would say a sicha to the people, to the Chabad people. Afterward, when everyone passed by and handed the Rebbe a note and could say something, my mother went by. She told me afterward that she had said, “I haven’t seen my son. I’d like to see my son.” So he said to Yechezkel[?]—how was it?

53:30 Speaker 13 “That’s a good thing. I’d also like to see him.” How did the Rebbe respond?

53:33 Speaker 1 Yes, and he told her that there was now a charter flight and so on. That’s what he said. She told me what to do. All right, I arrived at the Rebbe and went in for yechidus. There were days during the Ten Days of Teshuvah when people went in for yechidus, and I went in. As soon as I opened the door and passed the guard, the Rebbe was in the middle of putting some kind of handkerchief into the... He was doing this.

54:09 Speaker 13 Into the drawer.

54:10 Speaker 1 Yes. He saw me and said something like, “Sholom aleichem, Moshe,” like that. I went in and forgot to say [unclear]. I was all confused in the Rebbe’s presence, as I was every time I went in to the Rebbe. So I handed over the note. I had something difficult, something involving my mother that I wasn’t happy about, and I had written about it to the Rebbe. The Rebbe said there was a distinction. He spoke in her defense and said that there is the way of the tribes and there is the way of Yosef. The way of the tribes is that one needs to be a Torah scholar and a student, while Yosef was above that. Above it in what way? So...

55:23 Speaker 13 To engage with the world and remain above it.

55:25 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. Afterward he spoke with me about something concerning us. I remember—perhaps I have it written down, just a moment—and he told me something. To look in Tehillim, chapter 43. He spoke with me... No, that was something else. It was connected to this matter. Chapter 43. He told me to look in Tehillim, where it discusses it. Well, I was there, and afterward I returned here, to Eretz Yisroel.

56:00 Speaker 13 You returned to Kfar Chabad.

56:01 Speaker 1 Yes. That was it. I came here, and when the time came, I went back, in 5728. [unclear]

56:13 Speaker 13 Before you traveled to Eretz Yisroel, did you go in for another yechidus here?

56:17 Speaker 1 When?

56:18 Speaker 13 On Chol Hamoed, before you traveled to Eretz Yisroel.

56:22 Speaker 1 Ah, especially, especially.

56:24 Speaker 13 After Tishrei.

56:26 Speaker 1 Then yes, there was one time. There was one time...

56:32 Speaker 13 Before you returned to Eretz Yisroel, you didn’t go in for another yechidus?

56:34 Speaker 1 Not specially, no. That was then. Later, on 15 Cheshvan, I returned. I wanted to go to [unclear], but I had something on my mind; because of my health, I couldn’t concentrate. My father asked whether there was a place at this institution, [unclear], which still exists today. Rabbi Henkin was its director. He was a posek—he was America’s posek before Rabbi Moshe arrived. Yes.

57:18 Speaker 13 Actually, tell us a little about him. I don’t think everyone knows who he was.

57:22 Speaker 1 I will, yes, certainly. So I was at this [unclear]... No, I mean, my father knew Rabbi Margolin, who was one of the directors. Margolin—the father of Margolin, of Meir Margolin. No, he was Meir Margolin from here. Well...

57:40 Speaker 13 From Kfar Chabad.

57:41 Speaker 1 From Kfar...

57:42 Speaker 13 Menachem Margolin. No, Menachem’s father.

57:44 Speaker 1 The one from America is from America.

57:45 Speaker 13 The Margolin family.

57:46 Speaker 1 Margolin. My father asked if I could be there for a few months, until studies began.

57:54 Speaker 13 In the office.

57:56 Speaker 1 In the office. It was, how do you say it, a charitable organization. People who needed to marry off children, or to buy a home, or something else... At first it was founded by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in 1902, the same year the Rebbe...

58:25 Speaker 13 Left home.

58:26 Speaker 1 Left home. So it was called Ezras Torah. At first it was only for people who studied Torah, Torah scholars. They raised money for them, not for other people. Over time, it came to help householders too, ordinary householders. There were many, many requests from Eretz Yisroel, and so on. I was there. Now listen: I had just come from Kfar Chabad. In Kfar Chabad I was...

59:06 Speaker 13 Cut off from the world.

59:07 Speaker 1 Yes, really. Nothing else concerned me. I was just like every bochur there: the Rebbe, the Rebbe, the Rebbe and his sichos, what was going on there, and the Jews. Apart from that, I had nothing—no dealings with anything, not a bit of anything. And I knew, and I remember the long letter the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to Chaya Mushka, which has since been printed.

59:39 Speaker 13 [unclear]

59:39 Speaker 1 [unclear]. There he talks about Chaim Porush and tells what happened with him. He thought he had [unclear]. All sorts of foolishness there. If the Rebbe hadn’t written it, I wouldn’t have believed someone could be so foolish. And suddenly it was happening. I was already then with [unclear], and they were also among our friends. Shlomo Tziton [unclear]. Suddenly I landed here at Ezras Torah. I had no idea what it was. This was the center where all the... the center of the whole community, you understand. And people came there—

1:00:21 Speaker 13 All the Jews who...

1:00:22 Speaker 1 The Litvish Jews who...

1:00:23 Speaker 13 Who didn’t know [unclear] gathered there.

1:00:25 Speaker 1 No, all those who were against—against Lubavitch.

1:00:28 Speaker 13 I was putting it politely.

1:00:30 Speaker 1 So much so that once, someone came in, looked at me, saw I was a Lubavitcher, and said, “Oh, no! Why are you everywhere? You’ve made it here too?”

1:00:43 Speaker 13 You’ve made it here too.

1:00:44 Speaker 1 That got to me a little. And suddenly [unclear]. You understand, I was constantly getting these jabs. It wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to be there.

1:01:01 Speaker 13 You were a kind of secretary to Rabbi Henkin.

1:01:03 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, I’ll get to that in a moment. I’ll talk about it, but this was before Rabbi Henkin. It was at the beginning, during those first months. I wrote to the Rebbe that I couldn’t do it. This was how I put it to the Rebbe: if I’m there and don’t respond, silence implies agreement. On the other hand, if they insult the Rebbe and Lubavitch, I can’t keep quiet. It’s not my nature to get into disputes, but I kept getting into them. That was it; I wanted to leave. The Rebbe wrote to me: “This has already been explained. One should not [unclear] for fear of dispute. Continue and remain silent.” That was it. The moment he told me, “Continue and remain silent,” that settled it. It was on the Rebbe’s shoulders.

1:01:52 Speaker 13 On the Rebbe’s shoulders.

1:01:53 Speaker 1 So I was calm. It went in one ear and out the other. I didn’t start arguing. I did what I had to do. There was one thing: I was very effective there, very, very effective. But I wanted to leave already. What was I doing there? I needed a yechidus. I went in to the Rebbe for yechidus and said I wanted to leave, simply to leave. The Rebbe said to me: “That is to say, ‘I have nothing but Torah.’ One must have Torah in matters of Chassidus. These are matters of Chassidus. It says, ‘I have nothing but Torah’—even Torah one does not have. So you stay. You give tzedakah: one donation for Kfar Chabad, one for Jerusalem, one for Tziyon.” For all the places.

1:02:49 Speaker 13 Giving tzedakah to Kfar Chabad, one donation in Jerusalem.

1:02:52 Speaker 1 In all the places.

1:02:53 Speaker 13 In all the places.

1:02:53 Speaker 1 The room and all that. And then, the room—so, so it continues, it stays here. Okay. Now comes a story. A story that showed me what it means to be an opponent [?]. I saw what it is—what it is. Now I understood. I understood what the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote about Reb Chaim Perush. If before I had to believe the Rebbe, now I certainly had to believe the Rebbe. I saw it with my own eyes in the following story. It was around Teves, the first yahrtzeit of the Frierdiker Rebbe, and I was there. It was at... I left there every day at five. I was there from nine, from ten until five. At five I left and went back.

1:03:51 Speaker 13 Where were the offices?

1:03:52 Speaker 1 On the East Side.

1:03:53 Speaker 13 On the East Side.

1:03:56 Speaker 1 So it was Teves, and I knew there might be something—maybe the Rebbe would speak or something. I very much wanted to be there, and my mind was on it the whole time [unclear]. So I wanted to leave early. The president of the... the president at the time was Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda [unclear]. He was a very, very important man. Kindhearted.

1:04:27 Speaker 13 Part of his family—Naftali, Reb, Reb...

1:04:29 Speaker 1 Yes. He was a Chabad descendant, and he—his name was different.

1:04:35 Speaker 13 Was his name Reuven?

1:04:37 Speaker 1 And at the time he was a rabbi in New Jersey, at a camp, and he had been coming for a long time. He was a kindhearted man, so everyone came to him as president, and he would come and say, “Give me the particulars of who to give it to.”

1:04:49 Speaker 13 In other words, all the requests came to him, and he would pass them on to you.

1:04:51 Speaker 1 He would come to me, and he liked me very much because I was very efficient. He would say, “You know, mister, you know,” and I did exactly what he liked. He came in just when I wanted to leave early. He was already eighty-five and not in good health. You know, if I had known, perhaps I wouldn’t have said what I’m about to tell you. He gave me a long list of things to do. I did half of it and wanted to leave. I said, “Look, I still have half left. I want to leave a little early today, so I’ll finish it tomorrow morning. First thing tomorrow morning.” So he said, “Where are you going?”

1:05:42 Speaker 13 Where did you want to go? What did you answer?

1:05:45 Speaker 1 And then he said something [unclear], and then he said something about Kotler [unclear]. I looked at him innocently. No, not innocently—I didn’t know. And I said to him, quite innocently, “Rabbi, who would transcribe it? Who would listen to me?” Wow, that blew a fuse. Oy vey, I had no idea what was coming. He started firing away. “What? What? You—you’ve heard the entire Shas from him already? You know the entire Shas? The entire Shas?” I know, the entire Shas, the entire Shas. “What? What?” Oy, oy, oy, oy. That is exactly what Rabbi Weinberg writes in Hapardes. There are people like that today, too, I’m telling you. What it did to me! But that’s nothing. Well, afterward, two years later, there was Rabbi Henkin. He was, as they say, the halachic authority to whom the leading sages and rabbis throughout the United States brought their questions. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein also respected him very, very much. Every year on Erev Rosh Hashanah he would come to his home, [unclear]...

1:07:14 Speaker 13 Who was he? Was he Litvish?

1:07:17 Speaker 1 He was Litvish, yes, but not...

1:07:19 Speaker 13 But from Lithuania.

1:07:20 Speaker 1 From Lithuania, yes. He was from, from, from Klimovitch.

1:07:25 Speaker 13 Ah, from Klimovitch.

1:07:26 Speaker 1 Yes, he was from Klimovitch. Yes, he was.

1:07:30 Speaker 13 And where was he educated?

1:07:32 Speaker 1 Huh?

1:07:32 Speaker 13 Was he educated in Litvish yeshivos?

1:07:35 Speaker 1 Yes, I think so. Perhaps in Slutsk, I think.

1:07:40 Speaker 13 Slutsk.

1:07:41 Speaker 1 Yes, or somewhere like that. No, no, I don’t remember. In any case, he was truly a genius. And his grandson—his grandson was also Yehuda Henkin. Later he moved to Eretz Yisroel and became a rabbi in [unclear] at first, and afterward in—he was a rabbi at Mossad Harav Kook or something. His son was killed by terrorists.

1:08:12 Speaker 13 Murdered. His son and his wife were murdered.

1:08:14 Speaker 1 Yes. In any case, he was a young man and studied with his grandfather, and then he got married.

1:08:20 Speaker 13 The grandson.

1:08:20 Speaker 1 The grandson, and they moved to Eretz Yisroel. Someone had to fill in so that he could study, so I studied with him. I assisted Rabbi Henkin for three years. From ten, I spent three hours with him every morning, and it was truly an experience. That man, I tell you, in my eyes he was an extraordinary genius. I would learn the Gemara from the text. I worked with him. After all, he couldn’t learn a sugya in depth every day. So we went through all the aggados together, and if I made a mistake, he corrected me on the spot. It really was something.

1:09:08 Speaker 13 How old was he then?

1:09:10 Speaker 1 Ninety. Now listen. One day he called me and said, “I want to write an article for Hapardes.” Hapardes was a rabbinic journal, a collection of—

1:09:29 Speaker 13 A sort of monthly for rabbis that—

1:09:31 Speaker 1 Rabbis would—

1:09:31 Speaker 13 Avrele was the editor.

1:09:32 Speaker 1 Avrele was the editor, and all the rabbis would put their Torah insights in it. He said, “I want to do this. I’ll dictate, you write it down, and I’ll edit it.” Then he began: “I have heard that it is the custom in the yeshivos to eat before Kedushah de-me’umad.” After all, there is a Torah-level mitzvah involved, and if they already... The reason is that they don’t want to go without eating until the prayers are finished, so they eat before Kedushah de-me’umad.

1:10:16 Speaker 13 Because the davening goes on so long, and they don’t want to wait to eat until the end.

1:10:19 Speaker 1 So they don’t realize this. But if Kiddush is a Torah-level mitzvah, then they don’t eat, because they say it’s merely a rabbinic matter. But what they’re doing isn’t merely a rabbinic matter. If they want to do what they’re doing and eat, it would be better to do it after Kedushah de-meyushav, before Musaf—to make Kiddush then and eat. Since Kedushah de-me’umad is rabbinic, it is better to eat then. If you’re saying you can’t wait, it’s better to interrupt and eat before Kedushah de-me’umad than before—

1:11:00 Speaker 13 To make the break for eating then, rather than eat before Kedushah de-meyushav.

1:11:04 Speaker 1 Which is Torah-level. And he sent it off. There was more; I don’t remember. That was the main point. Two weeks passed, and he received a private letter—confidential, what do you call it, something like that, meant only for him. And who sent it? Gifter, the rosh yeshiva of Telz.

1:11:31 Speaker 13 Mordechai Gifter.

1:11:32 Speaker 1 Yes, he sent him this letter. I was his eyes, so I opened it and read it. He addressed him with all his titles: “The esteemed, distinguished...” and on and on. Then he said, “I was astonished.” He had read what Rabbi Henkin called “the custom of the yeshivos.” “I was astonished to see how a figure of your stature could write this. Surely you know that the entire yeshiva, and the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Kotler, and all the roshei yeshiva there [unclear]...” I read it to him.

1:12:20 Speaker 13 You read it to him.

1:12:21 Speaker 1 And he reacted like this—I wouldn’t have read it to him if I’d known how he would react. He was really... I was frightened. He said to me, “Write back to him: In Chullin, folio 7b, [unclear], ‘If it has been decreed from Heaven...’” I know where it is; I could find it. Well, afterward I heard... I really wanted to know. After I sent it to him, he wrote back—a six-page letter. He said, “G-d forbid, I did not mean to slight your honor, only to defend the honor of the yeshiva and the rosh yeshiva. I also spoke with the mashgiach, Rabbi Steiner [?], there...” But I very much wanted to understand what was going on. After all, he was saying that Rabbi Kotler and all those roshei yeshiva did this. How could that be? So I asked Rabbi Henkin, but he thought I was against him, that I was taking the side of—

1:13:39 Speaker 13 Rabbi Henkin thought you were siding with Gifter.

1:13:41 Speaker 1 So he said... Then I said, “Wait. In Lubavitch, the practice is different.” And he calmed down.

1:13:52 Speaker 13 So you told him that in Lubavitch they don’t do that.

1:13:53 Speaker 1 Of course.

1:13:53 Speaker 13 Then he calmed down.

1:13:54 Speaker 1 And he calmed down. So then he told me what Kotler had said to him. He said, “I want to tell you something. There was a rabbi here named Goldberg. Once he came to me with a question: If cantors sing elaborate flourishes during the repetition of the morning Shemoneh Esrei, does that count as an interruption? I told him it does. Two weeks later he came back and told me that, on Shabbos in Lakewood, he had asked Rabbi Kotler the same question, and Rabbi Kotler had said it was not an interruption. So he told him, ‘Rabbi Henkin says it is an interruption.’ And Kotler told him, ‘If Rabbi Henkin says it is an interruption, then I say it is an interruption too. Just attribute it to Rabbi Henkin. If he knew that I prohibited eating a fruit, he would prohibit it too.’” Fine. Then he said to me, “You should know, Rabbi Kotler may have been great in [unclear], or in the laws of [unclear]. In halachah, I’ll say, yes.” Anyway, that was that story.

1:15:02 Speaker 13 Did Rabbi Henkin have a connection with the Rebbe?

1:15:04 Speaker 1 Yes, there was—there are several [unclear], yes, and a great deal that I know of. Someone told me that, when they met there, the Rebbe would say to consult a rabbi, before Rabbi Zalman Shimon arrived. Rabbi Zalman Shimon arrived as [unclear], but this was much earlier. He meant Rabbi Henkin. Yes.

1:15:26 Speaker 13 When did Rabbi Henkin come to America? Before the war?

1:15:29 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, with the rabbinical seminary. Yes. That was at the same time. So that was one chapter in Rabbi Henkin’s life. Now, this is what happened. Once I came to him in the morning to study. He had this thing with “Shalom Yerushalayim.” Every Motzaei Shabbos he would listen to Rabbi Yosef Weinberg’s Tanya broadcast and then listen to something else. Yes, he listened to the Tanya, and perhaps also to the Frierdiker Rebbe’s weekly teaching. That much I know, but the Tanya—that I’m certain he—

1:16:14 Speaker 13 He listened.

1:16:15 Speaker 1 To Rabbi Weinberg. And at that time the Rebbe was also speaking about the integrity of the Land of Israel and all that. It was a period when the Rebbe was constantly calling on the National Religious Party to leave the government.

1:16:29 Speaker 13 Who is a Jew.

1:16:30 Speaker 1 Who is a Jew, and they were upholding the law and all that. So one day I came to him, and he said, “I want to write to the Rebbe. I think he’s making a mistake by asking the National Religious Party to leave the government, because if they leave, first of all, what will happen to all the—the religious observance they maintain? There won’t be any religious observance at all. Agudas Yisroel won’t be able to maintain it.” That was one point. “Second, I don’t think they can amend this law, because one of the government leaders has a son who is married to a non-Jewish woman, so he will never go against his own son.” I thought to myself, why should I bother the Rebbe with such nonsense? What? I didn’t answer him. Two weeks later he brought it up again. I saw he was quite insistent, and that if I didn’t do it, someone else would. So it was better that I do it. I was only writing it down and signing it; I was just the writing instrument. What I didn’t know was that things weren’t as I thought. Anyway, I passed it on to the Rebbe. I think that was on Thursday. Thursday. I brought it in to Binyamin at ten, and I thought to myself—well, I didn’t go back.

1:18:19 Speaker 13 You didn’t wait for an answer.

1:18:20 Speaker 1 I didn’t wait for an answer. If there was an answer, there would be an answer. I brought it in at ten. Then, at one, I had something else I needed to speak to Binyamin about—not this, something else. So I went over to Binyamin, and he said, “Where have you been? He’s been looking for you for an hour. Make yourself available.” He’d been looking for me already.

1:18:40 Speaker 13 Where were you?

1:18:41 Speaker 1 “Where were you?” There had already been an answer an hour later.

1:18:44 Speaker 13 An hour after you submitted it to the Rebbe.

1:18:45 Speaker 1 The Rebbe had answered: “Where were you?” So I took down the number then. Afterward I passed it on to Rabbi Henkin, and he said something else. Then the Rebbe answered that too. Later, on Friday, the entire correspondence—it’s in [unclear], at the end of [unclear]. The whole correspondence is there at the end. But here’s what happened with me: The first time we spoke was Thursday. The next time, on Friday, I didn’t come, or even if I did, we didn’t study then. So it was Sunday. In the meantime I received the Rebbe’s answer. I said to myself, an answer from the Rebbe must be delivered right away. So I got there at seven in the evening.

1:19:34 Speaker 13 Apart from your regular study session, you made a special trip to bring him the Rebbe’s answer.

1:19:37 Speaker 1 Yes, with Itzkovitz, who is in America now. He took me then. He was also [unclear]—his father-in-law was from [unclear]. His father-in-law spoke to him about it too. And in the Rebbe’s answer, regarding his statement that one of the government leaders had a son married to a non-Jewish woman—the Rebbe said, “If you mean Ben-Gurion, then on the contrary: When he was prime minister, there was the law of [unclear]. That came afterward.” So he wasn’t the one opposed to it. And then, regarding the claim that they weren’t doing anything—that by not leaving, they were upholding the law—and something else; you’ll see it there in the letter. And Rabbi Henkin said, “No, I didn’t mean Ben-Gurion. I didn’t mean Ben-Gurion.”

1:20:35 Speaker 14 Rabbi Henkin said that.

1:20:36 Speaker 1 Yes. And I could see he didn’t want to say more because—

1:20:40 Speaker 14 Someone else was there.

1:20:41 Speaker 1 Someone else was there. So I asked him to leave.

1:20:44 Speaker 14 You asked Gurevitch to leave.

1:20:45 Speaker 1 Yes, to leave. Then I asked, “So who was it?” I said, “Abba Eban?” He said, “Yes, Abba Eban.”

1:20:53 Speaker 14 Abba Eban.

1:20:53 Speaker 1 Yes, Abba Eban. Fine. So I sent that to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe sent an answer. You’ll see six points there. First, Abba Eban was married to the sister of Rabbi Herzog’s daughter-in-law. His wife was the sister of Chaim Herzog’s wife.

1:21:16 Speaker 14 Yes.

1:21:18 Speaker 1 And... yes. Another point was that they were also upholding the law by remaining there. You’ll see it in the answer. I sent it to the Rebbe. That’s what the Rebbe said.

1:21:38 Speaker 14 You sent it to Rabbi Henkin.

1:21:38 Speaker 1 So I told Rabbi Henkin. He said, “Look at what they wrote.” The Rebbe had said, “Even their own rabbis are telling them to leave. Do they obey their rabbis?” Rabbi Henkin said that, since no date had been given, it was merely a political letter—a political directive from the rabbis, he said. And here the Rebbe—you’ll see it there—the Rebbe answered him very sharply. But it helped, and from then on he said no more about it. The Rebbe said that to call a ruling issued by a majority a political matter was a desecration of the honor of [unclear]. And Rabbi Henkin’s own ruling was not without substance either. As for the wording—well, he said they hadn’t, they, they—

1:22:40 Speaker 14 They hadn’t given one.

1:22:40 Speaker 1 No, they hadn’t given a date.

1:22:43 Speaker 14 A date.

1:22:43 Speaker 1 A date. So the Rebbe said that wording without a specified date generally means within about thirty days. To call a ruling issued by a majority a political matter is a desecration of the honor of [unclear]. And Rabbi Henkin’s own ruling wasn’t without substance either. I saw that he accepted it. It was hard for him to accept, but he accepted it. What’s interesting is that later, when I went to Israel, I spent six years in the Knesset and was an aide to Minister Yuval Ne’eman. In the Knesset they have mail slots, you know, where they put the letters.

1:23:28 Speaker 14 Yes.

1:23:29 Speaker 1 So there are a hundred and twenty, a hundred and twenty—

1:23:33 Speaker 14 Mail slots.

1:23:33 Speaker 1 For men, and for, uh, women in another place. So when Yuval was a member of the Knesset, he had one, and it was next to Abba Eban’s changing room. Later, when he became a minister, a minister didn’t need that changing room. He had a separate room with a changing room and everything there. So I took it and put the things there. I was—Abba Eban, after all, I was with him almost every day. He would change his shirt and all that. Once I told him this story. I said, “I want to tell you—you know, Mr. Eban, I want to tell you a story.” I told him what that rabbi had said, that the rabbi had defended him. That’s what he said. So he says, “What? Susie—that’s what it says, that’s her name, Susie [unclear]. Maybe because she’s blonde and she’s from Switzerland [unclear]. A non-Jewish woman. That’s how it is.” He accepted it and was pleased. The rabbi had defended him. You understand? All right, that was that. That became known. But yes, there was something else. The Rebbe—the Rebbe also knew. You would travel back every day to [unclear], then, when you worked there at Ezras Torah? Of course. So you slept in [unclear], in Crown Heights? We were based there. In Crown Heights. In Crown Heights. Yes. Yes. Ezras Torah was connected to the Agudas Harabbonim? Yes. It was their baby. Agudas Harabbonim gave birth to it. They founded it, they founded it. That was their office. Yes, and wherever they went, Ezras Torah was in the same building. That’s how it was. That’s how I came to Agudas Harabbonim. So that’s how you got to know Agudas Harabbonim. What was Agudas Harabbonim like? And afterward you became the secretary of Agudas Harabbonim. Yes. Look, as I told you, it was the same building. Ezras Torah was upstairs,

1:25:44 Speaker 1 on the second floor and all that. It was their charitable arm; that was their respected charitable work. Yes. Agudas Harabbonim was an organization of rabbis. Yes, Agudas Harabbonim of the United States and Canada. They were the greatest authority in the rabbinic world there. Well, then it really carried a lot of weight. Yes. All the frum rabbis, all the chassidic rabbis, were there. Yes, yes. There was another, parallel organization of Mizrachi, that federation. A federation, yes, that’s right. There was also the Agudas Yisroel Igud Harabbonim in the middle. Igud, yes. Yes, but among the veterans there was Rabbi Eliezer Silver. At first, all the groups were there. When did they establish it? Before or after the Holocaust? No, before. In 5702. Oh, also 5702. Yes. In America. No, in—in Vilna, I think. And then they came to the United States. Yes, and then they arrived in the United States in the twenties, I think. They were in various places, but wherever they were, Ezras Torah was there. So they were downstairs and Ezras Torah was upstairs. And I was there in 5730, at the beginning of the Who Is a Jew issue. So, in 5730. Well, let’s go back to Agudas Harabbonim. So Agudas Harabbonim was an organization whose charitable arm was Ezras Torah. Okay. In 5730, the secretary of Agudas Harabbonim was named Rabbi Yaakov Hellerstein. Yaakov? Hellerstein. Hellerstein. He made aliyah to Eretz Yisroel, and they needed someone to take his place. So they suggested—I think Reb Zalman Gurary was very friendly with Rabbi Blebach, and Rabbi Blebach was the one who hired people. He was the boss. Reb Blebach was the chairman, chairman of the executive committee, and he was the one organizing the whole thing and hiring people. So they suggested that I do it, that I take

1:28:03 Speaker 1 his place. That’s how I became secretary of Agudas Harabbonim. Zalman Gurary was also a rabbi there, a member of that rabbinic group. Yes, he was friends with them. There were a lot of Chabad people there. Now, in 5730, the Who Is a Jew issue began. Purim 5730. The Who Is a Jew issue began in 5730. And I was—I was still at Ezras Torah then. What I remember is that a delegation from Agudas Harabbonim, headed by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein—I wasn’t at Agudas Harabbonim yet, but I knew about it—traveled to Eretz Yisroel to get the law amended. It started before the Rebbe began speaking about it. This was before the Rebbe spoke about it. And I remember they came back a few months before the Rebbe began speaking about it on Purim. They were at Ezras Torah—Rabbi [unclear] would come into my office to ask for donations for his relatives in Israel. So he came in, and one of the rabbis there, Rabbi Roginsky, one of the directors, asked him, “Nu, how was it there? What did you manage to accomplish regarding Who Is a Jew?” So he told him, “It’s hopeless.” He said this to Rabbi Roginsky: “Even if you go to them with a gun—a gun—and threaten to shoot them, they won’t amend the law. It’s hopeless. There’s nothing to discuss. Nothing can be done. That’s it.” That’s what I remember. Then I understood why the Rebbe began. In the sicha when the Rebbe began speaking about it, on Purim 5730, the Rebbe said that there was an issue he hadn’t wanted to speak about. He had been doing everything behind the scenes. But since he saw that people were becoming discouraged, he didn’t want that. He couldn’t accept seeing that they had already given up and weren’t doing anything. “I have no choice; I have to.”

1:30:35 Speaker 1 So that means the Rebbe was, in a sense, referring to what they had tried to do through diplomacy and— Yes. Now, that’s when it began: the Rebbe started speaking about it every time, at every farbrengen, about the Who Is a Jew issue, practically without end. Until one time—and each time it would be another half hour, an hour—one time the Rebbe came in and said, “I received a letter from Israel saying that if I don’t stop...” The Rebbe was constantly speaking against the National Religious Party and sharply criticizing them. “They told me that if I don’t stop speaking against the National Religious Party, they’ll turn off the tap. They won’t provide—” All the funding. “All the funding for Chabad institutions.” Chabad. “And they threatened me.” So the Rebbe said, “I have a trait: when people speak to me that way, I do twice as much.” And then, instead of speaking for half an hour or an hour, the Rebbe spoke for perhaps two hours. It was quite a sicha, and the Rebbe analyzed them, sharply criticizing them for it. And what’s very interesting is that the Rebbe once spoke about the territorial integrity of Eretz Yisroel, when the Camp David issue began. The Rebbe said, “The time will come when the Israelis will give the Arabs guns—guns—and they’ll be used against us.” Yes, that was before Oslo. Long before. Before that. That’s what happened after Oslo. Yes, yes, yes. Look, so that’s what the Rebbe said. Now, whenever the Rebbe gave a sicha concerning Eretz Yisroel, it would be passed on to [unclear]. [Unclear] was the spokesman, and he would pass it on to the press, through all his channels. Yes, he would bring it to them, get it into all the newspapers. Yes. Now, when this sicha came out, the National Religious Party wanted to delegitimize the Rebbe, to say that he didn’t know what he was talking about. So they took—look, it was on the front page. Look, that was eighty-eight,

1:33:00 Speaker 1 I think. Look at what he’s saying. And they said, “He says we’re going to give it to the Arabs.” That’s how someone talks? They wanted to make it look as though the Rebbe didn’t know what he was—didn’t understand what he was... Yes, that’s how it was. Now, the Rabbinical Council was a whole story in itself. It was something. Look, I’m telling you, it was an experience. It was a miracle that [unclear] was there. If [unclear] hadn’t been there, what can I tell you? I wanted [unclear]. You see the greatest rabbis there. I don’t want to mention names of anyone who was there. The way they behaved—I nearly had to physically hold one of them back. Physically. What I want to tell you is what I saw there: “How fortunate we are, how good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, and how beautiful our inheritance”—that we are chassidim and have the Rebbe. It didn’t make an impression on me personally, because from the outset I had come with the understanding that there is no one but the Rebbe. So it didn’t impress me. But I really saw what it meant. There was one incident like this. Oh, by the way, on Tu BiShvat, when it was the seventies, a week or a month before I started—I was still in the school for young people—but I knew that a delegation from the Rabbinical Council had come to the Rebbe to wish him a happy birthday. They went in for yechidus. Yechidus, yes, yes. Halberg and Rabbi Meir Cohen—or what was the director’s name? Rabbi Halberg, yes. Rabbi Meir Cohen was the director of the rabbis’ organization. Meir? Meir Cohen. Cohen, Cohen, Cohen. He was the grandson, the son, of [unclear]. He himself had also written a sefer. He was a great man, yes.

1:35:12 Speaker 1 He and Halberg, and perhaps Reichman—I don’t remember who—but I know Meir Cohen, who ran the place, was one of them. They were with the Rebbe for half an hour, I think. The next day I wanted to know what had happened. I didn’t know Halberg yet, but I did know the director, Meir Cohen. So I went down and asked him what had happened with the Rebbe. He said to me—in Yiddish—“Reb Levin, what can I tell you? It was a spiritual experience.” And I want to tell you something: the Rebbe is sitting here in his room, and Eretz Yisroel is right beside him. He spoke with us and told us everything going on at the meetings there—the names, what time, who, what—he knows everything. It’s extraordinary.” That’s what Rabbi Cohen said. That’s what Rabbi Cohen said. It was something, and it still [unclear]. Did Rabbi Halberg already have a connection then? Yes. When did his connection begin? Much, much earlier. Yes, much earlier. Much earlier. Right, yes. He was Polish. Halberg was the [unclear] from Lublin. Yes? The [unclear] from Lublin, Halberg. Halberg, Halberg. Once, on Simchas Torah, a charter flight arrived, and on the flight was a chazzan named [unclear], from Tel Aviv. From Tel Aviv. He sat behind the Rebbe, and he didn’t stand on ceremony. Halberg would come up to the Rebbe and speak to him. He would keep him for half an hour. Between the sichos. Between the sichos, half an hour. Meanwhile, there were hookups for the broadcasts, and people were paying for them. What were they paying for during that half hour? Anyway, I don’t know what someone told him. He didn’t understand any of it, and he was sitting there too. And he still didn’t have a beard. So—

1:37:23 Speaker 1 Halberg? This [unclear] didn’t have one either. So he’s sitting there and says, “Who is this man without a beard?” Then he sees him there for half an hour, and he gives him a pinch—a pinch on the face—and the man goes, “Ow!” And the Rebbe was like this. He gave him something serious, with a serious look. To Zalman [unclear]? Yes. The next day, or a few days later, Zalman [unclear] had yechidus with the Rebbe. What did the Rebbe say to him—why would you do such a thing? He said, “I do what my commander tells me.” There was a commander, I think Binyamin [unclear]. “I do what my commander tells me. He told me to do it.” In any case, he used to approach the Rebbe, and when [unclear] began—listen to this. The Rebbe asked him very, very strongly that the Rabbinical Council come out against it. Against his organization, right then. At that point they were just, as they say, nothing at all. But the Rebbe told him, “There will be trouble”—how do you say it?—“They will cause trouble unlike anything there has been before.” Because they were worse than the spies. The spies also didn’t want to enter the Land, but they didn’t go to the nations of the world to inform on us and tell them everything. Here they’re going outside, and “there will be trouble.” He told the rabbis. Yes, they needed to come out against it right then. That’s one thing. The second thing, which was very interesting, is a story. As I remember it, around 5732 or 5733, Jews began coming out of Russia, and the Georgian rabbis arrived: Rafael... Rashvili, the father of Rabbi Avraham Rashvili in Lod, and Rabbi Yaakov [unclear]. He was the more—Dobrushvili? Yes, yes, he was the older one. Older. They arrived, and the Rebbe very much wanted to honor them.

1:39:51 Speaker 1 He asked the Rabbinical Council to go to them, to strengthen them and be there for them. A delegation from the Rabbinical Council came. [Unclear] was at the home of Michael [unclear] on Eastern Parkway. Rabbi Dovid Raskin was there, sitting here; I was sitting here; and here sat a rabbi named Rabbi Zlotowitz. This Rabbi Zlotowitz was the father of the man who founded ArtScroll—Meir Zlotowitz of ArtScroll. That was his father.

1:40:38 Speaker 15 What’s called Schottenstein in Hebrew.

1:40:40 Speaker 1 Schottenstein. Yes.

1:40:41 Speaker 15 Zlotowitz was his father.

1:40:42 Speaker 1 Yes, he was his father. He was sitting here. He had studied in Lomza, I think, and he was the sort of person who, whenever someone quoted a Gemara, could tell you the page. So he’s sitting here, I’m sitting here, and they brought out Coca-Cola. Dovid Raskin takes it—there was a carpet—and Dovid Raskin takes it...

1:41:10 Speaker 15 And pours a little out.

1:41:11 Speaker 1 He pours a little out, you know, and the man sees it going onto the carpet. He’s sitting here watching. So I said to him, “It’s a Gemara, a Gemara.” I said, “Either in Pesachim or in Shabbos.”

1:41:28 Speaker 15 He asks, “Which Gemara? Which tractate?” Pesachim or Shabbos.

1:41:33 Speaker 1 So he says... I told him, “Next time you’re in the office, we’ll take out a set of Shas and I’ll show you.” Fine. A few days pass, and he comes with a binder, and... okay. He comes in and says, “Well? Where’s the Gemara?” So I took out the Gemara in Pesachim or Shabbos. I don’t remember which, but at the time I knew. It says, “My mother told me...” He had grown up with a mother who was very particular about these things, and she would tell him all sorts of things that sound like home remedies in the Gemara. One of the things she told him was not to drink water without pouring some out first, because of demons.

1:42:33 Speaker 15 To pour a little out of the vessel because of concern about demons.

1:42:36 Speaker 1 I showed it to him. He looks at me and says, “Rabbi Levin, you’re a complete hack, an absolute ignoramus. I thought you were a smart man. How could you come up with such nonsense? What do you think? I didn’t know that Gemara? But what demons? Can’t you see the bottle was sealed and had the Health Department’s approval? What demons are you talking about?” It was something.

1:43:12 Speaker 15 A way of thinking...

1:43:14 Speaker 1 Yes, there were more, too. I don’t remember. There were other stories like that; I could write a book about it. It was something.

1:43:25 Speaker 15 Let’s get back to your work with Rav Moshe.

1:43:28 Speaker 1 Yes. Uh...

1:43:29 Speaker 15 When?

1:43:29 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. Okay, okay.

1:43:33 Speaker 15 There was also a story about the Rebbe sending Rav Moshe the Jews who had arrived from Russia.

1:43:37 Speaker 1 I wasn’t there.

1:43:38 Speaker 15 You weren’t there.

1:43:39 Speaker 1 I wasn’t there.

1:43:39 Speaker 15 When did you get to know Rav Moshe?

1:43:41 Speaker 1 When I started—when I became secretary of the Rabbinical Council, one of my jobs was to go to him whenever they needed his signature.

1:43:52 Speaker 15 What was his position on the Rabbinical Council?

1:43:54 Speaker 1 President.

1:43:54 Speaker 15 He was president.

1:43:55 Speaker 1 He was the president.

1:43:56 Speaker 15 Simcha Halberg became...

1:43:57 Speaker 1 He became the one with the final say. Yes, Simcha Halberg was the one who, so to speak, handled the...

1:44:03 Speaker 15 The council meetings.

1:44:04 Speaker 1 And he was... He also said that, and he...

1:44:07 Speaker 15 Did Rav Moshe take part in the meetings?

1:44:09 Speaker 1 Yes, sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. Most of the time he didn’t. At the major ones—for example, once when there was [unclear], Reb Mendel came, and [unclear] came, and... then he would take part. But ordinarily, no. When they needed something from him, I would come.

1:44:28 Speaker 15 You wanted to get his signature.

1:44:29 Speaker 1 So I became friendly with his wife, and I became—I became like a member of the household. He liked me. Whenever a new sefer of his came out, he gave me a copy.

1:44:41 Speaker 15 Tell us a little about him. He came to Israel from Lithuania.

1:44:44 Speaker 1 Huh?

1:44:45 Speaker 15 A little background, what—

1:44:46 Speaker 1 He—

1:44:47 Speaker 15 We all know he was a great posek and a great Torah scholar, and [unclear]. But tell us a little about his personality.

1:44:52 Speaker 1 His personality—he was a very, very easygoing, calm person. You would never hear him raise his voice. But when it came to halachah—that reminds me. I remember once I came to him to get something signed, and there was a rabbi there from Flatbush. They wanted to make an eruv in Flatbush, but Reb Moshe was against it. This rabbi had come to persuade him to allow an eruv, and he was discussing it with him. I remember it because I was stunned, even frightened. I walked in and saw [unclear]. When it came to halachah, he said, “[unclear].” He was really, you know, [unclear].

1:45:53 Speaker 15 He really was—

1:45:54 Speaker 1 Yes. And I heard that again, I heard—

1:45:57 Speaker 15 He could be firm. He was—

1:45:59 Speaker 1 I heard this from someone who heard it when it happened. When Rabbi Kotler came to America, before he started Lakewood, he was on Long Island, where he was the rabbi of a shul. The shul gave him a trial period to see whether they would keep him as their rabbi.

1:46:18 Speaker 15 Yes.

1:46:18 Speaker 1 He was there for six months. After six months, they didn’t want him, but he wanted to stay and wouldn’t leave. So they went to a din Torah. I think one of the rabbis on the din Torah was Reb Moshe. Reb Moshe ruled that according to halachah he had to—

1:46:39 Speaker 15 Leave.

1:46:39 Speaker 1 Leave. So he began arguing with Reb Moshe, and Reb Moshe banged on the table. [Unclear.]

1:46:54 Speaker 15 In other words, when it came to halachah, even though he was easygoing, he was firm.

1:46:58 Speaker 1 Absolutely, yes. Let’s go back to Rabbi Henkin, because this is very relevant.

1:47:04 Speaker 15 Yes.

1:47:04 Speaker 1 At two in the morning—once, at two in the morning, early on when I had begun working with Rabbi Henkin—I got a phone call

1:47:15 Speaker 15 from [unclear].

1:47:16 Speaker 1 For him it was eleven at night. He knew it was two in the morning for me. He said, “Rabbi Shmuel, Reb Yisroel, [unclear].”

1:47:28 Speaker 15 He consulted you?

1:47:28 Speaker 1 Yes. “I want to make a mikveh here, a mikveh with a bor within a bor.”

1:47:34 Speaker 15 In California.

1:47:35 Speaker 1 Yes. “There’s a rabbi here who’s against it, and he told me that if I have permission from Rabbi Henkin, he’ll agree. So I want you to—”

1:47:50 Speaker 15 “Go to him.”

1:47:50 Speaker 1 “Go to him and get that for me.” So I went to him. I knew Reb Moshe wasn’t against it; I knew that. And so he wrote something like this: “It has been years since I [unclear], and I can’t look into it now. Since I’ve heard that the gaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein permits it—”

1:48:26 Speaker 15 The mikveh?

1:48:27 Speaker 1 Yes—“and the Lubavitcher Rebbe is particular about it, I agree with him as well.” And he signed it. So he had a mikveh that... Okay. From time to time I would come by; people would ask me to get letters. For example, I got quite a few letters from Reb Moshe. A letter when they opened a Tomchei Temimim yeshivah in Seattle. Reb Leib Kaplan, who had been in Montreal, went there for the first time. So there was—

1:49:03 Speaker 15 Leib Kaplan from Israel.

1:49:04 Speaker 1 Yes. He also gave me a letter of blessing for Moshe Perlman in Venezuela.

1:49:13 Speaker 15 Yes.

1:49:14 Speaker 1 And perhaps there were other places as well. He also gave one when the Iranians—when the revolution happened in Iran and—

1:49:23 Speaker 15 Torah scholars.

1:49:24 Speaker 1 Yes, and many Iranians began leaving. J. J. Hecht, Yankel Menachem Hecht, was working on that. So there’s a letter from Reb Moshe about that too.

1:49:36 Speaker 15 A recommendation.

1:49:36 Speaker 1 A recommendation that we should help him, that it was an important thing, and so on. Now—

1:49:44 Speaker 15 Did he know from the start that you were a Lubavitcher?

1:49:47 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. Now, you know he came to my wedding—to officiate at the kiddushin.

1:49:56 Speaker 15 That’s what I wanted to ask you about.

1:49:58 Speaker 1 It was a military operation. I knew from a friend, a student of mine named Schwartz, that if they knew he was going to come to the Rebbe, then—

1:50:12 Speaker 15 You knew it would be canceled if they found out.

1:50:14 Speaker 1 Canceled.

1:50:15 Speaker 15 So what did you do?

1:50:16 Speaker 1 What happened first? Wait. All right. So what did I do? I didn’t say anything. I asked him to come and officiate at the kiddushin. I told him briefly, but I didn’t say anything to him about the Rebbe. I didn’t say anything resembling that. I told him where it was, at the hall there, but I didn’t say anything else. Then we went to the kiddushin. It was 8 Shvat, and he was very happy. I got married on 8 Shvat, and he gave me—

1:50:48 Speaker 15 He told you he would come.

1:50:51 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:50:51 Speaker 15 His confirmation.

1:50:52 Speaker 1 He came. And you know who else came? That rabbi, Rabbi [unclear], came too, because he was very fond of me. Rabbi [unclear] came, Halberg came, and others. They told me afterward—I hadn’t known—that throughout the chuppah, with all those gedolim there, the [unclear] stood there just wanting to listen. He knew about everything they had needed, and now they were coming here. That was my angle. So afterward, he went in to see the Rebbe. Someone asked him—Halberg asked him—“Would you like to—”

1:51:35 Speaker 15 Go in.

1:51:35 Speaker 1 “See the Rebbe?” And he said, “Certainly, certainly.” Someone told me afterward that he had watched Reb Moshe standing in the doorway before he went in to the Rebbe. He stood there and moved his lips like this, as he was about to enter.

1:51:54 Speaker 15 Preparing himself.

1:51:55 Speaker 1 Preparing himself, yes. He saw him standing there, preparing himself.

1:51:59 Speaker 15 Had you notified the Rebbe, or the secretariat, in advance that he was coming?

1:52:02 Speaker 1 No. No. They understood it themselves.

1:52:06 Speaker 15 In other words, Rabbi Halberg suggested it on his own?

1:52:09 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

1:52:09 Speaker 15 Had you planned it with Rabbi Halberg?

1:52:11 Speaker 1 I understood that’s how it would happen, you see? I understood. I didn’t need to—I didn’t want to talk about it. You know, this Shabbos they told my story with Rabbi Meir Plotkin.

1:52:23 Speaker 15 Right.

1:52:24 Speaker 1 He was a bochur at the time, and he came over to me.

1:52:27 Speaker 15 During your time at Tomchei Temimim? When was this?

1:52:28 Speaker 1 In ’34. He came over to me a few months—two months before the wedding, or a month before the wedding—and said, “You have an opportunity if you want it.” I didn’t want to tell him anything. I said, “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to tell him that he was coming or anything like that. It was a secret military operation, and...

1:52:57 Speaker 15 But Plotkin was the one who used to bring Rabbi [unclear].

1:52:59 Speaker 1 Huh?

1:52:59 Speaker 15 Plotkin used to drive Rabbi [unclear].

1:53:02 Speaker 1 Ah, okay. Fine, that was later.

1:53:04 Speaker 15 That was later.

1:53:04 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. As I was saying, afterward they came out of there.

1:53:15 Speaker 15 Just a second—he went in before the chuppah?

1:53:17 Speaker 1 After the chuppah.

1:53:18 Speaker 15 In other words, he officiated at the kiddushin.

1:53:19 Speaker 1 Officiated at the kiddushin.

1:53:20 Speaker 15 You went to the wedding, and he went in to—who went in with him?

1:53:23 Speaker 1 Yes, Rabbi Albert.

1:53:24 Speaker 15 Rabbi Albert.

1:53:25 Speaker 1 Yes. And the bochur who brought him is now in Australia—Motel Feiglin. He had a Cadillac, and he drove him. Now, when he came out, Maariv was at nine-thirty; that time it was at a quarter to ten, there on Bernard.

1:53:45 Speaker 15 How long was the meeting?

1:53:46 Speaker 1 I think it was twenty minutes, half an hour, something like that. I’d say he had come expecting five minutes. Anyway, he came out. I hadn’t said anything to the photographer. The photographer was an idiot, so he didn’t take a proper picture. He only took a picture of Leibel putting his—

1:54:09 Speaker 15 Coat.

1:54:10 Speaker 1 And you can see the Rebbe’s eyes from the side. But you can see the clock very clearly. That’s very important. I’ll tell you why. The clock shows a quarter to ten. Why does that matter? Because later that week, after the wedding, there was a front-page headline in the newspaper.

1:54:34 Speaker 15 Reb Moshe had come to Lubavitch, to see the Rebbe.

1:54:39 Speaker 1 And everyone made a fuss about it. After all, the Rebbe should have come to him, you understand? They thought I had arranged it. So they said to me, “What chutzpah, bringing Reb Moshe at two in the morning! You brought him there at two in the morning.” So I told them, “You can see that it was—”

1:55:03 Speaker 15 A quarter to ten.

1:55:04 Speaker 1 Two, but that was... Now there was something else, an operation—almost a military operation, even more than that. Because at least with that, everyone knew; Albert [?] knew about it. This one, nobody knew. Absolutely nobody. Only me. And this was during the illness, after the stroke, after the heart attack. What I remember is that after that heart attack, Mekonin [?] and a few other shluchim were there, talking about how they had to do something for the Rebbe. They had to do something. So they decided to take on another institution, or something else. I heard about it and wanted to do something too, but I had no idea what I could do. Then I thought: What will I do? I’ll get a letter from him saying he supports the campaign. So I went.

1:56:04 Speaker 15 From Reb Moshe.

1:56:05 Speaker 1 Yes. I went and wrote it up. I wrote a letter and typed it. That was enough. He would add the date and his name. Well, that was enough for me.

1:56:25 Speaker 15 That was the procedure with all the letters—you were essentially his secretary.

1:56:28 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. Look, I knew this was really a bombshell. If, G-d forbid, [unclear]... That day there was a major snowstorm. So not everyone was there; only Reb Moshe and his wife were there.

1:56:50 Speaker 15 You know, there would be all kinds of—

1:56:52 Speaker 1 No, no, not like that.

1:56:53 Speaker 15 Intermediaries [?], intermediaries [?].

1:56:53 Speaker 1 Exactly, intermediaries [?], watching and looking. But there was snow, and nobody wanted to go out. So I seized the moment. I could go in whenever I wanted, because of my position. I gave it to him and sat there right on edge.

1:57:18 Speaker 15 In suspense.

1:57:18 Speaker 1 In suspense. Someone might come in, and I wanted [unclear]. He starts writing. He writes and writes, and the whole time I’m thinking, What am I...? He writes three full lines—three lines. Nobody could say it was forged. Three lines! “Certainly all these campaigns should be carried out, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe is doing, to bring Jews closer [unclear], and they should be supported,” and so on. Wow. I got it. I went outside, and once I was out on the street—wow, the snow didn’t matter, nothing mattered. But it was six o’clock, and I wanted the Rebbe to receive it before he went home. At that time, after [unclear], he would go home.

1:58:14 Speaker 15 Yes, yes.

1:58:15 Speaker 1 He used to go home early then.

1:58:19 Speaker 15 Seven in the evening.

1:58:20 Speaker 1 Seven in the evening. And getting there... Normally I would take a bus from the East Side, and it would take about half an hour. But with the snow, I was very worried about how long it would take. Still, I wanted the Rebbe at least to know there was such a letter. So I called Leibel and told him I had a letter from Reb Moshe, and that it was with me. I traveled there, arrived, and ran like a madman. I got there at about a quarter to seven and ran through Brooklyn. It stopped in Brooklyn.

1:58:55 Speaker 15 In Brooklyn.

1:58:56 Speaker 1 Then I turned and ran to 770. I went in there, near the Rebbe’s room, after [unclear]. People were standing there, and I was standing there too, with the letter. The Rebbe came out, with Leibel behind him. The Rebbe looked at the people and saw me. He turned to Leibel, and Leibel—

1:59:21 Speaker 15 Held out his hand, as if—

1:59:22 Speaker 1 Leibel didn’t do that. Leibel did what Leibel does. He immediately ran over to me. “Give it to me.” I gave it to him, and he went in. A few minutes later he came out. The Rebbe... [unclear]. Well, listen, it was—

1:59:40 Speaker 15 And if he approved it, [unclear] translated it into Hebrew.

1:59:44 Speaker 1 That was nothing, nothing. I forgot about the whole episode. I must have put it straight into the press.

1:59:50 Speaker 15 By word of mouth.

1:59:51 Speaker 1 Elazar was beside himself too. I’d done something he hadn’t even known about, but he didn’t mind. Then, listen, about two weeks later, I wanted to daven Minchah in one of the rooms at [unclear]. Sometimes I would go into their shul, at 14 [unclear].

2:00:16 Speaker 15 The yeshiva of [unclear]—there was a minyan there.

2:00:19 Speaker 1 Yes, it was right on the same block as the—

2:00:22 Speaker 15 Of [unclear].

2:00:23 Speaker 1 Of [unclear]. It was [unclear]. A lot of times they needed people for Minchah. You understand? To come to Reb Moshe’s Minchah minyan. Today you’d say, How could that be? But I’ll tell you something. My father-in-law, who had studied under the Chofetz Chaim, told me that the same thing happened there: often people didn’t want to come to his minyan. Anyway, one time I came there for Minchah and Reb Moshe was there. I’d forgotten about that letter and everything connected with it. I davened Minchah, Reb Moshe left, and his shamash came over to me and started telling me off. “You [unclear]! Do you know how much anguish you caused Reb Moshe with what you did with that letter? What was in that letter?” What? He was humiliating me in front of everyone. I’m telling you, I haven’t forgotten how it felt. But the main thing was, I didn’t care what they thought of me. I didn’t mind taking the criticism.

2:01:41 Speaker 15 Good for you. Good for you for getting caught.

2:01:43 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. But I didn’t know whether what they were saying about Reb Moshe was true.

2:01:52 Speaker 15 That bothered you.

2:01:52 Speaker 1 It bothered me very much. So that evening I went to his grandson. His grandson was with him all the time. He just hadn’t been there that snowy day. He was—

2:02:01 Speaker 15 Which grandson?

2:02:02 Speaker 1 His grandson, Tendler.

2:02:04 Speaker 15 Dovid Gershon.

2:02:05 Speaker 1 His son, dear.

2:02:07 Speaker 15 Ah, Dovid Gershon.

2:02:10 Speaker 1 He was with his grandfather almost twenty-four hours a day, so if anyone knew, he did. I asked him, “Is it true that—” And he said, “What nonsense!” But what could I do? There was another time: the brother of Rabbi Nachum Trebnik had been Reb Moshe’s study partner in yeshiva. They were friends.

2:02:38 Speaker 15 In yeshiva.

2:02:39 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:02:39 Speaker 15 In Lithuania.

2:02:40 Speaker 1 In Lithuania. Rabbi Nachum was there too, so he knew him. They’d been friendly ever since. Whenever he came to [unclear], he would go in.

2:02:49 Speaker 15 To the Tisch.

2:02:50 Speaker 1 To the Tisch, he would go in. Now, when the Rebbe launched Mivtza Neshek, the Shabbos candle-lighting campaign, people began opposing it. They said [unclear]; for a month people talked about it, speaking dismissively to him about all sorts of issues. I think the Rebbe asked Rabbi Nachum to speak with Reb Moshe about it, to find out whether he really opposed it. People were saying in his name that he was against it—that was it. So the question was whether he actually opposed it or not. He asked him to arrange the meeting, and I was at that meeting.

2:03:36 Speaker 15 Trebnik asked—Rabbi Trebnik asked.

2:03:38 Speaker 1 He asked me to arrange a meeting with Reb Moshe, and I did. They went in, embraced, and so on. He asked Reb Moshe whether what people were saying was true. Reb Moshe said, “G-d forbid, G-d forbid. I can’t say anything, but G-d forbid that I’m against it.” So he asked him to put it in writing. He also spoke to him about [unclear], something concerning a bris. That letter exists. Reb Moshe wrote it all in his own handwriting, not through me. It says, “Regarding what people are saying in my name, that I am against Neshek, the Rebbe’s Neshek campaign, [unclear]. Everything the Rebbe does is for the sake of Heaven. There is no doubt that it is not against halachah,” and so on. But he himself couldn’t become involved, because if he said something, people would take it as a halachic ruling. He couldn’t compel anyone to do it, but it wasn’t right to say he opposed it. Something like that. Now there was something else. To me, this is something you don’t forget in your lifetime. The Rebbe once sent me to be present at one of the Agudas Yisroel conventions.

2:05:08 Speaker 16 There was a convention in the winter.

2:05:10 Speaker 1 Yes, in the winter, and that was when he called [unclear].

2:05:14 Speaker 16 Hold on a second. Were there many such missions from the Rebbe then?

2:05:21 Speaker 1 There were a few. Yes, a few.

2:05:23 Speaker 16 Let’s start with this one, then. We’ll come back to the others.

2:05:25 Speaker 1 All right, I’ll have to... Well, there were things. Okay. I’ll tell you, it’s not that the Rebbe told me explicitly in every instance. I understood what he meant.

2:05:37 Speaker 16 Yes, of course.

2:05:38 Speaker 1 So he asked me to be there. It was over Shabbos. All the gedolim were there—[unclear], [unclear], and perhaps Rabbi Gifter was there too. People came from here as well. Leizer Sohn came from here, from [unclear]. Others came from here.

2:06:01 Speaker 16 Leizer Sohn was very young then.

2:06:03 Speaker 1 Yes, he was. So—

2:06:05 Speaker 16 Suddenly Pam and all the—

2:06:08 Speaker 1 Yes, Pam, [unclear], [unclear]. And Kotler—by the way, Kotler. I was very friendly with him. Remind me to tell you about that shortly if I forget. Anyway, they were there, and Kamenetsky, [unclear], all the gedolim—everyone who was anyone was there. They were on the podium.

2:06:33 Speaker 16 The dais.

2:06:34 Speaker 1 The dais.

2:06:35 Speaker 16 The head table.

2:06:36 Speaker 1 Reb Moshe, yes.

2:06:38 Speaker 16 Rabbi Moshe was there too.

2:06:39 Speaker 1 Yes, Rabbi Moshe was there. Yes, he arrived, and I was there. They saw there was no one else like me. They said I was [unclear]. By the way, I went in once—maybe they sent me twice, to two conventions, perhaps even three, I think. Three, actually. I don’t remember which one it was. I think it was either this time or later. I once went in there on Friday afternoon for Minchah, before Lechu Neranenah. I wanted to ask something, and he was standing there.

2:07:14 Speaker 16 Torah [unclear].

2:07:14 Speaker 1 Torah [unclear]. He was speaking with someone else. I walked past, and I knew him well. I said, “Good Shabbos, Rabbi,” and he smiled and said to the rosh yeshivah—I don’t remember who it was, some rosh yeshivah he was speaking with—“Do you know who this is? He’s their CIA man.”

2:07:39 Speaker 16 A CIA spy, their secret service. They knew. In short, they knew exactly why you were there.

2:07:46 Speaker 1 I was there. I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t know whether you think this might well have been the reason, but I’m not sure it was. Someone told me he thought the reason was that, at the time, there was opposition to the neshek campaign. Rabbi Nissan Nemenov was there, and they were afraid the convention would come out against it. So they saw [unclear] and knew that the rabbi would take care of it all. In any event, you see what happened. Friday afternoon came: Minchah, Lechu Neranenah, Maariv, and “Gut Shabbos.” There were two thousand people there, and everyone who mattered was there. He [unclear]. He saw me and couldn’t do anything. Then all two thousand people came past the dais, and everyone was saying, “Good Shabbos, good Shabbos.” I went past too, with everyone watching. And Rabbi Moshe said, “Do you have somewhere to eat?” He was offering to have me come to his home. Come to his home! You understand? Everyone there saw that he honored you and knew who you were. Yes, yes. Now, there was Rabbi Shneur Kotler. Rabbi Shneur Kotler was very, very fond of me. First of all, he wasn’t like Rabbi Shach. Not at all. He was calm. They say it was because he grew up with his grandfather, Rabbi [unclear], who used to daven in a Chassidic shtiebel in Meah Shearim. That was where he learned Likkutei Torah. In any event, he was very close to me. He liked me because he came from Lakewood and wanted to know what was happening in the rabbinic world. So—

2:10:07 Speaker 1 His mother lived in Boro Park. He asked me to come see him when he visited, to tell him what was going on. He would come down, and we would go for a stroll for fifteen or twenty minutes, and I would fill him in on what was happening in the rabbinic world. Exactly. Lag BaOmer came, and I drafted a letter for Rabbi Moshe to sign, endorsing the Lag BaOmer parade. This was already in 5740. In 5740, yes. And you know where it was? You mean Kikar Malchei Yisrael? Yes, in Tel Aviv. Rabbi Moshe signed the letter, but I didn’t want only Rabbi Moshe’s signature. So I also got the Gaon Rabbi Yehoshua [unclear]. I debated whether to approach Rabbi Shneur Kotler, because I knew it would make a tremendous impact. Yes. But I was also afraid that if he saw it, it might spoil things between us. So I told myself it was better to keep what I had from the other two. Whom you could count on. Yes. The letter came out and caused a great stir. A few days later, Rabbi Mendel’s attendant called me and said, “What chutzpah on your part!” Rabbi Moshe had received a great deal of criticism. Why had he endorsed something on a Sunday? First of all, according to halachah, you’re not supposed to specify Sunday. I didn’t know that. Sunday, and all sorts of other accusations and lashon hara. “What have you done?” When they told me that Sunday was against halachah, it hurt me very much. Whenever something on this subject weighed on me, I would speak to Rabbi Chodakov and the Rebbe. Their claim was that Sunday is a holiday of the non-Jews. Yes, yes, yes. Of the non-Jews, so—

2:12:28 Speaker 1 It wasn’t appropriate to hold it then. Yes, yes. And most of the time—almost all the time, if the Rebbe didn’t come on himself—he was on the line when I called Rabbi Chodakov. Yes. I remember the first time it happened. I called Rabbi Chodakov, and suddenly—I had no idea the Rebbe was on the line. I didn’t know that was the arrangement. I was speaking with Rabbi Chodakov, and suddenly I heard the Rebbe say to him, “Ask him.” He wasn’t speaking to me directly: “Ask him.” I heard exactly what he told him to ask. It was the first time I’d been asked something that way. I got frightened and simply lost my tongue. Rabbi Chodakov asked me, and I couldn’t answer. He said, “All right, perhaps another time.” After we hung up, I said to myself: What is this? The Rebbe asks you something and you don’t answer? It could happen again. You have to do something. So I had to find a way to create some distance in my mind. When there is a tzimtzum, the light is withdrawn. Yes, the light is withdrawn. It was the same here. I had to tell myself, in a sense, “The Rebbe isn’t here right now,” so that I would be able to speak. Otherwise I couldn’t speak. I needed that withdrawal of the light. It helped me a great deal. I could speak freely and hear the Rebbe, hear the Rebbe, without becoming overwhelmed. And it happened many, many times. So I called. I never, ever used those opportunities to raise a personal matter, though many things weighed on me. I would—

2:14:43 Speaker 1 Send a letter to the Rebbe instead, but I never did that on the phone. You didn’t dare? No, I didn’t dare. Yes. I mean, no. My own problems, personal matters—I didn’t dare. Never, never. And I could have received an answer immediately. No, no, no. All right, so what happened about that letter they shouted at you over? You remember? I called, and the Rebbe was on the line. Rabbi Chodakov told me, “Well, perhaps next time it should be done differently.” He made it sound as though it wasn’t so terrible. Not terrible, but it would have been better not to specify that it was Sunday. Right, but it wasn’t terrible. He calmed me down and said, “Vest testen di eyer”—“You’ll taste the eggs.” On Lag BaOmer people eat eggs. Eggs. That’s the custom. Right. Then the Rebbe asked him, “When will they eat the eggs?” I didn’t know about that custom at all. So I was thinking about it, and finally I asked him. Then I heard the Rebbe in the background—he hadn’t left—and he burst out laughing. When I heard the laughter, I got startled. Do you hear? I was startled and embarrassed. I didn’t know, and the Rebbe was laughing. I didn’t know what to do. It was [unclear]. I was simply embarrassed. Even afterward, it felt as though everybody knew and I was the only one who didn’t. It was amazing. Okay, so that was that.

2:16:37 Speaker 3 What happened? There’s also a story about the tefillin. The Rebbe asked Rabbi Yotam [?]—was that connected with you?

2:16:43 Speaker 1 No, Avraham Yosef did that. No, Avraham Yosef did that.

2:16:49 Speaker 3 But the Rebbe sent him Rabbeinu Tam tefillin from Rabbi [unclear] [?].

2:16:51 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. That wasn’t through me. But before I traveled here, Rabbi Nachum Trebnik apparently asked him to have a letter purchased in the Sefer Torah for his family, for his grandchildren.

2:17:19 Speaker 3 [unclear].

2:17:19 Speaker 1 Nothing, nothing. Yes.

2:17:20 Speaker 3 Now, for that.

2:17:22 Speaker 1 Yes, for that too.

2:17:23 Speaker 3 [unclear].

2:17:24 Speaker 1 [unclear]. Yes, yes. So he gave it to me. Before I traveled, I went in to Rabbi [unclear] [?] on [unclear] Street [?], and he gave me, I think, seventy-two dollars to give to Trebnik for the Sefer Torah. Then I told him I was about to travel to Eretz Yisroel, and that I intended to visit Rabbi Shlomo Zalman and give him regards.

2:17:55 Speaker 3 From the Rebbe.

2:17:56 Speaker 1 Yes, to send regards to Reb Meizel[?], and maybe I’ll come to his simcha. I told him that, but as for the one in Bnei Brak, I didn’t even want to say his name. I won’t go in to him. So he said—he was very gracious—“I’ll tell you.” He knew what it was about, so he began saying, “He’s a fine Jew, but he isn’t used to conducting himself that way, because the rabbi in his community... from the previous rabbi... was known throughout the world, so to depart from that...” So I told him, “Gut.” I’d better keep quiet; I wouldn’t have responded well. All right.

2:18:34 Speaker 3 We’ll go to...

2:18:35 Speaker 1 We’ll get to him. Oh, there’s something else too.

2:18:41 Speaker 3 The whole matter of his complaints.

2:18:45 Speaker 1 Ah, yes, yes, remind me. But there’s something else. It’s one of my big stories.

2:18:51 Speaker 3 Yes.

2:18:51 Speaker 1 This, this, this is a bombshell. A real bombshell. I only discovered it in the past year—I’m beginning to uncover it. I never told it. I never spoke about it. Only in the past year, when a lot of people interviewed me, did I start telling this story. I’ll tell you too. But first, some background. On Tu BiShvat, it had been two years... thirty... he came. Soloveitchik came.

2:19:19 Speaker 3 Tu BiShvat, Tu BiShvat.

2:19:22 Speaker 1 On Tu BiShvat there was a Great Assembly here.

2:19:25 Speaker 3 Here in Israel.

2:19:26 Speaker 1 Yes. For every Great Assembly, they would send invitations to all the Jewish communities. To the Rebbe too. They knew he wouldn’t come, but they sent an invitation, and then he sent a letter of blessing.

2:19:38 Speaker 3 Agudas Yisroel.

2:19:39 Speaker 1 Yes, here in Israel. They knew that the Rebbe would always send a letter of blessing or a telegram to be publicized, and they would read it aloud. It was Tu BiShvat, and Klepper[?] from Bnei Brak was there, and he wouldn’t allow it. They began saying that he wouldn’t let them read the letter. It took an hour. In the end they read it, but there was an hour or two of turmoil over it. You know, there was this whole thing where he wouldn’t... The press picked it up, and the next day there was a headline that he had slighted the... that he wouldn’t allow them to read the Rebbe’s letter. It was a disgrace. It was disrespectful to the Rebbe. That was when Tuvya Schwartz[?] came; Rabbi Yosef Ber came to the farbrengen[?]. The next morning, at eight, Halberg[?] calls me and says, “I want you to come to me.”

2:20:56 Speaker 4 To go out to the rabbi.

2:20:56 Speaker 1 Rabbi Halberg[?] calls me: “I want you to come to me.” Now, what do I do? Rabbi Halberg[?] gave the kosher certification for Coca-Cola, and that brought in a lot. One of Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik’s students had begun to approach him about it. He wanted to speak to Rabbi Yosef Ber so that he would exert his influence, persuade him about the, about the—

2:21:25 Speaker 4 The baal teshuvah.

2:21:26 Speaker 1 I had to get involved in it. He asked me to make the connection and listen to what they said, so I could serve as a witness if anything came of it. I had no idea what they were going to discuss; otherwise I would have brought a tape recorder. Oh, to this day I think I should have brought a tape recorder. So I arrived. He told me, “Listen, you stand here by the telephone. I’ll be in the other room. Connect me and listen to what he says.” I called. Ah, Rabbi Soloveitchik, I’m telling you. I said, “Rabbi Soloveitchik, good morning. Rabbi Halberg wants to speak with you.” So he takes the phone: “Rabbi Soloveitchik, good morning.” “Good morning. How are you, Halberg?” I’ll say it first in Yiddish, and then... I thought they were about to discuss that matter. So Rabbi Halberg says to him, “Nu, what did you think of last night? How did you—”

2:22:32 Speaker 4 Feel.

2:22:33 Speaker 1 Last night. So he said, “What are you talking about? What are you saying? Such a crowd! I thought one ought to make the blessing Chacham Harazim. Such a crowd, and they’re all his. He’s the father of the baalei teshuvah in America. He’s the father of the baalei teshuvah in America.” He’s the father of the baalei teshuvah in America.

2:23:00 Speaker 4 There was such a huge crowd that I wondered whether to say the blessing Chacham Harazim, and they were all his, because he’s the father of the baalei teshuvah in America.

2:23:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:23:09 Speaker 4 Rabbi Yosef Dov Ber said, “How fitting his name is—‘a good name.’”

2:23:13 Speaker 1 Yes. After that he said, “And I saw how he quoted a passage of Gemara... I know Tanya by heart.” He knows Tanya by heart. And then I noticed that once he quoted a passage of Gemara and made a mistake, and immediately went back and corrected himself. And he does it all without notes. He speaks for hours without notes. Even I can’t do that. He was known to speak at length too—an hour, three hours—but from notes. Three hours without notes, even I can’t do that. And he speaks and... “What are you saying? What are you saying?” So Halberg says to him, “You know, Rabbi Soloveitchik, your coming was a great honor.” That’s one thing. There was something else. I’ve forgotten. Maybe I need to... Ah, ah, ah.

2:24:14 Speaker 4 A fast, a public fast.

2:24:16 Speaker 1 He wanted a public fast. A public fast. A public fast. This public fast was the part he did about... that first time. It was the first time I remember him doing it. Ah, the first time was in 5732, when the Rebbe asked a group of rabbis to declare a public fast for a Jew. I worked very, very hard on it for twenty-four hours. I succeeded. On the following Shabbos, suddenly, as I’m standing there, the Rebbe turns to me on his own and says, “Come here for lechaim,” and—

2:24:52 Speaker 4 There was a war, Osdaleh[?].

2:24:54 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:24:54 Speaker 4 A major war.

2:24:54 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. But I said that there; I didn’t know. In any case, there was this... the fast came up, came up with a kippah, with a kippah.

2:25:09 Speaker 4 The Yom Kippur War.

2:25:10 Speaker 1 The Yom Kippur War. Yes. That’s it; that was something too. It was—

2:25:15 Speaker 4 Nu, what happened? Tell us.

2:25:17 Speaker 1 Oh, that was something. The Yom Kippur War broke out, and people heard what had happened here. All across the United States, all the Jews in the United States were depressed. Halberg came and said to Benenholer[?], “We have to declare a fast. I’m in shul all the time, and people ask me in their homes why the group of rabbis isn’t declaring a fast. So it has to be a fast, a fast.” And that was—

2:25:50 Speaker 4 To hold a fast for the United States.

2:25:52 Speaker 1 A fast for the United States. It was a real time of distress, a time of distress. So he called a large meeting to discuss it and decide whether to do it. Now, the Rebbe was opposed. He wanted simcha. He said the only way to—

2:26:13 Speaker 4 Break through.

2:26:14 Speaker 1 Break through was through simcha. “You shall rejoice on your festival”—it’s through simcha. Hashem will bring salvation. That’s how they would accomplish it.

2:26:23 Speaker 4 At the beginning, the day after the war began, the day after Yom Kippur, several people from Israel approached the Rebbe in tears.

2:26:30 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:26:30 Speaker 4 The Rebbe wouldn’t accept it. He said, “Why are you drawing me into your gloom? Give it over with simcha, and write about it with simcha.”

2:26:37 Speaker 1 Yes. So they came. Weinberg and Shlomo Morozov and all the Chabad people who were in the group of rabbis came there. Rabbi Mendelick. He was speaking.

2:26:51 Speaker 4 They came to the meeting of the—

2:26:52 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

2:26:52 Speaker 4 The rabbis.

2:26:53 Speaker 1 Rabbi Teitz was there.

2:26:55 Speaker 4 Pinchas Teitz from New Jersey.

2:26:56 Speaker 1 Yes. Now, suddenly they gave people the floor to speak about whether to do it or not. Usually, Halberg would have prepared things in advance. If he wanted something, he would arrange beforehand for the vote to go his way. Here he wanted a fast—he really wanted one—because if the group of rabbis did it, that was publicity, that was... Fine. Rabbi Mendelick spoke and began speaking with such pathos, so emotionally, with such feeling.

2:27:35 Speaker 4 Great feeling.

2:27:35 Speaker 1 Anyone who knew Halberg... Rabbi Mendelick spoke about simcha, simcha, and repeated the Rebbe’s sicha and all of that. No, under no circumstances. He spoke so persuasively that the rabbis began to lean his way. You know, some were for it, some... Then Teitz got up and said, “I don’t understand how we can practically dance when they’re on the other side...” There was—

2:28:06 Speaker 4 Teitz said he couldn’t understand how people could dance with joy in a situation like that.

2:28:09 Speaker 1 Yes. So there was another rabbi there, one of the Salonikan rabbis, who said to him, “And you can sleep? You can eat?” Something like that. And then they began discussing it and decided to hold a meeting, with Rabbi Meir Schorr on the phone and several other leading rabbis, to announce a fast. They understood, too, that you don’t hold a fast on Chol Hamoed. The meeting was during Chol Hamoed, and the fast would be after Simchas Torah. So they decided to announce in the newspapers that there would be a fast after Simchas Torah. That evening Herberg held a meeting with Rabbi Meir Schorr. There was the Alter [unclear], and other important rebbes of the time, and perhaps a few roshei yeshivah too, I think. They decided to hold a fast and announced it. Now it fell to me to carry it out. What did that mean? Placing the notice in the Morgen Journal, saying there would be a fast afterward. Now imagine people getting a notice on the eve of Simchas Torah that there’s going to be a fast. What kind of Simchas Torah would they have? It would be completely the opposite of what the Rebbe wanted. How could I place a notice like that? I said to myself, what am I going to do? But on the other hand, I knew that if I didn’t do it, someone else would. So I said, fine, I’ll do it. He gave it to me. This was the next day, Wednesday, I think, or Thursday—Wednesday. The notice had to be in by two. After two—

2:30:22 Speaker 4 Wouldn’t the paper already have gone to press?

2:30:23 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. And he had already arranged with Jacob Jacobson for the notice to be submitted by two, and for him to hold—

2:30:34 Speaker 4 To save a space.

2:30:35 Speaker 1 To save a space. But I knew I couldn’t do it. So I said, fine, I’ll do it. At ten—Herberg already suspected me—he said, “Well, have you put it in yet?” I said, “The deadline’s two; there’s still time.” At eleven-thirty: “Well, have you put it in?” I said, “I’m going now. Two o’clock is fine.” He asked me again at twelve, I think, or at one. No, no. Later, after two, when I should already have submitted it, he asked, “Well, did you put it in?” I said, “You don’t know what happened. The traffic was terrible; there was something going on there. I couldn’t get through, I couldn’t get there. When I got there, he turned me away. What could I do?” Fine. The next day I went straight to the office. I came in, the phone rang, and I picked it up. It was Herberg. He said, “You’re still in the office? Get out of here. You’re fired. I’m—I’m a fool. How do you say it?”

2:31:51 Speaker 4 You ruined the whole—

2:31:52 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. “You’re crazy. You belong in a hospital. Get out of here. I don’t want to see you.” He said I was fired. I thought, well, as you said, my trick had been discovered.

2:32:05 Speaker 4 Discovered.

2:32:05 Speaker 1 Yes. So what could I do? It was Thursday, and then came Simchas Torah. Was I going to write the Rebbe about something like this now? No, no, no. I thought I’d speak to the Rebbe after Simchas Torah. I wasn’t going to write about it now. I was just sitting with it. Well, apparently the Rebbe already knew. He heard through some [unclear], Zalman or someone. But not from me.

2:32:40 Speaker 5 You hadn’t written to him beforehand.

2:32:42 Speaker 1 I hadn’t written, hadn’t said anything, hadn’t reported anything. After it happened, I went to Reb Moishe and told him I hadn’t been able to do it. He said, “If you want, I’ll tell him to take you back. He shouldn’t have fired you.” At that point I still didn’t know whether I’d done the right thing.

2:33:06 Speaker 5 Did Reb Moishe know you hadn’t placed the notice because of the Rebbe?

2:33:09 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. No, no, no—he knew, but he didn’t know why. He only knew that I wasn’t going to do it and that I’d been fired. He said, “I can get you taken back if you want,” but I still didn’t know whether I should. So I said, “I don’t know yet.” Anyway, I wanted to hear from the Rebbe. Then came Shabbos in Borough Park, I think, after Simchas Torah.

2:33:35 Speaker 5 It was Thursday, Friday, Shabbos, all together.

2:33:36 Speaker 1 Yes. So on Sunday I called the Rebbe. I wrote the Rebbe the whole story, and the Rebbe said he had spoken about it at the farbrengen that Shabbos in Borough Park. He added that one doesn’t do such things according to Shulchan Aruch. Orach Chaim—it’s the one section of Shulchan Aruch; I’ll have to look up the siman—says not to proclaim fasts over all sorts of things like that. It was as though he could have come out against it more strongly, but there was no need now; this wasn’t a time for disputes. In other words, he told me he’d already spoken about it that Shabbos. He spoke about the difference between what Choni Hame’agel did and what Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai did. Choni Hame’agel had to draw a circle and go through a whole procedure; then the rain came. That approach was legitimate too. But with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai it came freely, right away, with joy—that was what I wanted. But their approach was legitimate as well. After all, they were rabbis.

2:35:05 Speaker 5 There are two ways, after all.

2:35:06 Speaker 1 Yes. Since the rabbis had said so, you didn’t have to act as I did. After I did it, but before I wrote to the Rebbe, before Simchas Torah, Zalman told me the next day, “You shouldn’t have done that.” Then I saw that the Rebbe said there were two ways, and they wanted me there. So I went back, and he took me back. Later, when my wife and I went to Eretz Yisroel, I went to see Elad Yechezkel Fried. I had worked with him for ten years, and his wife was there too. In the middle he got a phone call and went into the next room to speak. My wife and I were left with his wife. She said to me, “Rabbi Levin, I want you to know something. All that time, when he fired you and shouted at you and came down on you—he had to do that outwardly. He admired you very, very much. He admired your courage, the way you didn’t care what anyone thought. He liked that, but he couldn’t show it because of the whole situation. Don’t take it to heart.” Ah, there was something else I’ve forgotten.

2:36:32 Speaker 6 He was a Jew who cared, and over the years he grew closer and closer to the Rebbe, didn’t he?

2:36:37 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:36:37 Speaker 6 Herberg.

2:36:38 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes.

2:36:39 Speaker 6 In his collections, too, he included the—

2:36:41 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:36:41 Speaker 6 The Rebbe’s sichos.

2:36:42 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. I think—I think I should mention this to someone. Wiener, he was the author of Hadas Ponovezhuk [unclear].

2:36:50 Speaker 6 Yes.

2:36:50 Speaker 1 Could you—

2:36:51 Speaker 6 Maramos [unclear].

2:36:52 Speaker 1 Yes. No, someone named Wiener from America. Someone named Wiener from America, yes. He wrote about Hadas Ponovezhuk [unclear], “the gaon, the scholar and the tzaddik” [unclear].

2:37:01 Speaker 6 He grew a beard too, yes.

2:37:03 Speaker 1 You know, Herberg didn’t have a beard, and he gave him an approbation. I think that over time he kept thinking about how he was going around, and eventually he had a beard. But you see, that was life there.

2:37:27 Speaker 6 I was at Herberg’s funeral. I was studying in Jerusalem then.

2:37:31 Speaker 1 You remember I was there? Right.

2:37:34 Speaker 6 I came from Jerusalem then. It was at the Mir.

2:37:36 Speaker 1 I remember that.

2:37:37 Speaker 6 Rabbi Tzvi Fraks [unclear] was there, Rabbi Tzvi Fraks [unclear].

2:37:39 Speaker 1 Yes, I remember. Do you remember it?

2:37:41 Speaker 6 Not all of this belongs on the recording, but Rabbi Tzvi Fraks [unclear] spoke somehow about how he had worked on the Rebbe’s behalf, and how important the Rebbe’s honor was to him.

2:37:48 Speaker 1 And they took that out. It was—it was terrible.

2:37:53 Speaker 6 But it’s important to remember Rabbi Tzvi’s connection to that, how much he cared about the Rebbe’s honor and about...

2:38:02 Speaker 1 There was something else very interesting about Herberg. He would take me along in the car when he had to go to a doctor or somewhere like that. He wanted me there in case a policeman came or something, so I could... Once, on the way back, he told me this: he served as an intermediary between the Rebbe and leading rabbis in Eretz Yisroel. Every summer he would go on vacation to Switzerland and spend two weeks in Eretz Yisroel. Before leaving, he went in to the Rebbe for yechidus, and the Rebbe gave him several missions for the [unclear] Rav and other leading rabbis. There was an issue then—he told me it concerned Mivtza Tefillin. The Rebbe wanted a beis din to issue a letter supporting the Rebbe’s tefillin campaign.

2:39:00 Speaker 6 Against tefillin.

2:39:01 Speaker 1 So he went to the [unclear] Rav. The [unclear] Rav was then—how do you say it—he was the—

2:39:07 Speaker 6 President of the council.

2:39:08 Speaker 1 He told him what the Rebbe had said. So that rabbi [?] thought about it and said, “Nu, how do we do that?” So he told him the following. This is how Halberg [?] told it to me. He said to me, “Fly to him. Talk to him about tefillin—not the campaign, but the mitzvah, the greatness of the mitzvah of tefillin, as they say. Get him excited about tefillin, about how good it is to ask Jews to put on tefillin. You’ll see him warm to it. Once he wants to, tell him that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is very much against it.”

2:39:54 Speaker 6 In the strength of the Jewish people. Nu, when was the last time you saw the Rebbe?

2:40:03 Speaker 1 Oh, there was something else. Something else. My [unclear] is Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman’s son-in-law.

2:40:14 Speaker 6 Oh.

2:40:15 Speaker 1 So I had—

2:40:15 Speaker 6 I wanted to hear a little about Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman.

2:40:18 Speaker 1 Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman. So I was very, very close with him, and I was his messenger whenever he published a book. He would give me—

2:40:27 Speaker 6 Your [unclear].

2:40:28 Speaker 1 No, Reb Chaim, Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman.

2:40:31 Speaker 6 When Rabbi Chaim published a book, it was—

2:40:32 Speaker 1 He would give me the book.

2:40:34 Speaker 6 You were his messenger to bring it to the Rebbe.

2:40:36 Speaker 1 To bring it to the Rebbe, to send it to the Rebbe, to bring it to the Rebbe. And he would write a dedication: “In honor of the gaon, unique in his generation.” Now, Rabbi Chaim thought—he dismissed everyone else. He himself was unique in his generation. So it was hard for me: how could he call someone else unique in his generation? He called the Rebbe that. So once I asked him, “What do you see in the Rebbe that makes you write ‘unique in his generation’?” He told me, “You should know that your Rebbe knows the entire Torah by heart. When the [unclear] came from Jerusalem—everything, absolutely everything, he explains simply. He’s a genius at making things simple. In other words, if you have a difficulty and discuss it with him, he’ll show you, he’ll explain it so simply that you’ll see it was never difficult to begin with. That’s ‘unique in his generation,’” he said. He was very much involved in this. He told me once—he was very much in favor of the integrity of Eretz Yisroel, like the Rebbe. He was very much against that man in Bnei Brak who favored concessions. He wrote against him. So he told me, “Once his students came from Bnei Brak and threatened me that if I didn’t stop writing against concessions, as he wanted, and—”

2:42:20 Speaker 6 In favor of the integrity of Eretz Yisroel.

2:42:21 Speaker 1 “In favor of the integrity of Eretz Yisroel, they would make my life miserable. But I have students too. And what do you think? I understand the psychology of non-Jews. So what do you think? I told them, ‘If you dare do such a thing, my students will grab you by the legs, invite all the media and television crews, and give you a [unclear] in front of everyone.’” There was something else he told me there. Oh, the last time I was with the Rebbe was on 11 Shvat 5748. By the way, that 11 Shvat—11 Shvat was in the week of Parshas Beshalach. There was a farbrengen [?]. That was the first time, the very first time, that the Rebbe spoke about what to do if someone has a question about a doctor. No, that was on 17 Kislev.

2:43:38 Speaker 6 The eleventh of the month was a Thursday.

2:43:40 Speaker 1 Again, again, he also did—he said it in Shvat too.

2:43:43 Speaker 6 Yes.

2:43:44 Speaker 1 But the first time—

2:43:46 Speaker 6 Yes, yes.

2:43:48 Speaker 1 Yes. But the first time was then, on Shabbos.

2:43:50 Speaker 6 Yud Shvat was a Friday; on Shabbos the Rebbe [unclear].

2:43:54 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe said then, “If anyone has...” It was the first time we had heard anything like that. I remember those words—about seeing a doctor and all that. It was as though [unclear]. It was a knife to the heart for me. I couldn’t calm down that day, [unclear]. Anyway, yes, 5748. I was there at that time, and before I returned to Eretz Yisroel, I went by for dollars on Sunday. The Rebbe gave me a dollar. On Shabbos he had spoken about giving tzedakah to someone—that it connects you to him even across the sea. The connection is there even if he is across the sea and you are here. So I went by, the Rebbe gave me a dollar, and I started walking on. The Rebbe called me back and began speaking to me. While he spoke, he gave me another dollar and then another—three dollars altogether. As he spoke, he said, “This is for Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman.”

2:45:11 Speaker 7 “Give this to Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman.”

2:45:12 Speaker 1 He gave me another dollar, then another, in the middle of speaking. He said, “To give tzedakah to another person.” That is, giving tzedakah to someone creates a connection with him even if he is across the sea and you are here. The Rebbe smiled then and said that this applies even when one of them doesn’t believe that one is the greatest of the great and the other is the greatest of the small. Nevertheless, it creates a connection between two people; you just have to be generous toward the other person. I also heard another story about how he became friendly with the Rebbe. He said that once he went in to... He became friendly with the Rebbe even before the Rebbe’s marriage. The Rebbe sat at the head of a yeshivah and also headed [unclear]. He used to publish something like Pardes; there was Kerem, something—Kerem. He was involved in business too. He would come in from time to time to see what was happening. So one day he met the Rebbe and began talking with him in learning. He said that once, after the Rebbe became Rebbe, he came in and saw women and men and all sorts of people waiting for yechidus. “What do you expect? Do you know what kinds of novel insights there could be? If I were to say [unclear]—do you know who that is?”

2:46:49 Speaker 7 That was his style of speaking. It needs explaining; not everyone knows that—

2:46:54 Speaker 1 And he would tell—

2:46:55 Speaker 7 He would give the whole world.

2:46:56 Speaker 1 Yes. So once he—

2:47:00 Speaker 7 Rabbi Eliezer was there once.

2:47:01 Speaker 1 Rabbi Eliezer said—first I’ll tell you this. This was before the Rebbe’s marriage. He came to see the Rebbe, and the Rebbe was in the middle of something, so he went into the zal to a bochur who was studying there. He asked him a question. They were learning a lesson in Sforno, that chapter, so he asked him about it. Meanwhile, the bochur said, “It’s time already.” He told him, “[unclear], I don’t have time right now. I’ll get back to you.” They used to send postcards. “I’ll write you the answer.” He asked him, and then, listen, he went off to speak with the Rebbe. Afterward he never got an answer. So the next time he came, he approached him again and said, “What happened?” He said, “[unclear]. Listen, I don’t understand the psychology of oxen.”

2:48:11 Speaker 7 Oxen.

2:48:12 Speaker 1 [Unclear]. So, ah, I started telling you something else.

2:48:19 Speaker 7 He told Rabbi Eliezer something about the Rebbe’s greatness.

2:48:22 Speaker 1 Oh, I heard this from Rabbi Eliezer, I think, or from someone else. I wasn’t there. This was also in the fifties, early on. They asked him, “Why did you stop coming to the Rebbe? You used to come.” He said, “Look, in those days you didn’t need an appointment. I’m not a man for appointments and all that.” In any case, they said that once he did come, at the beginning of the Rebbe’s nesius, and spoke with him in Gan Eden Hatachton. As he spoke there, he didn’t stay in one—

2:49:03 Speaker 7 Place.

2:49:03 Speaker 1 Place. He paced back and forth, back and forth. The Rebbe stood calmly by the door, speaking with him about something in learning. He paced and spoke, back and forth, until they reached a certain point in the discussion. Then he came over to the Rebbe and suddenly stopped. “That’s a line of reasoning I can’t argue against,” or “We’ll certainly try.”

2:49:38 Speaker 7 I can remember.

2:49:39 Speaker 1 Because I’m not—

2:49:40 Speaker 7 I remember.

2:49:41 Speaker 1 What you said is very powerful, but I remember.

2:49:44 Speaker 7 I can remember. When he distributed HaGenzach, he estimated how many people in the world could understand the book.

2:49:51 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. When the Rebbe had the stroke. It was his birthday, his nine—

2:49:58 Speaker 7 Ninety-two, the fourth of [unclear].

2:49:59 Speaker 1 So, so—

2:50:00 Speaker 7 Ninety.

2:50:01 Speaker 1 Yes, his ninetieth. They asked for letters and so on. So I went to get a birthday greeting from him to bring to the Rebbe.

2:50:14 Speaker 7 To Rabbi Chaim Tzvi.

2:50:15 Speaker 1 Yes, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi wrote to him like this. He wrote something about “a day with the angel,” or something like that, and cited the Gemara in Berachos about Rabbi Yechiel. Did anyone know Rabbi Popper [?], or know Rabbi Yechiel? He had been ill at the yeshivah, something like that, and gave him the—

2:50:36 Speaker 7 [Unclear].

2:50:38 Speaker 1 So he said this letter would be at the entrance—

2:50:41 Speaker 7 [Unclear].

2:50:46 Speaker 1 And he signed the—

2:50:49 Speaker 7 His letter.

2:50:50 Speaker 1 I need to look at it again. I have a copy; I need to check whether it was before his signature or after his signature: “Warm regards to Yankel [?].”

2:51:04 Speaker 7 Well, all that remains now is to bless you that, with Hashem’s help, we’ll return and see the Rebbe again. You’ve carried out so many shlichus assignments and brought the Rebbe so much nachas. May we truly merit to be refreshed again by all those [unclear] with the Rebbe, and to see the Rebbe again soon.

2:51:20 Speaker 1 Amen.

2:51:20 Speaker 7 A good and sweet year.

2:51:21 Speaker 1 Amen.

2:51:21 Speaker 7 All the best.

2:51:23 Speaker 8 Thank you so much for listening to the third episode of Lehitra’nen. Our guest this time was Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Levin. Thank you so much for all the stories, the whole experience, and the refreshment we received in this episode. The podcast is hosted by Rabbi Nachum Goldschmid and produced by Aharon Freiman. Rabbi Shmulik Kaplan helped produce this episode. Thank you very much, and thank you for listening. We’ll meet again in future episodes. Lehitra’nen.