Lehisraanen Episode Eight: Rabbi Yaakov Minsky

00:00 Speaker 1 Shalom aleichem, welcome to another episode of the podcast Lehisraanen, where chassidim share their experiences and memories of the Rebbe and renew their connection to the Rebbe. This time we’re with the chossid Reb Yaakov Minsky, one of the elder members of Anash in the Holy Land—may he live for many long, good years. He was among those who established Chabad’s presence in the Holy Land, beginning when he was a young man in Jerusalem, and later helped establish schools through the Chabad Reshet Oholei Yosef Yitzchak. His memories will be divided into several episodes. Today we’ll hear the first, about his youth and the beginning of his work establishing schools in Kiryat Gat. In later episodes, we’ll hear about his yechidus and the missions he received from the Rebbe.

00:51 Speaker 2 Shalom aleichem. We’re here with a new episode of Lehisraanen, where chassidim tell us about their lives and their memories of the Rebbe. This time we have the privilege of sitting with someone who was involved in building Chabad in the Holy Land almost from the beginning of the Rebbe’s leadership: the chossid Reb Yaakov Minsky of Kfar Chabad. Rabbi Minsky, shalom uverachah. Let’s start with the question I ask everyone: Fun vanet shtamt ir—where are you from? You were born in Poland and then came to Jerusalem.

01:18 Speaker 1 In Jerusalem, there were three places where children studied. There was Eitz Chaim, which was associated with Porush and Rabbi Aryeh Levin; there was Chayei Olam, which was more chassidish, though it had chassidim of all kinds; and there was Torah Veyirah of Chortkov, as they called it.

01:44 Speaker 2 Eitz Chaim was more for Jerusalemites.

01:46 Speaker 1 Not necessarily Jerusalemites.

01:48 Speaker 2 Perushim, no? Perushim, Jerusalemites.

01:49 Speaker 1 No, all kinds. Within Eitz Chaim itself there were two groups, Porush’s and Rabbi Aryeh Levin’s. Porush’s were more Perushim, and Aryeh Levin’s was more... I even have my bar mitzvah speech—Aryeh Levin also wrote the, the—

02:09 Speaker 2 Speech.

02:09 Speaker 1 Speech.

02:10 Speaker 2 So you studied at Eitz Chaim.

02:11 Speaker 1 Yes. I studied at Eitz Chaim from—Eitz Chaim also had branches in the Beis Yisroel neighborhood. At first we studied there as children, and afterward we moved to the well-known Eitz Chaim in Nachalas Yehudah. I was even there long enough to hear classes from the great scholar of Eitz Chaim.

02:38 Speaker 2 Rabbi Isser Zalman.

02:39 Speaker 1 Rabbi Isser Zalman.

02:40 Speaker 2 He passed away in 5749—when did he pass away?

02:43 Speaker 1 Yes, I even heard a class from Rabbi Aharon Kotler once.

02:48 Speaker 2 Well, Rabbi Isser Zalman is more interesting.

02:49 Speaker 1 There are his customs, too.

02:51 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

02:52 Speaker 1 And there are many stories about that as well, but it isn’t connected to Chabad.

02:56 Speaker 2 Tell us. Tell us about Rabbi Isser Zalman.

03:01 Speaker 1 Rabbi Isser Zalman used to write Torah thoughts at his table. Yes, but there were people—I won’t say their names—who were very strong opponents. In any case, once, when I was a young man, I was sent to raise money. I came to someone’s house—I won’t say his name now—and asked whether the rabbi was home. Apparently, the Rebbetzin only heard me say his name. She came out and really let me have it: “Aren’t you ashamed to call him by his name? Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer! Aren’t you ashamed?” I got an earful, and I certainly didn’t get any money. When he passed away, at his funeral they walked with the, with the—

03:56 Speaker 2 His books.

03:56 Speaker 1 With his books. I don’t know his name; I won’t say his name. Fine, that’s that. I left Eitz Chaim and continued on. There were already married men studying there. Then there was Toras Emes. Toras Emes was a yeshivah in Meah Shearim, but it was for married men and provided half a day’s livelihood. You studied there and received a few pennies for half a day. That was the work of the young married men. For unmarried boys, there was no yeshivah. There was a Jew named Yossel Eichler. If you’ve heard of him—the Eichlers today are connected with him.

04:43 Speaker 2 The one who founded the Masmidim[unclear]?

04:45 Speaker 1 Correct, very good. He founded the Masmidim[unclear] yeshivah, and we came from all the different schools to study there.

04:53 Speaker 2 Where did you live, in Beis Yisroel?

04:55 Speaker 1 I lived in Beis Yisroel too, and in Gai Kapayim, all over. But yes, in Beis Yisroel as well. I was among the students who came.

05:05 Speaker 2 What were the Masmidim[unclear]? What kind of program was it?

05:07 Speaker 1 There were all kinds of children. They gave us a little, uh—

05:09 Speaker 2 When was it, in the evening?

05:10 Speaker 1 Of course, in the evening. An evening yeshivah.

05:13 Speaker 2 They would come, like an evening yeshivah.

05:14 Speaker 1 Afterward we slept on our own, all right? There were children there from all sorts of places. The person in charge of the evening yeshivah was the father-in-law[unclear] of Tuvia Broi[unclear]. There was a Jew there who was a good friend of Moshe Weber. Have you heard of him?

05:39 Speaker 2 Of Moishe Weber?

05:40 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:40 Speaker 2 What was his name?

05:41 Speaker 1 His name was Klein. He and the others were young married men studying at Toras Emes. They were Chabad chassidim. They wanted to establish a yeshivah for unmarried boys at Toras Emes; there weren’t any boys there yet.

05:55 Speaker 2 In other words, until then only married men studied at Toras Emes, and they wanted to organize—

05:59 Speaker 1 This was in 5708, ’12[unclear]. In all, they selected several good boys. Here’s the list of those boys, in the letter the Rebbe sent them on 1 Tammuz 5710.

06:16 Speaker 2 1 Tammuz 5710.

06:17 Speaker 1 These are young men, some of whom you know. They’re leading Chabad chassidim.

06:21 Speaker 2 These were the boys they gathered to establish the yeshivah, the Toras Emes yeshivah.

06:26 Speaker 1 Correct.

06:26 Speaker 2 How did you come to be part of that group?

06:29 Speaker 1 Well, I studied there. That man, Klein, chose boys—

06:35 Speaker 2 From the Masmidim[unclear].

06:36 Speaker 1 From the Masmidim[unclear].

06:37 Speaker 2 Not boys with a Chabad background.

06:39 Speaker 1 Eight people.

06:40 Speaker 2 Just Jews from Jerusalem who were studying. He told them, “You’re going to come study at the Toras Emes yeshivah.”

06:44 Speaker 1 You’ll soon see something very interesting about all of them.

06:49 Speaker 2 So on the list here we have Moshe Yosef—that’s Moshe Yosef... Alperin from Stombach[unclear].

06:55 Speaker 1 Who is that?

06:56 Speaker 2 Alperin.

06:56 Speaker 1 Right. May he have a complete recovery.

07:00 Speaker 2 A complete recovery. Here in Jerusalem, in Kfar Chabad. Eliezer Ben Tzion.

07:04 Speaker 1 Well, you don’t know? That’s all right.

07:07 Speaker 2 Reb Baruch—that’s Reb Baruch Priz[unclear].

07:09 Speaker 1 No, his family name. Well...

07:12 Speaker 2 Who is Eliezer Ben Tzion? I don’t recognize the name.

07:14 Speaker 1 You don’t know him. Look at him.

07:17 Speaker 2 Huh?

07:17 Speaker 1 You can see me.

07:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:19 Speaker 1 Who’s the one before that? That’s important.

07:21 Speaker 2 Binyamin—that’s Binyamin Klein from Stombach[unclear].

07:24 Speaker 1 Very good.

07:24 Speaker 2 Reb Yankel Weiser[unclear]—that’s you.

07:25 Speaker 1 That’s it, that’s Binyamin Klein. There, now we can identify everyone—

07:28 Speaker 2 Yehudah is Kupchik.

07:30 Speaker 1 Yes.

07:31 Speaker 2 This is a little slow for me.

07:34 Speaker 1 Reb Yonah Klein.

07:35 Speaker 2 Reb Yonah Klein.

07:36 Speaker 1 But how did they get there? There are things you’re not supposed to know. How did he get to America? Do you know why he was called Binyamin Klein?

07:43 Speaker 2 The orphan.

07:44 Speaker 1 Why? Because his mother passed away when she gave birth to him, so they called him Binyamin. His father wasn’t Chabad at all, or anything like that. He was also a head of the chevra kadisha, like you. How did he get there? And he became a leading Chabad chossid. He and another person you probably didn’t know, Eliezer Lipa, Terzach[unclear]—who is Eliezer Lipa?

08:15 Speaker 2 Well, who is Eliezer Lipa?

08:16 Speaker 1 Reb Novitz[unclear].

08:17 Speaker 2 Ah, Beliber[unclear].

08:19 Speaker 1 They’ll connect Kupchik with Mottel.

08:22 Speaker 2 Kupchik—and who else is there?

08:23 Speaker 1 And Mottel, which... which one is that?

08:29 Speaker 2 So this is the letter with which they established the Toras Emes branch for unmarried boys.

08:34 Speaker 1 Correct.

08:34 Speaker 2 The ones who did it were a Jew named Klein, who was—

08:37 Speaker 1 Weber.

08:39 Speaker 2 And Reb Moshe Weber.

08:40 Speaker 1 Weber.

08:40 Speaker 2 They were essentially—

08:41 Speaker 1 And the mashpia was—who was the mashpia?

08:44 Speaker 2 Who was the mashpia?

08:45 Speaker 1 Ah, of Anzel[unclear].

08:46 Speaker 2 Ah.

08:48 Speaker 1 Well, Reichman.

08:50 Speaker 2 Reichman, Reb Moshe Yehudah Reichman.

08:51 Speaker 1 You wouldn’t recognize him. They knew Chabad, and the rosh yeshivah was Moshe Leib Shapiro.

08:57 Speaker 2 Moshe Leib Shapiro.

08:58 Speaker 1 Who wrote the book Tevuzov[unclear].

08:59 Speaker 2 Tevuzov[unclear]. So with them, you essentially established the—

09:03 Speaker 1 That’s when we opened it.

09:03 Speaker 2 I understand. Now, where was Toras Emes? In the same place, at the end of Meah Shearim?

09:08 Speaker 1 Correct.

09:09 Speaker 2 At the corner of Shivtei Yisroel.

09:10 Speaker 1 Correct.

09:10 Speaker 2 Where there was later a kollel—

09:12 Speaker 1 And this is the letter we wrote to the Rebbe asking him to give a blessing—

09:16 Speaker 2 For its establishment.

09:16 Speaker 1 And this is the letter.

09:17 Speaker 2 The reply is dated 1 Tammuz 5712. In it, the Rebbe writes: “B”H. Today I received your letter, in which you write that you have now entered the Toras Emes yeshivah and ask for a blessing.”

09:27 Speaker 1 Good.

09:27 Speaker 2 That’s the letter.

09:27 Speaker 1 That’s how the study of Chassidus began.

09:29 Speaker 2 Toras Emes, the yeshivah.

09:30 Speaker 1 Correct.

09:31 Speaker 2 And then—

09:32 Speaker 1 There wasn’t even a yeshivah in Lod yet.

09:34 Speaker 2 Lod was just starting.

09:34 Speaker 1 And here the Rebbe tells us that to receive a blessing, you first have to plow and sow. Then you can ask for a blessing. And this is the Rebbe’s signature from then. We already saw the example about Moshiach—do you notice?

09:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:52 Speaker 1 It’s a very well-known letter.

09:56 Speaker 2 So let’s continue. After that...

09:59 Speaker 1 That was the foundation.

10:00 Speaker 2 The foundation of Toras Emes. So you studied there. How did you begin to get to know the Chabad way?

10:07 Speaker 1 We started learning Likkutei Torah. There were no books, nothing. There was no Tanya; there were no books. I bought a Tanya then and paid a lot of money for it. It had been printed in Hungary, and everyone envied me. Where had I found one?

10:29 Speaker 2 How did you get a Tanya?

10:30 Speaker 1 There were no books. Rabbi Fried was already in America, but they still hadn’t reached us here. There was nothing, nothing at all. But we started learning Likkutei Torah, and we started having farbrengens. There are a lot of stories.

10:50 Speaker 2 Tell us.

10:51 Speaker 1 So many. We boys did a great deal.

10:56 Speaker 2 Who was your mashpia?

10:57 Speaker 1 Rabbi Moshe Weber.

10:59 Speaker 2 Rabbi Moshe Weber.

11:00 Speaker 1 Moshe Weber. After that, we worked together with the yeshivah they had opened in the Pardes.

11:08 Speaker 2 The yeshivah in the Pardes.

11:11 Speaker 1 And then the shliach from Morocco...

11:14 Speaker 2 Blil Raskin[unclear].

11:16 Speaker 1 Raskin, and he’s no longer alive either. And he was from Italy, you know.

11:24 Speaker 2 Shmuel Gerlik.

11:25 Speaker 1 Mendy—they were friends of ours. We coordinated a lot, and I have many stories from when we worked together in Tzeirei Chabad. We did a lot of things.

11:36 Speaker 2 Like what? Tell me.

11:38 Speaker 1 For example, there were Jews who would go around Musrara, and there were—

11:42 Speaker 2 In the Musrara neighborhood of Jerusalem, yes.

11:44 Speaker 1 There were Christians there bringing food and everything. We went there to fight it, and we got beaten up more than once. Gerlik was beaten really badly. We coordinated everything. But all right, that’s a separate story. What did we see? There were no books. Avraham Fried had already started working with books abroad. A Chabad boy had his bar mitzvah. There weren’t—no, the rabbis hadn’t yet—the Rebbe hadn’t yet said anything. He arrived with a very, very thin siddur. He was embarrassed. Everyone else came with a siddur, [unclear], you know, and Chabad had nothing. So the first thing we wrote to the Rebbe about, together with them, was that we wanted a small siddur. Look, in the end, there are small siddurim today thanks to us. After that, the Tanya and other things. We had no stories. There was a fellow named Gottlieb, the one who wrote a book about his father.

13:05 Speaker 2 Naftali Gottlieb.

13:06 Speaker 1 Naftali Gottlieb. He had a—

13:09 Speaker 2 Typewriter.

13:10 Speaker 1 Typewriter. He found stories about this one and that one, about Shimshon [unclear] and so on. They were on thin paper, ten sheets, ten agurot apiece. And that’s what we lived on.

13:25 Speaker 2 That’s what kept you going.

13:25 Speaker 1 That’s what kept us going. Stories. We did—Rabbi [unclear], the one the Rebbe held in such regard—what was his name?

13:35 Speaker 2 Chaim Noy.

13:35 Speaker 1 Noy was a great Chabadnik. We even did [unclear] with him, together with the bochurim, of course.

13:45 Speaker 2 That was even earlier; after all, he passed away.

13:47 Speaker 1 Right, of course.

13:49 Speaker 2 He was the rabbi of the Bukharian neighborhood, if I’m not mistaken.

13:52 Speaker 1 No, he was—

13:53 Speaker 2 A personality.

13:54 Speaker 1 He would say, “How do I tell him? How do I bring him a Gemara?” And he told him, “[unclear].” Once he was at Rabbi Malka’s home, and Rabbi Malka gave a class about Esav asking his father how to tithe straw. He added a bit of scholarly analysis. The way he taught it was extraordinary. There are many stories about him among the Bukharians, but they don’t tell them. That’s how Chabad got started. I’ll tell just one little story. We decided—the Rebbe had launched the matzah campaign. Now you’ve heard where the small siddur came from: that was us. The matzah campaign. But afterward we opened an evening yeshiva on our own. Why [unclear]? We got the Koidanov shul—

14:48 Speaker 2 Before that, before the—

14:49 Speaker 1 Koidanov.

14:50 Speaker 2 Yes, but before that, what about how you started the matzah campaign?

14:52 Speaker 1 I’ll get to that in a moment.

14:54 Speaker 2 So you parted ways with the chassidim at Eichler’s—

14:57 Speaker 1 And we opened—

14:57 Speaker 2 You opened Chabad in the Koidanov shul in Beis Yisroel.

15:00 Speaker 1 Yes. Koidanov was closed; it was a storeroom.

15:05 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:05 Speaker 1 We brought paint ourselves; they gave us permission to do everything. We did as much as we could and opened an evening class. We started lighting candles, and more and more. All those people came through the evening class.

15:21 Speaker 2 You brought them in to learn.

15:22 Speaker 1 Correct.

15:23 Speaker 2 As a branch [unclear], that’s where the bochurim began.

15:26 Speaker 1 Take Adin Steinsaltz.

15:28 Speaker 2 Adin Even-Israel.

15:28 Speaker 1 He came. That’s a separate story. I’ll tell you about him too.

15:33 Speaker 2 Tell me.

15:34 Speaker 1 Adin Steinsaltz. As a child, he came from a nonreligious family. They didn’t even know what Yom Kippur was. He lived in Katamon. In Jerusalem, on Jaffa Street, there was a cinema, a big cinema there. There’s a cinema on Ben Yehuda Street.

15:54 Speaker 2 I never went there.

15:55 Speaker 1 There was a school for gifted children there, exceptionally gifted children. He was among the students who went there. He also had two religious friends. The religious ones came wearing yarmulkes; we drew them into an Ein Yaakov class in the afternoons.

16:15 Speaker 2 Who were they?

16:17 Speaker 1 I don’t remember their names. One was Zafir [?], and another one. They were friends of his, but they were religious. “Come,” they told him, “learn a little; you’ll enjoy it.” So he came without a yarmulke, but he learned. I gave the classes; when I didn’t have time, Shmuel Rozov did, and when he didn’t have time, Levi Yitzchak Alperin did.

16:39 Speaker 2 Shmuel Rozov and Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Alperin were brothers, too.

16:42 Speaker 1 Yes. I taught him as well. I’ll just tell a little story. He came without a yarmulke, though he wore one in class. He had no connection to any of it. They didn’t even know what Yom Kippur was. Little by little, he came along. He liked the stories. I taught them Ein Yaakov—stories, nothing more. I focused especially on the chapter that begins, “All Israel have a share,” taking a story from it each day. Once I spoke about Moshiach. He told me, “I don’t believe in Moshiach.” Those two other students were sitting there with him. I said, “Adin, you do believe. I’ll show you that you believe.” He said, “How will you show me? Will you take me to the morgue?” There used to be a morgue at the hospital. “Will you bring a dead person back to life for me?” I said, “Yes, I’ll show you. All right.” I planned a special class there about Moshiach. We learned it well, and they listened. At the end I said, “You and you will get up, and he’ll stay asleep.” His mouth fell open. “Why is the teacher saying I’ll stay asleep?” “What do you care? You don’t believe in it anyway, so what does it matter to you?” “Ah, then apparently I do believe.”

18:12 Speaker 2 That got him.

18:13 Speaker 1 And that’s when it began.

18:15 Speaker 2 It opened something up for him.

18:17 Speaker 1 Then he began going to shul on Shabbos in Katamon by himself, davening there. What did Katamon have? By then I had already gotten married and moved away—I had gone to Kiryat Gat. All right, I would come for Shabbos. I would see him there, davening at length every Shabbos, and that’s how it started. Later, when he was still a boy, I once took him on the train—the station was in Baka—to Shlomo Chaim in the Pardes. It was 19 Kislev. There was a wedding then on 19 Kislev. The shul was on that street. Who got married? Zushe, Zushe.

19:01 Speaker 2 Zushe Wilimovsky.

19:02 Speaker 1 Zushe Wilimovsky got married that 19 Kislev, and I brought Adin along. The train ran from Jerusalem through Hartuv, Ramle and Lod. It was nighttime. We stopped in Ramle; he got off, and I didn’t. I came looking for him, and he was gone. I didn’t know what to do. There was a Jew named Yisroel Cook—perhaps you’ve heard of him—who had Freund’s car. I said to him, “Do me a favor. Come, let’s catch up with this boy.” We hurried after him, found him in Ramle, and I brought him along to the 19 Kislev gathering at Shlomo Chaim’s. That’s when he began getting involved. That’s a story nobody knew.

19:48 Speaker 2 At one point he also spent a little time with Rabbi Shimon in [unclear].

19:50 Speaker 1 After that he began getting to know people. He attached himself to Rabbi Sassonkin and stayed close to him day and night. He learned with him about everything, [unclear], all of it. He gave him no rest. Of course, he knows all this, and we were good friends.

20:09 Speaker 2 Interesting. So what happened? How did you start, say, with the matzah campaign?

20:13 Speaker 1 As I said, the Rebbe had launched it. Now we needed to carry out the matzah campaign. Where would we get matzos? But there was a man here who had matzos, Shlonim.

20:26 Speaker 2 Leib Shlonim.

20:26 Speaker 1 No. Ten of us bochurim said we’d go to him. He had a matzah business in Jerusalem, on [unclear] Street. “Give us the place for the evening. We’ll bring everything, do all the work, and leave it clean. Just give us the place for five or six hours.” He absolutely refused. “I don’t want to.” “We’ll clean it for you. All we need is the oven and the—”

21:05 Speaker 2 Equipment.

21:05 Speaker 1 “We’ll make a few kilos of matzos and carry out the matzah campaign. We don’t have money, but we’ll buy the flour from you, and so on. A few people will help—one will do this and another will do that.” Absolutely not. We went to another chossid—never mind, to Loeb. He had a place, and he let us use it.

21:27 Speaker 2 Biederman’s bakery.

21:30 Speaker 1 You’re good with the names. Anyway, we made ten kilos of matzos. Those were our portions, and we distributed them. But we had no tools, so we bought a few [unclear]. We didn’t need this or that. I decided that I and Yisroel Alter Shoft—have you heard of him?—

21:52 Speaker 2 I’ve heard of Rabbi Shoft, yes.

21:53 Speaker 1 Yes. He and I would go and make an appointment with Ben-Zvi. We wanted to come in the name of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and give him matzah. The Rebbe had also just put out the first Haggadah, and we had that. We needed to dress nicely, but we had no money for it. So we went to buy old clothes, secondhand things. You won’t believe me: bochurim bought secondhand trousers.

22:22 Speaker 2 Old clothes.

22:23 Speaker 1 You don’t believe it; people don’t believe me. You understand? Anyway, I got myself ready. On Erev Pesach, he and I arrived at twelve o’clock.

22:34 Speaker 2 He was the president then, the president of the country.

22:37 Speaker 1 Yes, we didn’t have all the fancy clothes and that yet, but there was a ceremony. He and I came dressed in more or less old clothes, but clean ones. Anyway, the secretary says he’s sitting in his room. We go in, give him the matzos, give him the other things, talk a little, tell him about the Rebbe and everything. We finish after half an hour; by then it’s already one in the afternoon on Erev Pesach. He tells an officer, “Take them into that nice room and give them some refreshments.” He gives me a glass of wine and him a glass of wine. This is in another room. We say, what do we do? We’re not allowed to drink non-Jewish wine.

23:26 Speaker 2 You’re not allowed to drink that wine.

23:27 Speaker 1 What do we do? Pour it out here on the carpets? What do we do? What did I do with him?

23:37 Speaker 2 What did you do?

23:37 Speaker 1 He said, “If we don’t drink, next time he won’t invite us.” Because he was a Jew who knew how to learn. His wife was a great thinker.

23:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

23:46 Speaker 1 His wife, yes. Anyway, you know what? I took out a handkerchief and put it into my glass, soaking up about half a glass, and he did the same with his trousers. So there was half a glass left. Let him think what he wants. If he says we didn’t drink, the glasses aren’t full; if we did drink, why did we leave some? Hashem gave us some sense, and that’s what we did. Afterward, I had some activity in Be’er Sheva. I met a Jew who had been at the Seder in one of the villages. I asked him, “Who was at your Seder?” “President Ben-Zvi.” “What kind of matzos did he have?” “The ones from Tzeirei Chabad.” A true story.

24:39 Speaker 2 [unclear]. What year was that? Do you remember?

24:42 Speaker 1 That was already around 5717, apparently. Yes. And that’s how we began the work. I need to show you a letter I received from the Rebbe about the work with the young people. It had the Rebbe’s signature. We had never seen anything like it—not a signature like that on any other letter. The Rebbe signed it in a way that almost looked like the letters of “Moshiach.” I had it, and one day it was stolen. To this day I don’t know what happened to it. But when I was in yechidus with the Rebbe, I told Groner, “You have to show me the copy.” He said, “I’ll call you.” He brought me in, closed the door, and showed me the Rebbe’s handwriting. I copied it, then lost that too; later I photographed it as well. But the Rebbe writes to me that this work with the young people is the conquest of Eretz Yisroel in a spiritual sense.

25:53 Speaker 2 The conquest of Eretz Yisroel in a spiritual sense.

25:54 Speaker 1 We’ll see afterward if I can find it for you.

25:56 Speaker 2 We’ll find it in a moment. So that was in 5717, and then in 5718 you traveled to the Rebbe for the first time.

26:02 Speaker 1 Oh, there’s another thing after that. Let’s see, let’s see. No, you won’t see it.

26:09 Speaker 2 Here, already in 5716.

26:12 Speaker 1 That’s 5716.

26:13 Speaker 2 You’re already asking the Rebbe about coming to study there.

26:15 Speaker 1 But look, this is in his handwriting, and it was stolen from me.

26:19 Speaker 2 Yes, I understand, but already in 5716, in his letter of 3 Sivan, when you ask the Rebbe for permission to travel to study here, the Rebbe says, “For the time being, he should not do this. He should increase his diligent study in Eretz Yisroel and add to his work of drawing Chabad youth closer—the importance of which is beyond measure.”

26:36 Speaker 1 Do you hear that?

26:37 Speaker 2 Here: “It is understood that however much they add to this, it is still not enough. They must add more and more,” and so on. “And as with the physical conquest of Eretz Yisroel, ‘Little by little I will drive them out.’” And [unclear] that it should be successful. In other words, guidance about—about studying—

26:52 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe’s signature.

26:54 Speaker 2 His handwritten signature.

26:55 Speaker 1 And everyone was envious. Look at the blessing here at the end.

27:02 Speaker 2 At the end the Rebbe gives a blessing.

27:03 Speaker 1 The blessing—look at the blessing.

27:06 Speaker 2 Yes, look: “the season of the Giving of the Torah” ... “throughout the year” ... “each and every day, as befits a Jew” ... “like new things” ... what Rashi says ... [unclear].

27:23 Speaker 1 “And they should merit ...”

27:24 Speaker 2 Much later, another letter came, dated 9 Sivan: “And they should merit ...” [unclear] “for their good materially” ... [unclear].

27:33 Speaker 1 Just as it is today. And I received this with a signature.

27:37 Speaker 2 And [unclear]—

27:38 Speaker 1 I had it for only one day. So how do I have this?

27:43 Speaker 2 It’s a copy.

27:43 Speaker 1 When I got to 770, I told Groner, “You have to.” He called me in and shut me in the office. He thought I’d steal the—the—

27:55 Speaker 2 The original.

27:55 Speaker 1 But look what a blessing it is: the conquest of Eretz Yisroel.

27:59 Speaker 2 “As with the physical conquest of Eretz Yisroel,” yes. After that you arrived—[unclear].

28:06 Speaker 1 Do you understand what that is? I have other letters from the Rebbe myself, but have you ever heard anything like this? That the Rebbe calls it the conquest of Eretz Yisroel?

28:22 Speaker 2 Like the physical conquest of Eretz Yisroel: “Little by little I will drive them out.”

28:25 Speaker 1 And what you see, [unclear] and all that, came afterward.

28:28 Speaker 2 It all came from the activities of the [unclear] yeshivah that you started.

28:31 Speaker 1 Right. And [unclear]—do you see the stam today? It really is.

28:37 Speaker 2 It all came from an activity that was supposedly small. Look what great things came out of it.

28:41 Speaker 1 To that extent. I’ll show you something now. For three years the Rebbe wouldn’t let me go. Not only wouldn’t he let me—he told me to look at 8 Sivan. I have the letter here; I’ll show you. Do you want to see it?

28:57 Speaker 2 Look at what—in Hayom Yom for 8 Sivan?

28:59 Speaker 1 Yes. What does it say there? It’s written here too. Remember 8 Sivan, when the Rebbe Maharash—that was the day—

29:10 Speaker 2 When they became engaged—

29:10 Speaker 1 The Rebbe Maharash went in to his father, the Tzemach Tzedek, and said, “I knew that the yetzer hara is, is, is—”

29:21 Speaker 2 “A skilled craftsman” and [unclear].

29:22 Speaker 1 Right.

29:22 Speaker 2 He can disguise himself in all sorts of garments.

29:24 Speaker 1 I didn’t know he could even wear Chassidic garb.

29:26 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s the point about the match.

29:27 Speaker 1 That’s what the Rebbe writes to me about my wanting to travel.

29:30 Speaker 2 You asked to travel for three years, and that’s how the Rebbe answered.

29:33 Speaker 1 He wouldn’t let me. Later he gave me a blessing on condition that I return. But I traveled. I left Eretz Yisroel; they wouldn’t give me a visa in Israel because I’d been in prison many times. [unclear]. So, before Rosh Hashanah, I went to France. I was in France, and Rabbi Nissan told me, “You won’t make it there for Rosh Hashanah. You’ll stay here with me.” I have a separate story about that Moroccan Jew.

30:11 Speaker 2 Just to translate: Reb Nissan said you wouldn’t manage to arrive by Rosh Hashanah, so you should stay here for Rosh Hashanah, in Brunoy.

30:17 Speaker 1 No, “I won’t let you go. You’ll be the chazzan.”

30:20 Speaker 2 Ah, he wanted you to be the chazzan.

30:20 Speaker 1 Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. [unclear]. I didn’t understand it—there was dancing and noise. What poverty there was there in Paris. I won’t tell you about Paris now. And he made me lead all the prayers; that’s a separate story. I was there for three months, until I got my visa to America.

30:46 Speaker 2 In other words, from before Rosh Hashanah of 5718 until after Kislev.

30:49 Speaker 1 I arrived at the Rebbe on Erev 19 Kislev aboard the Queen Elizabeth. That’s a separate story. I was also in London with [unclear], and there was no minyan there. I had been a prisoner; I organized a Chabad minyan. Those are separate stories too. Don’t ask. They drove me crazy. More separate stories: “Get married here. Why do you need to go back to Eretz Yisroel? We’ll give you an apartment.” But never mind. I had already said [unclear], and I reached the Rebbe and had the privilege. Around 19 Kislev the Rebbe wasn’t receiving people, because there were—

31:27 Speaker 2 From 19 Kislev until 19 Kislev he didn’t receive people for yechidus.

31:29 Speaker 1 From the 19th until the 19th. But then, on the 18th, the elderly rabbi from Kfar Chabad arrived.

31:38 Speaker 2 Rabbi Shneur [unclear].

31:39 Speaker 1 Right, and Panya and [unclear] arrived too.

31:43 Speaker 2 Panya Althaus.

31:44 Speaker 1 Yes, so the Rebbe held yechidus. And I had the privilege of going in then too.

31:48 Speaker 2 So when did you go in for yechidus for the first time? Was it—

31:51 Speaker 1 Before 19 Kislev.

31:52 Speaker 2 Before 19 Kislev, in 5718.

31:55 Speaker 1 Yes. Well, there are stories about that too.

31:58 Speaker 2 Won’t you tell them?

31:59 Speaker 1 I—I ... There are stories from before then. During those three years I was managing the Diskin Orphanage, and I have many chassidim from there. There was a war, and [unclear], and I managed everything there. I did it as a young Chabad activist, not for the money. The Rebbe knew about it, and I got a telling-off: “[unclear].”

32:34 Speaker 2 So why were you working at Diskin?

32:35 Speaker 1 Yes. So I said I would leave immediately. But the Rebbe said, “You wrote that you don’t work there; you’re involved in Chabad activities.”

32:42 Speaker 2 You worked at Diskin and used the office to run Chabad activities.

32:47 Speaker 1 Yes. So the Rebbe writes to me here, “[unclear].” I said, “Then I won’t go there anymore.” I immediately received a letter: “No, you need to go back.”

33:00 Speaker 2 You needed to stay.

33:01 Speaker 1 And from there I gained many chassidim, all over the world.

33:05 Speaker 2 At the Diskin Orphanage.

33:06 Speaker 1 Yes. Oh, those are separate stories. Anyway, I began working on—there was, I don’t know when, an activity before the Chabad school network. Do you know what activity? There was a Jew in Kfar Chabad whose children [unclear], very prominent. He gave money, he and Moshe—Moshe Yoslovsky. A kindergarten—what was it called?

33:41 Speaker 2 Chadarim, chadarim—

33:42 Speaker 1 Chadarim Torah.

33:43 Speaker 2 Chadarim Torah. Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz.

33:47 Speaker 1 Ah, no. Yankel Horowitz was from Rishon.

33:50 Speaker 2 No, not Yankel Horowitz.

33:51 Speaker 1 Yankel Horowitz was—

33:52 Speaker 2 Friedman. Rabbi Yankel Friedman.

33:54 Speaker 1 Yes, but those two gave money to clubs in Kfar Saba.

33:58 Speaker 2 Who was Moishe Yuslavsky, and...?

34:02 Speaker 1 And that—

34:02 Speaker 2 Compared to Rabbi Hertzli.

34:03 Speaker 1 Yes, what was his name? They used to sell meat in [unclear]. You know, the Jew who lives in Nachlas Har Chabad, on Shturm Street, Eicher, the dark-haired one. He has... He was together with Moishe Yuslavsky. Anyway, I started working with him on this and that too.

34:26 Speaker 2 Did you work at Cheder Torah?

34:28 Speaker 1 Yes, at Cheder Torah, and I have some letters. And afterward I got married.

34:34 Speaker 2 What year?

34:35 Speaker 1 What year? In 5719.

34:37 Speaker 2 Wait, we skipped over your going to the Rebbe for yechidus.

34:40 Speaker 1 One moment. I went to the Rebbe for yechidus. I didn’t ask the Rebbe, because they had been driving me crazy. In France they told me to get mar— to go meet girls and all that, but I didn’t go, and they kept after me, Alter. Anyway, I didn’t ask the Rebbe at all. Once, at my second yechidus, he said to me, “Well, Rabinovitch, why don’t you ask? Perhaps you really should get married, travel there?” I said, “I didn’t ask.” So at that second yechidus, I asked the Rebbe, “Should I really consider what they told me?” And he said, “Your shidduch is from Eretz Yisroel.”

35:24 Speaker 2 Your shidduch is in Eretz Yisroel.

35:25 Speaker 1 Now there’s a very interesting story, and I’ll show you something—you won’t understand a thing. My father didn’t want me to travel. Why? He said, “Get married, then travel.” Why? My father had another three sons. Three, and two daughters. His daughters had children; his sons had none. The reason doesn’t matter.

35:53 Speaker 2 You mean he didn’t have three brothers; you had three brothers. You told your father—your father had another three sons and—

35:59 Speaker 1 And two daughters.

36:00 Speaker 2 His daughters had children, and his sons didn’t have children yet.

36:03 Speaker 1 So he said, “I want you to get married, all the same.”

36:06 Speaker 2 So that at least one would get married.

36:07 Speaker 1 And apparently he even wrote to the Rebbe; I didn’t know about it. So when he passed away, I was going through his things [?]—never mind how—and I found a letter from the Rebbe. The Rebbe told him no, he should let me travel, not to worry; everything would be all right.

36:26 Speaker 2 The Rebbe cared enough to answer him.

36:27 Speaker 1 You’ll see, you’ll see something interesting. First of all, these are the shluchim who were sent to Kfar Chabad. Did you have this?

36:35 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. I want to focus for a moment on that subject of—

36:38 Speaker 1 Wait.

36:38 Speaker 2 Being with the Rebbe.

36:39 Speaker 1 What I want to show you—let’s see if it’s here. Here’s the letter you saw, the one you had.

36:48 Speaker 2 Let me see.

36:50 Speaker 1 Okay, let’s look at it. This came from the Rebbe to me, not to my father. Read it.

37:01 Speaker 2 It’s a telegram that arrived for... yes. “Minsky, Diskin, Jerusalem. May the shidduch be at a good and auspicious time.” The Rebbe’s signature.

37:22 Speaker 1 The Rebbe wrote that to him.

37:24 Speaker 2 A telegram.

37:24 Speaker 1 It’s a telegram.

37:24 Speaker 2 He sent it about the shidduch.

37:25 Speaker 1 But he didn’t send it to my father.

37:27 Speaker 2 He sent it to you.

37:28 Speaker 1 He sent it to me, at Diskin.

37:30 Speaker 2 To Batei Diskin.

37:31 Speaker 1 “May the shidduch be...” What does that mean, “may it be”? I hadn’t even seen a prospective bride yet.

37:37 Speaker 2 The Rebbe had already given you his bracha in advance.

37:39 Speaker 1 The Rebbe told me to go. I had told him I had such a proposal. So the Rebbe didn’t send it to my father—I didn’t understand why. He had promised, and he sent it to me at Diskin.

37:52 Speaker 2 Batei Diskin—there’s the name.

37:55 Speaker 1 Not to my home. And nobody could read it, because it was in English. And you can’t say somebody made it up. It was the Rebbe.

38:05 Speaker 2 The Rebbe sent a telegram.

38:07 Speaker 1 And then, with the prospective bride too—they’d been driving me crazy—she forgot as well, and I had to go to her house. Where have you heard of such a thing? I got to the house and thought, “How do I go in? Who... what do I say?” Then I remembered her brother—you haven’t heard of him—Yaakov Safronovitch [?]. He was an activist too. I thought, “I’ll go in and ask if he’s home, and that way I can enter.” She was sitting there; she had forgotten too.

38:40 Speaker 2 She forgot you were supposed to meet.

38:42 Speaker 1 She was sitting there, and there were pictures around, and I hadn’t seen her before. I said, “Ma’am...” She said, “Sorry, I’m seeing the doctor in an hour.” I said to her, “Goodbye, good night. We’ll meet tomorrow in such-and-such a room.” She had forgotten too. But you see, that’s how the Rebbe arranged the shidduch, it seems to me.

39:04 Speaker 2 A shidduch from Hashem.

39:06 Speaker 1 And afterward, of course, there was an engagement and there was a letter. But “May the shidduch be...” I didn’t even know who or what.

39:15 Speaker 2 The Rebbe had it all in hand from the start.

39:16 Speaker 1 The Rebbe had promised, and here was a telegram, sent to Diskin. My father didn’t even see it. It’s remarkable.

39:25 Speaker 2 So what happened? But I want to go back for a moment. You first came to the Rebbe on 19 Kislev 5718.

39:29 Speaker 1 And then the Rebbe invited—

39:31 Speaker 2 What happened? Where was the farbrengen?

39:32 Speaker 1 I was studying in yeshiva then.

39:34 Speaker 2 Where was the farbrengen? Was the 19 Kislev farbrengen in a hall or at home?

39:38 Speaker 1 That first 19 Kislev was in a hall. Policemen stood in the hall and checked everyone who came in—or so I heard. I didn’t see it. There was something particular about that 19 Kislev farbrengen that I didn’t see at other farbrengens. What was the order of things at the farbrengen? The Rebbe spoke then about Beis Rivkah for girls. Beis Rivkah hadn’t yet been established; it was in a hut in Kfar Chabad. The Rebbe didn’t want the girls and boys—

40:14 Speaker 2 To be where the boys studied.

40:16 Speaker 1 So they made—he made, uh—

40:19 Speaker 2 Separate facilities.

40:20 Speaker 1 And then they handed out envelopes. Many times people wrote down what—

40:30 Speaker 2 An appropriate amount.

40:31 Speaker 1 An amount, or what they would undertake to complete—

40:35 Speaker 2 The Rebbe also made a point of dividing up the Shas at the farbrengen, and made a point of—

40:39 Speaker 1 Right. They assigned each bochur what he would give. I got five—five shekels, five dollars for admission, so I gave a dollar. There were bochurim whom the Rebbe told to add two zeros. I was very worried: where would I get it? Well, the Creator of the world didn’t decree that for me, but there were some whose envelopes reached the Rebbe.

41:37 Speaker 2 The Rebbe opened them.

41:38 Speaker 1 The Rebbe opened one and said the name, “Yechezkel ben Shmerel” [?]. Then, on Zos Chanukah, the Rebbe spoke, and he got it. Some chassidim were a little upset that the [unclear], that it was Yom Tov, but the Rebbe held a farbrengen and said, “Now I’m going to say something difficult, harder than before.”

42:07 Speaker 2 “Now I can say something—”

42:07 Speaker 1 It hadn’t yet come down to—

42:08 Speaker 2 More difficult than before, so to speak.

42:10 Speaker 1 So they thought he would tell them to give three times as much—that’s what they imagined. But he said, “No. Tomorrow, Sunday, the money must be in the office.”

42:24 Speaker 2 They had to bring the money by Sunday, and anyone who didn’t bring it by Sunday—the money would no longer be accepted from him.

42:28 Speaker 1 Did you hear that? It was a terrible day: if you didn’t, they wouldn’t take it. People went and borrowed money. One bochur was told to add two zeros. Don’t ask about that bochur; there’s a remarkable story. None of this is for nothing. It’s a story. I had promised the Rebbe that I... I had suffered from this eye since I was a child. I didn’t ask the Rebbe about it then, but I once wrote to ask whether I should try to treat it. I was in New York now—should I go for treatment?

43:06 Speaker 2 Your left eye.

43:08 Speaker 1 There was a written answer with Chadakov: I should make an appointment with a certain doctor in Manhattan. Chadakov called me in. I said, all right, go make the appointment. I took Binyamin; he already knew English. They told me the doctor was booked up until Shvat.

43:31 Speaker 2 That doctor.

43:31 Speaker 1 The doctor. Well, I didn’t know whether the Rebbe would tell me to go home, because I had promised I would travel. So Chadakov asked, since the doctor was booked up, whether to make the appointment. The answer was to make it. First of all, I was happy.

43:50 Speaker 2 That you’d stay with the Rebbe until Shabbos.

43:52 Speaker 1 And I made an appointment in Manhattan, in an eighty-story building. Two months away. All right, I told Binyamin, “You’re a good friend of mine. Find out right away—”

44:09 Speaker 2 Who would pay for the visit?

44:11 Speaker 1 No, I’d borrow, I’d manage, I’d pay it. Money doesn’t frighten me, but a doctor’s visit costs a lot: eighty dollars a visit. A dollar was worth... Anyway, we made the appointment. Two days beforehand—two days beforehand—Chadakov called me in: “Remember, you have to go to the doctor tomorrow.” I took Binyamin with me. Getting to Manhattan wasn’t so easy. We traveled there. The way it worked in New York, up to the tenth floor there was someone in charge; from the tenth to the twentieth, and so on. We got up to this doctor’s office. It was full of people, packed. Before I left, Chadakov had told me, “Tell the doctor that the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent you.” I said, “Binyamin, we’ll be standing here until tomorrow. Go to the receptionist and tell her the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent you. Say it like that; you know English.” He went. Five minutes later they called me in. People started shouting: “He just got here! We’ve been here for hours!” She didn’t even answer them; they took me in. The doctor sat with me—he was German and knew Yiddish and German. He took me to all sorts of machines for a whole hour. The people out there were going wild. I said to Binyamin, “Three hundred dollars.” In the end we were done. He wrote down what to do—in English—and gave me the letter. Binyamin asked him, “How much?” And he said, “Lubavitch? Never mind. Back to yeshiva with you.”

46:16 Speaker 3 “If the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent you, go straight back to yeshiva—”

46:18 Speaker 1 “Never mind. Back to yeshiva with you.”

46:20 Speaker 3 He didn’t take any money. An hour’s work—

46:24 Speaker 1 So, you see. And the remarkable thing is that the Rebbe apparently passed that letter on to Dr. Zelikson, and the Rebbe did the opposite of what the doctor wanted.

46:40 Speaker 3 The opposite of what the doctor wrote.

46:41 Speaker 1 He wanted surgery; the Rebbe didn’t agree to it. All right, that’s it. Is that enough for you?

46:47 Speaker 3 No, not at all. So how long did you stay with the Rebbe? How long did you stay with the Rebbe on Shushan Purim?

46:54 Speaker 1 Then came that famous Purim.

46:56 Speaker 3 Purim, Shushan Purim.

46:57 Speaker 1 Shushan Purim. So the farbrengen was already in a large hall, and a lot of people came. But it was after the meal, people were half drunk, and there were no pyramids, so they stood on the benches. And when someone fell, what happened? Everyone fell. And it didn’t happen just once—everyone fell. The Rebbe drank a lot of mashke, and Rashar [?] also said not to bring him the mashke—the Rebbe’s mashke, you know.

47:29 Speaker 3 Benedictine.

47:29 Speaker 1 Benedictine. No, and also Rabbi—well—

47:35 Speaker 3 Mentlik.

47:35 Speaker 1 Was he called Mentlik? No, the Rebbe called—what was the name of the man who supplied it?

47:43 Speaker 3 Kalman Tzvi.

47:45 Speaker 1 Kalman Tzvi? No, there was someone who—

47:48 Speaker 3 Yunik.

47:49 Speaker 1 Yunik, Yunik.

47:50 Speaker 3 He was also in the sicha.

47:51 Speaker 1 He put his hand in his pocket.

47:54 Speaker 3 And the Rebbe—

47:54 Speaker 1 Took out money. “Go bring mashke.” Never mind what all the rabbis say. He was, yes. They tried to fool the Rebbe: they gave him a glass of water. He took the glass and threw it away, and suddenly—well, I understand you were heading back. Oh, Shmuel Schneersohn was there that Purim too. Shmuel Schneersohn was there too. Yes, but the Rebbe said it: “You’ll be going home soon,” I said.

49:56 Speaker 3 That you would be going home soon.

49:57 Speaker 1 But the surprising thing is that after he went outside, he gave out mashke again, even by his car, and it was already seven in the morning. At nine—I hadn’t gone to sleep; I didn’t have anywhere to sleep, either. At nine the Rebbe came to his office.

50:14 Speaker 3 Nine thirty.

50:15 Speaker 1 Besides the story of Zachor—do you know that one?

50:18 Speaker 3 What happened? Tell it even if I know it. Tell it.

50:21 Speaker 1 You know the story.

50:23 Speaker 3 The people listening don’t. Tell it.

50:24 Speaker 1 Well, Shabbos Parshas Zachor.

50:27 Speaker 3 The famous [unclear] Munk.

50:28 Speaker 1 Right. We were staying in 770 with a few bochurim. We had to go through a lesson, lesson... He came into the room, came in and told us, “Get up.”

51:03 Speaker 4 “Come into the room.”

51:05 Speaker 1 He called us. One of them had gone to the bathroom at the far end, where the bathroom used to be.

51:11 Speaker 4 Next to Chadakov’s office.

51:12 Speaker 1 I won’t tell you his name. The Rebbe came in, shut the door, and warned us: “Woe to you if you open it.” He sat down facing the door and delivered the maamar. You could see the Rebbe Maharash’s table there—it was a table, and you could... It wasn’t like today. Ever since I was a bochur, I’ve made an effort to be at “Shema Yisroel”—

51:44 Speaker 4 [unclear].

51:44 Speaker 1 And I’ve managed to; I was there last year too. Ah, there was something special.

51:50 Speaker 4 You saw the fellows who had heard the maamar.

51:53 Speaker 1 Right. After a few moments, the banging started.

51:56 Speaker 4 Banging on the door.

51:57 Speaker 1 We didn’t dare [unclear]. And the Rebbe really [unclear] Bnei Brak and its chief rabbi. It was something. How did they know the maamar? It was based on a maamar of the Rebbe Rashab, Rabbi Yitzchak. That was Parshas [unclear], while I was with the Rebbe—

52:22 Speaker 4 When did you return—wait, when did you return to Eretz Yisroel?

52:25 Speaker 1 Huh?

52:25 Speaker 4 Were you back by Pesach?

52:27 Speaker 1 Of course. Not only that—the Rebbe gave me a shlichus through London, through Paris. Of course.

52:34 Speaker 4 So you returned via London and Paris.

52:35 Speaker 1 Of course, of course, of course. And I really did travel then with that lady, as I told you, together with—with the head of—

52:45 Speaker 4 Ponevezh.

52:46 Speaker 1 Ponevezh. She was—what was her name?

52:49 Speaker 4 Your grandmother.

52:49 Speaker 1 Feiga, Feiga, Feiga.

52:50 Speaker 4 Chichka.

52:51 Speaker 1 Chichka. She was a talker, and she argued with the... And it wasn’t El Al; it was some other plane that—I almost don’t know what happened.

53:01 Speaker 4 And then you arrived back in Eretz Yisroel. When did you get married?

53:05 Speaker 1 I got married on the—on the nineteenth.

53:07 Speaker 4 The fifteenth, the nineteenth. And then your work with the Reshet began.

53:10 Speaker 1 Right. So you see what this is—what’s a telegram?

53:14 Speaker 4 Yes, that’s the telegram about the shidduch.

53:16 Speaker 1 And then I did what I did.

53:17 Speaker 4 So you received a letter for the wedding.

53:19 Speaker 1 Yes.

53:21 Speaker 4 This is a notice setting the date of the wedding of [unclear], the fifteenth, the nineteenth. This is the Rebbe’s blessing for the wedding. So the next letter is already from 19 Cheshvan 5721, about—asking about plans for the future. You were living in Rishon.

53:43 Speaker 1 No.

53:44 Speaker 4 “He should make use of his talents and [unclear] Chabad institutions, for several reasons.”

53:50 Speaker 1 Yes.

53:51 Speaker 4 You started in Rishon.

53:52 Speaker 1 I started with—with Rishon. That’s a story too.

53:55 Speaker 4 Rav Shoyn.

53:56 Speaker 1 Rav Shoyn didn’t give a salary; he only gave a story.

54:02 Speaker 4 Rav Shoyn gave a story.

54:04 Speaker 1 He was still—he had no money. I went to donors to bring money in. Well, I wrote letters to the Rebbe then, because that was my work. Anyway, Rishon is a separate story. He’s buried in Rishon, you know. Right. He would pass by the gate every morning and say to me, “Did you ask him what for?” To warm the place up. And once he told me a very interesting story—something you should know. There were three people who wrote commentaries on the Rambam: the Ohr Sameach and others. So they sent their books—I won’t give you all their names now. To whom did they send their books? To the Rogatchover. The Rogatchover said, “[unclear].” He told me their names. That’s how Rav Sholom used to tell it. So what work did you do there, in the yeshiva in Rishon? I was in the yeshiva in Rishon, and I bought an apartment in Bnei Brak. With whom—wait, who is your wife? Whom did you marry? What family? Rabinowitz. Rabinowitz. Yes. In short, there’s a separate story about that, but maybe that’s enough for today. No, no, no. Go on, go on. In short, I got married on [unclear] Kislev. [Unclear] Kislev? No, not in Kislev. It says 14 Sivan, 14 Sivan. In the month of Tammuz. Listen to this story. I’m listening to every word. I was living in Bnei Brak. I was supposed to get a job for the vacation at [unclear] in Eretz Yisroel, with—Hefer was the principal of Beis Rivka then, but in the end he had no place for me. So I ended up going to Kiryat Gat and closing up my lovely apartment—the nicest apartment, on Friedman Street. Ben Gurion Street didn’t exist yet. I closed it up and set about building up Kiryat Gat. I lived in a hut without water or electricity, and my partner was none other than—

56:47 Speaker 1 The Sephardi, the Sephardi rabbi. Well, who was it? You don’t know? And afterward—the one from Kiryat Gat. No, no. Chabad. He was a Chabad chossid. But without a top. Without a top. He and his wife were a young couple in a hut, and another seven girls from Kfar Chabad were in a hut without electricity or water. And several bochurim slept in the shul. Now imagine if my parents had known about that—I don’t know what they would have done. So you actually went to establish the institutions in Kiryat Gat? Right. But before that I already had stories, and the Rebbe knows about it. I got married on 14 Sivan, and on Rosh Chodesh Tammuz there was knocking at the door on [unclear] Street. No less than—everyone with a white beard came. Among them were Chanzin, and the one from Petach Tikvah—what was his name? Rabbi Chanzin. No, another one. You know, the one who sent money for Chanukah—Rabbi Aharon Frish. Rabbi Aharon Frish. There were about ten of them, [unclear], in my nice apartment. “What do you want?” “Yaakov, come save us.” “What happened?” “Itzik Ginsburg opened a boarding program for the vacation”—what do you call it? “A camp.” A camp. There were no buildings; he rented army huts. You know, the army wasn’t like it is today. There were canvas tents and three huts, and they brought children. “So what do you want?” They discovered that the camp director wasn’t religious; he didn’t know the first thing about it. Itzik... “What? So what do you want?” “We want you to come run the camp.” “I’ve only just gotten married, on 14 Sivan”—I’d only just gotten married; it was my newlywed days. “Bring your wife there. We’ll give you a building.” Where was it? In Kfar Chabad. Kfar Chabad. Where the matzah bakery is today, there was a house belonging to—whose was it? Do you know? Mushke Perlman’s. It was a house full of animals, with scorpions. Where

59:19 Speaker 1 Found...? They gave my wife and me a place to sleep there. In the middle of the night she woke up: “Yaakov! Look, there are bugs!” I fled in the middle of the night and went to Beis Rivkah. There was a place near the village that hadn’t been built yet, but one room was finished. I said, “I’ll go in there.” I went in, and suddenly, toward morning, Mrs. Altus came. Who told you? Mrs. Altus. Zlata. Zlata. We have someone named Maltz, too. Anyway, they wanted to put us in the house of a shochet who had passed away—Lips, never mind—and his wife was a widow. My wife said, “I’m not going into that house. I’m going home.” So what would we do? What would we do? What would we do? I said to my wife, “You have a good friend named Yehudis. She’s a Breslov chassid. Go to her, bring her to the house, and she’ll stay with you. But our parents mustn’t know about it. I’ll stay in Kfar Chabad to run the camp, and you’ll spend this first year with your friend. We’ll be back in a week or two.” To this day my parents never knew about it, and they still don’t. No, what camp? I wanted to make it up to her. What could I do? Do you know what that took? Tremendous mesirus nefesh. There were no phones to call and ask how things were. Nobody knew about it; to this day they don’t know. At the end of camp, Be’er Sheva was the very end of Eretz Yisroel. There were Arabs there who raised camels. I brought camels for the end of camp, and I don’t know if I have a picture here. I brought my wife, and she and I got on a camel. There’s a story about it here. I don’t know if I have it here. I don’t see it. That was a gift to make it up to her. Yes, I took a picture. We sat on a camel and had our picture taken. That was how I made it up to her. Do you know what that means? And then there was the story with the queen of Gat. The first year. After camp. In a hut,

1:01:56 Speaker 1 In a hut. Of course, in a hut. There wasn’t even food to eat. It was a whole struggle. I traveled to Jerusalem every week to eat on Shabbos, until one time I arrived late and couldn’t get off at Kiryat Gat anymore; Shabbos had already begun. I got off at Diskin, where they knew me and my wife. At home in Katamon they didn’t know what had happened to me. I ate there that night, and the children were happy—they knew me. Later that night, after eating, I walked from Diskin to Katamon. Katamon. How happy they were—the family, who suddenly found out where I was. Anyway, my wife wrote to the Rebbe: “We can’t go on like this, without electricity, without water, without this, and without a place to put our clothes. Everything is on the counter, just as it is today. I can’t do it.” The Rebbe wrote her a letter. I have the letter somewhere; I need to find it. The Rebbe wrote, “With Hashem’s help, a Chabad yeshivah will be established.” There was nothing there yet. “It will be affiliated with the yeshivah in Lod, and your husband will also earn a living there.” So I’d be able to earn more. Yes, another ten, and then we’d have some breathing room. And she sent Avraham Fried to the house, and he said, “You’re going to rent an Amidar apartment. You’re not sleeping here anymore.” He lent me money, because the money I had was for maamad. I paid it all back afterward.

1:03:39 Speaker 5 So the Rebbe sent Avraham Fried to tell you that.

1:03:41 Speaker 1 Yes, and he gave me money, and I rented an apartment. I paid back the debt afterward. And in fact, that’s when they laid the foundations for the yeshivah in Kiryat Gat. Then I brought my mother-in-law, and she cooked, and I received the first students in Kiryat Gat. That’s the story. That’s all. You understand? And then the Rebbe addresses her. Look, now I’m going to jump ahead. 5750. What—what’s the name of the street?

1:04:19 Speaker 5 Here? Shlichus.

1:04:20 Speaker 1 Why? When did they do that? Do you know? Wait.

1:04:23 Speaker 5 Recently.

1:04:24 Speaker 1 Recently. I was already with Chabad twenty years before that, and there was no street here at all. 5711. After I’d been in all sorts of places, dozens of places, we finished with retirement. Seventy years, seventy pension points. We were already traveling around America every week—we have children. So, do you want to see my family? I have more than 350 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

1:04:52 Speaker 5 No evil eye, no evil eye.

1:04:53 Speaker 1 All over the world. So my wife wrote to the Rebbe that she wanted to go in for yechidus. She said to Binyamin that he should send us somewhere else. Binyamin said, “Send me your request for yechidus, along with an envelope. Write whatever you want, and I’ll bring it in and write something.” Here’s the letter. This is my wife’s handwriting.

1:05:22 Speaker 5 This is [unclear] where we asked about shlichus.

1:05:24 Speaker 1 What did she write?

1:05:25 Speaker 5 Well—

1:05:26 Speaker 1 Here.

1:05:27 Speaker 5 Binyamin.

1:05:29 Speaker 1 Right.

1:05:29 Speaker 5 To go out on shlichus. This is the Rebbe’s answer.

1:05:34 Speaker 1 And then this is Binyamin’s handwriting.

1:05:36 Speaker 5 Rabbi Binyamin came back on 28 Menachem Av, 28 Menachem Av.

1:05:41 Speaker 1 He wrote that before going in, because he wanted to give me an answer.

1:05:44 Speaker 5 An answer.

1:05:45 Speaker 1 Two hours later, the answer came out.

1:05:46 Speaker 5 “They have, after all, been on shlichus for many years.”

1:05:49 Speaker 1 That’s what the Rebbe writes. He closes it here.

1:05:52 Speaker 5 You asked to go out on shlichus. The Rebbe writes, “They have, after all, been on shlichus for many years.” So, Kiryat Tziyon.

1:05:57 Speaker 1 So there you have it. You understand how it really was? There are things I didn’t know. When I got to Lod, I was also a shliach in Lod.

1:06:08 Speaker 5 We’ll hear about that in a moment.

1:06:09 Speaker 1 Why did I come to Lod on shlichus? I was there, and I also came to Lod on shlichus. I was in Tel Nof. Why did I leave Kiryat Gat? Nine years in Tel Nof? There was a story there. Five hundred students went to the state school. So they decided I had to go, with eight children, to Avraham Danonim[?]. We were so poor that I slept on boards. Don’t ask—eight children and such poverty, because the council didn’t want me to come. They didn’t. They threw my things out of my house. They didn’t want me, and I came anyway. I brought all the children back and organized activities, all sorts of things. That’s not what interests you now—the activities.

1:06:52 Speaker 5 Yes, but one second.

1:06:53 Speaker 1 Does it interest you?

1:06:54 Speaker 5 Yes, just a second, let’s put things in order. So you came to Kiryat Gat in 5719.

1:06:58 Speaker 1 Right.

1:06:59 Speaker 5 You were there nine years.

1:07:00 Speaker 1 Nine years.

1:07:01 Speaker 5 You were in touch with the Rebbe during that time; you wrote letters.

1:07:04 Speaker 1 Hundreds of letters.

1:07:05 Speaker 5 Tell us, tell us.

1:07:06 Speaker 1 I have them upstairs.

1:07:08 Speaker 5 No, what was it like? Was it a school? What was there?

1:07:12 Speaker 1 A school. The school there was the nicest school in the country. A thousand students. It became a school within the state-religious school, and they divided it in half. They gave us the slow students and kept the others. Yes, that’s how it was. Nevertheless, we succeeded and established another school of our own on the other side of town, not in a permanent building but in huts. There are lots of stories about that, too. Want to hear? They gave us only two huts. Huts are huts—prefabricated huts from France. That’s four classrooms, so four and four makes eight classrooms. But if you want separate classes, you can’t do it. You need five times two—eight. In Chabad, boys and girls don’t study together. So what did we do? We ran a second shift.

1:08:03 Speaker 5 Sessions.

1:08:04 Speaker 1 A second shift. From eight to twelve, the boys, or the other way around; from twelve to four, the girls. Well, schools don’t work like that. It would cause—

1:08:16 Speaker 5 Problems with the Ministry of Education.

1:08:17 Speaker 1 What? No, the Ministry of Education didn’t mind.

1:08:19 Speaker 5 The parents wouldn’t want it.

1:08:20 Speaker 1 The parents wouldn’t want it. What could we do? Hashem helps. I was one of the first to arrive. I came, and there was a trailer, a big truck with two huts, marked “Aliyos School”—Aliyos was the state school. The driver asked me, “Where’s Aliyos School?” I said, “Here,” and opened the gate for him. He unloaded them. A hut is nothing on its own; you need to make a frame for it.

1:08:52 Speaker 5 Somewhere for it to stand.

1:08:54 Speaker 1 And he drove home. They were waiting there for the huts, the municipality, and discovered they’d been unloaded at Chabad. So what? Sending another semitrailer wasn’t worthwhile. But Chabad didn’t have a hut, didn’t have—didn’t have the thing.

1:09:12 Speaker 5 Didn’t have the money.

1:09:12 Speaker 1 We put pressure on the mayor. After all, the mayor had sent his keys to the Rebbe with Yaakov Peretz.

1:09:20 Speaker 5 Right.

1:09:21 Speaker 1 Gideon, Gideon Or[?]. And they put up the buildings for us, and we got more space, and that became another four classrooms. But all of this—

1:09:31 Speaker 5 Chabad began to [unclear].

1:09:32 Speaker 1 I remember it. I told him it was here. “Where’s Aliyos?” I said, “It’s here.” Look at the times we lived through.

1:09:38 Speaker 5 Your resourcefulness.

1:09:40 Speaker 1 There are many stories. Anyway—

1:09:42 Speaker 5 So you were in Kiryat Gat for eight years. When did you move to Tel Nof?

1:09:46 Speaker 1 Then something terrible happened there: five hundred students moved over in [unclear]. There was Yad Gar[?]. I came, and they made connections for me, but I fought. What did I do? I discovered that there were three villages there: Pazon[?], Meitav[?], and—

1:10:04 Speaker 5 Avital.

1:10:04 Speaker 1 Avital. Pazon[?]—nobody lived there, and Meitav had residents.

1:10:10 Speaker 5 In Bondanim[?].

1:10:12 Speaker 1 Yad Gar[?], may he rest in peace.

1:10:14 Speaker 5 Sheshonkin.

1:10:15 Speaker 1 Sheshonkin lived there too, too.

1:10:18 Speaker 5 In Avital.

1:10:19 Speaker 1 Not everyone is still here. Anyway, I discovered that they had fifty boys of bar mitzvah age who had no tefillin, nothing. From all the villages. I went to Habima in Tel Aviv, to Habima. “I want to put on a bar mitzvah program, but without women. Your actors, with an orchestra, with everything, but no women. Let’s put on a bar mitzvah program. The boys will sing, and you’ll perform.” They put together a program for us. I went to Haifa, to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. “I have twenty boys. I’m putting on a bar mitzvah with Habima. I need talleisim and tefillin. I have no money.” They got them for me, and during summer vacation, in an open space, I brought tables. Food? No problem. There were apples, watermelons, cucumbers.

1:11:33 Speaker 5 The community had them, the community had them. From the farms.

1:11:36 Speaker 1 And I invited all the parents, the whole community. And who was coming? Habima! Wow! And here was the new principal making it happen. So all the men came, and I brought a few rabbis too. They spoke, and there was an orchestra and a performance. And they sent all the children back to Devorah.

1:12:02 Speaker 5 To the other school.

1:12:03 Speaker 1 Listen, Devorah is—you know, Devorah the prophetess. Ours was called the Yael Center. Yael was—

1:12:14 Speaker 5 The wife of Chever the Kenite.

1:12:15 Speaker 1 But she was a convert. Then suddenly Golda Meir was coming to Devorah, and they invited all the principals from across the valley. Every school had a different color bucket hat. I chose white bucket hats. All my children wore white; those wore red, those wore green. They came to Devorah to welcome—

1:12:49 Speaker 5 The prime minister.

1:12:50 Speaker 1 So it was the prime—Mrs.—

1:12:52 Speaker 5 Golda Meir.

1:12:53 Speaker 1 And at the time, the issue of “Who is a Jew?” was in the news. I let the Rebbe know through Ephraim. I told Ephraim this was going to happen, and I’d been at the principals’ meeting. They’d decided I would speak. All the principals—there was no getting out of it; they specifically wanted—

1:13:18 Speaker 5 You were the principals’ representative.

1:13:19 Speaker 1 With a beard and... So I told him, “Ephraim, let the Rebbe know what we’ve arranged, and that I’m going to speak about ‘Who is a Jew?’” It was a hot issue then. Half an hour later I got a message from Ephraim: “I have instructions for you. First, the Rebbe asks that you not attack her, because she supported the ‘Who is a Jew?’ position. And also, don’t speak angrily. Speak nicely.”

1:13:51 Speaker 5 Calmly.

1:13:52 Speaker 1 “Treat her with respect.” I received instructions. That was the first time. All right, they prepared everything, everyone came, they sang beautifully, and they honored me. Then I explained the difference between Devorah and—

1:14:12 Speaker 5 Yael.

1:14:12 Speaker 1 Yael. Devorah was... Devorah sang, and Yael was a convert. That’s the point about conversion: a convert becomes Jewish. That’s the law concerning “Who is a Jew?” If someone isn’t Jewish, they need to convert. And I laid it out nicely. Of course, they came over, and what did she do? What did she do?

1:14:44 Speaker 5 She applauded.

1:14:44 Speaker 1 Not just that. I was half a kilometer away from her, and she came all the way over to shake my hand. Well, do you think I shook her hand?

1:14:58 Speaker 5 Of course not.

1:14:59 Speaker 1 At the meeting afterward, with all the principals, they asked, “Why on earth did you bring politics into this?” I said, “Gentlemen, did I ask to speak? When the shofar is in my hands, I blow it the way I want.” They were silent. That was the first time the Rebbe... There was a second time the Rebbe became involved in my work, and that’s why I’m telling you this. The first Jewish immigrants from Georgia arrived in Upper Nazareth. And Nazareth—

1:15:31 Speaker 5 What’s called Nof HaGalil today.

1:15:33 Speaker 1 Today it has the most beautiful school. Who made it happen? I did. I said to Moshe Shpunen, “Why aren’t you doing something for the religious Jews? Why aren’t you opening a school?” “The Rebbe doesn’t allow us to.” I called Chadakov. I was in Ta’anach, not far from there, right? “I want to open a school there, but Shpunen says the Rebbe won’t allow it.” Chadakov said, “Hold the line.” I understood what he was doing. Right away, the Rebbe asked, “Who’s taking responsibility?” I said, “I am.” “Shh, you’re not allowed to. Clearly, you’re not allowed!”

1:16:17 Speaker 5 That’s what the Rebbe said on the phone?

1:16:19 Speaker 1 I didn’t mention the network. I said, “I am,” because they had told me at the network that the Rebbe wouldn’t let them do it. I said, “I’ll take responsibility.” “Clearly, you’re not allowed.” I went and opened the school. How? During vacation I took the buildings there—they were buildings on pillars—and enclosed the space underneath. I got ten thousand shekels from the activists. At the time, Yisroel Lev was still working there. I received—

1:16:50 Speaker 5 He was also at Tzach, and later he became an activist.

1:16:53 Speaker 1 And I opened a school in those two months, July, July—

1:16:57 Speaker 5 The summer months.

1:16:58 Speaker 1 Downstairs, yes. I made classrooms downstairs with fabric partitions, bought supplies, and provided food. I enrolled fifty children, brought the registration to the Ministry of Education, and they approved the school without a building. The building was empty; people hadn’t moved in yet. And who was the principal? Yitzchak Ginsburg. Later he had, I think, a heart attack. Then Shimon Rosenberg became principal. So I opened it. It’s the most beautiful school. How did I open it? I sent my teachers there to teach. At first I brought girls from Beis Rivkah; they filled in—

1:17:37 Speaker 5 That was your school in Ta’anach.

1:17:39 Speaker 1 The Ministry of Education didn’t know about it. The inspector was a religious Jew who lived in Kfar Pines. I told him, “Listen, when you come, you won’t find me, because I’m traveling back and forth. Are you going to report it? Because if you do, I’ll stop, and it’ll be on your head.” He said, “Go, do what you can. I’ll visit the classes. If I don’t find you, I’ll know you’re at work.” He really deserves credit. May his merit protect us; he’s no longer alive either. Otherwise, there could even have been court cases. There was someone, Teicht, Teichtel; her wife was Gurvitz’s daughter. Someone reported that she wasn’t entitled to it because she was a teacher in Ta’anach, and so on. So they called me to testify in court. I said, “That isn’t true. She’s right.” I tell you, you need the Rebbe. It’s truly astonishing. Later Moshe Shpunen opened an office on [unclear] Street in Tel Aviv. The Rebbe wanted the office not to be in a room here.

1:18:49 Speaker 5 Not to be?

1:18:49 Speaker 1 The network’s office was in a tiny room at [unclear]. They weren’t organized, and the Rebbe wanted order. So we opened an office on [unclear] Street, and every Wednesday I would sit there—

1:19:04 Speaker 5 Yasher koach, Rabbi [unclear]. As we can tell, this has ended, but the story isn’t finished. We’re really right in the middle of it. With Hashem’s help, there will soon be more episodes with your memories—of your yechidus and of the guidance you merited to receive from the Rebbe. Yasher koach for bringing us to life and renewing our hiskashrus. And with Hashem’s help, very soon we’ll return and see the Rebbe, “in the light of the King’s countenance is life.” Yasher koach, good news, and may deliverance come quickly.