Lehisraanen Episode 11: Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer

00:00 Speaker 1 Shalom aleichem, welcome to another episode of the Lehitraanen podcast, where chassidim share their memories of the Rebbe and bring them to life. This time we’re with the chossid Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer, who had the privilege of being with the Rebbe in the 1950s. He went on to serve as the Rebbe’s shliach and teach Chassidus to thousands. Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer, good evening.

00:24 Speaker 2 Good evening.

00:25 Speaker 1 Let’s start with the question I ask everyone: Fun vanet shtamstu? Where do you come from?

00:33 Speaker 2 I studied in Ponevezh, and afterward in Brisk.

00:37 Speaker 1 But you weren’t born there at age twenty.

00:39 Speaker 2 Right. No. I studied and lived in [unclear], in Bnei Brak. Then I went through the whole progression. I entered the junior Ponevezh yeshiva, and afterward moved to Brisk. That’s where I discovered Chabad and began to grow closer.

01:00 Speaker 1 What do you mean, “discovered”? Who showed you the light?

01:03 Speaker 2 That’s a story. I’ve told it a few times already.

01:06 Speaker 1 Anything that’s been told a few times, we start from the beginning here.

01:09 Speaker 2 We were studying in Brisk, in a Sephardic synagogue in Machane Yehuda—not exactly a place for tourists. One afternoon, some student came into the courtyard. I don’t know how he got there. It was the era of the beatniks with long hair; he looked like a backpacker, and I don’t know how he ended up there. The fellows started telling him, “Come put on tefillin.” I think Teichtel was there.

01:47 Speaker 1 Dovid Teichtel?

01:48 Speaker 2 No, Yitzchok—Yitzchok Shlomo.

01:52 Speaker 1 Even before the tefillin campaign.

01:54 Speaker 2 Yes. So they offered him tefillin, and he said, “What is tefillin?” They told him it’s a commandment, a mitzvah from G-d. “What is G-d?” The fellows got upset and said, “Leave him alone, he’s a heretic.” But Teichtel said, “I know someone who can talk to him and answer all his questions.” We didn’t believe him. But he was determined, so during the second study session we got organized and went to Beis Warsaw [?]. Shlomo was there—he wasn’t “Rabbi” yet, just Shlomo. A young fellow, short, and he had no idea we were coming. I was thinking to myself: even if there is someone who can answer, he’d need two weeks to prepare—if he’d even agree. We opened the door, and he came out with his shirt untucked and said, “Don’t be afraid.” They told him, “There’s someone here with questions.” “Nu, come in” [?]. Now, he didn’t know English, so we brought along someone from England to translate. It turned out this fellow was a philosophy student, no ordinary person. Shlomo asked him, “What are your questions?” He said, “I don’t have many questions. I have just one question with four parts: What is G-d? What is a human being? What is the relationship of a human being to G-d? And what is the relationship of G-d to a human being? That’s it.” Shlomo wasn’t fazed for a second.

03:35 Speaker 1 Shlomo.

03:35 Speaker 2 Yes. He started pulling out [unclear], you hear? One thing after another, everything. And the fellow was translating it into English for him. We sat there for two hours. This man was an intellectual, someone impressed by an intellectual explanation. By the end of the conversation he was completely flushed, and he told Shlomo, in English, “You’re wise.” So Shlomo said to him, “Wise, not wise—come put on tefillin.”

04:06 Speaker 1 That’s what Shlomo told him.

04:07 Speaker 2 So he said, “Look, I need to sleep on it for a night, let it settle.” I don’t remember how it happened. We brought him back, and he slept at the yeshiva.

04:17 Speaker 1 Slept in Brisk.

04:18 Speaker 2 Yes. That’s a good thing, good foundations, but... The next day we went back for another three hours.

04:25 Speaker 1 To Shlomo.

04:26 Speaker 2 Yes. After that he disappeared. Unfortunately, to this day I don’t know what became of him. But as for what became of us—well, we were deeply impressed that someone knew something about G-d. We began studying Tanya in a class.

04:44 Speaker 1 With him, with Shlomo?

04:45 Speaker 2 In secret.

04:47 Speaker 1 Which Brisk was this? The one with Shai Barzon [?]?

04:49 Speaker 2 No, no, no. The students called it Rabbi Turchin’s yeshiva for outstanding students. Anyway, there were five of us studying—[unclear], me, and three others.

05:04 Speaker 1 One was from a Chabad family.

05:05 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:06 Speaker 1 His father was a Chabad chossid.

05:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:07 Speaker 1 Who were the other three?

05:08 Speaker 2 You wouldn’t know them now. One was the rosh yeshiva’s son.

05:14 Speaker 1 Turchin’s?

05:15 Speaker 2 Not Turchin’s, the other one’s. In any case, we studied for a while until they found out. The rosh yeshiva called me in and told me that Tanya was the same thing as [unclear].

05:30 Speaker 1 Are we talking about 5724?

05:32 Speaker 2 5725, maybe 5724. He wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t continue studying Chassidus. I told him, “I don’t know if I can promise that.” In short, I was torn. On the one hand, it really was a good yeshiva, and the rosh yeshiva was a genuine educator. He had helped me grow. At the time, for about half a year, I was so frum you wouldn’t believe it. In the half year from Rosh Hashanah to Purim, I memorized Tanya and finished all of tractate Zevachim. Do you understand what that means? I didn’t want to leave. On the other hand, I couldn’t give up my studies of Chassidus. So we decided I would write to the Rebbe.

06:28 Speaker 1 What did you know about the Rebbe?

06:30 Speaker 2 Shlomo had taught us about the Rebbe and all that. I wrote to the Rebbe. It was my first letter to him, and I asked what I should do. I had these two sides pulling at me. The Rebbe’s answer was very interesting. He said, “Regarding how you should continue your studies, consult with friends.” Not whether to continue or not.

06:51 Speaker 1 There was no question you’d continue. Just how—that you should discuss with...

06:55 Speaker 2 Exactly. In the end I went on to study with Yossel Segal. He gave me a grounding in Chassidus, and—to his credit—he didn’t push me straight into Tomchei Temimim. He said, you know, let me develop first. When he saw I was ready—

07:15 Speaker 1 How did you manage with the yeshiva? Or didn’t you?

07:17 Speaker 2 They didn’t know. We continued studying in secret. Then I came to the yeshiva and went in to see Reb Shlomo Chaim.

07:28 Speaker 1 When was that?

07:30 Speaker 2 Probably in Elul 5725.

07:32 Speaker 1 Elul 5725.

07:36 Speaker 2 After that, as Pesach approached—

07:37 Speaker 1 Wait, wait. Tell us a little about Shlomo Chaim. Give us a sense of him.

07:41 Speaker 2 Reb Shlomo Chaim was a warmhearted mashpia—in every sense of the word. What was remarkable was that the fellows would go to him almost as if for yechidus. They’d go in turn, and each had questions about Torah and life. One would lean over his desk and talk with him; then another would come and talk. He would give advice about Torah and life.

08:13 Speaker 1 Did you transfer straight in, or did you first come for a visit?

08:15 Speaker 2 I—I don’t think... I don’t remember. I think I transferred straight in. One thing I remember from when I moved to Tomchei Temimim: I saw the ovdim—those devoted to the inner work of serving Hashem—and learned what an oved was. I wanted to be one too. I began working on davening, and—

08:36 Speaker 1 You arrived with a résumé of Tanya by heart and all of Yevamos.

08:41 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Anyway, Yehoshua Mondshine, of blessed memory, was a friend of mine. He was the model of an oved. He would go upstairs to a room to daven because the minyan disturbed him, and I envied him. So I went to the rosh yeshiva and asked if perhaps I could go upstairs too. “What, what, what? [Unclear]—that’s what bothers you?” He brought me right back down to earth. All right.

09:22 Speaker 1 Before we go on—just a moment. You said Shlomo spoke to the intellect. Was there some point in Tanya that made you feel, back then, that this was your life? Something in Tanya or Chassidus?

09:33 Speaker 2 With him we studied Igeres Hateshuvah. He was also very frum, and we went through all the details in Igeres Hateshuvah, the three [unclear], and all those things.

09:47 Speaker 1 Before the explanations of the Rebbe were published—

09:49 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

09:50 Speaker 1 On Rabbi Levin’s Torah [unclear].

09:51 Speaker 2 With Segal I studied Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah. Those were profound subjects.

10:01 Speaker 1 Did you write to the Rebbe before you moved to the yeshiva?

10:05 Speaker 2 Just...

10:07 Speaker 1 There wasn’t any particular response?

10:09 Speaker 2 I don’t remember.

10:12 Speaker 1 Then you arrived at the yeshiva. How long were you there?

10:15 Speaker 2 Until Pesach 5727, when we went with the kvutzah.

10:18 Speaker 1 Oh, so you were only at the yeshiva in Israel for half a year.

10:24 Speaker 2 Something like that. No, actually a bit longer.

10:27 Speaker 1 Oh, the whole winter. Sorry—no, the whole winter.

10:29 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

10:30 Speaker 1 [Unclear] nigleh, Torah, Yankel Katz.

10:32 Speaker 2 Yes, and I lived in Bnei Brak. I had a connection with Reb Nochum.

10:38 Speaker 1 Really? Where—

10:40 Speaker 2 I would daven at [unclear].

10:42 Speaker 1 At Avraham’s.

10:43 Speaker 2 At Avraham’s, yes.

10:44 Speaker 1 On Rabbi Kook Street. So my grandfather—my grandfather was a Chabad chossid from Warsaw. He came to Bnei Brak.

10:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:50 Speaker 1 Did you also talk with him a bit about outlook and ideas?

10:51 Speaker 2 Of course, of course. We would go hear his classes, both at his home and at the synagogue. Every Shabbos he would review maamarim. He’d sit with the maamar, his hands tucked into his sleeves, and deliver it with such pleasure. I remember once he asked me, “Chetzkel, tell me, what’s Tanya’s great innovation?” You tell him—well, here it is. I said, “Tanya’s innovation is that you can be a beinoni even though your animal soul hasn’t budged an inch.” It’s the opposite, a complete reversal.

11:36 Speaker 1 That’s one of the great strengths of Tanya.

11:38 Speaker 2 Yes, and that was one of Reb Nochum’s strengths too: grasping a point like that. Everyone talks about reaching higher levels, reaching higher levels, while inside a person can still have [unclear]—

11:48 Speaker 1 He’ll put it to you this way.

11:49 Speaker 2 A person can be secular on the inside and religious on the outside.

11:55 Speaker 1 I have one point. Kfar Chabad published an article about Reb Nachum more than thirty years ago, by Rabbi Avraham Meislish, a"h. The headline was “The great maskil who wanted to remain a simple oved.” I was with Rabbi Yair [?] a few years after the article came out, and he couldn’t bear reading it. He said, “What? Reb Nachum didn’t ask to remain an oved. He wasn’t an oved.” He said, “What are they trying to show—that only someone who can be an oved can study Chassidus? Reb Nachum was a teacher to his son. And for all that, Chassidus was his life.” That completes what you said.

12:38 Speaker 3 [unclear].

12:41 Speaker 1 He couldn’t stand it. He said, “Don’t put a person in a box that doesn’t fit him.” It makes him out to be nothing but an oved. In other words, he was saying, “Who can be rich in Chassidus? Only someone who is utterly focused? Chassidus also belongs to someone who doesn’t always manage to keep a taanis dibbur all winter.”

12:58 Speaker 3 Someone my age was with him, and then he walked down the street.

13:09 Speaker 1 What else struck you back then, during that transition from the yeshiva, from Litvish circles, to Chabad teachings? Farbrengens?

13:21 Speaker 3 First, I was impressed by the level of Torah scholarship in the yeshiva, because it had always been drilled into my head that Chabadniks didn’t know how to learn. There were Shmulik Averbuch, Aram Alter [?], Averbuch, and all sorts of fellows like that whom you could talk to. At the same time, there was Chassidus at a very high level. We learned with Grossman, Munke Grossman.

14:01 Speaker 1 Studied Chassidus?

14:03 Speaker 3 Yes. We also farbrenged with him, farbrengens in the booths there.

14:12 Speaker 1 And then, uh, [unclear]—you traveled as Pesach approached?

14:16 Speaker 3 Yes, we traveled to the Rebbe.

14:20 Speaker 1 Well?

14:21 Speaker 3 What do you mean, “well”?

14:22 Speaker 1 Now you want the whole story out of me. What’s the purpose of the podcast? To refresh the simple things, the everyday experience with the Rebbe.

14:33 Speaker 3 What was different from today was that back then there weren’t videos of the Rebbe and all that. To us, the Rebbe was a virtual figure. I had never even seen him full-length; I couldn’t picture the Rebbe standing there. We knew the photographs, the portraits. Seeing the Rebbe actually there, like a person, was something very new. We traveled, and Rabbi Sholom Chaim [unclear] worked on us to prepare ourselves. As it says in the weekly parsha, “[unclear].” Before traveling to the Rebbe’s court, you have to bury your desires. And we arrived there.

15:20 Speaker 1 Now, before that, I had heard the Rebbe’s voice, though, if not—

15:23 Speaker 3 Yes.

15:23 Speaker 1 There were recordings.

15:24 Speaker 3 There were recordings, yes. But it was all as though you were talking about Moshe Rabbeinu up on Har Sinai. You didn’t... Seeing the Rebbe come in, walk, enter, look at me—that was something altogether new. I’ll say frankly that in the first week I wasn’t blown away. We saw the Rebbe; he would go in [unclear] and come out afterward. When the farbrengens started and all that, then it entered my soul more deeply.

16:01 Speaker 1 In other words, those first days were before Shabbos. You arrived at the beginning of the week.

16:04 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. We arrived for Shabbos Hagadol. Then we still had Pesach ahead of us, and the whole month of Nissan, with the maamarim—something extraordinary. And we merited to be there for the Seder night.

16:22 Speaker 1 Wait, you’re moving a little too fast. Slowly, slowly. You arrived, there was [unclear], and then on Shabbos there was a farbrengen. That was before anyone knew about—

16:33 Speaker 3 The Shabbos after [unclear], there was a farbrengen.

16:38 Speaker 1 Did the Rebbe acknowledge that a group had arrived?

16:41 Speaker 3 Of course. He kept speaking about how they had to study, and that otherwise they had no permission to leave Eretz Yisroel.

16:49 Speaker 1 And did the Rebbe tell the group to say l’chaim? Was that the custom?

16:55 Speaker 3 Yes, it was.

16:57 Speaker 1 You hadn’t yet gone into yechidus before [unclear].

16:59 Speaker 3 No, no, no, no.

17:01 Speaker 1 About how many bochurim were in your group?

17:04 Speaker 3 Twenty-something.

17:05 Speaker 1 A small group.

17:06 Speaker 3 Yes. My first time going in was later, in Menachem Av.

17:10 Speaker 1 We’ll get to that soon. So now, the Seder night. You arrived. What do you remember?

17:15 Speaker 3 What do you mean?

17:15 Speaker 1 True, it’s all been written down; everyone knows. We want to hear it all. The Seder night.

17:21 Speaker 3 Well, since everyone knows it all, what impressed me on the Seder night was that you could visibly see the Shechinah resting upon him.

17:30 Speaker 1 The Shechinah resting upon him.

17:31 Speaker 3 Someone who knows the laws of Pesach can see it in every movement the Rebbe makes. There are also things that look natural, but they’re truly amazing.

17:44 Speaker 1 Give an example.

17:45 Speaker 3 The Rebbe wasn’t young. He would fill the cup without spilling a single drop. And you have to lean and drink. With me, there would be a puddle. When he ate the matzah, he didn’t let a single crumb fall.

18:05 Speaker 1 Rabbi Drukman told that story too. I couldn’t understand how it was physically possible. After all, whenever any of us eats matzah, crumbs spill everywhere and the floor is covered.

18:15 Speaker 3 He would hold both hands like this, cupped together. That’s how he held the matzah, and he would catch any crumb. And he ate it. One of the things—and this is just a funny little experience—when you eat soup, at the end you need to lift the bowl so you can get—

18:43 Speaker 1 The last spoonful.

18:45 Speaker 3 Yes. And the Rebbe ate with one hand under the table, without lifting the bowl. I saw the Rebbe holding the spoon, and the bowl rose by itself. I thought it must be a miracle, until I realized he had his thumb under the tablecloth and was pushing the bowl up.

19:05 Speaker 1 With his thumb under the tablecloth, lifting the bowl.

19:08 Speaker 3 Yes. Just a little thing like that.

19:15 Speaker 1 Where were you standing, opposite him?

19:17 Speaker 3 Yes. We had an experience that not everyone tells about. That Pesach, there were two Seders. At the first Seder there was terrible pushing, and I stood behind the Rashag. The Rebbe was opposite us, and people were pushing so hard that they pushed the Rashag, and every few moments he said, “Oy!” Then the Rebbe would raise his eyes and everyone would move back. A few minutes later: “Oy!” There was such pushing—you’ve never seen anything like it. The Rashag’s chair broke, and he landed on the floor. You have no idea what it was like there. The Rebbe was displeased. I think wine also spilled on the table, and... it felt awful. The next day Dovid Raskin announced: “Enough pushing! Order! There’s no need to rush through the Seder night, because after what happened yesterday, no one will be allowed in.”

20:33 Speaker 4 In other words, that was on the first night.

20:34 Speaker 3 Yes, and we were sure that was how it would be, because we had no way of knowing otherwise. Well, on the second night there was a Seder. Everyone was sitting, and the Rebbe arrived. He came in and looked around at everyone.

20:49 Speaker 4 He came in on the second night too?

20:51 Speaker 3 Yes. He looked around at everyone, gave a blessing, and left. Once he left, most of the fellows didn’t go. What, are you crazy? They won’t let us in. There were four or five of us who decided: In another week we’re going home—how can we miss this? Let’s go; what can happen? We hurried, hurried, hurried, did what we had to do, and ran to [unclear]. We got upstairs, and the Rebbe hadn’t arrived yet. Chaim Boruch was standing at the door—may Hashem comfort him—and he said to me, “Chatzkel, what are you doing? Do you want us to get into a fight? No, you won’t be allowed in. Stop it.” We told him, “We’re not going [unclear]. We’re standing here. We’ll see how the Rebbe reacts, and that’s what we’ll do.” Fine, so we stayed there. We stood waiting. Suddenly we heard footsteps coming upstairs, and we waited tensely. Who was it? The Rebbetzin. Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka came up, saw us, and said to us:

22:12 Speaker 4 “My husband doesn’t want you here.”

22:14 Speaker 3 So one of the fellows—we won’t say his name—answered her brusquely. Well, she didn’t argue; she continued on. A few minutes later the Rebbe himself came upstairs, passed by us without saying anything, and went in. We followed behind him. Then we were there until [unclear], five fellows on our own. It was very moving. Afterward they opened—

22:52 Speaker 4 You saw all the preparation of the Seder plate and everything?

22:56 Speaker 3 Yes.

22:56 Speaker 4 What did you see?

22:57 Speaker 3 What everyone has already described. There’s nothing to add.

23:03 Speaker 4 Just out of interest: Were the three matzos already prepared for him, or did he take them from a whole box and choose particular ones?

23:10 Speaker 3 He took out matzos and arranged them, arranged them and [unclear]—they weren’t arranged beforehand.

23:15 Speaker 4 Did he choose specific ones, or just take the first ones that came out?

23:17 Speaker 3 I don’t remember. I don’t remember.

23:24 Speaker 4 All the other items were already prepared on a table nearby, and he took them?

23:26 Speaker 3 No, no, they hadn’t been prepared.

23:28 Speaker 4 No, obviously he put them on the Seder plate himself, but there was a table nearby; the onion was there.

23:32 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, of course.

23:33 Speaker 4 Did he choose a particular one, or take whatever...

23:36 Speaker 3 He would cut the onion and remove its center. The chrein was a whole undertaking—something astonishing.

23:45 Speaker 4 After the, after the...

23:47 Speaker 3 No, how did he prepare the chrein?

23:49 Speaker 4 Well, what did he do?

23:49 Speaker 3 A ball the size of a ping-pong ball. He took a heaping spoonful of chrein and put it down. He could barely eat it; it was really...

24:01 Speaker 4 A large amount, and he shaped it into a ball.

24:05 Speaker 3 He put three leaves underneath and three leaves on top.

24:11 Speaker 4 And a stalk too.

24:12 Speaker 3 Yes. After that came the moving part, upstairs. [unclear], and afterward they went downstairs. There was a farbrengen. It was a farbrengen that’s hard to forget. One in the morning, you know, half asleep, without any conclusion yet, and the Rebbe is sitting there speaking. There were very interesting sichos. The Rebbe spoke at length. I think so, yes. What was the focus of the sicha? “Mah Nishtanah.” Of all the Rebbe’s maamarim, I had never seen a maamar like that. And I had the privilege of being one of the people who reviewed the maamar afterward. It’s interesting. I don’t know why that maamar was never published. Rabbi Druckman and I worked together on the written transcript. Eventually I saw where things stood. I sent them the transcript several times, and they didn’t publish it. In the end I put it out myself. I wrote “unedited transcript.” “Mah Nishtanah,” 5726. And I heard a very interesting maamar. The Rebbe asked four questions about “Mah Nishtanah.” Do you know it?

25:28 Speaker 4 No.

25:29 Speaker 3 [unclear]. In general, there were special maamarim then. It was a hundred years since the Rebbe Maharash.

25:38 Speaker 4 During the year.

25:39 Speaker 3 No, during the year as well, but especially on Pesach it was like a series. It literally turned day into night.

25:48 Speaker 4 What hundred years since the Rebbe Maharash?

25:50 Speaker 3 It was then—

25:51 Speaker 4 A hundred years since the Rebbe Maharash’s leadership began.

25:52 Speaker 3 Yes.

25:53 Speaker 4 Oh. And a hundred years since the Tzemach Tzedek. The beginning of the Rebbe Maharash’s leadership.

25:57 Speaker 3 The maamarim were based on maamarim from 5626–5627.

26:02 Speaker 4 From the year the Rebbe Maharash assumed the leadership.

26:08 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

26:08 Speaker 4 Wait, so you arrived at the end of [unclear]. In other words, at the end of the year... A hundred years since the Tzemach Tzedek was 5626. So, 5726.

26:20 Speaker 3 Yes.

26:20 Speaker 4 You had already arrived at the beginning of the first year of the Rebbe Maharash’s leadership, a hundred years since that first year. And [unclear] was after Shevi’i shel Pesach.

26:35 Speaker 3 Yes.

26:36 Speaker 4 By the farbrengen, you’d already gotten up to speed; you’d already begun to recognize the style.

26:43 Speaker 3 After the farbrengens—the long, in-depth farbrengens. There was a Rashi sicha; it was a delight. I’ve been hooked on the Rashi sichos ever since. The Rebbe sat like a melamed with a Chumash, and everyone sat with Chumashim.

27:07 Speaker 4 So to speak.

27:07 Speaker 3 They knew the verse in advance. And the Rebbe’s tone was different from at an ordinary farbrengen. Like a melamed: “What is Rashi asking, and what does he answer?” And everyone would look at one another knowingly.

27:26 Speaker 4 What, did someone actually sit there with a Chumash? You’re saying that was a thing—

27:29 Speaker 3 Everyone sat with Chumashim.

27:31 Speaker 4 Really?

27:32 Speaker 3 Yes.

27:32 Speaker 4 The Rebbe also sat with an open Chumash.

27:34 Speaker 3 The Rebbe sat with a Chumash.

27:35 Speaker 4 He opened the Chumash and looked at Rashi?

27:37 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

27:38 Speaker 4 And those older men sitting at the table had a Chumash—

27:41 Speaker 3 You know, no, down below. Yes, they sat there, yes.

27:43 Speaker 4 The people who knew what was coming sat with an open Chumash?

27:45 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes. You could see them grasping the question and the answer, and being amazed. Afterward there was a review with Rabbi [unclear]. What?

28:04 Speaker 4 Say more, say more. It’s interesting to hear how a bochur arrived from Israel. You saw different kinds of people. First of all, you also saw chassidim, as it were—

28:13 Speaker 3 We also had something of a crisis in the move from Reb Shlomo Chaim to 770. I felt that year in particular was a point of transition. We came with a foundation of avodah, hisbonenus, davening, and all that. And there was a group there of Rabbi Yoel’s young men, and they worked on us, saying that wasn’t the main thing; the point was only [unclear], kashrus. They even wanted to separate us from Reb Shlomo Chaim. In their view—or that’s how I felt—Reb Shlomo Chaim was somehow a competitor to the Rebbe. On the one hand, we were enthusiastic. Rabbi Yoel’s young men were no small matter. Who were the prominent ones there? Shalom Yizrachi, Shalom Ber Levitin, Raizel Shapiro. In short, we tried to rise to the level of 770. Then there was—I don’t remember if the decree had already happened or not; you probably remember.

29:40 Speaker 4 Yes.

29:41 Speaker 3 Anyway, we’d go down to the basements and farbreng. A small group of theirs and ours. We were swept up in listening; they’d sing niggunim, and the niggun would end. “Nu, another l’chaim.” And I’m waiting for someone to say something. Another niggun, one that really touched the soul. “Nu, another l’chaim.” Until one day we understood that this wasn’t the way. I also remember an interesting experience. There was some—I don’t remember what it was—some farbrengen in the upstairs zal. They farbrenged all night. Shalom Yizrachi was drunk and lying on the table, his face pressed against it. In the morning, Dovid Raskin arrived for [unclear], and he saw him. Suddenly, from the depths of sleep, he lifted his head and made a gesture like this that took all the wind out of his sails.

31:07 Speaker 4 Answered all his questions.

31:08 Speaker 3 Yes. There was also a period when the fellows there, both from our group and from 770, decided that the Rebbe’s sichos on Nigleh needed to be disseminated. So they paired people up as study partners. Each pair worked on a different sicha. I remember I was with Shochet—not Ezra. Elisha, I think.

31:46 Speaker 4 Yes.

31:47 Speaker 3 And we worked on the sicha about an idolatrous city, a sicha [unclear] with the Rambam. We prepared the sichos so they could be distributed and so on. There was something there, not really connected to the Rebbe himself. I had a disagreement with Rabbi Shochet about what the Rebbe meant. There was a question and an answer, and he wouldn’t agree with me under any circumstances. I did something mischievous. We’d practiced imitating the Rebbe’s handwriting. I went and wrote a question to the Rebbe, and on the question I wrote an answer of my own. When he saw that the Rebbe had answered that way, he agreed with me. That was quite an undertaking.

32:41 Speaker 5 Did you tell him afterward?

32:42 Speaker 3 Yes.

32:45 Speaker 5 And did you study in the small zal, the big zal? Where did you study?

32:47 Speaker 3 Yes, of course, of course. Well, by the way, I’ve remembered something that really is worth publicizing. At first, looking back on that whole experience—today you look at a bookshelf and see forty volumes of the Rebbe’s sichos, and that’s just the edited ones. How many more are there that weren’t edited? Back then all of Likkutei Sichos was four volumes. You can’t imagine it today. All four volumes, and that was everything. There was a sicha there, fitting for next week, Parshas Shelach, about the spies. A straightforward sicha of the Rebbe’s in volume four.

33:32 Speaker 5 A fundamental sicha about the spies.

33:34 Speaker 3 The Rebbe asks a question and gives an answer. I had a major difficulty with both the question and the answer. I asked various rabbis, scholars of Nigleh, and so on. They all said it was a good question and they had no answer. Back then, [unclear] hadn’t become the fashion yet.

33:57 Speaker 5 That started later in Lubavitch.

33:58 Speaker 3 Who dared ask? I said, if everyone has the question and nobody knows the answer, can we just leave it like that? What could happen? Is it forbidden to ask questions? I went and set out my questions. I wrote to the Rebbe: Question A, Question B. I received an answer. What an answer!

34:19 Speaker 5 What?

34:21 Speaker 3 It’s very, very interesting. The Rebbe asks: How did the spies manage to sway the Jewish people when they had been seeing miracles and wonders all along? So the Rebbe answers that the spies’ argument was that you cannot bring proof from the miracles in the desert to what would happen in Eretz Yisroel, where those miracles would cease. Then he asks: So what did Calev accomplish with his words?

34:51 Speaker 5 Just encouragement.

34:52 Speaker 3 Right. So I asked how the Rebbe could say that... Oh, the Rebbe also asks a major question. “Even more astonishing”—that’s the wording—Calev, who was already connected, why didn’t he make this argument to them? “You’ve seen such miracles and wonders. What are you afraid of?” And the Rebbe answers that it wouldn’t have helped, because you couldn’t prove it. So my first question to the Rebbe was: How can you say Calev didn’t say it? According to Rashi, “Was that the only thing the son of Amram did for us?”—all the miracles. What was he going to tell them? They could say to him, “Oh, you’ve discovered America! What does that prove about what will happen there?” Then, after the Rebbe answers that you can’t bring proof, how does Calev bring proof from those events? So the Rebbe answered what I’d written about Rashi. He told me that this wasn’t the main point of Calev’s argument. In other words, it was an argument; he wasn’t saying Calev didn’t say it. It just wasn’t the main argument. But still, even if it isn’t the main argument, it seems untenable. Then he said something else that was wonderful. He said Calev didn’t say only words of encouragement, but also spoke of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

36:20 Speaker 5 Meaning, he did say it.

36:21 Speaker 3 He did say it. And he says, continuing Rashi, “Even if he tells us to make ladders and ascend to heaven, we will succeed in all his words.” So the Rebbe circled “his words”: the success comes because these are Moshe’s words. If so, it makes no difference whether what opposes us is natural or beyond nature. In other words, he brings what is beyond nature into nature. So what difference does it make to you what’s happening in the atmosphere? You’re within the...

36:54 Speaker 5 In other words, the answer is that Calev comes to say that...

36:59 Speaker 3 In other words, even if you say, “I agree with you that you can’t transfer the miracles of the sea from the supernatural into the natural,” here you’re bringing a piece of the supernatural into Eretz Yisroel. So what’s your problem? But afterward, the Rebbe didn’t explain why that wasn’t the main point. That’s the geshmak of the answer, the chassidishe answer. That part you have to work out yourself. I thought this answer was very chassidishe, very beautiful, but it follows their own line of reasoning. It’s as if he’s saying: Indeed, you can’t transfer the miracles of the sea from the supernatural into the natural. In other words, within nature, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is powerless, so to speak. But what am I bringing in?

37:45 Speaker 5 Eretz Yisroel. I’m putting the microphone inside Eretz Yisroel.

37:49 Speaker 3 His main point was that it wasn’t true. Even within nature itself, without Moshe Rabbeinu’s powers, Hakadosh Boruch Hu can bring what is above nature into nature—or [unclear]. It was something like that. That was the first time I received an answer from the Rebbe.

38:06 Speaker 5 You wrote that in the winter, even before your yechidus.

38:09 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes. I don’t know whether it was before or after, but it was...

38:17 Speaker 5 After Shavuos. What was the period of the Six-Day War like? How did you feel?

38:24 Speaker 3 I don’t remember much, but I mainly remember the regular gatherings. That was something. I have letters here that I wrote to my parents.

38:34 Speaker 5 They were living in Bnei Brak.

38:35 Speaker 3 Yes.

38:35 Speaker 5 Were they afraid?

38:37 Speaker 3 No. I reassured them by... I wrote to them that I had seen the Rebbe speak like Yeshayahu the prophet.

38:46 Speaker 5 That’s what you wrote, yes. By “the high ones,” you meant the... the baby.

38:50 Speaker 3 There was talk then about “our brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisroel who are under siege.” That He would save them, and He—He would save them.

39:09 Speaker 5 And that He would certainly save them.

39:10 Speaker 3 Yes, that was how we felt inside. Anyone who asked, “Why is Eretz Yisroel suddenly the safest place?”—the Rebbe wouldn’t even allow talk of missiles.

39:20 Speaker 5 What were they trying to do here? Did you want to...?

39:23 Speaker 3 Of course, the whole world was talking about missiles. How could you remain silent?

39:27 Speaker 5 That’s how he built it up. Later, people also noticed that in Nissan he went to the Ohel every other day, right?

39:33 Speaker 3 I don’t remember.

39:33 Speaker 5 I think I once heard that from Rabbi Nuske Wolf[?].

39:35 Speaker 3 I don’t remember things like that.

39:37 Speaker 5 No, afterward people noticed that he had gone to the Ohel very often, unusually often for Nissan.

39:43 Speaker 3 I wasn’t making that claim.

39:46 Speaker 5 And when you heard about the war, that was... Not like today, when of course you hear immediately, but...

39:55 Speaker 3 Well, there had already been tension for two weeks beforehand.

40:00 Speaker 5 Why?

40:01 Speaker 3 Tension.

40:06 Speaker 5 And then Mivtza Tefillin began.

40:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

40:11 Speaker 5 Did you go out right away?

40:12 Speaker 3 Hmm?

40:13 Speaker 5 Did you go out right away?

40:13 Speaker 3 Of course. Though it was hard back then. Now people are used to it. Back then, standing in the street and putting tefillin on people was really strange.

40:26 Speaker 5 An aside before we continue. On my way here, I thought, I’ll tell you this—you’ll enjoy it. I was at the central bus station in Netanya. I had a few minutes before my bus. I always try to carry tefillin. I have a stand nearby there too; that’s my place of shlichus. There were two fellows who looked like the kind you worked with, as we’ll hear later. Actually, there were three fellows there. One said, “I’ve put them on,” and then said, “Wait.” He said, “Oh, but we have another four minutes before the bus.” I told them, “Good, you’ll manage in four minutes.” One of them said, “I’ve never done this before. Look, explain it to me. Aren’t you surprised?” He told me, “I was born in a place called Cheirut. They made me a bar mitzvah, and it was on Shabbos.” He’s sixteen and a half. He had never put on tefillin. Another one, his friend from somewhere else, from Barkan[?], told me, “I’ve put on tefillin too, and this is...” He had put them on at his bar mitzvah; now was the second time. Anyway, it’s easier now, but even in Eretz Yisroel there are still Jews—

41:20 Speaker 3 Surprises too.

41:21 Speaker 5 Surprises too. Yes. All right, let’s continue. Shavuos 5727[?]. The Rebbe had already spoken a little about Jerusalem. Were you at the meals upstairs?

41:31 Speaker 3 There was also, how do you put it, a whole series of sichos about the mivtzoim. That was something.

41:37 Speaker 5 That was later, in the winter of 5728[?].

41:39 Speaker 3 Yes.

41:40 Speaker 5 About Mivtza Tefillin, when the Rebbe answered all the—

41:42 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes.

41:42 Speaker 5 There was an accounting in 5728[?].

41:43 Speaker 3 It was amazing. Every Shabbos there were sichos that everyone listened to.

41:51 Speaker 5 As though he were answering the objections.

41:52 Speaker 3 Yes. Someone said, “Yitzchak loved Eisav because game was in his mouth,” about the previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak—that he loved secular Jews, gave encouragement—

42:08 Speaker 5 [unclear] said that.

42:10 Speaker 3 Wow, the Rebbe was shaken by it. “[unclear].” A matter involving—

42:17 Speaker 5 Yitzchak.

42:18 Speaker 3 Yitzchak Avinu, yes.

42:21 Speaker 5 The Rebbe maintained that he had to travel to Me’aras Hamachpelah to ask forgiveness.

42:24 Speaker 3 Yes. And the answers he gave to all the questions. We also had an incident, unrelated to the Rebbe, with Reuven Dunin[?]. Once he was standing at the central bus station, and someone said to him, “How can you put tefillin on people? You need a clean body.” So he said, “Let’s do a joint campaign. You work on the clean body, and I’ll work on the tefillin.”

42:56 Speaker 5 Were you at the meals upstairs on Shavuos?

42:58 Speaker 3 No, no.

42:59 Speaker 5 Bochurim went upstairs.

42:59 Speaker 3 No. Only when I was with my family, you know.

43:07 Speaker 5 Did they go up on Pesach?

43:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

43:12 Speaker 5 All right, we come to the yechidus. How long beforehand did you prepare?

43:20 Speaker 3 Prepare? A few weeks.

43:30 Speaker 5 What was the final part of the preparation?

43:32 Speaker 3 Hmm?

43:32 Speaker 5 What was the final part of the preparation? Did someone guide you?

43:35 Speaker 3 We learned the Rebbe’s maamarim. Davening, Krias Shema before going to bed, things like that.

43:49 Speaker 5 Was there someone who guided you? Did you go ask anyone anything?

43:53 Speaker 3 Mainly what we received from the shluchim.

43:59 Speaker 5 When was the yechidus?

44:01 Speaker 3 Toward the end of Menachem Av, something like that. I remember it was Parshas Re’eh, because of something the Rebbe said to me in yechidus from the parsha. “[unclear].” One can, but one is not permitted.

44:19 Speaker 5 So, roughly when did you go in? In the middle of the night?

44:25 Speaker 3 Something like that. I don’t remember the exact details.

44:27 Speaker 5 What did you write—of what you can tell us?

44:32 Speaker 3 Who I am—

44:33 Speaker 5 Really, what does one write? You tell him who you are, sort of? How does it work?

44:35 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. Who am I? What am I? What do I do? What don’t I do?

44:45 Speaker 5 What did you ask?

44:46 Speaker 3 What did I ask? Oh, yes, I had a question... As you know, I suffer from melancholy. So I said I had a problem with levity. Yes, I remember that. Something about it interfering with my seriousness in Chassidus. I know things are written about it, and... So I wrote to ask what to do about the levity. It’s interesting—the Rebbe loves every Jew. So he said—

45:25 Speaker 5 “Regarding what you write about vitality...”

45:31 Speaker 3 Vitality. “Then study Derech Chaim.”

45:39 Speaker 5 By the Mitteler Rebbe.

45:41 Speaker 3 Yes.

45:43 Speaker 5 Wait, let’s go back a bit. How was the... How was the Rebbe sitting? How did you enter?

45:51 Speaker 3 Well, you see, the Rebbe was sitting—

45:52 Speaker 5 I have no picture of it; I don’t know anything.

45:53 Speaker 3 Beside the desk, at an angle like this.

45:57 Speaker 5 Ah, at an angle. Facing toward the window?

46:00 Speaker 3 No, toward the door. You go in and hand over the note to—

46:05 Speaker 5 You put it in his hand?

46:06 Speaker 3 Yes, exactly. The Rebbe said that putting it down wasn’t good.

46:10 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

46:13 Speaker 3 That’s it. The Rebbe begins reading. What was amazing was the way the Rebbe read. He held it on his fingers like a typewriter. Turned it, turned it. Then, suddenly, he began answering.

46:25 Speaker 5 How many pages was it? One page?

46:27 Speaker 3 Two. No, not very much. He began answering.

46:33 Speaker 5 Did he mark it first with a pencil?

46:37 Speaker 3 He asked me, “What is your father’s name?” I had written, “Reb [unclear].” [Unclear] he asked that for... You’ll be surprised to hear that throughout my life I went to the Rebbe several times. Only once was I there for Rosh Hashanah with the group. Apart from that, I was never there for Rosh Hashanah, so the shofar blowing is a vague memory. I was always a teacher in educational institutions. I couldn’t travel for Rosh Hashanah. My time for traveling was Chanukah, in Kislev.

48:43 Speaker 6 So what do you remember? Selichos before Rosh Hashanah of 5728. Then they arrived... For me it was what my grandfather had done.

48:56 Speaker 3 Yes.

48:56 Speaker 6 Our only tish. By then some Jews from Russia had already arrived, well...

49:00 Speaker 3 What do you mean?

49:00 Speaker 6 Jews who had left Russia had also begun to trickle in.

49:02 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes.

49:06 Speaker 6 There was a maamar.

49:09 Speaker 3 Oh, there was a maamar—

49:10 Speaker 6 It began by speaking about...

49:13 Speaker 3 The [unclear] of [unclear].

49:15 Speaker 6 Three maamarim, four maamarim.

49:16 Speaker 3 I know the one that’s now in—

49:19 Speaker 6 The Melukat[?]

49:20 Speaker 3 The Melukat.

49:20 Speaker 6 Yes, in the Melukat.

49:21 Speaker 3 An amazing maamar. There the Rebbe spoke about how the matter of [unclear] had already begun.

49:35 Speaker 6 But before that, on Shavuos, the Rebbe insisted that people believe that a million Jews were putting on tefillin.

49:42 Speaker 3 Yes.

49:42 Speaker 6 As a result of Mivtza Tefillin. The Rebbe also connected it to that then.

49:45 Speaker 3 Yes, it was a tremendous leap for all of us. Everyone got up and started putting tefillin on people.

49:55 Speaker 6 Do you remember the maamar?

49:57 Speaker 3 Which one?

49:58 Speaker 6 [unclear].

50:00 Speaker 3 Yes.

50:00 Speaker 6 Not that “they would come” one.

50:01 Speaker 3 Yes.

50:03 Speaker 6 You remember less about the shofar blowing.

50:06 Speaker 3 It’s vague. I remember the Rebbe standing for the shofar blowing, the tallis, the pushing.

50:16 Speaker 6 Yom Kippur of 5730[?]. Wow. Come on, tell us.

50:22 Speaker 3 I was there for Yom Kippur on other occasions too. After Rosh Hashanah, I traveled there for Yom Kippur. I don’t remember which year it was when there was that dancing. I think it was during the Yom Kippur War. He stood with the tallis over him, you could hear crying, and he danced on the chair for a long time.

50:55 Speaker 6 Everyone describes the jump onto the chair, but I never... I arrived in 5730[?] at the place by the steps. The jump onto the chair—how exactly did it happen? Did he suddenly jump up?

51:08 Speaker 3 Whether he jumped or not... After that we came to Eretz Yisroel.

51:22 Speaker 6 Wait, before you returned to Eretz Yisroel, we have a little more time. Another... another... another Rosh Hashanah, the cycle of events—do you remember? The jump?

51:32 Speaker 3 It’s hazy.

51:33 Speaker 6 Don’t be so analytical. Share a little of what you felt.

51:36 Speaker 3 I don’t remember. It’s all hazy.

51:50 Speaker 6 Sichos.

51:51 Speaker 3 He told me I have a cardiological problem. “Cold-iology.”

51:58 Speaker 6 Yes, I understood. I’m not willing to accept that. You’re not that cold. You had a second yechidus before you traveled. Was the yechidus for your birthday?

52:16 Speaker 3 The first one was for my birthday.

52:17 Speaker 6 Ah, [unclear].

52:21 Speaker 3 Not on the day—before my birthday, on 10 Elul.

52:31 Speaker 6 Three months. [unclear].

52:39 Speaker 3 Were there interesting things with the other fellows in yechidus then? With... someone who had been there a long time, something interesting? He was with the Rebbe for a long time, and Leibel went in and the Rebbe sent him out.

52:57 Speaker 6 Yehoshua was in your group—he came with you. Yehoshua was with you; he arrived on Pesach at [unclear]?

53:03 Speaker 3 He told me that in the middle of yechidus, he suddenly saw the Rebbe reaching for the—

53:08 Speaker 6 Buzzer.

53:09 Speaker 3 The buzzer, and he got frightened. Reb Leibel came in, the Rebbe told him not to interrupt, and he nearly fell over. There was one of the guys, I think—

53:23 Speaker 6 So why did the Rebbe use the buzzer?

53:25 Speaker 3 I don’t know. He kept coming in and interrupting, so the Rebbe told him to stop.

53:29 Speaker 6 Ah, the buzzer was to tell him not to come in. What happened in the yechidus? What did Yehoshua tell me?

53:35 Speaker 3 I don’t know if he told much. They said there was someone there, I think his name was Dov Cohen, from Nachlas Har Chabad. He went in to the Rebbe—

53:48 Speaker 6 Shomer.

53:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

53:49 Speaker 6 My uncle.

53:50 Speaker 3 Yes.

53:50 Speaker 6 He went with Dov.

53:51 Speaker 3 He got mixed up and handed the Rebbe the blank sheet. The Rebbe gave him all the answers. He was stunned when he went to write down the answers and took out the Rebbe’s sheet. Stories like that.

54:15 Speaker 6 By the way, what happened later that winter with the bachurim?

54:19 Speaker 3 Yes.

54:20 Speaker 6 Was there any special attention from the Rebbe? At the davening, at the farbrengens?

54:26 Speaker 3 Yes. I remember that during the first few weeks, we were quite mesmerized by the Rebbe. I remember something too, though I don’t know when it was—maybe you’ll know. There was some occasion when the Rebbe was davening on a weekday, with his tefillin on upstairs.

54:46 Speaker 6 It could have been Erev Rosh Hashanah, or Erev Yom Kippur, or Purim.

54:54 Speaker 3 Anyway, we were standing there watching, and suddenly the Rebbe turned to us, gestured with his hand, and said, “Ir shteit in tefillin, vos davent ir nisht?”

55:06 Speaker 6 “You’re standing there wearing tefillin—why aren’t you davening?” Something like that?

55:11 Speaker 3 Yes, as if to say, “Why are you looking at me like that?” Now, by the way, I’ve remembered something else that was beautiful. Anyone who remembers the Rebbe at Maariv knows he would come in through the door on the left, adjust his gartel, and sit down. Now, at Shema, the Rebbe would always gesture with his hand like this and move his head right, left, forward, back, up, and down, accepting Hashem’s sovereignty in heaven. And we loved watching the Rebbe do that. So in the middle of Shema, even though he had said, “Vos, vos,” we would open—

55:56 Speaker 6 Half a hand.

55:57 Speaker 3 Half a hand, and watch how the Rebbe moved his head. It was fascinating. I remember one Maariv: the Rebbe came in on an ordinary weekday, and when it came to Shema, the Rebbe put up his hand but didn’t move his head.

56:11 Speaker 6 No, he didn’t move his head from side to side.

56:14 Speaker 3 I knew that when something is a custom, it doesn’t change. I started wondering what had happened. While I was still thinking about it, he raised his hand again and did this.

56:28 Speaker 6 Shema again? How could that be?

56:30 Speaker 3 Wait! I’m telling you what I saw.

56:32 Speaker 6 Go on.

56:33 Speaker 3 I didn’t ask him what he’d done, but this is how I understood it: apparently he had come in a few seconds late. The chazzan had started Borchu, and he hadn’t said it yet. So when they reached Shema, he had to make it look as though he was keeping up with everyone else. He put his hand up like this, but he wasn’t there yet, so he didn’t move his head.

57:01 Speaker 6 It wasn’t his Shema; he just put his hand over his eyes.

57:03 Speaker 3 What I learned from that is that none of the Rebbe’s movements are without purpose. It reminded me of when I was still in Brisk. One of the books that first brought me close to Chassidus was Amud Ha’emes, about Kotzk. I loved the sayings in it. There are some very strange sayings there that you have to be a chossid to understand. I remember one that I didn’t understand; then it clicked. It says there that a chossid who doesn’t believe that when the Rebbe shakes his shtreimel, all seven heavens shake, isn’t a chossid. I said, it was Purim, vacation time, and you’re beginning to realize that you’re going back to Israel. Yes, yes.

59:29 Speaker 6 And...?

59:31 Speaker 3 And they sent us there, to Tirat Sams [unclear].

59:34 Speaker 6 Wait, wait—before that. Didn’t you go in for yechidus before you went back?

59:38 Speaker 3 Yes, but there wasn’t anything in particular.

59:40 Speaker 6 What happened?

59:40 Speaker 3 In yechidus we received blessings and so on. There wasn’t anything special. Only special people have something special happen.

59:54 Speaker 6 It’s not so easy to be ordinary, you know. But you were leaving without knowing when you’d come back next. You were going to Israel.

1:00:02 Speaker 3 Yes. Back then, there wasn’t this idea that you had to travel to the Rebbe every year.

1:00:07 Speaker 6 And you arrived at Tirat Sams [unclear], you say.

1:00:11 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:00:12 Speaker 6 Did you already know you were going to Tirat Sams [unclear]? Was there an instruction? Was there something from the Rebbe about it?

1:00:15 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes. At Tirat Sams [unclear], Shlomo Cohen and Yossi Segev were also there. They were already married and serving as mashpi’im. We would also go into the yeshivos of the misnagdim.

1:00:38 Speaker 6 Where? Where were you learning then?

1:00:42 Speaker 3 In Bnei Brak too. The quickest way was this: Dovid Nachshon and I were a pair, and we would go to yeshivos in Bnei Brak. How could we get talking to the students? You can’t just come in with a [unclear]. We would meet bachurim and ask where they learned and what they were learning in yeshiva. They would tell us [unclear], and then describe the sugya. Neither of us was a great scholar, but once we heard the sugya, we started asking them questions about it and tried to offer answers too. That led to a friendship. We asked what else they studied. “Mussar.” “What’s mussar?” They started talking. We explored it with them, and eventually told them that there was a whole dimension of Yiddishkeit beyond that. We gave many Tanya classes in Bnei Brak.

1:01:45 Speaker 6 Where?

1:01:47 Speaker 3 I don’t remember.

1:01:50 Speaker 6 At the booth [unclear].

1:01:51 Speaker 3 Hmm?

1:01:51 Speaker 6 At the booth [unclear].

1:01:52 Speaker 3 At the booth [unclear]? No.

1:01:54 Speaker 6 All right. And when did you next travel to the Rebbe?

1:02:02 Speaker 3 As a bachur.

1:02:04 Speaker 6 You didn’t come back again as a bachur.

1:02:07 Speaker 3 By the time I went again, I was already married.

1:02:09 Speaker 6 You married Rabbi Zalman Levin’s daughter.

1:02:11 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:02:12 Speaker 6 And then came the instruction to go to Nachlas Har Chabad?

1:02:15 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:02:17 Speaker 6 Was it a personal instruction, or was there a general arrangement for everyone?

1:02:20 Speaker 3 They asked who wanted to go. We were among the first ten. We went to Nachlas Har Chabad. A few months after we married, there was a period when we lived in a rented place in Bnei Brak.

1:02:36 Speaker 6 Ah, so after you married, you lived there in Bnei Brak.

1:02:38 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

1:02:39 Speaker 6 Where?

1:02:39 Speaker 3 Ravusha [unclear].

1:02:45 Speaker 6 Right. Then you came to Nachlas Har Chabad.

1:02:51 Speaker 3 At first we were in kollel. After that, I started working at the vocational school as an educational instructor.

1:02:57 Speaker 6 The vocational school in Kfar Chabad or in Nachlas Har Chabad?

1:02:58 Speaker 3 No, in Nachlas Har Chabad.

1:03:00 Speaker 6 Nachlas Har Chabad.

1:03:01 Speaker 3 With Yossi Hartman. That was the beginning of my work in education.

1:03:06 Speaker 6 The early 5730s.

1:03:08 Speaker 3 Hmm?

1:03:08 Speaker 6 The early 5730s.

1:03:10 Speaker 3 Something like that. I’m not good with dates.

1:03:13 Speaker 6 I’ll help you. And you still hadn’t traveled to the Rebbe. You hadn’t gone since the wedding.

1:03:21 Speaker 3 I don’t remember when I went. I went a few times. By the way, there’s another interesting story about traveling to the Rebbe. Again, I don’t remember the years. One year, my inner chossid suddenly asserted itself, and I decided I had to travel to the Rebbe. My wife was in the early stages of pregnancy, so she didn’t like the idea—especially since we already had a few children—and here I was, playing the devoted chossid. Why should I listen to my wife? “Ishto k’gufo” [unclear].

1:04:02 Speaker 6 After all, my inner chossid had asserted itself.

1:04:04 Speaker 3 Yes. So I sat down to write. In those days you didn’t just travel; you wrote a letter to the Rebbe asking whether you could come. My wife was very upset when she found out I was writing to the Rebbe. She realized I was serious. Really. Well, I sent the letter to the Rebbe. Not two weeks had passed before a written reply arrived: “Regarding his letter of such-and-such a date, the Rebbe shlita saw fit to ask whether he discussed this with his wife, may she live and be well.” Amazing, isn’t it? I hadn’t written that I missed him.

1:04:40 Speaker 6 He asked about your wife.

1:04:41 Speaker 3 So I worked on it. What can I say? Shalom bayis.

1:04:49 Speaker 6 And then you moved on—you worked at the school with Menachem and...?

1:04:52 Speaker 3 That was hard work. I’ll admit my shortcomings: back then I didn’t yet know how to educate. I gave a lot of punishments and writing assignments, and—

1:05:04 Speaker 6 Like that generation.

1:05:06 Speaker 3 It wasn’t good. But that’s where I slowly began to enter the world of education.

1:05:14 Speaker 6 And then you had some kind of bar mitzvah program.

1:05:16 Speaker 3 Yes. That was interesting. In Ashdod there was a school principal named Katzir. I don’t know what came over her that she decided—Ruchama Katzir—that the children knew nothing about Yiddishkeit. She wanted a bar mitzvah course for seventh grade. She had no connection to me; I didn’t know her. But Meir Lerer and Yossel Blau were in touch with her. I don’t know how. She asked for a program like that, and they approached me. I don’t know why they approached me. I wasn’t a campus rabbi yet or anything, but they asked if I was willing to take it on. I said yes. I prepared very thoroughly. I understood there was no point in just teaching them the haftorah and things like that. We had to give them Yiddishkeit. That was the first time I began thinking about how to bring emunah to them in a way they could understand. I imagined what questions a secular child might have, what might trouble him, and built a series of lessons around that. It was a tremendous success. She was very enthusiastic, and the children responded very well. She publicized it, and the following year several more schools wanted it.

1:06:58 Speaker 6 In Ashdod.

1:06:59 Speaker 3 Yes. That’s how it spread. Eventually she became the supervisor for the southern district, and all the schools in the district—twenty-five of them, in Be’er Sheva, Ashdod, and Ashkelon—went through the bar mitzvah program. It lasted a third of the school year, twelve lectures. The first lectures covered the fundamentals of faith, and the last ones dealt with putting on tefillin: how you do it and what it means. Afterward, they would bring the class to Nachlas Har Chabad for Shabbos and place all the students with families. On Motzaei Shabbos the parents would come, and we’d have a huge celebration together. That went on for six years. Later I’d meet young men who’d say, “Weren’t you in our seventh-grade class once?” There were a lot of—

1:07:59 Speaker 6 Did you write to the Rebbe about it?

1:08:00 Speaker 3 Of course. What—

1:08:01 Speaker 6 What happened?

1:08:05 Speaker 3 Blessings and so on. We received a letter then, [unclear]. All sorts of handwritten replies like that.

1:08:23 Speaker 6 As part of a general response.

1:08:24 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. After six years there, the university story came along.

1:08:39 Speaker 6 How did that come about? How did it start?

1:08:41 Speaker 3 Branover worked at the university, and he saw there was nothing there in terms of Yiddishkeit. He was on the university senate, so he worked from the inside to persuade them that they needed a rabbi. Eventually he convinced them, and they said, “Fine, bring us a candidate.” He already knew about the classes I gave in the secular schools, so he offered it to me. It really appealed to me, but there were two problems. There was also the vocational school. Oh, sorry—to work full-time for the Ministry of Education, I would have had to leave the vocational school, and Yossi Hartman wasn’t very happy about that. He said, “Your shlichus is here,” while I wanted to branch out. So we asked the Rebbe. The Rebbe gave a very—I’ve already published it—a very interesting answer: “Institutions should not take staff from one another [unclear], unless it is by agreement and on the advice of friends.”

1:10:05 Speaker 6 There’s no reason for institutions to snatch employees from one another—

1:10:09 Speaker 3 Just like that. If it can be arranged, it should be by agreement.

1:10:13 Speaker 6 That was before the university.

1:10:14 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:10:14 Speaker 6 The Ashdod work didn’t interfere with the vocational school?

1:10:17 Speaker 3 Ashdod alone didn’t, but afterward it grew into six years of an official position with the Ministry of Education, with a salary from the ministry.

1:10:26 Speaker 6 Ah, and that was when you received that answer?

1:10:28 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:10:30 Speaker 6 So what happened? Did Yossi agree?

1:10:31 Speaker 3 In the end, he agreed.

1:10:32 Speaker 6 On the advice of friends, and they said it wasn’t [unclear].

1:10:35 Speaker 3 Later, when I needed to move to the university, there was a problem with Lipa Kurzweil, [unclear].

1:10:41 Speaker 6 Because Lipa had organized [unclear].

1:10:43 Speaker 3 He was behind the bar mitzvah program. Without him, it wouldn’t have worked. He provided all the— So he insisted: “You’re running away from the work. You belong here. Your shlichus is in Nachlas Har Chabad.” All right, I asked the Rebbe. The Rebbe told me to seek the advice of friends, so I did. Here too, each person consults friends who will tell him yes, and I got a yes. But the move was still hard. My wife, too, was attached to Nachlas Har Chabad, with all her friends there, and suddenly we were moving to Be’er Sheva. A desert.

1:11:35 Speaker 6 There was nothing there.

1:11:36 Speaker 3 Yes, almost nothing. And—

1:11:40 Speaker 6 There wasn’t even a place there, [unclear].

1:11:43 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. Anyway, after I had already asked and she had agreed, it was still weighing on her. Yossi Hartman came and said to me, “Look, that isn’t fair. You wrote, you went to people who hadn’t heard Shari’s side of it,” and so on. In short, he pressed me.

1:12:07 Speaker 6 A cousin.

1:12:08 Speaker 3 Yes, he pressed me, and we wrote to the Rebbe again. Some people say this, others say that. The Rebbe’s answer was interesting: “I hope [unclear] the advice of friends, or the advice of the majority of those asked.” Then we asked again, consulted people, and moved. But the whole time, fear was eating at me. I kept telling myself, “You’re a traitor. You abandoned it.” It weighed on me. I won’t tell you it didn’t; it weighed on me. Then, after we’d been in Be’er Sheva for a year, my wife and I traveled to the Rebbe and decided—for the first time; I don’t know why we hadn’t done it before. It was known that the Rebbe wanted photos of the shluchim. We went to a photographer and had a picture taken of the whole family. To make it presentable, I put the picture in a cardboard frame, and we traveled to the Rebbe. Now, at that time my wife and I went in to the Rebbe together, but by then you no longer brought a letter into yechidus. You wrote all your questions in advance.

1:13:30 Speaker 6 To the secretariat.

1:13:31 Speaker 3 They would bring it in to the Rebbe. The Rebbe would answer in writing, and the next day you would go in just to receive blessings. Anyway, we had several weighty questions. We didn’t ask the Rebbe questions just anyone could answer—there were various things we were struggling with. One of them was this. I wrote to the Rebbe that Rabbi Grossfeld [unclear] kept saying I shouldn’t have come, and so on. I phrased it somewhat cleverly. I wrote, “I hope that in moving to Be’er Sheva we acted in accordance with the intention. If so, we ask whether to sell our apartment in Nachlas Har Chabad and buy a permanent home in Be’er Sheva.” On “acted in accordance with the intention,” the Rebbe answered yes, and instructed us to sell the apartment in Be’er Sheva. Then I knew I was covered. But what was interesting about that letter? It contained about five long, long questions. Binyamin Klein called me over and said, “Answers have arrived from the Rebbe.” He gave me an envelope. It couldn’t be taken out of the office. I opened it and nearly fainted. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anything like it. Have you ever seen paper that’s been shredded? It was as though someone had torn my letter into tiny pieces. I said, “What’s this? The Rebbe has returned the letter in shreds?” I opened it up, and what did I see? Something amazing. There were intimate questions in there, and the Rebbe didn’t want even the—

1:15:21 Speaker 6 Secretaries.

1:15:21 Speaker 3 Secretaries to set eyes on them. With his own holy hands, he had read each entire question and left only the end: “Should we do this or that?” Five times. It was amazing.

1:15:34 Speaker 6 So that no one would see a personal question.

1:15:36 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like it. Afterward, the two of us went in to the Rebbe for yechidus. I had written to the Rebbe that I wanted to present him with a photo of the family during yechidus. In his reply, the Rebbe wrote that I should put the names on the back.

1:16:00 Speaker 6 Write the names on the back of the photo.

1:16:02 Speaker 3 I wrote the names on the back of the photo, but to make it presentable I put it in a cardboard frame. I went in holding the picture, and when the Rebbe finished the yechidus, I handed it to him. The Rebbe took the picture and gave this smile, like a grandfather seeing his grandchildren. What a smile. Pure joy. Then he turned it over. But there was the cardboard, and he had asked me to write the names.

1:16:31 Speaker 6 That’s what he said.

1:16:31 Speaker 3 Yes. I told him, “I wrote them inside.” “Ah, all right.” Don’t be too clever; don’t do that.

1:16:48 Speaker 6 Were there other efforts connected with the university in Be’er Sheva?

1:16:53 Speaker 3 They were mainly Branover’s.

1:16:57 Speaker 6 In other words, you were, so to speak, working on Branover’s behalf, right?

1:16:59 Speaker 3 Yes, officially. Back then there wasn’t this distinction of shliach or not a shliach. I received a position from the university, which was unusual. There was also a campus rabbi in Haifa and one at Mount Scopus, but they were appointed by outside organizations. I received my position from the institution itself.

1:17:22 Speaker 6 That had a tremendous impact. There were many young people who—

1:17:25 Speaker 3 To tell the truth, not tremendous. Why? As I told you earlier, I was approaching it intellectually. I came there intending to bring about change, to bring people closer to Yiddishkeit, that sort of thing. I did mivtzoim too. For instance, one thing I consider a failure on my part is that I had almost no contact with the president.

1:17:53 Speaker 6 Of the university.

1:17:54 Speaker 3 Other people knew the president and knew this person and that person. My contact was only with students. I gave a course there called “Me and My Jewish Identity.” It was the beginning, the source, and the foundation of “Knowing How to Believe.” The course had about twelve classes covering all the fundamentals of faith. I even collected money for a raffle among the participants for a plane ticket to the Rebbe. And many, many people became baalei teshuvah through that course.

1:18:38 Speaker 6 So the results were tremendous.

1:18:41 Speaker 3 Yes, but not in terms of numbers.

1:18:43 Speaker 6 Today, Chabad on Campus is cultivating the seeds you planted.

1:18:46 Speaker 3 Yes, exactly. It’s unbelievable.

1:18:51 Speaker 6 And do you know whether Branover corresponded with the Rebbe about your activities?

1:18:56 Speaker 3 Yes, there was contact with—

1:19:00 Speaker 6 About the children’s education in Be’er Sheva. Did you write?

1:19:05 Speaker 3 We wrote, but there wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy. We established a Chabad cheder there. At first there were very few of us, barely a minyan, and fortunately the fellows agreed. It took mesirus nefesh for them to arrange to get to campus on Shabbos to daven; otherwise there wouldn’t have been a Chabad minyan. They walked kilometers to get there, and we davened there all the time. As for the children, I enrolled my daughter in Beis Yaakov—there was nothing else. I didn’t want to put the boys in an independent religious school, so we went to a Yiddish-speaking Satmar cheder there. We enrolled them there.

1:20:07 Speaker 6 Run by a Teitelbaum.

1:20:08 Speaker 3 Yes, I said—

1:20:09 Speaker 6 Oskov [unclear], Oskov [unclear].

1:20:10 Speaker 3 Oskov [unclear].

1:20:10 Speaker 6 Oskov [unclear].

1:20:11 Speaker 3 We said there should be a place there to teach. In short, they got to work. My son came home from cheder. “Nu, what did you learn?” “Vayisa lecha od gisi [?], vayisa lecha od gisi [?].” What’s “gisi [?]”? What does it mean? “I don’t know, that’s what they said.” I went to the head of the cheder and said, “What is this? Teach them in Hebrew.” He said, “Our first priority is to teach Yiddish, and then Chumash.” First Yiddish, then Chumash. We saw it wasn’t working. “Oy, ale Mitzrayim, oy, ale Mitzrayim.” In short, we established a cheder. Medli Kachavsky [?] was there too. There were already eight children. Look how far it’s grown today in Be’er Sheva—an educational empire.

1:21:08 Speaker 6 There were the tapes, the—

1:21:10 Speaker 3 Tapes.

1:21:11 Speaker 6 Tapes. That’s what I grew up on.

1:21:14 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:21:14 Speaker 6 Did the Rebbe respond to that?

1:21:17 Speaker 3 I have a picture here of me giving the Rebbe tapes.

1:21:27 Speaker 6 Here, at dollars.

1:21:31 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:21:31 Speaker 6 Those are the tapes on Tanya.

1:21:32 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:21:35 Speaker 6 Before that, Binyamin Rabinowitz from Bnei Brak used to make the lecture tapes. Right?

1:21:40 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes. This one is still Binyamin’s.

1:21:44 Speaker 6 Mm. That had an enormous impact. Back then there wasn’t—

1:21:49 Speaker 3 It was distributed very widely. Afterward Bernstock [?] was involved.

1:21:57 Speaker 6 Yes, that was already in the eighties. But did you write to the Rebbe about it? Was there a response from the Rebbe?

1:22:02 Speaker 3 We wrote about everything. There was also a period when we held seminars for baalei teshuvah.

1:22:12 Speaker 6 Yes, and once you even brought Chaim Shalom, right?

1:22:15 Speaker 3 I didn’t bring him. They organized it. There was Chaim Shalom, Pikarsky [?], Weber. They handled the technical arrangements, and we also brought Rabbi Hess from Bar-Ilan University. We gave lectures, yes. Our approach was that we didn’t do programs for beginners. Arachim already did enough for beginners. So we held them for Arachim graduates who were looking for something deeper, and there were a lot of them. We held several seminars like that. They were very successful.

1:23:09 Speaker 6 Any other special things you remember [?]? Your parents wrote to the Rebbe; they had a connection.

1:23:14 Speaker 3 Mm?

1:23:14 Speaker 6 Did your parents have a connection with the Rebbe?

1:23:18 Speaker 3 Right from the beginning.

1:23:19 Speaker 6 What?

1:23:21 Speaker 3 That story has already been told, too.

1:23:23 Speaker 6 Every—thing.

1:23:27 Speaker 3 As soon as I entered yeshivah, the first thing was “Honor your father and your mother.”

1:23:34 Speaker 6 Honor.

1:23:36 Speaker 3 I started to— My father wasn’t a Litvak, but he wasn’t a Chabadnik either. He belonged to Klal Yisroel. We used to go daven at the Alexander shul in Bnei Brak, with the grandfather of the present Alexander Rebbe. And... fine, I moved to Chabad; he didn’t mind. I began telling him to write to the Rebbe. He was genuinely humble. He said to me, “What would I write to the Rebbe? Would he even respond to me? When you write to the Rebbe, mention me.” I kept pressing him: “You’ll see, you’ll get a response.” And Boruch Hashem, he had no particular problem then. If he’d had a problem, he might have written, but Boruch Hashem, he was healthy, his livelihood was fine, everything. Eventually he did me a favor and wrote a fairly general letter asking for a brachah, and we sent it to the Rebbe. In those years there weren’t so many chassidim. The Rebbe would answer. You could tell any soldier in the central Nahal unit, “Write to the Rebbe,” and within two weeks he’d have a reply. So now I’m waiting for a letter from the Rebbe. My father grew interested. A month goes by, two months—no answer. My father wasn’t offended. He said, “I told you—who’s going to answer me?” Another half-year went by, and even I had given up. I confess my sins today: I thought, why? Why is he doing this to me? Every little nobody writes to the Rebbe and gets an answer. I came over from Brisk. Nothing—give me something! Well, you don’t question it. So I put the whole thing aside.

1:25:27 Speaker 7 You switched off that belief.

1:25:28 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, I pushed it out of my mind. A whole year passed, and I’d forgotten the entire business. One day I came home on a Shabbos break, and my mother came upstairs and told me, “A letter arrived from the Rebbe.” “How? What?” She told me what had happened. My father worked as a shochet in Tel Aviv, at Gassas. He came back by bus. We lived on what we called the Black Road, the Petach Tikvah road.

1:26:01 Speaker 7 It’s called Jabotinsky Street.

1:26:02 Speaker 3 He crossed the road carelessly, and a taxi came and hit him. My father was, compared with me, a quarter of my size.

1:26:13 Speaker 7 Thin.

1:26:14 Speaker 3 More than thin! He should have been broken to pieces. Boruch Hashem, he took a blow, but managed to get up and limp home. The letter arrived that very day.

1:26:28 Speaker 7 The day of the accident.

1:26:29 Speaker 3 That very day. When he got home and my wife—ah, my mother—saw him, she was frightened. She put compresses on him and so on. Two hours later she remembered: “Oh, a letter arrived from the Rebbe.” That’s what she told me when I came home. I was stunned. Could I see the letter? My father had written his letter on Chanukah. The reply said, “These days are the days of Chanukah, auspicious days,” and so on. It was a fairly general letter. And at the bottom, in the Rebbe’s own handwriting, was: “With a blessing for a speedy recovery and a good Pesach.” And that’s not all. I said, “Bring me the letter.” What do I see? My father had written his letter on Chanukah, and the reply was dated during Chanukah. How could that be? He wrote on Chanukah, and there was already a reply on Chanukah! The Rebbe had answered the letter right then, at the time—he answered immediately. The letter had been held, and it arrived on exactly the right day, at the right hour. You ask whether my parents had a connection with the Rebbe? From then on. My father merited something that’s engraved on his gravestone. He passed away at fifty-three.

1:28:05 Speaker 7 Fifty-three. I went with you a few times when I was on my way to [unclear]; we were friends, study partners.

1:28:13 Speaker 3 Yes. So the gravestone says, “Dedicated to establishing his holiness until the coming of Moshiach, the King Moshiach.”

1:28:29 Speaker 7 Was there anything about the style of the lectures, of what you said?

1:28:32 Speaker 3 Mm?

1:28:32 Speaker 7 About the style of the lectures—did the Rebbe comment on that?

1:28:39 Speaker 3 No.

1:28:40 Speaker 7 Not earlier either, in the thirties...?

1:28:43 Speaker 3 There were various replies, with blessings for success and so on [?].

1:28:46 Speaker 7 Brachahs, but was there also anything about the style, about the—

1:28:49 Speaker 3 No, no. Of course I reported on it.

1:28:57 Speaker 7 You made sure the people you brought closer wrote to the Rebbe.

1:29:01 Speaker 3 Certainly.

1:29:04 Speaker 7 Did any of them mention that they had come closer through you?

1:29:06 Speaker 3 Where?

1:29:07 Speaker 7 To the Rebbe?

1:29:08 Speaker 3 Certainly.

1:29:09 Speaker 7 Was there a response from—

1:29:11 Speaker 3 Perhaps they received one; I don’t know. Later, Tanya classes also began to develop in Be’er Sheva itself, including Tanya classes for women. And by then I had also started classes on the Rebbe’s explanations of Rashi. On weekdays there was a group of serious listeners. Ever since, all these years, I’ve been giving classes on Rashi and classes on Tanya.

1:29:46 Speaker 7 For many good years to come.

1:29:48 Speaker 3 Mm?

1:29:48 Speaker 7 For many good years to come.

1:29:50 Speaker 3 Amen, amen. By the way, this very week or next week, another volume of Mayanei Rashi is due to come out—on Bereishis and Shemos alone, 450 pages.

1:30:08 Speaker 7 Like an ever-flowing spring. Here’s Naveh.

1:30:12 Speaker 3 And it pains me that it doesn’t reach Litvish circles.

1:30:16 Speaker 7 It doesn’t reach them enough.

1:30:17 Speaker 3 Yes. It’s a wonderful creation of the Rebbe’s.

1:30:27 Speaker 7 Did the people you brought closer travel with you to the Rebbe, or not?

1:30:32 Speaker 3 Back then it wasn’t... there wasn’t the age for it. No, no.

1:30:40 Speaker 7 What other years do you remember traveling to the Rebbe like that, in the thirties or forties? Any particular moments or special occasions?

1:30:46 Speaker 3 Dates.

1:30:47 Speaker 7 Not dates—

1:30:47 Speaker 3 When I traveled and was invited to give lectures in America, in Australia.

1:30:55 Speaker 7 Boruch Hashem, you merited, and continue to merit, traveling to the Rebbe. Much, much nachas.

1:30:58 Speaker 3 There was an interesting story connected with that. Once I was invited on a lecture tour in the United States, and everything had been planned in advance. I left myself two days to spend at 770. I finished davening at 770 and went outside. A young woman with a stroller was walking toward me. I didn’t know her. She said, “Hello, Rabbi Sofer.” It turned out that she and her husband had become baalei teshuvah at a Daas seminar we’d held. “Oh, if I’d known! We’re in Minneso—no, not Minnesota, Kansas City. We have a community there with doctors and scientists and so on. You should come.” I said, “I can’t. My schedule is already set; I have a day or two here.” That didn’t help. She stuck to me like a leech. She said, “You have to come.” In the end I didn’t know what to say, and she said, “You know what? Today’s Sunday, there are dollars. I’ll go to the Rebbe and ask for a brachah that Rabbi Sofer should come to us, and we’ll see what the Rebbe says.” I said, “All right, fine.” I went to eat. Two hours later she came back, all excited. “I told the Rebbe, and the Rebbe gave such an interesting answer.” I said, “What did the Rebbe say?” “That you should have a healthy baby boy.” Do you hear this? I looked at her and said, “Ma’am, that’s a brachah for a pregnancy?”

1:32:52 Speaker 8 For a birth.

1:32:53 Speaker 3 Yes. She turned pale. She said she was in the first weeks of pregnancy, and nobody knew yet. She walks past the Rebbe, and he tells her she’ll have a healthy baby boy. In the end I went, and she did have a healthy baby boy.

1:33:08 Speaker 8 You went?

1:33:09 Speaker 3 Yes. It was very successful. I think Weinberg was there, if I’m not mistaken.

1:33:15 Speaker 8 Yes, Weinberg was there.

1:33:16 Speaker 3 Yes, it was very nice. Those lectures in the hall were very interesting. There was one amazing tour in Australia, in the days of Haskind and... Rabbi Ginsburg’s son, Yossi Ginsburg. There were shluchim there, and bochurim. We had already been there a whole week. A huge gathering. Rips was there too, which was unusual. I used to suffer from erysipelas from time to time. It puts you flat on your back, with a high fever; you can’t get out of bed. I travel to Australia for a week of lectures, and as soon as I land, I start feeling unwell. I gave a class that night and almost collapsed. I went up to my room, took my temperature—forty degrees. I understood right away that...

1:34:17 Speaker 8 ...I wouldn’t be able to make it.

1:34:19 Speaker 3 I called the fellows over: “What are we going to do? It’s only the first evening, I have a whole week ahead of me here, and they’ve spent so much money.” And they calmly said, “What’s the problem? We’ll write to the Rebbe.” They wrote to the Rebbe, and the request reached the Ohel. The next day they came to see how I was doing. I didn’t dare get out of bed because the pain was excruciating. They said, “Try, try getting up, if you can.” A week went by; [unclear].

1:34:55 Speaker 8 From the request at the Ohel.

1:34:57 Speaker 3 Something amazing. This is something that requires antibiotics and the like. Those are open miracles.

1:35:08 Speaker 8 Yes, with the Rebbe, that’s what happens to someone who devotes himself to spreading the joy of Simchas Beis Hashoeva. Rabbi Sofer, may you have much blessing and success. Keep on, uh, spreading the joy of Simchas Beis Hashoeva among all circles. Stay healthy and happy, and most importantly, may we merit [unclear], and we are also, uh—

1:35:23 Speaker 3 Amen.

1:35:23 Speaker 8 ...after every Gimmel Tammuz.

1:35:25 Speaker 3 Gimmel Tammuz.

1:35:26 Speaker 8 On Gimmel Tammuz. But the one thing left is that we want to see the Rebbe return, quite literally. So let’s strengthen our hiskashrus and bring the Rebbe nachas. It has great power.

1:35:38 Speaker 3 Amen.

1:35:38 Speaker 8 ...the Rebbe takes delight in our hiskashrus.

1:35:40 Speaker 3 All the best. Refresh yourself.

1:35:42 Speaker 8 Refresh yourself.