Lehisraanen Episode 13: Rabbi Nechemia Wilhelm (Bangkok, Thailand)

00:00 Speaker 1 Shalom aleichem, welcome to another episode of the podcast Lehitra’anein, where chassidim tell stories about their lives with the Rebbe and refresh our connection to the Rebbe. This time we’re with the chossid and shliach Rabbi Nechemia Wilhelm. Shalom aleichem.

00:12 Speaker 2 Aleichem shalom.

00:14 Speaker 1 I’ll start with the question I ask everyone: Where are you from? Of course, you’re from the holy city of Jerusalem. But, uh—

00:20 Speaker 2 So my father, of blessed memory, started drawing close to the Rebbe when he was around nineteen. Actually, the family had a connection even before that. There was a grandfather named Reb Yisroel Shimon Shein who was a chossid. My grandmother had a connection, and my grandfather—my father’s father—would daven from a Tehillas Hashem siddur. But at nineteen, my father began drawing closer. It’s interesting to see the first letter the Rebbe wrote to my father, after my father wrote that he wanted to establish a connection. The very first line the Rebbe wrote to him was, “It is surprising that you write your letter on 13 Tammuz without mentioning that it is the Festival of Liberation.”

00:58 Speaker 1 He opens with that.

00:59 Speaker 2 And at the end of the letter, the Rebbe writes to him again, “It is surprising that you write that your father studied at Tomchei Temimim, yet you have not seen fit to transfer to a chassidic yeshivah.”

01:07 Speaker 1 I think his grandfather, Reb Chaim Dovid, studied at Tomchei Temimim.

01:09 Speaker 2 He studied at Tomchei Temimim for a while, yes. So the Rebbe writes to him, “It is surprising that you write that your father studied at Tomchei Temimim, and you—you still haven’t seen fit to do so.” He was still in a yeshivah then, he was, uh... But that was when my father got started, and through him, really, all his brothers.

01:23 Speaker 1 What prompted your father to write to the Rebbe? Why did he become close?

01:26 Speaker 2 I can’t tell you exactly how it started, but he was drawn in, got to know people, and gradually became more connected, and through him—

01:36 Speaker 1 Was he the first of the brothers?

01:37 Speaker 2 Yes. And then all his brothers followed him. Almost all of them became involved, baruch Hashem, and their children are all shluchim, baruch Hashem.

01:45 Speaker 1 When did he himself first come to the Rebbe?

01:48 Speaker 2 I’m not sure what year his first visit was. I do know that he traveled there and ended up staying in New York for a year and a half. He came for the 29th and planned to return to Israel. The Rebbe told him to raise money for Tomchei Temimim, and in practice, each month the Rebbe extended his stay, until it had been a year and a half. My sister was born, and my father didn’t see her until she was nine months old.

02:13 Speaker 1 Wow.

02:14 Speaker 2 The Rebbe sent him to one place and then another.

02:16 Speaker 1 That must have been hard for your mother, too.

02:18 Speaker 2 I always tell my mother that I understand my father. What I can’t understand is how she managed to go along with it. But afterward my father traveled a lot. Especially for 11 Nissan—when the Rebbe told him to come, I know my father was there. You can see him in the videos, when he came back with the Tanya.

02:35 Speaker 1 From [unclear] [?].

02:36 Speaker 2 At [unclear] [?], [unclear] [?]. Sorry. Yes, [unclear] [?]. [unclear] [?]. So I think about it: 11 Nissan. You know, for a Jerusalem woman to let her husband travel for 11 Nissan, that’s...

02:47 Speaker 1 Meaning, he would travel because of his role. His job was fundraising.

02:50 Speaker 2 No, no.

02:51 Speaker 1 Meaning, he traveled to the Rebbe; it was only that one year that he stayed for that purpose.

02:53 Speaker 2 Yes, that year he stayed to raise money.

02:55 Speaker 1 So he had originally traveled just to be with the Rebbe.

02:57 Speaker 2 Yes, and that’s interesting too. My father may have been a Jerusalemite, but he was shy. Raising money wasn’t his strong suit. At one point during that period, he wrote to the Rebbe.

03:05 Speaker 1 We haven’t mentioned his name: Rabbi Nachum Bentzion Wilhelm’s father. Not everyone knows it.

03:09 Speaker 2 Yes. So on one occasion he apparently received a sum that moved him very much. He wrote to the Rebbe excitedly, and the Rebbe answered, “You should have larger sums.” You need to think on a bigger scale. That’s one of the guiding principles I took from it: the Rebbe always wanted us to think big. Not to look at something and be satisfied with, “There, I’ve accomplished something.” Always...

03:32 Speaker 1 And he brought your brothers in when they were young, and they went further.

03:36 Speaker 2 Yes. So actually, my brother—

03:39 Speaker 1 Jerusalem was interesting. So many people—so many Jerusalemites—came with their children.

03:44 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. I think my brother Eliyahu was with Rabbi Shimon Kadish [?]. Boruch had already been there before. Boruch also had that story with his ear. In 5740, if I’m not mistaken, my father very much wanted my mother to come to the Rebbe, but she was afraid of flying. So he took Boruch with him, and when he got there, he told her that Boruch really needed her. Then she came, and he made sure she stayed afterward. She arrived for Sukkos and stayed until after 19 Kislev. He made sure she stayed there. He told her, “You have to see a farbrengen of the Rebbe.” He kept her there, and you could say that was the period that really brought them back into it.

04:22 Speaker 1 Wow. How did he get her to stay that long?

04:24 Speaker 2 Yes.

04:26 Speaker 1 And you grew up here in Jerusalem.

04:28 Speaker 2 I grew up here in Jerusalem. I studied at Tomchei Temimim across from our home.

04:32 Speaker 1 Did people talk about the Rebbe?

04:33 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, definitely. Just this week I told someone that I remember when Freidin [?] would come with an eight-millimeter film to show everyone. That was a chance to see the Rebbe moving—not just in a picture. But yes, the Rebbe was certainly present. There were broadcasts.

04:54 Speaker 1 In Bnei Brak. I remember Bnei Brak too, even years after you. You could say that was one of the things that really brought the Rebbe into the lives of people in Israel. There was Freddy [?], with his commentary, too.

05:03 Speaker 2 His soundtrack accompanied the footage of the Rebbe in its own way.

05:06 Speaker 1 He’d get upset.

05:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:08 Speaker 1 But that—

05:09 Speaker 2 He had his sayings. But it really was special. It was. And yes, we listened to every broadcast. Look, for all the Rebbe’s farbrengens, we’d get up at three-thirty or four-thirty, depending on the time, run to the mikveh, hurry downstairs and come back for the broadcast. We lived with it, we really did.

05:24 Speaker 1 That was already around 5750, the beginning of the 5750s.

05:27 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

05:28 Speaker 1 And then you came to the Rebbe for the first time in—

05:30 Speaker 2 In Tishrei 5745 [?]. I actually arrived for the first time in Elul 5744, and—

05:37 Speaker 1 How old were you?

05:38 Speaker 2 I was almost twelve.

05:41 Speaker 1 And...?

05:43 Speaker 2 So we arrived. I remember the first time, when we were standing in the small zal. The Rebbe came out for Maariv, and suddenly, to see him like that... Until then, we’d mainly known him from pictures. Suddenly seeing the Rebbe—that moment has stayed before my eyes ever since. It’s the moment when you suddenly see the Rebbe. You see? You see the Rebbe right in front of you. So that Tishrei, I really was there at every opportunity to receive a coin from the Rebbe. At first, since we’d arrived in Elul, which was relatively early, my parents said, “Maybe you should go study at the school for a bit.” I went in, stayed one day, and said, “I want to be at the sukkah at 770.” I left right away. Twice that month something happened. Once, the Rebbe came out to go home without warning. Usually people knew when the Rebbe was about to leave, and everyone would take their places. This time, suddenly they announced that the Rebbe was coming out. All the bochurim jumped to one side of the passage by the sukkah at 770. For some reason I jumped to the other side. Now, usually they would start singing, but the Rebbe came out suddenly. So the Rebbe passed by me and gestured with his hand for us to start a song. Of course I went silent, but all the bochurim started singing, and that was...

06:57 Speaker 1 And did you get any attention from the Rebbe because you’d arrived early?

07:00 Speaker 2 No, there wasn’t any special attention, of course. Like all the children, I received coins. At a Tzivos Hashem rally I recited the last verse, about the Jewish people and the moon, and afterward I sang into the microphone. You know, a Jerusalem child singing.

07:14 Speaker 1 Were there many children from Israel in 5745?

07:17 Speaker 2 I don’t know what counts as many. I think there were a few dozen, but not the large numbers there were in later years.

07:24 Speaker 1 What do you remember as a child? Do you remember Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur?

07:29 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Look, I tried very hard to squeeze in close. My uncle Boruch, may he be well, made sure I could stand next to him, and he had good places. My brothers were there too and looked after me. By the way, the whole family was there that Tishrei—my sisters and my brothers, everyone—so they made sure I had pretty good places. And yes, it was...

07:53 Speaker 1 Because it was hard for the children.

07:56 Speaker 2 Yes, it wasn’t easy. I can’t say I remember exactly what I saw that year, but we were in that atmosphere, part of that experience. It was...

08:09 Speaker 1 And afterward, did you go straight back to Israel?

08:14 Speaker 2 We went back after Tishrei. In 5746, tickets were very, very expensive, so not many people traveled. But after that, in 5747, 5748, 5749, 5751, 5752—I was there for every Tishrei.

08:25 Speaker 1 We’re here to hear about it. It doesn’t have to be in order.

08:28 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Look, in Tishrei of 5747, 5748 and 5749, I came as a young bochur, and then as a somewhat older bochur. In those Tishreis, the tekios, the hakafos and all the special events beyond the day-to-day were, of course, farbrengens. Let me go back for a moment to when I was a child. My father would sometimes sit for twelve hours before a farbrengen to get a place by the aisle, on the bench near Ohel HaOrchim. So when I was a child, he would usually take me and sit me there. If he had sat for twelve hours, he might as well get two places for it! He would put me on his lap, and I would sit with him at the farbrengens. In later years, like all the bochurim, I tried to squeeze in so I could see and hear.

09:22 Speaker 1 I’m asking you specifically because I know. Let me explain: some of these podcasts are for older people. I specifically want to hear what it was like for a bochur arriving there. Sometimes we—I mean, for anyone listening—even a description of the everyday routine matters. What did a bochur do during the day? I was there as a child too, but those Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, you must have experienced them differently. The whole—

09:49 Speaker 2 I think that when we were there for Tishrei as bochurim—and that’s why, in the years afterward, at yeshiva, we took every opportunity, every campaign we could, to raise the money to make the trip—Tishrei changed your whole year. You were there. It wasn’t just a time when you saw the Rebbe; it was a whole month of being there, surrounded by it all. Whenever a sicha came out, everyone would sit in 770. One thing I remember throughout all those years is that when a general letter came out, you would suddenly see 770 turn into a sea of married men, children and older people, learning in pairs. You could hear everyone reading the Rebbe’s letter together, studying it deeply, trying to understand what the letter was saying. Really, every moment was like that. Beyond waiting for the Rebbe to return from the Ohel, or being at davening, or later at the dollar distribution—everything around it was something special. It was an atmosphere. When you returned to Eretz Yisroel, it took time to come back down to earth, because you had truly been somewhere else. That was what a bochur longed for all year. We didn’t have the privilege of traveling for 19 Shvat as well, and for... But that anticipation of Tishrei—when would Tishrei come and bring us back to the Rebbe?—was indescribable.

11:14 Speaker 1 And a farbrengen—as a young bochur, getting swept up in a farbrengen. With you, Yiddish isn’t the question, but you don’t understand everything.

11:21 Speaker 2 I have to say, I understood Yiddish; it’s my mother tongue. Can I say I understood the farbrengens? No. But I understood a sentence here and there, and seeing the Rebbe speak—we could sit or stand for hours and watch. Whether I understood or not wasn’t really relevant. The atmosphere was completely different. You felt a handbreadth above the ground. And of course, with the niggunim and the way they resonated, it was—

11:49 Speaker 1 Was there a routine? Did the bochurim say l’chaim? [?] What guidance did you get?

11:54 Speaker 2 I don’t think so. No, there wasn’t much guidance. It depended on which mashpia you had; before Tishrei he might sit with the bochurim and talk a little. But some did one thing and some did another. Later, when I was in 770 for years, bochurim began arguing about it: should you go for dollars or not? Should you approach or not? So, naturally, I think that at farbrengens I would raise a cup and say l’chaim.

12:23 Speaker 1 And then, when did you arrive in...?

12:26 Speaker 2 So I was there for Tishrei itself, uh—

12:28 Speaker 1 Wait, we’re skipping ahead a little. Let’s talk about that Tishrei itself. We can’t skip it. I was there too, baruch Hashem.

12:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:34 Speaker 1 Is there something special that you...?

12:36 Speaker 2 Tishrei 5747. First of all, one thing I remember very, very clearly is kos shel bracha that Tishrei, in 5747. It was—

12:44 Speaker 1 Simchas Torah.

12:45 Speaker 2 Yes, Simchas Torah. Actually, it started on Simchas Torah itself, when—when Drizin began singing, uh—

12:52 Speaker 1 Duchman.

12:52 Speaker 2 Sol Duchman began singing “The Rebbe Shlita,” and the Rebbe encouraged it. That was...

12:57 Speaker 1 If I may add something: that’s one of the things I always... To tell the truth, [unclear]. Part of the hakafos that morning was...

13:06 Speaker 2 Yes.

13:06 Speaker 1 I remember it because I was a ten-year-old child. That image of the Rebbe moving—that, the Rebbe moved to see the Sefer Torah on the bimah. It was in the middle of... They opened the way, helped, passed him the sefarim. The Rebbe, and I was...

13:20 Speaker 2 Simchas Torah in general was truly indescribable. Sometimes I sit with my bochurim, and you can’t convey it. However much you see the Rebbe in videos, standing and encouraging the singing, Simchas Torah was something you really cannot describe. But in 5747 it was something very, very special, and it continued at kos shel bracha. The Rebbe stopped from time to time and encouraged the singing of “The Rebbe Shlita.” That has stayed with me very, very strongly.

13:55 Speaker 1 Where were you for hakafos?

13:57 Speaker 2 For hakafos, I was fortunate: my brother Boruch was in the group of 5744, so when I arrived I inherited everything from him. I had a place facing the Rebbe at farbrengens, and at hakafos I had a spot on a box, right opposite him, in front of the aisle. There was a row between the Rebbe’s bimah and the farbrengen platform. Toward the end, I would stand there on several boxes, above everyone else.

14:25 Speaker 1 So you could see both—

14:26 Speaker 2 I could see both here and there. It was a place that really let me see everything.

14:33 Speaker 1 And after 5747 you went back to Eretz Yisroel as well. Where did you learn in yeshiva gedolah?

14:37 Speaker 2 Uh, I actually started yeshiva gedolah in [unclear].

14:41 Speaker 1 Ah.

14:42 Speaker 2 [Unclear].

14:43 Speaker 1 When you were here at [unclear].

14:44 Speaker 2 I was at [unclear]. I started yeshiva gedolah there too, until Tishrei. After Tishrei I returned to Eretz Yisroel, and a week after I got back, my father became ill and traveled to America for treatment. So I was here for a short time and then moved to learn in Nachlas Har Chabad. There was a yeshiva there then, with a one-year program.

15:01 Speaker 1 My brother was the mashgiach there.

15:02 Speaker 2 My brother was the mashgiach there. I stayed another two and a half or three months, and then I traveled to the Rebbe.

15:08 Speaker 1 When was that?

15:10 Speaker 2 It began because my father needed help. My brother Eli said, “Maybe you should go,” and of course I jumped at the opportunity. That’s it. I arrived there in Adar I 5749.

15:25 Speaker 1 Can we fill in a little of what happened before that?

15:28 Speaker 2 Maybe I wrote about it; I don’t remember. I don’t remember. But in Adar, Rashag passed away. So that month, when I arrived, they davened upstairs in Rashag’s apartment. They would let in thirty or forty people. Because my father was ill, they let him in, and they let me come in with him. There were lotteries, and the person in charge would decide who could go in and who couldn’t. I came to every davening and went in there with my father. It was a very special period. During that time, I went back and forth quite a lot between the hospitals and [unclear], but whenever I had the chance I was at davening and, of course, at farbrengens. I remember Purim 5749: I was actually at home with my father when, after Minchah, a sicha began. And then—

16:26 Speaker 1 An unexpected sicha.

16:26 Speaker 2 Yes, it was an unexpected sicha, and my father simply wasn’t feeling well. We listened to the sicha over the hook-up at home, and he said to me, “Come on, let’s get ready.” We hurried over to 770 to be there and feel the atmosphere. After that—

16:41 Speaker 1 Explain that in that sicha, the Rebbe spoke about...

16:44 Speaker 2 There was a sicha in which the Rebbe spoke at length about the joy that should be expressed in a certain way—yes, it was really a sicha that had 770 buzzing afterward. So we ran there. In general, what was interesting throughout that period was that there were times when my father ate more and times when he ate less. Whenever the Rebbe went to the Ohel, my father would always tell me, “When the Rebbe comes back from the Ohel, I want you to take me to 770, because when the Rebbe davens Mincha at night, he lifts us above time. I have to be at that Mincha.” And there really was a very special atmosphere when the Rebbe arrived late and davened Mincha. During that whole period I was there, and by then I was a little older, so I could stand there and had my own spot at farbrengens. I would stand through the farbrengen. Afterward there was Rabbi Woltein’s review, and I would always stay to hear it. I was already at a stage where I could understand more and connect more with what was being said. It was already...

17:49 Speaker 1 Was your father able to come to the farbrengens?

17:51 Speaker 2 Some of the time, yes. It depended on how he was feeling, but a good deal of the time, yes. By then they were already letting him sit behind the Rebbe at many farbrengens.

17:59 Speaker 1 For hours.

18:00 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

18:03 Speaker 1 So was that period marked by the Rebbe spending a lot of time at home?

18:07 Speaker 2 Yes. And when the Rebbe was at home, we would often go there too. Again, they let me in because I had an entry pass with my father. When they davened at the Rebbe’s house, even the davening there had a different atmosphere. It felt more intimate, more like a family atmosphere—

18:26 Speaker 1 Was there any particular attention from the Rebbe?

18:28 Speaker 2 No. My mother would pass by the Rebbe every Sunday. Every single Sunday, the Rebbe would give her an extra dollar on his own initiative, for my father, with a few more words.

18:38 Speaker 1 “For your husband”?

18:39 Speaker 2 Yes, “For your husband,” with another sentence. Each time, a few more words. We could really see how the Rebbe sustained her, because by Shabbos each week she was exhausted. She would come to the Rebbe on Sunday and return glowing, with strength for another week.

18:52 Speaker 1 Did your father pass by too?

18:53 Speaker 2 My father passed by too. But even when he did, even if he went by alongside her, the Rebbe would give her another dollar for him, with a few words. Every week, another dollar for your husband. More than that: even when the Rebbe distributed kuntreisim, when he wasn’t giving out dollars, my mother would receive an extra kuntres, an extra Tanya—something extra each time. They often passed by together, and even then he would give my father one and give her another kuntres: “This is for your husband.” When my mother came through during a distribution of dollars or kuntreisim downstairs in the shul, the bochurim would climb onto the benches as she approached to see what the Rebbe would say to her this time. But it really did sustain her. It...

19:34 Speaker 1 And as an Israeli bochur who had arrived, did you join a particular yeshiva?

19:38 Speaker 2 I joined Oholei Torah. Again, there were periods when I was there more and periods when I was there less, but I was in Oholei Torah. At that time, we had a rosh yeshiva there who maintained that the bochurim didn’t have to attend every one of the Rebbe’s tefillos. He also said that the sichos weren’t as focused on learning as they used to be. There were about twenty of us Israelis in Oholei Torah. This was at Troy and Empire [?]. Mincha was at 3:15, and seder began at 3:30. If you went to Mincha, you couldn’t get there before 3:50 or 4:00. So he announced that anyone who arrived late would have to pay five dollars. We Israelis would come into the zal before he even asked, and each of us would put five dollars on his desk. After a few days he realized there was nothing to be done and started letting us go. But really, throughout that period—you know, bochurim today sometimes say, “If I’d been there then, I wouldn’t have missed a single tefillah.” It wasn’t necessarily so obvious that you wouldn’t miss a tefillah. But baruch Hashem, from the time I was a child, my father really instilled in me, first and foremost, the importance of saying Shema on time. He drove me crazy about it. So maybe, on the one hand, I missed out because I wouldn’t stay at farbrengens until the early hours of the morning. But on the other hand, I was at every tefillah with the Rebbe. I always tried very hard to get to every tefillah. Whenever there was an opportunity to see the Rebbe, I was there.

21:11 Speaker 3 What was it actually like from a bochur’s point of view? Hearing about the group that comes for a year is one thing, but I’m asking specifically about an Israeli bochur who arrived in the middle of the year. Set the family circumstances aside for a moment. Describe a little of the daily routine around 770.

21:26 Speaker 2 Again, in principle, my daily routine was my learning in yeshiva.

21:29 Speaker 3 Yes.

21:29 Speaker 2 But whenever we had an opportunity, we came to 770 and tried to find a place. Look, we were young bochurim, not the older bochurim who had come with the group for the year. But we did our best to squeeze in, hear the farbrengens, and be there among the chassidim.

21:45 Speaker 3 Sundays were after the dollars.

21:48 Speaker 2 Yes. There was a group of us bochurim in Oholei Torah. The first thing we made sure of, when the Sunday dollars began, was to get a VCR. In those early years, you could buy a tape of the entire dollars distribution. So every Sunday we would pool a few dollars each, buy the tape, and sit down to watch the whole thing. At a certain point they stopped selling the complete tape and would only sell a tape of the person who had passed by. But we would also sometimes stand outside 770 on Sundays during dollars, trying to find someone willing to tell us what the Rebbe had said to them. It was really something special.

22:28 Speaker 3 Did it grow over time? I suddenly see all kinds of tourists who passed by. Did someone bring them, or did it happen gradually?

22:36 Speaker 2 We were always doing that. You’d go on mivtzoim, and there were people we visited regularly. Inviting people to come to the Rebbe was a very big thing. For example, there was a Jewish man I knew—I was a bochur of about nineteen—who owned a jewelry factory. One Friday when I came there, he looked devastated. Usually he would talk with me. I asked, “What happened?” He said, “Listen, they’ve discovered the disease in my wife, and the doctors say they have to remove her uterus. We have one child, and we want more children.” I told him, “Come with me to the Rebbe on Sunday.” He said, “You know what? That’s a good idea.” He came with me that Sunday. We stood in line together, and we went over what he would say before we passed by the Rebbe. He told me, “I’ll tell the Rebbe I want a bracha for my son, who has asthma, and a bracha for my wife. I’ll explain.” I said, “Listen, you can’t go into too much detail. Keep it brief; say a few words about it.” We passed by the Rebbe. He was very, very emotional. He said to the Rebbe, “I want a bracha for my wife and my son.” The Rebbe gave him a dollar and said, “This is for your son.” Another dollar: “This is for your wife.” Then the Rebbe took another dollar and said, “And this is for your next son—or daughter.”

23:42 Speaker 3 Is that how the Rebbe put it—“your next daughter”?

23:44 Speaker 2 Yes. I bought him the video afterward. The Rebbe gives him a dollar and says, “This is for your next son—or daughter.” We went outside, and he said to me, “What was that?” I told him, “Listen, in another nine months you’ll have a daughter.” He said, “Please, just don’t tell my wife that. I don’t want to get her hopes up.” I said, “Come on, let’s call her.” There were no cell phones yet. We went to a public phone, and I called his wife. I told her, “In another nine months you’ll have a daughter.” She said, “Rabbi, what makes you say that? The doctors say the chances...” I told her, “Listen, that’s what the Rebbe said.” And sure enough, nine months later they had a daughter.

24:13 Speaker 3 That’s...

24:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

24:16 Speaker 3 But many of the Israelis—some came. Today you hear people come back and tell you what the Rebbe said. I think some of them simply heard the Rebbe say “Welcome” to them, and afterward someone explained what it meant. It’s not that—

24:27 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

24:27 Speaker 3 Everyone understood the—

24:28 Speaker 2 No. Look, people would come. Most of the people who came couldn’t even speak. You’d walk past the Rebbe, and that was it. Sometimes you’d leave with someone you’d brought, and he wouldn’t even grasp what had just happened. But I was there with Yossi Ginzburg. We were a whole group of Israelis. We had classes and a lot of activities in Flatbush with the many Israelis there. And for some reason, on the last Sunday before 27 Adar, we said to the group, after a class—we’d had some class, and then I think the Rebbe came back from the Ohel and they announced that the Rebbe was giving out dollars. We all got into—

25:08 Speaker 3 Mil, mil.

25:08 Speaker 2 Yes, after, after the milah. We no longer had time to get back to 770, so we all got into cars and drove to 770. Everyone went by, received a dollar from the Rebbe, and that was it. Then came 27 Adar, and afterward they told us they would never forget that, thanks to us, they had been with the Rebbe just before it happened and had received a dollar. I also had an interesting story there. One day, a woman told me she wanted to consult with me. Actually, this is how it happened. We held a class in one woman’s home, and her sister had come from Israel with her two daughters. The sister told me she wanted to consult with me, and she said that—

25:44 Speaker 3 The sister who came from Israel.

25:45 Speaker 2 Yes. Her husband had left her, he’d gotten involved in all kinds of bad things, and now, having heard that they were in New York, he said he wanted to join them. He promised he would behave, and she didn’t know whether she could trust that. I told her, “Write to the Rebbe.” She sent a letter to the Rebbe. I don’t remember her exact wording, but the Rebbe said they should get back together. We held a wedding for them again at the Chabad House in Flatbush, and the girls enrolled in Beis Rivkah. It really was a success story. A few months later, another woman came to a class and asked to speak with me. She said, “Do you remember Irit’s story? I have a very similar story. My husband left me too. We live here in New York, and my husband left me. I also have two daughters, though they’re a little older, and he wants to come back too. So I understand that the Rebbe is in favor of getting back together.” I told her, “The Rebbe isn’t in favor of anything. The Rebbe wants you to write to him, and he’ll tell you what to do.” Fine. She wrote a letter, I gave it to Binyamin Klein, and the next day she called us. “What did the Rebbe say?” They called me to the public phone in 770: “What did the Rebbe say?” I told her, “The Rebbe hasn’t answered yet.” “What? Why did he answer Irit so quickly?” I told her, “I don’t know.” Another day went by, and another. I went in to Binyamin, and he told me, “Listen, the letter is on the desk. The Rebbe hasn’t answered yet.” After three or four days, she stopped calling me. A week passed, and someone told me, “Binyamin is looking for you.” He told me the Rebbe had said they should not get back together.

26:59 Speaker 3 The answer was that the Rebbe wouldn’t come back.

27:00 Speaker 2 Yes, that they shouldn’t get back together. Anyway, I ran to a public phone. Just as I was about to go out, I called her. She said, “Oh, I was just about to call you. Can we cancel the question?” I said, “What? Why?” She said, “Look, my husband just called me and said he can’t promise he’ll be able to support us. He wants to come back, but he won’t commit to that. Forget it—it’s no longer relevant.” I told her, “You see why the Rebbe waited?” So, yes.

27:21 Speaker 3 If we’re talking about answers, how did the process actually work? I mean, we know people would send in questions and...

27:28 Speaker 2 As I said, we had a lot of activities in Flatbush, and I really tried to write reports to the Rebbe all the time. I can’t say I wrote every Sunday, every week, but I wrote a lot. I almost never received an answer. Sometimes I would get the general-but-personal response that [unclear] would issue. But I had friends who would sometimes take someone to put up a mezuzah for somebody, and they would write to the Rebbe and get an answer. I didn’t get answers. One of the mashpi’im at the time told me, “Boruch Hashem the Rebbe doesn’t have to waste time on you.”

28:00 Speaker 3 Really, what was that like? That’s exactly what I want to ask. Today we’re already used to things as they are. But when you were in 770, right there at the source, how did it work? On the one hand, you saw the Rebbe three times a day, which was itself something new compared to earlier years. But you didn’t have any personal contact.

28:19 Speaker 2 To this day, when I tell people I was privileged to study by the Rebbe during the last six years before Gimmel Tammuz, they say to me, “Well? Tell us, what did you talk about?” I never spoke to the Rebbe. Actually, there was one time my mother called because my grandfather was very unwell, and she insisted that I—

28:32 Speaker 3 Your grandfather.

28:32 Speaker 2 Yes, her father. I passed by the Rebbe and said the name Binyamin Zev ben Peninela. That was it; I said his name, and that was all. And the Rebbe gave me a dollar and said, “A complete recovery.” But apart from that, I never spoke to him. When my father had recovered the first time, he went back to Israel, and then his illness returned. So on 6 Teves 5750, we traveled to Israel. On Sunday, I think it was 9 Teves, we passed by the Rebbe, and my mother told the Rebbe we were going to Israel and that we were going joyfully, as the Rebbe had told her several times that she should always be joyful and healthy. So she told the Rebbe, “We’re doing what the Rebbe wanted, and we’re traveling joyfully.” The truth is, she especially wanted to tell him about being joyful, but she started crying while she was speaking. That’s an interesting story too. She started crying and she couldn’t— When she came out, she said to me, “I can’t travel. I need to wait another week. I disappointed the Rebbe. I didn’t show the Rebbe well enough that I’m traveling joyfully.”

29:30 Speaker 3 Why? What had the Rebbe told her earlier about joy?

29:32 Speaker 2 Several times over that year and a half, the Rebbe told her always to be joyful and healthy, not to be in [unclear] and dejection. And she had really planned to tell the Rebbe. The doctors had told us everything was fine and he could— She said, “I’d planned to tell the Rebbe that we’re going, that I’m traveling joyfully,” and she hadn’t managed to say it properly. In any case, when we passed by, the Rebbe gave my mother a dollar and said, “Here—” two dollars—“Here’s a dollar for the Holy Land.” He gave my father one for here and one for the Holy Land. Then he raised his eyes toward me and asked her, “Is he going too?” The Rebbe caught sight of me, and she said yes. So the Rebbe gave me dollars too and told me, “One here and one in the Holy Land.” What happened was that when they were due to leave, she didn’t want to go. I went in and asked, “What should I do?” He told me, “When the Rebbe comes out, they should simply stand there by the car.”

30:25 Speaker 3 When the Rebbe came out to go to the mikveh.

30:26 Speaker 2 Yes, to the mikveh.

30:27 Speaker 3 To the Ohel.

30:27 Speaker 2 The Rebbe went to the Ohel afterward. He said, “When the Rebbe comes out, they should stand here by the car, and she should have a happy expression. But please tell her not to hold up the Rebbe, not to say anything.” The Rebbe came out as though he already knew we were there. He came out with a few coins, went over to each of us and gave us some coins, and then he was about to get into the car. Suddenly he turned back, went over to my mother, and said to her, “A freiliche nesiah”—a joyful trip. And then my mother told him, “Yo, ich for freilich”—yes, I’m traveling joyfully.

30:51 Speaker 3 Wow.

30:52 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s what happened.

30:54 Speaker 3 And then how long were you in Israel?

30:57 Speaker 2 We traveled on 6 Teves, and by the beginning of Nissan we were already back.

31:04 Speaker 3 So I want to return for a moment to this point. In effect, you didn’t have personal contact with the Rebbe, apart from those who passed by for birthday dollars or something like that. On the other hand, you felt—did you feel at home?

31:16 Speaker 2 You felt as close as could be, and at the same time, you know, you didn’t dare. Today I’m constantly being sent photos of myself. My children tell me, “Dad, you were always pushing to get close to the Rebbe.” I really did always try to be close. And yet I remember, as bochurim, we would stand there, you know, when the Rebbe gave out dollars in shul, and we’d form these human pyramids. Sometimes the Rebbe would raise his eyes, and in a second the whole pyramid would collapse. Nobody wanted the Rebbe to look at him. So you wanted to be as close as possible, but as invisible as possible. You didn’t want the Rebbe to look at you. So yes, we felt as close as could be, and on the other hand, you know—

31:51 Speaker 3 This is something we really need to talk about today. Everyone felt that the Rebbe was theirs and was with them, and on the other hand, it was as though he was above them—or maybe because it was so visible...

32:01 Speaker 2 On the one hand, he was as close as could be, and on the other, you felt such a distance between your standing and his that there was no chance at all you would come over and say a word, or speak, or anything. Quite the opposite: when the Rebbe looked at you, you ran away.

32:15 Speaker 3 And after an ordinary weekday sicha, what was the routine? Did people talk about it? Did it take over the day?

32:23 Speaker 2 Well, look, the first thing—let’s talk about after Shabbos. On Sunday, a brief summary would come out. So we would sit and go through the summary, trying to reconstruct the sicha. After that, the...

32:36 Speaker 3 Wait, you started—meaning, you said Leibel Altein’s review was in Yiddish?

32:40 Speaker 2 No, in English.

32:41 Speaker 3 But—

32:41 Speaker 2 In English.

32:41 Speaker 3 Right after the farbrengen?

32:42 Speaker 2 Right after the farbrengen, lots of people would stay—really, lots of people. He would review it, and we would help him.

32:49 Speaker 3 English, I thought—

32:49 Speaker 2 No, because that’s what there was after the farbrengen. There wasn’t a Yiddish review then. Yiddish was at night; Reb Yoel would do it, or Jacobson would do it, but—

32:55 Speaker 3 Right after the afternoon farbrengen.

32:56 Speaker 2 Right after the farbrengen. I felt I needed that immediately afterward, because if you wanted to remember even a little of it, you know, it was...

33:03 Speaker 3 There wasn’t a Hebrew review yet. Was there one later, in the evening?

33:06 Speaker 2 No, I don’t—I don’t know if there was one in Hebrew, but I don’t remember an organized review in Hebrew. From time to time someone would give a review in Hebrew, but there was Leibel Altein’s review. He would go over it with such geshmak, and anyone who remembered something else would put in a word. There was something really special about sitting down right after the farbrengen and going over it. So that was—

33:28 Speaker 3 At five o’clock.

33:28 Speaker 2 You have to bear in mind that, you know, nobody had time to go eat anything afterward. After davening, you got to five o’clock. Even if you weren’t one of those who actually came at seven to learn Chassidus, you’d at least learn something before davening with the Rebbe, go to the mikveh, and then davening was at twelve. Davening ended at twelve-thirty, and you ran to arrange your place for the farbrengen. The farbrengen ended at four or four-thirty, and you stayed another hour or two for the review. So, uh...

33:53 Speaker 3 Five o’clock—and Maariv started at six.

33:55 Speaker 2 Yes. Nobody, nobody...

33:58 Speaker 3 Every Motzaei Shabbos.

33:59 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, but nobody was in a hurry. I described it recently to some fellows here. I told them it was simply a pleasure, spiritually and physically. Really, to sit there—you lacked nothing. You were running, you know, just trying to keep up with another edited maamar coming out, another edited sicha coming out, and before that you had the brief summary and the hanachos. You tried to keep up and couldn’t, because there was such an abundance, a constant abundance that you were immersed in.

34:32 Speaker 3 And that’s without even talking about Yom Tov. I spoke about this at home once. You know, for an ordinary Crown Heights woman, the structure of Yom Tov that we all know today—or knew at other times—just didn’t exist. Take Sukkos. The Rebbe would finish davening, and there would be a sicha. Usually the first day’s sicha wasn’t short. Then he went to the sukkah. After that, there was a review.

34:56 Speaker 2 When you say “to the sukkah,” you’re talking about the earlier years.

34:59 Speaker 3 On the first day, in our years. When I came to you to wish you a good Yom Tov in the sukkah on the first day, [unclear].

35:05 Speaker 2 Ah, when you were guests. Yes, yes.

35:07 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

35:08 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

35:09 Speaker 3 And after that there was still a review of the sicha. Normally, the Yom Tov meal would begin at ten at night.

35:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

35:14 Speaker 3 I mean, even today we...

35:16 Speaker 2 Yes, but you’re talking about a time when every woman in Crown Heights—there wasn’t a home without dozens of guests. That was how it was. Yes, people would prepare for—

35:25 Speaker 3 And every Shabbos, a sicha, a farbrengen. There wasn’t the structure everyone knows today, a set schedule. A husband can tell his wife roughly when he’ll be home, so she can—

35:34 Speaker 2 No, no, it was a completely different daily routine. But I think a great many of the women also came to 770 and experienced it together with everyone. They were part of it. It wasn’t that the husband came home and told them about it. At my aunt’s house, everyone would come—the boys, everyone.

35:48 Speaker 3 They came. Take Erev Yom Kippur: I myself remember a Yom Kippur, in [unclear] or in 5752, when there was a fifty-minute sicha on Erev Yom Kippur.

35:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:56 Speaker 3 You had no break in between at all.

35:58 Speaker 2 And I’m not even talking about the years when we tried—I had a year, maybe even a year or two, when we wanted to secure a spot by the window outside, near the sukkah, to hear Birchas Hatmimim.

36:09 Speaker 3 Birchas Hatmimim.

36:10 Speaker 2 So from seven in the morning, when we were at the Rebbe’s kapores, my cousins and I took turns standing there. My aunt sent us sandwiches so we could eat our meals there by the window. All of Erev Yom Kippur was spent there by that window.

36:23 Speaker 3 Because the arrangement was that the older bochurim were in the zal.

36:25 Speaker 2 The older, wiser ones were inside, yes. We were still too young for that, so we took a place by the window. It was a place where I could—

36:33 Speaker 3 By the window near the sukkah.

36:34 Speaker 2 In the sukkah, outside the small zal. Through—

36:36 Speaker 3 The small zal was for the older ones. The small room was for... the age groups were gathered in the sukkah.

36:43 Speaker 2 I think it even went up to age twenty-three or something like that, but let’s just say the younger ones certainly couldn’t get in.

36:49 Speaker 3 So I was—I had my bar mitzvah in November, so my place was around June, so to speak.

36:56 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. But back then we really lived in a different atmosphere. You lacked nothing. You genuinely felt completely fulfilled all the time, simply from it. All that spirituality was a physical pleasure. So...

37:15 Speaker 3 Nu, let’s go back a bit to the tish. What tish are you talking about? A farbrengen.

37:22 Speaker 2 I’m trying to think which one. Look, the farbrengens of the elder chassidim were incredible, but we usually missed them because we were on tahaluchah. So I always remember that while preparing for hakafos, you would hear a sentence here, a word there, some bit about what had happened.

37:45 Speaker 3 There was a sicha in the zal about that—about why there was such crying at [unclear].

37:54 Speaker 2 Ah, right, that was in the zal.

37:56 Speaker 3 That we heard.

37:57 Speaker 2 Yes. Anyway, whenever we came back, you would hear about those special farbrengens. But on every Shabbos, every opportunity we had—again, as I say, look, I wasn’t a chozer, and I wasn’t someone who could say he’d heard a farbrengen and could repeat it afterward.

38:15 Speaker 3 That’s what I want to hear. Hearing a chozer isn’t like hearing a bochur who—

38:18 Speaker 2 Yes. Let’s say that after you’d stood there for three or four hours, you had no problem standing there longer. It really was—why? Just to look at the Rebbe. You didn’t need anything more than that. That was it.

38:41 Speaker 3 After you came back in Nissan, did you return to [unclear] in Tishrei?

38:50 Speaker 2 Yes, I went back to [unclear]. There was a somewhat challenging period, because by then he’d already had surgery and was undergoing chemotherapy, so it was more difficult. But yes, I tried to be there as much as I could. And I’ll tell you about the occasion when there was a maamar in—

39:22 Speaker 3 [unclear].

39:23 Speaker 2 [unclear]. My father had had a medical episode then, and I was with him in the hospital. I remember my uncle calling me right after the maamar and saying, “There was a maamar.” I told my mother, “I’m going to 770.” I went to 770. The whole of 770 was abuzz, and I felt, “Oh, how could I have missed something like that?” Look, I was a very young bochur, but all around you, you kept hearing, “We’re waiting for the Rebbe to say a maamar, waiting for the Rebbe to say a maamar.” And then it happened, and I wasn’t there. But before Shavuos, my cousins and I were sitting and talking at my uncle’s house, and I told them, “I’m sure there’ll be a maamar before Shavuos.” We started discussing what the opening words would be. I was actually standing there in the front row near the Rebbe, and when the Rebbe began, it was—wow! I felt—

40:15 Speaker 3 A moment of ruach hakodesh?

40:16 Speaker 2 No, it wasn’t ruach hakodesh. It was the feeling of a child who felt he needed that embrace. I stood there and truly felt it was for me. I felt so much more settled. Listen, I’d gone through a difficult period as a young bochur, and I felt that sense of having missed out, of not having been there on that occasion. I said I had no doubt there would be another maamar. When it happened, it really was one of the special moments of my life. And again, I can’t say I could have repeated that maamar afterward, but I was there for a maamar from the Rebbe. Yes, that’s the feeling I mean.

40:57 Speaker 3 So, uh, on Tisha B’Av 5751, my father—

41:04 Speaker 2 My father passed away while on vacation in Thailand in 5751.

41:05 Speaker 3 There.

41:05 Speaker 2 Yes, he passed away there.

41:07 Speaker 3 Were you already here?

41:08 Speaker 2 I was already in the country. Before the funeral, I was at davening with the Rebbe and said Kaddish there.

41:17 Speaker 3 Downstairs, in the zal?

41:18 Speaker 2 Downstairs. Yes.

41:19 Speaker 3 Did he look at you, or what?

41:20 Speaker 2 I don’t know. I mean, I was there, I said Kaddish, but I only found out about it afterward, after I came back. In fact, my father passed away while on vacation in Thailand. And to my mother’s credit—I was the only one who wasn’t married. All my siblings were married, and everyone said I would surely stay with her now. But my mother called me over and said, “Listen, I’ve seen how much chayus you have with the Rebbe. Go back to the Rebbe. I’ll manage.” And honestly, that saved my life. I’ve told her many times, including in recent years, how much I appreciate it. Naturally, it would have made perfect sense to tell your son, “Listen, you’re the only one. Stay here with me.” She arranged for a cousin to come sleep at her place, and I went back to the Rebbe.

42:07 Speaker 3 When did you go back?

42:09 Speaker 2 Before Pesach. I was already there for Pesach. By 4 Nissan I was there. And listen, I can tell you those years really shaped me. Seeing the Rebbe at the Kinus Hashluchim—you could see the Rebbe walking with the pride of a chief of staff seeing his army beside him.

42:32 Speaker 3 I saw— I heard—

42:33 Speaker 2 I saw it in the most tangible way. Those were the opportunities that—look, I grew up in Jerusalem. My father was very active in Tzach; he even has a letter from the Rebbe as a Tzach activist. But I learned what shlichus meant there. In those years, when I saw the Rebbe, the upliftedness, the way the Rebbe was elevated during the week of the Kinus Hashluchim, with the shluchim there, I said, “I’m going to be part of this.” You can’t see that and not be part of it. Of course, all the activities I did there also gave me tremendous energy for it, but it was something—

43:11 Speaker 3 You could see on the Rebbe’s face during the Kinus Hashluchim that—

43:14 Speaker 2 You could see that the Rebbe simply had a special joy. It was really something—

43:19 Speaker 3 I heard from Yigal Beloviansky[?], the shliach in Connecticut, that there were times—apparently after the Rebbe’s passing—when the shluchim felt that as they came in, the Rebbe’s color visibly changed.

43:32 Speaker 2 Literally.

43:32 Speaker 3 You could see it. There was also a year after a period when some of the veteran shluchim got together—how many were there then? Just a few dozen. That was also around the time of the sefarim trial. It happened a number of times.

43:44 Speaker 2 That’s something I saw in the most tangible way. That’s what gave me the— Even then, as a bochur, I told my mother, “I’m going to be a shliach. I have no doubt I’m going to be a shliach.” It’s...

43:58 Speaker 3 Now let’s try to get a little closer to this point. Let’s talk about before Gimmel Tammuz, about 5751–5752[?]. You had just arrived in Nissan.

44:04 Speaker 2 Yes.

44:07 Speaker 3 What was the feeling like, as a young bochur, when suddenly that sicha came? Did it come out of the blue?

44:13 Speaker 2 Yes, completely. I was on break, I was there, and I was standing right at the front during the sicha. I remember my first feeling afterward was perhaps helplessness, like, what does the Rebbe want from us? What are we supposed to...? It wasn’t clear. I just remember Kuti Feldman standing off to the side, sobbing, and everyone—you could see everyone was confused. People came out after that sicha and started shouting “Ad masai!” They started shouting, but nobody really knew what to do, until the Rebbe began to bring some order to it. There was a very, very strong feeling of—

44:53 Speaker 3 Disappointment? As though the Rebbe was disappointed in us?

44:55 Speaker 2 Yes. I don’t know. Was the Rebbe planning to leave us? What did he want? And that night people sat at farbrengens, talking from every angle—you know, all kinds of people, bochurim, young married men, older men. I remember it as something that really confused me. I tried to understand what was happening, and I was still young. I kept trying to figure out: what now? It was clear that something new was going to happen here. But what? I can say that when the Rebbe spoke on Shabbos about learning the subjects of Geulah and Moshiach, in a way there may have been disappointment. People had expected the Rebbe to say, “Come on, turn everything upside down, fly planes, do something.” Learn about Geulah and Moshiach? That’s what you want? Give us projects, give us—

45:49 Speaker 3 Those are the simple tools, so to speak.

45:51 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s how it sounded. But—

45:58 Speaker 3 And what were the bochurim saying among themselves? Tell me. Come on, [unclear].

46:03 Speaker 2 There was a lot of talk, a lot. Again, because it was about learning, it wasn’t—you know, if there had been a campaign to go out and do something... There wasn’t really anything practical that you felt you could get up and do right then. People did want to put up signs with [unclear] “Beis Moshiach.” You know, it wasn’t—

46:25 Speaker 3 Didn’t people write to the Rebbe? Weren’t there groups of bochurim organizing—

46:27 Speaker 2 Again, I assume the older ones did. I didn’t really feel that I had any place to be [unclear] or anything. But look, there was a lot of confusion. On the one hand, everyone felt that we really needed to start publicizing it, perhaps, and talking about it. On the other hand, you know, there were those who argued that publicity was harmful, and that regarding non-Jews, that year the Rebbe had said not to—

46:57 Speaker 3 Put up signs.

46:57 Speaker 2 Publicize it. I suppose that characterized the whole group, and that whole period throughout the world: people understood that something had to happen, but I don’t think they understood well enough what.

47:15 Speaker 3 And then the regular schedule just continued, as it were—

47:18 Speaker 2 Look, it’s clear now that Moshiach became the subject, right? Of course, at the Rebbe’s farbrengens and in all the sichos too. It was on a completely different scale from before. But I can’t say that there was something we actually started doing.

47:49 Speaker 3 And with everything that began happening in 5751[?] and 5752—many more trips to the Ohel, many more sichos, and all of that—did it change the bochurim’s schedule?

47:59 Speaker 2 That’s right. As we said, between 5751 and 5752, we were actually—

48:02 Speaker 3 5751[?]. 5751[?].

48:03 Speaker 2 No, I mean that at the end of 5751, we had finished Elul [unclear] and were supposed to go out on shlichus. We were a group of Israelis who told them we didn’t want to go out on shlichus; we wanted to stay with the Rebbe. They didn’t know how to deal with that, because usually the prize was getting to go on shlichus. Not getting to go on shlichus was—

48:21 Speaker 3 To the yeshivos.

48:22 Speaker 2 ...the carrot and the stick.

48:23 Speaker 3 Yes.

48:24 Speaker 2 We said we didn’t want to go at all. So at first they called us in and told us we couldn’t learn in 770; we had to learn at [unclear]. We said, “Fine, we’ll learn at [unclear].” Then David Raskin called us in and said he wanted us to go on shlichus to Ocean Parkway. We said we’d be in the area, but we set conditions. We told him we wanted a weekly shiur from Rabbi Yoel and a shiur from Rabbi Pikarsky.

48:46 Speaker 3 Which they’d already had on Ocean Parkway before.

48:47 Speaker 2 So we got it. Rabbi Yoel would come once a week to give us a shiur, and Rabbi Pikarsky and Benny Giladi would come to give us shiurim. There were six of us bochurim. I would take Rabbi Yoel each time—he had a shiur in Borough Park on Thursdays. I’d come and pick him up for the shiur, then bring him to us. I mean, sorry, I’d bring him to us, and afterward he would go to his shiur in Borough Park. Traveling with him and listening to him was a special experience too. So that was when we started on Ocean Parkway. And every day we had to—we’d go to 770. One day the Rebbe went to the Ohel, another day there was a sicha; every day was a different story, and we were constantly going back and forth. But we were still there until the break. After that, we didn’t go back.

49:37 Speaker 3 You stayed in 770, then.

49:38 Speaker 2 We stayed at 770. It was during Sukkos, in November. I managed to get a number—they were handing out numbers for the Rebbe’s sukkah—and I got an early one, so I could make the blessings and then daven with the Rebbe’s minyan. I got there around eight-thirty, maybe a quarter to nine, and saw a long line. I went up and told them I had an early number. People said, “No problem, you can go ahead.” But I sensed that something was different. Then someone told me, “The Rebbe is standing there.” As soon as I heard that, I ran to the back of the line and stood there. I think it was one of the most extraordinary moments. When you pass by for dollars, you’re there for a second; you don’t have to say anything. Here you’re standing there, and the Rebbe has to hear you say two blessings. On the one hand, you don’t want to hold up the Rebbe, so you want to say them quickly. On the other hand, the Rebbe is listening to you; you can’t swallow the words. Those few seconds when the Rebbe stood there looking at you were among the most frightening and most extraordinary moments we had in that period. Because—

50:53 Speaker 3 It was almost the only time, you might say, when the Rebbe was standing there and not doing anything.

50:57 Speaker 2 Standing and looking at you. Really listening.

50:58 Speaker 3 At dollars, he’s handing out dollars.

50:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. You pass by, and you don’t have to do anything yourself. Here you have to speak, and the Rebbe is looking at you. So it really was one of the most extraordinary moments, but very, very frightening. You know, you have to look in the siddur and say two blessings... Afterward, davening was at three. They started Shacharis, and there was Hallel, during which the Rebbe encouraged the singing for a really long time.

51:32 Speaker 3 The tallis, too—I remember that, because I was a child then.

51:37 Speaker 2 What?

51:38 Speaker 3 On the first and second days, the tallis.

51:40 Speaker 2 Oh, the one that kept falling. Yes.

51:42 Speaker 3 They could lift me up; they held me, and it almost fell, and—

51:44 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

51:46 Speaker 3 I remember that 770 was... I wasn’t one of those making the blessings, because I was already past bar mitzvah, but—

51:54 Speaker 2 You were already past bar mitzvah?

51:55 Speaker 3 I was a month past bar mitzvah.

51:56 Speaker 2 So you did make the blessings.

51:56 Speaker 3 Yes, I did, but I wasn’t one of those who stayed to look into the sukkah, to catch a glimpse. You could barely see anything anyway.

52:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:01 Speaker 3 So I was in 770. People felt something they couldn’t quite explain.

52:06 Speaker 2 Until three.

52:09 Speaker 3 Of course.

52:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:11 Speaker 3 There was a large crowd, too.

52:13 Speaker 2 Very large.

52:13 Speaker 3 [unclear].

52:14 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

52:14 Speaker 3 A crowd.

52:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:17 Speaker 3 Because it had started earlier, with the dollars. I remember Leible coming down [unclear]. Yom Kippur was Wednesday, Thursday. After [unclear], my brother got married that same day, when Itzik married [unclear]—

52:30 Speaker 2 There was a wedding, too.

52:32 Speaker 3 Leible—it was specifically when the Rebbe said that all the children should pass by for dollars, children only.

52:37 Speaker 2 What do you remember—

52:38 Speaker 3 I remember when Leible arrived. I was already past bar mitzvah, so I didn’t pass by, but my brother received a siddur. I didn’t go in. It’s like what I mentioned just now; it leads to—

52:48 Speaker 2 Yes, meaning—

52:49 Speaker 3 Both things: my brothers taught me not to pass by for dollars every time, and not to go in for the siddur either. [Unclear] the Sonkin family—their two younger children went in. The Rebbe gave my brother a siddur and immediately went out to distribute dollars to the children. That was surprising too: only children, only children under bar mitzvah.

53:07 Speaker 2 The Rebbe handed out dollars only to children then?

53:09 Speaker 3 At the usual place for dollars, only to— And then he went to the Ohel. He came back from the Ohel in the middle of the chuppah of...

53:18 Speaker 2 Wow. You know, in that period there really was a lot of discussion about whether to pass by for dollars or not. Looking back today, I’m glad about every time I went. Listen, people often ask me for dollars, and I give someone a dollar. I tell them, “Look, this is a dollar the Rebbe placed in my hand. It’s very hard for me to part with it. I’ll give it to you if you take on something that’s genuinely difficult for you.” Just last week, I officiated at a wedding in Bangkok. After the sheva brachos, a young man came up to me. He isn’t religious at all; he has a girlfriend there. He said, “Rabbi, do you know what my dream is? To have a dollar from the Rebbe.” I said, “Wow.” Then I asked him, “Do you keep Shabbos?” He said, “No, but if you give me a dollar from the Rebbe, I’ll start keeping Shabbos.”

54:09 Speaker 3 Really.

54:10 Speaker 2 Okay. We kept talking. I went over and asked him, “When were you born? What’s your birth date?” I hurried off and found a dollar the Rebbe had given me two days before his birthday. Then I came back and told him, “Listen, I have a dollar the Rebbe gave me five years before you were born. I’ve kept it for forty years for this moment. I’m going to give you a dollar that’s hard for me to part with, but you...” He said, “Rabbi, when I do something, I’m all in. I promise you I’m going to start keeping Shabbos.” All his employees were sitting there, and he told them, “From today on, you don’t call me. I won’t have a phone on Shabbos.” That was it. He wrote to me the other day. This happened last Thursday.

54:39 Speaker 3 Wow.

54:40 Speaker 2 Two days ago he wrote, “Rabbi, you should know that this was the first Shabbos we kept. We enjoyed it so much; it was so good.” So I thank Hashem for every dollar I have. There are dollars from the Rebbe circulating today, but when you tell someone, “The Rebbe placed this dollar in my hand, and I’m giving it to you,” it means something. Quite a few people are now keeping Shabbos because of that, and they’ve made very, very serious commitments. But as a bochur, it really was... Sometimes many people would ask me, “Why?” Of course I didn’t pass by every time, but when the Rebbe—

55:09 Speaker 3 When did you pass by?

55:11 Speaker 2 I did pass by after sichos, and on Sundays—

55:15 Speaker 3 You really did pass by.

55:16 Speaker 2 Yes. And on Sundays, when there was... Well, of course, for a birthday and things like that. I’d pass by from time to time. Sometimes I went with my father and mother, but...

55:30 Speaker 3 You brought people, too, as—

55:32 Speaker 2 What’s that? Yes, of course. When I brought people, naturally I went through with them. Yes.

55:36 Speaker 3 Did a lot of bochurim bring people?

55:39 Speaker 2 I think so. For a while there was a bochur there—he’s an avreich now—Shimon [unclear]. Do you know who that is? He used to bring rabbis to the Rebbe. At the time I had a car, and I would drive with him to pick up the rabbis. So I would pass by with them.

55:56 Speaker 3 Who, for example? Do you remember?

55:58 Speaker 2 Rabbi Menashe Klein. And the rabbi... What was his name? The...

56:03 Speaker 3 Uri Zinner.

56:04 Speaker 2 Uri Zinner.

56:05 Speaker 3 Yes.

56:05 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Nati... Nati Gabriel.

56:10 Speaker 3 Gavriel Zinner.

56:11 Speaker 2 Zinner.

56:11 Speaker 3 Did you ask him?

56:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

56:14 Speaker 3 Did they say anything afterward?

56:15 Speaker 2 Yes, often. Again, I was a young bochur, and I didn’t necessarily speak with them, but they always came away deeply impressed. I did get to go and bring people a few times, so I would pass by as well, to see. But...

56:33 Speaker 3 What was hidden about that part wasn’t clear. Even what you see on the inside—how much more so what you can understand about what came of it. Sometimes you see the Rebbe say something that the person doesn’t understand, and only later do you hear what resulted from it. It seems to me there was more hidden than revealed in...

56:57 Speaker 2 One of the things that impressed me even then, and that I think about even more today, is watching people pass by the Rebbe. Whenever someone told the Rebbe about something they had done, the Rebbe would always ask for more. You’d see people come away saying, “Do you know what the Rebbe asked me to do? Even more.” Naturally, you’d expect someone to say, “No, I did something. Give me a good word!” But the Rebbe had this special ability to make a person accept, on the one hand, that they needed to do more, and on the other—

57:29 Speaker 3 To feel it as encouragement, not as—

57:30 Speaker 2 Exactly.

57:31 Speaker 3 Not as though you—

57:32 Speaker 2 Because that’s what it really was. The Rebbe wasn’t saying, “You’re not good enough.” The Rebbe was saying, “I believe in you more than you believe in yourself. You think this is your limit? I know you can do much more than this.” Everyone wants to feel they can do much more. But when the Rebbe said it, it was in a way that...

57:56 Speaker 3 A personal question—you don’t have to answer. After something like your father passing away, wouldn’t you write to the Rebbe about it? Did you write to the Rebbe? There’s a feeling that the Rebbe knows anyway.

58:07 Speaker 2 No, I don’t think I wrote to the Rebbe. I... no, I didn’t. Listen, I had no complaints. No.

58:18 Speaker 3 Did the Rebbe want to check that you came afterward to speak with him about something?

58:22 Speaker 2 No, I don’t remember. I don’t think there was anything particular. No.

58:28 Speaker 3 How did the chassidim deal with that? Did someone from outside have to...

58:31 Speaker 2 I didn’t get too much encouragement or anything like that. Okay.

58:37 Speaker 3 What greater encouragement could you have than the shlichus?

58:39 Speaker 2 Of course. I receive from the Rebbe every day. I mean, as a bochur, it wasn’t—as I said, the Rebbe wasn’t giving me instructions and...

58:46 Speaker 3 No, that’s what’s special about it, and why I’m so happy about the podcast. Today, unfortunately, we all feel that we still don’t see or experience that. But even in those years, the connection was, in a certain sense, an essential one. I mean, it wasn’t—

59:04 Speaker 2 Exactly.

59:05 Speaker 3 That’s what I want—that’s the point I’m trying to—

59:07 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Listen, you were there. You lived with the Rebbe, saw the Rebbe, and we really tried to take part in the davening, the farbrengens, the sichos, and... But there was still that vast distance. I mean, there was you, and yet at the same time you felt very, very close. You were with the Rebbe. And...

59:40 Speaker 3 I remember that on [unclear], the Rebbe spoke about the integrity of the Land of Israel. I was a child; I barely understood Yiddish. I was standing quite far away too, a thirteen-year-old Israeli boy. But suddenly the Rebbe spoke in a loud voice. Usually, at [unclear], you could no longer hear... This was on Bereishis. You felt that even though you were a young boy standing far away, suddenly the Rebbe was making himself heard to you too. That’s how it felt; I remember it afterward. And at the end, when the Rebbe gave a brachah, it felt as though I heard that too.

1:00:25 Speaker 2 What brachah was it at the end?

1:00:27 Speaker 3 Yes, even when the Rebbe opened the siddur like that. There are special moments that you experienced, that you lived through by seeing and hearing, apart from what you learn.

1:00:41 Speaker 2 So no, unfortunately, I don’t have some particular... Again, from that whole period with the Rebbe, I remember the atmosphere more than the individual days or the content. Yes, but I often think: what if I had been there during a period like today, when I could really understand more? But listen, we were privileged. Every day we were there was an enormous privilege. I have no doubt it contributed tremendously to where I am today. And listen, when you’re on shlichus, so many times you encounter... You know, there are the beautiful things people usually write about and tell you about, but in day-to-day life there are many, many things that aren’t simple. When you reach moments like that, you know how to close your eyes for a moment and think about what the Rebbe expects of you right now, and you know exactly what you need to do. You know, when people come to you and you help them, and then they throw stones at you and get angry with you too—you take a second and picture the woman passing by the Rebbe and telling him, “You told me this in a dream,” and the Rebbe patiently, with a smile, answering each person. You understand what the Rebbe expects of you. If you really want to be a shliach, you have to be like [unclear]. You can’t play at it. So I have no doubt that we drew a lot of strength from that period. All the...

1:02:10 Speaker 3 From the supposedly simple things.

1:02:12 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. I mean, as a bochur... Look, I’m sure there were bochurim, even my age, who really could repeat a sicha afterward, or who truly took in its content.

1:02:25 Speaker 3 Or wrote it up for the newspapers.

1:02:26 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And I should also say that for a large part of those years when I was there, my head was in one place and I was in another. But even afterward, I can’t say I was one of those who could repeat a sicha after hearing it. But...

1:02:47 Speaker 3 But precisely because of that, it’s the opposite. It’s as if—yes.

1:02:51 Speaker 2 You know the story chassidim tell about a wagon driver? On the way back, they took him along and gave him some of the leftovers from the farbrengen to eat. As they were traveling, they noticed him looking at the wheels instead of watching the road. They told him, “Watch the road.” He said, “Listen, I’ve discovered something amazing: the harder I whip the horse, the faster the wheels turn.” They said, “Look at that—even this wagon driver came away with something from the month he spent with the Rebbe.” So I’m saying, you know, when you’re with the Rebbe, there’s no question that it has an effect. And I’m sure it’s true today too. In fact, precisely because it’s seemingly not about what you heard from the Rebbe—just being within the Rebbe’s daled amos changes your life. I think that’s true today. There’s no doubt it’s true today too.

1:03:40 Speaker 3 Or there’s a story—I don’t know its source—about a bochur who didn’t want to go into yechidus. The Rebbe once asked [unclear]. There was a period when [unclear] would go in—every worker, rabbi and minister—and the Rebbe said something to the effect that even at an ordinary Minchah, “I see him just as I do in yechidus.” That’s what I want to hear from you. I imagine it was like that for the bochurim too. In a sense, when you were there and the Rebbe came in, you felt a connection.

1:04:11 Speaker 2 Listen, as I said, throughout that whole period I really tried very, very hard not to miss davening and not to miss opportunities. So yes, I didn’t have those “wow” stories, but that day-to-day experience—

1:04:27 Speaker 3 Naturally, people always say that as a community grows, the more people there are, the less each person feels a personal connection. Yet with the Rebbe, the connection was...

1:04:38 Speaker 2 That’s what they felt.

1:04:38 Speaker 3 With the Rebbe, that’s no surprise. But in this podcast we’re not describing the Rebbe; we’re talking about how chassidim felt.

1:04:43 Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly.

1:04:44 Speaker 3 Chassidim felt that coming to a gathering of five thousand was like coming to one of [unclear]. That’s what I’m trying to say. Not even a gathering—just an ordinary [unclear].

1:04:54 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely. Look, of course there were times—say, in the summer, when many people had traveled—when you had a farbrengen with maybe seventy, [unclear]. That gave you this feeling of “Wow, we’re really alone with the Rebbe.”

1:05:10 Speaker 3 And in one respect, it was easier to get close.

1:05:12 Speaker 2 Of course. But there was also that feeling of “Wow, we’re alone here with the Rebbe.” Alone—with a thousand people, or eighteen hundred people. But even when it was packed, even when there were huge numbers of people, each person clearly felt his own personal connection to the Rebbe.

1:05:34 Speaker 3 May we soon return and live it and see it.

1:05:37 Speaker 2 Amen. With Hashem’s help.

1:05:38 Speaker 3 Geulah. And in the meantime, we keep drawing strength from the shlichus, from the work—each person in whatever he does, and...

1:05:48 Speaker 2 There’s no doubt that you feel the Rebbe in shlichus. I also believe that if you don’t truly live with the Rebbe, you can’t live the shlichus day to day. Listen, as I said earlier, shlichus is truly an amazing thing. Sitting with hundreds of people on Shabbos is a pleasure. But it isn’t only that. There are also moments that are less glamorous, less... When you truly remember, and constantly remind yourself how the Rebbe would respond in a situation like this, what the Rebbe would expect of me in a situation like this—you know what the Rebbe would tell you if you asked that question. That gives you the strength and the answer for every question that comes your way. And...

1:06:35 Speaker 3 And what did you say at the beginning that the Rebbe gave you? “Groise hatzlachah,” right?

1:06:39 Speaker 2 “Groise hatzlachah.”

1:06:40 Speaker 3 “Groise hatzlachah.” May there be great accomplishments.

1:06:42 Speaker 2 Yes, no question.

1:06:44 Speaker 3 Both in the shlichus and in the work.

1:06:46 Speaker 2 With Hashem’s help.

1:06:46 Speaker 3 May we see the Rebbe very soon, and may there be great strength.

1:06:48 Speaker 2 Amen. Great strength to you, Rabbi Nechemia. I already long to see the Rebbe with us, with Hashem’s help.

1:06:54 Speaker 3 Amen.