Lehisraanen Episode 23: Rabbi Feitel Sudkevitch (Kfar Chabad)

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome to the podcast “Lehitra’anein,” where chassidim refresh our connection to the Rebbe, sharing and telling stories about life in 770, Beis Chayeinu. This time we’re with the chossid Reb Feitel Sudkevitch from Kfar Chabad. Hello and welcome.

00:15 Speaker 2 Good evening.

00:16 Speaker 1 Good evening. Let’s start with the question we always open with: Where do you come from? What are your roots?

00:23 Speaker 2 On my mother’s side, we come from the Jews expelled from Spain.

00:29 Speaker 1 From the expulsion from Spain? Wow. The Levi family?

00:34 Speaker 2 Yes. A very distinguished lineage.

00:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

00:37 Speaker 2 You said Ashkenazi—so I’m Sephardi. Sephardi, Sephardi, it makes no difference. My father is from [unclear]. There’s also a lineage going back to [unclear]. This was during the revolution. It wasn’t possible to study openly; he studied at home with the Ramban.

01:02 Speaker 1 In Ukraine.

01:03 Speaker 2 In Ukraine, yes. That town was a place my great-grandfather owned; he built it—Pervomaisk. There’s a shliach there now, and he built a mikveh there.

01:20 Speaker 1 Perlstein.

01:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:21 Speaker 1 The shliach there.

01:23 Speaker 2 And he was the...

01:24 Speaker 1 Who was your great-grandfather? What was his name?

01:25 Speaker 2 Huh?

01:26 Speaker 1 What was his name?

01:28 Speaker 2 Eliyahu.

01:28 Speaker 1 Huh?

01:28 Speaker 2 On my grandmother’s side, Eliyahu.

01:30 Speaker 1 Eliyahu.

01:31 Speaker 2 Yes. He was a very wealthy man. He was the contractor who supplied the railroad ties to the king. Then, when the revolution began, he lost all his money.

01:46 Speaker 1 They took everything from him.

01:48 Speaker 2 There weren’t banks then. It was kept in barrels—coins, gold coins in barrels, in the...

01:55 Speaker 1 In the ground.

01:57 Speaker 2 Who took them? The non-Jew who worked in the yard. He took everything. And [unclear]. My great-grandfather was an anti-Zionist. No question about it. Maimon, the minister, the minister...

02:18 Speaker 1 Fishman. Fishman-Maimon.

02:20 Speaker 2 Fishman. He came to Pervomaisk to sell [unclear] for the Zionist movement. My grandfather heard about it and said, “Out!” He wouldn’t let him speak. He told him, “How much do you think you can make here? I’ll give you three times as much.”

02:40 Speaker 1 How much did you think you could make here? I’ll give you three times that—just leave.

02:46 Speaker 2 When Kfar Chabad was being built, there was no mikveh. My father heard about it and said, “Kfar Chabad can’t be without a mikveh. That’s impossible.” He traveled to Jerusalem, to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and from there to Maimon. They started talking. My father asked him, “Do you remember my grandfather?” Of course he remembered him. He had paid him a lot of money. At the time, the seventy-three families had a committee, a committee—not a local council. Because of that, he gave [unclear], and there was a budget to build a mikveh.

03:29 Speaker 1 Because of what your grandfather had done...

03:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:31 Speaker 1 Once your father reminded him of it, Kfar Chabad got a mikveh because...

03:34 Speaker 2 But we had a troublesome Polish [unclear] here. They went to [unclear]. The shochet heard it from the side. He said to him, “Reb Uriel, what are you relying on?”

03:48 Speaker 1 [unclear].

03:49 Speaker 2 Yes. “[unclear].” So the shochet [unclear], and they didn’t use it. There was one pit and another pit.

03:59 Speaker 1 So it had both.

04:00 Speaker 2 But they didn’t use it.

04:01 Speaker 1 The one the shochet was talking about.

04:02 Speaker 2 [unclear] wanted it, fine, and he made it, but they didn’t use it. That was the first mikveh in Kfar Chabad.

04:09 Speaker 1 Which was also built, in fact, thanks to what your grandfather, Reb Eliyahu, had done...

04:12 Speaker 2 Huh?

04:12 Speaker 1 It was also built thanks to the efforts...

04:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

04:14 Speaker 1 Of your grandfather, Reb Eliyahu.

04:16 Speaker 2 The anti-Zionist [unclear]. What my father did was no small thing.

04:23 Speaker 1 Wait, was your father born there in... Where was your father born? There in Pervo... Pervomaisk?

04:30 Speaker 2 He was from Pervomaisk.

04:31 Speaker 1 When did he first get to know the chassidim?

04:33 Speaker 2 What?

04:33 Speaker 1 When did he first get to know the chassidim?

04:34 Speaker 2 In 5729.

04:36 Speaker 1 So until 5729, he wasn’t connected to Lubavitch?

04:38 Speaker 2 He was. He was involved in the activities. In 5729 he had three names: Zalman Soloveitchik; in the neighborhood it was Karso, Zalman Karso; and Jema. Thanks to those three names, Hashem saved us.

04:57 Speaker 1 Because otherwise they could have caught him.

04:58 Speaker 2 Hashem kept sending two people. They were the two who were inside the shul.

05:04 Speaker 1 Informers.

05:05 Speaker 2 Bedouin informers.

05:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:07 Speaker 2 They were looking for Jema, and they knew Zalman Karso. That was one of the ways he was saved—and he wasn’t saved for nothing. He conducted business there on a scale you can’t imagine. My mother told us there was a room full of sacks of [unclear], sack after sack, and it went to the yeshiva and the cheder in Samarkand. I was still a little boy, and [unclear] knew my father wasn’t making those sacks for nothing. What were the sacks for? He would bribe Georgia’s minister of the economy. They would obtain the raw material used to make parachutes and give it to our people. They built machines for them to make stockings. That way they wouldn’t have to work on Shabbos; some was for this and some was for that.

06:11 Speaker 1 Some was kept, and some went to whatever was needed.

06:14 Speaker 2 And this wasn’t a small amount. It was railroad cars, whole railroad cars of material.

06:22 Speaker 1 Railroad cars of material that he managed to...

06:23 Speaker 2 Yes, and afterward it went onto the black market, and they made millions from it. Someone came to my father and said, “I don’t understand you. Can’t you buy your wife a dress? I know you’re turning over millions.” He said, “Listen, the fact that I’m turning over millions is beyond the natural order. With everything going on around me, it’s beyond the natural order. I’m just the one entrusted with it. I take what I need to live, and everything else goes to the yeshivas.”

06:53 Speaker 1 To the yeshivas and the cheder.

06:54 Speaker 2 These were millions. Later, when the escape operation began, millions went toward bribing all the...

07:05 Speaker 1 All the echelons and all the...

07:07 Speaker 2 Everyone who might say something was given a sweet to keep his mouth shut. Those “sweets” cost millions and millions. In the end, he didn’t even have paper money or dollars for himself. And he was the one who insisted they give the Rebbe papers from [unclear]. I’m deliberately not going into detail about what happened there afterward.

07:41 Speaker 1 Everyone held back.

07:42 Speaker 2 [unclear] ask the Rebbe for forgiveness. He knew of Reb Levik—not personally, but he knew of him. During the war, that gave him strength.

07:55 Speaker 1 Where did he come to know of Reb Levik?

07:57 Speaker 2 After they fled from there, my grandfather lived in Malakhovka—my father’s father, Gershon.

08:03 Speaker 1 Reb Gershon Soloveitchik.

08:05 Speaker 2 And apparently something remained of my grandfather’s money, of his wealth. Reb Levik would come to collect money for [unclear].

08:17 Speaker 1 In Malakhovka.

08:18 Speaker 2 In Malakhovka too, and Moscow.

08:19 Speaker 1 So that goes back to the very, very early years of the tzaddikim.

08:23 Speaker 2 The tzaddikim, yes. Binyamin Lipkin told me he was invited to a wedding because of Reb Levik—the Rebbe’s father. Haven’t you heard that story? It’s amazing.

08:36 Speaker 1 I haven’t heard any of it.

08:38 Speaker 2 One of those Litvaks was shouting at him. He wanted him at the wedding. Why did he want a Lubavitcher at the wedding? He told him something amazing. His son, whose descendant was now getting married, couldn’t have children. He went to every doctor in Israel.

09:00 Speaker 1 They told him, “When hair grows on the palm of your hand...”

09:02 Speaker 2 He decided to go to doctors in America. He went all over the world, and every single one told him the same thing.

09:09 Speaker 1 That there was no chance.

09:10 Speaker 2 He called his father and said, “I’m coming back.” His father said, “No. You’re going to the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” [unclear].

09:19 Speaker 1 “Are you sure? Do you hear what you’re saying?”

09:20 Speaker 2 [unclear].

09:23 Speaker 1 He said to him, “My father...”

09:24 Speaker 2 “Going to the Lubavitcher Rebbe is repaying a debt.” “What debt?”

09:29 Speaker 1 “A debt of gratitude. You’re going to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and that’s how we’ll repay it.”

09:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:32 Speaker 1 He asked him, “What debt are we repaying?”

09:34 Speaker 2 When Reb Levik was in Moscow, he stayed at his father’s house twice.

09:38 Speaker 1 At the father’s house of that... [unclear].

09:40 Speaker 2 In that house, yes.

09:40 Speaker 1 That [unclear].

09:42 Speaker 2 “Go up to the Rebbe and tell him you’re the grandson of the man whose home Reb Levik stayed in. You want...”

09:48 Speaker 1 A bracha? To repay the hospitality, the cost of lodging.

09:53 Speaker 2 “[unclear] at the festival.”

09:57 Speaker 1 “My community will kill me.”

09:59 Speaker 2 “But I remember that before Mincha there aren’t any...”

10:05 Speaker 1 No photographs.

10:06 Speaker 2 “There are no photographs. I’ll come before Mincha.” He said it outside, and he spoke to the Rebbe. The Rebbe told him to come into the room. [unclear].

10:16 Speaker 1 The Rebbe told him, “Come into the room.”

10:18 Speaker 2 He went in, and the Rebbe blessed him. Thank Hashem. The wedding was for the grandchild of the child born after the Rebbe’s bracha.

10:29 Speaker 1 The grandchild of that child?

10:30 Speaker 2 Of course. That’s why he wanted a Lubavitcher at the wedding.

10:36 Speaker 1 So what was new to you was that Reb Levik had been in the Moscow area.

10:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:39 Speaker 1 In Malakhovka.

10:39 Speaker 2 In Malakhovka.

10:42 Speaker 1 Wait, but your father—Reb Zalman’s father, Reb Gershon—wasn’t a Lubavitcher.

10:45 Speaker 2 No. He was a chossid of [unclear]. Now, when [unclear] arrived after Reb Levik [unclear] and came to Moscow, there were people who didn’t want to stand near him because...

11:05 Speaker 1 They were afraid.

11:05 Speaker 2 [unclear]. But my father knew of Reb Levik. He knew where [unclear] needed to stay. They started looking for a place for him to stay.

11:20 Speaker 1 He didn’t come to Moscow; he came to Tashkent.

11:22 Speaker 2 No, no, no. [unclear] was there in Malakhovka.

11:26 Speaker 1 After Alma-Ata?

11:28 Speaker 2 Yes. There was a Dr. Belman there, a Jewish surgeon, an observant doctor. He arrived [unclear] and later came to Israel. His wife was the sister of the minister of justice—if I could only remember the name. He was also from the town of Pervomaisk. Incidentally, there were Jews there, Jews.

11:58 Speaker 1 The minister of justice.

12:00 Speaker 2 [unclear]. He used to have a class with Cohen in July.

12:10 Speaker 1 Chaim Cohen.

12:11 Speaker 2 Judge Cohen, the one whom the rabbi...

12:12 Speaker 1 Judge Chaim Cohen.

12:14 Speaker 2 I don’t know if they learned with him, or how that worked. I don’t know. So my father approached her and said… She had three rooms. “Would you rent out a room?” “No problem. I’m not afraid anymore.”

12:29 Speaker 1 To Rebbetzin Chana.

12:30 Speaker 2 Yes. She said, “I’m not afraid anymore.” She had already been through Zionism, yeshivos, all kinds of yeshivos, and she rented a room to Rebbetzin Chana.

12:42 Speaker 1 Dr. Landsman.

12:43 Speaker 2 Dr. Landman.

12:44 Speaker 1 Landman.

12:45 Speaker 2 She was active; people were coming and going. Yocheved Zalmanov. Yocheved Gurevitch—that’s her sister. And later there are the letters Rebbetzin Chana wrote to her. Have you seen them?

12:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

12:59 Speaker 2 Very warm letters.

13:01 Speaker 1 Yes, to Yocheved Zalmanov, née Gurevitch.

13:03 Speaker 2 Who helped her. So all that came later. My father became involved in the work in Kfar Chabad.

13:13 Speaker 1 Wait, we’ll get to that in a second. So they were in Lviv, in Lviv, and then they left. In the end, your father did get out.

13:20 Speaker 2 Afterward they traveled to…

13:20 Speaker 1 He left on the very last train.

13:22 Speaker 2 The very, very last one.

13:23 Speaker 1 He arrived in… Yes, and then he arrived in Paris.

13:27 Speaker 2 We arrived in Paris, but Rebbetzin Chana was in…

13:31 Speaker 1 Pocking.

13:31 Speaker 2 Pocking. She was there, I’d say, for two weeks as well. There was a hospital there and a room for patients. Rebbetzin Chana was there, and so was Sholom Feldman’s mother, Basya. Sholom was a young boy of thirteen or fourteen. He came to visit his mother. Rebbetzin Chana had been in the room a long time, and his mother wasn’t in the room just then, so she closed the door and shut everything. Later, when Rabbi Tzvi came, Rebbetzin Chana said a sentence that Sholom says would pierce him to the heart.

14:14 Speaker 1 “He reminds me of my son.” Wow.

14:20 Speaker 2 If you want to pierce him to the depths of his soul, just say that sentence.

14:25 Speaker 1 It stirs him.

14:28 Speaker 2 That’s it.

14:29 Speaker 1 And then they arrived in France.

14:32 Speaker 2 And then the Rebbe came, in 5707. It took a few months until…

14:37 Speaker 1 The Rebbe was there for three months. Then your father got to know the Rebbe, and your father saw the Rebbe in 5707.

14:42 Speaker 2 Yes. And he didn’t just see him; he was very closely involved in everything.

14:48 Speaker 1 What was he involved in?

14:49 Speaker 2 Huh?

14:49 Speaker 1 What was he closely involved in?

14:50 Speaker 2 In things like the farbrengens, coming and helping out. There were things at the farbrengen…

14:59 Speaker 1 I don’t know anything about it. Tell me.

15:01 Speaker 2 You don’t know about the farbrengen?

15:02 Speaker 1 I don’t know anything.

15:05 Speaker 2 There was a farbrengen that took place at [unclear]. The Rebbe asked each person his name and explained the name of each one from the Torah.

15:14 Speaker 1 The…?

15:14 Speaker 2 The name from the Torah.

15:16 Speaker 1 The name from the Torah.

15:17 Speaker 2 Whoever the Rebbe was speaking to heard it directly. When he came to my father, my father told him, “Ah, Froim Zalman—that has to do with…” And the Rebbe began speaking.

15:30 Speaker 1 “Froim Zalman is something entirely different, not two names,” and he began to speak.

15:33 Speaker 2 About my father’s name. And there are more things from there.

15:42 Speaker 1 How old was he?

15:42 Speaker 2 Things my father didn’t find… My father didn’t want to tell them, either.

15:46 Speaker 1 How old was he then, in France?

15:47 Speaker 2 Who?

15:47 Speaker 1 Your father. How old was he then, in France?

15:49 Speaker 2 He was thirty-four or thirty-five.

15:57 Speaker 1 He already had children?

15:58 Speaker 2 Yes. I was there, and Gershon was there.

16:00 Speaker 1 Where were you born?

16:01 Speaker 2 I was born in Tashkent.

16:03 Speaker 1 You were born in Tashkent.

16:05 Speaker 2 Tashkent. Gershon was born in Moscow. When we left, I was a year and two months old. Gershon was a month or two old, a month and a half.

16:16 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

16:18 Speaker 2 Now—

16:19 Speaker 1 When you were in France with the Rebbe, did the Rebbe see you?

16:23 Speaker 2 Who? Us?

16:24 Speaker 1 As young children, perhaps.

16:26 Speaker 2 There’s an account about Bukma.

16:27 Speaker 1 Yes, but no, I’m asking about you.

16:29 Speaker 2 He brought me presents.

16:29 Speaker 1 Yes, but you yourselves…

16:31 Speaker 2 And he told me…

16:32 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

16:33 Speaker 2 Do you know what he told me? A bicycle.

16:36 Speaker 1 A bicycle, yes.

16:39 Speaker 2 All these things… My father didn’t study [unclear].

16:47 Speaker 1 But he didn’t study in a yeshiva as one of the Temimim.

16:50 Speaker 2 He didn’t study in any yeshiva. He only studied with Lamber. When the work began, there were things the Rebbe wrote to the rabbi, telling him to read…

17:06 Speaker 1 The Rebbe wrote letters to Rabbi Schneur Dan [unclear], and told him to burn the page after reading it.

17:12 Speaker 2 There were things he couldn’t do on his own. He was—

17:16 Speaker 1 He needed helpers.

17:16 Speaker 2 He was close to him.

17:18 Speaker 1 He was close to him. My father was close to him.

17:20 Speaker 2 Very close, in a way that nobody knew what they were doing. For example, [unclear]. It was a revolution. I remember when my father came to the shul, they wanted to throw him out. They found out he was behind that move. I was a child, and he said, “Come help me.” He took a hammer, screws, locks. “Come on, this is the girls’ shul.” He changed all the locks. Closed it up. Someone came and said, “What?” It was all done at the rabbi’s direction. The rabbi couldn’t do it alone, for various reasons.

18:14 Speaker 1 Yes.

18:15 Speaker 2 It was Shabbos at the shul, and I was a child. How old was I then—four or five? Most of what happened there… But even though people wanted to come, they had to put the rules in writing. Not just general rules; they spelled out what to do.

18:30 Speaker 1 How to come and how not to come.

18:32 Speaker 2 Yes, because then…

18:34 Speaker 1 It was hard for them. They came, they came—

18:35 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you what happened. There was a meeting of Chabad people after they established it. There were a few prominent people there. “If you’ve drunk Tanya, then that establishes a presumption.”

18:46 Speaker 1 That isn’t written in Tanya.

18:47 Speaker 2 “Drinking Tanya establishes a presumption.” You can understand what… And who was it who said that? The leading people. So word reached the Rebbe that Zalman was making—

19:01 Speaker 1 Trouble.

19:02 Speaker 2 The Rebbe said something—either to me or to someone else. The Rebbe said, “Zalman iz meiner.”

19:08 Speaker 1 “Zalman iz meiner”—Zalman is mine.

19:09 Speaker 2 The Rebbe said it about Dovid Raskin too: “Dovid iz meiner.”

19:16 Speaker 1 Wow.

19:16 Speaker 2 Then there was the work of establishing Kfar Chabad—

19:19 Speaker 1 Before we get to establishing the village, let’s go over a story that is somewhat well known, but it’s worth hearing firsthand.

19:24 Speaker 2 I haven’t heard it.

19:25 Speaker 1 What was the story with “Az Yosef”?

19:28 Speaker 2 That’s already well known.

19:29 Speaker 1 Yes, but it’s worth hearing firsthand, even if it’s well known.

19:32 Speaker 2 This is what happened. There were about sixteen people who applied for visas—not certificates—as shochtim and rabbis. They prepared those lists and gave them to someone to—

19:50 Speaker 1 In France.

19:51 Speaker 2 Yes, to pass them on to—

19:52 Speaker 1 New York.

19:53 Speaker 2 To the Rebbe. And there was no answer, no answer.

19:57 Speaker 1 No answer from the previous Rebbe.

19:59 Speaker 2 There was no answer, even from the secretariat. Then they began… The Rebbe said—

20:10 Speaker 1 Let’s explain this. You don’t know what a dear friend you have over there.

20:13 Speaker 2 You have. The Rebbe told the story.

20:17 Speaker 1 What’s the story?

20:18 Speaker 2 I don’t know the story.

20:20 Speaker 1 Some people don’t know it.

20:22 Speaker 2 Manya, the nurse.

20:23 Speaker 1 The nurse, Manya.

20:25 Speaker 2 She had to give the Rebbe injections.

20:27 Speaker 1 The previous Rebbe.

20:28 Speaker 2 Yes. She came in, and the Rebbe was murmuring and moving one leg. One leg was moving the whole time, and he was saying—

20:40 Speaker 1 She saw that he was murmuring something and moving one leg, but he looked as though he wasn’t present.

20:44 Speaker 2 He wasn’t, he wasn’t—

20:46 Speaker 1 Responding.

20:46 Speaker 2 He wasn’t responding. She got frightened and ran to send for someone. The Rebbe was living on New York…

20:52 Speaker 1 New York Street.

20:53 Speaker 2 New York Street, there. The Rebbe came, and he heard, “Az Yosef…”

20:59 Speaker 1 He heard the previous Rebbe say “Az Yosef” several times.

21:03 Speaker 2 Several times. “Durkhgegangen, durkhgegangen.”

21:06 Speaker 1 He was saying, “They’ve passed through, they’ve passed through.”

21:07 Speaker 2 “They’ve passed through.” My father sat with the Rebbe. He said it was exactly—it was exactly—

21:15 Speaker 1 Your father asked what it meant, and it meant—the trains.

21:19 Speaker 2 The train had…

21:21 Speaker 1 It was exactly when the trains crossed the border.

21:23 Speaker 2 That train was the very last one, the most problematic one. And my father traveled without papers.

21:31 Speaker 1 And then the Rebbe said it was an expression of a dear friend who knows about you and feels what you’re going through.

21:37 Speaker 2 That’s absolutely certain. Yes, do you want another story about Rebbetzin Chana? I’ll tell you another one. You heard this from M. Friedman. His mother—

21:50 Speaker 1 Gitele.

21:50 Speaker 2 Gitele. She traveled to the wedding of Yisrolik, Rabbi Friedman’s son.

21:55 Speaker 1 Yisroel Friedman.

21:58 Speaker 2 And she said she wanted to visit Rebbetzin Chana. Why? In the summer she used to travel with the rabbi of Odessa—

22:09 Speaker 1 Rabbi Zushe.

22:11 Speaker 2 Who was a descendant of the Maggid.

22:15 Speaker 1 Zushe Friedman.

22:16 Speaker 2 I wanted to picture whom I had told him about… He knows the family line, generation after generation. So he told an amazing story. He called ahead, and they arranged a quarter of an hour. She came to Rebbetzin Chana, who was very happy. People would come just for the summer; they were regular visitors. They would come to the rabbi of Odessa for a cup of coffee. So they had met several times at the rabbi’s home—

22:45 Speaker 1 She also came with her father.

22:46 Speaker 2 With her husband.

22:48 Speaker 1 With her hus— with her husband.

22:49 Speaker 2 Her husband.

22:50 Speaker 1 With her husband, sorry.

22:52 Speaker 2 They had a chance to talk. Gitele was from Odessa, and her dialect was more Russian. Rebbetzin Chana was from…

23:05 Speaker 1 Chassidic Ukraine. Rebbetzin Chana was from Nikolayev.

23:07 Speaker 2 Nikolayev is…

23:08 Speaker 1 That’s Lithuanian. Ukraine—

23:11 Speaker 2 No! No!

23:11 Speaker 1 No?

23:12 Speaker 2 That’s Ukraine too.

23:14 Speaker 1 Lithuanian Ukraine, more, more Russian.

23:16 Speaker 2 Yes, Ukraine. At home they spoke Russian. When she spoke with Gitele, Gitele switched to Russian, and she did too, and it went on for an hour and a half. Gitele realized and said, “Rebbetzin…”

23:31 Speaker 1 “You said only a quarter of an hour.”

23:33 Speaker 2 [unclear].

23:36 Speaker 1 “We agreed on a quarter of an hour, and we’ve already been talking here for an hour and a half.”

23:39 Speaker 2 What did Rebbetzin Chana answer her? Something amazing: “It’s entirely my pleasure.”

23:45 Speaker 1 All my pleasure.

23:46 Speaker 2 “[unclear].”

23:53 Speaker 1 “Since I left home, I haven’t had the opportunity to speak in the dialect we used to speak.”

23:58 Speaker 2 With that accent.

23:59 Speaker 1 With that accent, with…

23:59 Speaker 2 What was the last sentence? “Not even with my son.”

24:02 Speaker 1 Not even with my son. Wow!

24:10 Speaker 2 Yeah. It went round and round. That was the beginning.

24:14 Speaker 1 About your uncle, for example—the uncle I remember from my childhood, Reb Moishe—did he also become close to Chabad in Tashkent?

24:20 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, Tashkent.

24:23 Speaker 1 Reb Moishe Soloveitchik.

24:24 Speaker 2 You remember him?

24:25 Speaker 1 Of course I remember him.

24:26 Speaker 2 A friend of Rabbi Kook.

24:27 Speaker 1 A friend of Rabbi Kook, of course. A chossid in his soul. So how did he get through without papers?

24:35 Speaker 2 When they got to the train, there were two lines. One was for people whose papers were in order. The NKVD would check them. The other line was for the question marks—people without papers.

24:52 Speaker 1 Not papers that were wrong, and not question marks. Neither one nor the other.

24:54 Speaker 2 I was in his arms. Girshe was in my mother’s arms, already inside the carriage, but she was listed on someone else’s passport. Above the carriage there was some branch, and apparently it had broken off somewhere. I spoke in Russian and said to my father, “I want that flower.” The train started moving. My mother began to cry out, “He’s going! Bring him the flower!” Little by little he got into the carriage. What now? The chassidim said, “Friends, I’ll lie down.” Boxes, boxes; suitcases, suitcases. As long as they lived, they would remind me of it—Rivkin from [unclear] and Zelig [unclear]. “We were sitting one on top of the other.” The NKVD knew something was going on. They came and searched with flashlights, looking everywhere, right and left. But because of [unclear], I’m sitting here today.

26:16 Speaker 1 Thanks to you.

26:17 Speaker 2 That story has already been published.

26:19 Speaker 1 Everything has been published, and here we are hearing it all anew. And then you grew up. You grew up here in Kfar Chabad.

26:27 Speaker 2 We were in Kfar Chabad—what should I call it? [unclear], in every sense.

26:42 Speaker 1 For better and for worse.

26:43 Speaker 2 When we first arrived in Kfar Chabad, we were in a tent where the passageway is today, between the event hall and what is there now. There was a row of [unclear] there.

26:58 Speaker 1 On the path between the event hall and the new Beis Menachem. Where—

27:02 Speaker 2 There were tents there where they stored the new tents.

27:08 Speaker 1 What year was that?

27:09 Speaker 2 5709. I know we arrived in 5709.

27:13 Speaker 1 Oh, so that was after you arrived. Yes.

27:16 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem, it was winter then. The tents were [unclear]. What were we to do? Where the Moroccan shul is today, there were buildings the British had built as schools for the Arabs; the old shul was there too. So they took blankets, stretched lines, and gave each family two meters by two meters. We had two beds, and the children slept on [unclear]. There was no water. People went with buckets to the wells in the Arabs’ orchards and brought water back. My mother would walk a kilometer or two. There was no electricity either. Electricity came two or three years later, for a lightbulb. The shamash then was Lieberman’s brother; he was the shamash here, and—

28:17 Speaker 1 Rabbi Bender, Rabbi Bender’s brother.

28:19 Speaker 2 What? No, no, not the secretary’s—

28:22 Speaker 1 Chaim Lieberman’s brother. His name was Tzvi—Tzvi Lieberman.

28:25 Speaker 2 Later the lamp caught fire, and he [unclear].

28:28 Speaker 1 Yes.

28:28 Speaker 2 I remember how he would prepare the—before Shabbos, the—lamps.

28:34 Speaker 1 Lamps, yes, the kind with kerosene.

28:36 Speaker 2 They were glass, and he would clean them. He was a chassidishe Jew. He used to give a Tanya class to Menachem Maimon and Bishi Yanki. That was later, in cheder. We spent years in cheder. Who was the melamed? It was Feuerman’s father, and—

28:59 Speaker 1 Reb Yossel Feuerman’s father.

29:00 Speaker 2 What? Yoske Feuerman’s father.

29:02 Speaker 1 Yoske’s father.

29:02 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, of course.

29:03 Speaker 1 No, because today when you say “Feuerman,” you mean the grandchildren.

29:05 Speaker 2 What?

29:05 Speaker 1 Today when you say “Feuerman,” you mean the grandchildren. Yoske Feuerman’s father. Yes.

29:10 Speaker 2 I remember it to this day. He started teaching me alef, beis. Suddenly—bang! Blood started pouring from my nose. I was a four-year-old child, and he was standing there [unclear], frightened. All right, a little blood, I’ll manage. The next day I went back to cheder.

29:36 Speaker 1 There was no parents’ committee.

29:37 Speaker 2 What?

29:38 Speaker 1 There was no parents’ committee to fight it.

29:40 Speaker 2 There was no committee at all. It was just sheer humiliation. Later they set up cheder rooms and classrooms. Goffin was the principal, and they went straight out to bring in melamdim. There was one melamed who [unclear], Reb Shloime. Four or five of us children sat on a bench while he taught us. He came up with a trick: he found a board with nails outside, put it behind him, and [unclear]. I figured out a trick too. I gave—

30:23 Speaker 1 He sat down on the [unclear].

30:24 Speaker 2 No, it was left inside. I came home and said—I don’t know, it’s seventy years ago now. What turned out? Seventy years. He gave me [unclear]; he was here. So Goffin went looking for a melamed, and then he brought Romleider. That was already Romleider. We were learning Chumash with Romleider by then. When we reached “chirish ayzef”... What? We reached “chirish ayzef,” and one boy there was looking for the lion and couldn’t find it. Non-Chabad families lived where the matzah factory is today. They had taken over the whole place. He started crying, and everyone cried after him, and Romleider was there with us.

31:15 Speaker 1 Wow.

31:18 Speaker 2 To this day, Romleider [unclear] “chirish ayzef” in a—

31:22 Speaker 1 Special way.

31:23 Speaker 2 A special way. There’s a picture today of “chirish ayzef” with the melamed. Those were the classes. Later there was a melamed named Chaim Schreiber. That was something else already.

31:40 Speaker 1 When did you first hear about the Rebbe, and did you have any connection with the Rebbe here as children?

31:44 Speaker 2 What? What can I tell you? Romleider taught us to say the Rebbe’s chapter of Tehillim. That was the Rebbe’s chapter then. Our only connection was when the shluchim arrived.

31:55 Speaker 1 That was already after the attack at the vocational school.

31:58 Speaker 2 What?

31:59 Speaker 1 After the attack.

32:00 Speaker 2 Yes. That was something.

32:04 Speaker 1 Do you remember the attack?

32:05 Speaker 2 What? Of course. Do I remember it? How could I not?

32:10 Speaker 1 Tell us.

32:11 Speaker 2 It happened at night. Afterward they brought two of the children to our home. They distributed all the children among the homes.

32:19 Speaker 1 The children who remained at the school were distributed among the homes.

32:22 Speaker 2 French children—

32:24 Speaker 1 Where—

32:24 Speaker 2 Who spoke Hebrew. They stayed for two or three weeks, until everything was rebuilt. You see, the impression was that the Rebbe simply insisted that Kfar Chabad continue. Everyone was crying.

32:44 Speaker 1 Yes? That was the situation?

32:46 Speaker 2 The Rebbe sent word that they should stay in the village.

32:49 Speaker 1 Wait, the residents were so frightened that they were—

32:51 Speaker 2 What do you mean? Look how far we were from the border. Two kilometers.

32:56 Speaker 1 Where was the border?

32:56 Speaker 2 How should I know?

32:57 Speaker 1 Latrun.

32:58 Speaker 2 Ben Shemen—where is that?

33:00 Speaker 1 Ben Shemen.

33:01 Speaker 2 As the crow flies, it’s two kilometers. And didn’t they come here to steal every night? There were thefts here every night. Our neighbor was from the Mizrachi movement. He had been very well-to-do in Czechoslovakia. He brought a whole container full of things, big crates with all sorts of items. Among them was rat poison. It looked like chocolate. Some Arabs took it and went to sit in the orchard and eat. They ate the “chocolate,” and afterward there were three bodies.

33:39 Speaker 1 From the poison.

33:41 Speaker 2 So the thefts stopped for a long time. They thought—I don’t know what they thought. It helped. That was the general picture. Yeah.

33:50 Speaker 1 Wait, so the residents really felt that the village was falling apart—

33:54 Speaker 2 What do you mean? Some people left. There’s the Rebbe’s letter. The Rebbe saw it from his perspective. The Rebbe said, “Meine [unclear].” There’s a book about it.

34:10 Speaker 1 In one book about it, that’s a point I discovered.

34:12 Speaker 2 “Meine [unclear].”

34:16 Speaker 1 The Rebbe would not let it fall apart.

34:18 Speaker 2 To put it bluntly, he had taken a punch. Not just any punch.

34:25 Speaker 1 A blow to something that was his.

34:27 Speaker 2 So, “Meine [unclear].” And [unclear].

34:34 Speaker 1 That is how the Rebbe expressed it to the Temimim.

34:41 Speaker 2 [Unclear]. And, and... there’s no need to go into detail. The Rebbe said another sentence: “Ich volt alein fahren.”

34:52 Speaker 1 “I myself should travel.”

34:53 Speaker 2 “I myself would have had to travel.”

34:54 Speaker 1 To Eretz Yisroel, that is.

34:55 Speaker 2 “[Unclear].”

34:58 Speaker 1 He sent the shluchim because of those circumstances.

35:02 Speaker 2 Those are words you could hang on the wall. What can I tell you—how the Rebbe took it. For years afterward, when we walked there, we were afraid. We would run, holding hands.

35:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

35:14 Speaker 2 We would run up there. There was fear.

35:16 Speaker 1 Trauma, fear.

35:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:19 Speaker 1 Were their funerals here in the village?

35:20 Speaker 2 No.

35:21 Speaker 1 Were the students’ funerals here in the village, or—

35:24 Speaker 2 No, each one was held in his own place. Simcha’s was wherever his was. Later there was a gathering for the shloshim. We arranged it—Pini [unclear]. Pini organized it and brought a chazzan.

35:39 Speaker 1 So they held an event here for the shloshim.

35:41 Speaker 2 Yes, they could.

35:43 Speaker 1 So Simcha Zilbershlag’s funeral was in Jerusalem, not here.

35:46 Speaker 2 Yes, certainly. Pini organized it. He brought Begin, and he brought the chazzan Leibele, Leibele, uh...

35:56 Speaker 1 Glantz, Waldman.

35:58 Speaker 2 What?

35:59 Speaker 1 Waldman, Glantz.

36:00 Speaker 2 Glantz, Glantz, yes.

36:02 Speaker 1 Leibele Glantz.

36:04 Speaker 2 He made quite a stir. There were ministers, Knesset members, the Histadrut. Afterward the Histadrut came and built us a fence.

36:16 Speaker 1 A fence.

36:16 Speaker 2 The Histadrut. They put a fence around the village, a security fence. It stood for many years. So, yes.

36:27 Speaker 1 And then the shluchim arrived at the beginning of Menachem Av.

36:30 Speaker 2 For me, that Shabbos—Shabbos Chazon—was special. Avraham [unclear], [unclear], Yehuda [unclear].

36:43 Speaker 1 Avremel Koff.

36:44 Speaker 2 What?

36:44 Speaker 1 Avremel Koff.

36:46 Speaker 2 Yehuda.

36:47 Speaker 1 No, you said Avremel, and I’m asking which one—Avremel Koff?

36:48 Speaker 2 Yes, Avraham, Avraham, and there was another one. They took a great interest, a tremendous interest, and they spoke. They spoke about that ceremony.

37:06 Speaker 1 Because the Rebbe had taught it a few weeks earlier.

37:09 Speaker 2 Yes. And anyway, Yair went. That’s getting the story about the children mixed up.

37:17 Speaker 1 Tell it, tell the story.

37:18 Speaker 2 What?

37:18 Speaker 1 Tell it. Nobody knows anything. Feitel.

37:23 Speaker 2 A Jew had no sons. He came to ask for a bracha. He was told to change the curtains. He made silk ones. [unclear] Silk means zaydenes. [unclear]—

37:39 Speaker 1 And that’s a story the Rebbe told when he taught this.

37:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

37:42 Speaker 1 He came to the Viledniker, right?

37:44 Speaker 2 Who?

37:45 Speaker 1 The Viledniker.

37:45 Speaker 2 The Viledniker.

37:46 Speaker 1 He told someone who wanted a bracha for children to change the curtains, because that fabric—is it silk?

37:52 Speaker 2 Silk.

37:53 Speaker 1 The Rebbe took it to mean that in honor of Shabbos, people should wear silk kapotes.

38:00 Speaker 2 They really told us things we didn’t know. There was no direct communication, after all. Only a few people traveled then—one or two.

38:11 Speaker 1 Meaning, you didn’t know them; you hadn’t heard. Apart from knowing that we were Lubavitchers and that there was a Rebbe, we knew nothing.

38:17 Speaker 2 There wasn’t [unclear]. Who traveled then? Rabbi Hazaken—he traveled before 5709, once, with someone from Kfar Chabad. To go back to who... Then Zechariah [unclear] went, and that was it.

38:44 Speaker 1 Zechariah [unclear] started in ’11.

38:45 Speaker 2 Later, people started traveling. Come on, [unclear], [unclear].

38:55 Speaker 1 And then when—

38:58 Speaker 2 What?

38:58 Speaker 1 So when did you enter yeshiva? Actually, wait—when did you celebrate your bar mitzvah? One second, when was the bar mitzvah?

39:02 Speaker 2 We went to yeshiva—

39:03 Speaker 1 Wait, before yeshiva: when was the bar mitzvah?

39:05 Speaker 2 Lod. We studied there for two or three weeks. Then we came to Rishon.

39:09 Speaker 1 Wait, when was your bar mitzvah?

39:11 Speaker 2 In 5718.

39:14 Speaker 1 And to Kfar Chabad.

39:15 Speaker 2 At age twelve, we went to yeshiva.

39:17 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

39:17 Speaker 2 We were in Lod. Afterward we moved to Rabbi Shach’s, to study in Yiddish. At the yeshiva in Lod they had promised it would be in Yiddish—

39:27 Speaker 1 There were immigrants from Russia and immigrants from Yemen, so they also spoke Hebrew.

39:30 Speaker 2 Huh?

39:30 Speaker 1 Since there were immigrants from Russia and Yemen, they also spoke Hebrew.

39:33 Speaker 2 No, not because of that. Because of the Ministry of Education.

39:36 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

39:39 Speaker 2 And of course, the Hebrew of the... Melech Kaplan knew Hebrew well, but with the others, even a single word could become a circus.

39:53 Speaker 1 So you went—

39:55 Speaker 2 Yankel Katz knew Hebrew, but the others...

40:00 Speaker 1 So you moved to Rishon?

40:01 Speaker 2 We studied in Rishon. We studied in Rishon for five years. In 5727, when the yeshiva moved here, we came here.

40:08 Speaker 1 Did you write to the Rebbe for your bar mitzvah?

40:11 Speaker 2 Yes. I still don’t know what the answer was. I don’t know.

40:14 Speaker 1 No, I mean, in terms of your connection, was that the first time that—

40:17 Speaker 2 Look, back then everyone recited a different maamar.

40:21 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

40:22 Speaker 2 I think I was the first or second to recite... We recited the maamar that...

40:29 Speaker 1 The bar mitzvah one.

40:31 Speaker 2 Huh?

40:32 Speaker 1 The bar mitzvah maamar people recite, “Isa b’Midrash Tehillim.”

40:35 Speaker 2 “Isa b’Midrash Tehillim.” My father wanted the shochet, Gabriel Kagan, to study the maamar with me. Which maamar did he want me to study with him? “[unclear]”—

40:48 Speaker 1 [unclear].

40:49 Speaker 2 [unclear]. He started studying it with me. Then it turned out we had the maamar. It was in a Sefer Hamaamarim; I remember the cover was red. 5718. It was at the end of the 5718 volume. We recited the maamar. My bar mitzvah was on Motzaei Shabbos, Shevi’i shel Pesach. It was in the courtyard. There was a crowd of several thousand—or maybe three benches’ worth.

41:28 Speaker 1 They farbrenged.

41:28 Speaker 2 Huh?

41:29 Speaker 1 There was a bar mitzvah farbrengen; the chassidim farbrenged.

41:31 Speaker 2 No, something happened to me there. I tell all my grandchildren about it. Reb Shaul came especially for the bar mitzvah.

41:39 Speaker 1 From Rishon.

41:40 Speaker 2 From Rishon, yes. He sat beside me and said, “I want to give you a gift. There’s nothing like it in the world.” This is what he told me: “I took it upon myself not to speak from the time I put on tefillin until I took them off. Then, when I began running the yeshiva, I had to make an exception. After chazaras hashatz, I would go around the shul collecting money. But I want the practice to continue, so I want to give it as a gift.”

42:23 Speaker 1 “I want to give you a gift. The gift is the practice I took upon myself: not to speak from the time I put on tefillin until I take them off.”

42:29 Speaker 2 Yes.

42:29 Speaker 1 “Now that I run the yeshiva, I can’t do it, because I need to collect money after chazaras hashatz.”

42:33 Speaker 2 Yes.

42:34 Speaker 1 “I want the practice to remain, so I’m giving it to you as a gift.”

42:37 Speaker 2 That’s it. So I still have the gift today.

42:43 Speaker 1 A very frum Jew.

42:44 Speaker 2 Who?

42:45 Speaker 1 Reb Shaul.

42:46 Speaker 2 He was—he disliked the word “frum.”

42:49 Speaker 1 He disliked the word “frum.”

42:50 Speaker 2 “Frumer iz gelekh.”

42:51 Speaker 1 “Frumer iz gelekh.” That doesn’t need translating. “Frum”—

42:55 Speaker 2 Huh?

42:55 Speaker 1 So what was he? Simply a chassidic Jew?

42:58 Speaker 2 No, “frum” is... He was a pnimi, someone inwardly sincere, not...

43:06 Speaker 1 Right, not labels. A pnimi.

43:08 Speaker 2 No, that’s not it. He couldn’t stand that outward show. For him it was—oh, fire.

43:20 Speaker 1 When you studied under him, was he—

43:21 Speaker 2 What?

43:22 Speaker 1 When you studied under him, was he close to the students?

43:24 Speaker 2 Very close. I even got a slap from him.

43:28 Speaker 1 A slap? What was that for? Reb Shaul, that was...

43:30 Speaker 2 Once. Afterward he told me, “You didn’t deserve it, but I knew you could take it, so that others would hear and fear.”

43:39 Speaker 1 You could take it?

43:40 Speaker 2 “You could take it so that others would hear and fear.”

43:44 Speaker 1 So that others would hear and fear.

43:47 Speaker 2 I remember [unclear] was already in the yeshiva then. He came to calm me down.

43:53 Speaker 1 [unclear] worked at the yeshiva; he was a maggid shiur there then.

43:56 Speaker 2 He was a maggid shiur.

43:59 Speaker 1 How many students were there in Rishon then?

44:01 Speaker 2 How many students? Dozens. There were dozens then.

44:05 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

44:07 Speaker 2 And there was...

44:10 Speaker 1 And then in ’[unclear].

44:11 Speaker 2 Materially, it was truly like Gan Eden there. Not the lower Gan Eden. I’m not joking.

44:19 Speaker 1 You lived in the higher Gan Eden, without material comforts.

44:23 Speaker 2 Today, put a child in a room without plaster or faucets, with a window that doesn’t shut at the bottom in winter. Well. Then he’d go down to the dining room. What was breakfast? I’m not exaggerating: a quarter of a hard-boiled egg; they’d cut a cucumber into eight pieces and a tomato into four. And olives—oh, those were treats. What else was there? Sometimes there was a vort or something at the homes where some students went to eat, and they’d bring food back to the yeshiva for the students. That was a great luxury. One day a week there was something meaty. What was it? P’tcha. Do you know what p’tcha is?

45:18 Speaker 1 Jelly.

45:18 Speaker 2 What did they make the p’tcha from? There was a Jew in Bnei Brak named Malov, Malov’s father.

45:24 Speaker 1 Menachem Malov.

45:25 Speaker 2 Not Menachem—Menachem’s father.

45:26 Speaker 1 Menachem’s father.

45:28 Speaker 2 He’d go around to the three or four places that made turkey sausage. He’d take a sack, collect all the bones, and bring them to the yeshiva by bus. There was a cook there, a woman who devoted herself to the boys—as though they were all her own children. She’d make p’tcha from it. Later the Joint distributed legumes to yeshivas. So there was this one time—what was it, what was it—[unclear].

46:08 Speaker 1 Legumes and all kinds of things like that.

46:09 Speaker 2 What does it say there? Come on, Rashi, come on.

46:13 Speaker 1 I don’t remember.

46:14 Speaker 2 So she came to Rabbi Sheina: “The children won’t eat.” Rabbi Sheina called us over.

46:20 Speaker 1 She complained that the boys didn’t want to eat.

46:22 Speaker 2 “[unclear] don’t want to eat?”

46:26 Speaker 1 Yosef sent it to Yaakov, and it was considered food. Those are delicacies.

46:31 Speaker 2 All around, all around.

46:34 Speaker 1 Well, [unclear]—

46:35 Speaker 2 What was there on Shabbos? People brought food from home. Those who went to eat lunch in people’s homes—we didn’t want to eat... So at around six they gave us two hours: go home and bring food back. It was Gan Eden.

46:53 Speaker 1 And then in ’[unclear], you moved here?

46:54 Speaker 2 ’[unclear]—the yeshiva... We were in Lod for a few weeks, maybe two months, and afterward we moved here. We used to come by bus until they arranged the water here.

47:07 Speaker 1 ’[unclear]—they fixed up Street Three.

47:08 Speaker 2 Huh?

47:08 Speaker 1 Street Three?

47:09 Speaker 2 ’[unclear]—that was Street Three.

47:11 Speaker 1 And then you studied under Reb Shlomo Chaim.

47:13 Speaker 2 In the yeshiva.

47:14 Speaker 1 In the yeshiva.

47:17 Speaker 2 Yes. Let’s start with something—

47:18 Speaker 1 When did you travel to the Rebbe?

47:19 Speaker 2 Huh?

47:19 Speaker 1 When did you travel to the Rebbe?

47:21 Speaker 2 We were the first group. We arrived on 19 Elul, in ’[unclear].

47:27 Speaker 1 In...?

47:27 Speaker 2 ’[unclear].

47:28 Speaker 1 ’[unclear].

47:29 Speaker 2 19 Elul.

47:30 Speaker 1 19 Elul, ’[unclear].

47:31 Speaker 2 Yes. We received a very pointed note about the beginning of the first ten-day period.

47:36 Speaker 1 The beginning?

47:37 Speaker 2 The first ten-day period.

47:38 Speaker 1 The first ten-day period.

47:39 Speaker 2 Because Tishrei is thirty days.

47:41 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

47:42 Speaker 2 The night after the nineteenth is already the twentieth.

47:44 Speaker 1 Ah.

47:45 Speaker 2 So forty days. Four periods of ten.

47:48 Speaker 1 Ah, the first ten days means—

47:50 Speaker 2 The first ten days.

47:51 Speaker 1 That’s already—

47:52 Speaker 2 Far, far, far away.

47:53 Speaker 1 Just a second, let’s look at it again. The first ten—because that’s the last ten days, the nearer one.

47:57 Speaker 2 Why? In Elul, it’s the first ten days.

48:00 Speaker 1 Did you arrive on the eighteenth or the nineteenth?

48:02 Speaker 2 19 Elul.

48:04 Speaker 1 Well?

48:05 Speaker 2 So after 19 Elul, it’s already the night of the twentieth.

48:09 Speaker 1 Yes.

48:10 Speaker 2 Until Tishrei, that’s ten days.

48:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

48:12 Speaker 2 Tishrei is thirty days. That’s forty.

48:14 Speaker 1 So maybe it was already 19 Menachem Av.

48:16 Speaker 2 19 Elul.

48:18 Speaker 1 Forty days—

48:19 Speaker 2 Elul and Tishrei make forty.

48:21 Speaker 1 So from the first—

48:21 Speaker 2 Ten days of Elul.

48:23 Speaker 1 Usually you count from 1 Elul until Yom Kippur.

48:25 Speaker 2 No, no, no—not until then. Until the end of Tishrei.

48:28 Speaker 1 So that’s, that’s—

48:29 Speaker 2 The end of Tishrei.

48:30 Speaker 1 That’s a new calculation I didn’t know.

48:31 Speaker 2 All right, let me explain. Our exit permit was valid until 11 Iyar.

48:38 Speaker 1 Why do you say yours was the first group? Because those who went in ’[unclear], ’[unclear], and ’[unclear] didn’t—

48:43 Speaker 2 No, there were people who went for two months, a week, a week.

48:44 Speaker 1 Ah, so you mean the first group to go for a whole year, for more than half a year.

48:47 Speaker 2 It wasn’t simple. The administration didn’t want it; Rabbi Shimon Chaim in particular didn’t want it. I remember it like it was today. There was a seder on Friday morning, a Chassidus seder. My place was in the dining room, which served as the zal then, at the first table on the left. I had a chavrusa, Menachem Mizrachi. I still remember where we sat and learned. Rabbi Shimon Chaim came in and learned next to us.

49:20 Speaker 1 He looked to see what we were learning.

49:22 Speaker 2 He looked and looked and looked. This was already after Pesach. In the end, would it happen or wouldn’t it? I asked Rabbi Shimon Chaim, “What will happen if we get an exit permit?” He looked at me as though I’d hit him.

49:51 Speaker 1 The look on his face wasn’t a happy one.

49:54 Speaker 2 I told him, “Not for two months. Until after Pesach.” “What?” What, stay away through Pesach?

50:04 Speaker 1 Until after Pesach.

50:05 Speaker 2 Well, what can I tell you? It was like an incredible dream. “Yes, yes?”

50:12 Speaker 1 What can you do? Can you get a flight? Take—

50:14 Speaker 2 “Can you arrange a flight?” He said no. [unclear]

50:20 Speaker 1 When you asked whether you could get to the administration with that approval, did he say yes?

50:25 Speaker 2 He said to do everything we could to get the exit permit. It wasn’t simple; there were tickets involved. At the time, that was under the Ministry of Defense. The official in charge was Niv.

50:35 Speaker 1 The official in charge was?

50:36 Speaker 2 Niv, Niv. He was a relative of Rabbi Nochum—Nochum Trebnik.

50:42 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

50:42 Speaker 2 A delegation of older people went to him. Rabbi Nochum was among them, and [unclear]. My father wasn’t involved in that. They came to him and started talking to him in Zionist terms: we would bring the spirit from here to there, and they would bring the spirit from there to here. He gave us until 11 Iyar.

51:08 Speaker 1 Until 11 Iyar.

51:11 Speaker 2 Yes. Good.

51:13 Speaker 1 Did you write anything to the Rebbe about it?

51:14 Speaker 2 Of course. What—

51:16 Speaker 1 What do you mean, “of course”? What—

51:17 Speaker 2 Well, heaven forbid we wouldn’t.

51:18 Speaker 1 So tell us, tell us.

51:18 Speaker 2 We had his consent, of course.

51:20 Speaker 1 In other words, you wrote to the Rebbe about what you were doing to organize it.

51:24 Speaker 2 After that, we started thinking about what to do about tickets. I had no idea how to manage it. There was no money for the tickets, and taking it from our parents—where would our parents get the money? I don’t know. There were group fares, the cheapest prices, but you needed twenty-five people. We were eighteen or nineteen. So we said, a few of us bochurim will go to El Al, to the CEO of El Al. We had nerve; I don’t know where we got it. It was on Ben Yehuda Street—

52:00 Speaker 1 You were going to the Rebbe. That’s where the nerve came from.

52:02 Speaker 2 Ben Yehuda Street. We came in, and he sat down with us there, at the end of the table—the CEO. “Boys, what do you want?” “We want a group flight, but we don’t have the…”

52:16 Speaker 1 The twenty-five people.

52:17 Speaker 2 “So what do you want?” I said, “Give us the same rate for nineteen that you give for twenty-five.” “What are you saying?” I said, “That’s what we’re asking.” He thought for a moment. “You’ve got it.”

52:28 Speaker 1 Wow.

52:30 Speaker 2 But that wasn’t the end of it. The tickets were valid for a year. When did the year end? In Elul.

52:38 Speaker 1 In Elul.

52:39 Speaker 2 After all our efforts, through Shazar and everything else, we had already gotten our exit permits extended until Cheshvan 5727.

52:50 Speaker 1 Instead of the exit permit being valid only until Iyar—

52:52 Speaker 2 It had been until Iyar, I think.

52:54 Speaker 1 And that—

52:54 Speaker 2 Until Cheshvan—

52:56 Speaker 1 5727.

52:56 Speaker 2 5727. But the tickets had gone—

53:00 Speaker 1 Out the window.

53:01 Speaker 2 Out the window.

53:01 Speaker 1 They’d expired.

53:02 Speaker 2 Do you remember Nochum Cohen?

53:04 Speaker 1 My brother-in-law.

53:04 Speaker 2 Yitzchak.

53:05 Speaker 1 My brother-in-law.

53:05 Speaker 2 Nochum Cohen. Huh?

53:06 Speaker 1 My brother-in-law.

53:07 Speaker 2 Your brother-in-law, Nochum.

53:08 Speaker 1 Nochum is my brother-in-law.

53:10 Speaker 2 So I’m the agent.

53:12 Speaker 1 So, so—

53:13 Speaker 2 So I’m the agent. A delegation of us went to the El Al offices in Manhattan. “Boys, what do you want?” “We want to know whether our tickets are still valid.” Someone was sitting there, and he had an idea. “You’ve got it.” What had we gotten? Promotional tickets. Free tickets, with no weight restriction or anything. The fellows loaded up with books—hundreds of kilos. The Rebbe wanted it, and it happened. It was the same with the exit permits: the Rebbe directed us whom to approach and where—

54:02 Speaker 1 Wait, wait, you’re going too fast. Slowly. The permit was only valid until Chesh—until Iyar—

54:09 Speaker 2 Until Iyar.

54:09 Speaker 1 And afterward the Rebbe directed you to approach—

54:12 Speaker 2 Afterward we reached out. The Rebbe would receive [unclear] twice a month then. We approached several of the older fellows. The only person we had contact with at the time was Rabbi Jacobson. He used to give us a Chassidus shiur in Dvorkin’s room at seven in the morning. So he asked the Rebbe. He asked the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said—

54:40 Speaker 1 You told him that the exit permit—

54:42 Speaker 2 That we needed to extend the exit permit.

54:43 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

54:44 Speaker 2 He said, “Of course, of course.”

54:46 Speaker 1 That’s what the Rebbe said?

54:49 Speaker 2 Yes. We broke through the barrier. Then the exit permits came through. Not just the exit permits—the passports too.

54:59 Speaker 1 What do you—

54:59 Speaker 2 The passports were expiring too. Once they expired, everything was over. And we had to go to the consulate in Manhattan.

55:08 Speaker 1 What do you mean when you say the Rebbe directed you whom to approach? Through whom?

55:11 Speaker 2 Where to—

55:12 Speaker 1 How? Through whom?

55:13 Speaker 2 We had a grandson of Rabbi Zevin there. Rabbi Zevin was—

55:17 Speaker 1 Rabbi Nochum Zevin, the rabbi from Haifa. But just a second. What do you mean when you say the Rebbe directed you whom to approach?

55:23 Speaker 2 Whom to approach to get the extension—

55:26 Speaker 1 Through whom did the Rebbe direct you?

55:27 Speaker 2 Through the secretariat.

55:28 Speaker 1 He gave instructions to the secretariat?

55:29 Speaker 2 Through the secretariat, and also through [unclear]. We started working on it, working through Shazar, and Shazar was the one who revived the connection and got Niv to help us.

55:42 Speaker 1 To extend it from Cheshvan, from Iyar—

55:45 Speaker 2 From Iyar until Cheshvan 5727.

55:46 Speaker 1 From Iyar until after Tishrei 5727.

55:48 Speaker 2 Until Cheshvan 5727.

55:49 Speaker 1 Until Cheshvan.

55:50 Speaker 2 The fellows here were angry with us.

55:52 Speaker 1 Because it delayed their trip.

55:53 Speaker 2 They didn’t travel for Tishrei, while we were there. I think letters came out in some of the publications about us, calling us all sorts of names.

56:09 Speaker 1 Yes.

56:09 Speaker 2 So that’s how it was extended until Cheshvan.

56:11 Speaker 1 Just a second. So you arrived on 19 Elul. What happened? When did you first see the Rebbe?

56:17 Speaker 2 They sent a bus to pick us up at the airport. It was a Satmar bus.

56:22 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

56:24 Speaker 2 Just as we arrived, the Rebbe came out to go home. It was around six or six-thirty.

56:31 Speaker 1 In the evening.

56:32 Speaker 2 No, no, no—not from his room, from the stairs.

56:35 Speaker 1 I mean six-thirty in the evening.

56:36 Speaker 2 In the evening.

56:37 Speaker 1 The Rebbe was coming out to go home.

56:38 Speaker 2 He came out. We had just… The Rebbe came down the stairs. That was the first time I saw him.

56:49 Speaker 1 He looked at you.

56:50 Speaker 2 Huh?

56:50 Speaker 1 Did he look at you?

56:51 Speaker 2 We were on the bus.

56:53 Speaker 1 You were still inside the bus.

56:54 Speaker 2 We hadn’t even had a chance to get off and see the Rebbe properly.

56:55 Speaker 1 I understand. And how many bochurim traveled to the Rebbe then?

56:59 Speaker 2 What?

56:59 Speaker 1 How many bochurim arrived then—nineteen?

57:01 Speaker 2 Nineteen. Actually, one didn’t arrive with us. He got stuck in Tzfas and came later. Today he’s in Australia.

57:12 Speaker 1 Rabbi Cohen.

57:13 Speaker 2 Huh?

57:14 Speaker 1 Rabbi Cohen from the yeshiva there.

57:15 Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. That was Dovid Segal.

57:20 Speaker 1 Dovid. So when was the first time you actually—

57:24 Speaker 2 The next day.

57:25 Speaker 1 The next day you were with him on Shabbos… And that Shabbos there was a farbrengen.

57:31 Speaker 2 There was a farbrengen that Shabbos, and the Rebbe spoke. He raised the question of foreknowledge and free choice. But ask me the actual question. It was as though—

57:43 Speaker 1 As though the question was whether foreknowledge takes away free choice. The Rebbe said, “When a father gives, there are no questions.” That was—

57:51 Speaker 2 That was—

57:52 Speaker 1 That was your welcome.

57:55 Speaker 2 But ask me the actual question.

57:57 Speaker 1 “When a father gives, there are no questions.”

58:01 Speaker 2 I’ve looked for it, but I can’t recall it now.

58:04 Speaker 1 But that part is engraved in your memory.

58:06 Speaker 2 Huh? Not just mine—everyone’s. It was a thunderbolt! Chanukah—

58:18 Speaker 1 Tishrei—wait, Tishrei 5727. Tishrei 5727. Describe it.

58:22 Speaker 2 Tishrei was… The first thing was the maamar, when the Rebbe cried. [unclear] The Rebbe cried. It was staggering, staggering, staggering.

58:51 Speaker 1 “Why am I crying? Why is it I who has to be me?”

58:54 Speaker 2 Well, I’m already [unclear]. The Rebbe could barely finish the maamar.

59:06 Speaker 1 Was that on Rosh Hashanah?

59:06 Speaker 2 Rosh Hashanah, yes. “Bein Hameitzarim”—the maamar “Bein Hameitzarim.” Yes. All sorts of nuances, nuances, nuances.

59:22 Speaker 1 We want to hear the nuances.

59:23 Speaker 2 Huh?

59:24 Speaker 1 We want to hear the nuances.

59:29 Speaker 2 My birthday is on [unclear].

59:31 Speaker 1 We’ll get to [unclear]. I managed to be there for it already.

59:35 Speaker 2 Just a little bit. Yechidus.

59:39 Speaker 1 A few days—about two days after you arrived, he let you in.

59:44 Speaker 2 But very briefly.

59:46 Speaker 1 I was entitled to it; it was my birthday.

59:50 Speaker 2 It was already the Ten Days of Teshuvah. They couldn’t put me off any longer, even so.

59:58 Speaker 1 Half a minute.

59:59 Speaker 2 In and out.

1:00:00 Speaker 1 Go in and come out.

1:00:04 Speaker 2 I went in, the Rebbe gave me a bracha, and I came out.

1:00:06 Speaker 1 Did you hand in a note?

1:00:07 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:00:07 Speaker 1 Did you hand in a note?

1:00:08 Speaker 2 No, no, nothing at all. Just to go in—and then come out.

1:00:12 Speaker 1 What happened when you went in?

1:00:13 Speaker 2 The Rebbe gave me brachos. That was all.

1:00:15 Speaker 1 Had you said Shehecheyanu by then?

1:00:17 Speaker 2 I’d said Shehecheyanu earlier.

1:00:18 Speaker 1 What about when you first saw—

1:00:19 Speaker 2 Yankel Heberanger was at the davening.

1:00:25 Speaker 1 What bracha did the Rebbe give you?

1:00:25 Speaker 2 Wait, the yechidus, the yechidus—

1:00:27 Speaker 1 Just a second, we’ll get to the yechidus. What bracha did the Rebbe give you?

1:00:30 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:00:30 Speaker 1 What bracha did the Rebbe give you?

1:00:31 Speaker 2 A bracha and… No, something—

1:00:33 Speaker 1 A standard bracha. So you actually had the privilege of going in during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, right after you arrived.

1:00:40 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:00:40 Speaker 1 Because it was my first birthday—

1:00:41 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:00:41 Speaker 1 Because that was the first day after Tishrei. Did the Rebbe farbreng?

1:00:45 Speaker 2 Certainly.

1:00:48 Speaker 1 What happened?

1:00:49 Speaker 2 Ah, that... Do you want me to give you a review?

1:00:52 Speaker 1 No, I’m not asking for a review. I’m asking about things—

1:00:53 Speaker 2 There was something...

1:01:00 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:01:01 Speaker 2 The maftir on Rosh Hashanah was awe-inspiring. The story of Chana—it was all tears. “Ashrei, ashrei, ashrei, ashrei.”

1:01:16 Speaker 1 Crying you could actually hear throughout—crying you could hear out loud.

1:01:18 Speaker 2 It wasn’t such a big crowd then; it was still in the small shul.

1:01:21 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:01:22 Speaker 2 Before they expanded it. They would call me up for the chazakah, but the crying was so loud you could hear it across the whole... We stood opposite the bimah. The shul was expanded afterward.

1:01:41 Speaker 1 During the shofar blowing, you could see the—

1:01:42 Speaker 2 What?

1:01:42 Speaker 1 During the shofar blowing, you could see the Rebbe’s distinctive conduct.

1:01:47 Speaker 2 Only those standing close could hear the shofar blowing. The Rebbe would blow with his tallis over the sacks containing the pidyonos. By then there were already several people from Russia whom the Rebbe had asked to stand near him.

1:02:01 Speaker 1 Who stood there?

1:02:02 Speaker 2 Several immigrants from Russia. There were many of them at Chovevei Torah. Something interesting happened then. Yechezkel was the one who would go in to give out the aliyos.

1:02:11 Speaker 1 Yechezkel Goldman.

1:02:12 Speaker 2 Yechezkel Goldman. The Rebbe told him—Yechezkel related this—“They are my guests too.”

1:02:18 Speaker 1 “These are my guests.”

1:02:20 Speaker 2 “I want them to have aliyos too.”

1:02:22 Speaker 1 So he went to give them aliyos.

1:02:25 Speaker 2 Yechezkel said, “But that comes to three times chai dollars.”

1:02:33 Speaker 1 Each one—

1:02:34 Speaker 2 “Do you want a check?” The Rebbe wrote him a check.

1:02:36 Speaker 1 For the guests.

1:02:37 Speaker 2 For the—for the aliyos.

1:02:39 Speaker 1 For the guests’ aliyos—

1:02:40 Speaker 2 Yes!

1:02:40 Speaker 1 They calculated each aliyah at no less than three times chai dollars.

1:02:44 Speaker 2 Chai dollars. Rabbi Yechezkel came out with the check.

1:02:48 Speaker 1 That was at Chovevei Torah.

1:02:49 Speaker 2 At Chovevei.

1:02:50 Speaker 1 So that was already at Chovevei.

1:02:51 Speaker 2 Chovevei was already there.

1:02:52 Speaker 1 Who were the guests from Russia, from—

1:02:54 Speaker 2 There were several. I don’t remember exactly who they were. Several had already arrived.

1:02:59 Speaker 1 Vishedsky, perhaps.

1:03:00 Speaker 2 What?

1:03:00 Speaker 1 Perhaps Vishedsky. Maybe Vishedsky.

1:03:02 Speaker 2 Could be; I don’t remember exactly. They stood near the Rebbe—the Rebbe asked them to stand there.

1:03:12 Speaker 1 Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Simchas Torah.

1:03:15 Speaker 2 What?

1:03:15 Speaker 1 Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Simchas Torah.

1:03:17 Speaker 2 Those are things everyone knows.

1:03:20 Speaker 1 Nothing is known. Tell us a little about what...

1:03:24 Speaker 2 There’s another point to mention. Something happened there with the esrog.

1:03:33 Speaker 1 What happened?

1:03:36 Speaker 2 It was a frightening sight. Meir Helger was standing there, ready with the esrog. After chazaras hashatz, they asked for the esrog to bring it to the Rebbe. Some clever fellow broke off the pitom. Meir...

1:04:00 Speaker 1 Trembled.

1:04:01 Speaker 2 There wasn’t a bimah there yet. He froze in place.

1:04:06 Speaker 1 Was that on Chol Hamoed or on Yom Tov?

1:04:09 Speaker 2 On Yom Tov.

1:04:09 Speaker 1 On Yom Tov it was downstairs; the Rebbe davened downstairs.

1:04:13 Speaker 2 He approached, and the Rebbe looked at it. The Rebbe’s face was stunned. The Rebbe said something about the esrog being invalid.

1:04:26 Speaker 1 They had invalidated the esrog.

1:04:28 Speaker 2 The Rebbe stayed like that, then left the shul—

1:04:31 Speaker 1 The Rebbe left?

1:04:32 Speaker 2 He left and went up to his room.

1:04:34 Speaker 1 Between chazaras hashatz and Hallel?

1:04:35 Speaker 2 Yes. Before Hallel; there was time.

1:04:38 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:04:39 Speaker 2 He went up to his room and sent for an esrog from home. After Hallel, after [unclear], he came, took the esrog again, and made the brachah. He approached, and the Rebbe said an astonishing thing to me: “It isn’t mine.”

1:04:57 Speaker 1 “It’s not mine.”

1:04:58 Speaker 2 It belonged to the Rebbetzin, then.

1:04:59 Speaker 1 So you had to ask her permission to let people make a brachah on it.

1:05:03 Speaker 2 I don’t know what it meant. I remember what happened—

1:05:04 Speaker 1 He had it in his hand, right?

1:05:05 Speaker 2 What I remember about those moments is—

1:05:07 Speaker 1 What he meant was, “It isn’t mine; it’s hers.”

1:05:09 Speaker 2 So we didn’t have an esrog for that whole... We would all make the brachah on the esrog the Rebbe gave Yoske Perlman for the Chabad bochurim, and the rest used the esrogim the Rebbe gave to—

1:05:22 Speaker 1 To that—

1:05:22 Speaker 2 His own.

1:05:23 Speaker 1 In other words, that year people could no longer make the brachah on the Rebbe’s esrog.

1:05:27 Speaker 2 There was another time something happened. The Rebbe had already brought one out of his room, and afterward he let people make the brachah on it.

1:05:34 Speaker 1 You mean in the mem years.

1:05:35 Speaker 2 What?

1:05:36 Speaker 1 You mean that was already in the mem years.

1:05:37 Speaker 2 Something like that.

1:05:38 Speaker 1 It was mem-vav, 5746. Yes.

1:05:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:05:44 Speaker 1 But the Rebbe’s face, the moment it became invalid—it was a face...

1:05:46 Speaker 2 It was a frightening, frightening sight. The esrog was invalidated. It really was...

1:05:57 Speaker 1 There was a farbrengen in the sukkah afterward.

1:05:58 Speaker 2 What?

1:05:59 Speaker 1 There was a farbrengen in the sukkah.

1:06:00 Speaker 2 It was in the sukkah, and it was raining. The Rebbe came in wearing a coat. The moment he sat down, he took off the coat and tossed it over the chair.

1:06:10 Speaker 1 Over the back of it.

1:06:13 Speaker 2 He looked around at the crowd. I had found a spot at the window of my room. It wasn’t raining there, but we could see and hear. It was something... In the sukkah it was very hard to hear, so the Rebbe spoke loudly. The Rebbe looked over, and Yisroel Leib arrived wearing his coat. The Rebbe motioned to him like this. He had no choice; he took off the coat. There was something there that wasn’t so happy. A man named Schenker, who lived in Boro Park, came into the farbrengen to ask for a brachah for his father. He approached the Rebbe. The Rebbe didn’t respond to what he was saying, only [unclear].

1:07:15 Speaker 1 The Rebbe didn’t respond to his request and told him to encourage the crowd.

1:07:18 Speaker 2 He didn’t respond to the request. What turned out?

1:07:22 Speaker 1 That it was already too late.

1:07:28 Speaker 2 Wow. Yes. The Rebbe paid no attention to the rain. I wondered what would happen, but the sicha... The rain wasn’t so terrible, but it was raining.

1:07:45 Speaker 1 Yes. Afterward—

1:07:47 Speaker 2 What?

1:07:48 Speaker 1 After that, where did you go in? Where did you learn—at Chovevei, in the seminary itself, or at Chovevei Torah?

1:07:52 Speaker 2 Upstairs, upstairs in the seminary room, the place by the door in the corner.

1:07:57 Speaker 1 In the small zal.

1:07:58 Speaker 2 In the small zal, yes. How many were there then? There were seventeen of us, and however many there were in the whole yeshivah. Everyone sat upstairs.

1:08:11 Speaker 1 Then 19 Kislev came.

1:08:13 Speaker 2 What?

1:08:13 Speaker 1 19 Kislev came—the famous 19 Kislev of 5726.

1:08:16 Speaker 2 Oh, that’s the introduction to Sefer HaErchim.

1:08:22 Speaker 1 That came afterward... But the kuntres itself was said then.

1:08:27 Speaker 2 Then there was—

1:08:27 Speaker 1 There were also two maamarim, one for 19 Kislev and one for Chanukah.

1:08:32 Speaker 2 After the volume came out—I don’t know, I heard it from the bochurim who worked on it—the Rebbe said something remarkable. Did you hear that? You have a good memory.

1:08:42 Speaker 1 I didn’t hear anything. I think it was about how far it would—how far he—

1:08:54 Speaker 2 How far he reaches.

1:08:55 Speaker 1 How much he...

1:08:57 Speaker 2 It was an astonishing statement.

1:08:58 Speaker 1 About what he wrote, what he edited. About the depth of it.

1:09:05 Speaker 2 Then came 4 Nissan. In 5726 there was no farbrengen.

1:09:10 Speaker 1 4 Nissan?

1:09:10 Speaker 2 There was no farbrengen in 5726.

1:09:11 Speaker 1 Wait, before 4 Nissan we have Purim. There are still a few things before 4 Nissan. Just a second.

1:09:16 Speaker 2 I’m talking about 5726.

1:09:18 Speaker 1 We still have Purim 5726 before that. Wait.

1:09:20 Speaker 2 What?

1:09:20 Speaker 1 We still have Purim 5726 before that.

1:09:22 Speaker 2 Purim was Purim. Everyone knows about Purim and the whole episode with the wine. It turns out it wasn’t spontaneous: the Rebbe had asked them to prepare a lot of wine. When the Rebbe distributed it, there was quite a commotion.

1:09:43 Speaker 1 Just a second. You’re saying that on Purim 5726, the Rebbe had said in advance to prepare a lot of wine?

1:09:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:09:48 Speaker 1 The Rebbe spoke strongly about those who travel on shlichus—

1:09:53 Speaker 2 What?

1:09:57 Speaker 1 “I give my golden scepter to those who go on shlichus.”

1:10:00 Speaker 2 So—

1:10:02 Speaker 1 After that came the whole episode.

1:10:04 Speaker 2 I received some by the window on the right-hand side of the exit.

1:10:14 Speaker 1 In other words, the Rebbe started distributing mashke while he was sitting in his place.

1:10:17 Speaker 2 He distributed it and distributed it and distributed it.

1:10:18 Speaker 1 In his place.

1:10:19 Speaker 2 And when he started walking home, he distributed it then too. I stood at the side with a cup; I could barely hold it. The Rebbe poured for me. Then the Rebbe continued along the whole path. All the bochurim and the others stood by the Rebbe’s old car, and they got into the car. The Rebbe kept distributing. There was a bochur there who took pictures and is no longer with us. The Rebbe asked him—

1:10:50 Speaker 1 But why take pictures?

1:10:51 Speaker 2 To put the camera in the secretariat.

1:10:55 Speaker 1 He should put the camera in the secretariat.

1:10:58 Speaker 2 No, the Rebbe distributed for a long time there. And the car sank down onto the ground. Not—

1:11:04 Speaker 1 It dropped down to the ground.

1:11:07 Speaker 2 And Yehuda didn’t know what to do. So he took the Rebbe home. Mottel Rivkin told me, “I have a new car; I’ve just bought it, and I’ll bring it.” He brought it, and Yehuda and Mottel argued. Mottel said—

1:11:25 Speaker 1 “It’s my car.” Yehuda said, “I’m the driver.”

1:11:29 Speaker 2 In the end Yehuda drove, but the Rebbe rode in your car.

1:11:33 Speaker 1 In Mottel Rivkin’s car.

1:11:34 Speaker 2 Mottel’s. A lot of things happened with Mottel, and I heard that the Rebbe once said to him, “[unclear].”

1:11:44 Speaker 1 That’s what the Rebbe said to Mottel Rivkin. We already daven together in the same shul. But as we went along, we skipped something. You said you had yechidus in Teves?

1:11:54 Speaker 2 Everyone in the group had yechidus in Teves.

1:11:56 Speaker 1 What happened?

1:11:56 Speaker 2 It took place over three nights. Mine wasn’t anything particularly special. Brachahs, brachahs, brachahs, brachahs. It was short, short—really short.

1:12:08 Speaker 1 What was the procedure? Did you write to the Rebbe about what had happened?

1:12:11 Speaker 2 You wrote whatever you had to write. Brachahs. He gave one or two brachahs, and that was it, boruch Hashem. Afterward, the next yechidus was when we were leaving.

1:12:26 Speaker 1 Just a second; we’ll get to that. But during the year, was there any other personal attention to the bochurim?

1:12:31 Speaker 2 To the group? There wasn’t anything special for the group, and... I don’t remember. We were a drop in the ocean. Look, the bochurim’s general conduct was perfectly good. There wasn’t anything like the Rebbe saying that it wasn’t.

1:13:00 Speaker 1 It was a serious group. And then—

1:13:02 Speaker 2 One bochur traveled back before Pesach for personal reasons.

1:13:09 Speaker 1 We won’t go into that.

1:13:10 Speaker 2 What?

1:13:10 Speaker 1 Yes. Then Pesach arrived. Pesach was...

1:13:16 Speaker 2 I was involved before Pesach. It was after Purim. Amram Malka was already there, going around.

1:13:28 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:13:30 Speaker 2 So he kept coming, coming, coming—what was coming? So I told someone to start getting things ready, to take out the utensils; we would prepare the Seder. He told me, “Amram, that’s not for me.” There was no work; there really wasn’t anyone in the zal. He latched on to me. Fine, but to go up to the second floor, we needed permission from Rabbi Tzadok Halevi Modzitz. And then there was an awkward moment. She wasn’t there, so people would write to her, and Manya was sitting beside her. They wrote down my name—wait, Feiglin. She gave a shout: “Shol Nevner?”

1:14:17 Speaker 1 A relative.

1:14:21 Speaker 2 Why, he was my grandfather’s brother.

1:14:23 Speaker 1 Shol Nevner was my grandfather’s brother.

1:14:24 Speaker 2 There were two brothers—three brothers—in Lubavitch: Shol, my grandfather, and Zemele Levin’s father.

1:14:34 Speaker 1 Binyamin.

1:14:34 Speaker 2 Yoshen Ber.

1:14:35 Speaker 1 Yoshen Ber.

1:14:37 Speaker 2 And they knew them. Long before Rabbi [unclear] knew all the... especially Shol Nevner and the goat. Do you know the story of the goat?

1:14:49 Speaker 1 I don’t know anything about it.

1:14:50 Speaker 2 What do you mean, you don’t know anything?

1:14:51 Speaker 1 What’s the story with the goat?

1:14:53 Speaker 2 There was a goat in Lubavitch whose milk the Temimim drank. Shol Nevner was Shol Nevner. He decided that a goat like that had to be brought into the zal. What do you mean?

1:15:09 Speaker 1 Something in Lubavitch that he wouldn’t bring into the zal?

1:15:12 Speaker 2 He and—who was his partner? Another bochur was his partner. They brought the goat into the—

1:15:22 Speaker 1 The zal.

1:15:22 Speaker 2 The zal. Right, it caused a commotion, and that’s how it reached the Rebbe Rashab. It was a disaster.

1:15:32 Speaker 1 They expelled him from the yeshivah.

1:15:33 Speaker 2 Yes, Shol—Shol Nevner stayed in the yeshivah because he went to the Rebbe and pleaded with him.

1:15:42 Speaker 1 Rabbi Tzvi [unclear].

1:15:44 Speaker 2 Rabbi Tzvi of the Rebbe Rashab’s [unclear].

1:15:46 Speaker 1 Rabbi Tzvi [unclear].

1:15:49 Speaker 2 And he didn’t plead for himself. He pleaded for the other bochur. So [unclear]. He promised he would speak with him, and they accepted that, and he stayed in the yeshivah. But he was a close friend of the Rebbe, and such a chossid that he would give a third of what he earned. In Russia, that was... And not only that: they lived there, and things would be brought from Sholom Levner’s home to the Frierdiker Rebbe’s home—food and other things. There was something there I won’t go into. When Sholom’s mother traveled to visit him, she said she wanted to meet the Rebbe—Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka. “How can you call her a simple woman?” She wanted to meet—

1:16:54 Speaker 3 In other words, Sholom [unclear]’s mother, who traveled to the Rebbe, said she wanted to see Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka.

1:16:58 Speaker 2 Yes. What does that have to do with him? Anyway, she rang the bell. “A simple woman is at the door.”

1:17:09 Speaker 3 “Who is it?” In any case, she had said, “A simple woman.” The Rebbetzin asked, “But who is it?”

1:17:13 Speaker 2 No, the Rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Cha—

1:17:14 Speaker 3 Oh.

1:17:14 Speaker 2 Rebbetzin Cha—

1:17:15 Speaker 3 I said Rebbetzin Chaya—

1:17:15 Speaker 2 Rebbetzin Mushka asked at the door, “Who is it?”

1:17:17 Speaker 3 “But who is it?”

1:17:19 Speaker 2 So she said, “Sholom’s daughter.” “And you call her a simple Jewish woman?”

1:17:24 Speaker 3 She introduced herself as Sholom Levner’s sister. So the Rebbetzin said, “And you call yourself a simple woman?”

1:17:29 Speaker 2 Anyway, she came in, and they talked and talked. Rebbetzin Chaya asked, “Do you remember that moment, when such-and-such happened?” She said, “I remember. I heard you, and I remember exactly how it was.” Then they sat and talked and reminisced. Ah, that was in Leningrad... “And you call her a simple Jewish woman?”

1:17:51 Speaker 3 So, yes, I was there at the house, helping in the Frierdiker Rebbe’s home.

1:17:57 Speaker 2 I helped there. I saw all the gifts people had brought the Frierdiker Rebbe—Kiddush cups and all sorts of things. We went down and got things ready. So then I had the opportunity to go in for the Seder afterward.

1:18:17 Speaker 3 Earlier.

1:18:18 Speaker 2 We arrived really early. We got there before the Rebbe had even come out of his room. The one who came out—

1:18:24 Speaker 3 Before that, the Rebbe came to your Seder first to give a blessing.

1:18:27 Speaker 2 That Seder was [unclear]. We finished it in ten or twelve minutes—with the four cups, the matzos, everything, everything. And of course we didn’t walk; we—

1:18:45 Speaker 3 Ran.

1:18:45 Speaker 2 We ran. We arrived while the Rebbe was still in his room, and the person who came out was Katz. He had just received the matzos from the Rebbe.

1:18:55 Speaker 3 Yankel Katz.

1:18:56 Speaker 2 Yankel Katz.

1:18:57 Speaker 3 From Chicago.

1:18:57 Speaker 2 He went upstairs, and we went up too. The Rebbe sat here, and over here was the Frierdiker Rebbe’s ke’arah.

1:19:10 Speaker 3 At the head of the table was the Frierdiker Rebbe’s ke’arah. The Rebbe sat to its left.

1:19:15 Speaker 2 Mendelik would come in, you know.

1:19:17 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:19:20 Speaker 2 We saw the Rebbe standing there with a very serious expression. The matzah on the Rebbe’s ke’arah was partly uncovered. The Rebbe said, “What are we going to do? That will raise a question about Kiddush. It’s Kiddush.”

1:19:42 Speaker 3 There would be a question about Kiddush if the matzah was uncovered.

1:19:48 Speaker 2 The Rebbe’s expression was awe-inspiring, awe-inspiring, awe-inspiring. Every time the Rebbe looked at the ke’arah.

1:20:00 Speaker 3 At every point, the Rebbe looked toward the—

1:20:02 Speaker 2 At the—

1:20:03 Speaker 3 The chair of—the ke’arah and the chair of the Frierdiker Rebbe.

1:20:07 Speaker 2 This was before the Seder, while we were still... The Rebbetzin stood in the room, at the doorway. I don’t know whether she could hear Kiddush. I don’t know. It was...

1:20:20 Speaker 3 During Kiddush she stood in the outer room—

1:20:22 Speaker 2 In the room, at the doorway. Now, at Rachtzah, the Rebbe didn’t have... The Rebbe would get up. Opposite the kitchen there was a—

1:20:33 Speaker 3 Sink.

1:20:34 Speaker 2 A sink, and the Rebbe washed his hands there. That was... Later, during the meal, the Rebbe also got up and went—

1:20:43 Speaker 3 Did arranging the ke’arah take a long time?

1:20:46 Speaker 2 What? No—

1:20:47 Speaker 3 All the parts of the Seder.

1:20:49 Speaker 2 It was only a matter of bringing the egg. He rolled it. The Rebbe didn’t give it a tap. Again and again, until it stood up.

1:20:59 Speaker 3 Until it stood up and stayed whole. In other words, he didn’t tap it—

1:21:02 Speaker 2 Yes. At the beginning of the meal, the Rebbe peeled it. He didn’t break it open, didn’t break it open. He brought salt and ate—

1:21:11 Speaker 3 At the start of Shulchan Orech.

1:21:12 Speaker 2 Yes. Another thing was how the Rebbe prepared the maror. There were large Russian spoons there, soup spoons. The Rebbe put in several olives’ worth—I don’t know how it all fit—and covered it with lettuce leaves. On top there was really—

1:21:37 Speaker 3 Horseradish.

1:21:38 Speaker 2 A piece of maror. And afterward, while eating matzah, he would bring it back... Not a crumb fell. The Rebbe ate it like this. He ate as if he were playing a—

1:22:01 Speaker 3 Piano. A—

1:22:02 Speaker 2 No, no, an accordion.

1:22:05 Speaker 3 Yes, a—

1:22:06 Speaker 2 Quickly, and without teeth. Anyone who noticed was amazed.

1:22:13 Speaker 3 And despite all that, not a crumb fell.

1:22:17 Speaker 2 The secretaries say that the Rebbe ate matzah every Motzaei Shabbos. Did you know that?

1:22:25 Speaker 3 When he ate Melaveh Malkah, he ate matzah.

1:22:27 Speaker 2 Melaveh Malkah was matzah. Once he asked Mali—Mali—to bring matzos to the Rebbe’s house. So who... Tell me, I have a difficult question. It turned out—he said the Rebbe ate matzos at Shulchan Orech. And there were other things there; I don’t know whether they wrote this down. Whenever the Rebbe ate something, he took a napkin to wipe his mouth. There was a box here, covered with—

1:23:07 Speaker 3 To the Rebbe’s right, on the—

1:23:10 Speaker 2 Here, here was a crate covered with a sheet, and the—

1:23:13 Speaker 3 Napkins, the napkins—

1:23:14 Speaker 2 He would throw them in there. There was a bochur there, Bentzi [unclear]. Hop, hop, hop.

1:23:20 Speaker 3 He put napkins in his own pocket.

1:23:21 Speaker 2 There was the siddur. Maybe the question was where the vinegar was.

1:23:26 Speaker 3 Did the Rebbe say the word “vinegar”?

1:23:29 Speaker 2 The question.

1:23:30 Speaker 3 The question even concerned vinegar. A question about vinegar, as though it had to do with gebrokts.

1:23:36 Speaker 2 I didn’t interrupt. Later there was Eliyahu’s cup. It was... Nobody understands, nobody will understand what went on there.

1:23:49 Speaker 3 What happened? How—how was it done? Was it standing up?

1:23:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:23:54 Speaker 3 The Rebbe would stand up?

1:23:55 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:23:56 Speaker 3 After he drank the cup, would he stand up? Did the Rebbe say “Leshanah haba’ah” sitting or standing?

1:24:01 Speaker 2 I don’t know. I don’t remember, I don’t remember.

1:24:03 Speaker 3 But arranging the cup was done standing up.

1:24:05 Speaker 2 Things have been written, but I don’t remember exactly.

1:24:08 Speaker 3 Arranging the cup—

1:24:09 Speaker 2 There were other things there.

1:24:10 Speaker 3 Just a second—what happened? Where did the Rebbe pour from?

1:24:12 Speaker 2 From the cup into the bottle, from the bottle into the cup. I don’t remember, I don’t remember. Some people recorded it; I don’t remember either. There was a bochur there, Yitzchok Shmotkin. He was a bochur. He had a watch. The Rebbe would... look at his watch, and... it made quite an impression, that watch.

1:24:34 Speaker 3 To ask about chatzos.

1:24:35 Speaker 2 By 5717, he was already married.

1:24:40 Speaker 3 The Rebbe no longer asked.

1:24:41 Speaker 2 He arrived, and the Rebbe didn’t even... He immediately threw it away. And there was—

1:24:47 Speaker 3 Did the married members of Anash come too?

1:24:48 Speaker 2 What?

1:24:49 Speaker 3 Did members of Anash come too—the married men?

1:24:51 Speaker 2 What do you mean? Yes.

1:24:52 Speaker 3 I mean Anash, besides the bochurim. Yes, as time went on.

1:24:54 Speaker 2 They came, they came. Afterward there was [unclear] and—

1:25:01 Speaker 3 [unclear].

1:25:08 Speaker 2 Afterward, to see the Rebbe, all of it... it inspired awe.

1:25:16 Speaker 3 What inspired awe?

1:25:17 Speaker 2 The Rebbe ate a substantial amount. They hadn’t opened the container. It was kept closed.

1:25:25 Speaker 3 It was sharp.

1:25:27 Speaker 2 What was sharp?

1:25:30 Speaker 3 And could you see anything in the Rebbe’s eyes?

1:25:32 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:25:33 Speaker 3 Could you see anything in his eyes while he ate it?

1:25:35 Speaker 2 No, he made an effort there. He controlled himself.

1:25:38 Speaker 3 He coughed.

1:25:39 Speaker 2 Yes. Then on Shevi’i shel Pesach there was—

1:25:46 Speaker 3 After—after the Seder, the Rebbe went home.

1:25:50 Speaker 2 No, afterward there was [unclear].

1:25:51 Speaker 3 That was on the second day. On the second night there was [unclear]. He went down to [unclear].

1:25:54 Speaker 2 That was interesting.

1:25:56 Speaker 3 That—that’s what I wanted to ask—

1:25:57 Speaker 2 The Rebbe didn’t go by Eastern Parkway. He went by the smaller street where the kollel was.

1:26:05 Speaker 3 Union.

1:26:05 Speaker 2 Union. Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka would wait. They would go by Union.

1:26:12 Speaker 3 Along the path where the kollel was later, the path used for Tashlich.

1:26:15 Speaker 2 Yes, but they would go by Union.

1:26:17 Speaker 3 They would walk together.

1:26:17 Speaker 2 The bochurim would accompany the—the Rebbe like this, and the Rebbe like this. The Rebbe walked like this. They said to me, “The Rebbe—listen to what she’s saying.”

1:26:29 Speaker 3 Prick up your ears.

1:26:30 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:26:31 Speaker 3 He tilted his ear to hear what the Rebbetzin was saying.

1:26:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:26:34 Speaker 3 I mean, there were bochurim in the back. Did you notice that?

1:26:36 Speaker 2 Yes, that, that...

1:26:37 Speaker 3 There was, as it were, quite a difference in height.

1:26:40 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:26:40 Speaker 3 There was a difference in height, and the Rebbe tilted his ear to hear. I’m describing what you’re—you were demonstrating it, and I’m just putting it into words.

1:26:45 Speaker 2 [unclear].

1:26:47 Speaker 3 I’m saying, I’m explaining because you demonstrated it: the Rebbe bent down a little, turning his ear to hear what she—

1:26:54 Speaker 2 [unclear]. The Rebbe finished distributing and went home. We ran straight to the house. What we saw there was a sight. [unclear].

1:27:11 Speaker 3 The path to the house.

1:27:12 Speaker 2 To the house. He didn’t go inside. He stood facing the crowd. The crowd began to sing. The Rebbe stood there—I remember the Rebbe standing and dancing. It was a sight. At a farbrengen you wouldn’t see that; I think the table would have blocked the view.

1:27:34 Speaker 3 There was nothing separating us from the Rebbe’s full figure—

1:27:37 Speaker 2 Ten, fifteen minutes.

1:27:38 Speaker 3 Wow.

1:27:40 Speaker 2 It was something... You didn’t see that, only that—so we saw the Rebbe standing, and even at [unclear] you didn’t see that.

1:27:50 Speaker 3 There was always something blocking the view, separating us. Here the Rebbe stood with both hands.

1:28:00 Speaker 2 What a sight. I don’t know whether anyone managed to photograph it, anyone who was there—I don’t know. We ran, really ran, to get there before Yudel arrived with the—with the car—

1:28:10 Speaker 3 With the car.

1:28:15 Speaker 2 Something interesting happened there. We got to the Rebbe’s house; this was before Shavuos. Meir Mahalik was in charge of bringing the thermos. He would simply take the empty thermos from the railing and put it between the doors. The gate isn’t there today; I don’t know why they didn’t put it back. They still haven’t put the gate back. He would leave it there, and the Rebbetzin would prepare a full thermos, put it there, and he would take it back. Before Shavuos, Meir said, “There’s a bag there; let’s take the bag too.”

1:28:55 Speaker 4 There was also a bag beside the thermos.

1:28:57 Speaker 2 There was an envelope there; they’d put down an envelope. He picked it up. It was sealed, but you could feel that there was some kind of fabric inside. On Shavuos I noticed that the Rebbe had two talleisim: one with the stripes we knew, and one with wide stripes. The tallis with wide stripes hadn’t been there before. I went over to Meir: “Meir, was that [unclear]?” I believed it had been the tallis. That’s how it was. There were things, there were things—

1:29:35 Speaker 4 What happened on the seventh day of Pesach?

1:29:37 Speaker 2 On the seventh day of Pesach, there were two Jews who needed healing. One was Shalom Geitz, who had suffered a very serious heart attack. And Marozov, too—[unclear]—

1:29:56 Speaker 4 Mendel.

1:29:57 Speaker 2 Mendel. Both had had heart attacks. Shalom’s son, Yoske, was a child, not even bar mitzvah yet. [unclear]. The Rebbe found him and said to him, “Four kisses.”

1:30:16 Speaker 4 With his—with his hand, four fingers: four kisses.

1:30:21 Speaker 2 Simply, four kisses. How long did he live—seven? Four years.

1:30:25 Speaker 4 Four years.

1:30:27 Speaker 2 Then Mendel Marozov’s son, Zalman, who lives in Canada today, came over to ask for a blessing for his father, Mendel. The Rebbe took some of the matzah and gave it to him: “Matzah is the food of healing.” I met Zalman afterward—well, he was here ten years ago. [unclear] Why did he say “the food of healing”? Ah! I remember.

1:31:05 Speaker 4 Then he understood that the Rebbe had given him healing for many long years.

1:31:10 Speaker 2 Until a hundred and ten—that’s interesting. There were other Jews there who came over, and he said, “The food of healing,” “the food of healing.” That was already [unclear]. So the 17th of Nissan, broadly speaking, was something very personal. I’m going back more than forty, forty and a half years. I had something that I really... needed an answer from the Rebbe.

1:31:44 Speaker 4 Just a second, you’re talking about forty years ago—

1:31:47 Speaker 2 More than forty years ago.

1:31:48 Speaker 4 Elul, 5740.

1:31:54 Speaker 2 Yes. There was a medical problem. I needed an answer. The difficulty was that here it was nine-thirty, while by the Rebbe it was, what, three in the morning.

1:32:04 Speaker 4 Nine-thirty in the morning, and you urgently needed a medical answer for yourself.

1:32:08 Speaker 2 For the family.

1:32:09 Speaker 4 For someone in the family, yes.

1:32:11 Speaker 2 What could I do? I knew Binyamin from our group.

1:32:16 Speaker 4 You were friends.

1:32:18 Speaker 2 I said, “I’ll apologize to him.” I had his home phone number. He wasn’t asleep. It was a quarter to three. He was still working. So I told him as well. “You have consent and a blessing.”

1:32:30 Speaker 4 I didn’t understand. You called him and explained the medical situation?

1:32:33 Speaker 2 Yes. I told him there was an issue—[unclear].

1:32:37 Speaker 4 Right.

1:32:38 Speaker 2 So I told Binyamin about it.

1:32:40 Speaker 4 And he told you, “Wait a moment.”

1:32:42 Speaker 2 He said, “Hold on.” Ten minutes later he called.

1:32:45 Speaker 4 He called you back after ten minutes with an answer.

1:32:47 Speaker 2 “You have consent and a blessing.”

1:32:48 Speaker 4 Consent and a blessing for the medical matter you needed help with.

1:32:50 Speaker 2 Consent and a blessing, and it was above nature within nature. Boruch Hashem. I still live with that. Binyamin came to Israel a few times afterward. A few times he was here around Shabbos. He said, “Do you remember?” I said, “Remember? I live with it.”

1:33:08 Speaker 4 I asked whether you remembered, and you said, “I don’t just remember it; I live with it every day, every moment.”

1:33:12 Speaker 2 He told me how he had done it. There was no direct number. He said, “I didn’t have the Rebbe’s phone number. But there was a phone, and the Rebbetzin had given me permission to call her if it was a matter of saving a life. You weren’t the first or the last. I had to judge whether it really was a matter of saving a life—

1:33:39 Speaker 4 “or just someone who decided that he needed something.

1:33:41 Speaker 2 “I would call her, and she would go to the Rebbe to ask, then bring back what the Rebbe said. That’s what I did for you too.” And he told me, “All well and good, it was a matter of saving a life. But three in the morning is the Rebbe and Rebbetzin’s private time, and I was intruding. They really weren’t asleep, but I felt a real need to apologize to the Rebbetzin. I looked for an opportunity to apologize, and I had one. I said to the Rebbetzin—”

1:34:14 Speaker 4 Binyamin was saying that he wanted to apologize to the Rebbetzin, even though he had permission.

1:34:20 Speaker 2 “Once, I felt I could ask. I said to the Rebbetzin, ‘I want to apologize for disturbing you during your private time.’”

1:34:30 Speaker 4 I want to apologize for disturbing you during your free time, your personal time.

1:34:33 Speaker 2 “Now listen carefully to what the Rebbetzin answered me: ‘We came into this world to help Jews twenty-four hours a day, and you are privileged to help us do that work.’”

1:34:49 Speaker 4 We came into this world to help Jews.

1:34:52 Speaker 2 Twenty-four hours a day, and you are privileged to help them do that work. [unclear].

1:35:08 Speaker 4 He told you that here, on Gimmel Tammuz?

1:35:10 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:35:10 Speaker 4 He told you that here, on Gimmel Tammuz?

1:35:11 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, by the window.

1:35:14 Speaker 4 Wow. How much that obligates us, to know how the Rebbetzin defined it.

1:35:23 Speaker 2 [unclear].

1:35:28 Speaker 4 Wait, we skipped ahead a little. Getting back to the famous [unclear]: the Rebbe spoke then about those who helped rescue the Frierdiker Rebbe. They were not harmed. Those are things that—

1:35:42 Speaker 2 There was another line there.

1:35:44 Speaker 4 Well, what was it?

1:35:46 Speaker 2 It was deeply chilling. [unclear].

1:35:55 Speaker 4 The way he put it: they sent people, and those people did not return, yet they continued sending more Jews on missions that endangered their lives.

1:36:04 Speaker 2 It was chilling. Yes.

1:36:16 Speaker 4 You can feel that—even though sixty years have passed—you, uh, feel it. It’s alive for you.

1:36:21 Speaker 2 On 19 Shvat, the Rebbe also spoke about the person who translated Sefer Hazichronos. He was impressed with [unclear].

1:36:29 Speaker 4 Yes, indeed.

1:36:30 Speaker 2 So he referred to him.

1:36:32 Speaker 4 The translator of Sefer Hazichronos heard a great deal from him.

1:36:36 Speaker 2 That the Rebbe touched on spreading Chassidus [unclear].

1:36:43 Speaker 4 How he touched on reaching people in every language, spreading Chassidus.

1:36:49 Speaker 2 We immediately saw that [unclear] was sitting there.

1:36:52 Speaker 4 You hadn’t recognized him before. No, you didn’t know him.

1:36:54 Speaker 2 He didn’t have a beard, uh, part of... People knew who he was.

1:37:00 Speaker 4 Well, before we move on to other occasions, I just want to ask: when did your father first come to the Rebbe? After, uh, after, after France.

1:37:06 Speaker 2 In the winter.

1:37:07 Speaker 4 In the winter, when you were there.

1:37:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:37:09 Speaker 4 Tishrei?

1:37:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:37:10 Speaker 4 What happened?

1:37:11 Speaker 2 [unclear].

1:37:13 Speaker 4 Ah, what happened?

1:37:15 Speaker 2 First thing when he arrived, the Rebbe called him in on Friday for about three and a quarter hours of yechidus.

1:37:22 Speaker 4 Wow, three and a quarter hours on Friday?

1:37:24 Speaker 2 The Rebbe questioned him. He didn’t speak; the Rebbe—

1:37:27 Speaker 4 About what? About what was happening in Kfar Chabad?

1:37:29 Speaker 2 He was the deputy, and to this day he never told us what happened there.

1:37:32 Speaker 4 But wait, what kinds of things about Kfar Chabad?

1:37:34 Speaker 2 About his work as deputy, what was going on.

1:37:37 Speaker 4 Was he deputy here in Kfar Chabad, or also in the institutions? What?

1:37:40 Speaker 2 He didn’t—

1:37:41 Speaker 4 What was he involved in?

1:37:41 Speaker 2 He never said. Three and a quarter hours—the Rebbe questioned him. Down to the smallest details, every detail, everything that—what had happened, what was... That was what it was. [unclear].

1:37:56 Speaker 4 It always was.

1:37:59 Speaker 2 It depends at what level.

1:38:03 Speaker 4 Which kind?

1:38:04 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:38:05 Speaker 4 Was that his only yechidus, or was there another—

1:38:06 Speaker 2 No, afterward he went in, uh—

1:38:09 Speaker 4 As a chossid.

1:38:09 Speaker 2 That wasn’t, wasn’t called a yechidus. It was more like—

1:38:12 Speaker 4 Work.

1:38:13 Speaker 2 Questioning.

1:38:15 Speaker 4 A meeting, a work meeting, so to speak.

1:38:18 Speaker 2 That’s what he said afterward.

1:38:23 Speaker 4 So it was Friday afternoon, or in the morning?

1:38:26 Speaker 2 Friday afternoon. It was something, something... The Rebbe’s work.

1:38:35 Speaker 4 He didn’t tell us anything. Even though you were with him at the time, he didn’t tell you anything.

1:38:38 Speaker 2 He didn’t hear.

1:38:39 Speaker 4 No, but even though you were with him, that was a private conversation; he didn’t tell you anything.

1:38:43 Speaker 2 Look, there are things you can’t tell.

1:38:45 Speaker 4 Of course.

1:38:45 Speaker 2 If the Rebbe wants to know things, uh—

1:38:48 Speaker 4 Of course.

1:38:49 Speaker 2 I’ll give you another little picture. Yehuda would drive the Rebbe. He’d turn onto Kingston and then farther left into San Pablo. But he’d keep going straight, pull into the little space by the bank, where there was a mailbox. The Rebbe would get out—

1:39:12 Speaker 4 Meaning, instead of driving along Kingston and turning into San Pablo, the Rebbe would continue, as it were, toward—

1:39:16 Speaker 2 He’d get out by the bank, where there was a mailbox. The Rebbe would get out and drop the letter in the mailbox. He could have given it to Yehuda.

1:39:24 Speaker 4 There were letters he didn’t give him, and you didn’t even mention them to him.

1:39:29 Speaker 2 That was something.

1:39:31 Speaker 4 That was during your year there, in the winter.

1:39:32 Speaker 2 Yes, in the winter. We’d be there on the steps to see the Rebbe come out.

1:39:39 Speaker 4 What happened afterward, in the yechidus he went into later?

1:39:41 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:39:42 Speaker 4 What happened in your father’s yechidus afterward?

1:39:44 Speaker 2 He didn’t tell us. He didn’t tell us.

1:39:45 Speaker 4 Was your mother there too?

1:39:45 Speaker 2 Huh? No.

1:39:46 Speaker 4 Um, no.

1:39:47 Speaker 2 Mother was there after the break.

1:39:51 Speaker 4 Oh, even before your father.

1:39:52 Speaker 2 Yes. Her brother was Levi Levin in Paris, and he had been a shliach in Morocco. Their story wasn’t... Later the Moroccans expelled him. During the Sinai War, they expelled all the—all the Israelis. The Rebbe told him to stay in Paris.

1:40:15 Speaker 5 Paris.

1:40:15 Speaker 2 The school he opened there for [unclear] would continue in Paris. But then many immigrants arrived from Morocco, and they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. So he sent her a ticket to Paris from there. He said, “You’ll continue from here onward.” When she was at yechidus with the Rebbe, I was of draft age. Uh, in Russia, the prizyv, the prizyv.

1:40:47 Speaker 5 Prizyv means the draft.

1:40:48 Speaker 2 Ah, the draft, prizyv. Her brother, Rabbi Yankel, fasted because of the prizyv. He was short; he passed away.

1:40:58 Speaker 5 In Russia.

1:40:59 Speaker 2 In 5729. Because the Rebbe gave her a very remarkable answer: “For the older one, it applies; for the younger one, it doesn’t apply.”

1:41:11 Speaker 5 For the older one, it applies—

1:41:12 Speaker 2 For the older one, it applies—

1:41:14 Speaker 5 The older one.

1:41:14 Speaker 2 For the younger one, it doesn’t apply. Gershon held on to that for [unclear], and I went through more and more—the Lebanon War, and more and more and more. So what am I doing here now? There was something interesting—

1:41:31 Speaker 5 In yechidus, the Rebbe said that it didn’t apply to the younger one, but it did apply to the older one.

1:41:36 Speaker 2 There was something interesting. I was in Tyre, where there was a building that collapsed forty-two years ago.

1:41:41 Speaker 5 The embassy.

1:41:42 Speaker 2 Huh? No.

1:41:43 Speaker 5 The United States Embassy.

1:41:44 Speaker 2 Not an embassy. It was the main headquarters—

1:41:47 Speaker 5 Ah, yes, the headquarters.

1:41:48 Speaker 2 Three stories.

1:41:49 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:41:50 Speaker 2 We were there two hours before it collapsed. There was a medical unit there. No, it was—the Rebbetzin told the attendants that Solokovitz had been there. To this day, I don’t know how she knew.

1:42:04 Speaker 5 That’s what Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka told the attendants: “I heard Solokovitz was there.”

1:42:11 Speaker 2 I hadn’t written; I didn’t know anything.

1:42:14 Speaker 5 Who told you that? Chaim Bor?

1:42:16 Speaker 2 I know. Uh, why—who, who—

1:42:18 Speaker 5 No. Who told you that, Chaim Bor?

1:42:20 Speaker 2 The attendants. Chani. Chani, uh, sometimes he would let things slip.

1:42:30 Speaker 5 And then your mother—what else happened in that yechidus? What—

1:42:32 Speaker 2 What?

1:42:32 Speaker 5 What else happened in your mother’s yechidus that year?

1:42:34 Speaker 2 It was about her work; she knew about that, and that was it. It was, “For the older one, it applies; for the younger one, it doesn’t apply.” I knew there was no point in trying any tricks; nothing would help. That was it.

1:42:50 Speaker 5 Your father received attention at a farbrengen, during—during Tishrei 5727, at the farbrengen, when—

1:42:55 Speaker 2 He was sitting there; they let him sit [unclear]. During the farbrengen, I was standing among the bochurim on the right, and he pointed out to the Rebbe that I was there.

1:43:08 Speaker 5 He pointed me out to the Rebbe.

1:43:09 Speaker 2 My heart started...

1:43:12 Speaker 5 Pounding.

1:43:13 Speaker 2 The Rebbe turned to look at me. I mean, what was that like! Well, yes.

1:43:22 Speaker 5 And then—

1:43:23 Speaker 2 Someone understood that when the Rebbe addressed the householders, he turned to my father, who was sitting on the Polish side. Father said—Father said that he wasn’t from Poland; he was only supposed to have Polish papers. He didn’t even have those.

1:43:39 Speaker 5 [Unclear].

1:43:40 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:43:41 Speaker 5 [Unclear], when the Rebbe addressed the householders from the different countries.

1:43:43 Speaker 2 Not by mistake. He traveled alone.

1:43:46 Speaker 5 Just a second before that. So afterward, in Cheshvan 5727, when did you return to Eretz Yisroel?

1:43:52 Speaker 2 In Cheshvan. We had a yechidus; the Rebbe gave him fifty pounds.

1:43:56 Speaker 5 Wait, I don’t want to skip over that. Just a second. So you were there for Tishrei 5727.

1:44:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:44:01 Speaker 5 In Tishrei 5727 there had already been—

1:44:02 Speaker 2 There was a sicha, there was a sicha, and the Rebbe addressed us about the trip.

1:44:05 Speaker 5 What happened?

1:44:07 Speaker 2 Brochos, brochos, brochos, brochos. In the yechidus too, there were brochos and brochos, and the Rebbe gave him fifty pounds toward the trip.

1:44:16 Speaker 5 Fifty pounds for each of you toward the trip. And did you return through Europe?

1:44:21 Speaker 2 No, we flew straight back on a flight—

1:44:23 Speaker 5 Ah, on the flight they gave you with the advance ticket—the advance—the advance flight ticket.

1:44:28 Speaker 2 The advance flight ticket, the advance [unclear]—

1:44:30 Speaker 5 And then what? You returned—you returned to the yeshiva?

1:44:34 Speaker 2 We came back here, to Kfar Chabad. After that, the shlichus began. Some went on shlichus to Kiryat Gat, and we went to Tirat Tzvi. That was during the Six-Day War. We were home for Pesach, but we went back a day before the war. There was a train. We went back to Tirat Shalom. Inside Tirat Shalom there was a Civil Defense headquarters.

1:45:05 Speaker 5 What’s called the Home Front Command today.

1:45:08 Speaker 2 I wasn’t there, but [unclear] said, “Let’s go over to Grandfather and see what’s happening there.”

1:45:14 Speaker 5 Rabbi Nachum Zevin told you to go to Yona Street.

1:45:16 Speaker 2 Yes, Grandfather was in Tirat Shalom then.

1:45:18 Speaker 5 To go to Yona Street and see how Grandfather was doing.

1:45:20 Speaker 2 When we got to Grandfather’s house, nothing seemed to concern him. He was sitting and learning in the hallway. Yes, in the hallway. He had a brother who had recently arrived from Russia. He said, “They’re making a war, they’re making a war.”

1:45:34 Speaker 5 That was the war room.

1:45:35 Speaker 2 No, so what did we do? We put up sandbags—

1:45:37 Speaker 5 You call that a war?

1:45:38 Speaker 2 Sandbags; we got everything arranged. We wanted to go back, and boom! They wouldn’t let us go back. Air-raid sirens. We stayed there overnight.

1:45:48 Speaker 5 At Grandfather’s.

1:45:49 Speaker 2 Zevin sat and learned. Nothing else concerned him. Then, the next day, they had already liberated the Kosel. So the secretary of the encyclopedia, the well-known—

1:46:02 Speaker 5 Yehoshua Buksboim?

1:46:03 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:46:04 Speaker 5 Yehoshua Buksboim.

1:46:05 Speaker 2 Our secretary.

1:46:07 Speaker 5 Of Machon Yerushalayim.

1:46:09 Speaker 2 They were arranging a trip to the Kosel with a command car. “If everyone can go, only then will I go.”

1:46:18 Speaker 5 That’s what he said: “If I can go—I’ll go when everyone can—”

1:46:20 Speaker 2 He didn’t go.

1:46:21 Speaker 5 “I’ll go when everyone can go.”

1:46:23 Speaker 2 He didn’t go. It was for all the important people.

1:46:34 Speaker 5 When did you go back to the Rebbe afterward?

1:46:36 Speaker 2 What?

1:46:37 Speaker 5 When did you next get to the Rebbe?

1:46:38 Speaker 2 That was already in 5728.

1:46:40 Speaker 5 As a bochur, or were you already married?

1:46:41 Speaker 2 No, it was already after the wedding, in our first year.

1:46:44 Speaker 5 Just a second—you married the daughter of Rabbi Zechariah Klipschitz, right?

1:46:46 Speaker 2 What?

1:46:48 Speaker 5 You married...?

1:46:50 Speaker 2 My wife.

1:46:50 Speaker 5 Yes. Your father-in-law is Rabbi Zechariah Klipschitz, right?

1:46:53 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

1:46:53 Speaker 5 A son-in-law of Rabbi Zalman Avelin, the shochet of Hadera.

1:46:59 Speaker 2 How do you know he was the shochet of Hadera?

1:47:00 Speaker 5 Go on, tell us.

1:47:01 Speaker 2 I don’t know.

1:47:02 Speaker 5 I don’t know anything.

1:47:05 Speaker 2 When the upheaval started there, he fled Jerusalem. Where did he flee to? Hadera. “We have to provide food for the children.” There was no shochet there then. Hadera was a local council at the time, not a city.

1:47:19 Speaker 6 Before I jump in.

1:47:19 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:47:20 Speaker 6 Maybe you could tell us how he came to Kfar Chabad.

1:47:22 Speaker 2 What?

1:47:22 Speaker 6 Maybe you could tell us how he came to Kfar Chabad.

1:47:23 Speaker 5 How did he get there? Where did he come from? What was his background?

1:47:25 Speaker 2 Uh, he...

1:47:28 Speaker 6 That’s interesting too.

1:47:28 Speaker 2 He was known as the ilui of Siedlce; his town was called Siedlce.

1:47:31 Speaker 5 Siedlce is in Poland.

1:47:33 Speaker 2 It’s in Poland.

1:47:33 Speaker 5 Later he came to Biała, to the Biała yeshiva. He studied in Biała afterward, and also in Ungvar, Hungary.

1:47:39 Speaker 2 Rabbi Kook, who had established his yeshiva, Merkaz Harav, searched all over the world—

1:47:43 Speaker 5 For the ilui.

1:47:45 Speaker 2 And he had an agreement with the British Mandate authorities that they would give him certificates.

1:47:51 Speaker 5 Entry permits, immigration permits.

1:47:52 Speaker 2 He sent him a certificate, and he arrived in Jaffa with a suitcase. He had a copy of Shem Mishmuel. Shem Mishmuel. I mean, he had that book with him, because his father was a chossid.

1:48:09 Speaker 5 Sochatchov.

1:48:09 Speaker 2 Radomsk.

1:48:10 Speaker 5 Radomsk.

1:48:10 Speaker 2 Radomsk.

1:48:11 Speaker 5 Shem Mishmuel.

1:48:13 Speaker 2 He got off the ship and met a chossid. “Young man, young man, where are you going?” “To learn, to learn.” So he asked, “To Rav Kook?” He was startled. “No. How did you know?” He told him, “You’re going to Jerusalem. You’ll go to Toras Emes.” He felt a little uncomfortable. No, so he went to Rav Kook and said, “Thank you very much; everything is very good, very nice.” “A person should study Torah in the place his heart desires.” You have to learn where your heart desires. “What should I do?” “Go where your heart desires.” That’s what Rav Kook told him. Yes, he didn’t hold it against him. That was in Toras Emes. Later he met some warmhearted Lubavitch chassidim, and they pulled him into Toras Emes. He studied there. Toras Emes wasn’t in Meah Shearim then. That was before it moved to Meah Shearim. Huh? Before it reached Meah Shearim. It was somewhere else before that; I’ve forgotten the street’s name. Um, I don’t remember. It wasn’t in Toras... it was in some out-of-the-way place. And Rabbi Zalman got to know him as an illui, a prodigy, and took him to Chabad. But then they started hearing about disturbances, so he fled to Hadera. I don’t know exactly why he chose Hadera; to this day I don’t know. He was in touch with Shmotkin, Yehuda Shmotkin. Yehuda didn’t yet have the shop, the famous shop in Tel Aviv. It was at 11 [unclear] Alley. He told him, “Itche, come. We’ll go work in Petach Tikvah.” They would work together in Petach Tikvah. What? In Petach Tikvah. There was a factory there making roof tiles and blocks. He said, “Where will we stay?” “At Avraham Frish’s.” In Avraham Frish’s house, at 16 Bar Kochba Street. And that’s what happened. In the summer they slept in his yard. So Zalman told him, “You know...”

1:50:29 Speaker 2 He told him that this prodigy of his was making roof tiles and blocks. He was alarmed. He simply brought him [unclear], so he wouldn’t have to [unclear]. That’s what he said. He traveled from Jerusalem to him and said, “Itche, what’s going to happen?” That was it. He went to Hadera and persuaded the local council to employ him as a shochet. So he became a shochet, and wound up doing everything, everything, everything. And the Frierdiker Rebbe appointed him a shliach there, in Hadera. My brother-in-law Tzvi—Sholom [unclear]—Tzvi Menashe. Huh? Tzvi Menashe. He became [unclear] in Hadera. So in Hadera they wanted to go to the moon. They did, but they went to the moon much later. Even that they couldn’t have done. Why? The colonies had already begun. Why? There was a woman on the education committee. Who was she? Schneersohn. You know, if you look at that old section, there are rows there—yes, several rows. Rows of Schneersohns. Mm-hmm. He approached her and told her he wanted to establish a cheder, to have one here. “When hair grows on the palm of my hand, there’ll be a cheder in Hadera.” That was her answer. He went home in tears, sat down, and wrote the Frierdiker Rebbe a letter. A reply came back almost immediately. The Rebbe wrote to him in Yiddish—there’s a letter in Yiddish: “When you meet Sarah, give Sarah my warm regards.” As soon as he received the letter, he went outside, and there she was in the street. He approached her and said, “Someone sends you very warm regards.” “Who?” “Your cousin.” She burst into tears. Now he says, “A cheder!” [unclear].

1:52:35 Speaker 7 He was there for many years. Right, he stayed there for many years.

1:52:38 Speaker 2 [unclear].

1:52:41 Speaker 7 So, in Tishrei 5728. When did you receive a response from the Rebbe? You wrote to the Rebbe before the wedding—did you receive one?

1:52:46 Speaker 2 Yes, certainly.

1:52:48 Speaker 7 And then you traveled to the Rebbe. When?

1:52:49 Speaker 2 It was in my first year. The Rebbe had set conditions: not to take a gemach loan. I also needed permission from the kollel, permission from my wife—all those things. I had a problem with all three. I went to Rabbi Baruch Berlin and asked him, “What should I do?” He told me, “Well, a good wife—what are you asking? Yocheved is a good wife. Why ask questions?”

1:53:18 Speaker 7 She’s certainly a good wife. So why are you asking questions?

1:53:20 Speaker 2 “And you’ll presumably get permission. What’s the question?”

1:53:24 Speaker 7 You’ll surely get permission, no question.

1:53:26 Speaker 2 “And as for the gemach loan...”

1:53:28 Speaker 7 That’s how it was.

1:53:29 Speaker 2 He had a gemach. It’s not that I didn’t take the gemach loan. I flew on a charter from here to England, and from England on the English charter.

1:53:43 Speaker 7 Tishrei 5728.

1:53:44 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:53:45 Speaker 7 In Tishrei 5728.

1:53:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:53:47 Speaker 7 When did you arrive?

1:53:48 Speaker 2 We arrived [unclear] on a charter flight. On the way back we traveled as far as Europe, and from Europe we took a charter back. I arranged it with Eddie Elboim. “What can you do for me? Because afterward I want to make a stop in Paris too.”

1:54:13 Speaker 7 To visit your uncle.

1:54:16 Speaker 2 No problem. He was [unclear].

1:54:18 Speaker 7 Menachem Elboim.

1:54:19 Speaker 2 Yes, he was a friend of my father’s. It wasn’t just that. There’s a story about him too: he brought the first esrog seedlings from Italy. He’s the one who brought them.

1:54:30 Speaker 7 Oh, yes.

1:54:31 Speaker 2 No, that wasn’t the only reason. The main reason I went was that I told my cousin Yosef, “I want to go to Brunoy.” We took the tram and went. I arrived there. When the Rebbe said, “This is Lubavitch,” it wasn’t just a phrase; it was all there. I arrived and saw [unclear] finishing davening, and his son—

1:55:02 Speaker 7 Ari Yosef.

1:55:03 Speaker 2 Ari Yosef went over to him. I stood to the side. If I hadn’t heard it, I wouldn’t have believed it. [unclear] a potato.

1:55:15 Speaker 7 A potato with its skin on, like that.

1:55:18 Speaker 2 And he went and opened it, and wanted [unclear] too—the whole Brunoy experience. I looked at the entire courtyard, everything, all the descriptions. It was really, really exactly like that.

1:55:36 Speaker 7 Kfar Chabad was considered a luxury compared to—

1:55:38 Speaker 2 What?

1:55:38 Speaker 7 Kfar Chabad was considered a luxury compared to Brunoy.

1:55:41 Speaker 2 Kfar Chabad at the time was...

1:55:43 Speaker 7 A gap, a tremendous gap.

1:55:44 Speaker 2 What a place it was.

1:55:48 Speaker 7 Did you go in for yechidus then? Did you go in for yechidus in 5728?

1:55:52 Speaker 2 At the beginning and at the end. Everyone did, in the first decade.

1:55:54 Speaker 7 Was it different from a yechidus outside?

1:55:57 Speaker 2 Far from the outside, far from the outside.

1:55:59 Speaker 7 Even as a married young man.

1:56:00 Speaker 2 Far from the outside.

1:56:01 Speaker 7 No, he didn’t answer something—what can you do? No.

1:56:03 Speaker 2 Far from it. You’d go outside, and your heart would be pounding—boom, boom.

1:56:09 Speaker 7 Were there other married men who came then?

1:56:10 Speaker 2 What?

1:56:11 Speaker 7 Were there other married young men who came from Israel?

1:56:13 Speaker 2 A few, a few. There weren’t many. And we received a sharp letter from [unclear] saying that we were cutting off the branch we were sitting on.

1:56:20 Speaker 7 Above all.

1:56:21 Speaker 2 A mashpia sat with us who had traveled with us too. Oy, what a [unclear]. That letter must be somewhere now; I don’t know where it is.

1:56:31 Speaker 7 Later, over the years, did you work things out with [unclear]?

1:56:33 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:56:33 Speaker 7 Later, over the years, did you work things out with [unclear]?

1:56:36 Speaker 2 There was nothing to work out. It was just a letter; when he arrived, there wasn’t even room.

1:56:46 Speaker 7 And then you continued living here in Kfar Chabad.

1:56:50 Speaker 2 In the kollel, and afterward renting a place, while working in the office. The office wasn’t here yet; it was still in Petach Tikvah. Later they brought it here. Stories.

1:57:03 Speaker 7 Was there a response from the Rebbe about your moving—was there a response from the Rebbe about moving the factory to Kfar Chabad?

1:57:08 Speaker 2 Pressure? No.

1:57:09 Speaker 7 A response.

1:57:11 Speaker 2 No, I mean an indirect response.

1:57:12 Speaker 7 What happened?

1:57:14 Speaker 2 If only there hadn’t been a response.

1:57:20 Speaker 7 When did you travel again after that?

1:57:22 Speaker 2 I used to travel whenever my turn came—after two years, a year, a year and a half. I would go for a year to [unclear]. I belonged to the Northern Command, to the Northern Command medical unit. Our battalion commander was—

1:57:51 Speaker 7 Tough.

1:57:52 Speaker 2 [Unclear]. Besides that, his job was to chair the committee that judged dog beauty contests. Somehow I figured they were already planning reserve duty for Elul, or around Tammuz. That was during the withdrawal from Lebanon. We were supposed to be—

1:58:19 Speaker 7 The first withdrawal.

1:58:21 Speaker 2 We were supposed to be in the rearguard units. I went to him. Reservists had to [unclear] too. I contacted the liaison office at Beit Lid; there was a liaison officer there. She told me, “You have a problem.” “What problem? It’s still half a year away—what’s the problem?” “You’re scheduled for reserve duty. There’s nothing to discuss. But perhaps I can arrange a meeting with the battalion commander for you.” “All right. When?” “Ten-thirty at night.” I arrived at Beit Lid. The battalion commander was sitting there with his clerk. “What do you want?” “I want permission to travel, properly and in order. I want to visit the museums in Holland.” “I won’t give you permission. Go.”

1:59:22 Speaker 7 Go.

1:59:24 Speaker 2 I’m talking to a wall. Nothing. Apparently he wanted me to get there after all. Three days before we went into Lebanon, there was a command-training course. They’d given me the rank of sergeant major as a gift. I was a senior medic, so you had to take this command course. We’re sitting there, sitting and sitting. It was in Yokneam. One part was up above and the other was down below. I see this guy running the whole time. Running and running. “What happened? Why are you running?” “What do you mean?” “I don’t know—tell me.” “I have tickets for a safari tour in South Africa.” I said, “Dream on.” He said, “I’m not dreaming. I’m going to get them.” I said, “How can you be sure?” “I work at Bank Leumi, and my CEO used to head the fund. He gave me these numbers.” I said, “Give them to me.” He did. I went over there. “A safari, you say?” “Yes.” “Why wouldn’t I want that?” And there were those numbers. I gave him a slap. He dragged me along until Erev Rosh Hashanah. But I was wearing a yarmulke when I was with the Rebbe, and then... with distinction on 3 Tishrei... I said, “I’m going to be bold. If the army won’t let me get to you, perhaps enough is enough.” I got up and [unclear].

2:01:07 Speaker 8 The Rebbe didn’t respond.

2:01:09 Speaker 2 I’m not sure.

2:01:13 Speaker 8 All right, you say you know you’re in the army because the Rebbe told your mother so in yechidus. Now you want your discharge. The real discharge.

2:01:21 Speaker 2 The second time. The third time I didn’t ask—I begged.

2:01:30 Speaker 8 So the Rebbe answers you.

2:01:33 Speaker 2 I went back, and back again. What do you do now? My company commander was an orthopedist. Hakadosh Boruch Hu helped me: my back seized up, and not just a little. I had his phone number; he had a clinic. “When you get out, go straight there and rest.” “You’re a doctor too?” He said, “Yes, yes.” “Can I come see you?” “Of course.” I told him, “I’m looking to you.” For an hour he kept saying, “What am I...?” “Don’t frighten me.” I said, “I won’t frighten you, but I want you to come for every test. I want to make sure it isn’t what I think it is.” At the time, he was the senior physician running Sheba’s outpatient department.

2:02:24 Speaker 8 Tel Hashomer.

2:02:24 Speaker 2 That was where they’d brought all the latest equipment—MRI, [unclear]. He called me in. It took a month. They brought all the test results. He said, “Now come to my office and we’ll see what to do.” He looks and looks, then says, “It’s what I suspected. You don’t have [unclear]. Are you still in the battalion?” I said, “Who’s going to throw me out of the battalion?” “What? That can’t be!” He ran outside. “Bring me the book of codes.” “I recommend this, this, this...” It came to forty. I was at ninety-seven. I said, “What do I do with this?” “You go to the Chabad House, give it to Rabbi [unclear], and he’ll mark you down for medical work. I’d like to see anyone say otherwise.” I said, “Who are you? What are you? Who am I?” “Do you know who I am today? If I write this, nobody can do otherwise. I’m finished with it.”

2:03:19 Speaker 8 When the Rebbe answers you that way, it releases you. The Rebbe put you in the army, and the Rebbe released you from the army.

2:03:25 Speaker 2 I was all right for someone who wasn’t.

2:03:29 Speaker 8 When was the last time you were with the Rebbe, back then? I mean before Gimmel Tammuz.

2:03:34 Speaker 2 I was there on Gimmel Tammuz.

2:03:36 Speaker 8 Before that.

2:03:38 Speaker 2 That was important. Wow. Wow. Yes, it was that time I traveled from the army.

2:03:51 Speaker 8 Well, with Hashem’s help, soon the Rebbe will return, “in the light of the king’s countenance is life.”

2:03:56 Speaker 2 Then I saw something else.

2:03:59 Speaker 9 Do you want to tell him the story about the yarmulke and the hat?

2:04:04 Speaker 2 That’s already... The hat? What? Oh, those are two different stories.

2:04:11 Speaker 8 Tell it, tell it.

2:04:12 Speaker 9 He lived with them. He did mivtzoim.

2:04:15 Speaker 8 Tell us, tell us. It will strengthen the Jews listening. Tell it.

2:04:19 Speaker 2 Huh?

2:04:20 Speaker 8 It will strengthen the Jews listening, awaken them, refresh them.

2:04:24 Speaker 2 For quite a few years I was at the Chabad House in Terminal One. Things happened there... It’s a shame the director didn’t let us record them. There were some remarkable things. I remember one simple incident. I was there Tuesday nights and Friday mornings. At night it wasn’t [unclear]; people just came in for a drink, and there was a midnight flight then. [Unclear] was never late. So all the religious Jews would come over to talk and have a drink. They had an hour, an hour and a half, and they’d come over to talk and pass the time. There was a young couple with two or three small children who needed diapers and nursing. We had a room there, so we sent them in.

2:05:23 Speaker 8 You mean back when people still flew out of Terminal One.

2:05:25 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, there was a room there—

2:05:26 Speaker 8 The old terminal.

2:05:27 Speaker 2 The old one, the old one. After all the drinking and everything, everything in the terminal... all because of the child. I don’t remember. [Unclear]. He says, “I don’t have anything, anything.”

2:05:45 Speaker 8 “I don’t have money to give [unclear]. I want to give you something.”

2:05:48 Speaker 2 What did he tell me? He told me something amazing. He was the son of [unclear], the av beis din, [unclear] Yitzchak. There’s—

2:05:58 Speaker 8 Avremi Tzachor. Avremi Tzachok.

2:05:59 Speaker 2 Yes, Avremi Tzachok.

2:06:01 Speaker 8 The son of the one who—

2:06:02 Speaker 2 He was the son. This was forty years ago. So he says to me, “When I was young, I was at dollars...” [Unclear]. “I went over to my father and asked him...”

2:06:29 Speaker 8 “How could the Rebbe receive women who supposedly represented things like that?”

2:06:32 Speaker 2 So he said, “Listen to what his father told him. Listen carefully: ‘One who questions his rebbe...’ The Rebbe is a rebbe; there is no question about it.” Then he told me something even stronger.

2:06:56 Speaker 8 “The fact that you think you understand what the Rebbe does—do you even have the means—”

2:06:59 Speaker 2 “Do you have the means to understand what the Rebbe does?” And that was the end of it.

2:07:05 Speaker 8 In other words, his father treated the Rebbe as his rebbe: someone he must not question.

2:07:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

2:07:08 Speaker 8 As though the Rebbe was his rebbe. His father had, after all, been in yechidus in [unclear]. His father had been in yechidus in [unclear].

2:07:19 Speaker 2 There was a Jew who traveled to Eretz Yisroel. He said that in Jerusalem, his rebbe [unclear].

2:07:28 Speaker 8 Dangerous talk.

2:07:30 Speaker 2 I was... I went back to Terminal One and caught Shimon Hatzaddik. I told him about it.

2:07:37 Speaker 8 Shimon Friedman—Shimon Hatzaddik.

2:07:40 Speaker 2 He said to me, “You should know what happened. There was an uproar in Jerusalem. And then he said, ‘[unclear].’ One day I told him, ‘Be careful. Don’t talk, don’t talk.’ A few hours later he had a heart attack. We immediately sent a fax to the Rebbe.”

2:08:03 Speaker 8 That’s how Reb Shimon tells it.

2:08:04 Speaker 2 Shimon: “I sent a fax to the Rebbe asking for a bracha.” He—

2:08:09 Speaker 8 Survived.

2:08:16 Speaker 2 That’s one story. Now, there was another older Jew there—oh, I’ve forgotten his name. He was America’s secretary of state... [unclear].

2:08:29 Speaker 8 Kissinger.

2:08:29 Speaker 2 Huh? No, no, not a non-Jew. There was a delay that morning too. I went into the shul and he said to me, “Rabbi Becker, a glass of coffee—but pour it for me like Havdalah.”

2:08:47 Speaker 8 “Give me a cup of coffee and fill it to the brim, like Havdalah.”

2:08:50 Speaker 2 Fine, like Havdalah. He takes the cup—he was in his eighties—and goes back to his place. There’s a crowd there, some forty or fifty people. He holds the cup like this. Not a drop spills. He says, “Listen, my friends.”

2:09:07 Speaker 8 “Listen, Jews.”

2:09:08 Speaker 2 This was the [unclear] of—

2:09:11 Speaker 8 5749.

2:09:14 Speaker 2 ’49. He tells them, “Listen, my friends. I was a rabbi on the East Side. I had a shul with four hundred members.”

2:09:28 Speaker 8 Four hundred members—a shul on Manhattan’s East Side.

2:09:32 Speaker 2 East Side.

2:09:33 Speaker 8 That’s Manhattan. The East Side, the eastern side of Manhattan.

2:09:36 Speaker 2 “And there was a mikveh there, which Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and another rabbi had inspected. The shul began to dwindle and dwindle and dwindle. I was left with two or three elderly people, and I would [unclear]. But the mikveh had a woman who kept it going, even when she had to hold on to it—”

2:10:03 Speaker 8 She gripped it.

2:10:05 Speaker 2 “With her teeth. As long as the mikveh existed, they couldn’t sell the shul either. One day she came over to me in the middle of a class. ‘Rabbi Becker, something terrible has happened. There’s a big, strong lock on the door. We can’t open the mikveh.’”

2:10:26 Speaker 8 They locked the mikveh.

2:10:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

2:10:27 Speaker 8 Because they wanted to sell the...

2:10:29 Speaker 2 “So she tells me, ‘Don’t worry, I have an ax in the trunk.’ I went, broke the lock and opened the mikveh. The next day she came again. ‘What is it today?’ Listen: what gave her the strength to keep the mikveh going was that every night, at eleven or twelve, the Rebbe would call her. He would ask how things were going and give her a bracha for the next day.”

2:11:00 Speaker 8 I said, “I didn’t understand—who was the one who would—”

2:11:02 Speaker 2 The Rebbe would call her, the woman, to ask how things were going—

2:11:07 Speaker 8 And give her brachos.

2:11:08 Speaker 2 “And a bracha for the next day, again. Now, when you broke the lock, I told the Rebbe about it. So the Rebbe said, ‘May the hands that did it be blessed.’ You see? These are the Rebbe’s hands.”

2:11:25 Speaker 8 That don’t shake.

2:11:26 Speaker 2 Not a drop—not a drop spilled. That was what he’d asked for.

2:11:28 Speaker 8 His hand didn’t shake, and not a drop spilled.

2:11:29 Speaker 2 That was what he’d asked for: “Fill it for me like Havdalah.” [Unclear].

2:11:38 Speaker 8 Understand? “I’m keeping the mikveh going, even though it isn’t connected to—”

2:11:40 Speaker 2 He ran that mikveh.

2:11:42 Speaker 8 And then he talks about that same person who spoke against the Rambam. Wow.

2:11:49 Speaker 2 That’s one story.

2:11:50 Speaker 8 These are things the Rebbe does that we don’t know about. Only sometimes do we get to see a little.

2:11:54 Speaker 2 You see, the Rebbe called night after night to strengthen her so she wouldn’t abandon the mikveh.

2:12:00 Speaker 8 In the years when the Jewish community there was dwindling.

2:12:03 Speaker 2 Rabbi Feinstein.

2:12:05 Speaker 8 And people weren’t coming.

2:12:06 Speaker 2 He was at the yeshivah here; something softened with—

2:12:09 Speaker 8 Kamenetsky.

2:12:11 Speaker 2 Huh?

2:12:11 Speaker 8 Silver.

2:12:12 Speaker 2 Silver, yes.

2:12:13 Speaker 8 Rabbi Silver, Rabbi Eliezer Silver.

2:12:15 Speaker 2 Together they built the mikveh. [unclear] came home and looked at my Shas. [unclear] give the hundred dollars.

2:12:25 Speaker 8 At home, [unclear].

2:12:28 Speaker 2 And who was right? Moti.

2:12:30 Speaker 8 Ah, Moti.

2:12:32 Speaker 2 Nazy’s father. [unclear] He sent it to him. There was another incident there once. A Jew arrived, also late. He said—I asked him, “Have you ever been to the Rebbe?” He said, “Of course.” I said to him—

2:12:52 Speaker 8 Tell the story.

2:12:53 Speaker 2 What happened?

2:12:54 Speaker 8 Give me something to work with.

2:12:56 Speaker 2 He tells me this: “I have a friend in Lubavitch. I think his name was Menashe, Menashe Perman. He’s my contact in Lubavitch. He lectures at YU in Jewish thought—that’s what it’s called in English, Jewish thought—”

2:13:19 Speaker 8 Jewish philosophy.

2:13:20 Speaker 2 Jewish philosophy.

2:13:22 Speaker 8 At Yeshiva University.

2:13:23 Speaker 2 “I had problems. A friend told me, ‘The Lubavitcher Rebbe is the one for this. Only the Rebbe can solve your problems.’ What were they? First, I didn’t know the Rebbe’s position on secular studies. And I had another problem: one student in particular kept needling me with questions about faith. I didn’t know what to do with him. I decided to go ask the Rebbe. They arranged it—how do you arrange it? His name is Zohar, the Zohar family. I went into yechidus and wrote down the problems. The Rebbe said to me: ‘As for the student who needles you with questions about faith, you must be careful that he not ask those questions in public. Sometimes a question stays with people more strongly than the answer.’”

2:14:28 Speaker 8 Regarding what you say about him needling you with questions, you have to be careful that he doesn’t ask them in public, because sometimes the questions remain stronger than the answers.

2:14:35 Speaker 2 Than the answer. “As for what you ask me about secular studies—”

2:14:41 Speaker 8 What you ask me about secular studies.

2:14:44 Speaker 2 “Where did people once look for a son-in-law?”

2:14:48 Speaker 8 Where did people look for a son-in-law in the past?

2:14:50 Speaker 2 “A Torah scholar, Reb Yisroel. Where do they look today? It’s a disaster for the Jewish people.”

2:14:58 Speaker 8 In other words, in the past they looked for a Torah scholar, someone learned. Today they supposedly look for him at a university. It’s a disaster for the Jewish people.

2:15:06 Speaker 2 The Rebbe continued: “And don’t ask why I have three or four doctorates.”

2:15:13 Speaker 8 Don’t ask why I have—

2:15:15 Speaker 2 Why three or four? The last one was when the Rebbe had already left; he received the—

2:15:20 Speaker 8 In other words, why I myself have three doctoral degrees.

2:15:23 Speaker 2 Don’t ask me why I have three or four doctorates.

2:15:26 Speaker 8 Three or four doctoral degrees.

2:15:28 Speaker 2 What does “three or four” mean? It’s either three or four. The last one was already during the war, and they didn’t give the approval. Then, two or three months later—

2:15:42 Speaker 8 What’s that Jew’s name?

2:15:44 Speaker 2 Zohar.

2:15:45 Speaker 8 The one who was at YU, at Yeshiva University.

2:15:48 Speaker 2 Huh?

2:15:48 Speaker 8 He was a lecturer in Jewish philosophy.

2:15:51 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

2:15:51 Speaker 8 An American, an American Jew.

2:15:52 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, American. He tells me, “I have a friend. I don’t remember his name—no, his name was Menashe Perman. He lived on President Street, almost opposite the Rebbe. He’d been a friend of mine for a long time, and he also lectured on something. He would always bring me all the new books, things from the Rebbe. He brought me Likkutei Sichos, and I wasn’t in the frame of mind for it. My wife was ill and needed tests. I told him, ‘Don’t bother me. Please put this on the kitchen table.’”

2:16:31 Speaker 10 Don’t disturb me; put that book on the kitchen table.

2:16:35 Speaker 2 “Well,” he says, “she had all the tests, but there was still no answer, and we were planning to travel to Israel for the wedding of a very close relative. But I had no answer from the doctors. I said, ‘I’ll open the book.’” He said to me, “Where do you open a book?” I told him, “I don’t come from a chassidishe home.” “I opened it in the middle. There was a letter from the Rebbe to someone who had asked about a medical matter. He wrote not to follow the doctors’ advice, but to do such and such. That’s what I did. I’m sitting here, and boruch Hashem, we’re back and everything is fine.”

2:17:14 Speaker 10 In other words, the book he got from his friend—

2:17:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

2:17:18 Speaker 10 Likkutei Sichos, which he’d given him to study—

2:17:20 Speaker 2 There was, there was—

2:17:21 Speaker 10 There was a letter.

2:17:21 Speaker 2 There were many letters there on medical matters.

2:17:23 Speaker 10 In the additions.

2:17:24 Speaker 2 In the additions.

2:17:24 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

2:17:28 Speaker 2 That’s about my trip to Israel.

2:17:32 Speaker 10 That same Zohar—that’s the story—

2:17:33 Speaker 2 Huh?

2:17:33 Speaker 10 That same Zohar. He’s the one who relates that he was saved thanks to the letter from...

2:17:37 Speaker 2 No, his wife, his wife.

2:17:38 Speaker 10 His wife.

2:17:40 Speaker 2 There was a couple there. He was clean-shaven, with his tzitzis out. A thoroughly American Orthodox Jew. They’d been married since the fifties, or longer. She had a full head covering. They even asked, “Do you have instant coffee? Do you have—”

2:18:04 Speaker 10 They had also asked the Rebbe.

2:18:08 Speaker 2 When? She spoke half Yiddish and half English. And she told me this: “We were a young couple. We had the problems young couples have. This was in the—who knows what year. I went here and there. I heard there was a new rabbi, a very smart man.”

2:18:31 Speaker 10 I heard there was a Rebbe, a new rabbi, who was very smart.

2:18:33 Speaker 2 Young, very smart.

2:18:34 Speaker 10 Young.

2:18:37 Speaker 2 “I said, fine. I made the phone call, but the line was busy. I had to wait two or three months.”

2:18:46 Speaker 10 He had to wait two—two or three months.

2:18:48 Speaker 2 “I said, ‘Okay, good, I’ll wait.’ We’ll wait. So, he tells me, we really did wait two months, and they gave us an appointment. We sat at home and prepared all the questions, every question, in one envelope. A second envelope held a donation, a gift.”

2:19:05 Speaker 10 A donation.

2:19:06 Speaker 2 “We said we’d bring the donation. Fine. We arrived. They told us ten o’clock, eleven o’clock; nothing. Then twelve. We went in to the Rebbe. He didn’t ask us to sit down. We sat down and gave the Rebbe the envelope with the questions. He said to me, ‘One by one, one by one’—question by question. The Rebbe resolved them for us. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing.”

2:19:35 Speaker 10 The Rebbe answered every question.

2:19:37 Speaker 2 “And we felt truly... I can’t describe it to you. Then we saw it was over. It had been twenty—twenty-five minutes, half an hour. I looked for the second envelope, with the donation. It wasn’t there. I said to my wife, ‘We won’t take up any more of the Rebbe’s time. Let’s go.’ We went out, and I said, ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll come back with the donation.’ The next morning we came back to bring the donation, the envelope with the money.” Then he says, “Now look at me.” The lady: “Look at me.” Like this... Well, I looked. He said to me, “We came with the envelope, to give it to him. How did we go up? It had been a yechidus on Sunday night. On Monday, the Rebbe arrived—what a wonder. We were standing by the second staircase, in the corner. Look at me, look at me.” That’s how he said it: look at me, look at me. He told me, “We were standing there. The Rebbe arrived and stopped beside us. ‘Good morning.’ Look at me. To my wife, the Rebbe did this with his hat.” In other words, the Rebbe didn’t just say good morning; he tipped his hat to the woman, so to speak. He lifted his hat like this. They both became emotional all over again. Even telling it to you made them emotional. Huh? As they told it, they both became emotional. He told me, “We’ve just come back from Israel, from visiting our children. We have sons-in-law in kollel. Grandsons. Do you understand? Granddaughters in Vizhnitz. You know what that is? It all came from the Rebbe tipping his hat to my wife. It changed my wife’s thinking a hundred and eighty degrees.” Apart from the answers the Rebbe gave them in yechidus, there was the way he treated them the next day. It was—I said to him, “Did you forget the donation? You forgot the donation?” He looked at me. “You’re right.” Something...

2:22:10 Speaker 2 Amazing. In other words, all of this was so that—no, he hadn’t forgotten the donation. It was all so he would bring it to him again the next day, receive that tip of the hat, and change the whole meaning of his life, as he puts it. He himself says that all his children are thanks to the Rebbe’s blessings. All his children are religious and Torah-observant. Religious, and everything that goes with it—what is that? A revolution. Thank you so much, Rabbi Sudkevich, for calling and renewing our connection with the Rebbe. And very soon, we’ll return and see him up close. There’s more—no, no, not just one more thing. More to come. Have you heard the story about the Vatican? No, I haven’t. What? The one who publicized it, a well-known [unclear], said that at his bar mitzvah he was with the Rebbe. The one who was with the Rebbe for his bar mitzvah, yes. That was during his [unclear]. Yes. He gave him stamps as a gift. The Rebbe would take the stamps off. Mm-hmm. Among the stamps were two Vatican stamps. Well, at the time he didn’t say anything. A few years later, the grandson of Nissim Miller—all that generation used to pass through him—told an amazing thing. On Motzaei Shabbos there was a video about the Seven Noahide Laws, of the... Mm-hmm. When the Rebbe began speaking about the Seven Noahide Laws, they sent the Rebbe a letter. The Vatican. The Vatican. “We recognize your greatness and leadership, but concern yourself only with the Jews.” That’s what they asked. And those were this man’s stamps. Did the Rebbe respond? Huh? Did the Rebbe respond, answer them? That’s as much as I heard. This is how the Rebbe acts and accomplishes what he wants to accomplish. And with Hashem’s help, we’ll prepare ourselves and see the Rebbe again soon. Thank you very much, Reb Feitel.