Lehisraanen Episode 10: Rabbi Moshe Adrei

00:02 Speaker 1 Shalom aleichem, and welcome to another episode of the Lehitra’anan podcast, where chassidim share their experiences and stories of life at 770, in Beis Chayeinu. Today we have a special episode with the chossid Reb Moshe Edrei, who had the privilege of being with the Rebbe in the early years, in the fifties, and of living in Kfar Chabad. We’ll hear from Reb Moishe. Good evening.

00:29 Speaker 2 Good evening.

00:32 Speaker 1 I’ll ask you, Reb Moishe, what I ask everyone: From where? Where do you come from?

00:36 Speaker 2 Where are you from? Where are you from?

00:38 Speaker 1 Yes.

00:40 Speaker 2 Well, I arrived in Israel in ’56, at age eleven. We had the privilege of coming to Israel when I was eleven. Two years before we arrived, my father, a"h, passed away. I was nine when he passed away.

01:02 Speaker 1 In Morocco.

01:03 Speaker 2 Yes. He very, very much wanted to come to Israel. I remember a Jewish Agency representative coming into our home to register him—to register us to go to Israel. It’s hard to describe how excited everyone was. I’m speaking as a child of eight or nine. Eretz Yisroel, Eretz Yisroel! I told my brother, “From now on we have to watch what we say and speak only nicely. Eretz Yisroel—there’s nothing like it!”

01:41 Speaker 1 Which city in Morocco?

01:42 Speaker 2 Huh?

01:43 Speaker 1 Which city?

01:43 Speaker 2 Safi, Safi. The city of Safi. I studied there at Alliance through, through deuxième [?], through eighth grade. And afterward—in the mornings we studied there, and in the afternoons we also studied Torah with the... Anyway, we came to Israel because Father had always aspired to, though he himself didn’t live to do it.

02:25 Speaker 1 He wanted to move to Israel.

02:27 Speaker 2 My older brother Nissim, may he live and be well, was the eldest at home. He was already seventeen or eighteen. He was really the father of the house. He organized the whole trip, and all the luggage had to be carried from the house to the central station.

02:53 Speaker 1 By “luggage,” you mean all the suitcases, all the packages.

02:56 Speaker 2 And he was very capable. He was also a carpenter—he loved woodworking. He made three suitcases that fit one on top of another, and a cart with iron wheels low to the ground. With that, we carried all the luggage, all the packages, to the station together.

03:24 Speaker 1 Your whole home, your whole life.

03:25 Speaker 2 To the central station. From there we traveled from Safi to Casablanca. We spent a month in a transit camp in Casablanca. After a month we sailed to Marseille, and after a month in Marseille, France, we boarded the ship Negba for Israel. That’s how we got there.

04:02 Speaker 1 ’56.

04:04 Speaker 2 Right. It was just around this time of year, before Shavuos.

04:19 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:19 Speaker 2 We arrived in Israel a week before Shavuos.

04:21 Speaker 1 Well, seventy years.

04:23 Speaker 2 That was shortly after Rosh Chodesh Iyar, when, in this very room where we’re sitting now...

04:33 Speaker 1 Here in the synagogue of—

04:34 Speaker 2 The attack in which the five were killed took place. We’re sitting here in the synagogue.

04:37 Speaker 1 Of Yad HaChamisha.

04:39 Speaker 2 So I remember that when we reached the village a few months later, I saw a student who was in a cast from head to toe. A few years ago he was here at an alumni gathering. He’s healthy now. So that’s...

05:03 Speaker 1 Your first memory.

05:04 Speaker 2 I mean, I wasn’t...

05:06 Speaker 1 We’ll certainly get to that in a moment.

05:07 Speaker 2 I wasn’t there when it happened. But we had arrived in Israel, and I was still eleven.

05:15 Speaker 1 So where did you go—Ashkelon, or somewhere?

05:16 Speaker 2 Huh?

05:17 Speaker 1 Where did you go?

05:18 Speaker 2 Well, when the Negba docked in Haifa, it’s hard for me to describe what it was like when we stepped off the ship onto the ground. I remember kissing the ground. If only I could kiss a Torah scroll like that today.

05:46 Speaker 1 Wow.

05:46 Speaker 2 You can’t imagine how holy it was. Holy, holy, holy. It’s hard to describe.

05:54 Speaker 1 That all came from what your father instilled in you—the holiness of Eretz Yisroel.

05:58 Speaker 2 Certainly. What can I say? My father, the way I remember him—wow, wow—a long beard...

06:06 Speaker 1 A long beard—describe it.

06:09 Speaker 2 No, no.

06:09 Speaker 1 People can’t see you; they can only hear you. A long beard.

06:11 Speaker 2 What?

06:11 Speaker 1 I’m saying they can only hear you, not see you, so describe him.

06:13 Speaker 2 He had a long beard and was a true tzaddik. As I remember him, we slept on a mat, and he would get up at midnight, sit on a stool facing the mezuzah, say Tikkun Chatzos, and study Reishis Chochmah until five in the morning. At five he would wake me and my brother Yaakov, and we’d go to the synagogue to daven vasikin with the tzaddikim. That was...

06:47 Speaker 1 Jews of the old days.

06:48 Speaker 2 Oh, he was an emissary of—a rabbi, a true tzaddik—Rabbi Baruch Sabag.

06:55 Speaker 1 Rabbi Baruch Sabag.

06:56 Speaker 2 Exactly. My father was his assistant; he was with him all the time. Anyway...

07:05 Speaker 1 You arrived in Israel.

07:08 Speaker 2 When we docked in Haifa, we got onto a truck, and they took us to the transit camp in Ashkelon, Migdal Ashkelon. We lived there in a tin shack.

07:28 Speaker 1 Tin shacks in the transit camps.

07:30 Speaker 2 Yes, in the transit camp. A tin shack four meters by four meters. The whole family was there—my five brothers, my sister, and my mother. I remember that the next morning, when we got up, right away...

07:51 Speaker 1 Reb Yashar.

07:53 Speaker 2 No—ah, Reb Yashar. Right away.

07:56 Speaker 1 You got up right away in the morning.

07:57 Speaker 2 Reb Yashar was still a baby, still with a pacifier.

08:02 Speaker 1 Ah.

08:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:03 Speaker 1 So when you got up in the morning?

08:04 Speaker 2 Exactly. Anyway, as soon as we got up, I went looking for the... Because when we were talking about coming to Israel, Mother had brought seeds with her. Seeds! You come to Israel, you have to sow and plant. So I took the seeds, and we had a hammer, and on that first day I worked the soil for a meter all around the shack and planted the seeds.

08:33 Speaker 1 The faith and the certainty that Eretz Yisroel needs—

08:36 Speaker 2 I was a child—what do you expect? And we also needed a parnassah. We needed to support the family, because Father was gone. So I immediately went looking for the market in Ashkelon. I took two buckets, ice and raspberry syrup, and sold drinks. Then Rabbi Yisroel Leibov, a"h, came. He’d heard about us while we were still in France.

09:25 Speaker 1 From whom?

09:27 Speaker 2 My brother Nissim, may he be well, had contacted the activists in Israel. He was the eldest and was looking after his brothers.

09:35 Speaker 1 He already knew about the activists?

09:36 Speaker 2 The activists used to come to us.

09:37 Speaker 1 The Yad L’Achim activists. He already knew about them?

09:39 Speaker 2 The activists.

09:40 Speaker 1 How did Nissim know about them?

09:42 Speaker 2 I don’t know. He knew.

09:45 Speaker 1 Interesting.

09:45 Speaker 2 He contacted them. Then, after we arrived, Rabbi Yisroel Leibov heard we were in Ashkelon. He came to the transit camp looking for me, and they told him I was at the—

09:58 Speaker 1 Market.

09:59 Speaker 2 Market. He came and waited until I finished. I went home, and I think it was that same day—I remember him taking me and my brother Yaakov to the yeshivah in Lod.

10:15 Speaker 1 Rabbi Yisroel—was it a half-day program then, or was it—

10:17 Speaker 2 And what’s interesting is that Mrs. Lowenfeld was there, Sheikowitz’s mother-in-law. I remember the first food I ate in Lod: gehakte herring. I’ve loved gehakte herring ever since.

10:43 Speaker 1 Which you didn’t have in Morocco.

10:46 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you about Morocco. Have you heard the phrase “We remember the fish”?

10:53 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:53 Speaker 2 I told you we were from Safi. Safi is the world capital of sardines.

11:02 Speaker 1 Oh.

11:03 Speaker 2 As an aside, the first time I came to the Rebbe—I think that was in 5726. I had started school in second grade when the other boys were already in twelfth grade. That was the first time I came. We went into the dining room, and they served us tins of sardines marked “Made in Safi, Morocco.”

11:40 Speaker 1 Really.

11:42 Speaker 2 Because—

11:43 Speaker 1 A Jewish kashrus supervisor.

11:44 Speaker 2 To this day, Safi has a sardine factory that’s kosher l’mehadrin. And I remember that as a child, when we studied at Alliance, we’d finish at twelve or one. I’d go down to the port, where the Arabs brought in boats loaded with sardines. They’d unload them from the holds onto carts and onto the shore. Every day I brought home a basket of sardines. You understand? So from fresh sardines—

12:30 Speaker 1 You came to gehakte herring.

12:31 Speaker 2 To gehakte herring.

12:33 Speaker 1 So you went to—were you in the Pardes?

12:36 Speaker 2 Huh?

12:36 Speaker 1 Where were you? In the Pardes in Lod?

12:38 Speaker 2 I studied in the Pardes in Lod, yes.

12:41 Speaker 1 With whom? Was Milche there then? Who was there?

12:43 Speaker 2 No, at first I was with Galfried. Our counselor was Moshe Hillel, a"h. Later, at the station, there was also Sholom Leib—

12:57 Speaker 1 Eisenbach.

12:58 Speaker 2 Eisenbach too, yes. There was a counselor, Yitzchak Wendelson [unclear], Fishel—Fishel—Henik, Henik was there. Those were the counselors. I learned how to be a counselor from Moshe Hillel, a"h.

13:17 Speaker 1 How to be a counselor at the school. But before we get to that, just a moment. What was the culture shock like, coming as a child from Morocco to the yeshivah, to the Chabad way of life?

13:27 Speaker 2 I was homesick at first. At first I cried, and all that, but...

13:32 Speaker 1 I mean the Chabad way of life. Did you connect with it right away?

13:35 Speaker 2 No, as a child I wasn’t a Chabad chossid yet. I mean, I’m talking about when I was eleven or twelve...

13:44 Speaker 1 What do you actually remember about how it began—what was the first thing they told you about Chabad? About the Alter Rebbe? What?

13:58 Speaker 2 We also had a counselor, Moshe Aharon Teichman. He taught us niggunim, davening, and all the rest. Later we studied in Lod. The classes weren’t organized by teacher. There was Halperin, then Shloime Greenblatt, then Munya Shneur, then Melech Kaplan, and then Nachum Trebnik. My class was Shmulik Haber’s class. Shmulik Haber—that was it. So we were in the same class. Itche Gurevitch, too. Well, then we moved into the zal. And how did I get to the school?

15:09 Speaker 1 Just before you got to the school: where did you celebrate your bar mitzvah, in the yeshivah, or did you go back with him?

15:13 Speaker 2 I celebrated my bar mitzvah at eleven, together with my older brother Yaakov, who was thirteen, in Morocco.

15:21 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

15:22 Speaker 2 They made me a bar mitzvah after my father passed away. I’ve been putting on tefillin since I was eleven. Yes, my brother Yaakov and I had our bar mitzvah together. There was a maamar and everything. There was a maamar, a particularly fine maamar. We were fortunate children, with a righteous father and a righteous mother.

15:55 Speaker 1 And afterward, as you continued on that path, you reached [unclear].

16:04 Speaker 2 I was in the yeshivah for—

16:07 Speaker 1 You went straight to the school.

16:11 Speaker 2 I had only just begun the second year in the zal. That is, I was seventeen.

16:17 Speaker 1 Yes.

16:20 Speaker 2 And in the middle—during the year. That is, in Elul. Yes, right at the beginning of Tishrei, Mottel Levin came to the yeshivah in Lod and spoke with his son. His son was there, Lemkel, Lemkel. He asked him whom he could take to the school.

16:43 Speaker 1 Mottel Levin was running the school then?

16:45 Speaker 2 What?

16:45 Speaker 1 Mottel Levin was running the school then?

16:48 Speaker 2 He was the principal, yes, the educational director there.

16:52 Speaker 1 He was looking for a counselor, so he consulted his son.

16:54 Speaker 2 So he took me. I thought I was coming for a week, and to this day—to this day I’m at the school. To this day. It was remarkable, and it was—

17:04 Speaker 1 When did you first write to the Rebbe?

17:06 Speaker 2 What?

17:07 Speaker 1 When did you first write a letter to the Rebbe, apart from the school?

17:11 Speaker 2 No.

17:12 Speaker 1 As a young man, at some point.

17:13 Speaker 2 I wrote letters to the Rebbe all the time as a young man, yes. Of course. Shlomo Chaim—I was also the one who served drinks at Shlomo Chaim’s farbrengens, as a young boy. Yes, of course. I wrote to the Rebbe. I have letters; I have everything. Of course. There were answers. But I came to the school in my second year in the zal. My Gemara is still open there. My chavrusa was Reb [unclear], Abelio.

17:55 Speaker 1 Abelio.

17:55 Speaker 2 Abelio, yes. We used to sit in a side room in Lod and learn there. So when Mottel Levin came to take me, I asked him, and he told me it would be all right. He encouraged me to—

18:10 Speaker 1 Mr. Abelio.

18:11 Speaker 2 Yes. And I wrote a letter to the Rebbe, but I didn’t get an answer until a year later. Only after a year did I get an answer. The truth is, as soon as I came to the school, people from the army came looking for me. At the time, they went to Gitele and asked her, and she simply told them I was at the vocational school. They came up the stairs—they’ve renovated those stairs here now—and I was in the dining room with the children. Someone came to me in the dining room and said, “The army has come looking for you.” So I went out and down the stairs while they were coming up, and they didn’t know it was me. A month later they sent me a draft notice. Then Feimpel and Tannenbaum from Jerusalem, from the Yeshivah Committee, worked very hard for a whole year until they got me released from it. How? Because I was both a counselor and a Gemara teacher, and the supervisor wrote a good recommendation for me. So they registered me as though I were with Youth Aliyah, and that’s how—

19:47 Speaker 1 As a teacher-soldier or something like that.

19:49 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

19:50 Speaker 1 And you’re saying you didn’t get an answer from the Rebbe?

19:54 Speaker 2 After a year. Why? Because only after—

19:57 Speaker 1 It was settled—

19:58 Speaker 2 Because that first year I had to hide. I couldn’t sleep here. So I was a counselor in Pardes in Lod; I worked there as a counselor, and during the day I came here. It hadn’t been sorted out.

20:10 Speaker 1 Until it was sorted out.

20:12 Speaker 2 After it was settled, there was a letter from the Rebbe. In the merit of the Rebbe and the children and everything, really—

20:19 Speaker 1 What sort of children were there then?

20:21 Speaker 2 What?

20:21 Speaker 1 What sort of children were here in the fifties? About how many were there?

20:30 Speaker 2 How many children? I think there were—later, at its largest, there were 427 children. But back then there were a hundred, a hundred and fifty, and then it grew. Yes.

20:48 Speaker 1 What was the schedule? Did they study some religious subjects in the morning?

20:58 Speaker 2 Of course, of course. They got up at six-thirty in the morning and came to the shul; by quarter to seven they were in the shul. I remember Moshe Vishedsky, a"h, teaching Tanya from quarter to seven until ten past seven. Then they davened, then went to the dining room, and at eight o’clock they went to class. Yes, they studied until midday. But some of them went to work for the first few hours and then went to study at eleven.

21:45 Speaker 1 The work was here, inside the school?

21:47 Speaker 2 What?

21:47 Speaker 1 The work was inside the school?

21:49 Speaker 2 Yes!

21:49 Speaker 1 In the print shop and the carpentry shop.

21:51 Speaker 2 Yes—printing, carpentry, metalwork. Later there was electromechanics, and later they opened a high-tech program. Yes, vocational subjects.

22:03 Speaker 1 So you worked here. And when did you first travel to the Rebbe?

22:13 Speaker 2 My first class, my first graduating group—Yisroel Mader here in Kfar Chabad was my first student. When they reached twelfth grade—

22:27 Speaker 1 The students.

22:28 Speaker 2 Then I traveled to the Rebbe, because my group, Shmulik Haber and Itche Horowitz, were going for a year.

22:38 Speaker 1 The group.

22:39 Speaker 2 I also went for Tishrei. And that Tishrei... the whole family talked about it. They didn’t recognize me when I came back after a month.

23:00 Speaker 1 Why?

23:00 Speaker 2 Because I had lost thirty kilos.

23:02 Speaker 1 Wow.

23:03 Speaker 2 Yes, really. Why? Because we took part in the chazarah with Rabbi Yoel Kahn. What did that mean? At the end of the farbrengen, and then after Maariv, and after that until one or two in the morning, we wrote it all down. But I wanted to stay.

23:23 Speaker 1 Tishrei of what year was that? [unclear]

23:26 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. I still have what we wrote at home. I think it was—

23:32 Speaker 1 The notes from the chazarah.

23:34 Speaker 2 Yes. It was with Yossi Hecht—young Yossi Hecht was also part of the chazarah.

23:41 Speaker 1 He was already a young chozer.

23:42 Speaker 2 [Unclear], Gerlitzky, Avremi, Avremi.

23:46 Speaker 1 Brom, Brom Grintzky [?].

23:47 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, that chazarah—you can’t imagine. We didn’t eat or drink. It was something else.

23:54 Speaker 1 Because if you wanted to hear every word—

23:56 Speaker 2 You can’t imagine it. There’s no way to describe it. I wanted to stay, and the Rebbe told me to return to the school. I cried for seventy-two hours, maybe [unclear]. But the Rebbe was right, because the Rebbe has never left me, from then until this very day. It’s beyond words. At dollars, there wasn’t a single time I came to the Rebbe that the Rebbe didn’t stop me, even without [unclear]. If one of my sons came to the Rebbe, or my wife, and all that—

24:32 Speaker 1 Every time [?], no.

24:33 Speaker 2 No, no, no. Not a single one was missed. There was one time—

24:42 Speaker 1 I want to pause for a second and hear about your visit as a young man for Tishrei. Do you remember a little about the shofar blowing, the march? Tell us about it.

24:54 Speaker 2 Everything, all of it. What can I tell you? We were at the chazarah until one or two in the morning, and all the rest—and the whole order of the shofar blowing. I was there for only one year.

25:10 Speaker 1 Only [unclear].

25:12 Speaker 2 No. After that I took groups to the Rebbe many times, some six or seven groups from the school, but I never traveled with them. I would only come to bring them back. Why? Because I sent them for Elul and Tishrei, and I needed to be at the school. If I traveled, I came during Chol Hamoed. There was one time I came during Chol Hamoed, and then on the Tuesday after Sukkos there was yechidus. I wanted the boys—the group who were supposed to fly back that Tuesday on TWA—to go in for yechidus. Now, the school—

26:06 Speaker 1 A general yechidus.

26:07 Speaker 2 What?

26:08 Speaker 1 A general yechidus, downstairs in the shul.

26:12 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, there was yechidus. I’ll explain. In short, I prepared them for yechidus: they got dressed, went to the mikveh, and prepared everything. But I spent the whole day trying to speak with TWA to postpone the flight, because their flight was scheduled for that same time. I also had to contend with the school administration over whether they would be late getting back to school. In short, they stood on the corner of Kingston and Eastern Parkway.

26:45 Speaker 1 On the corner.

26:45 Speaker 2 On the corner, dressed and ready for yechidus, with everything. [Unclear]. Until seven o’clock. There was no approval from TWA. I had to take them back and get them to their flight.

26:57 Speaker 1 To the airport.

26:58 Speaker 2 I drove them to the airport, took them to the airport. The guide I sent with them was Amram Haddad, because he was with them from the beginning and I only drove them there.

27:10 Speaker 1 You were just dropping them off.

27:11 Speaker 2 Right. Anyway, I got them into the line and everything. We were a little late, but the seating was fine. I even went onto the plane with them, though I wasn’t supposed to board. I told the flight attendant, “I’m not flying.” Why? Because we’d arrived late, so they checked us through quickly and all that. Anyway, I went back to 770. Yechidus had already started at eight, with the—

27:47 Speaker 1 First, the guests.

27:49 Speaker 2 Chassanim and kallahs.

27:51 Speaker 1 The guests came first.

27:51 Speaker 2 After that, the—

27:53 Speaker 1 Guests, then bar mitzvah boys, then chassanim and kallahs.

27:56 Speaker 2 Right, right. And after that—

27:58 Speaker 1 The bochurim.

27:59 Speaker 2 The bochurim. By the time I got back, they were almost finished. Binyamin Karel was standing at the entrance. When I came to go in, he said, “Moshe, what are you doing here? You’re not a bochur.” I told him, “Come on, I’ve been taking care of the bochurim. I travel with the bochurim.” All right, fine. I went in. I reached the Rebbe; there were five or six bochurim there, and Leibel Groner looked at me as if to say—

28:25 Speaker 1 “What are you doing here?”

28:27 Speaker 2 The Rebbe noticed him looking at me and said, “This is Edrei from Kfar Chabad, Edrei from the vocational school.” He said, “Yes.” Then the Rebbe held out his hand, and Leibel Groner put three dollars in it. The Rebbe gave them to me. I hadn’t said a word. The Rebbe took the dollars, gave them to me and said, “[unclear].” Just like that. No conversation, nothing.

28:49 Speaker 1 That was during [unclear], right?

28:50 Speaker 2 What?

28:50 Speaker 1 That was during [unclear].

28:56 Speaker 2 What year was it? I don’t remember—either 5749 or 5750. Yes, yes, right. That’s one story. But there was another time, at dollars, on Tu B’Av—I was there on Tu B’Av, on Thursday—no, not Tu B’Av, Tu BiShvat.

29:20 Speaker 1 [unclear].

29:22 Speaker 2 Tu BiShvat. Now, Moshe Oslovsky wasn’t there on Tu BiShvat, so I took care of the guests from morning till evening. There was a dollars line, and I made sure everyone who arrived had somewhere to stay—this one here, that one there, all of that. That evening, when the Rebbe gave out dollars, he wasn’t stopping anyone. The line was moving fast.

29:48 Speaker 1 The dollars line that came afterward—in the shul downstairs.

29:50 Speaker 2 Yes. I mean, in the morning it was—

29:53 Speaker 1 Like on a Sunday morning.

29:54 Speaker 2 On Sunday the Rebbe would stop, give someone an extra dollar, and so on. Anyway, that evening, the only person before me whom the Rebbe stopped and gave another dollar to was Avraham Shemtov. Then the Rebbe stopped me and gave me an extra dollar too. Yoskele [unclear] came running over—Yoskele Kuk from the Rambam [unclear]. Yoskele said, “What? Why did he suddenly give you—what?” I told him, “Don’t you understand? I took care of the Rebbe’s guests, so the Rebbe gave me another one.” He said, “But I’d like the Rebbe to acknowledge me like that just once.” I told him, “You know what? With Hashem’s help, there are still two women I haven’t found places for. Tell me now that you’ll take them, then stand in the line when the Rebbe comes out. You’ll see that the Rebbe acknowledges you. Ask him.” He stood in the line, and as soon as the Rebbe came out—

30:51 Speaker 1 With his hand.

30:52 Speaker 2 What a strong—

30:52 Speaker 1 He gestured to him with his hand.

30:53 Speaker 2 He ran over to me and kissed me. Whenever I come to 770, he kisses me. He still can’t get over it, you understand? It was an open miracle. Why was it so striking? Because the Rebbe had never acknowledged him before. Anyway—

31:09 Speaker 1 Let’s go back a moment to the fifties. You arrived at Chabad, and then you went into yechidus?

31:14 Speaker 2 What?

31:15 Speaker 1 You went into yechidus?

31:16 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

31:17 Speaker 1 What happened?

31:17 Speaker 2 Right. What happened in yechidus? The yechidus I remember was after my wedding, in 5732. I’d been before as well. So when I went in afterward, it was an ordinary yechidus, not...

31:57 Speaker 1 Was the instruction to return to the school given in yechidus, or was it in a written response?

32:01 Speaker 2 No, no—not in yechidus. In a written response, yes, yes. That year I didn’t have yechidus—I didn’t have my annual yechidus for the first time.

32:10 Speaker 1 You didn’t have yechidus?

32:18 Speaker 2 I had a special yechidus after the wedding. The wedding was in Manchester, and then I traveled—

32:31 Speaker 1 Tell us something about the shidduch. How did it come about?

32:37 Speaker 2 All right. The wedding was in Manchester, and after the wedding I traveled with my wife to the Rebbe, and I had yechidus. My father-in-law, a"h, and my family had given me letters. They wrote to the Rebbe asking him to persuade me to stop working as a counselor and just continue teaching, because after the wedding... As soon as the Rebbe read everyone’s notes, he began: “He should overcome all those who hinder and obstruct him—”

33:33 Speaker 1 “He should overcome all those who hinder and obstruct him.”

33:35 Speaker 2 “He should overcome all those who hinder and obstruct him, at home and outside, and continue his work as a counselor with extraordinary success.” After that there was—

33:47 Speaker 1 For you, the work as a counselor was the most sacred thing of all.

33:50 Speaker 2 What?

33:50 Speaker 1 Your work as a counselor and your influence on the students were the most important things.

33:57 Speaker 2 “He should overcome all...” My father-in-law wrote three pages. I also taught Gemara for half the day, you know, and I was with the children here twenty-four hours a day. Once my father-in-law spent Shabbos with me. I only came home from the Friday-night seder at eleven or twelve at night. So he wrote to the Rebbe: How could this go on? And the Rebbe said, “He should overcome all those who hinder and obstruct him, at home and outside, and continue his work as a counselor with extraordinary success.” The Rebbe was right, because there were many [unclear] here. You understand? To go into the details... The Rebbe was right, to this day, to this very day, in every...

34:46 Speaker 1 How did the shidduch actually come about? What happened?

34:51 Speaker 2 My wife’s uncle is Moishe Jaffe. They’re the people behind Heichal Shlomo and the Great Synagogue today. My wife’s uncles built the shul together with Wolfson and the others. And Zushe Wilimovsky was like a member of the family—

35:25 Speaker 1 At Polsky’s [unclear].

35:25 Speaker 2 At Heichal Shlomo. He used to come by, because Moishe Jaffe is Zalman Jaffe’s brother. Zushe Wilimovsky would come to their home, with [unclear], and the grandfather, and everyone. So my wife’s uncle—my mother-in-law was his sister—was concerned about finding a shidduch for his sister’s daughter, my wife. He asked for the Rebbe’s advice. The Rebbe told him to tell Moishe Jaffe to approach Zushe Wilimovsky, so that he would handle it.

36:15 Speaker 1 In other words, Zalman Jaffe asked on his brother’s behalf?

36:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:20 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe said Moishe Jaffe should approach Zushe Wilimovsky.

36:23 Speaker 2 Exactly, yes.

36:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

36:24 Speaker 2 Then one day, after a kiddush, Zushe was at Beis Chana. I came into Beis Chana at two or three in the afternoon—

36:36 Speaker 1 It wasn’t called Beis Chana yet.

36:38 Speaker 2 What?

36:38 Speaker 1 It wasn’t called Beis Chana yet.

36:39 Speaker 2 Right, it was the original place. Yes, yes. He was asleep there on a bench. He said to me, “Moishe, I have a shidduch for you.” Then he told me to go to the Kings Hotel on Motzaei Shabbos, where I would meet her. We met there, and...

37:04 Speaker 1 And thank G-d—

37:05 Speaker 2 Two months later, we had the wedding. That’s the story of the shidduch. People tell all sorts of stories about it, that he was six and so on...

37:16 Speaker 1 What?

37:17 Speaker 2 That’s how it happened. That’s it.

37:19 Speaker 1 There’s also something about the children.

37:23 Speaker 2 What?

37:24 Speaker 1 About your child’s name.

37:32 Speaker 2 Which child’s name?

37:33 Speaker 1 Or about Levi Yitzchak—Levi, what?

37:35 Speaker 2 Oh, right.

37:37 Speaker 1 Tell us.

37:37 Speaker 2 Before that, there was a yechidus—one of those special yechidusen. I already had two children then, a boy and a girl, Levi Yitzchak and Shevi. I went into yechidus and had written a note. First I asked for a bracha for the vocational school, for the children. Then I mentioned my own children. The Rebbe began the yechidus like this: “Just as you know how to write and ask for your own children, so too for the children of the vocational school—‘as though you had actually fathered them.’”

38:16 Speaker 1 Translate that into Hebrew for the listeners.

38:17 Speaker 2 “Just as you know how to write and ask for your own children, so too for the children of the vocational school—‘as though you had actually fathered them.’” It’s in Rashi on this week’s parsha.

38:31 Speaker 1 This week’s parsha.

38:32 Speaker 2 What? Yes.

38:33 Speaker 1 This week’s parsha. So what did the Rebbe mean—that you should write down their names, like you wrote down your own children’s names?

38:39 Speaker 2 No.

38:40 Speaker 1 Right, you had mentioned the vocational school.

38:46 Speaker 2 Is that what the Rebbe meant? That’s what the Rebbe said. You can think for yourself afterward about what the Rebbe meant. The Rebbe meant... he gave me strength, and that is what keeps me going to this very day: “As though you had actually fathered them.” When did I feel what the Rebbe said most strongly? Usually, whenever a class graduated, I would go to Gershon the driver and order thirty pairs of thick—

39:22 Speaker 1 Tefillin.

39:23 Speaker 2 To replace the students’ tefillin when they finished, so they would have mehudar tefillin instead of the ones they had all along. But when my son’s bar mitzvah came, I didn’t go to Gershon the driver to get tefillin by the kilo. I looked for Knik[?], the best sofer, and Feder[?], and this one and that one—

39:48 Speaker 1 I went to the very best.

39:48 Speaker 2 Oh, so when it’s your own son, you understand. So the Rebbe said, “[unclear],” that this is how it has to be—with all your heart. I still try to do that to this day. I’m telling you, yesterday there were alumni sitting in this room—

40:05 Speaker 1 I can testify to that. I told you, I meet Jews who put on tefillin with me near the Kosel.

40:10 Speaker 2 Huh?

40:10 Speaker 1 I meet Jews whom I have the privilege of helping put on tefillin. Every week or two, someone tells me, “I studied at the School of Crafts.” The first name they remember is Reb Moishe.

40:20 Speaker 2 To this day I have a file with more than five thousand addresses and details—for every class, every person, with their phone numbers. Every year, before 19 Kislev, I invite them to an alumni gathering—

40:36 Speaker 1 Did the Rebbe address the alumni?

40:39 Speaker 2 What?

40:39 Speaker 1 Apart from the guidance, did the Rebbe address this matter of the alumni?

40:42 Speaker 2 When I wrote the Rebbe a report about the alumni, the Rebbe wrote this to me about keeping in touch with them: “And this is very, very right.” And when I sign off, I also sign “very, very.” There was an incident—I had a special yechidus. Reb Yeshaya Gofin, a"h, came out of his yechidus, and I went in after him. When he came out and saw that I was about to go in, he said to me, “Moishe, Moishe, Moishe, I forgot to ask the Rebbe how to get excellent, good students to come.” So I included that in—

41:40 Speaker 1 All right, explain who Reb Yeshaya Gofin was. He was the director here, right?

41:43 Speaker 2 The director, yes.

41:44 Speaker 1 Not everyone knows. He was the director, and he said he’d forgotten to write that.

41:48 Speaker 2 So I wrote it down, and the Rebbe said—I have the yechidus in print. But there, regarding how to get excellent students to come, the Rebbe begins by saying that the School of Crafts is well known. On a special occasion—and in the middle there’s [unclear]—

42:10 Speaker 1 Wait, wait. So the School of Crafts is well known.

42:13 Speaker 2 The yechidus is written down—

42:15 Speaker 1 On a special occasion.

42:18 Speaker 2 It’s well known and doesn’t need any publicity. Rather, to bring in excellent students, you need excellent teachers and excellent counselors, and there’s no point haggling over a lira or half a lira.

42:40 Speaker 1 Over salaries.

42:41 Speaker 2 The Rebbe was saying to pay, and to pay properly. Tzvi Greenbaum would always complain. He would say, “Why should the child learn from me? It would be better for—” We had a woodworking technology teacher named Ashkenazi. He would work two or three hours a week and earn a fortune. Meanwhile, he and Tzvi Greenbaum spent four to six hours with the children every day, and then there was their salary. In other words, when you pay properly, that affects everything. As for the counselors, at the beginning of the yechidus the Rebbe spoke about the load on a counselor: there shouldn’t be one counselor on duty twenty-four hours a day, the way I was. Not one person for everything, but one in the morning and one in the evening. I was with the children until two or three in the morning. The next morning I’d get three, four, five boys up. “You said such-and-such last night”—they wouldn’t even realize it. We knew what they dreamed about, what they talked about, everything. But today’s generation—or even then, with all of that—a child is... The Rebbe told me that, and I try to do it to this day. That’s the whole thing. That’s it.

44:23 Speaker 1 So what happened regarding your son’s name?

44:29 Speaker 2 I wrote to the Rebbe. I named him Levi Yitzchak Osher. Osher is after my father, and Levi Yitzchak after the Rebbe’s father. After the bris, I wrote to the Rebbe. Then the Rebbe sent a letter concerning the pidyon haben, and it said, “[unclear] Osher Levi Yitzchak.” I had written Levi Yitzchak Osher to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe wrote Osher Levi Yitzchak. In other words, my father’s name came first. My father’s name was [unclear], which translates as Osher—that is... yes. And now [unclear].

45:22 Speaker 1 Did you also have a connection between the Baba Sali and the Rebbe? Or was that only your brother?

45:31 Speaker 2 My brother, my brother, yes.

45:33 Speaker 1 You weren’t involved? You didn’t pass along certain things—

45:36 Speaker 2 Not with the Rebbe, I mean.

45:39 Speaker 1 Between the Baba Sali and the Rebbe.

45:44 Speaker 2 The Baba Sali came to Kfar Chabad once; he visited my mother. But regarding the Rebbe—the Rebbe told [unclear] that the Sephardim had always been in touch, and the Rebbe very much encouraged it. There was a Jew named Mittelman in Tel Aviv, at 17 Levontin Street. He made Judaica—all sorts of kippahs, tablecloths, things for Pesach, all kinds of things. He had a great many products. He knew I was traveling to the Rebbe, so he said he wanted to send the Rebbe a sample of everything he made. I told him he could write to the Rebbe, even in Russian. He was Russian. So he wrote the Rebbe four pages in Russian and made up this enormous package. He also sewed two special kippahs. That’s why I still wear this kind today, though this isn’t the one. He said, “One for you and one for the Rebbe.” I brought the whole large package to Binyamin Klein. The next day Binyamin Klein said to me, “Come see what the Rebbe wrote.” On all the papers, on everything, he wrote one word: “Continuation.” Do you know what “continuation” means?

47:34 Speaker 1 That they should keep in touch with him?

47:36 Speaker 2 Huh? I took it to mean that everything needs a continuation. Starting a project isn’t the achievement. You were at the school, I was at the school—so continue it. You began a practice? Continue it. You started something good? Keep it going. That’s it. I always tell the alumni: once, Kahn spoke to me and said that the Rebbe was asking—back then, the children would travel home every fourth Shabbos—whether on that fourth Shabbos they could go to Chabad Houses instead. So I took the lists of all the students and arranged buses to take them on four or five different routes: one south, one north, one east, and so on. The buses would stop with them at Chabad Houses along the way—

48:47 Speaker 1 To show them and connect them.

48:48 Speaker 2 You understand? There’s no end to what you can do. I also sent the Chabad Houses lists. I still have them. Every community—Achi’ezer, [unclear]—any community you name, I have an exact record of which alumnus lives there. I have it all. I said—

49:07 Speaker 1 Netanya too?

49:08 Speaker 2 Huh?

49:09 Speaker 1 Netanya too?

49:09 Speaker 2 Of course. I can bring you a list. I have everything, with phone numbers and all. You understand? That’s fundamental. There isn’t anyone who studied at the School of Crafts who would refuse a request from it. They give it their all. I can’t reach everyone. I send things to everyone—

49:29 Speaker 1 In Netanya, our head of the religious council, Rabbi Ashruach[?]—

49:33 Speaker 2 Ah, yes.

49:34 Speaker 1 Rabbi Ashruach[?], he’s [unclear].

49:36 Speaker 2 He used to come to the alumni gatherings and all that, yes.

49:40 Speaker 1 The head of our religious council in Netanya. He always mentions, “I’m a Chabadnik. I went to the School of Crafts.”

49:45 Speaker 2 He was once a member of the Knesset—

49:46 Speaker 1 He was a deputy[?].

49:47 Speaker 2 He’s very, very talented. He used to come to the gatherings. Of course. Yes, of course. To show you what was special about the alumni: fifty would graduate each time, and I would always take twenty of the fifty into Nahal. Why Nahal? Because in Nahal they’re a group—

50:18 Speaker 1 They stayed together as a group.

50:19 Speaker 2 No—because I could still look after them while they were in the army, in my dealings with the army. You understand?

50:25 Speaker 1 The school kept in touch with them through the army?

50:27 Speaker 2 Of course, of course. I stayed involved with them. I would rush to the Jordan Valley at six in the morning for [unclear] for a fellow—it was something else. Wherever something happened, I was in touch with the commanders about the Nahal soldiers. In short, Nahal has stages. There’s basic training, then a settlement outpost. Sha’alvim was once such an outpost too: soldiers establish it, and later it becomes a community. The soldiers, as soldiers, set up an outpost on [unclear] land, and afterward it becomes a settlement. Also, six months before their discharge, the Nahal soldiers are assigned to an existing community, a kibbutz or moshav. Many make their home there; many stay after they’re discharged, even today. I’m still in touch with Yonatan Kaspi in Sha’alvim.

51:39 Speaker 1 Moshavim that began as Nahal settlements, where they could later live.

51:43 Speaker 2 I have alumni there.

51:44 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

51:45 Speaker 2 That’s it. So, one of the groups—I came to find them what’s called a host farm. A host farm. I came to take one of the groups to Nir Galim. Near Nir Galim there’s a gas station, and at the gas station there’s a restaurant.

52:03 Speaker 1 Nir Galim is near Ashdod.

52:05 Speaker 2 Yes. I come in, I go into the restaurant. Twenty, twenty-five boys are sitting there eating. In the middle of their meal, the restaurant manager comes out and asks me, “Tell me, how many of your boys stay religious after they finish here?” And I told him, “Usually fifty, sixty percent—a hundred percent.”

52:40 Speaker 1 A hundred percent, a hundred percent stay religious.

52:42 Speaker 2 Yes, and afterward they improve, too. So he says to me, “I believe you.” I said, “How can you believe me? What makes you say that?” He says, “I saw how you brought them in to eat. They washed their hands, dipped in salt, had a whole loaf for Hamotzi, sat down, and afterward, Birchas Hamazon, a zimun, mayim acharonim. If that’s how you educated them, I believe you.” And that’s how they were educated at the school. There was no food, no meal, without washing hands, with supervision of the handwashing, Birchas Hamazon and a zimun. Nothing without halachah. There was always a halachah before Birchas Hamazon in every dining room, and so on and so forth. That’s it. That’s how they were educated at the school.

53:40 Speaker 1 Did you have some kind of—

53:40 Speaker 2 If only they educated students in yeshivah with that kind of dedication.

53:44 Speaker 1 Did you receive any guidance from the Rebbe regarding—

53:47 Speaker 2 Huh?

53:48 Speaker 1 Did you receive any guidance from the Rebbe or Rabbi Chadakov about what to be particular about with the graduates, what things you started doing—besides the connection with Chabad Houses, were there other things?

54:00 Speaker 2 Ah.

54:01 Speaker 1 Did you write to the Rebbe about particular things you were careful to do with the students?

54:08 Speaker 2 I told you: when fifty boys finished, twenty went to Nahal, six or seven to yeshivah. I have many students who went on to study with Lishinsky in Tzfas.

54:21 Speaker 1 Rabbi Lishinsky, not by name [?].

54:22 Speaker 2 So I always had a question about where to put the emphasis. If I put the emphasis on yeshivah, more would go to yeshivah, but fewer would go to Nahal. That was also a good framework that kept them on track, but it was— So the Rebbe said it depends on each individual.

54:48 Speaker 1 The Rebbe left it up to the individual case.

54:49 Speaker 2 Yes, of course. And also, when I was in yechidus and told the Rebbe about it—that’s the yechidus that was published, published—there was the schedule for Shabbos. They would learn for about ten minutes with Moshe Vishesky [?], but on Shabbos they started davening at ten, because before ten they would eat cake and learn Chassidus. So the Rebbe told me in yechidus—he wrote it for me—that the children at the vocational school are called vocational-school children, not yeshivah bochurim, and you can’t explain to them why they shouldn’t start davening at the proper time. So they should start then. In the middle I said, “But they learn Chassidus.” So the Rebbe said, “Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour.” Yes, yes, but... So when I got back—it was Tishrei—when Cheshvan began, I was to announce a new schedule: on Shabbos we would start davening at the proper time. That’s what the Rebbe said.

56:17 Speaker 1 What about the children here who had customs from home—was there—

56:24 Speaker 2 Huh?

56:25 Speaker 1 Was there a practice of preserving the customs they brought from home? Did each child here keep his own customs, if he had them? For example, the nusach of davening—what did they use?

56:35 Speaker 2 Ah, regarding the nusach, my brother Yaakov, back when we were still studying in Lod, asked the Rebbe. The Rebbe said that someone going from Sephardi to Ashkenazi nusach shouldn’t change, but from Sephardi to—

57:00 Speaker 1 Nusach Ari.

57:02 Speaker 2 To Nusach Ari, yes, he may change.

57:05 Speaker 1 By “Sephardi,” he means Jews from the Middle Eastern communities. Nowadays there are Ashkenazim who daven Nusach Sefard. He means what are called the Middle Eastern communities.

57:12 Speaker 2 Yes, from the beginning we—

57:13 Speaker 1 So they could change. But here at the vocational school, what did the children daven? Nusach Ari as well?

57:18 Speaker 2 Ah, no—Nusach Ari, certainly, certainly, certainly. I came from yeshivah. Motl Levy brought me here, and then put me in this room with fifty boys, ninth grade, to be their counselor. Where had I learned how to guide them? There were classes at night and all that, but I learned from Shlomo Chaim. What did Shlomo Chaim do? He would learn [unclear] while the boys davened. So I did the same: it was davening time, and I was learning. Motl Levy came in: “Let’s see what you’re learning. Look, the boys over there are talking during davening.” I didn’t understand what he meant at all. “You’re not paying attention to them.” So that opened my eyes. And then I was very [unclear] about looking after the boys and maintaining discipline. All right, that’s it.

58:39 Speaker 1 And from the way people speak about you, they always felt that you did it because you cared about them, from the heart.

58:45 Speaker 2 Certainly. Yes, yes.

58:46 Speaker 1 Even if you were [unclear].

58:48 Speaker 2 No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m not like that. Take the dining room: find me one boy who can tell you where my seat was there. I never sat down. I was serving them the whole time. At the end, if there were leftovers, I would eat. I wasn’t one of those who sat down to eat. You should know that. They knew it. Of course. But when you care—and to this day there are graduates who are already grandfathers with great-grandchildren, and they remember—under my care, not one of the four hundred boys got out of bed without negel vasser. No such thing. The counselors, too—no. The boys would prepare water before bed, but the counselors would come around, go through every room and make sure. No boy got up without negel vasser and Modeh Ani. That was me. They learned Chitas and Rambam. There was no going without it. That’s what I’m saying: if they had done that in yeshivah, things would have been different. You understand? Even when I studied in yeshivah, we didn’t learn that way. I mean, I learned halachos on my own. After seder ended and everyone went to eat, we would sit for another fifteen or twenty minutes to learn Shulchan Aruch or something like that. Fine, but here it was like with tefillin, when they said you need counselors. That’s how it was. I’m telling you, at first, when I came, I thought, “Why should I have to supervise davening at all?” But all right. And then I would listen to them review from the siddur, go through the whole thing. That was fine. They learned things by heart, they learned—

1:01:04 Speaker 1 They also—

1:01:05 Speaker 2 They learned by heart for the Purim fair. A month before the Purim fair, there were vouchers to buy things at the fair, and they earned the vouchers through competitions in learning by heart—the Mishnayos and so on. At one point we had seventeen shuls, one for each group here—seventeen shuls.

1:01:31 Speaker 1 In Israel.

1:01:34 Speaker 2 At the vocational school.

1:01:36 Speaker 1 Each group had a separate shul?

1:01:38 Speaker 2 Yes. The big group was in the main shul, but at one point— So we held a competition between the shuls. I remember Mendel Futerfas came to decide who—

1:01:53 Speaker 1 Who would be on the judging committee.

1:01:55 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, you understand? A competition. They renovated, arranged things; each group did its own work, with names for the shuls and so on. Yes. And every year we also sent a group of fifteen or seventeen students to the Rebbe.

1:02:27 Speaker 1 There are also a great many families.

1:02:29 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:02:29 Speaker 1 There are also a great many families who became fully Chabad.

1:02:33 Speaker 2 Many, certainly. What? Yes. As for how to run things, the Rebbe said in that yechidus that was published: “Something that has become the practice should not be reduced.” Meaning—

1:02:53 Speaker 1 The customs that had been established—don’t cut back on them.

1:02:56 Speaker 2 No, not Sephardi customs or anything like that.

1:02:58 Speaker 1 Ah, practices at the school.

1:03:00 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember that one of the class periods was for Chassidus. Besides the Gemara they learned in the morning, they learned Chassidus in the evening. Now, there was a time when they needed that period for secular studies. So they said, let’s say on Wednesday they’ll learn for two hours, and on Thursday they won’t learn it at all. Moshe Vishesky, a"h, asked the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said no—they should learn every day.

1:03:45 Speaker 3 There shouldn’t be a day without learning Chassidus.

1:03:46 Speaker 2 Exactly. They should learn every day. And something that—

1:03:49 Speaker 3 Well, on the one hand, the Rebbe says there’s a proper time for davening on Shabbos, so they should start earlier.

1:03:57 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:57 Speaker 3 On the other hand, there shouldn’t be a day when they don’t learn Chassidus.

1:04:00 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. Besides what they learned, there were halachos. They used to learn Tanya before that, but at one point I established that they should wear only a black yarmulke, not a white one. And that they shouldn’t touch their beards.

1:04:19 Speaker 3 Yes, that was something you were particular about.

1:04:21 Speaker 2 Yes. They didn’t touch their beards. When Moshe Vysotsky was here, if someone touched his beard, he would let out a groan. Yes, he was particular about it. So that was something established from the beginning: not to shave. As for what depended on me as a counselor and dormitory director—many other things depended on the school administration and so on. I have a kollel here for one hour, and I pay them too. Shalom Tarnowitz[?] has been teaching here every Friday for twenty years, since the school began. He hasn’t missed a single Friday. Every Friday, from nine-thirty or a quarter to ten until eleven, he teaches the laws of Shabbos. It’s to sustain this place as a holy place. [unclear] There’s also a Sefer Torah here.

1:05:19 Speaker 3 Yad HaChamisha was founded here.

1:05:20 Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly.

1:05:23 Speaker 3 Thank you so much, Rabbi Moshe. You’ve given us new life and refreshed our connection to the Rebbe with all those instructions and all those yechidus meetings. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help—

1:05:30 Speaker 2 We need to listen to every word from the Rebbe, every hint, every little comma. That’s—

1:05:40 Speaker 3 Blessed be He; our King lives and endures.

1:05:43 Speaker 2 That’s the foundation, first of all: keep going, keep going. Don’t get tired, don’t get tired. And set an example in everything, both personally and in general—in the way you conduct yourself and in your dealings with others. That’s how everything carries on. It gives us the strength for it all, and that’s the secret of the children at the school, for heaven’s sake. There isn’t a single one... I had a secretary here, Schreiber, who came every day from eight until twelve. He would call alumni. I’d tell him, “Just once, bring me some kind of negative response from somebody.” He would talk with the alumni, call them up—but everyone loves the place and is loved. Boruch Hashem, Boruch Hashem.

1:06:33 Speaker 3 It comes from the strength the Rebbe gave you to work with the alumni. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help you continue for many long years, [unclear], in good health, and keep working among us.

1:06:41 Speaker 2 And may He redeem us, with Hashem’s help.

1:06:42 Speaker 3 Very soon, may we merit to see our righteous Moshiach redeem us.

1:06:45 Speaker 2 When many soldiers fell in Lebanon, I went to the Baba Sali and told him, “The soldiers are crying.” He said to me, “Tell them not to cry. Soon they’ll all get up and dance with their brothers.” Then one of the soldiers said to me, “Rabbi, have you ever seen someone get up from the dead?” I told him, “Yes, yes—you got up this morning.” He said, “You know what? You’re right. I went to sleep like a dead man, and I got up.” So his friends said to him, “He restores souls and revives the dead.”

1:07:18 Speaker 3 With Hashem’s help, we will rise.

1:07:19 Speaker 2 Exactly, with Hashem’s help. Truly, Hashem.

1:07:22 Speaker 3 Thank you so much. Take my books, and rejoice deep within.