Lehisraanen Episode 24: Rabbi Menachem Wolpo (Netanya) | Part One

00:00 Speaker 1 Shalom aleichem, welcome to another episode of the “Lehisranein” podcast, where chassidim share memories and bring to life their experiences around the Rebbe. This time we’re with the shliach in Netanya, Rabbi Menachem Wolpo. Good evening, shalom aleichem.

00:16 Speaker 2 A good and blessed evening. May we hear good news.

00:18 Speaker 1 Amen. So I’ll start with the question we ask everyone: Fun vanet shtamt ir—where do you come from?

00:24 Speaker 2 Well, I grew up in a home where my father, a"h, was what you’d call a Litvish Jew. So much so that the family had a document tracing their lineage to the Vilna Gaon’s brother. They had come long ago, probably with the wave of his students who immigrated around the time the chassidim came too. There was also a wave of—

00:49 Speaker 1 Students of the Vilna Gaon.

00:50 Speaker 2 Students of the Vilna Gaon. But even as a child, I could tell there was something special here. Why? Because my mother, a"h, was the daughter of the chossid Reb Zelig Slonim of Jerusalem. He was a third-generation descendant of Menucha Rochel. Grandmother Menucha Rochel was a fifth-generation descendant of the Alter Rebbe. He had an extraordinary connection to the Rebbeim, to Chassidus and to the ways of Chassidus, and was deeply devoted. I could see the difference. When I visited my father’s family, they too were observant Jews, with yeshiva backgrounds and everything. But here there was something entirely different.

01:52 Speaker 1 Did you live nearby?

01:54 Speaker 2 Yes. When I was a child, we lived just a few houses away from them. We often went over in the evenings, and on Shabbos too. His whole way of conducting himself was very special. Let me tell you a little about him—

02:13 Speaker 1 Please do.

02:13 Speaker 2 His history—where he grew up, how he acquired that connection and those chassidic strengths. He was born in Chevron, where the family had settled. Grandmother Menucha Rochel came to Chevron with her husband, Rabbi Yaakov Koppel Slonim, who was the Mitteler Rebbe’s son-in-law, and they established their home there. That’s where their descendants were born. They had a son named Yehuda Leib, their eldest. Reb Yehuda Leib had a son named Zev Dov. They called him Velvel—Velvel is Zev Dov. In his time, Zev Dov was the gabbai of the Avraham Avinu synagogue in Chevron. It was Chabad’s synagogue, a small place. There was a larger synagogue next to it. It’s still there today.

03:07 Speaker 1 The Avraham Avinu synagogue.

03:09 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s still there. So he was the gabbai, and of course he was a chossid and all. He was still very young when he came to the synagogue one day and saw Arabs building on its roof. The Arabs were putting up a second story without asking, without permission—certainly without building permits from the authorities, but that isn’t the point. They were building something for themselves; I don’t know what. So he saw what was happening and said to them, “What are you doing here? How can you build here?” He was a young married man. One of the Arabs attacked him and kicked him hard in the stomach. He felt very unwell, but he thought he would be all right. He recovered a little and said, “I have to go to Jerusalem to tell the pasha what the Arabs are doing here—using violence and building by force.” So he and several young men from Chevron who were connected with the synagogue traveled to Jerusalem to see the pasha. While they were in Jerusalem, after they came out from the pasha, he began to feel very, very ill. They took him to a hospital, and he passed away there.

04:32 Speaker 8 From that blow, essentially.

04:33 Speaker 2 From that blow. It had caused serious damage, and Hashem should protect us—in those days, too, what did they know about medicine? So several small children were left orphaned. There was Reb Lipel Sonnenbaum[?], the grandfather’s brother, who had a bakery in Jerusalem and was the gabbai of the Chabad synagogue in Meah Shearim, among other things. There were sisters too; they were all young children. Their mother had to raise them, and someone suggested a match for her with the Rebbe of Dzikov.

05:14 Speaker 8 A rabbi from Dzikov.

05:15 Speaker 2 Yes. He had a grandson in Kretshnif.

05:18 Speaker 8 There are many grandchildren.

05:19 Speaker 2 He had a grandson who was known as the tzaddik of Kretshnif.

05:22 Speaker 8 Reb Chaim Mendel Steinberg.

05:24 Speaker 2 Yes, he was his grandson. And Rabbi Roth used to tell me that Rabbi [unclear], because she married—

05:30 Speaker 8 His name was Reb Mendel of Dzikov.

05:31 Speaker 2 Yes. So she married him. Then he decided to move to Tzfas.

05:40 Speaker 8 Tzfas and Tiberias.

05:43 Speaker 2 Yes, he went there. So they left Chevron, and the widow and her children went with him. He would tell how Reb Chamad[?], the rabbi of Chevron, walked with them as far as the edge of town.

06:01 Speaker 8 He saw them off.

06:01 Speaker 2 He saw them off. That was how strong the connection was.

06:04 Speaker 8 Between the families.

06:05 Speaker 2 Between the families, because these were families with deep ties to Chevron. She had really been like a mother to everyone in Chevron. All sorts of Rebbeim would come to receive her blessing. People would say that when they came to that area, they would go to the Ma’aras Hamachpelah and then visit the great bubbe. Even tzaddikim came to ask her for blessings. In any case, they went there, and he raised the children. They had peyos; he raised them like the sons of a great Rebbe. But their mother thought to herself: This child, Zelig, belongs to the family—

06:52 Speaker 8 Of the Rebbe.

06:52 Speaker 2 Of the Alter Rebbe and all that, and she hoped he would become involved in it. So what should she do with him? If he stayed there, that connection might not develop. She had the courage to act. She decided to take him—not just anywhere, but all the way to Lubavitch. She took him to Lubavitch to place him in the yeshiva there, so he could receive from the source to which he belonged. He was probably very happy at the prospect of a nice trip. They traveled and traveled—it was a long journey—and finally arrived. The Rebbetzin there welcomed them warmly into the family.

07:39 Speaker 8 Meaning it was just his mother and Reb Zelig who went?

07:41 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

07:41 Speaker 8 His brothers didn’t go?

07:43 Speaker 2 No. Reb Lipel Sonnenbaum[?] wasn’t in Lubavitch either.

07:49 Speaker 8 He was older.

07:51 Speaker 2 He was older than my grandfather, but no. My grandfather always had that special quality: he maintained the connection. Though he had already been to Lubavitch.

08:01 Speaker 8 Yes, he too was in Lubavitch. So they traveled, and the Rebbetzin of Stropkov welcomed them.

08:05 Speaker 2 She welcomed them very warmly, like family. She asked his mother, “What kind of bread does he like? I’ll bake it for him.” So she baked the bread he liked. He was fourteen years old. I think he arrived in Lubavitch in 5672 or 5673. In any case, everything was fine. The Rebbe Rashab wasn’t in Lubavitch at the time. A day or two later he returned. My grandfather would say that he remembered the Rebbe Rashab arriving in a cap, a fashionable sort of cap. During the week he wore a cap like that. On Shabbos he wore a shtreimel, but when he was away from Lubavitch he wore a hat—the hat in the photograph of him. In Lubavitch he wore a shtreimel on Shabbos and that cap during the week. “Oh! This is Uncle Yehuda Leib’s grandson! Shalom aleichem!” And afterward, all the yeshiva students came down on him.

09:17 Speaker 8 “How could you offer him your hand?”

09:18 Speaker 2 “What did you do? You gave the Rebbe your hand!” “I don’t know. My stepfather was [unclear]. Everyone comes over, so I offered my hand. Everyone shakes hands. I don’t understand.” He hadn’t yet grasped—

09:32 Speaker 8 He didn’t know the difference between Polish customs—

09:36 Speaker 2 Yes. Anyway, on Shabbos he would eat at the Rebbe Rashab’s table with the Rebbetzin, his mother.

09:44 Speaker 8 What you meant to say is, if he arrived—

09:45 Speaker 2 Rebbetzin Rivkah.

09:46 Speaker 8 If he arrived in 5673, he still had a chance to eat with Rebbetzin Rivkah.

09:49 Speaker 2 Rebbetzin Rivkah was at the table, and the Rebbe Rashab and the Rebbe—

10:39 Speaker 8 And how many years was he in Lubavitch?

10:41 Speaker 2 Nearly ten years.

10:42 Speaker 8 Ten years.

10:43 Speaker 2 Yes, and there wasn’t any. There was a period of war, and there was no contact with him. They knew nothing—whether he was alive, what was happening with him, anything. In any case, he was there. He always told me many remarkable things. He said, “I was there, running around. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was a cheder boy. Suddenly they brought me into Lubavitch.” There was a small zal where they apparently learned downstairs. To get to the big zal, you had to climb a lot of stairs. One day he decided to see what the big zal was. So he climbed the stairs—a little boy, climbing and climbing until he got there. What did he see? A room full of bochurim, davening late. He didn’t understand what was happening. He went up to them. Each one was [unclear]. One was even saying, “Rachmana litzlan.” He saw them davening in a way unlike anything he had seen in his life. He said that at that moment he understood he had come to an entirely different place. He resolved that he wanted this too. He understood that this was something different.

11:59 Speaker 8 So it sank in.

11:59 Speaker 2 It sank in that this was something entirely different, a whole different world, a whole different matter. So that was that. He was there for years, and he was always thin. He barely ate. He was a bochur who davened and learned. There were all sorts of things. One of his good friends was Reb Eliezer Nales[?]. Reb Eliezer Nales[?] was truly like a brother to him. In Lubavitch they were together all the time. There’s a whole story involving the Rebbe Rashab and the Frierdiker Rebbe, who was then the director of the yeshiva. Maybe people know the story, but briefly: the Frierdiker Rebbe came to Reb Eliezer Nales[?], who was a bochur, and told him, “After Shabbos, on Sunday at such-and-such a time, take your things and travel home.” “But why?” “You need to be at home. Travel home.” “But why? I want to learn. I want to be in the yeshiva. What did I do? Please, Rebbe, tell me what I did.” And the Frierdiker Rebbe, who directed the yeshiva, said, “You didn’t do anything.” He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t come to terms with it. “Go home.” That was final. End of story.

13:19 Speaker 9 They’ve expelled me from the yeshiva.

13:21 Speaker 2 Exactly. He didn’t know what to do, so he ran to the Rebbe Rashab’s room and stood there. Dovber[?] Groner was there, guarding the door. He also served in the Rebbe’s household. So he said to him, “Let me in to see the Rebbe.” He said, “No one can go in now. You can’t go in.” “I have to. I have to.” He said, “I can’t let you in. That’s my job here.” He saw how desperately the bochur was pleading, so he told him, “Look, at such-and-such a time I leave my post. The door will be open. If you want to go in, go in.” Reb Eliezer went, opened the door, knocked, and entered. He stood at a distance and began to cry. He just cried and cried. The Rebbe immediately said to him, “Eliezer, what is it? Why are you crying? What happened?” He said, “What do you mean, why am I crying?”

14:21 Speaker 9 They’re throwing me out of here.

14:22 Speaker 2 They’re throwing me out of the yeshiva, throwing me out of the yeshiva. I don’t even know what I did. I asked, and…” The Rebbe said, “They’re not throwing you out of the yeshiva. It’s just that right now you need to be at home.” He said, “Chas veshalom, did something happen at home?” “No, nothing happened. You need to be at home now, but I promise you that we’ll tell you when to come back. You’ll come back. We’ll tell you when.” He calmed down a little. He didn’t understand, but he calmed down a little. The Rebbe said, “You’ll travel by train, stop here and stop there. Along the way, by Friday, you’ll reach the station near where Rabbi Levik lives.”

15:00 Speaker 9 Yekaterinoslav.

15:02 Speaker 2 Could be. Yes, apparently he was already there. And this was around Sukkos, I think. So for Sukkos you’ll have lodging with the Goldschmidt brothers; they were chassidim there who ran a place that served food. And during Sukkos, go to Rabbi Levik to hear his talks. That’s what he told him. So he did what the Rebbe said and traveled. He stayed with the Goldschmidt brothers and went to Rabbi Levik to hear the talks and everything. Suddenly, one day during Sukkos, he felt terribly ill. Apparently he had a very high fever and couldn’t move. They quickly brought a doctor. The doctor said it was probably typhus. It was very dangerous. He said that was probably what it was. They told him to travel quickly to where there were excellent doctors, so they could examine him right away, because his condition was serious. He left for home. When he arrived, they received him in alarm and rushed to the best doctors. It was a condition that took a long time—

16:24 Speaker 9 Until he recovered.

16:25 Speaker 2 Until he recovered, by a miracle. And for the rest of his life he had pain in his legs. Walking was difficult for him because of the lingering effects of the typhus. It took months before he was somewhat himself again. When he felt better, a letter suddenly arrived from the Rebbe Rashab. It said, “We’ve arranged a place for you and for [unclear] Zalman at the home of Reb Itche Masmid’s father[?].” He had a sort of farm, a place where they would sometimes send people for fresh air to recuperate. So the yeshiva arranged a place for you there. You can travel there, stay for a while, and then return to the yeshiva, as I said you would. There were no telephones to tell the Rebbe Rashab that he had been ill. When he was healthy, says Reb Sholom Ber[?], who would take care of him?

17:18 Speaker 9 In other words, the remedy had been arranged in advance—

17:20 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. They had a place where he could receive care, and now, after a few months, the Rebbe told him he could come. “We’ve arranged a place for you to recuperate.” Because Grandpa, too, was a big fellow who ate and drank and was [unclear]. So the two of them were good friends. Then the father of Reb Itche Masmid[?] wrote that there were many members of Chovevei Tzion, Poalei Tzion, and the Zionist youth there—

17:46 Speaker 9 Both of them for years.

17:47 Speaker 2 They were completely distant from Torah and mitzvos—no Shabbos, no Yom Tov, nothing. Whenever the chassidim walked by, those people would cross to the other side of the street. Reb Eliezer Nales[?] and Grandpa approached those groups, sat down with them, talked with them, and drew them close. They became interested, asked questions, came along with them and walked with them. I don’t know whether they put on tefillin. It was really a testament—

18:18 Speaker 9 A place people had always run away from—

18:20 Speaker 2 So he says, how can it be that we are chassidim of generations, while these are young Zionists, young men—and they manage to draw them in and strengthen them?

18:33 Speaker 9 That’s what the father of Reb Itche Masmid[?] writes. He writes—

18:35 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, he wrote that. But read the letter he wrote: it turns out that today’s youth are deeply committed.

18:43 Speaker 9 Wow.

18:44 Speaker 2 Very interesting. Anyway, he returned, and so on, until he had been there for almost eight years. Then, around 5676[?], the Rebbe Rashab had already left and reached Rostov. He sent him to a yeshiva they had established in—I don’t remember where the yeshiva was—to go there and—

19:14 Speaker 9 Strengthen it.

19:14 Speaker 2 To be a mashpia there. Yes, something like that. So he went, and he was there for two or three years. From time to time he would visit the Rebbe, though perhaps not often, but he was at the yeshiva. It was something like the shlichus people do today. On 2 Nissan 5680, the Rebbe Rashab passed away in Rostov. He was away on shlichus at the yeshiva. They knew nothing. There were no telephones, no radio, nothing. How could they know? They only found out in Elul. In Elul they learned—

19:55 Speaker 9 Five months later.

19:56 Speaker 2 That it had already happened. He once told me that when he heard the news, he became so—he really—

20:07 Speaker 9 He was beside himself.

20:08 Speaker 2 He couldn’t contain himself at all. He couldn’t. He said that during that period he davened for longer and longer, and through that he wanted to—

20:23 Speaker 9 Maintain the connection.

20:24 Speaker 2 Hold himself together, strengthen himself, stir himself. That went on for several weeks. It was a very, very difficult time. Then he roused himself and said, “What about Rosh Hashanah?” He told himself he had to travel to the Rebbe. He understood that the Frierdiker Rebbe was now the Rebbe, so he said, “First of all, I have to be with the Rebbe for Rosh Hashanah. I have to travel to the Rebbe.” He found out how he could travel. People told him, “Don’t go. The situation is terrible. Non-Jewish thugs are throwing Jews off the train while it’s moving. It’s a danger to life. They have no mercy at all. They see a Jew and throw him out the window in the middle of the journey. You can’t do it.” He said, “I’m traveling to the Rebbe for Rosh Hashanah.” A few other fellows who were there went with him. They traveled by train and, boruch Hashem—

21:20 Speaker 9 They arrived.

21:20 Speaker 2 They got through, and baruch Hashem, they arrived there. When he arrived, the first thing he did was go to the Rebbetzin, because his mother was with her. He told her with pain what he was going through, what he had been through, what had happened, and so on.

21:37 Speaker 9 The whole story of Skiri.

21:39 Speaker 2 While he was speaking with her, the Frierdiker Rebbe came to his mother. That was the first time he saw the Rebbe.

21:48 Speaker 9 Now he was already the Rebbe, not—

21:49 Speaker 2 Yes, he was already—

21:49 Speaker 9 Not her son.

21:50 Speaker 2 They were sitting together at the Rosh Hashanah meal. During those weeks, with the davening and everything, he had decided—as he told me—that the Rebbe was the same Rebbe. Only his appearance had changed, but he was the same Rebbe as before. Then the Frierdiker Rebbe came, and he left [unclear] and shouted, “Rebbe!” That’s how he shouted, out of excitement. That was the moment he became connected to the Frierdiker Rebbe with his whole soul. From then on, whatever the Frierdiker Rebbe told him, he would do. By then the Rebbe Rashab had passed away. It reminded me of something from earlier.

22:35 Speaker 9 Yes.

22:36 Speaker 2 Two or three years earlier, a group of chassidim had to make a trip, and my grandfather wanted to travel with them. The Rebbe Rashab said they should go overland, by wagon—that’s what they had then; there were no cars. Wagons. But my grandfather said to the Rebbe Rashab, “I have a suggestion: let’s go by sea. It’s much more comfortable and much shorter.” So they asked the Rebbe Rashab for permission to go, instead of the way he had said—

23:16 Speaker 9 Instead of going overland by wagon, to go by ship.

23:18 Speaker 2 By ship, yes. He said, “But if you go by ship, you’ll stop in such-and-such a city.” That was around the time war had begun between Ukraine and Russia, and that city was full of gunfire.

23:38 Speaker 9 Odessa?

23:38 Speaker 2 No, not Odessa. No, not Odessa. Never mind. He said the war had started in that city, so they should go overland. They didn’t understand what was wrong with that city, what the problem was. So my grandfather went. When they came to tell the whole group what the Rebbe Rashab had said, they said, “Explain to the Rebbe what a hardship it would be.” With the Rebbe, there wasn’t usually such a thing, but at that time there was a possibility of asking to—

24:05 Speaker 9 Persuade him.

24:05 Speaker 2 So they came to the Rebbe Rashab again and said they were asking once more, because for the whole group it would be very difficult, very time-consuming and a great deal of trouble with all the children. By ship, they could get there quickly and peacefully. They kept asking, and asked the Rebbe to bless them. So the Rebbe Rashab said, “Nu, all right, go.” Later, when my grandfather took leave of the Rebbe Rashab, the Rebbe Rashab said, “Zelig, blayb gantz.”

24:44 Speaker 9 “Zelig, remain whole.”

24:45 Speaker 2 “Zelig, remain whole.” They didn’t understand what he meant. There was a connection to what he had said about that city, but the Rebbe Rashab didn’t explain it. So, “Remain whole.” They went to the ship, but then it was delayed for several days. By Friday it was still delayed. They said perhaps the ship would leave on Shabbos. So my grandfather bought a blanket for the ship and ran—

25:15 Speaker 9 Ran to the Rebbe.

25:15 Speaker 2 To the Rebbe, to hear—

25:18 Speaker 9 Whether to travel.

25:18 Speaker 2 The vort, to hear the vort. He said, “If I’m leaving from here, I’m going to run over.” Well, when he arrived, the Rebbe Rashab was just coming out of the mikveh, and they met. The Rebbe Rashab said, “Zelig! [unclear], what are you doing here?” He said the ship hadn’t sailed all those days and now it might leave tomorrow, and today it was still early. “So I came to hear the—

25:45 Speaker 9 Friday-night vort.”

25:48 Speaker 2 Well, afterward, when he went back to the ship, the Rebbe Rashab told him, “Travel in good health, travel in good health. Hashem will protect you, Hashem will protect you.”

26:00 Speaker 9 Twice he wished him a good journey—

26:01 Speaker 2 A good journey, travel in peace.

26:02 Speaker 9 Hakadosh Boruch Hu will protect you, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will protect you.

26:03 Speaker 2 “Travel in peace” again, and “Hakadosh Boruch Hu will protect you, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will protect you.” So he traveled. It was only in Elul that he learned the Rebbe Rashab had passed away. That had been the last time he was with the Rebbe Rashab.

26:21 Speaker 9 It was the last time he was with the Rebbe Rashab.

26:22 Speaker 2 Yes. In any case, they sailed and sailed. Mariupol—that was the city. He said, “Have we reached Mariupol?” The Rebbe Rashab had said, “How will you travel?” They reached Mariupol, and the ship stopped and docked there at the—

26:42 Speaker 9 At the shore.

26:42 Speaker 2 At the shore.

26:43 Speaker 9 The port, the port. It was a large port.

26:45 Speaker 2 Yes, a large port. Huge groups of Russian police came—still the tsar’s police, I don’t know exactly. Maybe you remember—

26:59 Speaker 9 The beginning of the century, yes.

27:00 Speaker 2 Yes. There were still wars then—

27:02 Speaker 9 Between the Reds and the Whites.

27:03 Speaker 2 The Reds and the Whites and all that. Groups of them boarded the ship and said, “Everyone line up. Everyone has to come past us. Each person, take out your passport, your…” What do you call it?

27:19 Speaker 9 Papers, what do you call them?

27:19 Speaker 2 Your papers. “We want to check them.” My grandfather had no papers at all, so they gave him the papers of a young man who had passed away, G-d forbid. He took on a different name and a slightly different age. He was already older, but the passport said he was eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds had to serve in the army, and the inspection on the ship was to find deserters who were eighteen and weren’t serving—

27:48 Speaker 9 [unclear].

27:49 Speaker 2 No, candidates for the draft, G-d protect us. The punishment was—

27:53 Speaker 9 [unclear].

27:53 Speaker 2 [unclear]. People fleeing the army of the motherland—such a thing couldn’t be allowed. Well, all the young men went through, and he went through too. The officer took his passport and said, “Is your name so-and-so?” “Yes.” “Are you eighteen?” “Uh, yes.” “All right, keep going.” My grandfather said it was simply—

28:13 Speaker 9 The Rebbe’s protection.

28:14 Speaker 2 That was exactly why he had come: to catch eighteen-year-olds who weren’t serving in the army. “You’re eighteen? Fine, go on. Go on.” [unclear]. This was Zelig, my grandfather. This was Zelig Shalom.

28:29 Speaker 9 Shalom, yes.

28:30 Speaker 2 Well, he came to our Holy Land. I tell a lot of stories about him. It’s interesting.

28:37 Speaker 9 How long did he actually remain there in Russia?

28:40 Speaker 2 I think he returned to the Land of Israel around 5682. He returned in 5682 and then married Rebbetzin Tziporah Feigel—Chaya Feigel—of the Shapira family. Kahana-Shapira, also very—

29:07 Speaker 9 From a distinguished holy family.

29:08 Speaker 2 Very distinguished. There’s no time to tell all the stories, but right after he married, he received a letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe. The Rebbe told him this: there’s something interesting in Hayom Yom. On one of the days it says that the Shpola Zeide was more fiery than all his fellow students of the Maggid. They asked him why that was.

29:39 Speaker 9 [unclear]—

29:39 Speaker 2 He said that when he was still a little boy of four, and didn’t yet know—

29:42 Speaker 9 [unclear].

29:44 Speaker 2 He placed his holy hand on his heart, and from then on he was aflame. So it says he was more fiery than all the other students. The Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to him, “You, Zelig, are different from all your friends of your generation,” and so on—like that story.

30:05 Speaker 9 So that’s a quotation—

30:06 Speaker 2 That’s a quotation from my grandfather’s letter.

30:08 Speaker 9 Oh, wow.

30:08 Speaker 2 There’s a quotation written there—

30:09 Speaker 9 Mm-hmm.

30:10 Speaker 2 And the people quoted there are named in writing. That’s Zelig Slonim.

30:14 Speaker 9 In the Rebbe’s handwriting—the Rebbe writes it in hints.

30:16 Speaker 2 Yes, in hints. So that means my grandfather was, in a sense, like the Shpola Zeide.

30:20 Speaker 9 The comparison is—

30:22 Speaker 2 He was entirely different from others his age because he had seen the holy of holies. In other words, “You saw the Rebbe Rashab, you were there, you heard and saw what they didn’t see.” In the Land of Israel, no one else had that. With that strength, he could accomplish things, again and again. The Rebbe immediately made him a shliach, sending him wherever he needed to go. Already then, around 5681 or so, he traveled to America, to New York. He sent him to New York, to Chicago.

30:56 Speaker 9 From the Land of Israel.

30:56 Speaker 2 And he has letters, excerpts from letters, arranging for people to receive him here and there. He was to speak in this shul and that shul, among all the Lubavitch people who—

31:07 Speaker 9 All those people who had traveled—

31:10 Speaker 2 Wait a little, so he could restore their—

31:12 Speaker 9 He was an emissary, essentially.

31:13 Speaker 2 Restore it to them, yes—restore their light, restore their… That was his work.

31:19 Speaker 9 So he traveled from the Land of Israel to the United States.

31:21 Speaker 2 He traveled to the United States.

31:23 Speaker 9 Was he raising money for the yeshivah, then?

31:24 Speaker 2 He wasn’t raising money. No.

31:26 Speaker 9 Oh, he wasn’t involved in—

31:26 Speaker 2 No money at all.

31:27 Speaker 9 Just to warm their spirits.

31:29 Speaker 2 To warm their spirits. And there are reports in the newspapers here about Zelig Slonim and [unclear], saying that he had come as the Rebbe’s shliach.

31:38 Speaker 9 Also in Chevron. He returned to Chevron, and he—

31:40 Speaker 2 Later, in Jerusalem too.

31:42 Speaker 9 Jerusalem.

31:42 Speaker 2 Yes. So there are all these accounts they collected: everywhere he went, people welcomed him, and he spoke in shuls all across the country. Meanwhile, his first daughter was born. He had a daughter, but he wasn’t there. By the time he came back, she was two years old. After that long trip, all those months and months, she was two. He came home; his poor wife had been alone the whole time. Nobody paid her a salary for his shlichus, nobody gave her anything, and he had no one to give him anything either. What could they do? So, boruch Hashem, he came home. He told his wife—we have the telegram he received while he was in New York: “Born daughter.” A daughter had been born to them. I think that was when my mother was born.

32:40 Speaker 10 Yes, yes.

32:40 Speaker 2 So he asked his wife, “Where’s our daughter?” She said, “Look, they’re playing out in the courtyard now.” This was in the Old City. My mother was born near the Kosel, at Misgav Ladach.

32:53 Speaker 10 Misgav Ladach.

32:54 Speaker 2 Right near the Kosel. All the neighbors’ children were playing outside. “Go out and find your daughter.”

33:01 Speaker 10 “See if you recognize her.”

33:02 Speaker 2 That’s what she told him. She was a very clever woman. He went out, and recognized her right away. She looked very much like her father. In any case, imagine: he hadn’t seen his daughter for two years, and afterward he went to Australia.

33:18 Speaker 10 For several years, to Australia.

33:19 Speaker 2 He stayed with all the families whose names people know today. The Feiglins.

33:25 Speaker 10 The Feiglins.

33:25 Speaker 2 And all of them. Yes, it’s interesting—I don’t know whether this happened in Australia or London. He once had his photograph taken and received a copy, but the photographer was very struck by the look in his...

33:43 Speaker 10 Among the photographs.

33:44 Speaker 2 So he put it in the window.

33:46 Speaker 10 The shop window.

33:47 Speaker 2 Yes. Then Ashkenazi came by—the grandfather of Reb Motti Ashkenazi, Moshe Ashkenazi’s father. What was his name?

33:58 Speaker 10 Reb Meir Schneur Zalman.

34:00 Speaker 2 Reb Meir. I think his name was Reb Meir.

34:03 Speaker 10 Reb Meir was Reb Moishe’s grandfather. Reb Meir was Reb Moishe’s grandfather. His father’s name was Schneur Zalman.

34:08 Speaker 2 Anyway, he was there, in London or wherever it was, and he saw that photograph. It made a great impression on him. He asked, “Can I buy it from the photographer who took it?” Yes, he kept it with him. He said, “I have to find out who this is. Who is this Jew?”

34:28 Speaker 10 Sorry, Reb Moishe was Reb Meir’s son. The grandfather’s name was Schneur Zalman. He was alive—that is, Reb Meir’s father.

34:34 Speaker 2 The one whose name was Chai.

34:35 Speaker 10 Chai’s father was Reb Meir.

34:36 Speaker 2 Yes. Later he came to Jerusalem, and they told him where the man lived. One day he came and knocked on the door. They greeted each other warmly, though they didn’t know each other yet. He said, “Look, I have a photograph of you.” They sat down together, and from then on there was a very close friendship between the families.

34:57 Speaker 10 Until they became in-laws.

34:58 Speaker 2 In the end they became in-laws. Anyway, he traveled all over the world. His father-in-law was a very special Jew. Shapira—Kohen Shapira—wrote to the Frierdiker Rebbe.

35:10 Speaker 10 The Frierdiker Rebbe.

35:12 Speaker 2 The Frierdiker Rebbe: “My dear son-in-law has no steady livelihood, and he travels on shlichus for Your Holiness, the Rebbe. His wife is left at home with their young children and nothing to live on. Perhaps you could allow him to stay here and earn a normal living.” After the Frierdiker Rebbe received that letter, he immediately sent him a letter telling him to set out on another trip.

35:42 Speaker 10 A long one.

35:42 Speaker 2 A very long one. So he didn’t go off on his own initiative; he was sent. My mother once told me that one morning, when he had to leave on one of his distant trips, he picked up his suitcase and walked out of the house. She stood in the doorway, held on to his legs and cried, “Father, don’t go! Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave!” He cried too, and said, “I have to go. I need to go. The Rebbe is sending me; I’m going on my shlichus.” [unclear] She couldn’t see his eyes at all. Wow. Anyway, there’s a very interesting story. When he returned from one of his trips, the Frierdiker Rebbe told him, “Go straight to London. There’s an Anash Lubavitch shul there. Apparently its rabbi has passed away, and now they’re looking for a rabbi. They want to bring in a rabbi with a doctorate, a rabbi who’s...”

36:43 Speaker 11 Modern.

36:43 Speaker 2 Modern. “Chas veshalom. I want a proper Lubavitch rabbi there, someone I can turn to. I propose Gutnick. Zev.”

36:56 Speaker 11 Mottke Zev.

36:57 Speaker 2 Mottke Zev. He told him that Mottke Zev should be the rabbi of the Lubavitch shul in London. “Go there and do everything you can to see that he gets the position.” How was he supposed to do that? He didn’t know anyone. In short, he arrived at the shul and davened there in London. Another week, then another week. Get to know the people a little. And he began telling everyone, “This is an Anash Lubavitch shul. They founded it with mesirus nefesh. They came from Russia and all those places. You have to continue on the same path, not change it or turn it into something else. There’s a great rabbi and darshan”—he was an exceptionally gifted speaker, truly a very intelligent man—“and he’s right for you, because he’s a genuine Lubavitcher and he’ll lead the shul properly.” He went from person to person, one by one. He lived in Jerusalem. He hadn’t come to collect money; people would bring money to Jerusalem. That wasn’t the point. He came and spoke well. “Who are we going to take as rabbi?” Some favored one candidate, some another. One day after davening—he was there all the time—the head gabbai called him into his room. “Please sit down,” he said with a big smile. He seated him across a small table. First he took out a thick, accordion-like bundle of—I don’t know what you call them—

38:31 Speaker 11 Pound notes.

38:32 Speaker 2 And put it beside him without a word. He put it next to my grandfather and said, “Look, you’re an important guest. Anyone can see you’re a wise man, a G-d-fearing man, and all that. But you don’t know what’s going on here. You’re from Jerusalem. What do you know about us? We’re a long-established community, and we have our own way of doing things. So take this and go back to Jerusalem.”

39:02 Speaker 11 “Use it for your household.”

39:03 Speaker 2 “For your family. We’ll manage.” My grandfather told me, “I let him finish speaking. First, just as he had pushed the bundle toward me, I pushed it firmly back toward him.” He said, “Listen, I didn’t come for money or anything else. There’s nothing in this for me.” Then he began speaking from the depths of his heart: this was a community founded with mesirus nefesh. “And now, chas veshalom... There’s a rabbi who is a great rabbi, very wise and an exceptionally gifted speaker. He’ll bring you great nachas, and he’ll preserve the mark of genuine Lubavitch, of Anash Lubavitch.” He spoke from the depths of his heart. He didn’t persuade the gabbai, but the gabbai saw that money meant nothing to him. He stayed there an entire year, until Gutnick was installed as rabbi of the shul. And then—Zalig can break through an obstacle. That’s how you say it, right? Get through whatever needs getting through.

40:16 Speaker 11 Wow.

40:17 Speaker 2 I asked, “What was happening at home with his wife and children? What did he do?” He was there, I don’t know—

40:23 Speaker 11 What really happened? What did you hear from your grandmother?

40:25 Speaker 2 Come on, let’s finish the story.

40:28 Speaker 11 Yes.

40:28 Speaker 2 Later, after some time—I don’t know if it was a year or not very long—this Gutnick suddenly passed away. Chaim Gutnick’s father died suddenly, while still young. My grandfather immediately received an instruction from the Frierdiker Rebbe: “I ask you to go and arrange a match between Rabbi Gutnick’s widow and...” What was the name of the family they had connected with in Australia, where I had been? There was a grandfather there, perhaps named Abramson, Abramson, who had also been among the Lubavitch students. He married—

41:08 Speaker 11 [unclear].

41:09 Speaker 2 No, no.

41:10 Speaker 11 Abramovson.

41:10 Speaker 2 Abramson. He married the widow, and he was appointed rabbi.

41:15 Speaker 11 Rabbi.

41:16 Speaker 2 My grandfather did that too. In other words, his whole being was—

41:21 Speaker 11 Devoted to the shlichus—

41:22 Speaker 2 He traveled throughout Europe, reaching its most remote countries. Denmark. Farther north. What are those countries called? It’s unbelievable where he got to. He reached places—

41:37 Speaker 11 Finland.

41:37 Speaker 2 There were places where he had to pass through villages of Black people to get where he needed to go. It’s unbelievable where he traveled. And he spent twenty years on shlichus for the Frierdiker Rebbe.

41:52 Speaker 11 So that was until the Holocaust, essentially. Throughout the twenties and thirties.

41:57 Speaker 2 Apparently, yes.

41:58 Speaker 11 How did your grandmother manage, really? Did the Frierdiker Rebbe write her anything?

42:01 Speaker 2 I don’t know if he wrote to her specifically, but it was very hard for her. Of course it was hard. It was hard.

42:07 Speaker 11 Her bittul was—

42:07 Speaker 2 On the other hand, she was very active; she did things. She established Tipat Chalav in Jerusalem.

42:16 Speaker 11 Yes, that idea—

42:17 Speaker 2 She was close to Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner for Judea. She had a voice and could get things done. With that strength and the Rebbe’s brachos, she held on. Moishe Slonim.

42:34 Speaker 11 Yes.

42:34 Speaker 2 He was also a child then, and so on and so forth. In any case, that was his dedication and commitment. That was the kind of home my mother grew up in. So of course, whatever the case, she had a different outlook on everything. I know that once there was a religious youth movement there, though not Chabad, and my mother joined it. My grandfather didn’t want her going there. He didn’t. So one day he made an issue of it and went to the head of that movement. He said, “Look, you’re all religious, and that’s all fine, but we want a different education for my daughter, a more chassidic one, and this isn’t right for me. So please tell her that—”

43:29 Speaker 11 “That she isn’t suited to it.”

43:30 Speaker 2 “That she can’t be part of it.” So he said, “Are you talking about your daughter? Do you know what happened a short while ago? There was a gathering, a jubilee celebration for one of their rabbis. They brought everyone together and gave them sandwiches to eat during the break or something. And they made lofty speeches: ‘We’re this, and our movement is so important,’ and all about observing and doing. Then it was time to eat the sandwiches. All those children rushed over, grabbed sandwiches, and ate them. Your daughter,” he told my grandfather, “went up onstage and said, ‘May I have permission to speak?’ They said yes; they didn’t know who she was or what she wanted. So she said, ‘Listen to what I want to tell you. We all came here and spoke so loftily about ourselves. But as soon as we were allowed to eat the sandwiches, everyone grabbed them. Nobody washed their hands, nobody said Hamotzi, nobody said anything. What good is all that lofty talk? This is what we need to do.’ Your daughter has that kind of courage, and she cares about these things and about influencing others.”

44:58 Speaker 12 “So leave her here.”

45:01 Speaker 2 In any case, that was already years—

45:04 Speaker 12 And then 5710 came. Where was he then?

45:09 Speaker 2 Ah, 5710. You see, my grandfather used to travel to the Frierdiker Rebbe every year. Just as people travel to—

45:23 Speaker 12 On all those trips?

45:24 Speaker 2 Yes, on all the trips, or when he was at home. He would travel to the Frierdiker Rebbe for Tishrei.

45:29 Speaker 12 For the holidays, people—

45:30 Speaker 2 By ship. Once he traveled with the Satmar Rebbe, and once with the previous Gerer Rebbe, the—

45:38 Speaker 12 Lev Simcha.

45:39 Speaker 2 No, no.

45:40 Speaker 12 With [unclear].

45:41 Speaker 2 With [unclear], yes, he traveled with him. He traveled to the Rebbe regularly. And on his other journeys, whenever he was somewhere close enough to reach the Rebbe, he would go. Once he wanted to get to the Frierdiker Rebbe, but they wouldn’t give him a visa to travel from one European country to another. He heard that a son of the Rebbe was already in Paris—that the Rebbe’s son-in-law, the Rebbe, was in Paris.

46:15 Speaker 12 Our Rebbe.

46:15 Speaker 2 The Frierdiker Rebbe’s son-in-law. So he said, “Maybe I’ll go to him and ask him to help me.”

46:22 Speaker 12 Get a visa.

46:22 Speaker 2 Get the visa, through the Frierdiker Rebbe, since he was his son-in-law.

46:28 Speaker 12 Mm-hmm.

46:28 Speaker 2 Well, he got there and knocked on the door. A woman who worked in the house told him, “Rabbi Schneerson isn’t receiving visitors today.” It was a Monday or Thursday. Apparently the Rebbe was fasting on Mondays and Thursdays. He wasn’t receiving visitors. So he said, “Tell him his cousin has come.” She told the Rebbe, “Your cousin, Rabbi Zalman Slonim, is here.” So he said to let him in. The Rebbe was in Paris then, studying the Yerushalmi. He received him, and my grandfather said, “I’m Slonim, and I’ve heard about you from the shliach. Now I want to travel to the Frierdiker Rebbe, but I can’t get a visa from the consulate.” The Rebbe said, “All right, I’ll arrange it for you.” The Rebbe [unclear] and went with him to the post and telegraph office. He sent a telegram to the Frierdiker Rebbe, and the Frierdiker Rebbe arranged the—

47:36 Speaker 12 The application, yes.

47:38 Speaker 2 The Rebbe was wearing white gloves, he said.

47:41 Speaker 12 That was the Rebbe’s custom.

47:42 Speaker 2 He always wore gloves, as is known. [unclear] also wore gloves.

47:47 Speaker 12 There are two opinions about that. Some say one thing, and some say another.

47:50 Speaker 2 He was there; he knew. In any case, he would always say with great emotion, “Imagine: the Rebbe walks with me and accompanies me down the street to arrange a visa for me to travel to the Frierdiker Rebbe.” It’s unbelievable. Another time, he came to Warsaw to see the Frierdiker Rebbe. They told him the Frierdiker Rebbe had gone to Berlin and was staying at a particular hotel. So he immediately traveled to Berlin. When he got there, they told him the Frierdiker Rebbe had finished in Berlin and returned to Warsaw. So he went back to Warsaw again. He had an incredible drive. When the Frierdiker Rebbe received him, he said, “For you, Zalman—Warsaw, Berlin, Berlin, Warsaw. Berlin is no problem at all!” Well, that shows how deep the connection was, how deeply he felt it. From the Rebbe Rashab to his connection with the Frierdiker Rebbe: it was the same Rebbe, the same everything, the same soul, the same thing. Only the outward form, so to speak, was different.

48:58 Speaker 13 So when did you first become acquainted with the Rebbe?

49:01 Speaker 2 Perhaps I’ll just finish this: in 5710, before [unclear], my grandfather led the whole effort in Jerusalem for the—

49:09 Speaker 13 Letter of hiskashrus.

49:10 Speaker 2 The letter of hiskashrus and all of that. And he went to the one who had been in Samarkand—

49:19 Speaker 13 Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Eliezerov.

49:20 Speaker 2 Eliezerov was already—

49:22 Speaker 13 His uncle, actually.

49:23 Speaker 2 He was in an old-age home then and was no longer quite himself. He was weak, and he didn’t know what had happened with the Rebbe. They hadn’t told him. They asked him, “What do you say? We want to…”

49:37 Speaker 13 Write a letter of hiskashrus.

49:39 Speaker 2 To this Rebbe. Then he understood. He wept terribly over [unclear]. Afterward he said yes, that he knew the Rebbe and had heard about the Rebbe, and he joined all those who signed. Then my grandfather pushed the whole—

49:54 Speaker 13 Jerusalem effort; he led that effort.

49:56 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, what he went through. “But I know the Rebbe,” that’s what he said. “I know the Rebbe.”

50:04 Speaker 13 We’ll also hear later about Shikun Chabad and the whole group, but I want to hear when you actually first became—

50:10 Speaker 2 So we knew there was something different here. As my grandfather said, at the big [unclear] in Lvov he saw something different. And then, by Divine providence, my parents—my father worked at Discount Bank; he was a manager there for seventy-five years. The bank’s management sent him to New York to open a Discount Bank branch there and make contact with all the Torah leaders and chassidic leaders.

50:40 Speaker 13 So they would open accounts with them.

50:42 Speaker 2 So they would open accounts, since it was a bank in Eretz Yisroel, and give it their support. They chose him because he was an expert in these matters and also—

50:53 Speaker 13 Observant.

50:53 Speaker 2 He could speak to everyone and explain things to them, and so on. My parents went for a relatively short period, five weeks, from Tishrei until the middle of Cheshvan, like now. And where did the children stay? With our grandparents, the Slonims, of course. There were three of us, and we spent Tishrei with our grandfather Slonim, from morning to night and from night to morning. So that added still more.

51:25 Speaker 13 So you had already absorbed—

51:27 Speaker 2 It was an extended stay. You weren’t just coming to visit; you saw a way of life. What Tishrei means for a chossid, what [unclear] means, what the shofar blowing means—he blew the shofar at—

51:37 Speaker 13 Where did he daven then?

51:38 Speaker 2 I mean in Shikun Chabad, which he founded. He founded Shikun Chabad.

51:41 Speaker 13 I know that. I’m asking whether that was already a few years after—

51:43 Speaker 2 It was in 5713.

51:44 Speaker 13 Ah, but he founded it in [unclear]—

51:45 Speaker 2 5713, 5713, yes. So in 5713 there was an apartment in the neighborhood that served as the shul for the time being. They hadn’t yet built the shul downstairs. There was no mikveh yet. That was at the beginning of the neighborhood, but it was there. So first of all, he recited the verses just as he—

52:02 Speaker 13 Before the shofar blowing.

52:02 Speaker 2 The Rebbe Rashab used to say—I think the Rebbe says it too—anyone who was with the Rebbe knows there was something about it, probably the same tune, the same... So he said the verses there, all of it, as though he were living it all over again. You could see it. And afterward he said he didn’t know whether he would have the strength to blow the shofar now—he was already an older chossid—so he would try. If he managed one blast, perhaps someone else would continue after that. But his whole being poured into the verses, and into his conduct—you saw so many things. On Sukkos, too, and “You shall rejoice on your festival”—what does that mean? What is a farbrengen? There was a farbrengen. Many chassidim sat there, including chassidim of [unclear]. The Rabinowitz family farbrenged there—Nachum Rabinowitz, his brothers, Reb Hillel, and quite a few others. Eisenbach was there, Tzvi Eisenbach and some of his brothers. The young Chabad chassidim of those days farbrenged. There were older chassidim there too. Well, by then it was understood that we had begun saying Tehillim. That was really a foretaste of your bar mitzvah. Yes, right, right. So we began saying the Rebbe’s Tehillim, of course, and began wearing tefillin properly. When my parents came back—may they be well, and my father, peace be upon him—yes, when they came back, we returned home, but they could already sense a certain awakening here, in our conduct and practices. And little by little, he became more particular about these things, about the things chassidim are particular about, and so on. At first it seemed as though the world had come to an end. My father had studied at [unclear]. His father was the head of the old Beis Yaakov—not the modern Beis Yaakov. The old one. The Perushim, who kept the genuine tradition. Yes. But the thing is, my father...

54:11 Speaker 2 He lived a Jewish life in Slonim. So on Shabbos mornings they would meet and learn Chassidus together. That was what my grandfather had asked of his sons-in-law—he had two sons-in-law. They would learn Chassidus. What, Likkutei Torah[?]? They learned Kuntres [unclear], Kuntres [unclear]. The Rebbe Rashab—my father tells how he would learn just a few words with him, and springs of water would flow from his eyes. Tears. Where do you find a person like that? He reads a few words in a kuntres, and tears keep pouring down. He also said that it sank in, it really sank in, though he remained as he was. Mm-hmm. But after all this—at first he hadn’t really understood how it could be that he followed Ashkenazic customs and his children were beginning to change over to other customs. Every father wants his children to carry on his ways. Later he saw the results of it all, and it gave him so much nachas that he himself adopted many things. He would get up at four in the morning to say Tehillim. There was no Rambam study cycle yet, but later he studied Rambam too. At first, though, the first thing was that he would get up to say Tehillim. After that, things changed completely. He truly revered the Rebbe. The Rebbe was everything to him. Some years ago, when he was already older, he traveled to New York to help a Jew who had asked him for help. He said, “I’m coming to you.” He had more or less retired already. So he went to him. He was on the move there for a week—I don’t know where he ate or drank—and he helped that Jew. Where did he daven? With the Rebbe; it didn’t matter where he davened. And whenever he was with the Rebbe, whether at a farbrengen or otherwise—over the years, he and my mother were with the Rebbe quite a few times—the Rebbe would always smile at him.

56:16 Speaker 2 The Rebbe would always speak to him. The Rebbe would always give him something, especially wine. And he would always say, [unclear]. “I didn’t receive the [unclear]. What is this?” [unclear]. He was so moved that he had sat near the Rebbe. The Rebbe spoke with him, laughed, and gave him wine for a l’chaim.

56:41 Speaker 14 So he was with the Rebbe in 5758, then?

56:43 Speaker 2 Certainly.

56:44 Speaker 14 When?

56:45 Speaker 2 Especially then, certainly.

56:46 Speaker 14 Oh, yes? So what happened?

56:47 Speaker 2 Certainly, certainly.

56:48 Speaker 14 With your mother?

56:49 Speaker 2 Yes, certainly. The Rebbe was already speaking about the children then, I think, at any rate. So once, when he returned from that trip he had made alone to help a Jew, I was already grown and already on shlichus. I thought to myself: He’s an older man now. He traveled alone to help a Jew, and he’ll return alone and make the trip home to Jerusalem alone. I said, I’ll go to Lod and meet him. I’ll sit with him, welcome him back, give him a little vitality.

57:21 Speaker 14 Encouragement.

57:21 Speaker 2 Here’s a man traveling around like that, not for himself but for another Jew. He goes to help him, then comes back alone and travels home alone. Maybe it was a crazy idea, but I felt that was what I needed to do. So, back then there was a screen where you could see who was about to come out.

57:37 Speaker 14 Who was arriving.

57:38 Speaker 2 Who was getting ready to come out of customs there. So I waited and waited, until I saw it was him, and then I ran farther ahead. He came out of customs and started walking. I went up to him. “Dad, welcome back!” I hugged him. He didn’t say anything to me. He didn’t answer. He said to me, very seriously, “You know, I was thinking to myself: How will I daven Shacharis tomorrow without the Rebbe?” And I felt ashamed. I knew the whole atmosphere—the l’chaims, all the bochurim. I had been with the Rebbe, I had been in a group, I had been a Tomim...

58:22 Speaker 14 After a week there, that’s what was hard for him.

58:25 Speaker 2 He doesn’t say hello to me. He says, “I’ll tell you something. I was thinking to myself: How will I daven Shacharis tomorrow morning without the Rebbe?”

58:33 Speaker 14 [unclear]—that’s an influence.

58:35 Speaker 2 So you see, the Rebbe would always write him letters. He would address him as “Mr. [unclear],” “Mr. [unclear].” Well, at any rate.

58:45 Speaker 14 You reached the year of your bar mitzvah, and after that you gradually began adopting the customs. How did that transition happen?

58:55 Speaker 2 At first I studied at the well-known Kol Torah yeshiva ketanah in Jerusalem, and we arranged a Tanya class there with Rabbi Yosef Segal.

59:07 Speaker 14 Was that in the yeshiva ketanah or the yeshiva gedolah?

59:09 Speaker 2 In the yeshiva ketanah. Yes. Before that I had gone to Kfar Chabad.

59:11 Speaker 14 Yes.

59:12 Speaker 2 But we went in the strictest secrecy, and he would come. Rabbi Segal did great things.

59:21 Speaker 14 Mm-hmm.

59:21 Speaker 2 He taught in many places. It was done secretly, but then they caught us, and there was a big uproar and all that. My grandfather went to Rabbi Zalman Auerbach, a very dear Jew with a very big heart. He was not one to defend it at all.

59:43 Speaker 14 The Litvish, Jerusalem one.

59:45 Speaker 2 Yes. He had a strong connection with the Rebbe. He wrote to the Rebbe in terms that showed such bittul to the Rebbe. So he said to him, “What is all this anger about? About Tanya? What wrong has been done?” And he too said it wasn’t wrong. But there was the mashgiach, who—

1:00:05 Speaker 14 Had more influence over him.

1:00:06 Speaker 2 So those were the years, and of course we were... My brother was with the Rebbe in those years.

1:00:17 Speaker 14 Oh, that’s what I wanted to hear.

1:00:18 Speaker 2 With the Rebbe.

1:00:18 Speaker 14 So Shalom Dovber was with the Rebbe. Right, Chaviv’s.

1:00:21 Speaker 2 Chaviv, yes. He too was with the Rebbe, while I was then at the yeshiva—

1:00:27 Speaker 14 At Kol Torah.

1:00:28 Speaker 2 At Kol Torah. So he went in for yechidus. The Rebbe said to him, “As for your brother, do you send him what is discussed here at the farbrengens?” He said no. So the Rebbe said, “I don’t mean all the sichos, but what is discussed here. Send it to him. Send him what is discussed here, and in time he will come here too.” That’s what the Rebbe told him. Without our even hinting at it, he told me—

1:01:00 Speaker 14 Had you written anything before that? For your bar mitzvah, perhaps?

1:01:04 Speaker 2 I wrote for my bar mitzvah, and I also have a letter from the Rebbe from before my bar mitzvah, when I was eleven or twelve.

1:01:08 Speaker 14 About what?

1:01:09 Speaker 2 I wrote to the Rebbe that I had gone to the yeshiva at [unclear]—

1:01:12 Speaker 14 Oh.

1:01:12 Speaker 2 And... I asked for a brachah that I should succeed. The Rebbe wrote to me even then—

1:01:22 Speaker 14 What?

1:01:24 Speaker 2 Something like: “I was pleased to hear that you participate in Chabad chassidim’s farbrengens and that you benefit from them, and that you also take what you gain from the farbrengen with you into the days that follow, conducting yourself like someone born into a chassidic family.” You conduct yourself that way; you take those things with you.

1:01:45 Speaker 14 That was when you were eleven.

1:01:46 Speaker 2 Eleven. So it happened gradually...

1:01:51 Speaker 14 And then you wrote for your bar mitzvah.

1:01:52 Speaker 2 My brother told the Rebbe in yechidus that it was difficult: he was already studying in Chabad, and his sister, Rebbetzin Ashkenazi, was also already studying in Kfar Chabad. So one child was left on his own, studying at Kol Torah. The Rebbe told him, “It will be easier with him than it was with you, because they already—”

1:02:15 Speaker 14 You paved the way.

1:02:16 Speaker 2 “They already understand; they’ve already come to terms with the fact that their children are...”

1:02:20 Speaker 14 Oh, the parents had come to terms with it.

1:02:21 Speaker 2 They already knew. And that’s how it really was. It happened in stages.

1:02:28 Speaker 14 A process. So when did you move?

1:02:33 Speaker 2 I transferred in Cheshvan 5728. I transferred to the yeshiva gedolah in Kfar Chabad. I went there by car, and riding with me were young bochurim like myself, among them Chaim Sholom Segal, Rabbi Yossel Segal from Migdal HaEmek. We took a taxi to Kfar Chabad with a few others I don’t remember, and we were accepted that same day—

1:03:00 Speaker 14 So this is the beginning of the sixties now.

1:03:02 Speaker 2 Yes. So we were accepted as students in Chabad.

1:03:07 Speaker 14 They selected you?

1:03:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:08 Speaker 14 Who? Yankel?

1:03:10 Speaker 2 Yankel, maybe Motke, a"h. Anyway, they accepted us, you see.

1:03:17 Speaker 14 Mm-hmm.

1:03:19 Speaker 2 And that was a very big experience too, because I understood that I wasn’t going back to the kind of place I’d been in.

1:03:26 Speaker 14 Had you gone there for Shabbos before? Did you used to go, or was going there a surprise?

1:03:30 Speaker 2 I had gone for Shabbos. One Shabbos, yes. I’d also go to my brother-in-law, Rabbi Ashkenazi, a"h, for Shabbos and stay with him. And then too—

1:03:41 Speaker 14 He was already living there? He was already married by then?

1:03:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:43 Speaker 14 When had he gotten married?

1:03:44 Speaker 2 He got married during the break.

1:03:45 Speaker 14 Ah.

1:03:46 Speaker 2 He got married during the break.

1:03:47 Speaker 14 Mm-hmm.

1:03:48 Speaker 2 In any case, there was a very special feeling. Reb Sholom Chaim—

1:03:56 Speaker 14 Mm-hmm.

1:03:56 Speaker 2 Reb Sholom Chaim would give each bochur encouragement of all kinds, here and there. He’d make sure to have him come and talk with him. Once he called me over during davening and spoke with me—but he spoke with me about Chassidus. He explained a concept in Chassidus, asked questions and answered them, all the way until the Torah reading. I didn’t daven. What could I do? There had to be a minyan, no? So he kept me there until the Torah reading. Then we stopped, because he’d been talking and talking from the heart. I can’t speak with that kind of passion. He was a man of feeling, and he understood bochurim—what bochurim are. He had special chassidic strengths. And that’s how, little by little, I went deeper and deeper into it. Afterward they started telling us that Yud-Tes Kislev was coming up and we’d have to go to high-school yeshivos, speak there and accomplish something. There was [unclear] Bernstein; today he—

1:05:04 Speaker 15 Became a Chabad chossid.

1:05:04 Speaker 2 Became a Chabad chossid. He was older than me, a very chassidic bochur, an example to others, and a singer. So we went together to a yeshiva in the city—Ir Ganim or something, in Petach Tikva.

1:05:23 Speaker 15 Kfar Ganim.

1:05:24 Speaker 2 Kfar Ganim. Kfar Ganim. It was a high-school yeshiva, apparently.

1:05:26 Speaker 15 Yes.

1:05:27 Speaker 2 Well, I knew nothing. I’d only been there a little while—

1:05:31 Speaker 15 Meaning just a few weeks after you arrived.

1:05:33 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, I think so. Or perhaps it was the following year, but it was early on. I wasn’t used to speaking at all, and now here I was, supposed to represent the Rebbe and Chassidus. So, all right. We were in the dining room with everyone, and we sang with them and so on. Then the rosh yeshiva said, “After the meal, split into two groups. You know what? Ninth and tenth grades, eleventh and twelfth. You take this group, and you take that group.” I found myself facing a large group of bochurim, all these boys in knitted yarmulkes, and I, a Tomim, now had to—

1:06:15 Speaker 15 Inspire them.

1:06:16 Speaker 2 I even remember what I spoke to them about. Boruch Hashem, for the first time I simply had to speak. I couldn’t stay silent, so I shared a little of what I had, the idea that was driving me, the idea of Chassidus. It was a farbrengen—possibly my first farbrengen. That was it, and afterward we kept going out more and more. Later, when members of Anash, young men from Kfar Chabad, would travel to various cities, they’d arrive, stay in an apartment somewhere, and go to the shul to speak and so on. I traveled and went along with them too, and little by little I drew closer.

1:06:55 Speaker 15 So Mivtza Tefillin had already begun by then.

1:06:58 Speaker 2 Mivtza Tefillin began in ’27.

1:07:00 Speaker 15 Right, so when you arrived at the yeshiva, Mivtza Tefillin was already underway.

1:07:03 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

1:07:03 Speaker 15 Where would you go? You’d travel—

1:07:05 Speaker 2 I’d go to Tel Aviv.

1:07:06 Speaker 15 They went from Kfar Chabad to Tel Aviv every week.

1:07:09 Speaker 2 For Tel Aviv there was Rabbi [unclear], a"h, R.P. He was a chassidic bochur from head to toe.

1:07:18 Speaker 15 Mm-hmm.

1:07:18 Speaker 2 He’d bring a truck. Don’t imagine it was— They called it a tiyulit. It had benches along each side that folded down, and you’d sit on them. But it wasn’t a bus—

1:07:31 Speaker 15 Comfortable.

1:07:31 Speaker 2 Comfortable and orderly. You’d climb onto the truck and lower the boards. Every week there was a form. We’d write down how many people had put on tefillin, where you’d been, approximately what time—so a report could be sent to the Rebbe. That’s when the mivtza began, and there was electricity in the air. Every week there’d be clapping: “Mivtza Tefillin! The truck’s here!” R.P., a"h, was a very special Jew. So those were the mivtzoim and the like.

1:08:08 Speaker 15 What contact did you actually have with the Rebbe then, apart from— Did you write to the Rebbe as bochurim?

1:08:13 Speaker 2 Of course, of course.

1:08:14 Speaker 15 When? Was there a set schedule for writing?

1:08:17 Speaker 2 On Yud Shvat we wrote a… The Rebbe would answer.

1:08:21 Speaker 15 Personally?

1:08:21 Speaker 2 There was a note for the day of the hilula and a note after the day of the hilula. The Rebbe answered both the first note and the second, for each person.

1:08:32 Speaker 15 Individual answers?

1:08:33 Speaker 2 Yes, individual answers, personal to each one. But the main thing was that our hearts were burning: we had to go to the Rebbe already. We had to go to the Rebbe, had to go to the Rebbe. So after we’d been there two years, 5730 arrived. The previous group, of course, had gone during the break.

1:08:59 Speaker 15 For Pesach.

1:09:00 Speaker 2 Yes, it was for Pesach.

1:09:02 Speaker 15 Mm-hmm.

1:09:03 Speaker 2 So we understood. Around Kislev, we wrote to the Rebbe that, since we were the group that, with Hashem’s help, was about to come to the Rebbe’s court, we were the Rebbe’s, and we asked for a bracha for success: that we should become chassidim, that we should learn and be the Rebbe’s students. The Rebbe sent us a reply in a general letter, and at the end he wrote a whole line in his holy handwriting: “A blessing for success in Torah study and the fulfillment of mitzvos, with love and awe.” He wrote “love and awe.” Guys, it says “love and awe” there—he wrote that! Afterward we held a raffle to see who would get that original handwritten letter; everyone received photocopies. Who would get the original? I won it. I have the letter in which the Rebbe writes, “in Torah study”—

1:09:53 Speaker 15 The wording.

1:09:53 Speaker 2 “With kabbolas ol, with love and awe.” Well, we were happy—we jumped around, we went wild. Everything was wonderful. Then, just before Pesach, when we were supposed to travel, they suddenly informed us—from the administration or somewhere—that no, we weren’t going. We’d go in Tishrei, as before, from Tishrei to Tishrei. What do you mean? We want to go, we want to go! Of course we’re going! What? We’re not going? We don’t want to put it off; we want to go! No, it’s impossible. We’re not going. It can’t be done. So one of us, from our group, wrote a letter to the Rebbe saying that we wanted to go to our Rebbe, and they weren’t letting us. Ah, I didn’t know what to do. Why did you write things like that? G-d forbid, that was going too far, [unclear]. We wanted to call there so they wouldn’t pass the letter on to the Rebbe.

1:10:55 Speaker 15 Meaning he told you after he’d written it, so you wanted to…

1:10:59 Speaker 2 In the end, we didn’t succeed. All right, fine, but we told them we didn’t agree. There was nothing to be done: we weren’t going, and that was that. It was a Shabbos—I don’t remember which; perhaps there were two Adars that year. The Rebbe held a farbrengen, and suddenly the Rebbe said that bochurim wanted to come and learn. Another thing: around Shabbos Hagadol in 5730, Reb Sholom Chaim came to the Rebbe. He had yechidus, and the Rebbe asked him, “When is the group coming, with Hashem’s help?” The Rebbe asked him. He said, “Tishrei, Tishrei.” So the Rebbe said, “The bochurim wrote to me that they’re coming for Pesach, that they’re coming in Nissan. Isn’t that enough? That’s good.” Well, the Rebbe had already said it. Then, at that farbrengen on Shabbos Parshas Bo, I think, the Rebbe said that bochurim wanted to come and learn at the yeshiva in [unclear]. Moshe Dayan [unclear]. So [unclear] at the yeshiva in [unclear]. Moshe Dayan, from Williams[?]—they need to come here.

1:12:05 Speaker 15 He was the defense minister.

1:12:06 Speaker 2 To study. No, they hadn’t arranged beds. All right, fine, but there was still the matter of accommodations. The Rebbe raised his hand and said it twice: accommodations. There are no beds in all of New York? No beds for the bochurim? Right after Shabbos, Reb Wolf got word that such a thing couldn’t happen in Tishrei. The Rebbe said arrangements had to be made, so the administration there would see to it. Then they sent us to a doctor. You couldn’t travel to America unless a doctor wrote that you were healthy and fit to make the trip, and so on and so forth. And Sholom Chaim—the Rebbe had told Sholom Chaim on Yud Shvat. Didn’t he tell you that before? You didn’t know? I don’t quite remember; it was many years ago. But yes, the Rebbe told him, “The bochurim wrote to me that they’re coming for Pesach.” The Rebbe knew about each one; he had everything in mind. So they quickly sent us to the doctor, sent us here and there, sorted out the flights and all the other problems. And we were privileged to get what we wanted and hoped for: we arrived at the Rebbe. We got to the Rebbe on 9 Nissan 5730. It was very, very cold. Very cold. We didn’t know New York. Nissan, and cold? We couldn’t understand what was going on. Eastern Parkway was full of cars driving by, each one bouncing along, with sparks coming out of them. We couldn’t understand it: late at night, and so many cars! Back in Israel you’d barely see cars even during the day, and here they were everywhere. And we stood in the cold outside 770, waiting for the Rebbe to come out of his room. They told us the Rebbe would soon come out and go home, and then we could see him. So of course we waited. We waited a few hours. They told us, “When you see the light in the Rebbe’s room go out, that’s a sign he’s about to come out.” We were already standing in two rows. There were forty bochurim, forty bochurim.

1:14:20 Speaker 2 There were about twenty on one side and twenty on the other, with space to walk between us. And we waited and waited and waited and waited. At eleven-thirty at night, the light went out. We were standing there, and there was a stir. Within seconds the Rebbe was standing in the doorway. Someone held the door open, and the Rebbe stood there, his face radiant in all its splendor. Then all the bochurim began saying, “Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe...” You could hear all the bochurim as the Rebbe walked between the two rows—what do you call it, a guard of honor. The Rebbe walked down the middle, and as he walked he wished us a happy Pesach and that we should prepare for Pesach quickly. Then the Rebbe continued on, and we all ran to see him, to see him, to see the Rebbe. He turned, then went straight and left, and left again. From the car the Rebbe waved his hand to us, like this, goodbye. Right away everyone broke into a dance. A big dance, with tremendous excitement. That was it. We were there, and we thought, “This is where we’ll be, this is where we’ll live.” And we stayed here. This is where we found our place. When was the farbrengen? When was the first farbrengen? Right away, right away. We arrived on Wednesday. On Thursday we were called up to the Torah in the Rebbe’s building. The gabbai called us up for the Torah reading in the small shul. All forty bochurim were there, and after the Rebbe was called up for the third aliyah, the gabbai began calling us up near the Rebbe. The Rebbe looked at each and every one. The gabbai did well: the Rebbe looked at every one of us. That Shabbos was the first farbrengen. I remember when the Rebbe came in for the farbrengen, he signaled to Rabbi Yoel to start a niggun for a maamar. There were a number of niggunim for maamarim then. There would be two sichos, and the first part included a maamar.

1:16:40 Speaker 3 So let’s start with the maamar.

1:16:42 Speaker 2 With the maamar. “Hachodesh hazeh lachem,” or “Yeish chodoshim.”

1:16:53 Speaker 3 That was 12 Nissan.

1:16:55 Speaker 2 It was 12 Nissan.

1:16:55 Speaker 3 You said you arrived—

1:16:57 Speaker 2 It was the twelfth—

1:16:58 Speaker 3 So, the fourteenth. But you didn’t know anything about 14 Nissan yet.

1:17:03 Speaker 2 We knew it was 14 Nissan.

1:17:04 Speaker 3 But there hadn’t been a farbrengen yet, had there?

1:17:07 Speaker 2 The following year.

1:17:07 Speaker 3 There was a farbrengen. We’ll get to that in a moment.

1:17:10 Speaker 2 But there was a maamar.

1:17:11 Speaker 3 The subject was “Malcho”...

1:17:13 Speaker 2 “Leha’alos es Hashem.” No.

1:17:14 Speaker 3 On the sixteenth.

1:17:15 Speaker 2 By the sixteenth there had already been a maamar, until—Lag—

1:17:18 Speaker 3 But there wasn’t anything special on 14 Nissan, as such? No, not at first.

1:17:24 Speaker 2 Nothing special.

1:17:25 Speaker 3 And then the Rebbe said a maamar at the beginning of the farbrengen.

1:17:27 Speaker 2 That was on Friday.

1:17:28 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:17:29 Speaker 2 I know the Rebbe was born on a Friday too.

1:17:30 Speaker 3 Yes. The Rebbe once mentioned that too.

1:17:32 Speaker 2 He didn’t say much about it, or something like that. But of course we saw the Rebbe on Friday. No, it’s not permitted to—

1:17:41 Speaker 3 And then the Rebbe began the maamar. Did he refer at the farbrengen to your arrival?

1:17:44 Speaker 2 Oh.

1:17:45 Speaker 3 What happened?

1:17:45 Speaker 2 In the sichos he said that there were bochurim who had come to study Torah. That was what they were there for. They hadn’t come to learn the names of the streets. They had come to study Torah; that was the purpose, and the only purpose. Something like that. The Rebbe said that anyone who didn’t understand that should understand: that was the point, that was the purpose. This may have been before Pesach—

1:18:17 Speaker 3 To go back.

1:18:18 Speaker 2 To go back, I mean.

1:18:19 Speaker 3 There was also something at the airport, wasn’t there? Someone saw you were coming to learn, that you were coming to study with him.

1:18:25 Speaker 2 Ah, that was Freund.

1:18:26 Speaker 3 What happened?

1:18:27 Speaker 2 The Rebbe said that.

1:18:28 Speaker 3 Freund came to the airport, something like that.

1:18:30 Speaker 2 I said that he told various bochurim what he felt he needed to tell them: “Do you know why you’re going? To study and keep the sedorim. That’s why you’re going.” I don’t know why he said it, but I don’t think that was from the Rebbe. There was also Shvi’i shel Pesach. At the end of the farbrengen on Shvi’i shel Pesach there were great revelations. The Rebbe did something with “Machbo.”

1:18:50 Speaker 3 What happened?

1:18:50 Speaker 2 “Machbo”—he spoke about “Machbo” that day.

1:18:53 Speaker 3 I don’t know. Tell us.

1:18:54 Speaker 2 The Rebbe said that this precious maamar, “Machbo,” which they were now publishing—or were going to publish, something like that... The Rebbe spoke at length about the greatness of the maamar and what was special about it, now that it had been printed. I remember it hadn’t been printed before. Those things, including the one about Beis, hadn’t been printed. Only afterward did the Rebbe say to print it; it had all been in stencil copies, what they called copies. So at the end of the farbrengen on Shvi’i shel Pesach, before the Rebbe left, he lifted the matzos that were in front of him with both hands and, with his eyes closed, said—let me put it in English—that there were now two groups: one group that had been here from the previous year until Pesach, and a second group that had just come from Eretz Yisroel for Pesach. They should take these matzos, hold a farbrengen together and make good resolutions. That was, so to speak, how the whole—

1:20:04 Speaker 3 Pesach.

1:20:04 Speaker 2 Pesach, yes.

1:20:06 Speaker 3 Before I get to Pesach, just a moment: did Grandpa encourage you to make the trip? Did he prepare you? Was he happy you were going?

1:20:13 Speaker 2 Of course he was happy. It’s interesting: the last time Grandpa came to the Rebbe—every year he would travel to the Rebbe from Yud Shvat until Pesach. Every year. Yud Shvat, Purim, until Pesach, and then he would return to Israel.

1:20:29 Speaker 3 For Pesach, Pesach—

1:20:30 Speaker 2 He would return to Israel with the matzos for Eretz Yisroel.

1:20:33 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

1:20:33 Speaker 2 The Rebbe would have him—

1:20:35 Speaker 3 Go and bring them.

1:20:35 Speaker 2 Go and bring them to Eretz Yisroel. The Rebbe would say, “When you get to the airport, before you board the plane, drink some water.” So a group would gather around Grandpa—

1:20:46 Speaker 3 At Kennedy, meaning the New York airport, on his way back.

1:20:49 Speaker 2 Before all that, he would drink water right there, before the flight. He had a lot of water to drink, a full amount.

1:20:59 Speaker 3 So when was the last time he came?

1:21:01 Speaker 2 At the end of 5730 he was there, and I helped him a great deal and did things for him.

1:21:07 Speaker 3 In 5730, with everything.

1:21:09 Speaker 2 5730, 5730, yes. I helped him then.

1:21:11 Speaker 3 Ah, we’ll get to that in a moment.

1:21:12 Speaker 2 That was the last time he was—

1:21:13 Speaker 3 When, actually, was the first time he traveled to the Rebbe after the Rebbe became Rebbe? Right away, on Yud—

1:21:19 Speaker 2 Uh, 5717, I think. 5717, 5717. I remember when he traveled. We went to the airport; there was a sort of balcony where you could see the people, and...

1:21:29 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

1:21:29 Speaker 2 That was what they did. So they would come out with the—

1:21:32 Speaker 3 Profiles.

1:21:32 Speaker 2 With those profiles.

1:21:34 Speaker 3 So he—

1:21:34 Speaker 2 So he traveled, and the Rebbe was already Rebbe then. From then on it became a regular thing, year after year.

1:21:39 Speaker 3 The Rebbe also appointed him, besides having him establish the Chabad neighborhood, to be responsible for Colel Chabad, right?

1:21:43 Speaker 2 Yes, he was also involved with Colel Chabad. It had already begun in the Rebbe’s time, and all the Rebbe’s matters and Chabad matters. Anything to do with Chabad in Jerusalem came straight to his home. All the chassidim’s greetings and wishes for a good year, and everything else, all the time, and the committees’ activities...

1:22:03 Speaker 3 In other words, he was essentially the person in charge, the representative.

1:22:05 Speaker 2 In Shvat he would receive that, and everything the Rebbe needed. He was in contact with the Rebbe every day: getting books for the Rebbe, sending him books, matters involving the library, speaking with Shazar about it, speaking with... He was constantly receiving instructions and questions, all the time.

1:22:23 Speaker 3 Well, then Pesach arrived. [unclear], when the Rebbe came to your seder.

1:22:28 Speaker 2 Ah. You understand that things like that are simply beyond description?

1:22:35 Speaker 3 A little.

1:22:35 Speaker 2 I’ll just tell you what happened there.

1:22:37 Speaker 3 Try to describe it a little in words, anyway.

1:22:39 Speaker 2 Before the Rebbe held his Seder, he first went to visit the boys who were having theirs on President Street, as it was called.

1:22:50 Speaker 3 That’s where the college is today.

1:22:51 Speaker 2 The college there, on Kingston Street today.

1:22:55 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:22:55 Speaker 2 On the second floor. So he came there, and the place was new. They had taken care of it and fixed it up. It was a nice place, clean, beautifully painted. He came to us and climbed all those stairs, just imagine, to us. And he went to FREE, for the Russians.

1:23:13 Speaker 3 President.

1:23:14 Speaker 2 President. And he went to Machon Chana, to the girls. He went in to see them too, and gave a blessing here, and a blessing here, and a blessing here. When he went upstairs, the first person to greet him was Mrs. Musya, a"h. Those who knew her know she was a great tzaddekes, a great chassidiste. He went into the kitchen and looked at everything. She explained things to the Rebbe. Even though—afterward, when the Rebbe left, she said, “Now that’s what you call a great tzaddik; that’s what you call a discerning eye.” The great tzaddik had seen the holiness, had seen that everything in my kitchen was kosher and everything was good. That’s what she said. The Rebbe blessed her. Then the Rebbe went in to the boys. Every boy was already ready with his Seder plate. We made the plates out of a paper tablecloth folded—

1:23:58 Speaker 3 A tablecloth, that kind of tablecloth.

1:23:59 Speaker 2 But made of paper.

1:24:00 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:24:01 Speaker 2 And between the folds we put the matzos, and on top we put all the—

1:24:07 Speaker 3 Seder items.

1:24:07 Speaker 2 Yes, the Seder items. The Rebbe went along all the long rows, from one person to the next, looking at every Seder plate, at every person. He walked among all of us. Suddenly, beside me, he stopped by someone and looked and looked for quite a while. After the Rebbe left, they looked at the plate to see why he had been looking: the matzos were broken. Anyway, the Rebbe said: “For G-d will save Zion and build the cities of Judah; they shall dwell there and inherit it. The descendants of His servants shall inherit it, and those who love His name shall dwell therein.” That was the blessing.

1:24:55 Speaker 3 So that chapter of Tehillim—because that’s when it began.

1:24:57 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. What was the story with “Elokim Yoshi’a Tziyon”? How did that suddenly become a thing? The truth is, we accompanied the group that was going back to Israel. Our group rode along with them to see them off, and in the car they sang “Elokim Yoshi’a.” One of the boys from that group had sort of put together—

1:25:24 Speaker 3 Set the words to a tune, yes.

1:25:26 Speaker 2 Every year, a tune—

1:25:27 Speaker 3 That really hadn’t been done.

1:25:27 Speaker 2 There was no such thing, but they sang “Elokim Yoshi’a Tziyon.” Fine, very nice. We didn’t hear anything more about it then. But on Shavuos, at the Rebbe’s meal upstairs, some boys who had gone in started singing “Elokim Yoshi’a Tziyon.” The Rebbe suddenly asked, “Who set the words to the tune?” They answered, “The bochurim.” The Rebbe smiled with satisfaction. We always used to wait for those who had been at the meal to come downstairs afterward and tell us what had happened—questions they had asked the Rebbe and so on. So we waited in the small room, and people came down and told us about it. Among other things, they said someone had started singing “Elokim Yoshi’a Tziyon,” and the Rebbe had asked, “Who set the words to the tune?” They said, “The bochurim,” and the Rebbe had been very pleased. So we suggested to the boys—the ones who had made up the tune hadn’t suggested it themselves—“The Rebbe will be coming down to his room in a moment. Stand by the entrance to the room downstairs and sing ‘Elokim Yoshi’a Tziyon.’ The Rebbe likes it.” So we waited. All the boys who were in the area came over to—

1:26:49 Speaker 3 You have to understand, in those years it wasn’t a regular thing to stand near the Rebbe and sing.

1:26:54 Speaker 2 Right. So the Rebbe came down the wooden stairs—

1:26:57 Speaker 3 The inside stairs.

1:26:58 Speaker 2 Yes, the inside stairs. As soon as we saw the Rebbe coming down, we started singing. The Rebbe looked and looked, smiled, and made a circle—

1:27:09 Speaker 3 A circular motion with his hand.

1:27:10 Speaker 2 With his hand, with his finger, he made a circular motion. Meaning, get moving—

1:27:13 Speaker 3 Get moving.

1:27:13 Speaker 2 “You’re just standing there singing!” So we started dancing and dancing and dancing. The Rebbe was very pleased and went into his room. We sang for maybe two hours without stopping, perhaps even longer, with tremendous enthusiasm. Later, when the Rebbe came down for the farbrengen, it was already the first niggun everyone sang, and the Rebbe—

1:27:33 Speaker 3 Encouraged it strongly.

1:27:34 Speaker 2 On Yud-Beis Tammuz, the Rebbe himself began singing it alone. He sang a phrase and the crowd answered; he sang a phrase and the crowd answered. The Rebbe took to that niggun with great affection.

1:27:44 Speaker 3 He was fond of it.

1:27:45 Speaker 2 And it became a very powerful niggun. The Rebbe spoke about the words, about “they shall dwell there and inherit it.” He was always speaking about Moshiach and all that. And then, apparently, every year they began looking for—

1:27:59 Speaker 3 Words, and composing niggunim.

1:28:03 Speaker 2 At first they fitted words to existing niggunim. Later they began to—

1:28:08 Speaker 3 Compose tunes.

1:28:09 Speaker 2 And the Rebbe accepted that too.

1:28:11 Speaker 3 Yes. After the Rebbe blessed you at your Seder, did you run to the Rebbe’s Seder?

1:28:15 Speaker 2 Now I’ll confess something. I’ll mention an idea that’s almost a closely guarded secret. A few did go up. I must have thought I had to be someone special. What happened was this: I’d heard from the previous group about the previous Pesach. There had been a bit of a commotion.

1:28:38 Speaker 3 There was pushing.

1:28:38 Speaker 2 They may have broken a leg of one of the Seder tables. Afterward, the Rebbe said that people shouldn’t come into the Seder at all. That had always been the arrangement: people didn’t come into the Seder. You see it in the Pesach Haggadah too: Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Tarfon sat in Bnei Brak all that night, until their students came to them. The students hadn’t been there; they came in the morning. So on Pesach you don’t go to your rav. No, there’s no need to come. Later people brought up the Zohar, and the Rebbe clarified what he had meant. I told myself—I didn’t regret my decision afterward, though of course I missed out, because a few boys went up, enjoyed it, and told us about it. But I thought: the Rebbe has said he doesn’t want people coming. And the rabbis weren’t there either. On Pesach, specifically, they didn’t come. The Rebbe didn’t say anything to those boys; he didn’t turn them away, G-d forbid. But I said to myself, don’t go. And that was it—I didn’t go in.

1:29:53 Speaker 3 At either Seder.

1:29:53 Speaker 2 Some people told me I had—

1:29:56 Speaker 3 You weren’t at either Seder.

1:29:57 Speaker 2 No, I wasn’t. I told myself: the Rebbe doesn’t want it, so am I going to show up just because I want to see? You want to? You can want to.

1:30:04 Speaker 3 Yes. Well—

1:30:05 Speaker 2 But the meal was something more important than... perhaps. Later people said that was nonsense, that it wasn’t true.

1:30:12 Speaker 3 Afterward you began to—where did you sit and learn? Not in the summer—in [unclear], where did you learn? In 770?

1:30:19 Speaker 2 We learned in 770, and we also learned in...

1:30:23 Speaker 3 [unclear]?

1:30:24 Speaker 2 We learned in [unclear] too. There was a period when we learned there. And afterward we would take part in the chazarah of Chassidus. Reb Yoel would always review the Rebbe’s words, and we put a lot into listening, listening and listening. Gerlitzky was there too.

1:30:42 Speaker 3 Reb Abba [unclear].

1:30:43 Speaker 2 Reb Abba [unclear] would write and write and write. Afterward they would put it out and print it.

1:30:48 Speaker 3 And as you began to get to know what you might call the Rebbe’s language, did you immediately grasp...?

1:30:54 Speaker 2 It was easier for me because I knew Yiddish well, and...

1:30:58 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

1:30:58 Speaker 2 Some didn’t know Yiddish.

1:31:00 Speaker 3 Maybe you stood in a good spot, and right away you could...

1:31:04 Speaker 2 I stood by Chaim Bor’s window, way up high. So I was high up, but on the other hand I was right—

1:31:11 Speaker 3 You could see.

1:31:11 Speaker 2 I paid attention to every detail, every detail. The Rebbe would take a handkerchief to say the maamar, put it under... I saw everything, everything. You can really see from there. From up high you can see even better.

1:31:22 Speaker 3 And you could hear? On Shabbos you could hear?

1:31:24 Speaker 2 In the early years, perhaps you could hear better. Later on, in the later years, if it was on Shabbos, then I had to...

1:31:31 Speaker 3 Strain to hear.

1:31:32 Speaker 2 Strain to hear, yes. I remember, before maamarim began to be edited, as a young bochur I had this understanding that a maamar came from Above. These were the words of the living G-d being spoken now. They even used an expression about the Rebbe himself not knowing what would be revealed in it. There’s an expression that when the Rebbe says a maamar, he feels as though he’s walking down the street and people are throwing stones at him and humiliating him. That means he has to have such complete bittul. And everything he says in the maamar, he feels himself; everything he says in the maamar consists of combinations of Divine Names. That’s what the older chassidim passed down. In general, a maamar comes from Above. When the time comes for a maamar to be revealed, it is revealed. As they say, “He looked into the Torah and created the world”—that’s certainly how it is. So when the Rebbe put the handkerchief in place and began the first farbrengen, he immediately said that we had come to the heart of the maamar. I said to myself, in another moment we’re going to hear something from Heaven. The hiskashrus of the bochurim was something very, very special. It’s something we have to work on our whole lives.

1:32:51 Speaker 4 When did you go in for yechidus?

1:32:54 Speaker 2 I went in for yechidus close to my birthday.

1:32:57 Speaker 4 9 Tammuz.

1:32:59 Speaker 2 Ah, yes, in Tammuz. It was a few days after my birthday, around that time—not on the exact day. The Rebbe asked me in the middle of the yechidus: “Regarding the birthday you wrote about, did you receive an aliyah on the Shabbos before your birthday?”

1:33:22 Speaker 4 Regarding the birthday you wrote about, did you receive an aliyah on the Shabbos before your birthday?

1:33:28 Speaker 2 I said yes. Tzedakah, too.

1:33:30 Speaker 4 Tzedakah, too.

1:33:31 Speaker 2 I had given that, too. So after the Rebbe asked me, he began giving blessings and blessings and blessings.

1:33:37 Speaker 4 Wait a second, but before that—was that how the yechidus began, or what happened?

1:33:41 Speaker 2 When I went in for yechidus, I didn’t know how to prepare for it. I didn’t know how to prepare, what to do. So I had heard [unclear] in the Rebbe’s name about reviewing what one learned as a child—that even if he just reads and studies it, it counts as reviewing his childhood learning. So I sat there waiting for Reb Groner to tell me to go in, and I went over it and went over it and reviewed it. I finished once and started again from the beginning. I understood that I needed to polish something up a little before going in. What happened when I entered yechidus was really something very special. You could say that’s how a young bochur sees it, but it happened. The person before me had gone in, and I knew that when he came out—perhaps Groner had told me, “You’re next”—I would go in. And I thought to myself: When I go in for yechidus, I’ll be at my very best. I’ll be completely there. But no, I felt normal. That’s what I was thinking. Suddenly he came out, opened the door, and I had to go in. I had to knock on the door and go in. Suddenly I heard a boom! I thought something had happened, and then another boom. I was about to go in to the Rebbe—what was that booming? Then I realized it was...

1:35:29 Speaker 4 Your heartbeat.

1:35:30 Speaker 2 My heartbeat. I hadn’t expected those pounding beats, and they were so strong. I went in, into the Rebbe’s room. The Rebbe was sitting with his head bowed. You couldn’t really see his face, only half of it. The Rebbe looked completely different. The Rebbe’s face in yechidus looked completely different from how it looked during a maamar. Something entirely different. And as I went in, I felt as if I couldn’t enter, as if the whole room was full. I quickly thought to myself, as a child: It’s like the darkness in Egypt—lehavdil, a thousand times over. There was so much holiness here that I couldn’t walk. So I forced myself to go in, and the Rebbe held out his hand to me with this startling seriousness, with such a penetrating look, as though his hand was there to receive the—

1:36:30 Speaker 5 He held out his hand to receive the pan.

1:36:31 Speaker 2 To receive the pan, and that was it. From then on I stood there. I didn’t even look at the Rebbe or do anything else. I said to myself: I’ve given myself over to the Rebbe. I wrote the Rebbe everything there was to write, and I gave it to him. The Rebbe will say what he has to say. There was a pause for some time; apparently the Rebbe read it and made marks. I don’t know. And then suddenly the Rebbe began answering at lightning speed: Regarding this question, such and such. Regarding that question, such and such. Regarding this other question, on this matter, such and such. I thought it was as if everything was already prepared; the Rebbe had only pressed a button, and it was transmitting what he had prepared beforehand. Such speed, and addressing every—

1:37:11 Speaker 5 Everything was in order.

1:37:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, exactly. Then, after answering me so quickly, the Rebbe began speaking to me about the birthday I had written about. Had I received an aliyah, had I given tzedakah? He finished the yechidus with all the blessings. Then he raised his head and looked at me. I could barely look, but when the Rebbe raised his head, there was such compassion. I thought: The Rebbe simply wants to lift up the chassidim. He wants to give them the strength, the—

1:37:50 Speaker 5 What? Of the things you wrote about, what are you allowed to reveal?

1:37:54 Speaker 2 What did we write about? We can’t really... But the things we wrote and the things the Rebbe answered—his answers have continued to answer us all these years. What the Rebbe told me stays with me all the time. There were a few more yechidus—

1:38:22 Speaker 5 We’ll get to those.

1:38:23 Speaker 2 This year was very, very special. Very special.

1:38:27 Speaker 5 What do you write about the past? How did you do it?

1:38:31 Speaker 2 Everyone writes what he thinks the Rebbe can—

1:38:36 Speaker 5 What can be revealed, though? What can we learn from it? Is there anything?

1:38:39 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:38:39 Speaker 5 Things that could inspire the listeners.

1:38:47 Speaker 2 The Rebbe wanted Torah learning to increase everywhere, and for a person to be immersed in it wherever he is. Did you see the Rebbe going into shul? His lips were moving the whole time. When he came out of shul, it was the same. You could see it on his lips. The Rebbe was constantly, constantly saying words of Torah. The Rebbe wants a bochur, or an older person, or anyone, to be immersed in Torah all the time he’s awake.

1:39:17 Speaker 5 That’s what the Rebbe impressed upon you in yechidus.

1:39:19 Speaker 2 Yes, that.

1:39:20 Speaker 5 To occupy yourself with learning.

1:39:24 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. He established that everywhere, uh—

1:39:29 Speaker 5 The fact that you’re a grandfather and you’re a grandson—that wasn’t...

1:39:33 Speaker 2 No, no, I didn’t receive any special attention because of that, not because I was a relative. In letters, the Rebbe writes to me, “[unclear], family...”

1:39:43 Speaker 5 Yes, “may it stand him in good stead in all the above.”

1:39:46 Speaker 2 Things like that.

1:39:47 Speaker 5 You’re saying that in yechidus you felt good about [unclear].

1:39:49 Speaker 2 No, the Rebbe didn’t.

1:39:52 Speaker 5 Well, afterward you come out of yechidus and farbreng—that’s...

1:39:57 Speaker 2 That, that, that’s one of those things. It’s one of a person’s greatest possessions. His assets, his treasures—it’s something you can’t define at all. You know how the young people say to us: “You were there on 18 Elul, you were there for that—and what about us? Weren’t we?” And they’re more chassidish than we are.

1:40:25 Speaker 5 Right.

1:40:26 Speaker 2 It’s unbelievable.

1:40:28 Speaker 5 Well, after 18 Elul comes Tishrei—the preparation for Tishrei, Elul, that famous Tishrei. So, the tekios: the one time you were there for the tekios. Describe it for us, Rabbi Wolpo.

1:40:40 Speaker 2 Very, very, very special. Very special. Very special. I was fortunate to be there for just one Tishrei—no, not one Tishrei, one Rosh Hashanah.

1:40:52 Speaker 5 One set of tekios.

1:40:53 Speaker 2 One set of tekios.

1:40:54 Speaker 5 And you were—you were on shlichus.

1:40:55 Speaker 2 I was on shlichus. That’s a story, too.

1:40:58 Speaker 5 As we’ll hear later. But let’s hear for a moment—

1:41:01 Speaker 2 I’ll tell it now.

1:41:02 Speaker 5 I have time.

1:41:03 Speaker 2 So, uh, I managed to get a place close by. For the haftaros every Shabbos, too, I was fortunate to be close, even though we were new and had only just arrived, and all the Americans had taken over the area. But I managed to get close, close, close, close enough to hear every word the Rebbe said in the haftorah. The way the Rebbe said it... There were haftaros when the Rebbe cried in the middle. I’m not talking about the preparation—before Rosh Hashanah there’s preparation.

1:41:32 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

1:41:33 Speaker 2 Certainly. And there were several other times when the Rebbe—

1:41:36 Speaker 5 During the year as well.

1:41:37 Speaker 2 During the year there were several times. I remember Shabbos Chazon: suddenly, in the middle of the words—the Rebbe had read everything normally, and then reached “Hear the word of Hashem, rulers of Sodom.” He could no longer speak normally, and every word after that was broken up with crying, until he had to... It had been normal, like every Shabbos. The same thing happened on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashanah. There’s “I will greatly rejoice in Hashem,” and everything was fine, until suddenly he reached “For Zion’s sake I will not... uh... be still”—however it goes.

1:42:20 Speaker 5 “For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be still.”

1:42:23 Speaker 2 Such crying! Suddenly, on that word! It wasn’t that he’d already been overcome beforehand. No, it had all been in a strong voice and everything was fine, and then, on that word...

1:42:32 Speaker 5 What they call going from zero to a hundred. Suddenly.

1:42:34 Speaker 2 Suddenly, the very fact that he was the Rebbe—you simply can’t describe it. I was also with the Rebbe that summer, when the Rebbe spoke about the situation in Eretz Yisroel. The Rebbe said they must not agree to a ceasefire with the Egyptians. He pleaded with people to speak to the government and to anyone they could, so there would be no ceasefire. They decided on a ninety-day ceasefire. The Rebbe said: All this time you’ve been fighting at the Canal, putting yourselves in danger, and soldiers are falling. Why? So the Egyptians won’t build their missile batteries. Missile batteries—Hashem protect us. That’s why you keep firing to prevent them from doing it, in a very difficult situation. It was the War of Attrition. Now, if you give them ninety days, they’ll disregard the agreement. They will bring in the missiles and set up their batteries, while you, the tenderhearted government, have promised not to fire for ninety days. They’ll build their missile batteries, and not even a Phantom jet will be able to destroy them, the Rebbe said. And who knows how many precious lives we’ll pay for those ninety days, the Rebbe said. Then the Rebbe said this: “When I was in cheder, I had a melamed”—I remember him saying it then—“who would find a verse for everything. Whatever it was, he found a fitting verse. Once we came to him and saw that he was very happy. We asked him, ‘Why are you so happy?’ ‘I found a verse,’ he said.” That was why he was happy. “So have I,” the Rebbe said. The Rebbe became serious. “Today I found a verse in the haftorah. I read there: ‘Is My hand too short to redeem? Do I lack the strength to save?’ It says, ‘I called, and no one answered,’ there in one of the summer haftaros. ‘Why did I come

1:45:09 Speaker 2 and there was no one? I called, and no one answered.’” He said:

1:45:14 Speaker 6 [unclear]

1:45:14 Speaker 2 [unclear]. “Why did I come and there was no one? I’m coming to help you. I’m coming to save you.” He said it in Yiddish. “I’m coming to save you, to help you—just don’t accept those ninety days. To save you. [unclear]. I’m telling you, don’t do it. [unclear].”

1:45:35 Speaker 6 [unclear].

1:45:36 Speaker 2 That is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to the Jewish people: “Is My hand too short to redeem? Do I lack the strength to save?” And he cried. He said, “I found a verse.” He’s telling them, listen. Everything that happened afterward...

1:45:55 Speaker 6 Then Yom Kippur—

1:45:56 Speaker 2 Yom Kippur came out of that.

1:45:58 Speaker 6 And “Who is a Jew?” was also going on in your time, actually.

1:46:00 Speaker 2 Oh, “Who is a Jew?” was very intense. It had started even earlier. [unclear].

1:46:06 Speaker 6 [unclear].

1:46:07 Speaker 2 Earlier in cheder. But when the Rebbe spoke about who is truly a Jew, there was no end to the anguish with which the Rebbe spoke. Such bitterness, such pain. It was simply unbelievable. And what was happening? The Rebbe would farbreng, filling the time with sichos and notes, and with sichos about the Rebbe’s father, whose explanations of Tanya and Zohar had then been brought out. Every week there was more and more of it.

1:46:42 Speaker 6 And he would say l’chaim with the chassidim.

1:46:43 Speaker 2 Yes. And naturally, when the Rebbe farbrenged for so many hours, the bochurim listened to every word, but they were tired from the whole week, so they might miss a few things. Suddenly the Rebbe raised his voice and said, “This is only about the designation ‘Jew’!” The whole crowd was jolted. You could see everyone move. The Rebbe spoke for about half an hour, speaking and speaking. It was like night and day. He said they weren’t putting a stop to it, even though they had already claimed there was no such thing. Conversions? There were no conversions, they said, none at all. Then, when we proved that there were, they came up with another trick: not even conversions. Come to register and say you’re Jewish. Come to register; don’t say, “My father is Jewish and my mother isn’t.” Don’t say it. They instructed them, he said, that when they came to register upon immigration, they should all be registered as Jews. The Rebbe said: They’re deceiving the non-Jew, and afterward the non-Jew will see that he was deceived, that he was told things that weren’t true. To become a Jew, one needs a conversion according to halachah. Only then does Hakadosh Boruch Hu give him a Jewish soul and he becomes a Jew.

1:48:02 Speaker 6 Then the Rebbe mentioned Netanya, where there was...

1:48:05 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. The Rebbe, in the same breath—yes, yes. That was the story of the Chief Rabbi of Israel, who ruled that they were brother and sister and permitted them to marry.

1:48:18 Speaker 6 That came later.

1:48:20 Speaker 2 Yes, that too. How much the Rebbe spoke about it, how much he spoke. He said, “I’m not troubled by everyone who comes out against me, because the Lubavitcher Rebbe agrees with my ruling. The proof is that he hasn’t said anything.” But they took advantage of that. I saw his first written ruling. Later he realized that ruling didn’t hold up, so he wrote a new one. I saw the second one too. It turned out that the Rebbe rejected it completely. Yet he said, “The Lubavitcher Rebbe agrees with me, so why should anyone else trouble me?” Some nerve!

1:48:55 Speaker 6 I’m talking about the fact that—

1:48:56 Speaker 2 They gave him the—

1:48:57 Speaker 6 The Rebbe, the Rebbe didn’t, so to speak, enter into the substance of the case. The Rebbe said that the very fact that—

1:49:00 Speaker 2 They gave him—

1:49:01 Speaker 6 The ruling followed a promise of a political appointment.

1:49:04 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:49:06 Speaker 6 So let’s go back to the tekios.

1:49:09 Speaker 2 I was at the tekios several times, and the Rebbe began to say the “Lamnatzeiach” and all of that. He covered the entire lectern there with his tallis and leaned over it, and the Rebbe went on and on. Then it took time—the verses the Rebbe said afterward, seven times. I had never heard anything like it. The whole congregation stood in awe and fear. During the tekios themselves, the Rebbe made many, many movements—dozens of movements each time.

1:49:53 Speaker 6 Could you hear crying?

1:49:56 Speaker 2 You could hear loud crying during the haftorah, at the beginning. I really don’t remember now about when the Rebbe was under the tallis and all that. I don’t remember now.

1:50:08 Speaker 6 But you could see the order of Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofros and all that.

1:50:11 Speaker 2 You couldn’t make anything out. They brought the black shofar, which had a crack; it was still used then, because afterward they stopped using it. [unclear]. For example, Yom Kippur—I can’t even explain it to you. At that point the Rebbe didn’t have a platform at all. The Rebbe was—

1:50:36 Speaker 6 On the floor, with a carpet.

1:50:37 Speaker 2 Yes, as usual, yes.

1:50:37 Speaker 6 There was a carpet.

1:50:38 Speaker 2 A carpet and—

1:50:39 Speaker 6 A place.

1:50:40 Speaker 2 A place for the Rebbe. Anyway, I got a spot right on the right-hand side, about a meter from the Rebbe. I was there the whole of Yom Kippur, and I stood on my feet all Yom Kippur. Think about it: Yom Kippur, standing on your feet all day. How can you do that? You didn’t feel a thing. On Yom Kippur, when you’re near the Rebbe, you’re unaware of anything else. Once, during hakafos—I don’t remember which year, one of the first years the Rebbe had a platform—I was right there while the Rebbe was dancing, literally about twenty centimeters from him, because the Rebbe stood beside me and the whole crowd pressed onto the platform. You’d surely say a person couldn’t bear it. But the fact is, I was crushed in there for all those hours and didn’t—

1:51:39 Speaker 6 I didn’t feel it.

1:51:39 Speaker 2 Not because I was especially strong. It was something else. When you’re with the Rebbe, you’re in another world, another state, another place. The main thing for you is that you’re with the Rebbe. So how could you—you don’t really feel what’s happening around you. That’s the fact.

1:51:56 Speaker 6 And on Sukkos there was something special about that for everyone.

1:51:59 Speaker 2 Yes, it was special. Then there was a problem. The Rebbe said that on Sukkos 5730 there had been an incident involving danger to life.

1:52:16 Speaker 6 They were farbrenging and someone broke his leg.

1:52:18 Speaker 2 Shabbos, Shabbos. Not just someone—[unclear]!

1:52:21 Speaker 6 Yes. He wasn’t [unclear] yet then.

1:52:22 Speaker 2 Rabbi, uh—

1:52:23 Speaker 6 He told him. He wasn’t [unclear] yet then.

1:52:25 Speaker 2 He told him. He fell and broke his leg, but, G-d forbid, it could have been much worse. The Rebbe said he didn’t want to take responsibility for a danger to life. He was willing to walk any distance necessary, however far, so there would be a large, safe sukkah that people could enter without danger. He was willing. But they didn’t build a sukkah. The Rebbe said, “I’m willing to walk. Build a large sukkah so there won’t be any danger to life.” But they didn’t build one. So people wondered: What will happen? What will happen? What will happen? Then the Rebbe said he would deliver a maamar. The maamar was at the place where the farbrengen was held. I don’t remember whether there was a sukkah above it or not, because sometimes they opened it up there. I don’t remember whether there was a sukkah then, but the Rebbe said a maamar. And what a maamar! “Ulekachtem Lachem,” I think. They thought that would be enough, as though a maamar was something he couldn’t forgo. The Rebbe also said something about this once. There was an incident on Yud Shvat—I’m going back to a different time—when the Rebbe was farbrenging. In the middle of the sicha, the Rebbe saw two elderly men who seemed to be struggling with each other. Elderly men, elderly men, sitting there by—

1:53:58 Speaker 6 The path below.

1:53:59 Speaker 2 Yes, they were sitting there. In the middle of speaking, the Rebbe looked over and saw two elderly men tussling. Suddenly, one of them said to the Rebbe, “I keep telling him not to do that to me, and he keeps doing it.” What a thing! I thought, Where in the world can I run? The Rebbe has to hear things like that in the middle of a farbrengen. Then the Rebbe became very, very serious. The Rebbe said, “We can do without the freilach, but we cannot do without Vayomer. [unclear].” He said to Reb [unclear]—Reb [unclear] couldn’t do anything. “[Unclear]!” the Rebbe told him more forcefully.

1:54:45 Speaker 6 To start the niggun that comes before Vayomer.

1:54:46 Speaker 2 Vayomer, and that would be it. So you see that Vayomer was something the Rebbe would not, would not, would not give up. We thought that would be it: the Rebbe would get up and leave, as he did on Shavuos. The Rebbe would say Vayomer on Shavuos night, without a niggun beforehand.

1:55:01 Speaker 6 Three in the morning.

1:55:02 Speaker 2 Three in the morning. Everyone was ready by then. The Rebbe sat down in his place, took the towel, arranged it, and began Vayomer. By the time we got to the third day, it was ten in the morning. He finished, got up, and left. It was a sight—I can’t describe it. But we thought the Rebbe would say Vayomer now, on Sukkos, and that would be it. Instead, the Rebbe immediately—

1:55:32 Speaker 6 Encouraged the singing.

1:55:33 Speaker 2 Encouraged it and encouraged it, and then said another two sichos there. It was as though he felt uncomfortable about it. The Rebbe could not tolerate certain things. I also remember several times when I was with the Rebbe. Once, in the middle of a farbrengen, in the middle of a sicha, the Rebbe stopped and pointed to someone apparently far across from him. No one knew whom he meant. He said—I’m translating it into Hebrew—“It is forbidden to cut your nails on Shabbos,” the Rebbe said, “even if you do it before bar mitzvah.” The Rebbe had first given a detailed Torah discussion: In the Alter Rebbe’s teachings it says that a minor who commits a transgression is not liable. Nevertheless, [unclear] says that after he becomes bar mitzvah, he should do teshuvah for transgressions he committed as a child, before bar mitzvah. Then he went on to other matters as well. But suddenly the Rebbe pointed into the crowd, stopped speaking, and said, “Cutting your nails is forbidden on Shabbos. You have to do teshuvah for it, even if you did it before bar mitzvah. And we have people here who are already past bar mitzvah. Rabbonim are sitting here, and no one says a word. Why do I have to be the one to do these things?” The Rebbe said all this in the middle of the sicha. He stopped. He had seen a Jew put his fingernail between his teeth, with people sitting beside him, and not one of them told him that it was Shabbos. But the Rebbe also couldn’t continue the sicha when he saw that a Jew might, G-d forbid, stumble into doing it in another moment. There were also a few times when I was simply startled: in the middle of a sicha, the Rebbe put his right hand over his mouth, closing it firmly like this. What had happened? Someone at the farbrengen was yawning, with his mouth wide open. He hadn’t stopped when the person first began, but then he understood that if he wanted to make a point, he had to do it unmistakably. Even things like that mattered to the Rebbe. Once, after [unclear] in the small zal, the Rebbe opened the door to leave, and suddenly, instead of—

1:57:44 Speaker 2 Leaving, he came back and turned toward us. We were on the small platform in the small zal, not far from the Rebbe.

1:57:51 Speaker 7 The platform used for the Torah reading.

1:57:52 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:57:53 Speaker 7 The platform used for the Torah reading.

1:57:54 Speaker 2 Yes. It was after [unclear]. The Rebbe walked in our direction. Everyone tried to move back, but they could hardly do it because the place was full of bochurim. The Rebbe reached the platform, bent all the way down to the floor, and pulled a cigarette out from under [unclear].

1:58:12 Speaker 7 From under the leg of the platform.

1:58:14 Speaker 2 Yes. He took it out and carried it to his room.

1:58:18 Speaker 7 He carried the [unclear] cigarette all the way to his room?

1:58:20 Speaker 2 Yes. Someone smokes a cigarette in the shul and drops it on the shul floor. What kind of—Hashem protect us! You’re in the Rebbe’s shul, and this is what you do? In other words, the Rebbe did not accept that chassidim should be [unclear]. They should use their heads, observe basic derech eretz, and respect the shul. The Rebbe also once spoke about dirt near the aron kodesh. He said, “What is this?” There was one Jew who would clean the shul with his beard. Rashi’s[?] father would clean the shul with his beard, and there was dirt even there. There was nothing to be done. When people saw the Rebbe coming, they would push it along with their feet. There was dirt, so they pushed it forward with their feet. What? The Rebbe wanted them to get rid of it. A shul was not a place for that. Anything involving the honor of Hashem, the honor of the Torah, the honor of mitzvos—that mattered to the Rebbe. Then came, Hashem protect us, the preparations on Hoshana Rabbah, during davening. You may know the story: a Jew came while the Hoshana Rabbah service was going on and photographed the Rebbe from a distance. The Rebbe suddenly stopped, pointed at him, and said, “Have you learned Chitas? Did you do Chitas today?” To say, “No, I did this part but not that part”—which is better? I’m translating into Hebrew: Which is better, to learn Chitas or to take pictures in a holy place?

2:00:07 Speaker 7 Just a little later, a few—

2:00:08 Speaker 2 Later that same night came the heart attack.

2:00:12 Speaker 7 How many times, in general—

2:00:13 Speaker 2 He came over to us and said he didn’t know what to do. “I’m upset with [unclear].”

2:00:16 Speaker 7 That’s what he thought.

2:00:17 Speaker 2 Yes, he was very frightened. Yes.

2:00:19 Speaker 7 How many times did the Rebbe connect the subject of photography with Tanya? It happened often, too, that the Rebbe [unclear] while walking between farbrengens—

2:00:24 Speaker 2 I didn’t understand.

2:00:24 Speaker 7 With saying Tanya.

2:00:26 Speaker 2 Ah.

2:00:27 Speaker 7 Photography. There are several instances, including in [unclear], where the Rebbe says that Tanya is, as it were—

2:00:32 Speaker 2 Like Chitas?

2:00:32 Speaker 7 Yes.

2:00:33 Speaker 2 Also—

2:00:34 Speaker 7 There was once a pho—

2:00:35 Speaker 2 Photographs in a holy place.

2:00:37 Speaker 7 Once there was a photographer, and the Rebbe sent Reb [unclear] to bring him a Tanya at the farbrengen. It’s very interesting that the Rebbe connected photography with learning Tanya.

2:00:44 Speaker 2 With the Rebbe, everything was truth, everything was truth. “And the truth of Hashem endures forever.” That was—

2:00:51 Speaker 7 Wasn’t that verse about Elokim?

2:00:53 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

2:00:53 Speaker 7 About Hashem. Yes. After that there was—

2:00:55 Speaker 2 There was a continuation. So it really continued what had been said in [unclear]. There was Havayah, according to the forms, [unclear].

2:01:03 Speaker 7 Yes.

2:01:04 Speaker 2 It was one continuation that the Rebbe spoke about then.

2:01:07 Speaker 7 A great yasher koach to Rabbi [unclear] for these vivid, life-giving words. They give us the strength to feel refreshed and to sense the atmosphere as you experienced it with the Rebbe. Of course, we haven’t finished. We’re only pausing to leave some space between one part and the next, and with Hashem’s help, next week, in the next episode, we’ll continue hearing about your life with the Rebbe: the years of the 5730s, Shemini Atzeres of 5738, and many more instructions and stories from your shlichus in Netanya. So, with Hashem’s help, we’ll meet again in the next episode. A great yasher koach.