Lehisraanen Episode Five: Rabbi Dovid Meir Drukman

00:00 Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to “Lehitra’anein.” This is a podcast in which chassidim tell us about moments they experienced and witnessed with the Rebbe, and together with them, we refresh our connection to the Rebbe. The podcast is available on all listening platforms, including Drive, and is first released in our WhatsApp group, “Lehitra’anein.” The podcast is hosted by the Rebbe’s shliach, Rabbi Nachum Goldschmidt. Produced by Aharon Freeman. Rabbi Shmulik Kaplan helped record this episode. Thank you very much, and enjoy listening. Lehitra’anein.

00:28 Speaker 2 Welcome to another episode of the podcast. This time we’re with Rabbi Dovid Meir Drukman, who merited to spend many years with the Rebbe and on the Rebbe’s shlichus. We’ll refresh ourselves with him about the outlook of chassidim in real life—a life connected to Beis Chayeinu, a life of joy, a life of everything the Rebbe gives us. First of all, Rabbi Drukman, have a good Erev Rosh Chodesh; may we increase in joy. In Yiddish they ask, “Fun vanet shtamt ir?” Where do you come from?

00:55 Speaker 13 [unclear].

00:56 Speaker 2 [unclear].

00:57 Speaker 13 I came from the knitted-kippah world. Not exactly, but what’s more accurate is that, as a child, I studied in schools associated with the knitted-kippah community. Then, boruch Hashem, even before my bar mitzvah, Hashem gave me the privilege of becoming acquainted with the Rebbe and with Chassidus.

01:25 Speaker 2 How?

01:28 Speaker 13 I’m originally from Jerusalem. I was born in Jerusalem, on Mount Scopus, in 5717, before the establishment of the state. And I’m registered on my identity card as a Palestinian. My family and I would travel to Jerusalem from time to time to visit relatives. I remember as though it were today one Shabbos when we were in Jerusalem. If you know Jerusalem, there’s an institution called Altshuler on Even Yehoshua Street. There was a family minyan there where we davened, and my cousin, Rabbi Yosef Mandelbaum, met me there. He began telling my father about what was, in those days, a relatively new phenomenon. I was about ten then. He spoke about the love people had for the new Rebbe. He spoke about it with such tremendous enthusiasm that it drew in my father and, gradually, me too.

02:34 Speaker 2 How did he know about it?

02:36 Speaker 13 My father was originally from the Vizhnitz chassidim, [unclear]. Here, this isn’t here. And here, this is a picture of me with my grandfather when I was bar mitzvah age.

02:51 Speaker 2 Grandfather [unclear].

02:52 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. My grandfather was a tzaddik.

02:55 Speaker 2 He even saw the Vizhnitzer Rebbe.

02:57 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. Which Vizhnitzer Rebbe? Rebbe Chaim Meir Hager.

03:00 Speaker 2 Ah, only Rebbe Chaim Meir.

03:01 Speaker 13 Not [unclear]?

03:02 Speaker 2 Wasn’t he farther up in Romania?

03:03 Speaker 13 He was, he was from Czernowitz, yes.

03:05 Speaker 2 In Bukovina.

03:05 Speaker 13 Right, yes. And my other grandfather was very well known in Karlin. In any case.

03:17 Speaker 2 How did Rabbi Yosef Mandel—uh, Mandelbaum know about it?

03:19 Speaker 13 Yosef Mandelbaum? How? I don’t know, he’d heard about it.

03:22 Speaker 2 In Jerusalem.

03:23 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes.

03:24 Speaker 2 Or [unclear].

03:25 Speaker 13 Rabbi Yosef Mandelbaum later became the son-in-law of the Slonimer Rebbe, Rebbe Boruch Shalom, in Bnei Brak. At the time, he was a student at Kol Torah. He spoke about it with real generosity of spirit, as people would say today—with love and warmth. It made us very curious. So my father said to me, “You know what? Tomorrow evening, let’s look for a Chabad shul in Jerusalem.” We arrived at the Baal HaTanya shul in Meah Shearim and happened to sit down at Reb Dovid Goldberg’s table. Reb Dovid Goldberg, as is well known, was a man of very dignified bearing who spoke beautifully, a Jew who was the same inside and out. He drew us close.

04:16 Speaker 2 So Reb Dovid was a student of Reb Alter.

04:18 Speaker 13 He was a student of Reb Alter.

04:19 Speaker 2 In Hebron.

04:20 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. On another occasion he told me several stories about Reb Alter. He and Avshil Lipkin were devoted students of his.

04:30 Speaker 2 Reb Alter—is that Reb Alter [unclear]?

04:31 Speaker 13 Alter [unclear], yes. He told me just one thing: In Lithuania, they called him Alter, without “Reb,” right? When he arrived in Jerusalem, the people there honored him by calling him “Reb Alter.” So he said, “Vos reibt ir mir?”—“Reibt,” in Yiddish: “Why are you rubbing me?”

04:52 Speaker 2 And “reibt”—rubbing.

04:53 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. He couldn’t stand displays of honor.

04:57 Speaker 2 In Lithuania they called him Alter Potchever.

04:59 Speaker 13 Alter Potchever, yes, yes, yes. There were other Jews who later became close to Reb Alter. There was Reb Moshe Weber.

05:05 Speaker 2 All of them.

05:06 Speaker 13 Reb Meir Sha—Reb Meir Shachne.

05:09 Speaker 2 Yisroel Tzvi Haber.

05:12 Speaker 13 Hertzel. All the great—

05:14 Speaker 2 Moshe Ashkenazi didn’t become close to him, but he was his student.

05:16 Speaker 13 Moshe Ashkenazi, yes. He came from Chabad stock.

05:20 Speaker 2 He was in Chabad, yes. All of them were a whole group—really something.

05:22 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

05:23 Speaker 2 At my grandfather’s house, they have a gift all his friends gave him for his wedding: a Rambam in five volumes, I believe.

05:29 Speaker 13 For whom? Whose wedding?

05:31 Speaker 2 Reb Meir Shachne’s.

05:32 Speaker 13 Ah, yes.

05:32 Speaker 2 His friends were Yisroel Tzvi Haber, Moshe—Moshe Ashkenazi, students of Reb Alter. He passed away two years before Reb—before he got married. They were considered a group of—

05:41 Speaker 13 And Hertzel was there too, Hertzel and—indirectly, indirectly—

05:46 Speaker 2 No, but Dovid Goldberg became close to him back in Hebron. It was a group of—

05:49 Speaker 13 Dovid Goldberg came from a Hebron family.

05:51 Speaker 2 Yes, that young group was welcomed in Jerusalem.

05:53 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

05:54 Speaker 2 Dovid Goldberg was part of an earlier group, he—

05:56 Speaker 13 Yes. In Jerusalem there were Chabadniks, and there were “Chabatzkers.” There were a lot of Chabatzkers. A Chabatzker was a term for an ordinary Yerushalmi who was close to the Chabadniks, and he turned them into Chabadniks. Yes. Moshe Lipkin also came from a family with Chabad roots. Rabbi says he actually came from Alexander chassidim. So that’s it: from then on, Reb Dovid drew us close. Whenever anything about Chabad or Lubavitch came on the radio or appeared in the media, it immediately set off red lights at home—or green lights, whatever you want to call them—and we began taking an interest. After that—

06:37 Speaker 2 Where were you studying then?

06:39 Speaker 13 At the time, I attended a religious state elementary school here, a Talmud Torah, and in the afternoons there was also a cheder to supplement our religious education. There was a cheder in [unclear] too, and the teacher was actually a [unclear] chossid. Maybe my impressions are a little [unclear], because there was a cheder, and the teacher even had a strap, like in the pictures by [unclear]. Later I studied in Kfar HaRoeh with Rabbi Neriah. But in between, there were two things that were very significant for me. Maybe you’ll be surprised to hear this, maybe not. Once every two weeks, on Wednesday, there was a twenty-minute Tanya class by Rabbi Nachum Goldschmidt.

07:25 Speaker 2 You were among the first listeners. [unclear].

07:28 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. Years later I learned that it was also broadcast on Kol Tzion LaGolah.

07:32 Speaker 2 That was later.

07:33 Speaker 13 How do I know? I was at a celebration for [unclear] in Kfar Chabad, and Reb Yehuda [unclear], a Jew from [unclear], had arrived in Israel. Suddenly he and Rabbi Nachum were kissing and embracing, and Yehuda said to Rabbi Nachum, “We used to hear you on Kol Tzion LaGolah.” It simply gave them life. And no less than that—however much of the Tanya I already understood—I imagined that the person behind the microphone was a young man, because he spoke with such energy, such enthusiasm. That’s it. Later I saw that he was already a Jew with a white beard. Yes, I don’t know exactly what he looked like then. What moved me no less was that there was always a set niggun before Rabbi Nachum’s class: ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, [unclear]. That was the regular niggun before the class.

08:31 Speaker 14 Did he sing it, or was it—

08:32 Speaker 13 No, no, no, that was the introduction.

08:35 Speaker 14 Right, even then.

08:36 Speaker 13 Yes, and it was very, very moving. I really looked forward to hearing the class every two weeks. Later it came out in mimeographed form, yes. Also, there was a newspaper called Panim el Panim, sometimes Ayin BeAyin, edited by Shmuel Avidor HaKohen. Rabbi Dovid Chanzin—Rabbi Chanzin from Petach Tikvah—traveled to the Rebbe for Tishrei, and in a series in the newspaper he described what he experienced there. I read it avidly. I pored over every line several times, and it aroused tremendous curiosity in me. And I remember, today, bli ayin hara, there are pictures and photographs. Back then, there were no pictures of the Rebbe. So I found a booklet published by Tzach with the famous picture. It was the only picture approved for publication. I glued it to cardboard, covered it with clear plastic, and kept it in the kitchen, in my parents’ kitchen. Then I went looking for a Tanya.

09:47 Speaker 14 But by your bar mitzvah, you still didn’t really have a connection. You hadn’t written to the Rebbe.

09:50 Speaker 13 At my bar mitzvah, no, no, no, no.

09:53 Speaker 14 So you arrived at Kfar HaRoeh in the early fifties.

09:56 Speaker 13 Yes. But on my own initiative, since I’d already become close to chassidic circles, I cut off my forelock. And I put on a cap. I remember I had a grandmother. My parents weren’t too pleased about it. My grandmother gave me a gift of ten liras. So I went to Kikar HaShabbos in Jerusalem. There was a hat shop there belonging to Rosenak, today [unclear], and I bought a cap from him.

10:28 Speaker 14 So that’s how you entered Kfar HaRoeh.

10:29 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. In short, I went looking for a Tanya. In the end, I found one in just one store, at Rabbi Gershon [unclear] Kahn’s. But then I also looked for a Tehillas Hashem siddur. Reb Ben Shmuel didn’t have one either. I went through all the stores in Meah Shearim. There weren’t that many back then, either. There was Stitzberg’s [?], of course, a Ger chossid, and at the far end, near Breslov, there was Rubinstein’s store; he was a Breslov chossid. I asked about a Tehillas Hashem. He said yes, and pulled out a Tehillas Hashem siddur from behind the books—the first American edition, with a blue cover. That’s how Tehillas Hashem began for me, too. When I came to Kfar Haroeh, the truth is that I really didn’t want to study in a high-school yeshiva. I wanted to study in a regular yeshiva, but the feeling in Israel then was that without a high-school diploma you weren’t a person, you weren’t a person. So my parents respected the path I was taking, little by little. At home there was a great deal of affection for the Rebbe and for Chabad. A great deal. But a diploma was a must. That was nonnegotiable. So at Kfar Haroeh, too, they knew I was the Chabadnik there, and students would come from there. Yeshiva students would arrive; every so often, boys would come to learn Chassidus.

12:07 Speaker 14 From the village?

12:09 Speaker 13 That was still from Lod.

12:10 Speaker 14 Lod.

12:10 Speaker 13 The yeshiva was in Lod. Now, on Shavuos—toward the end of Shavuos, once when Shabbos and Shavuos fell together—that was the first time I went to the yeshiva in Lod, and I’ll never forget it. I was standing in the zal. Anyone who remembers the zal there—I was talking with Nochum Kaplan from Lod, may he be well. How did I know him? He was one of the group who had come to Kfar Haroeh. And suddenly—I’ll never forget it.

12:36 Speaker 14 Later, he also became a relative of Dovid Goldberg’s.

12:39 Speaker 13 Right, right, right, right. His Yiddish, yes. And suddenly I see someone walk into the zal. I thought I’d been given an electric shock. A Jew with a white beard, radiant. I had no idea who he was. I asked him, “Nochum, who is that?” He said, “That’s Rabbi Shlomo Chaim.” I’ll never forget it. Without any preparation. It’s not that I’d been prepared for it or brainwashed. There was something about his very appearance.

13:04 Speaker 14 The first time you saw him.

13:05 Speaker 13 The first time I saw such Jews. A luminous face, a luminous presence. He said, “That’s Rabbi Shlomo Chaim.” In short, boys from the yeshiva in Lod would come from there. Among them was Micha Steinmetz, with whom, thank G-d, I’m close. Reb Nochum Sternberg from Crown Heights [?], the son-in-law of Reb Elazar [unclear].

13:24 Speaker 14 He has distinguished lineage in his own right, too.

13:25 Speaker 13 Ah, certainly.

13:26 Speaker 14 He has distinguished lineage in his own right, too.

13:28 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes.

13:29 Speaker 14 A mensch, a respected mensch.

13:31 Speaker 13 Nochum Sternberg is a grandson of Reb Zusha Friedman of Odessa. Yes, there’s a lot one could say about that. And there was Micha Steinmetz, whom I mentioned, and Yossi Hartman, Bentzi Lipsker, Halperin, and that whole group we remember so fondly—Rabbi Shlomo Chaim’s students. I noticed two things about how they conducted themselves. First, they ate in the yeshiva dining room, but they didn’t eat its food; they brought their own food from the yeshiva. They didn’t rely on anyone else.

14:07 Speaker 14 What do you mean—food they brought from home?

14:08 Speaker 13 They brought food from their yeshiva.

14:10 Speaker 14 Ah, when they came to your yeshiva.

14:11 Speaker 13 When they came to Kfar Haroeh, yes.

14:12 Speaker 14 When they came to the village.

14:14 Speaker 13 Another thing: I discovered the idea of finishing davening and still going on davening. I said, “What, don’t they know Hebrew?” They kept davening. And back then they were still boys who were quite removed from all that. Today, when someone comes to a high-school yeshiva, or even to a kibbutz, he gets to know the guys, joins in, sings the songs everyone knows. No, they were really Temimim, apart from all that. Yossi Hartman was more familiar with it, because he himself had been a student at Kfar Haroeh. Yes, but the others didn’t know any of it. That was how it all was. I remember they sang... There was another Jew who had a very, very strong influence—he really put the finishing touch on what brought me to that point, and I wrote to the Rebbe. That was Baruch Nachshon from Chevron. He came.

15:06 Speaker 14 Before we get to [unclear], one moment: that Shavuos in [unclear]—had you already written to the Rebbe then, or was that...

15:11 Speaker 13 Around then. After that Shavuos, I had already written a letter.

15:15 Speaker 14 So what happened that Shavuos, besides seeing Rabbi Shlomo Chaim?

15:18 Speaker 13 First of all, Rabbi Shlomo Chaim, and the whole atmosphere around him, and the boys. I just remember walking into the zal on Shavuos night—no, it was Friday night. Suddenly I saw Nochum Kaplan. I looked up to him then, and I still do today. But at that time, all the boys who had been to the Rebbe came back in black suits and black hats, and here was Nochum, covered in white dust from head to toe. I didn’t know about boys hauling [unclear], and I was startled. He came over to me and said, “I don’t eat people.” For me, as they say, it was all part of the package: I’d fallen in with a group I didn’t know. But, thank G-d, that didn’t create a distance. On the contrary, apparently my soul belongs somehow, at its root, to the Rebbe. In fact, I wrote—there were two times I wrote to the Rebbe at first. One time was in 5718. Baruch Nachshon had been to the Rebbe, the first time he’d ever been there. Perhaps he was still from Haifa then, before Chevron. We sat in a rather dim room in Kfar Chabad, one of the rooms. He spoke and farbrenged, and he taught the niggun that the Rebbe had taught that Simchas Torah, a melody for the words “Zemiros...” What did I know about zemiros? It completely overwhelmed me. It was close to Chanukah, and then I took two things upon myself. One was to start learning Tanya. I started Tanya without commentaries, without explanations—whatever I was able to understand.

17:05 Speaker 15 Close to Chanukah—that’s 19 Kislev.

17:07 Speaker 13 Yes, but I wasn’t celebrating 19 Kislev yet. No, but I wrote a letter to the Rebbe afterward, though I didn’t receive an answer to that. What happened was that during the winter, that same winter, the boys from there came and said that in the winter of 5718 the Rebbe was asking people to compile the Sefer Hachassidim, to fill out cards.

17:33 Speaker 15 Cards.

17:34 Speaker 13 So I filled one out too, and then I received an official letter saying I’d been accepted—accepted into the Chabad movement.

17:40 Speaker 15 The chassidim.

17:41 Speaker 13 5718.

17:42 Speaker 15 Just to get a sense of it: when you say Baruch Nachshon farbrenged, how many other guys came?

17:45 Speaker 13 Forty, fifty.

17:47 Speaker 15 Came?

17:48 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He was very captivating, and so on.

17:51 Speaker 15 But the guys who went on from there to—at that time...

17:53 Speaker 13 With all of them, a warm place in my heart remained—even more than that. In any case, when I was in Lod, as I said earlier, I wrote the Rebbe a letter about the impression the farbrengens had made on me, and then I received an answer.

18:04 Speaker 15 [unclear].

18:05 Speaker 13 Yes. I received a reply saying that the Rebbe was pleased to hear, and so on, about the farbrengens I’d attended there, and the Rebbe wished me that it should have an ongoing effect, and so on and so forth. That was the first letter I received from the Rebbe, after Shavuos.

18:21 Speaker 15 The first letter came earlier, from the Sefer Hachassidim, you said.

18:24 Speaker 13 Ah, that wasn’t from the Rebbe. Leib Olovsky wrote that one. I have the letter.

18:29 Speaker 15 From the Sefer’s editorial staff.

18:30 Speaker 13 Leib Olovsky writes that Dovid Druckman has registered and been accepted.

18:33 Speaker 15 So you received a letter from the Rebbe after your visit to [unclear].

18:37 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes, yes. And that was in 5718. Nochum Kaplan brought me the first Likkutei Sichos that came out, volume one—in Yiddish, of course. I knew a little Yiddish. When my parents wanted me not to understand, they spoke Yiddish to each other, so I picked it up. You can see it here in the library, too: volume one is completely worn out on every side. I’ve just remembered that I very much wanted to go to the yeshiva in Lod, but they wouldn’t let me. So, to my regret, I put on my Shabbos clothes, found another boy, and we learned—I taught him, we learned together. I taught him a sicha of the Rebbe, while my soul was in the yeshiva in Lod, and I said, “Where am I?” But Rabbi Neria deserves to be remembered fondly. Rabbi Neria was very, very supportive and encouraging, and in his talks he would mention Chabad, the Alter Rebbe and the Rebbe from time to time. I remember, for example, that he taught us the Kuzari. There’s a description in the Kuzari of the inner bond between a student and a prophet. And what example did he choose? A Chabad chossid entering the Rebbe’s presence. That was his example. Later, I saw him on Rosh Hashanah night. He was lying down—he had a medical condition, something was putting pressure on his heart, his intestines were pressing on it—and he was actually lying down, feeling a little better. I saw him lying on a bench, studying the Kuzari with deep concentration on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. And another thing: in the large hall of the yeshiva at Kfar Haroeh, there was, interestingly enough, a permanent display board for Colel Chabad. I remember, “Toward the light, toward the light we go—”

20:41 Speaker 16 Chaim Ner’s.

20:42 Speaker 13 In honor of the author of the Tanya, and so on. And another thing: in Rabbi Neria’s private office, there were two pictures. One was a picture of [unclear], and the other of [unclear]. Those were the two pictures. So Rabbi Neria, on the contrary, was very, very happy when the boys came. Later I heard that even before that, Mr. Brizinsky [?] used to come, but I wasn’t there then. There was another Jew who brought something of the spirit of Chabad to the yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh, someone people no longer talk about. I never saw him, but I saw the effect of his charisma. His name was Reb Moshe Schneerson. His father—Moshe Schneerson’s father—was [unclear] Schneerson, a brother of Reb Shimon Menachem Schneerson. No, the father of Reb Shimon Menachem Schneerson. His father.

21:33 Speaker 16 The father of Reb Shimon Schneerson of Jerusalem.

21:35 Speaker 13 Yes. He was an idealist who also wanted to work the land of Eretz Yisroel.

21:40 Speaker 16 Where did he live?

21:41 Speaker 13 In Kfar HaRoeh.

21:42 Speaker 16 He himself lived in Kfar HaRoeh.

21:43 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. I even saw in an old Chabad newspaper that his students, Tzvi Hartman and Yossi Hartman, made a donation to the yeshiva in his memory. I even remember that he passed away on the 17th, in 5710, I think. No, Tishrei 5710, if I’m not mistaken. If I’m not mistaken. In any case.

22:07 Speaker 16 The Hartmans are actually his cousins.

22:09 Speaker 13 Sorry?

22:09 Speaker 16 The Hartmans are actually his cousins.

22:12 Speaker 13 The Hartmans are the ones from Chevron, yes. Actually, this takes us into a completely different subject: it says that he wasn’t really a Schneerson; he was a Kaznovsky [?]. But because of the Russian documents, they changed it to—changed it to Schneerson.

22:28 Speaker 16 So he had an influence too, because he lived in Kfar HaRoeh. Somehow he influenced—

22:31 Speaker 13 Certainly, yes. Probably not directly on me, but indirectly. His spirit, his spirit was present there. After that—

22:41 Speaker 16 5708.

22:42 Speaker 13 Right. Then I spent two years in Kfar HaRoeh. After that, they established a high-school yeshiva here in Kiryat Shmuel, near my parents, and I moved from Kfar HaRoeh to Kiryat Shmuel.

22:55 Speaker 16 And all that time you were still in touch with the yeshiva in Lod, traveling to—

22:57 Speaker 13 All the time—to Lod, and later to Kfar Chabad. I even remember my first visit to Kfar Chabad. It was Yud Shvat 5723. Maybe ’21, ’23—not 5723, maybe ’22 or ’23. And I remember that I brought another boy with me. There was a farbrengen in the yeshiva, and I see Rabbi Sholom Chaim farbrenging. Across from him, around the table, is this energetic, fired-up redhead with a reddish beard, constantly seeming to interrupt Rabbi Sholom Chaim, and the two of them are having a back-and-forth. And then something happened that, if I hadn’t already felt connected to Lubavitch, I would have run away. Suddenly, without warning, I see that redhead sprawled right across the table, into the herring and the potatoes. Years later he became my brother-in-law: Rabbi Meir Friedman. And you know, boruch Hashem, it didn’t put me off at all. When you feel you belong, then, boruch Hashem, everything carries on. So then, in 5715—uh, that summer, when I was fifteen, I came to the yeshiva and—

24:20 Speaker 16 Wait, you were here in Kiryat Shmuel for a year.

24:22 Speaker 13 Two years, two years in Kfar HaRoeh, two years in Kiryat Shmuel.

24:25 Speaker 16 And then?

24:26 Speaker 13 All the time I kept going back and forth—Kfar Chabad, Lod. We would also travel all the time in Kiryat Sh—oh, another thing. After I left Kfar HaRoeh, it turned out that during the years I was there, the dorm counselor at the yeshiva was Baruch Nachshon. As I said earlier, Nachshon was from Haifa, and there were children he had been learning with. Now Baruch traveled to the Rebbe again, and there he completed his, his—

24:59 Speaker 16 Art diploma.

25:00 Speaker 13 Art diploma. So he asked me to continue learning with the children. What did I do? I’m really not a sports fan, and I don’t understand sports. Maccabi Haifa and Beitar Jerusalem were fine, but when it came to gym classes—how do they say it today? I cut class. I didn’t go to gym; I learned with three children instead. And I would write reports to Baruch—Baruch Nachshon, that is. It turned out that sometimes he would stop the Rebbe on the sidewalk and show the Rebbe my letters.

25:40 Speaker 16 The ones you sent.

25:41 Speaker 13 Yes.

25:42 Speaker 16 Reports on the students.

25:43 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

25:45 Speaker 16 And did you learn Chassidus with them?

25:47 Speaker 13 Yiddishkeit, Chassidus. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So—

25:55 Speaker 16 But you didn’t have, you didn’t—

25:56 Speaker 13 One more thing, one more thing. By then Chabad was becoming more and more part of things. My class in Kiryat Shmuel was the yeshiva’s second graduating class, and they called it “the rabbis’ class.” Why? One graduate became the rabbi of Chag; another became the rabbi of—

26:17 Speaker 16 Chag or Shabbos?

26:17 Speaker 13 Chag, Chag. One became the rabbi of Kiryat Yam; I, in my small way, became the rabbi of Kiryat Motzkin. There was Rabbi Dovid Levanon, who later worked in Ashkelon. Uh, Rabbi Yechiel Cohen—Kahana, Kahana—the head of the Har Hamor kollel, connected with Merkaz HaRav. Uh, there was Rabbi Yoel Friedman. He’s the brother of Rabbi Tzvi Friedman, the well-known figure from the more extreme faction. In short, it was quite a class. There were always debates there about Chabad and the Chazon Ish, [unclear], but everything revolved around that. And even more than that, we would actually sit in the shul in Kiryat Shmuel and farbreng about [unclear]. It was really something. In my class there was my friend Gershon Burkis from Lod. There was [unclear]. [unclear]. They were part of that group, and things really, really, really heated up around Chabad. And then, I don’t know how I merited it, but a reel of recorded tape came my way. Back then they called it a tape recorder. They were these big, cumbersome machines with reels of tape, and this was a recording of a sicha of the Rebbe’s, [unclear]. Now, who had a tape recorder? There was a very dear woman, Rebbetzin Kleiman. Her husband was a rabbi at the yeshiva. She was the sister of Rabbi Lichtenstein of—

27:59 Speaker 16 Kfar Tzion.

28:00 Speaker 13 Of Eretz Tzion, yes. So I borrowed the machine from her. I didn’t know how to operate it, so her husband came and started it, and I invited everyone who was anyone. It was extraordinary. They sat around the machine and listened to a sicha of the Rebbe.

28:18 Speaker 16 The first time you heard the Rebbe’s voice.

28:20 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. There was also the niggun “Oy, tzimtzum, tzimtzum,” [unclear], “Kumah, kumah,” and so on. It was extraordinary. Another episode from those days is something today’s generation can’t understand. It was [unclear]. Someone brought me a clipping from Haaretz, a tiny little clipping from a page of the newspaper, saying that Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson had passed away. I hurried straight to the public telephone in the center of Kiryat Shmuel and called Reuven Dunin. He hadn’t heard about it.

29:15 Speaker 16 He didn’t know.

29:15 Speaker 13 No. Just so you understand how things were.

29:18 Speaker 16 How did you already know Reuven then?

29:20 Speaker 13 Oh, Reuven—I had started visiting Reuven that summer, when I was fifteen.

29:26 Speaker 16 After you had been in Lod.

29:27 Speaker 13 Yes. When I came that summer at fifteen, Reuven’s home was, for me, what you might call my apprenticeship in how a chassidishe home should look.

29:37 Speaker 16 He lived in Haifa, and you were in Kiryat Motzkin.

29:40 Speaker 13 Yes.

29:41 Speaker 16 Motzkin is close to Haifa.

29:42 Speaker 13 You took a bus to Haifa—that was how things were then. I remember arriving at Reuven’s house a few days before Pesach. It was before 11 Nissan, the eve of 11 Nissan. Who knew about 11 Nissan? Who marked it? People didn’t talk about it at all. Reuven was at work on the tractor, and Rivka was at home, so I said to her—

30:09 Speaker 16 Rivka was his wife.

30:10 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. And I told her, “You know, it’s the Rebbe’s birthday, and we have to do something.” Now, she was a Jerusalem woman getting ready for Pesach. So I wanted to win her over. I said, “You know what? I’ll help you get ready for Pesach—clean the house.” Anyway, without much fuss, she brought out a bottle of mashke. In those days it was clear liquor; people called it something more like gasoline than mashke. She sliced some sausage, cut up a few tomatoes, and we let the few people around know. Throughout the entire north, there were fewer than a minyan of Chabad chassidim. There was Rabbi Tzvi Lifshitz—

30:49 Speaker 16 In Hadera.

30:49 Speaker 13 In Hadera. In [unclear] there was Rabbi Shimon Kupchik. I should distinguish between the living and those who have passed away; I was young then. And in Haifa there was Reuven, Rabbi [unclear] Finkel, and Rabbi Dubrovskin. That was it. Those were all the Chabad chassidim.

31:11 Speaker 16 From Haifa northward, all the way to the end.

31:12 Speaker 13 Huh?

31:12 Speaker 16 From Haifa northward, all the way to the end.

31:15 Speaker 13 Who’s even talking about that? I heard that in Kfar Yechezkel there was a shochet named Chen.

31:20 Speaker 16 Yes, there was. He’s the one who has the Rebbe’s letter from those days about the mikveh.

31:23 Speaker 13 Yes.

31:23 Speaker 16 The letter was addressed to him.

31:24 Speaker 13 I never saw him, either.

31:25 Speaker 16 Rabbi Gershon.

31:26 Speaker 13 And when you enter the old cemetery in Haifa, you see a headstone: Reb Menachem Mendel, son of Reb Aharon Chen. Only later in life did I find out who he was—Rabbi Gershon Chen. But by the time I came, he was already—

31:39 Speaker 16 The one in Kfar Yechezkel was Rabbi Gershon’s brother.

31:41 Speaker 13 Oh, I didn’t know.

31:42 Speaker 16 Just as—

31:43 Speaker 13 I didn’t know; how would I have known? So that was all of Chabad. I’m trying to remember as I speak. All of Chabad in the entire northern region was [unclear].

31:57 Speaker 16 So it was 11 Nissan.

31:58 Speaker 13 We were excited about 11 Nissan.

32:00 Speaker 16 Reuven came back from the tractor.

32:01 Speaker 13 Of course, of course, of course. That’s how it was—and who even knew about 11 Nissan [?]? Later, things began to pick up. By then I was already in other places. The yeshiva in Migdal HaEmek was established, and Rabbi Tzvi Yitzchak Segal and Rabbi Diskin would come there from time to time, to Reuven [?]. But none of that existed yet. Migdal HaEmek wasn’t even on the map. I still remember Rabbi Grossman standing at the Check Post, waiting for a ride to Migdal HaEmek.

32:35 Speaker 16 All right, we’ll get to that later.

32:36 Speaker 13 Yes.

32:36 Speaker 16 We’re still in 1950.

32:48 Speaker 13 Yes.

32:48 Speaker 16 So in 1950, when did you enter Tomchei Temimim?

32:51 Speaker 17 Where?

32:52 Speaker 13 In the summer of ’50. In the summer of ’50 they tested me in nigleh.

32:56 Speaker 16 Had you written to the Rebbe before that? Asked him?

32:59 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. I wrote to the Rebbe asking permission, because I needed to. Actually, classes had already ended by the middle of the summer. I asked the Rebbe for permission to finish my matriculation exams first, because my parents were pressuring me, and then to enter. I don’t know what the Rebbe answered; I no longer remember. But I had an interesting experience with the Rebbe when I was sixteen. What happened? My grandfather, the one I mentioned, was a Vizhnitz chossid, from Antonia [?]. I found a Tanya in his library: Igeres Hateshuvah, a first printing, page 59. It was an early edition of Igeres Hateshuvah, with some book about tzaddikim bound to it. A book about tzaddikim. I knew what it was—Rabbi Yudel Kahn wrote about it. Anyway, I asked the elder members of Anash there. Oh, and another thing: during vacations when I traveled to Jerusalem, I spent a lot of time around [unclear], and that’s a story in itself. None of the elder members of Anash knew what it was. So I wrote to the Rebbe. I got an answer from the Rebbe—I signed my letter, and the Rebbe gave me a rap on the head. He said it was surprising that I needed to write about such things concerning the book and [unclear]. It was surprising that I needed to ask someone across the ocean about such things instead of reporting progress in Torah study and the observance of mitzvos. When people abroad see that and hear about it, they’re strengthened even more. So, boruch Hashem, I merited a rap on the head. And boruch Hashem, in those days people said that after marriage, the Rebbe spoke to someone who truly felt connected to him as “du.” With many young married men, the Rebbe began using “ir,” the respectful plural form. But the Rebbe spoke to me as “du.”

34:50 Speaker 16 In Yiddish, “ir” means “you” in the plural, and “du” is the singular “you.”

34:52 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. So I got a rap on the head from the Rebbe for [unclear]. Yes.

34:58 Speaker 16 Maybe the Rebbe wanted you to study not just—not just [unclear], not just the surroundings, but the pathways too.

35:03 Speaker 13 Not just about Chabad, but about the matter itself as well.

35:06 Speaker 16 You also have to give in order to receive.

35:08 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. In time, I sent that Tanya to the Rebbe’s library, and for many years it stood on display there, in the exhibition. Apparently it really was something the library had been missing.

35:25 Speaker 16 So after that, you entered Tomchei Temimim in 1950.

35:28 Speaker 13 Another thing: here in Motzkin’s central shul, I found old books in the library—a first printing of [unclear], and [unclear] from one of the early printings. Now, I knew that if I was a Chabad chossid... But I came to the factory at eight, and first of all, it never entered my mind not to daven with a minyan. On the other hand, I was a Chabad chossid. So I would get up at six in the morning, go to the mikveh here, take the [unclear]—incidentally, it’s here at the house; it was there—and learn Chassidus before davening. I couldn’t daven without a minyan. That’s where I belonged. “You learn Chassidus before davening?” “What do you mean? I’m a Chabad chossid!” Yes. Another thing: I set up the first sukkah for the public to use anywhere in the northern region, in Motzkin. I was already studying in a religious high school then. And in Haifa, I set up the first sukkah for the public on Herzl Street, opposite the central shul. I remember that I didn’t know: I put up the sechach before the walls, with the wood above. Then old Bobrovsky [?] arrived. Oh, I haven’t mentioned him—he was also one of the Chabad chassidim in the north. He said, “You mustn’t do it that way.” So we took down the sechach and put it up again. That was the first sukkah.

36:51 Speaker 18 Where did the idea come from?

36:53 Speaker 13 Where did the idea come from? That’s another thing. I had an uncle and aunt in Tel Aviv, on Trumpeldor Street. I passed the central shul on Allenby Street and saw a sukkah there for people to use, and—well, I knew the Rebbe wanted that.

37:10 Speaker 18 Did people already know then that they were doing it in Tel Aviv on the Rebbe’s instruction?

37:14 Speaker 13 You’re asking whether it was on the Rebbe’s instruction? I imagine so. I can’t tell you exactly.

37:18 Speaker 18 You brought it to the north.

37:19 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. I just remember—do you know who was there? I don’t know whether the name will mean anything to the listeners. One of the senior figures was a Jew named Gershon Segal, who was Reb Pollak’s son-in-law here. Anyway, he was a Jew without a beard.

37:30 Speaker 18 So he helped people do the mitzvah in Tel Aviv.

37:31 Speaker 13 He helped people do it in Tel Aviv.

37:32 Speaker 18 And because of that, it reached Haifa.

37:34 Speaker 13 Maybe Haifa. Ah, yes, yes, yes. So that was Motzkin, here in the southern part of the [unclear], and afterward Haifa.

37:44 Speaker 18 And it spread throughout the land. Then you came to the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad.

37:50 Speaker 13 Yes.

37:51 Speaker 18 When?

37:52 Speaker 13 So I stopped. I was already a Chabad chossid. No need to study.

37:55 Speaker 18 One thing settles it.

37:56 Speaker 13 Yes. In the summer of ’50 they tested me in nigleh.

38:01 Speaker 18 Who did?

38:03 Speaker 13 Yankel Katz. I hope they won’t hear what I’m about to say. I stole a chiddush from the Steipler and said some clever insight about the young man. It wasn’t simple to be accepted. It was simple—first of all, this may be hard to understand today, but they specifically did not accept baalei teshuvah. That was why Rabbi Zalman Gafni established Or Temimim.

38:30 Speaker 18 Later.

38:31 Speaker 13 That was later. Five or six years afterward, boruch Hashem, the phenomenon of baalei teshuvah began. The yeshiva administration said to accept only baalei teshuvah who had already been called up for a second draft notice. Those at the first stage went to Rabbi Zalman Gafni’s Or Temimim. And in general, they didn’t accept just anybody. To give you an idea, the yeshiva had standards. I remember two things. First, when I visited Lod, as I said earlier, on Shavuos—then that summer I came back to the yeshiva in Lod and stayed for two weeks. There was a shack on the roof of the yeshiva. Incidentally, in this week’s Dvar Malchus I saw that the Rebbe said he had forgotten about the good news that they had built a shack. Do you understand what things were like then? Anyway, they gave me a bed, and I slept in it for two weeks. One day I came in at noon to lie down on my bed. The nerve! I found a bochur lying on it. It turned out that “my” bed was his bed. Apparently, he had spent two weeks sitting on a bench.

39:49 Speaker 18 And not sleeping in his bed.

39:50 Speaker 13 Who was the bochur? Itzik Margolin. And there I was thinking, “The nerve, sleeping in my bed!” Later I came to the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad. I remember another story from one of those years. I was lying in my room, and there was a bochur... By the eighties, Kfar Chabad already had two snack kiosks. There was Gittele’s, near the old bonfire site, and there was an Arab house. Above it lived a very interesting Jew named Engel Shagalov [?]. Anyway, there was once a letter from Rabbi Chadakov to the yeshiva saying, “Oy vey!” He had heard that bochurim were going to Gittele’s and eating wafers there. Later, another kiosk opened on the boundary between Kfar Chabad and Tocheles [?]. Today I think it’s roughly where the regional council parking lot is—Pesach Shochat’s place. A bochur bought orange juice there from Pesach Shochat—Jaffa Ora juice, or Pag juice, sorry.

41:06 Speaker 19 Pag juice.

41:07 Speaker 13 He brought it into the room. I’ll never forget it. He hid it under his coat so nobody would see his shame. He opened the door, and nobody saw him. How did I see? I’d been dozing at noon and opened an eye. Oy vey, such indulgence! He hid the bottle under his coat so nobody would see the terrible shame: he wasn’t practicing iskafya.

41:32 Speaker 19 Orange juice.

41:32 Speaker 13 Yes. Reb Sholom Chaim would always say, “Without iskafya, there’s no davening.” Reb Sholom Chaim was from Ukraine. Incidentally, your grandfather too—even today he wouldn’t say “vos” but “vos.” “Vos, vos, vos, vos.” That was iskafya, and [unclear]. That was how strongly he felt about it. During the week, Reb Sholom Chaim would—well, I don’t know what it’s like today, but in the corridor of the three-story building there were balconies.

42:12 Speaker 19 In the dormitory.

42:13 Speaker 13 In the dormitory. They enclosed a balcony with plywood, and that was the Rebbe’s office. Reb Sholom Chaim would daven there every day [unclear].

42:21 Speaker 19 [unclear].

42:22 Speaker 13 Yes. He wasn’t standing in the office, but more by the balcony. Someone drilled a hole in the plywood, and we stood in line to watch him daven. Interestingly, I don’t know why, but on Friday night he didn’t daven at length. On Shabbos day he did daven at length, and when there was a farbrengen, sometimes he shortened it a little and they started in the afternoon. I just remember us sitting there in the afternoon, and it was hot. There was no air conditioning then. We took off our jackets, and suddenly Michoel Vishatzky, who had only just arrived from Russia, came in. He passed away not long ago. He saw us sitting there in shirts, without jackets, and said, “[unclear] can be refined, but sitting without jackets is anti-Chassidish, and that cannot be refined. What is this, Chassidus in Berlin? Sitting around in shirts like that?”

43:24 Speaker 19 That’s how he arrived from Russia, with—

43:25 Speaker 13 Yes.

43:26 Speaker 19 He came to you.

43:27 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. He didn’t know yet. And Reb Sholom Chaim would sometimes farbreng even on summer Shabbosim, and they would bring him fish to eat. So for lechaim he would say, “A kezayis, a kebeitzah,” and he ate, but meanwhile it became time for Minchah. They davened Minchah, and he carried on afterward, with the fish still on his plate. He had forgotten about the fish. He had gone into what modern language calls a trance. “Vaiter, vaiter, vaiter, vaiter”—on and on. It was really, really [unclear].

44:05 Speaker 19 That’s real life.

44:07 Speaker 13 Speaking of Reb Sholom Chaim, I’ll tell you something very interesting. It was at night; I don’t remember which night. Everyone knows where Sholom Chaim lived. Well, everyone knows. Across from Munke’s house, across from Mendel’s. What’s it called today? Rabbi Garlick Street. I don’t know my way around the new street names anymore.

44:33 Speaker 19 Between the yeshivah and toward [unclear].

44:35 Speaker 13 You see, the Tchebiner Rav passed away that night.

44:39 Speaker 19 Beis Street.

44:41 Speaker 13 Yes, and I remember that at the yeshivah, with communications as they were, they didn’t know. The bochurim—I don’t know what was going on, some farbrengen—were dancing. Sholom Chaim heard the dancing at the yeshivah.

44:52 Speaker 19 Beis Street.

44:53 Speaker 13 No, not Beis Street.

44:54 Speaker 19 [unclear].

44:55 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. Sholom Chaim heard the dancing, came out of his house—he had to put his sirtuk on over his shirt—and went into the yeshivah. “Vos, vos, vos, vos? What’s going on? The Tchebiner Rav! How can you dance?” He couldn’t take it. He went outside, then came back in and went out again, three times. He simply couldn’t bear that the Tchebiner Rav had passed away. Possibly, possibly. In general, when guests came and so on, Sholom Chaim was very... [unclear]. He was very courteous to people. I remember that one year Rabbi Shlomo Goren came to Kfar Chabad for an evening. He spoke from the main platform, but beforehand he came to the zal. I think it was Yud Shvat, and they gave him the floor. This was before the whole [unclear] affair. He spoke, and Sholom Chaim kept nodding his head like this. He showed him a great deal of respect. Then, at a quarter to twelve, while he was still speaking, Goren said, “Well, you have to go learn.” But Sholom Chaim was very, very courteous there, very respectful of people. Yes, he was.

46:43 Speaker 19 At the Shabbos farbrengens, he would address the bochurim personally.

46:47 Speaker 13 Wow, I remember one bochur—I won’t mention his name—whom Sholom Chaim really took to task. At the end Sholom Chaim said to him, “I’ve taken you to task so much, and you haven’t even burst into tears.” Then the bochur began to cry. There were many like that whom he dealt with personally, both pushing away with the left hand and drawing close with the right. In general, [unclear]—there was a group that went to him, among them the well-known Rabbi [unclear]. There was a group drawn toward Sholom Chaim, [unclear] to speak, certainly. It was very powerful.

47:36 Speaker 19 And when did you go to the Rebbe?

47:39 Speaker 13 Well, we went to the Rebbe.

47:46 Speaker 19 Wait, before that. The preparations for it.

47:49 Speaker 13 Oh! The preparations. For several months we were under intense pressure [unclear]. At least we tried to work on ourselves, for our own self-improvement. I’m speaking for myself, not for anyone else. Yes, to really devote more time. Sholom Chaim told us, “You’re going to the Rebbe, you’re going to the Rebbe.” I remember that on the plane I didn’t dare look out the window. I held a Chumash the whole time and learned. And wow, [unclear]—that stayed with me in later years too. But there was...

48:31 Speaker 20 When did you go? When did it start?

48:33 Speaker 13 It was in Nissan 5728.

48:37 Speaker 20 How many bochurim were there?

48:38 Speaker 13 We were a relatively large group compared with the earlier groups. We were the first Israeli group of native-born Israelis, and we were rather hyperactive. Oh, they gave us... Our first dormitory was in Mr. Itkin’s house, I think [unclear]. Today it’s the library. They gave us the basement, and we farbrenged, being Israelis and all. I remember one of the bochurim punching the wall at the back, and the next morning [unclear]. They said a gang of troublemakers had come from Israel. That’s how it was.

49:24 Speaker 20 When did you see the Rebbe for the first time?

49:27 Speaker 13 When we arrived, there was Minchah—our first Minchah—and I can’t put it into words.

49:33 Speaker 20 Try.

49:34 Speaker 13 I don’t know. The Rebbe’s beard was still partly black, and—

49:38 Speaker 20 In the zal upstairs.

49:40 Speaker 13 In the zal, yes. Everything was in the small zal upstairs. In fact, psychologically, when I think of the Rebbe, I connect him with the small zal upstairs. And just one interesting episode—there were many episodes there.

49:57 Speaker 20 That’s why I’m here: to hear them.

50:00 Speaker 13 It was one day, a summer day.

50:06 Speaker 20 Wait, a moment before the summer day—the first Minchah.

50:10 Speaker 13 Again, I can’t put it into words. I can’t put it into words. There’s simply no way I can put it into words.

50:14 Speaker 20 Were you inside the zal?

50:16 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. I remember standing behind the Torah-reading bimah. The Rebbe came in. He wasn’t wearing his gartel in the small zal; he held it in his hand. He came in like this, faced south, then turned around and looked at the clock. Then he put on the gartel, measuring it like this so it would be—

50:46 Speaker 20 Exact.

50:46 Speaker 13 So it would be exact. And then, you know, he would sit down and cover his eyes with his hand. I remember one interesting thing: once, opposite the Rebbe, there stood a visitor, a Breslov chossid. He was davening Shemoneh Esrei after the Rebbe had already finished Kedushah. The Rebbe was about to sit down, but suddenly saw him standing in Shemoneh Esrei, so the Rebbe remained standing. There is a halachah that one may not sit within four amos of someone who is davening.

51:17 Speaker 20 And where were you standing at that Minchah? Was it the first or the second?

51:19 Speaker 13 I was standing behind the bimah, yes, yes, yes. And something interesting: one summer day, when everyone had gone away to the country, there were very few people upstairs. So we—the Israelis—stood around the Rebbe. It was a day in Elul when the Rebbe would say Kaddish.

51:43 Speaker 20 The 23rd?

51:44 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

51:45 Speaker 20 The 23rd or the 25th, both of them.

51:47 Speaker 13 I think it was the 23rd. We stood there holding siddurim. Suddenly the Rebbe [unclear]. The Rebbe turned to us and said—I’ll translate it right away—“You’re standing here with tefillin on; why aren’t you davening?” Don’t ask. That evening Dovy Draskin [?] farbrenged with us. Yes, afterward we davened. He began explaining: what does “with tefillin on” mean? Tefillin are a connection, and surely not [unclear]. Why weren’t you saying the words of davening? But suddenly we got it—we got a dressing-down. Generally, relatively speaking—and I stress relatively—there wasn’t much pushing upstairs during the week. On Saturday night there was, yes. And in general, so much happened upstairs. By the time I was there, yechidus was only twice a week; before that it had been three times a week. We sat there, and one way or another, we kept half an eye on who went in and came out. Many people sat and talked with us before going in to the Rebbe, and then they came out. So, as they say, we pumped them for information: “What did you see? What did you hear?” I remember just one episode. A Jewish man came to the Rebbe—a Litvish rabbi, a Torah scholar—and he discussed learning with the bochurim. He asked a question in Maseches Megillah that, he said, he had put to many people. I remember that [unclear] in Lithuania, and they couldn’t answer him.

53:43 Speaker 3 Back in Lithuania.

53:44 Speaker 13 Yes. There was [unclear]—or your relative. We called him Dov, but he—

53:52 Speaker 3 Schneberg-Kohn.

53:53 Speaker 13 Schneberg-Kohn. To my eyes, he was an exceptional person, and he answered the man’s question. The man came out deeply impressed and told the Rebbe about it. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but the Rebbe had a great deal of nachas from it.

54:11 Speaker 3 Interesting. I know my uncle a little, and he never told that story. That’s the Rebbe’s influence: my uncle didn’t tell it. Who was the other man?

54:18 Speaker 13 He was a Litvish rabbi who edited the work of Reb Shmuel Yalov [?].

54:23 Speaker 3 Shmuel?

54:23 Speaker 13 Yalov.

54:24 Speaker 3 Yalov.

54:25 Speaker 13 He wrote a book of Torah insights. He was a wise man.

54:27 Speaker 3 Did something happen in his yechidus afterward?

54:29 Speaker 13 What?

54:29 Speaker 3 He went in for yechidus, and he—

54:30 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

54:31 Speaker 3 There was something special.

54:32 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. You know, there was. I remember once a delegation from the Eidah Chareidis went in to see the Rebbe. As I recall, Yosef Sheinberger was there—he was the secretary of the Eidah Chareidis committee—and a few Satmar chassidim. And I’d say it was a bit brazen. They had sat with us beforehand, and I don’t know. Here they were going in for yechidus, while here they had spoken against Lubavitch, and there was—

55:00 Speaker 3 The chareidim had spoken against it, as it were.

55:01 Speaker 13 Against all sorts of things. Mordechai Sharantov[?] was there. Wow, wow. How the Rebbe had them wrapped around his little finger, how he handled them. The sharpest of them was Yosef Sheinberger. They said, “Yossel, what do you have to say about that?” Yossel was silent. Afterward they went outside. They were—

55:19 Speaker 3 That was presumably after the Six-Day War.

55:22 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

55:23 Speaker 3 So let’s go back in order for a second. Pesach, then. You arrived at the Rebbe before Pesach.

55:27 Speaker 13 Yes.

55:28 Speaker 3 Before the first farbrengen, there was a day or so. Yudel Penins[?] wasn’t there. Yudel Penins[?] wasn’t a person who was—

55:33 Speaker 13 No, no, no, no, he wasn’t.

55:35 Speaker 3 And that was seven hours before the first farbrengen.

55:36 Speaker 13 The farbrengen. Yes.

55:37 Speaker 3 So what was it like?

55:38 Speaker 13 Now, how did I get a place there? I was generally on good terms with Dovi Kretz. He was from Haifa, so we had developed a friendship through—

55:53 Speaker 3 Haifa solidarity.

55:54 Speaker 13 Huh?

55:55 Speaker 3 Haifa solidarity.

55:56 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. So he gave me—bequeathed me—his place. I don’t know if it was from that farbrengen onward, but he wasn’t there for a while. By the way, the place he bequeathed me had room for only one foot. So for a few seconds I’d stand on one foot, then for a few seconds on my left foot. And today, boruch Hashem, I have [unclear]. My legs were worse off from all the exercise I did back then. But I remember once I stood somewhere else at a farbrengen, and Leibel Groner was there. Leibel noticed me turning my head like this and said to me, “The Rebbe is saying a sicha. As a rule, you have to look at the Rebbe’s face.” It never occurred to us, throughout the entire farbrengen, to take our eyes off the Rebbe for even a moment. And, G-d forbid, not to be in the neighborhood, or to arrive late to a farbrengen—it simply never entered our minds. Besides that, you went to the mikveh for a farbrengen, put on Shabbos clothes, and knew you were going into battle for a place. It was something very, very special. [unclear] I’d heard about 770, and then I saw the zal. The zal was still its original size, a third of what it later became. I said, “That’s all? That’s all?” Well, that was all. By the way, that year, before Tishrei, they knocked down a wall. Then, after Tishrei, another wall. Yes, but it was really packed, packed, packed, packed.

57:47 Speaker 4 And Pesach—you came for the Seder.

57:49 Speaker 13 Pesach. I had the undeserved privilege of being at four Sedarim with the Rebbe: the two Sedarim of 5727 and the two Sedarim of 5728. Yes, yes, yes. By the way, your grandfather was also at the Rebbe that year—your grandfather and grandmother.

58:05 Speaker 4 Grandpa was there in Tishrei 5728.

58:06 Speaker 13 5728, Tishrei.

58:07 Speaker 4 5728. Wait, we’ll get to that in a moment. I want to stay with Pesach for a second.

58:10 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

58:11 Speaker 4 Something—

58:12 Speaker 13 Yes.

58:13 Speaker 4 At the first farbrengen, the Rebbe refers to the group that had arrived.

58:16 Speaker 13 Yes. He says we came to learn, and so on and so forth. It went so far that Chatzkel Sofer, a friend, and I would write up the hanachah in Hebrew after Shabbos, while all the hanachos were in Yiddish. Avraham Grintzvaig would write a hanachah in Yiddish, and so would Dovid Fisher. But what Dovid Fisher wrote, he didn’t publish. I remember that every Motzaei—

58:48 Speaker 4 Dovid Fisher was a year ahead of you.

58:50 Speaker 13 Dovid Fisher was already there before us. On Motzaei Shabbos he would sleep until midnight, then take a stimulant pill. There’s a story with those stimulant pills. The Rebbe, as they say, was a noble person. But we know that when the sichos weren’t being delivered into a microphone, the Rebbe didn’t mince words if he noticed someone falling asleep. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Later I saw in books—I think in a book by the Munkatcher, [unclear]—that he says sleeping while a tzaddik is speaking can be harmful. So they had to solve the problem. What happened? Zalman Gurary handed out stimulant pills—pills with a concentration of caffeine. Eventually Zalman Shimon Dworkin raised the question of whether they were permitted on Shabbos, so they stopped. But on Motzaei Shabbos, Dovid Fisher would sleep until midnight.

59:54 Speaker 4 After the farbrengen.

59:55 Speaker 13 Yes. On the Motzaei Shabbos after the farbrengen, he’d take a stimulant pill and stay up until morning.

1:00:01 Speaker 4 Writing up the sicha.

1:00:02 Speaker 13 Writing up the entire sicha. But what Fisher wrote didn’t get published. Now, Chatzkel and I—Chatzkel Sofer and I—worked on the sichos. And where did we sit? On the corner of Eastern Parkway and Brooklyn Avenue, in a shul called Krestir[?]. There was a mikveh downstairs. Above the shul lived Motel Groner and his wife Malka, [unclear], Groner’s father. So we sat there. By the way, we sat in the women’s section. In the shul itself were two Jews who looked like two angels: Motel Groner and Yisroel Meir Muniz. They stayed after Shacharis in their tallis and tefillin and learned Gemara for several hours. It’s a shame there were no cameras then. There was a Jew who urged us to finish the—finish the hanachah. Rabbi Zalman Duchman was so eager for it. He would take the hanachah and ride the bus to the Frierdiker Rebbe’s Ohel to read the sicha aloud.

1:01:09 Speaker 4 Zalman would read it aloud?

1:01:10 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. He went by bus; there weren’t cars then. He didn’t have a car. He’d be waiting for us to finally finish. He was—

1:01:18 Speaker 4 And did you submit that hanachah to the Rebbe?

1:01:21 Speaker 13 Personally, I don’t remember. I don’t remember. First of all, you have to understand: even today, to one degree or another, we were very much in awe of the Rebbe. We were. I remember someone once came—I won’t mention his name; he has since passed away—with a group from camp. He was the head counselor, the one running the camp. He spoke in the Rebbe’s presence. It was very, very strange. Very strange. Ah, I remember there were problems. The army wanted to bring our group back to Israel, so the friends in the group appointed me as their representative to go up to the Rebbe at a farbrengen and ask for a bracha. The arrangement was that between sichos you would approach with a little cup of mashke and ask for a bracha. I don’t know—I admit it—I agreed.

1:02:10 Speaker 4 When was that?

1:02:12 Speaker 13 That was, I think, in 5728. In which year—

1:02:15 Speaker 4 Meaning after you’d already been there for many months.

1:02:17 Speaker 13 Yes. I stood in front of the Rebbe and started stammering. The Rebbe looked at me and said, “Eh?” I stammered even more. He said, “Eh?” I stammered even more. Oy, it’s a wonder I survived. Finally, [unclear], I got out alive, boruch Hashem. It worked out. But there really was that sense of “Young men saw me and hid.” I remember I had two aunts who lived in Boro Park, and once they came to visit me in the middle of the day. We sat on a bench along Eastern Parkway. They were American women, you know. And suddenly I ran away from them. They thought I’d lost my mind. I hid behind a hedge, and they had no idea where I was. Meanwhile—I’m getting ahead of myself—I had seen, at the corner of Brooklyn and Eastern Parkway, the Rebbe coming on foot, as he did every day. I saw the Rebbe and thought, what if the Rebbe sees me in the middle of seder? By the way, one of my aunts was terribly impressed. She knew the Rebbe from the newspapers, and when the Rebbe saw the two women, before they could open their mouths, he said to them, “Good morning.” She was beside herself: the great Lubavitcher sees a Jewish woman and says “Good morning” to her! Wow! So there’s a concept called rechimu d’Rachmana, love of Hashem, and there’s dechilu d’Rachmana, awe of Hashem. Rechimu means love, but I think the awe is the point that needs more strengthening today. I knew Jews who weren’t the most outstanding chassidim, but when they wrote to the Rebbe, they would write once—and back then there were no certificates from Einstein or Harvard, and so on. They would write, write, write, then tear up the paper and write again. There was simply fear of a human being—fear of a human being, of the Rebbe. You know, they used to say in Jerusalem that if you threw a stone, it would hit either an Eisenbach or a cat. So they say the stones ran out, but—

1:04:33 Speaker 13 The Eisenbachs didn’t run out. Especially today, eh.

1:04:37 Speaker 5 Wait—so did you come out of hiding when the Rebbe said “Good morning” to her, or afterward?

1:04:42 Speaker 13 Of course I eventually came out. I went back feeling—

1:04:44 Speaker 5 After the Rebbe had passed.

1:04:45 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes, yes. But there was fear of the Rebbe. There was.

1:04:49 Speaker 5 When you approached the Rebbe, what did you ask for—a bracha that things would work out with the army?

1:04:53 Speaker 13 Yes. He gave a bracha, and listen, it worked out. It worked out, it worked out. Um, what did I want to say?

1:05:01 Speaker 5 Apart from that, what do you remember?

1:05:04 Speaker 13 A lot of things need to jog my... Give me a second.

1:05:08 Speaker 5 I want to ask how you got there. You had known Chabad from a distance, and suddenly you arrived at the Rebbe. What was that like? What did you feel? You were twenty years old.

1:05:22 Speaker 13 It was such an overwhelming experience that, to this day, I don’t have words for it. I don’t have words. And we were also brought up—I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this into a microphone—not to gush.

1:05:45 Speaker 5 Yes, but today, you know...

1:05:46 Speaker 13 Not to gush in public.

1:05:47 Speaker 5 This podcast is called Lehitrannen—To Be Refreshed—because I truly believe that today, not only for young people, for young people who are becoming involved, but for older people too, this is air to breathe and live by. Sometimes you have an obligation. You can’t—I mean, we can’t let you off the hook.

1:06:01 Speaker 13 To this day, I’m a little embarrassed to say I’m a Chabad chossid. I say that I’m trying to be a Chabad chossid, and still trying. I’m trying, trying to be a Chabad chossid.

1:06:13 Speaker 5 We’ll deal with you about that later.

1:06:14 Speaker 13 No, no, it’s not because of [unclear]. Ah.

1:06:17 Speaker 5 In any case, I’d like a few words, something to convey what you felt as a young man seeing the Rebbe and hearing those calls.

1:06:25 Speaker 13 It’s a shame you didn’t bring mashke, Shimon Dovid. Look, first of all, we knew that in that room they knew everything, and that reports were submitted about every bochur. We knew there was an eye watching. And even today, we believe and feel that. There’s another point that many people today don’t understand. Sometimes someone asks, “You mean the Rebbe came down hard on someone in yechidus?” Today they’ll tell you, “That’s not the Rebbe’s way of speaking.” Why? Because they know the Rebbe from the dollar-distribution videos. Now, it’s not as though the Rebbe smiled at everyone, but anyone who was there day to day, and on Shabbos, knows—wow, wow, wow, wow, wow—the Rebbe did not hold back his words. Someone went in there—I won’t mention his name, a good friend of mine—and he told the Rebbe in yechidus, either because he wanted to put on an act or because he genuinely meant it, that he couldn’t promise to do everything the Rebbe told him. He got quite a dressing-down. So anyone who was with the Rebbe day to day knows that the Rebbe wasn’t all cuddly with everyone, the way it might look in the dollar videos. Perhaps when a woman came in to the Rebbe, or some prominent person. But with his own people—I knew a bochur...

1:08:10 Speaker 5 “His own people” means members of the household.

1:08:12 Speaker 13 I knew a bochur who wasn’t prepared to go into yechidus. He said he didn’t feel—he didn’t feel he could go in. Yechidus was a mountain. It was a mountain. You saw the whole scene: people standing downstairs, waiting and waiting. I mentioned Rabbi Neria earlier. After the Six-Day War, Rabbi Neria came to the United States. Of course, he visited the great rabbis, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. And when he came to the Rebbe, [unclear] said Tehillim. In other words, even a Jew from the wider world knew that the Rebbe was something different. I saw it with my own eyes. People would go in, and just seeing Rabbi Chadakov arrive in the early morning because he had to go in to the Rebbe—you could see his eyes were stuck together from lack of sleep. As it says in Chassidus, including in Tanya: when you come before the king and see the awe and self-effacement of his ministers and servants, that itself has an effect on you.

1:09:32 Speaker 5 You understand what’s happening here.

1:09:33 Speaker 13 The awe of royalty. And we saw great chassidim, and the self-effacement Rabbi Mentlik had before the Rebbe. At a Torah gathering, since he was the king’s trusted servant, he would be wiping things down the whole time. Or at a farbrengen, he would stand without moving. Or when he poured the wine, he would hold it by the base, because his hands were presumably shaking. And you saw the secretaries, the secretaries. I remember something even more striking. I remember Rashag, the Rebbe’s brother-in-law. We were sitting there. Everyone knows the table where the Rebbe davened every day upstairs. The Rebbe didn’t want people to treat the place where he sat as his own seat. He didn’t want to disrupt the yeshivah’s routine, so they hadn’t even put padding on the bench, and the table was the same color as all the other tables. Later, Yankel Rivsker [?] made those squares, and then Rabbi Yosef Stender, but back then the Rebbe’s table was like every other table. We were sitting there—I remember sitting with Yankele Chazan and a few other fellows—when Rashag suddenly arrived and asked one of us to go into the secretaries’ office and ask permission for him to go in to the Rebbe. Understand: for him too, it was a mountain. He asked the bochurim to go into the secretaries’ office, into that room—“the angel,” as they called him, right?

1:11:12 Speaker 5 Binyamin.

1:11:13 Speaker 13 Binyamin, or Rivo [?], whoever was there, to ask permission for him to go into yechidus. People—

1:11:23 Speaker 5 And he went straight in.

1:11:25 Speaker 13 Yes, after a few minutes he went in, or perhaps even sooner. There’s another example: when the Rebbe walked down the street, believe me, even the dogs stopped barking. I can picture the route. You know, even the policeman didn’t know that—and the Rebbe walked very simply, without an entourage.

1:11:47 Speaker 5 Did you ever walk behind him?

1:11:49 Speaker 13 On Friday nights I walked behind him, yes, quite far behind. I even remember one occasion when I was waiting for the Rebbe on a Friday night. The Rebbe had gone into his room and was there for a long time. Usually on Friday nights it was like this: the curtain in the Rebbe’s room was always closed, but on nights of yechidus, because women went in too, the curtain was open.

1:12:18 Speaker 5 And the window too.

1:12:19 Speaker 13 The window too, yes. One Friday night the window was open, and the curtain—and there was a breeze. Every so often the wind moved the curtain, and I saw the Rebbe sitting like this, with his yarmulke like this.

1:12:36 Speaker 5 With the yarmulke further toward his forehead.

1:12:38 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:12:39 Speaker 5 A sefer in his hands, both hands.

1:12:41 Speaker 13 I think so, I think so. In any case, I was waiting for the Rebbe opposite the—

1:12:48 Speaker 5 In other words, the Rebbe was sitting and learning.

1:12:49 Speaker 13 Yes, opposite the elevator. I think [unclear]. We waited for the Rebbe to come out. We knew roughly when to expect him, and suddenly the Rebbe came out. You know, I felt what it means that Moshiach will suddenly come to his house. Why did I turn around? Because I was waiting for the Rebbe to start walking, and we followed a few yards behind him, and that was it. Everyone knows that when the Rebbe entered the house, he would move the curtains. I don’t know why, but yes.

1:13:23 Speaker 5 At home.

1:13:23 Speaker 13 At home, yes, yes. The curtains facing President Street.

1:13:32 Speaker 5 When did you actually go into your first yechidus?

1:13:36 Speaker 13 That was—well, there was the group’s general yechidus, and...

1:13:41 Speaker 5 What?

1:13:41 Speaker 13 We went to the Rebbe twice as a group.

1:13:43 Speaker 5 The whole group together.

1:13:44 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:13:44 Speaker 5 When?

1:13:45 Speaker 13 I don’t remember the exact date. And 7 Elul is my birthday, so I went into yechidus... I remember that once I was [unclear]. I wanted to record the Rebbe in yechidus. Someone gave me...

1:14:09 Speaker 5 At that yechidus? Was that the yechidus?

1:14:11 Speaker 13 During the year, personally, I went in three times: once when we came—when I came—and after we left. Three times during the year, and...

1:14:24 Speaker 5 When during the year? On other occasions?

1:14:26 Speaker 13 Yes. No, no, it was during that year. First of all, you know, the crowd was small.

1:14:33 Speaker 5 Just a second.

1:14:34 Speaker 13 I want to add another point. You said we sat in the zal. There was the small zal, and classes were held there too. Downstairs in the large zal, they turned the lights off at nine in the evening. They barely davened in the large zal even on Shabbos—I mean, barely on Friday night and Shabbos morning. Shabbos afternoon was already upstairs. Now, there was something interesting, something that happened regularly on Shabbos afternoon. Everyone knows that every day the Rebbe came in through the door—if I’m standing facing the aron kodesh, say...

1:15:17 Speaker 5 In the small zal.

1:15:18 Speaker 13 On the left. And at around 1:20, he would come in from the right. On Shabbos afternoon too, he came in from the right.

1:15:26 Speaker 5 Through the corridor and the women’s section.

1:15:28 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

1:15:29 Speaker 5 And then you went in.

1:15:29 Speaker 13 Women behind you. People sat there.

1:15:33 Speaker 5 Those were the women.

1:15:34 Speaker 13 By the windows, yes. And on Shabbos afternoon they spread a white tablecloth and prepared the Rebbe’s chair. At around six-ten they moved the chair to the middle of the table, and the Rebbe sat down. It was a regular thing, every time. On Shabbos afternoon, around six-ten, the Rebbe sat with his eyes closed.

1:15:56 Speaker 5 On Friday too.

1:15:57 Speaker 13 Friday, I think—actually, I don’t remember, though it fits with what the Arizal says. Yes, but I don’t know. If I don’t remember something, I can’t say it. But this I know for certain. By the way—or maybe not by the way—in those years there wasn’t a farbrengen every Shabbos for Shabbos Mevarchim, or for the Shabbos before the 17th of Tammuz, or after the 17th of Tammuz. It just wasn’t like that. So I remember Shabbosos when there was no farbrengen. Rabbi Chodakov would go home downstairs, finish his meal, then come to the small room, sit at the very end of the bench, and study Shulchan Aruch—the laws of chametz—out loud.

1:16:43 Speaker 6 Alone.

1:16:44 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:16:50 Speaker 6 Just a second, let’s go back to the yechidus for a moment. That’ll help me get things straight.

1:16:52 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:16:53 Speaker 6 Zayin Elul is your birthday. Had you already gone in for a private yechidus before that?

1:16:57 Speaker 13 I don’t remember. But they say that—

1:17:01 Speaker 6 Yes, but the yechidus for—

1:17:02 Speaker 13 It’s written down in my notes, but—

1:17:03 Speaker 6 The birthday yechidus.

1:17:05 Speaker 13 Yes. I don’t remember whether it was the day before or afterward.

1:17:09 Speaker 6 And...?

1:17:09 Speaker 13 Well, what can I tell you?

1:17:11 Speaker 6 Tell me what happened.

1:17:12 Speaker 13 Well, first of all, I want to tell you that when I go into the room now, I see there were other things in it. But when I went in then, it was as though there was a circle around the Rebbe’s holy face, and I saw nothing else. At most, I saw the Rebbe tear the note. He would turn to the side, and there was a shelf that pulled out of the desk, and he would put on his glasses. And there was once a story connected with you, too. Do you know which story?

1:17:40 Speaker 6 With Grandma.

1:17:41 Speaker 13 With your son who was born a few years ago.

1:17:44 Speaker 6 Ah, yes, that.

1:17:45 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:17:46 Speaker 6 But just a second. What happened at the yechidus?

1:17:50 Speaker 13 I wrote to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe answered me, and it’s written down in my notes. I don’t—I don’t know. I haven’t told it, and I won’t tell it. I don’t know. Some things are so deep in the heart that even today, at my age, it’s hard for me—

1:18:09 Speaker 6 To speak about—

1:18:11 Speaker 13 To speak about it. Yes.

1:18:12 Speaker 6 About the past.

1:18:13 Speaker 13 You have to understand: our group sat around one table. At the other table sat all the lions of the group: [unclear], Baruch Avraham Pikarsky, Nussi Gurary, Shloime Zarchi, Sholem Weinberg, and Gershon Schusterman. Every one of them, really, was a lion of the group. They were serious fellows, relatively speaking... Sholem [unclear] and Sholem [unclear] were cousins.

1:18:49 Speaker 6 Nachum.

1:18:50 Speaker 13 One was the son of Benki—of Binyamin—and the other was the son of Avraham Yanko. Later, Mula Zimov joined them. If anyone had told me Mula Zimov was capable of opening his mouth, I would have sent him to a closed institution. But since we’re mentioning Mula Zimov, there were two weddings that broke new ground. One was the wedding of Itzik Gurevitch, the son of Reb Shmuel from Lod.

1:19:29 Speaker 6 Lod.

1:19:29 Speaker 13 The city of [unclear].

1:19:30 Speaker 6 He married Motel Rivkin.

1:19:31 Speaker 13 [Unclear] from [unclear]. Until then, people would travel. I wasn’t there in the period when the Rebbe himself performed the kiddushin; this was already afterward. They would travel to a hall in Boro Park, New York, and there they held the chuppah. They would open the roof above the chuppah, and the chuppah took place there. Itzik Gurevitch wouldn’t agree to that. His chuppah was supposed to be in Boro Park, but he held it under the open sky, with a chuppah. It was cold and windy. He broke one convention. The second convention was broken when Mula Zimov became engaged to Rabbi Bentz Ashmatov’s daughter. Bentz asked Rabbi Chodakov whether perhaps the Rebbe... and they held the chuppah opposite 770.

1:20:20 Speaker 6 Was that the first time?

1:20:21 Speaker 13 The first time, yes.

1:20:22 Speaker 6 Since the Rebbe had allowed it.

1:20:23 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. And another thing: the wedding meal wasn’t in New York or in Boro Park. They took the yeshivah on Eastern Parkway and sat there. That was around Shvat. How do I know it was Shvat? Because Nissan Nemanov would come to the Rebbe in Shvat. Speaking of Nissan, as we said, they davened Kabbalas Shabbos downstairs, but the yeshivah had its own separate minyan. Reb Nissan had a yahrzeit around that time—I think it was for his mother—so Nissan davened at the amud. I could feel that as he davened, he was holding himself back, holding himself back, holding himself back. When he reached “Purify our hearts to serve You in truth” in the berachah of Me’ein Sheva, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He burst out crying like a child.

1:21:18 Speaker 6 That was in the yeshivah’s minyan?

1:21:19 Speaker 13 In the yeshivah’s minyan. “Purify our hearts to serve You in truth.” When it came to saying that, Nissan couldn’t go on, and he burst into tears. I also remember that once, during that visit, he came to Minchah—the first Minchah of his visit. The Rebbe came in for Minchah, and Rabbi Nissan was in the other room. The door was open. When the Rebbe came in, Reb Nissan stood up on the bench to see the Rebbe, then climbed down and continued davening at his own pace.

1:21:52 Speaker 6 All right, Tishrei 5727. About the yechidus, you don’t want to say what the Rebbe said regarding the past.

1:21:56 Speaker 13 I don’t want to, and I can’t. No, no. But there’s one thing I must say, something that perhaps should even be publicized. It was very strange. Later I heard it had happened with others too, but not that year. I want to stress that I came again in later years. I came in Tishrei, and I hadn’t told the Rebbe when I was flying back. I went in for yechidus, and again the Rebbe went over what I had written and answered me. Then suddenly—and I hadn’t asked about the flight or mentioned it at all—the Rebbe began speaking to me about a halachic problem with flying on Motzaei Shabbos. He explained that the plane might be prepared on Shabbos, and told me that I needed to find out, diplomatically, how many hours the maintenance crew there took to prepare the plane. What’s most interesting is the way he told me this. Let’s say the explanation took about five minutes. Several times he looked at me and said, “Du farshteist take?”

1:23:06 Speaker 6 You understand.

1:23:07 Speaker 13 “Du farshteist? Du farshteist?” It was remarkable. There was one other time when the Rebbe asked me a question in the middle of a yechidus. Oh, now I remember. I had written to the Rebbe in a note about shidduchim. I worked at Beis Rivkah in Kfar Chabad II, and I wrote about shidduchim there. I told the Rebbe that there was one teacher—not a Chabad teacher, but such a righteous woman—who did wonderful work with shidduchim. The Rebbe stopped and asked what her name was, who she was. Her name was Mazal Bugaev, a righteous woman. I hope she lives to 120. The Rebbe asked, “Who is she?” Those were, as far as I remember, the only two times the Rebbe asked me something outside the usual course of things, so to speak—not just in response to what I had written.

1:24:16 Speaker 6 All right, Tishrei 5728. That was your first Tishrei.

1:24:20 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:24:20 Speaker 6 Well, then—

1:24:22 Speaker 13 First of all, Tishrei 5728. For the shofar blowing, I held my place for twelve hours, from [unclear]. I no longer remember how I made Kiddush. Maybe I arranged to trade off with someone: you go make Kiddush, and then I’ll go. But it was twelve hours of struggle, an enormous struggle. In Tishrei 5728 there was something else as well: that was when they broke through the—

1:24:50 Speaker 6 Expanded it.

1:24:51 Speaker 13 The wall, and the air conditioners weren’t working. You can imagine. When it came time for the shofar blowing, the air conditioners still weren’t working. And at the shofar blowing the Rebbe would always cover himself with his tallis, and from under the tallis you could hear groans—groans and real crying. Then he uncovered his holy face: “From the narrow straits...” All of it together. The Rebbe’s face was red. Wow, wow, wow. Simply indescribable. Indescribable. It took tremendous emotional and physical strength. And of course, after Tishrei we bought new suits; everything had been torn. Ber Ehrlich would always buy a new hat after Tishrei. Another time there was always a great deal of pushing was during the haftarah. The Rebbe would say the haftarah during the year, and I think it’s worth listening to. You can hear it on the recording tapes of the haftarahs from [unclear], because you hear thousands of people reading the haftarah—not a gathering where everyone is saying it together, you understand? But there is a particular tune. Another thing many people don’t know, since we’re talking about it: I don’t remember whether this happened during the first year or at some other time. The Rebbe rarely davened at the amud, but sometimes he would on Shabbos. First of all, you should know that in Lubavitch they used to say Lecha Dodi section by section, and they said the rest of the passages section by section too.

1:26:41 Speaker 6 They didn’t sing it yet.

1:26:42 Speaker 13 They didn’t sing it. What was the Rebbe’s tune for Lecha Dodi? Like this: “Come, my beloved, to greet the bride; let us welcome the Shabbos. ‘Keep’ and ‘remember’ in one utterance the One G-d caused us to hear. Hashem is One and His Name is One, for renown, for glory, and for praise. Come, my beloved, to greet the bride; let us welcome the Shabbos.” Pay attention to the high notes. That’s how the Rebbe said it. Now, how do I remember it? First of all, I heard it from the Rebbe. And afterward, Reb Yosel Weinberg would say that Lecha Dodi in exactly the same way.

1:27:26 Speaker 6 The Rebbe also changed it in the later years. The Rebbe very much wanted them to sing.

1:27:31 Speaker 13 Another episode from that year. I don’t know if it was that year or another year. No, it was another year. I had come as a married man, as a yungerman, but I slept with the bochurim at 749, across the street. By the way, at 749 there was that famous cook from Moscow. She was a righteous woman. She knew that at around ten, when he would come to Cemetery, she would stand on the steps and say, “Der heyliger tzaddik, der heyliger tzaddik.”

1:28:08 Speaker 6 The tzaddik, the holy tzaddik.

1:28:09 Speaker 13 The holy tzaddik, der heyliger tzaddik. So again, I come back to the analogy of the king’s servants: der heyliger tzaddik. And... you could sense it. When bochurim came late, when they came late on Shabbos afternoon, you could sense who was a servant and who had just come along.

1:28:27 Speaker 6 Who was a servant.

1:28:28 Speaker 13 Yes. The servants received special treatment.

1:28:31 Speaker 6 I heard a story about her. It was there in mem-beis.

1:28:34 Speaker 13 Yes.

1:28:34 Speaker 6 It’s an uncomfortable story, so I’ll tell it as I heard it. In mem-beis, the Rebbe had stopped coming to the sedarim.

1:28:38 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

1:28:40 Speaker 6 Everyone knew he would come to the Seder. He would always bless her and ask how she was, and she would wait all year for him to come.

1:28:46 Speaker 13 Even after she stopped being the cook during the year, on Pesach she—

1:28:49 Speaker 6 Right, so they didn’t know how to tell her that the Rebbe wasn’t going to come. They were afraid. I heard from one of the bochurim who approached her. They said, “Mussie, the Rebbe perhaps isn’t feeling well enough anymore to make the trip.” “What? Of course! I’ve always thought about that. Why should he go to the trouble of coming especially?” It was so... considering how important it was to her, she was a woman—

1:29:13 Speaker 13 Spontaneous. That was her answer.

1:29:13 Speaker 6 She was a generous woman, because she had nothing apart from her brother, with her brothers in [unclear], right?

1:29:18 Speaker 13 Her friend Maria, who [unclear].

1:29:19 Speaker 6 Yes, but I mean, that spontaneous reaction: “Why should the Rebbe go to the trouble for me?” That’s...

1:29:24 Speaker 13 Heaven forbid that it should happen. There was one winter—I was already in Germany—and there was a rainstorm, uh, a snowstorm. I crossed the street and then turned left toward Cemetery, and I saw someone walking toward me with measured steps, as though there were no snow. When I got a little closer, I saw it was the Rebbe himself. Snow, a raging snowstorm—everyone, you know, was hurrying along. And the Rebbe always walked with one hand in his pocket. If it was very cold, he would gesture to the bochurim: why weren’t they turning up their—

1:30:01 Speaker 6 He would signal to them to turn up their—

1:30:03 Speaker 13 The Rebbe himself would do it too. Although the Rebbe never—

1:30:08 Speaker 6 Turned up the fold of the coat.

1:30:10 Speaker 13 Oh, speaking of which, I just remembered another story.

1:30:12 Speaker 6 Just a second, finish this first. Just a second. The Rebbe himself would turn up the fold—

1:30:16 Speaker 13 He did turn it up, yes.

1:30:16 Speaker 6 The fold of the coat around his neck, and the Rebbe would signal to the bochurim to do the same.

1:30:20 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, he would signal. He wouldn’t let a row of bochurim stand there without—

1:30:24 Speaker 6 When they were a bit cold.

1:30:25 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes.

1:30:26 Speaker 6 What did you remember?

1:30:27 Speaker 13 It was Parshas Naso. I was—once I became a rabbi too, I would travel for Shavuos. On Parshas Naso, I was there. That famous story when the Rebbe suddenly came out in the middle of Shabbos and held a farbrengen.

1:30:43 Speaker 6 Naso.

1:30:45 Speaker 13 I was physically very close to what happened. There was a farbrengen. I had gone to eat the third Shabbos meal, came back, and sat at the front of 770. To tell the truth, I had put my head down like this to doze off. Suddenly I heard, “Shhh.” I thought, “What’s this shhh?” And there was a farbrengen. I looked up and threw myself backward. The Rebbe was standing right next to me, with a towel over his shoulder and a—

1:31:17 Speaker 6 A cup.

1:31:17 Speaker 13 A cup. So he went toward his place for davening. They managed to bring a little table, without a tablecloth, and—

1:31:31 Speaker 6 It took time until they had the table. I was little too; I was there too.

1:31:34 Speaker 13 It took time, yes.

1:31:36 Speaker 6 I was a child then, before bar mitzvah. That too was the most—

1:31:38 Speaker 13 What I wanted to say, suppose—

1:31:39 Speaker 6 The Rebbe put his siddur on the—

1:31:40 Speaker 13 Suppose this is the bimah, and I was like this.

1:31:44 Speaker 6 Yes. Really bent over.

1:31:47 Speaker 13 Yes, so I saw—

1:31:48 Speaker 6 To describe it to someone—

1:31:49 Speaker 13 I saw something that perhaps it’s good for people to know, to know what—and whom—we are dealing with. The Rebbe would always walk straight [unclear] on the sole of his foot. His physical flesh was red. It’s known that even in winter the Rebbe wore the thinnest socks. I ate many Shabbos meals at the home of [unclear], may he live and be well, and his wife—my sister-in-law—was very close friends with the Rebbetzin of Sanz. She told me that the Rebbetzin of Sanz had complained to her that even in winter, with air conditioning in the Rebbe’s room, the Rebbe suffered terribly from the heat. And that inevitably reminded me of an interpretation by the holy Baal Shem Tov. He said that Chabad is an acronym: Ches—“My heart grew hot within me”; Beis—“As I meditated, a fire burned”; Daled—“I spoke with my tongue.”

1:33:00 Speaker 7 An interpretation of the Baal Shem Tov?

1:33:01 Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

1:33:03 Speaker 7 I heard it from Zalman Klein in Nachlas Har Chabad. It could be that he said it too.

1:33:07 Speaker 13 Could be, could be.

1:33:08 Speaker 7 Among the Russians they would say—

1:33:09 Speaker 13 It could be that I heard it from your grandfather, Reb Sholom Goldstein, too, but [unclear]. So I saw “My flesh longs for You.” “My flesh longs for You”—literally, his physical flesh was burning. And as the Rebbetzin of Sanz said, even in winter the Rebbe—we saw it—never wore a sweater or a scarf. He never wore [unclear]. And it’s also known that his shoes were always torn. So I actually saw that his physical body was holy flesh. Unbelievable. And I saw this during that parsha, that same parsha.

1:33:54 Speaker 7 Well, well, [unclear].

1:33:54 Speaker 13 Well, do you remember when? Were you there right at the beginning?

1:33:57 Speaker 7 I was up on the pyramid then, but I’m not going into that now.

1:33:59 Speaker 13 Ah.

1:34:00 Speaker 7 I was up on the pyramid, and there we were with a few child—there were a few of us children, before bar mitzvah. I had to accompany—

1:34:05 Speaker 13 That’s quite far away.

1:34:06 Speaker 7 It was very far away, yes.

1:34:08 Speaker 13 Let’s just go back to 28 [unclear], Tishrei, Yom Kippur, Sukkos. What do you remember about Sukkos?

1:34:21 Speaker 7 What were the hakafos like?

1:34:24 Speaker 13 Oh yes, the hakafos. I remember one particular episode. Well, the Rebbe’s hakafos—no heart and no mind can grasp them. How could anyone understand that? But I remember standing at the hakafos near the Rebbe’s davening bimah, in the second or third row. We’ll get to more about the hakafos in a moment. It’s worth knowing this story. You know that on the second night, people from the embassy would come to the Rebbe. They came with security guards. The embassy people went upstairs, but the guards stood among us. There were two [unclear] standing there—I mean people from Hashomer Hatzair, from a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz. Security guards. Suddenly I heard one say to his friend about the Rebbe, “Excuse me, but look what a strong man he is. Our heads are already out of it, and he...” Since we’ve mentioned the hakafos, I’ll tell you another episode from the hakafos. I’m debating whether to say the name of the person involved, but we’ll leave it like this for now. Again, this was already when they had arranged the tables in the shape of a closed mem and we were standing outside, waiting for the moment they opened the door.

1:36:09 Speaker 7 To grab a place.

1:36:10 Speaker 13 To grab a place. I had a spot in the second row, I think. And as you know, Rabbi Chadakov was in the first row, at the far end, with the Rashag. By the way, if you noticed Rabbi Chadakov with the Rashag, he held his coat like this.

1:36:28 Speaker 7 His hand held the—

1:36:29 Speaker 13 Yes, so the coat would... so that too.

1:36:30 Speaker 7 Let’s explain it for those who can’t see. His hand held—

1:36:32 Speaker 13 So the hem wouldn’t rise.

1:36:33 Speaker 7 His hand held the hem so it wouldn’t rise, so you wouldn’t see his hand, only the—

1:36:37 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. So, speaking of that—it brings something to mind. One year, someone was ill and hospitalized. Everyone was talking about whom the Rebbe would dance with. You say Rabbi Chadakov. They found the dancer on his own. So [unclear] asked whom the Rebbe would dance with. They told him that he wouldn’t.

1:37:02 Speaker 7 He was reassured.

1:37:04 Speaker 13 The Rebbe’s consideration and sensitivity. It’s unbelievable, simply unbelievable how much... Oh. The crowd in Kfar Chabad.

1:37:19 Speaker 7 Wait, you went in for the hakafos.

1:37:20 Speaker 13 Okay, right. Now, a little introduction. In Kfar Chabad there was a family of distinguished chassidic lineage. But they had a son who went off in another direction: he shaved his beard and didn’t follow the usual path. Suddenly I turned around and saw this young man. Let’s say his name was Leizer—it doesn’t matter, and I won’t give his last name. I thought, “If Leizer is here, it will give the Rebbe more pleasure if I give him my place and let him stand where I am.” I gave up my place and stood behind him. In short, the Rebbe was dancing with the Rashag. Suddenly the Rebbe noticed him. So the Rebbe kept dancing there in place with the Rashag, waiting for Leizer to start jumping. The Rebbe kept going, while Leizer was like a refrigerator. Then he went back to standing still. This happened several times. Each time the Rebbe saw Leizer standing still, he kept jumping.

1:38:32 Speaker 7 But without, without turning around, so that—

1:38:34 Speaker 13 Obviously, Leizer Zaken studies every day and doesn’t live in Kfar Chabad. Obviously, the name is from the chassidim of Sarid[?]. And you understand—right in the middle of hakafos, what does the Rebbe ask about? So, back to hakafos. Once, in later years, Dr. Dufkin came to hakafos from Kfar Chabad. He was Kfar Chabad’s doctor, and he was a relative of ours.

1:39:01 Speaker 7 He was an Itkin son-in-law.

1:39:03 Speaker 13 His mother-in-law[?] was from the Itkin family, yes. He was very soft-spoken and gentle. Before hakafos, the Rebbe asked where he was. He couldn’t push his way through; he couldn’t push even a little[?]. What did they say? In the end someone said, “Ah, that’s it. You want to get to the Rebbe?” So they lifted him over the people like a package and brought him to the Rebbe. And [unclear] after hakafos. One thing I do remember: I went on a procession. We reached some distant place in New York—I don’t remember its name—and I went with, may he be well, Moishe Bogomilsky. It turned out that Moishe went there throughout the year. It was an Orthodox shul, but the partition between the men and women was known as a “Rabbi Moshe Feinstein partition.” Moshe brought to America—

1:40:19 Speaker 7 His—

1:40:22 Speaker 13 A partition up to the shoulders. Suddenly, in the middle of hakafos, the president of the shul called for quiet, went up to the lectern and said, “In appreciation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who doesn’t forget us—who comes every year to bring us joy—the committee, the shul’s board, has decided to put up a proper partition.”

1:40:46 Speaker 7 Wow. Did you report that to the Rebbe?

1:40:51 Speaker 13 What? I don’t remember. If anyone did, Moishe would have had to report it. There was another procession I went on once, to a closer place. It was a shul across from Prospect Park. Nebach. The rabbi was Orthodox, though he didn’t have a beard, and they barely had a minyan. Honestly, if we hadn’t arrived, it would have been [unclear]. Rachmana litzlan, a year later they had already put a cross on the shul. It had become something else. I’ll never forget arriving there simply to bring it to life—to bring the dead to life. And I also remember going to Borough Park, and some Jews went along, like Shlomo... you know, from Britain[?], you know.

1:41:45 Speaker 7 Moshke Korff.

1:41:45 Speaker 13 Moshke Korff and Shmuel Dovid Raichik[?]. They said, “Polish chassidim.” They said, “Take them—they’re chassidim, older Jews.” The Lubavitcher Rebbe said about the—we were like soldiers.

1:41:56 Speaker 7 That’s a very interesting point you’re making. In my generation, when people went on the procession, they went to [unclear] say “vote”[?]. Back then, it was simply that the Rebbe—perhaps we don’t always notice that the Rebbe really sent people to bring life to those outlying shuls that—

1:42:10 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes.

1:42:11 Speaker 7 Some of which later became something else.

1:42:14 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

1:42:15 Speaker 7 Again, from the Rebbe’s perspective, it was about bringing joy to Jews.

1:42:20 Speaker 13 And another thing: when the groups returned on Shavuos, the Rebbe would come out to greet them. Then there was a Shavuos when things were difficult. No one had seen him for some time, for months, since 7 Adar, after the incident. You were there that year on Shavuos. We came back from Borough Park and stood dancing opposite the alleyway, hoping that perhaps we’d catch a glimpse[?]. Suddenly they announced, “The Rebbe is coming out.”

1:42:52 Speaker 7 For a few seconds.

1:42:54 Speaker 13 And I came to after fainting. I was looking for my glasses, my hat and my gartel. It was something else. There was such laughter, such laughter. I was just spinning around. Wow, wow, wow. Just imagine that he would merit to see the Rebbe again on Shavuos, in person. Wow, wow.

1:43:19 Speaker 7 Then there will be screams of joy.

1:43:20 Speaker 13 Huh?

1:43:21 Speaker 7 Then there will be screams of joy.

1:43:22 Speaker 13 Those were screams of joy too.

1:43:23 Speaker 7 Yes.

1:43:24 Speaker 13 Those were screams of joy too. So, I’ll tell you the truth. This is something very personal for me. I find it very hard to sit with people and tell them who the Rebbe is. You know, it’s the kind of thing people say: if a man truly loves his wife, he doesn’t tell the whole world how much he loves her. It’s so, so inward that...

1:43:59 Speaker 7 We’re saying: we want you to tell us what happened. Not what you feel—what you felt.

1:44:04 Speaker 13 Come—

1:44:05 Speaker 7 In any case, chassidim want to hear a little about it. All right, let’s continue with the winter of 5728. The Rebbe spoke about the tefillin campaign and all the explanations for the tefillin campaign.

1:44:14 Speaker 13 Oh, yes, I remember.

1:44:15 Speaker 7 Everything that happened at the convention, the big convention.

1:44:18 Speaker 13 I remember when they captured the Kosel. The Rebbe got out of the car, and a Jew named Mordechai Bendek stopped the Rebbe in the middle of the street and spread out the newspaper for him. “Rebbe, the Kosel is ours!” he said to the Rebbe in English.

1:44:37 Speaker 7 Right after the Six-Day War.

1:44:38 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. He thought the Rebbe didn’t know.

1:44:41 Speaker 7 Yes.

1:44:41 Speaker 13 “Rebbe, the Kosel is ours.” That was what everyone was talking about then.

1:44:47 Speaker 7 How did the Rebbe respond?

1:44:49 Speaker 13 I don’t remember, but there was a certain pleasure in it. I don’t remember the exact details. If we’re talking about the sidewalk[?], I remember once when the Rebbe arrived at the seminary, and there was a student—or a woman—there collecting tzedakah. The Rebbe didn’t have any small change, so he went in, came back out with money and gave her the [unclear]. Another incident, speaking of that area between the yechidus room and the corridor where the Rebbe later distributed dollars: it was Erev Pesach, around three in the afternoon. The Rebbe came out for Minchah, and standing in front of him was someone who, rachmana litzlan, was mentally disturbed. I saw that he wanted to approach the Rebbe, so I pulled him back by his coat. The Rebbe fixed me with a sharp look of disapproval. Of course, I let go of him immediately. He told the Rebbe he wanted matzah and a bed to sleep in. So the Rebbe went back to his room, brought out matzah for him, and since he didn’t have a bed, I arranged something for him at the Seder[?].

1:46:06 Speaker 7 The Rebbe distributed matzos to you too, to those who were at the Seder.

1:46:08 Speaker 13 That was once. Oh, another thing. I don’t know whether anyone has told this story, or noticed it. I thought of it recently when I saw it written in the holy seforim that when hagbahah is done, the light that comes out from between the letters is something—I don’t remember the exact wording. Every time they did hagbahah, the Rebbe would blink his eyes. Every time.

1:46:37 Speaker 7 Both downstairs and upstairs.

1:46:40 Speaker 13 Both downstairs and upstairs, throughout the years. I always thought—just a guess—that he was afraid the person holding the Sefer Torah might... In general, the Rebbe was very sensitive to this. For example, the Rebbe was not pleased when he heard in his room that people were dancing in the small zal. That became clear to me later.

1:47:05 Speaker 7 What was that?

1:47:05 Speaker 13 Dancing in the small zal. How did I find that out? At the end of the Seder, when the Seder was over, they would start singing that familiar niggun as the Rebbe poured the—

1:47:19 Speaker 7 The wine back into the cup.

1:47:20 Speaker 13 The wine back into the cup. Good thing you reminded me of the Seder—there are two mistakes I want to address. We’ll get to them in a moment. Then they would start dancing, go downstairs and keep dancing. So they danced in the hallway.

1:47:32 Speaker 7 Yes, let’s get the sequence straight. The Rebbe would pour the cup—the wine—

1:47:35 Speaker 13 The wine back into the cup. They would sing that familiar niggun then.

1:47:38 Speaker 7 And then the bochurim would—

1:47:39 Speaker 13 The bochurim who were there at the end of the Seder would continue dancing downstairs.

1:47:43 Speaker 7 After the Rebbe went down.

1:47:44 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, and they would continue.

1:47:46 Speaker 7 Downstairs. Everyone would go down and keep dancing.

1:47:48 Speaker 13 Then I was told, “You don’t dance inside the zal, in the shul.” Why? I don’t know what it’s like today, but the zal was built so that if the floor shook, the Aron Kodesh would sway a little. The Rebbe didn’t want that.

1:48:01 Speaker 7 Wow, that’s a surprise.

1:48:02 Speaker 13 The Rebbe didn’t want that. And since we’re talking about Seder night, there are two mistakes—may [unclear] forgive me in the World of Truth—written by someone who is usually [unclear], one of the early [unclear]. On this, he is unequivocally wrong. I was there.

1:48:20 Speaker 7 This is getting interesting.

1:48:21 Speaker 13 As I said, I was at the Seder then, [unclear]. I was at four Sedarim with the Rebbe—two Pesachs, two Pesach holidays. At two of the Sedarim I sat right behind the Rebbe, and at two behind the sh"g, so I could—

1:48:39 Speaker 7 Be facing the Rebbe.

1:48:41 Speaker 13 Yes. Again, one memory brings up another. I remember that on Seder night—I don’t remember whether it was in the year 5718 or 5728, I don’t remember—an Armenian woman came out, [unclear]. She was dressed, as they say, like something from an encyclopedia: the sort you see from the days of the emperors, with a long dress and [unclear]. She had a magnifying glass in her hand. She was a little hard of hearing and spoke loudly. She addressed the Rebbe. I emphasize that the sh"g was sitting on one side, but she addressed the Rebbe, because many people later asked me whom she had spoken to. I didn’t understand why that was so interesting, but afterward I did. She said something like, “Tomorrow is the yahrtzeit of the Rebbe of Nizhyn.” In other words, tomorrow—this was on the second Seder night, so it would be after the second day of Yom Tov—was the yahrtzeit of the grandfather, the Rebbe of Nizhyn.

1:49:55 Speaker 7 [Unclear] of Nizhyn.

1:49:56 Speaker 13 Because she was a daughter of the Sandler family, descended from the Tzemach Tzedek. So she asked when to light the yahrzeit candle: before Havdalah or after Havdalah? I wondered how the Rebbe would answer her, since she couldn’t hear. What did the Rebbe do? The Rebbe gestured like this, as though holding a cup—meaning after Havdalah.

1:50:22 Speaker 7 In other words, the Rebbe made a sign.

1:50:23 Speaker 13 A sign as though he were holding a cup.

1:50:24 Speaker 7 He held the imaginary cup and then gestured afterward.

1:50:25 Speaker 13 Meaning, after Havdalah.

1:50:28 Speaker 7 That’s how the Rebbe answered her, with gestures, since she couldn’t hear.

1:50:31 Speaker 13 Sign language. Yes. Another thing: the women at the Seder were in a separate room. We couldn’t see them at all. When the Rebbe made Havdalah—sorry, Kiddush—they opened the door. Why? No woman was visible there. It wasn’t possible to hear the Rebbe. He didn’t make Kiddush loudly for everyone, but the fact is that they opened the door. I don’t know why.

1:51:00 Speaker 7 So you had already managed to get to the Seder before the Rebbe began Kiddush.

1:51:03 Speaker 13 Yes, every time. Including the story that was published recently—I wrote about being at the Rebbe’s Seder in the Kfar Chabad newspaper. So, the Rebbe used a lot of napkins during the Seder. He kept touching his lips because they itched.

1:51:21 Speaker 7 Sheruyah.

1:51:22 Speaker 13 Sheruyah, yes. Next to the Rebbe was a piece of furniture covered with a white cloth. The Rebbe himself held his Haggadah, but it had been rebound. It was quite unusual. There was a Pesach Haggadah there with dates on it. Look, it wasn’t the Rebbe’s Kiddush cup—I don’t know why—and on the furniture was a Siddur HaAri z”l.

1:51:49 Speaker 7 A thick volume.

1:51:51 Speaker 13 Yes, a substantial one. I opened it to see whether the Rebbe’s name was written there, and I saw that someone had dedicated it to the Rebbe. I don’t know who; I don’t remember the name.

1:52:01 Speaker 7 It was a gift the Rebbe had received.

1:52:02 Speaker 13 Yes. And when the Rebbe wiped his lips with a napkin, he would put it on that piece of furniture. A bochur was standing next to me, Bentzion Shafran. He later became known for giving classes on the radio. He passed away a few years ago, olov hashalom. He was an interesting fellow. People said he was a shliach of the Rebbe in the media. Anyway, whenever there was a napkin on the furniture, he would put it in his pocket. Suddenly the Rebbe noticed. He turned to Shafran and told him, “It’s been used; it’s sheruyah.” Now I see two mistakes in what Kfar Chabad wrote. First, it says the Rebbe threw the napkins on the floor. That never happened. It would not have been like the Rebbe. The Rebbe was very meticulous. Second, it says the Rebbe told him it was chametz. That never happened either. The Rebbe said, “It’s been used; it’s sheruyah.” Now, you asked whether we got there before the Rebbe started. Yes. We would finish our own Seder quickly in the kitchen—the kitchen of [unclear], whom we mentioned earlier—and when we arrived, the Rebbe hadn’t even come upstairs yet. In other words, there was a long time between the end of davening and the Rebbe’s arrival at the Seder. Now, one night—the first night, I remember it was Pesach 5727. I heard Rabbi Chezki Sofer say it was 5728, but I remember 5727. That doesn’t matter right now. It was the first night, and there was a lot of pushing. Apparently that damaged Rashag’s chair, and it upset him. So Rabbi Dovid Raskin announced that the next night, at the second Seder, no one would come in before the door was opened. All right, the bochurim in the kitchen didn’t hurry, but I and a few other bochurim—I don’t remember who else—said, “Let’s do it anyway.”

1:54:31 Speaker 13 So we went through the Seder quickly and went up to the second floor. We stood in the hallway; the door was closed. Suddenly Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka appeared and said to us, “[unclear].” After all, it had been announced that no one was coming in that evening. I don’t know whether I did the right thing, but I told her, “[unclear].” So she said, “[unclear]. I’ll ask my husband.” She went downstairs, waited there a few minutes, came back without saying a word, went into the Frierdiker Rebbe’s apartment and left the door open. That made it clear. We went in. So, as they say, we came four times—all four times. Oh, there was another incident at a Seder that I’ll never forget. The person who recited the Haggadah aloud was a man named Reb Daniel Kapetz. That’s a story in itself.

1:55:32 Speaker 7 Chicago.

1:55:33 Speaker 13 Chicago. Oh, I once posed a question even to Chabad rabbis, asking them to explain something, and they couldn’t. In Pesach Haggadahs—I don’t know about today’s editions, but certainly in the older printings—at the cups, it always says “Al hagefen ve’al pri hagefen.”

1:55:48 Speaker 7 Borei nefashos.

1:55:49 Speaker 13 Borei nefashos. What does borei nefashos have to do with it? You’re not supposed to drink then! Eventually it dawned on me: in Russia, wine wasn’t always available. For the four cups they drank chamar medinah—coffee or tea. Where would they get wine? They made tea or coffee, chamar medinah. It’s like the famous story of the woman who came to the Rogatchover and asked whether she could fulfill the obligation of the four cups with milk. The Rogatchover sent her money before Pesach. If she was drinking milk, that meant she had no meat. Incidentally, the Rogatchover ruled that she could use it, because he was known to hold that one could make Havdalah over milk, since it was chamar medinah. Anyway, someone was reading “Al hagefen ve’al pri hagefen” and then “borei pri...” So he interrupted him in the middle and said, “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever.”

1:56:44 Speaker 8 You weren’t at the meals at the table upstairs?

1:56:47 Speaker 13 Not at any meal.

1:56:48 Speaker 8 No bochur ever was.

1:56:49 Speaker 13 Only family members or elderly people were allowed in.

1:56:55 Speaker 8 You know, whether my grandfather was at that same table upstairs during the meals—that’s something...

1:56:58 Speaker 13 Upstairs?

1:56:59 Speaker 8 I don’t know. I’m asking whether perhaps you know.

1:57:00 Speaker 13 I don’t remember.

1:57:01 Speaker 8 Did you hear it from him?

1:57:02 Speaker 13 I don’t remember. What I do know is that there were elderly people there. Among them was another Jew, may he be remembered for good, Reb Yitzchok Horowitz. He lived in Eretz Yisroel. He was a bachelor, without a wife or children, and he won the lottery.

1:57:19 Speaker 8 And he stayed.

1:57:20 Speaker 13 Yes, he stayed. He was indeed one of those who sat at the meals. And it was well known that at the Seder, of course, they didn’t prepare cushions for reclining for the grandfather or anyone else, because one does not recline in the presence of one’s teacher. But they did prepare one for Rashag. Not for the Rebbe, of course. Rashag wasn’t the grandfather. Then there was the well-known asking of the questions: the Rebbe didn’t speak. The Rebbe Rashab was there; the Frierdiker Rebbe was there. But Rashag asked. It was very nice to see Rashag asking, even with a slight smile on his face.

1:57:56 Speaker 8 During the meal, at Shulchan Orech.

1:57:58 Speaker 13 Yes, yes, yes. And when it came to reclining—what can I say? The Rebbe didn’t merely lean. He almost lay down, or lay down completely. By the way, he also ate the maror, and he coughed a great deal in the middle. I want to tell you something else that I think people don’t pay attention to. They tell a story about the Rebbe of Strashelye. The Rebbe of Strashelye was a student of the Alter Rebbe and a colleague of the Mitteler Rebbe. All the older Chabad chassidim have surely heard the story: when he made Kiddush on Friday night, in a state of tremendous inspiration, he would run with the Kiddush cup from wall to wall, and not a drop spilled. I saw that not a drop of wine from the Kiddush cup spilled. They tell that about the Alter Rebbe too. That’s why they padded the walls, though I haven’t heard whether any wine spilled in that story. Anyway—oh, Pax suddenly woke up.

1:59:04 Speaker 8 Pax.

1:59:05 Speaker 13 Who’s talking about Pax?

1:59:06 Speaker 8 Pax is legendary.

1:59:07 Speaker 13 Yes, yes. In short, with the Rebbe, only a trained pharmacist could have poured the wine with such precision. And not a crumb fell when the Rebbe ate his large required portion of matzah. He held it like this in both hands and ate and ate and ate. I don’t know if I can convey it.

1:59:43 Speaker 8 Wow. The rest of us scatter crumbs everywhere.

1:59:46 Speaker 13 There wasn’t a crumb on the table.

1:59:48 Speaker 8 I wanted to ask sometime. Nothing.

1:59:50 Speaker 13 There wasn’t a crumb on the table. It was just like what the Rebbe once said about the virtue of Aharon, that he did not deviate. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev.

1:59:59 Speaker 8 At the height of inspiration.

2:00:00 Speaker 13 At the height of inspiration. Nothing. You really saw something wondrous there.

2:00:06 Speaker 8 Even on his clothing?

2:00:07 Speaker 13 Nothing at all. And everything was orderly. Everything was done with intention—the lettuce, the matzos—with the utmost precision, and everything around him was clean.

2:00:21 Speaker 8 That’s beyond what’s natural.

2:00:23 Speaker 13 Huh?

2:00:25 Speaker 8 Beyond human limits.

2:00:26 Speaker 13 What’s there? Beyond human bounds, yes. Far, far beyond human bounds. But that’s not it. And I’m telling you firsthand, not something I heard from someone who heard it from someone. My own eyes saw it. Another thing about the Rebbe’s conduct: the people serving at the Seder—I think they were both from Machaneh Yosef—[unclear] and Yisroel [unclear]. They served the bowls of soup, of course serving the Rebbe first. The Rebbe did not begin eating until the last person seated there had been served, and until the people serving had sat down to eat. He did not begin eating. I think that’s a lesson in shalom bayis: on Friday night, you have to wait for your wife to come and prepare the fish, not start eating before her. Wow, wow—the Rebbe’s sensitivity! Another thing I saw: the Rebbe never rested his left hand on the table. Only on Yom Kippur.

2:01:37 Speaker 8 He didn’t rest his left hand on the table.

2:01:38 Speaker 13 He never rested it on the table. The dining table. Not at a farbrengen either. Only when eating the three—he held both hands like this on the table. At a farbrengen, never. And if you ever saw it rise, that took a great deal of strength, [unclear]. So I did once see it rise. But while eating, only on Yom Kippur. The Rebbe explained to Rashak that this was how his father conducted himself, and how the Arizal conducted himself.

2:02:03 Speaker 8 Eating with both hands.

2:02:04 Speaker 13 Because there is a mitzvah to eat.

2:02:05 Speaker 8 But that’s worth knowing—for the whole year.

2:02:07 Speaker 13 No. Another thing I saw was a mountain of salt on the fish. A mountain of salt—also beyond human bounds. Then I saw something interesting: when he got to the last drops of soup, the Rebbe lifted the plate from underneath and tilted it.

2:02:25 Speaker 8 Meaning, with his thumbs underneath.

2:02:27 Speaker 13 His left thumb. I no longer know whether it was both of them—no, the left thumb, while he let go with the right. So it was with his left thumb.

2:02:32 Speaker 8 He lifted the plate with his left thumb from below the table.

2:02:35 Speaker 13 From below the table.

2:02:35 Speaker 8 And he didn’t put his left hand on the table.

2:02:37 Speaker 13 On the table.

2:02:41 Speaker 8 The practice during a meal is different here. I didn’t know that.

2:02:44 Speaker 13 By the way, they say Rashak once asked the Rebbe why he put salt on the fish. He said, “It’s simply geshmak.” In other words, it simply tastes good. Ah, ah, ah. Another thing. And again, by way of introduction: they tell about the Rebbe of [unclear] that while davening he would hold his watch in his hand. They explained why: so that—

2:04:15 Speaker 8 He was doing things. Focusing. Everything we’ve said needs to come down into our language, so that it clicks for us: he saw the time. The moment he looked at the watch, he descended from higher worlds and had to enter the vessels, the bounds, of time. That’s something. After that, [unclear]. After that, they say the Rebbe said [unclear] much more loudly. Or it’s well known how he said “Nishmas.” And I remember another interesting thing. I don’t remember whether it was during Nishmas or another passage of the Haggadah. There were passages in the Haggadah that the Rebbe said with his eyes closed. And it was remarkable: when he reached the end of the page with his eyes closed, he turned the page. Luckily, the page was photographed. There was no doubt about it: the end of the page. Another interesting thing, and it’s absolutely astonishing: there were no Yom Tov candles in the Seder room, not on the table and not off to the side. They were probably where the other people were. Probably where the other people were. So he wouldn’t look? What? So he wouldn’t look. No, there were no candles in the room, not on the table or on any of the furniture. [Unclear]. Yes, [unclear], the Rebbe remarked, “Why?” For the yeshiva Seder, they should take one candle. I remember that even in my years—yes, yes—after Gimmel Tammuz, there was a whole ceremony: she would light candles in the kitchen, two candles in the kitchen, and then take one candle over to our Seder, the bochurim’s Seder, because the Rebbe had told her to take one candle to the place where the bochurim held their Seder. Good to know. So she had this ceremony of taking it over. Sometimes there are a lot of candles on the table, and it’s dangerous. So I always make sure—my own idea, yes—that there are two candles on the table. Interesting, interesting. Good to know. Yes, yes, yes. What happened in the winter of ’28? We sat in the seminary and learned. Davening with the Rebbe—

2:06:21 Speaker 8 Every day. Yes, that’s right. Every time—again, as I said earlier, the Rebbe would walk, but whenever the Rebbe came in, everyone immediately stood up. Now, he would arrive around quarter past. Yes, so he didn’t enter the zal. But when he passed through [unclear], in the hall, yes, underneath [unclear], everyone stood up. It could be the middle of the night—the middle of the night—and suddenly [unclear] would come down and talk. He would speak with Moshe [unclear] in shul. There was also a story connected to you personally: your grandfather, Rabbi [unclear], was at the seminary. Everyone stood to watch your grandfather standing and talking with [unclear] in shul. I remember your grandfather was a bochur then. It was between [unclear] and [unclear]—one is bittul and the other is “me.” Yes, they were both dear boys, good children, going back to their Tel Aviv days. Yes. His student. Ah, his student. No, whom are you talking about? Your grandfather, Rabbi Nochum [unclear], and [unclear]. [Unclear] studied under him. Studied under him in Tel Aviv. At [unclear]? Yes, yes. His student. He studied under him for years. No, not at [unclear]; he studied in his home. In his home? Yes, yes. So that’s it. In his home, as a... By the way, until he traveled. By the way, since we’ve mentioned [unclear], Rabbi [unclear] shlita told me personally—and he was one of the top students in Bnei Brak, along with [unclear] and [unclear]. He said to me, “Tzvi [unclear], our Yelik”—they called him Yair—“Yelik was a greater lamdan than [unclear], because he had more learning than all of them.” Anyone who has ever visited Rabbi [unclear] hears that from him. Huh? Anyone who has ever had the privilege of visiting Rabbi [unclear] on a Chabad visit hears it from him. I didn’t understand.

2:08:20 Speaker 8 I heard about that. Yes. No. No, I’m just saying. Actually, my grandfather was there during Chol Hamoed in Tishrei. That was when he spoke with the bochurim about their learning in Chassidus, at the Rebbe’s instruction. I only remember one part of the yechidus: Grandma went in alone—perhaps she even went in first—and Grandpa sat outside in the lower Gan Eden. Afterward he went in for yechidus. Didn’t you hear from him about it? No, I don’t remember. I only remember seeing Grandma talking with the Rebbe through the window. In the same yechidus when he was with her? No, she was alone. Meaning, that same Tishrei when she was—I think she went in before him or after him. I can’t remember that precisely. I think it was before him, before him, because he was waiting outside to go in for yechidus too, so I think she went in first. He went in afterward and had a very long yechidus. Yes, yes. Almost an hour and a half, an hour and ten minutes—I don’t remember. Yes. That’s how it was, but he didn’t talk about it. A large part of it was about the Rebbe’s father and the Rebbe’s brother. Yes. But he didn’t tell us too much. [Unclear] instruction to speak about Chassidus with the bochurim. At the shul in Crown Heights—the bochurim. The Rebbe wanted him to test them. Ah, yes. In general, he spoke with them about Chassidus, the Rebbe. He wrote the Rebbe a report about what he intended to test them on, and the next day he tested them, and... I only remember telling your grandfather—ah, this was in the time of the Frierdiker Rebbe—when the Satmar newspaper, the Neturei Karta newspaper, arrived there at 770. There was another—yes. So the Frierdiker Rebbe gave it to the Rebbe and said, “The day will yet come—your newspaper has arrived.” Then we started talking about how, after the nesius—no, no,

2:10:10 Speaker 8 We weren’t that careful about it in the later years. What was the expression we used? Yes. So we said that your grandfather said, “That was before the Rebbe’s nesius, and this was after the nesius.” And you returned to Israel after Chol Hamoed Pesach. Did you have a yechidus when you came back? The Rebbe accompanied us. Was that the only yechidus when you returned? Yes, I don’t remember. Don’t ask me about dates; I’m especially bad with them. I’m almost eighty already. Yes, may you go on to many good years. So I’m allowed to forget here and there. May you go on to many good years. Did the Rebbe accompany you as you left 770 to return to Israel? What? As you left 770. May I tell a story connected to you? Tell it. You know which story I mean, what I’m talking about. Go ahead. Though you told it at your son’s bris. Yes. I’ll tell it from my perspective. First, just for general background, women didn’t used to travel to the Rebbe. The first young woman who went to the Rebbe was in Elul 5725. Berel Chen traveled with his daughter Frida—Frida Friedman, may she be well. There was no such thing before. Little by little it began to happen, but only a few went. There was Rivka Chitrik, who traveled with—well, Rivka Chitrik also stayed there. In general, there was a time when Gurary, who was known as the rabbi in [unclear], and Shenya Rosenblum—those women of the Gurary family, including your grandmother, Chichka—would study with [unclear]. They had to explain to them, since apparently they didn’t know, that [unclear] was also called a Rebbe, and that one was one kind of Rebbe and the other was another kind. Have you ever heard that? Maybe you have. Well, that was another planet. Never mind. For several years after I got married, we had no children. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. My wife was treated by the doctor considered the leading specialist

2:12:28 Speaker 8 in the Middle East. His name was Professor Polishuk. You needed special connections to get an appointment with him. Years later, it turned out that he had told the woman who arranged that connection to the professor, “Mrs. Drukman is as likely to have children as you are to grow hair on the palms of your hands.” So what do you do? You turn to the Rebbe. No, I traveled to the Rebbe alone. And in yechidus I mentioned the matter of children. The Rebbe sat, as was his holy custom, going over the paper—or papers. Afterward, he turned to me and began to speak.

2:13:07 Speaker 9 At first he would turn to the side. Then he turned toward you.

2:13:10 Speaker 8 Yes. He would look at the paper with his glasses on, then speak without them. “Regarding what you wrote, such and such...” Afterward he said something to me about that matter too. The truth is, I didn’t understand. I was very emotional. So I gathered my courage and said to the Rebbe, with all due respect, “I’m truly asking the Rebbe for a promise.” He said to me, “You’re pressing me on this? I already told you: ‘Now may we merit a chuppah and good deeds.’” Well, baruch Hashem, a year later, on 11 Nissan, my daughter Piya was born. Today she is the wife of Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi, the rabbi of Karkur. That year was an auspicious year. [Unclear], a well-known chossid whose first wife was Malka Yaakovovitch, had also been without children for even longer than we had, and there were all sorts of stories about that too. And your grandfather and grandmother went in.

2:14:10 Speaker 9 My mother-in-law.

2:14:11 Speaker 8 Your mother-in-law, sorry. Reb Nachum Cohen’s—

2:14:13 Speaker 9 My mother-in-law.

2:14:14 Speaker 8 Yes, may she be well. The Rebbe spoke with her in Hebrew, though his usual practice was to speak Yiddish. She told the Rebbe that she wanted it to happen that year. The Rebbe said, “Why are you setting dates? It will happen sooner than you think.” She told the Rebbe she wanted a son, so he said, “Daughters too.” Well, that’s the first part of the story. In the second part, you see what it means that the Rebbe is alive. This was a few years ago. You probably remember the year. For two years I accompanied the group of girls known as Zeitlin’s group. I was the group’s rabbi. And there were also shluchos from Israel, among them your mother.

2:15:05 Speaker 9 My wife, with all due respect.

2:15:06 Speaker 8 Your wife. Of course, I’m old already. Your wife and the shluchos from Israel asked me to come farbreng with them. I hadn’t been going out much, but I said all right. There’s a small hall there at the Shluchim Office on Eastern Parkway. We sat and farbrenged, and I told my story—how my daughter was born—and also the story about your mother-in-law. Your wife came up to me and said, “I’m the daughter who was born from that blessing.” But it didn’t end there. That morning—remind me if I get this wrong, all right?

2:15:48 Speaker 9 I’ll tell you exactly. My wife came back to Israel and told me the story, and at first she hadn’t even realized the connection. One of the main reasons she had traveled was that we had two older children and then, for ten years, no more children. I had traveled several times and asked the Rebbe too, but the way a man asks—not the way you asked. She decided to travel specifically to ask.

2:16:13 Speaker 8 To the tziyun.

2:16:14 Speaker 9 To the tziyun, at the Ohel. She went that morning. She had traveled a day early, the day before the Kinus began, especially so she could write her request. That evening you farbrenged and told this story. Even then she didn’t make the connection. Only when she came back to Israel—

2:16:28 Speaker 8 It clicked.

2:16:29 Speaker 9 She told me, and I said, “Look, Chani, the Rebbe has answered us. We’ll definitely have children.” Eleven months later—

2:16:35 Speaker 8 Eleven months later.

2:16:36 Speaker 9 On 14 Kislev, our son Levi Yitzchak was born. Today he’s nine years old, baruch Hashem. That’s the story. Whenever I see you, I see shluchim—faithful shluchim bringing the Rebbe’s blessing.

2:16:49 Speaker 8 Of course. What can we take from this?

2:16:50 Speaker 9 It really is one of the things that work.

2:16:52 Speaker 8 Huh?

2:16:52 Speaker 9 One of those things: when you write to the Rebbe in earnest and know that your letter has an address, it works.

2:16:58 Speaker 8 It happened to me personally. It happened to me personally.

2:17:02 Speaker 9 So when did you actually come to the Rebbe for the first time after your year in the group?

2:17:05 Speaker 8 After that, on average, almost every year—once or twice. Yes, it was quite a business getting loans: running from one gemach to another, from Shlomo Chaim’s wife to Shlomo Chaskin, and from Shlomo Chaskin to Gavriel Kagan’s son, and then going to Zusha Rivkin, rolling over checks, rolling over gemach loans.

2:17:27 Speaker 9 They could have exchanged them with one another.

2:17:28 Speaker 8 Huh?

2:17:29 Speaker 9 She’s joking that they could have exchanged them with one another.

2:17:31 Speaker 8 Yes, yes, yes, yes. Wow. Then you had to travel to Tel Aviv, to the Luxembourg agency on Hayarkon Street. And we’re not even done with the army. Oy, oy! You had to go to the army office, to the [unclear] neighborhood in Petach Tikvah.

2:17:48 Speaker 9 To get the travel authorization.

2:17:49 Speaker 8 To get the travel authorization. Oh, what a process! And we also felt that the time we had with the Rebbe was limited—that time was money. So there were all those expenses too.

2:18:02 Speaker 9 Did you come again between your year in the group and your wedding? No, that wasn’t done yet. So when did it begin? Grooms traveling to the Rebbe wasn’t a thing in your time yet?

2:18:08 Speaker 8 Not yet. It wasn’t.

2:18:09 Speaker 9 So the first time you came after the group, you were already married.

2:18:13 Speaker 8 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It wasn’t feasible. The cost was half a year’s salary. And after I wrote to the Rebbe about my shidduch, it took a month for a letter to arrive. But that was how it was.

2:18:31 Speaker 9 What was your work? You worked in Kfar Chabad, in Hut K, in Kfar Chabad?

2:18:35 Speaker 8 I worked in Hut K for many years, more than ten years, together with your grandfather. Yes, those were very good years.

2:18:46 Speaker 9 Grandpa Nachum. What was his official role, actually?

2:18:49 Speaker 8 He was called the mashpia, and so on.

2:18:50 Speaker 9 He taught Chassidus.

2:18:51 Speaker 8 First of all, during the long break—the ten-minute break, as they called it—and the [unclear] in between. Wow, it’s a shame I didn’t write it all down. Nachum also—

2:19:01 Speaker 9 Well, you taught, and he was also the mashpia there.

2:19:03 Speaker 8 He taught too. He taught Tanya review. His first role, at the beginning, was teaching the biographies of the Rebbeim. Later he took over the Tanya review itself, and his students today are among the leading figures in Lubavitch: Rebbetzin Goldberg, [unclear], Nachman Strasberg’s [unclear], and Leimel Schildkraut’s wife. They are truly among the learned women of this generation. Back then there weren’t any books. By the way, before your grandfather, I had Leib Zalman Moriah [unclear]. Yes. In short, it worked out to once or twice a year on average. At that point there still weren’t all the arrangements of the Vaad and everything else. Where did I sleep? With the bachurim at 770 Eastern Parkway. I felt like a bachur again and remembered the good years. Ah, again.

2:20:13 Speaker 9 Did you travel with your wife too?

2:20:14 Speaker 8 Yes, I did a few times. Yes, a few times.

2:20:17 Speaker 9 Did you also go to yechidus?

2:20:18 Speaker 8 To yechidus. Yes, yes, yes.

2:20:22 Speaker 9 And...?

2:20:25 Speaker 8 There was an interesting incident with my mother-in-law. As we said, during the Six-Day War I was a bochur. She wasn’t my mother-in-law yet; I wasn’t engaged then. My future mother-in-law was staying with her children in Crown Heights, a son and a daughter. Before that, before she traveled, she had been very ill. There was no one there. Then, one night in the middle of the night, my brother-in-law, Rabbi Asher Mordechai Bronstein, got a phone call. The caller asked whether Mrs. Bronstein was at home. “Who’s calling?” He identified himself as Leibel Groner. “Who wants to know?” “The Rebbe.” What was it about? The Rebbe was asking whether she could come for yechidus right then, in the middle of the night. Of course she wanted to get herself ready. She went in to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe asked her, “What did the doctor tell you?” She told him: this and that, a serious illness. The Rebbe said, “Das iz gornisht.”

2:21:35 Speaker 9 It’s nothing.

2:21:36 Speaker 8 And that was that. It disappeared as it had come. She lived another twenty years and eventually passed away from a heart condition. There was something else from when we were bochurim. It was an attraction then, a sensation, really. Together with your uncle, known as Dov HaKohen, Rabbi Sholom Ber Kohn, we reproduced letters from the Rebbe and sold them. Nothing like that existed at all. The two of us were small-time businessmen. After everything, we were left with a few shekels to pay for the cabinet locks, and we suffered embarrassment too. Each of us was sure the other had stolen from him. No, no, that’s not how it was. We didn’t steal from anyone. We were in touch with chassidim, and they bought them with their own money. We would travel to Manhattan to make copies. Just think of what things were like then: if someone wanted to photocopy a document in the middle of the day, he had to walk all the way to the library at the corner of Utica and Eastern Parkway. Yes, life is easy today. Another example—I remember that after many years in which the Rebbe had not edited a maamar, suddenly there was an edited maamar. The Rebbe speaks there about what’s needed, with the director and the address [unclear]. Well, after years without an edited maamar, there had been a blackout. It’s slipped my mind. They danced all night, danced the whole night. There was Basi Legani too. After Basi Legani, there were also years when the Rebbe did not edit a maamar. There was a chossid there, [unclear], Reb Moshe Dubinsky [?], who approached the Rebbe at a farbrengen and asked the Rebbe to edit one. The Rebbe asked, “What about Basi Legani?” He told the Rebbe that he had already been davening with that maamar for years. In fact, as a result, the Rebbe edited the maamar. Well, they kept dancing, all night long, over that maamar the Rebbe had edited. Oh, I forgot to tell you: I came together with Chetzkel Sofer. [unclear]

2:24:14 Speaker 8 [unclear] When we copied out the maamarim, we proposed—

2:24:21 Speaker 9 The text [?].

2:24:21 Speaker 8 The text [?]. So we proposed to the Rebbe that the Rebbe’s sichos be translated altogether.

2:24:28 Speaker 9 You proposed to—

2:24:28 Speaker 8 To translate, to translate the Rebbe’s sichos.

2:24:30 Speaker 9 To whom did you propose it?

2:24:31 Speaker 8 We proposed it—we wrote to the Rebbe.

2:24:32 Speaker 9 Ah, you wrote to the Rebbe that...

2:24:34 Speaker 8 We wanted to translate them into Hebrew. I remember once going with my son—I came with Zusha Wilimovsky [?]—to Rabbi Goren [unclear]. He said, “I don’t know how to read Yiddish.” He wasn’t [unclear].

2:24:48 Speaker 9 Yes.

2:24:50 Speaker 8 So...

2:24:50 Speaker 9 He said, “I’ll tell you something about Rabbi Goren. I just want to understand one thing.”

2:24:53 Speaker 8 So we wrote to the Rebbe, proposing to translate the Rebbe’s sichos, and saying that we were prepared to do it.

2:24:58 Speaker 9 Likkutei Sichos?

2:24:59 Speaker 8 S-so the Rebbe answered that it was a worthwhile thing, but as far as we were concerned, it had been said several times and made clear that we had come there to sit and learn ourselves, and so on.

2:25:18 Speaker 9 The idea of translating was good, but—

2:25:23 Speaker 8 Yes.

2:25:23 Speaker 9 Regarding Rabbi Goren, I once heard something from Leibel Zamir. Perhaps you’ve heard it too—

2:25:26 Speaker 8 Yes.

2:25:27 Speaker 9 —so correct me if I have it wrong. He may not have been exact.

2:25:30 Speaker 8 Leibel Zamir worked as a military rabbi, by the way.

2:25:33 Speaker 9 That’s how he had a connection with Rabbi Goren. After Rabbi Goren’s first yechidus, Leibel Zamir received a note from the Rebbe through the secretariat, telling him to go to Rabbi Goren and ask him several things. He was instructed to return the note afterward.

2:25:51 Speaker 8 Oh, wow.

2:25:51 Speaker 9 Because it was confidential. So of course he didn’t say what was in the note. He only said that he had heard from Rabbi Goren’s wife—

2:25:58 Speaker 8 But this, this, this is [unclear], I see.

2:26:01 Speaker 9 —that from the time Rabbi Goren returned, the Rebbe’s books never left his table. So if you were thinking that he hadn’t read all of Likkutei Sichos, apparently he had sichos or something.

2:26:13 Speaker 8 On that note, Rabbi Goren came and met with [unclear], who said they would make fun of the Rebbes because they didn’t know how to learn. “I don’t know what you know, but I come from [unclear], and he’s a great Torah scholar.” So they said, “No, those are his secretaries.” He answered, “Well, then good for you! If his secretaries understand that much, imagine the Rebbe himself.”

2:26:32 Speaker 9 Let’s just finish the subject of the rabbinate in Kiryat Motzkin.

2:26:35 Speaker 8 Oh, that would take a few hours.

2:26:37 Speaker 9 We have a few more minutes.

2:26:42 Speaker 8 All right.

2:26:43 Speaker 9 [unclear]

2:26:45 Speaker 8 When I worked at Beis Rivkah, every time I wanted to leave, the Rebbe wouldn’t let me. He simply told me to continue, continue, continue. Until—

2:26:54 Speaker 9 You were also on the spiritual committee in Kfar Chabad.

2:26:55 Speaker 8 I was the secretary of the spiritual committee.

2:26:57 Speaker 9 Yes.

2:26:58 Speaker 8 And by the way, there was the spiritual committee too. Once someone came in alarm and said, “There’s a very prominent young man in Kfar Chabad who has a television.” What did they say? Eventually he let slip that it was Motel Ashkenazi. He wasn’t a rabbi yet. It turned out that Rabbi Ashkenazi had one of those large heating stoves with a window in the middle. The man had innocently thought it was a television. Anyway, the Rebbe wouldn’t let me leave. But I could leave partially. I partially left Beis Rivkah and worked only in the mornings, and in the afternoons I went back to the kollel.

2:27:58 Speaker 9 In the Kfar.

2:27:58 Speaker 8 In the Kfar. My chavrusa was my friend Rabbi Shlomo Altervitz, and then we received semichah, semichah.

2:28:07 Speaker 9 The kollel was in the yeshivah.

2:28:09 Speaker 8 Yes, it was in the yeshivah building.

2:28:10 Speaker 9 In the [unclear].

2:28:11 Speaker 8 In the [unclear], yes. One day I was at the home of my grandfather, Yechezkel Bronstein [?], and a shliach, Rabbi Shilkroit [?], arrived from Haifa. He’s a relative of ours. He was speaking with my wife, and from the other room I heard that they had organized a Chabad evening at the Yad Labanim club here in Motzkin. Rabbi Grossman of Migdal HaEmek had promised to attend, but at the last minute he said he couldn’t come. What did he want from me? That I should speak in his place. I really didn’t feel like it. I said no. Then my wife said to me, “No, you’re going.” Well, was I going to argue with her?

2:29:03 Speaker 9 All the shots go over the wall.

2:29:05 Speaker 8 So I went. I spoke there. The mayor was there—his name was Goshen. He heard my talk and said to me afterward, “You’re going to be our rabbi.” There was still a rabbi here then, Rabbi Fogelman, who was Rabbi Lau’s uncle, but he was already elderly and no longer able to serve. There was another issue: in those days, if you didn’t have a Mafdal party membership card, you couldn’t become a rabbi. That was how things worked. Some rabbis compromised, but I wasn’t prepared to. There was a Mafdal party man there named Ben Atar [?], Rafael Ben Atar [?]. If you didn’t have some connection with Ben Atar [?], you couldn’t do it. I didn’t want that. Anyway, the Rebbe was still corresponding through notes, and so on.

2:29:59 Speaker 9 To you directly, or to the people handling it?

2:30:01 Speaker 8 Both to me directly and to the people handling it. I’m giving you the short version, because we could talk about this for hours. At first I became a neighborhood rabbi. That was more than forty years ago. In the meantime, Rabbi Fogelman passed away, and what you’d call, in everyday language, the race for the city rabbinate began. I had the backing of all the chief rabbis. But the Mafdal circles caught on and said, “What’s this?” A campaign of persecution and slander began. They tried to put forward all sorts of other candidates, but they weren’t serious candidates. Eventually they put forward someone who really was a serious candidate: Rabbi Zevin’s grandson.

2:30:59 Speaker 9 Nachum.

2:30:59 Speaker 8 Nachum Zevin. Well, I was a little [unclear]. We were friendly, and it was all right—what do you call it? A fair fight.

2:31:12 Speaker 9 He was a neighborhood rabbi in Haifa.

2:31:14 Speaker 8 Rabbi of Kiryat Eliyahu. Meanwhile, the opponents did not let up. One of the leading opponents was the gaon Rabbi Yoel Kloft[?]; he was behind the opposition to me. I decided to go see him. He lived in Haifa. “What have you come to me for?” he asked. I spoke to him in Yiddish and said, “I want the rabbi to get to know Chabad.” Not a word of Yiddish. He actually held the Rebbe Rashab in very high regard—there’s a whole story there, but we won’t get into it now. He said, “[unclear], I actually like you. Let’s go into the side room.” And we became the best of friends. He dropped all his opposition. But Nahum Zevin—well, I wouldn’t say he was a threat. Fine, if he had been elected, he would have been elected. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world. One Friday, Levi Shitkopf[?] came to me and said, “Rabbi Nahum Zevin has withdrawn his candidacy.” What happened? A day or two earlier, he had received a letter from the Rebbe. What letter? What letter? I don’t know. I only know that I used to write to—send the Rebbe all the relevant material. Press clippings. I didn’t ask the Rebbe about Rabbi Nahum Zevin, no. I didn’t write anything against him, but from the press clippings, the Rebbe saw there was a new candidate. It turns out the letter to Rabbi Nahum Zevin didn’t arrive by mail. The Rebbe sent it to Rabbi Ashkenazi in Kfar Chabad. There was no [unclear] yet then. And the Rebbe asked him to pass the letter on to Rabbi Nahum Zevin. They had known each other since their Tel Aviv days, yes. Okay. One day I receive—today I’m allowed to tell this; he has already passed away—in the middle of the night, I receive a letter from the rabbi of Rechovot, Rabbi Simcha HaKohen Kook. He was my second cousin, through the Mandelbaum family. Today I can tell it; this is the first time it’s being made

2:33:18 Speaker 8 public.

2:33:18 Speaker 10 You’re both descendants of [unclear] Mandelbaum.

2:33:20 Speaker 8 Yes. He’s a grandson; I’m a nephew. In any case, we’re both great-grandsons of—do you see Rabbi Shimon in the picture? He was called the Turei Zahav[?].

2:33:30 Speaker 10 Turei—

2:33:31 Speaker 8 He’s the one who raised the young Rebbe of Karlin.

2:33:34 Speaker 10 Rabbi Yechezkel.

2:33:35 Speaker 8 No, the Rebbe [unclear].

2:33:36 Speaker 10 The Rebbe [unclear] Pankfurter[?].

2:33:38 Speaker 8 Pankfurter[?], yes. In any case, the two of us are both his great-grandsons. He says to me, “I can’t tell you how I know, but you should know that tomorrow at twelve at night there’s a meeting of the Chief Rabbinate Council, and your opposition intends to come there and, as they say, speak badly about you. Take my advice: go there.” Okay. I went. Rabbi Ashkenazi himself was there with me, Rabbi Ashkenazi, Yigal Pizem, and Shmuel Pomer. And there was another famous Litvish rabbi whose love for us was so strong that when Rabbi Ashkenazi offered him his hand in the corridor of the Chief Rabbinate, he said, “There is no peace for the wicked.” Years later he apologized. In any case, they let him and two others into the Chief Rabbinate to say as much dirt as they wanted, while I had no idea what they were saying. We had already insisted that two of us be allowed in. They didn’t tell me what he said. The chief rabbis presiding over the council were Rabbi Shapira and Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council. Rabbi Lau, who is a very wise man in every respect, proposed a compromise: Rabbi Nahum Zevin was the rabbi of Kiryat Eliyahu, and I was in Kiryat Motzkin. With all the confusion between one Kiryat and another, he suggested Rabbi Zevin go to Kiryat Motzkin and I go to Kiryat Eliyahu. Never mind that Motzkin is a city and Kiryat Eliyahu is a neighborhood. So what did I tell him? I told him that Rabbi Nahum Zevin’s candidacy was no longer relevant because he had received a letter from the Rebbe. Rabbi Lau, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, said to me, “Your opponents say the letter is forged.” Rabbi Ashkenazi stood up and said, “I received the letter.” Do you understand what that means? And not only that. The Rebbe writes to Rabbi Ashkenazi, “I am sending the letter”—the letter intended for Rabbi Nahum Zevin, through Rabbi Ashkenazi—“I am sending the letter through

2:36:00 Speaker 8 a confidant of mine.” What was written in the letter? I didn’t know until a year ago. Rabbi Yossi Ashkenazi, who published two volumes about Rabbi Ashkenazi—you can see the story in his book, volume two—found the letter. He didn’t tell me how he found it. It turns out that the Rebbe appeals to Nahum Zevin to withdraw his candidacy. What’s more, Rabbi She’ar Yashuv Cohen was indeed a friend of mine, but he was also very friendly with Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin. So he, too, wrote to the Rebbe that he was proposing Rabbi Nahum Zevin. And the Rebbe writes back to him, “I have already written above.”

2:36:49 Speaker 11 That’s how he writes it.

2:36:50 Speaker 8 Yes. In short, on the evening of my installation, I received a letter. It was the first siyum of the Rambam. The first siyum of the Rambam. At the conclusion of the installation, the Rebbe writes, “Boruch Hashem, 2 Shvat 5747.”

2:37:06 Speaker 11 Wait, that wasn’t the first siyum of the Rambam. 5747?

2:37:09 Speaker 8 Wasn’t 5747 the first siyum of the Rambam?

2:37:10 Speaker 11 The third. 5744, 5746, 5747.

2:37:13 Speaker 8 Wait, perhaps I’m not—ah, right.

2:37:15 Speaker 11 The third.

2:37:16 Speaker 8 All right. “To the honored participants in the installation of the city’s rabbi”—but you mustn’t, you mustn’t leave out that detail, and...

2:37:22 Speaker 11 Yes, yes, of course.

2:37:23 Speaker 8 Sorry, I told you I was mistaken. “To the honored participants in the installation of the city’s rabbi, shlita: May the installation take place at an auspicious and successful time, [unclear], the rabbi of the city—the rabbi of the city. Especially since they have joined it with a siyum of the Rambam, [unclear], and through one who teaches and repeats the halachos, a rabbi [unclear] at his installation. May it be Hashem’s will that very soon our eyes merit to see the fulfillment of the words at the conclusion: ‘The earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.’ With blessing,” and his holy signature.

2:38:16 Speaker 11 Wow, that’s the reply the Rebbe wrote for the Rambam siyum and the rabbinic appointment.

2:38:19 Speaker 8 Yes, yes.

2:38:19 Speaker 11 By the way, when you say the first siyum of the Rambam—

2:38:21 Speaker 8 So I received semichah from the Rebbe.

2:38:23 Speaker 11 When you say the first siyum of the Rambam, it was presumably the first siyum for the one-chapter-a-day cycle, because they studied from 5744 to 5745—

2:38:29 Speaker 8 Oh, oh, oh.

2:38:29 Speaker 11 —to 5746 and then 5747. So that would be the one-chapter cycle. Now I’ll add something you didn’t know, and with that we’ll finish.

2:38:37 Speaker 8 One more point.

2:38:38 Speaker 11 Yes.

2:38:38 Speaker 8 Rabbi Groner called me, crying, asking that the Rebbe release me. The Rebbe gave him three points verbally, and I have them written down somewhere. And the fourth point was, essentially, “I fail to understand”—how could he even consider withdrawing at a stage like this?

2:38:57 Speaker 11 Withdrawing at that stage. Wow.

2:38:58 Speaker 8 Yes, yes.

2:38:59 Speaker 11 I’ll tell you something.

2:39:00 Speaker 8 Yes.

2:39:01 Speaker 11 Maybe I’m making a bit of a connection of my own here, but before 5760—5761, in Tammuz or Menachem Av of 5761—I was a bochur and went to help on shlichus in Prague. On Shabbos we would travel to Karlovy Vary, Karlsbad. There was a hotel there belonging to Rabbi Nahum Zevin’s brother-in-law, [unclear]. I think his name was Rabbi Yosef Weinrauch[?] from Belgium.

2:39:22 Speaker 8 All the great rabbis went there, as we said earlier.

2:39:24 Speaker 11 Well, in 5761 no great rabbis came; lesser ones did. And one Shabbos Nahum Zevin arrived with his wife and son, and I was there with another bochur. The other bochur was less interested, but I had a wonderful Shabbos with Nahum Zevin, the whole Shabbos. He remembers me to this day.

2:39:39 Speaker 8 Very much in demand, yes.

2:39:40 Speaker 11 Then he told me a story. His grandfather, Shlomo Yosef, once received a letter from the Rebbe instructing him to do something. His grandfather was very upset, so Nahum said to him, “Come on, he’s Polish”—meaning, don’t listen, don’t obey. Because it was hard for his grandfather. His grandfather told him, “Well, when the Rebbe speaks with me about learning, I can still debate with him. But when he instructs me to do something as a Rebbe, ich muz folgen. I have to obey.” Nahum Zevin told me then that he remembered this story when a request came to him that was difficult for him to carry out.

2:40:19 Speaker 8 You don’t say. He heard it from you.

2:40:22 Speaker 11 I’m telling you that I heard it from Nahum Zevin. I remembered it, and I always thought to myself that he was probably referring to this request.

2:40:29 Speaker 8 That letter only came to light quite recently.

2:40:31 Speaker 11 No, we knew, but—I remembered that people knew there had been—

2:40:35 Speaker 8 But [unclear], when the senior mashgiach says, “I received the letter.”

2:40:41 Speaker 11 And I’m telling you that Nahum Zevin said the story about his grandfather also helped him come to terms with it.

2:40:45 Speaker 8 Wow.

2:40:46 Speaker 11 To this day, when he sees me—he sometimes comes to Netanya because he’s connected with Nitzan[?], Yeshivas Nitzan[?].

2:40:52 Speaker 8 Ah yes, he gave Nitzan. That’s the shul in Kiryat Eliyahu. Yes, yes, yes.

2:40:56 Speaker 11 Well, Rabbi Drukman, thank you so much. You’ve refreshed us. Refreshment means chayus—simply coming back to life. I’m sure the listeners who hear this will feel a great deal of longing for the Rebbe, and not longing for something that has passed.

2:41:07 Speaker 8 Only, the truth is—

2:41:08 Speaker 11 Not for something in the past, but for something beginning anew.

2:41:10 Speaker 8 I’m ashamed and embarrassed. After such closeness, I should have turned out differently.

2:41:16 Speaker 11 Very soon, we’ll return and see the Rebbe again.

2:41:17 Speaker 8 Indeed, speedily in our days, with his revelation. May we merit it.

2:41:22 Speaker 11 Be well and happy, in health and joy.

2:41:24 Speaker 8 Say a psalm.

2:41:25 Speaker 11 To you and all the children, and to our entire holy community—may there be good news in every matter.

2:41:29 Speaker 8 Amen, amen, amen, amen.

2:41:31 Speaker 12 Thank you very much for listening to this episode. Many thanks to tonight’s guest, Rabbi David Meir Druckman. The podcast is hosted by Rabbi Nachum Goldschmidt and produced by Aharon Freiman. Rabbi Shmulik Kaplan helped record this episode. We’ll meet again in future episodes. Goodbye.