Rabbi Itzik Kopcik - Bolivia - Part 1

00:20 Speaker 1 We’re with you in the story. Tell us.

00:22 Speaker 2 Okay. Thirteen and a half years ago, I was a young married man studying in a kollel in Tzfas. I’d been there for three years already—one of the old-timers—sitting and learning while looking for a place to go on shlichus. Rabbi Elishansky came to the kollel with a proposal: Rabbi Shmarya Rel[?] was willing to come and give a lecture once a week.

00:49 Speaker 1 It was—

00:49 Speaker 2 The title was “Tools for the Work of Shlichus,” and we had to choose, from what I think were fourteen topics, three that interested us. Naturally, I thought the financial side was what mattered most for shlichus, so I chose the financial topics. Unfortunately for me, most of the men chose public speaking, and I was really disappointed. I didn’t see myself as someone who gave speeches, or even as someone who spoke much, and I thought it was going to be very boring. What did public speaking have to do with me? The first session was a taste of each topic—a sort of introduction to public speaking and to something financial. I don’t remember what the third thing was. I sat through the first hour on public speaking and was captivated. First of all, I discovered that I was a public speaker—that, really, everyone is—and I’d never realized it. And that you need tools for it: you need to know how to prepare and how to do it properly. After that hour, I knew I was really glad and wanted to take part in the workshop. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the next session, because I left on shlichus a week later, maybe two weeks later. But what I got from that session—perhaps there was one more session on public speaking, I don’t remember—the tools I got in that short time stayed with me. I believe they’re still with me today, but in those first years I really felt them, thought about them and kept coming back to them. It was excellent preparation for shlichus.

02:37 Speaker 1 Well, you’ve made me happy. What can I tell you? You really have. Wow.

02:42 Speaker 2 We really never had a chance to talk about this, but I’ve told people about it quite a few times. The hashgachah pratis of it: one week I heard about public speaking, and the next week I found myself speaking in front of a hundred people. Six months later, I had to speak in front of fifteen hundred people, fourteen hundred people, and... it’s possible that without that preparation I wouldn’t have been able to do it. But afterward, I had some tools. And one of the powerful things said there was that people want to listen. Wherever there are people, they’re interested in hearing; they want to hear. Our job is simply to convey the message to them, to give them what they’re looking to hear.

03:31 Speaker 1 On the contrary, Itzik, tell us where you spoke in front of a hundred people, and what happened afterward with the fifteen hundred. Tell us what happened. Let’s hear it, at least.

03:42 Speaker 2 Okay. The truth is, we went on shlichus without any advance preparation. We’d been looking for a place to go on shlichus for several years. In practice, the opportunity came the night after our second son’s bris.

03:59 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

03:59 Speaker 2 My father was the sandek. He’d come from India and said a great many lechaims at the bris. Then, at a certain point, when he was feeling the effects of the wine, he said, “I want to give you a blessing from the heart, with love.” After an introduction like that, I braced myself. What was he going to spring on me? Then he told everyone that he was blessing me, and that they should all say amen: that I should go on shlichus, but not with ten children—because he’d gone to India with ten children. Everyone answered amen and blessed me that I should go on shlichus. That evening, while I was bringing things home from the hall where we’d held the bris, I got a call from a friend. He said, “Listen, I know you’re looking for a place for shlichus and that you really want to go. There’s a place.” I asked him where. He said, “La Paz, Bolivia, South America.” I told him, “Listen, I don’t speak Spanish. I’m not going to South America. It’s far away; it’s not the direction I had in mind.” He said, “Listen, I didn’t call to hear why not. I’ll give you an overview of the place, you’ll know what’s going on, and then you can decide.” He told me there was a place with a very small local Jewish community, as well as hundreds and thousands of travelers passing through the country. There was an active Chabad House, a space, tables, chairs, a refrigerator, a kitchen—everything. The only thing was that the shliach had to leave unexpectedly, and they simply needed someone to replace him. As for the distance, he told me, “After a day or two of travel, it’s over. You’re there, and that’s it.” I didn’t know where it was. I didn’t know where it was on the globe. I seem to remember someone telling me it was four hours from New York. Maybe he’d confused it with La Paz, Mexico, but...

06:06 Speaker 2 Today, the shortest flight takes more than eleven hours. I mean, there’s no direct flight. If there were, it would be like flying from Tel Aviv to New York. These days, when I fly to the Kinus Hashluchim, it’s usually three flights, almost twenty hours. But there’s no choice; I’m here now.

06:23 Speaker 3 Right, there’s no changing that now.

06:25 Speaker 2 Anyway, my friend told me, “Listen, I’d really like to go there myself. It was offered to me, and I was there as a bochur. I want to go back, but for several reasons I can’t. So here’s your opportunity to go on shlichus.” I told him that when I’d been asked about South America before, I’d said absolutely not. Languages are hard for me. He said, “Listen...” I told him, “We’ve also just finished the bris for our second son. There was an unexpected surgery and many miracles, but physically I don’t think we’ll manage to travel. Maybe closer to Chanukah.” This was the beginning of Elul. He said, “Listen, I understand all the difficulties, but the shliach there has to leave in two weeks. He’s already bought his tickets. If you want to meet him and have him show you the ropes, you need to be there next week.” I said, “Uh...” He said, “Okay, those are the conditions. I’m not going to argue with you or explain it to you. That’s the situation.” We ended the call, and I got home. I told my wife, “We’ve been offered a place for shlichus.” I laid out the details for her—this time only the positive things, not the negative ones. She said, “Okay, closer to Chanukah sounds like a good time.” I said, “Right, closer to Chanukah.” Two hours later, I said, “Listen, maybe we could come for the Yomim Tovim, toward the end, for Simchas Torah. We’d meet all the Jews in shul.” Okay, she thought, that’s another month and a half. A few minutes later I said, “Listen, the truth is that the shliach there is leaving in two weeks, and we want him to show us the ropes. So we need to get on a plane next week.” She said she very...

08:15 Speaker 2 ...very much wanted to, but she didn’t think she could manage it physically. We’d have to pack up a home and pack suitcases. I didn’t know. I told her, “Okay, write to the Rebbe, and we’ll see.” She wrote to the Rebbe, and the letter was entirely about the special strength of Jewish women: in their merit we were redeemed, and in their merit we will be redeemed in the future, especially in our generation. She said to me, “Okay, buy the tickets.” I called a travel agent and gave him the airport codes: Tel Aviv to LPB. I hadn’t even looked at where it was on the globe. I sent him photos of our passports. Of course, we didn’t have the money. I called a good friend and said, “Listen, Shmulik, we’ve been offered a place on shlichus. I need five thousand dollars right now for tickets and other expenses. One thing I can tell you for certain: I can’t be certain I’ll pay you back. That’s the situation. If you’re willing to lend it to me on those terms, I’m willing to accept.” And he lent us the money.

09:26 Speaker 4 Good for him. Good for him.

09:28 Speaker 2 The truth is, as soon as we got back, I went to him and repaid the loan. Anyway, that’s how, within a week and a half, we found ourselves landing at our place of shlichus. Our first Shabbos there was Chai Elul. And of course, dozens of people came. At that time, I think there were between eighty and a hundred and twenty people at the Chabad House every Shabbos. Later, there were times of year when we’d have Shabbos with only two or three people, but it depended on the season. There were also Shabboses with two or three hundred people. The biggest event was the Seder night. In those years, more than a thousand people came each time.

10:16 Speaker 4 Really?

10:18 Speaker 2 So standing up and speaking before a crowd like that, right at the beginning of the Seder—just before Yom Tov begins, you have a microphone, but after a few minutes they turn it off—and you find yourself facing a huge crowd, most of whom you don’t know at all. Just knowing that people want to hear is what gave me the strength to speak, lead, and explain everything. It’s the same every Shabbos. People come to the Chabad House, and often they meet other people, talk, share experiences, and ask each other questions. You’re sitting at a Shabbos meal, and often the crowd isn’t sitting quietly and listening. They didn’t come to hear a class. But you know they came to the Chabad House because they want to leave with something. If you don’t convey a message, they’ll leave disappointed. The food may have been good, but there are restaurants outside where the food is sometimes even better. That gives you confidence; it pushes you forward.

11:29 Speaker 4 Do people from the local community come too, or only travelers?

11:33 Speaker 2 It depends on the year. There were years when we were in— the community here is in one area on one side of the city, and the travelers are on the other side, maybe a forty-minute drive away.

11:45 Speaker 4 What’s the city called?

11:47 Speaker 2 La Paz.

11:49 Speaker 4 So that’s the capital of Bolivia.

11:52 Speaker 2 Bolivia has three capitals.

11:54 Speaker 4 The courts?

11:56 Speaker 2 No. There’s a constitutional capital, where the country was proclaimed, and that’s where the Supreme Court is. It’s a city called Sucre. La Paz is the capital in practice, where all the government offices are. And there’s a city called Santa Cruz, which is the economic capital; that’s where all the businesses are. It’s sort of like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, lehavdil. Lehavdil. Until COVID, we lived in the travelers’ area. We lived in the Chabad House itself for many years. We moved nearby, moved back, but our focus was on the travelers. On Shabbos I would walk to the community. It was an hour and a half each way.

12:33 Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

12:33 Speaker 2 Walking, yes. A healthy walk. Often, religious travelers would ask me if there was a minyan. I’d tell them yes: “I leave for the community at eight in the morning”—or seven-thirty. They’d wait for me by the Chabad House, and we’d set off. After ten minutes they’d ask, “So, where is it...?” I’d say, “A few more minutes, a few more minutes.” Once we’d passed the halfway point, I’d tell them, “Okay, now we’ve reached the halfway point. Decide whether you want to go back to the Chabad House or keep going to the minyan.” But those Shabbos walks, when people came with me, were very nice—a chance to talk and get to know one another. It isn’t easy, because it’s an hour and a half downhill and an hour and a half uphill.

13:18 Speaker 5 Ah.

13:20 Speaker 2 Yes, the uphill part is on the way back, so that’s okay.

13:23 Speaker 5 That sounds... that doesn’t sound easy. Not easy.

13:28 Speaker 2 Now, in recent years—COVID disrupted things a bit. The travelers’ Chabad House closed because we had to vacate the building; it was sold. There was a period with the travelers. We moved to the community’s area, and then more people from the community started coming to us, though not so many. Since October 7, as people call it, there have been people here who have spent every Shabbos with us for months. The Yomim Tovim too—Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Simchas Torah—and every Shabbos. I told them, “Bring your mattresses and pillows over here. Why do you keep going back and forth? Stay with us.” It’s simply unbelievable. It sparked a tremendous awakening, and they find themselves at the Chabad House every Shabbos. Older people, too—they make a real effort and come.

14:33 Speaker 5 How big is the community there? How many people are there?

14:37 Speaker 2 The community here today is very, very small. There are between fifty and a hundred people, and we keep finding more Jews, including people in out-of-the-way places. There were once more than ten thousand Jews in the city—“once” meaning after the Holocaust. It’s a piece of history that isn’t very well known, but Bolivia was one of the only countries in the world that admitted Jews during the Holocaust. There’s a station here—today it’s a cable-car station, but it was a very large train station, a very impressive building. Jews would gather in its courtyard every day when the train arrived from Argentina and wait to see whether Jewish refugees got off, so they could help them get food and drink, find somewhere to sleep, and get settled. Over the years people left because conditions here are those of a developing country. There have been many, many revolutions and coups.

15:39 Speaker 5 A complete mess.

15:41 Speaker 2 Yes. The economy here was never good, and now it’s even worse. So most of them did leave. Only a few remained, and every so often we find another Jew here, another Jew there. Some also come with the U.S. Embassy. There’s a Jewish woman here now whose husband is the European Union consul. So every so often we find more Jews—some who come to live here permanently, and some who come for two or three years and then move on.

16:17 Speaker 5 And the travelers now—what’s happening with them?

16:21 Speaker 2 Well, unfortunately, the government here is hostile to Israel.

16:27 Speaker 5 Ah.

16:28 Speaker 2 They expelled the Israeli embassy and severed diplomatic relations.

16:32 Speaker 5 Ah.

16:32 Speaker 2 For the past ten years or so, they’ve also required travelers to get a visa. That drastically reduced the number of travelers here, but there are still hundreds and thousands. I mean, instead of a Seder for 1,500 people, we have a small, home-style Seder for four or five hundred.

16:54 Speaker 5 Home-style, yes.

16:55 Speaker 2 No, that’s quite a crowd.

16:56 Speaker 5 Impressive.

16:56 Speaker 2 …

16:57 Speaker 5 “Home-style” sounds good.

17:00 Speaker 2 It’s all relative, but—

17:02 Speaker 5 Impressive. Do travelers come to you regularly, two or three times, or do they come just once and that’s it?

17:10 Speaker 2 No, they come for a period of time. Travel in Bolivia is usually like a hub-and-spoke trip: they set out from La Paz and come back to La Paz. On average, they’re here for a month or a month and a half. It used to be longer, but these days that’s about the length of it. So people come to the Chabad House several times, on Shabbos and during the week. A little less now because we’re farther away. Boruch Hashem, we bought a building there in the travelers’ area.

17:45 Speaker 5 Ah, so you bought another building on the other side.

17:47 Speaker 2 No.

17:47 Speaker 5 So, so, so explain the setup. What do you mean by a travelers’ area and a community area? I couldn’t understand why the travelers’ area in particular—is that where they head into the jungle, on their journey[?]?

17:58 Speaker 2 No, no. It’s simply a huge city. I don’t know how to compare its size to a city in Israel. It can take maybe two hours to drive from one side to the other.

18:10 Speaker 5 What do you mean?

18:10 Speaker 2 Maybe that’s because of the traffic jams, and the infrastructure isn’t the best. But the city is spread over a very, very large area.

18:19 Speaker 5 Ah.

18:19 Speaker 2 So travelers began going to a particular area because it was the cheap part of town.

18:25 Speaker 5 Ah.

18:25 Speaker 2 And someone... they built hostels and cheap places to stay there. Then everything travelers need developed around them: restaurants, cafés, laundromats, travel agencies, and so on. It’s an area the Jews of the local community wouldn’t go to, because it’s the most crowded part of the city, the smelliest part. There are drunks at night, processions, traffic jams—you name it. So we really run two Chabad Houses: one for travelers and one for the community. They’re two languages, Hebrew and Spanish; two populations, different ages, different worlds. Every so often they meet.

19:11 Speaker 5 Do you have someone specifically looking after the travelers right now?

19:15 Speaker 2 No.

19:16 Speaker 5 So you’re going back and forth from one side to the other.

19:19 Speaker 2 In principle, yes. Right now the activities take place at our place, in our home. Later, once we build the Chabad House and the travelers’ Chabad House is operating all week, 24/7, we’ll see what to do with the community. I mean, it’s not as though there are activities with the community from morning to night. We used to meet at the shul on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbos. Since COVID, that’s fallen off a bit because the minyan has shrunk. A few people passed away, and a few left. So now it’s more about getting together on Shabbos. There’s a weekly class, and we make home visits from time to time.

20:01 Speaker 5 Ah.

20:02 Speaker 2 But it isn’t something that runs from morning to night.

20:04 Speaker 5 Is your Chabad House on the community’s side or the travelers’ side?

20:08 Speaker 2 The building we bought is in the travelers’ area.

20:11 Speaker 5 Ah.

20:12 Speaker 2 And our private home, which serves as a Chabad House, is in the community’s area.

20:18 Speaker 5 So you have two Chabad Houses. One is a building you bought for the travelers, and the other is a house that...

20:24 Speaker 2 It isn’t being used yet. I mean, we bought it. It’s basically a storefront with two floors of storage space. We’re supposed to start renovations. Once we finish, we’ll see whether we keep living here and run the Chabad House there, or move there and travel here. We’ll see. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

20:43 Speaker 5 Interesting, interesting. Very interesting. Thank you, thank you. You’ve told wonderful stories. I’m especially glad that what I said resonated with you. [unclear].

20:56 Speaker 2 It’s unbelievable how sometimes you say something to someone, and at that exact moment they’re ready to receive it. Or you yourself hear something from someone. You can hear a lot of things, but when you’re in the right place and Hakadosh Boruch Hu arranges for you to hear the right thing at the right time, it sinks in deeply. I mean, if I’d heard it earlier or later, it might have gone right past me. That’s something I’ve seen in a number of situations. It’s the same when I speak at the Chabad House. I never know who I’m speaking to. I don’t know what I’m talking about, I don’t know... And sometimes people come up to me and say, “Rabbi, what you said really touched me.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, what did I say? What touched you so much?” Then the person tells me about some situation they went through, something they experienced, and how the rabbi just gave them a precise message—exactly what they needed to hear. I didn’t feel that at all. I hadn’t thought of it; I didn’t know about it. And it has its effect on them.

22:01 Speaker 5 Wonderful. Wonderful. Especially with you, we see you saying, “No, no, no,” and then the no, no, no turns into yes, yes, yes. “I’m not flying off to [unclear]. Oh, sorry, I’m already here.”

22:14 Speaker 2 Since we’ve brought this up, I’ll finish with one more story.

22:16 Speaker 5 Yes.

22:18 Speaker 2 It’s related to this too. On Fridays, the thing I worried about most was never how much food to prepare, or how many people would come. That always worked itself out. What to say—that stressed me out a lot. Someone came to me once. I remember he’d served in Shayetet 13. He was an officer.

22:45 Speaker 5 There’s such a thing.

22:47 Speaker 2 Yes. No, I don’t remember if it was Shayetet 13 or something similar, but he said to me—he did a tremendous amount at the Chabad House. [unclear]. You also see that people who reached that kind of rank generally come in and always help. They really care; they’re quality people. So he said to me, “Listen, I want to tell you something. I’ve been here two or three weeks, I don’t remember exactly. But listen, take this the right way. You know I’m on your side. I’ve become very close to the Chabad House. I really care. I want to offer you a criticism, but please take it in the right spirit.” He said, “You make the same mistake all the army rabbis make.” I said, “Okay, I was never an army rabbi. What mistake?” He said, “You speak from where you’re coming from, not where we’re coming from. You say very nice things, very beautiful things, but they don’t interest us. You’re not—you’re not in our headspace.” I said, “Okay, what can I do about it?” He said, “I don’t know what you can do, but just know that’s how it is.” Okay, that really shook my confidence. Now I’m standing there speaking while people talk among themselves, and I’m thinking, “Fine, I don’t interest them. But what can I say that will interest them? How do I get into their headspace?” I felt pretty down. A week or two later, on a Friday, I had everything prepared—what I was going to say, a story, a joke. It was all put together beautifully. I felt calm. I stood up to speak, and somehow I started talking about something else. What did I start talking about? I have a chavrusa,

24:36 Speaker 2 a weekly phone call with a friend to learn a sicha of the Rebbe. We sit and learn, and I started repeating the sicha I’d learned with him. That week it was a sicha about how you tithe salt. Eisav presented himself as a great tzaddik. He asked Yitzchak how to tithe salt, and the Rebbe asks: He wasn’t presenting himself as a great tzaddik; he was presenting himself as an ignoramus who didn’t know that maaser applies to things that grow from the ground. It was a whole sicha. I started explaining it, and suddenly I had to explain to people what maaser is, because they didn’t know, and that it applies in Eretz Yisroel and not outside it, and only to produce—to fruit and vegetables, not to inanimate things. People were losing their attention and concentration. This sicha didn’t interest them right then, especially since I hadn’t prepared it, so I had to put it together quickly as I went. They started talking, and the room got noisy. I remember a big crowd, 120 people who weren’t interested in what the rabbi was saying. I started feeling hot. I tried opening the window a little to let some air in. How do I get out of this? How do I end this talk? Then I explained that the question wasn’t how to tithe the salt itself, but how to regard its value. Salt itself costs less than a shekel a kilo. What you’re mainly paying for is the transport and the bag. But if it’s missing—if you’re eating a steak that costs fifty or sixty shekels or more and there’s no salt, the whole meal is ruined. So the question was whether you look at something in terms of what it’s worth on its own. Somehow I finished the sicha, started a song, a niggun, and sat down. I said to my wife, “I’m never speaking at the Chabad House again. Tomorrow people won’t come to the Chabad House. I’m

26:35 Speaker 2 telling you. I just spoke for ten, maybe twenty minutes—I don’t remember how long—and none of it interested them. Tomorrow no one will come to the Shabbos meal.” Well, people came the next day. The following week I was back to wondering what to say, what would interest them and what wouldn’t. Two weeks later, I was going around offering l’chaim to the travelers, and one of them said to me, “Rabbi, those two next to me—give them a double shot. Give them a double l’chaim.” I said, “Why? You pay for the food, but I pay for the drinks. I’m not pouring a double l’chaim unless you tell me why.” He said, “No, Rabbi, they’re...” He told me which kibbutz they were from. “They decided they wouldn’t set foot in any Chabad House on this trip.” I said, “What? Look at the signs here. We’re a Chabad House. There’s the ‘Yechi Adoneinu’ sign, and all this.” He said, “No, Rabbi, let me tell you a story. We spent two weeks trekking through the jungle. It’s called a survival trek. You go into the jungle with a guide and a machete, and you have to manage like that for two weeks.”

27:41 Speaker 6 And try to come back.

27:43 Speaker 2 Yes. So he told me that on the last night, it didn’t even occur to him—he was so far removed from my world that he didn’t realize it would be hard for me to hear—that they’d caught a non-kosher animal, cooked it over a fire, and run out of salt. One of his friends said, “If only I had a little salt right now.” He replied, “Wow, salt! Just two weeks ago I was at the Chabad House, and the rabbi explained how salt has its value. Look how much we’d be willing to pay for salt right now.” His friend was impressed. He said, “Wow, I have to hear this. I have to meet that rabbi.” He told him, “Listen, the rabbi lives at the Chabad House. You can’t meet him without going there.” So that’s how they came to the Shabbos meal. I told them, “Okay, you understand now that a Chabad House isn’t just about the hummus and tahini. There are 120 travelers here right now, and we don’t have time to sit and talk. Come on Sunday, and we’ll meet at ten in the morning.” In short, they came on Sunday, and we sat and talked. Then I said to them, “Okay, talk is all well and good, but at a Chabad House you have to put on tefillin.” “No, absolutely not. Under no circumstances. That’s...” I told them, “Listen, I didn’t ask and I didn’t suggest. That’s just how it is.” And both of them put on tefillin for the first time in their lives. They had their bar mitzvahs. That’s when I saw that when you repeat the Rebbe’s teachings, they have their effect.

29:08 Speaker 7 Wow.

29:08 Speaker 2 You understand, with your own talks and the things you prepare, maybe you really aren’t speaking in their headspace. But the Rebbe works through you. And it was specifically when you gave a whole in-depth lecture on salt that those two Jews from the kibbutz came and had their bar mitzvahs.

29:27 Speaker 7 Um, well, listen, I think that, as a personal story, this is wonderful. Really beautiful. Well done. Let’s pause here and arrange a time to continue. Then you can tell us about your parents, your childhood, and all your brothers and sisters. After all, you’re a whole family of shluchim—all of you.

29:52 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem.

29:53 Speaker 7 There’s a lot to tell about that.

29:55 Speaker 2 Yes. Okay.

29:58 Speaker 7 All right, Itzik, thank you very much. Yasher koach.

30:00 Speaker 2 All right.

30:00 Speaker 7 L’chaim, l’chaim.