Rabbi Itzik Kopcik - Bolivia - Part 3

00:21 Speaker 1 Uh, we were talking about the people you’ve met over the course of your shlichus there, their life stories, and your story with them. You know, the encounters, the dilemmas, all kinds of episodes a person comes across in life. To make it easier, I think maybe you should start at the beginning. Who was the first person you met on shlichus? What happened? Then go through them one by one, describe the people, and along the way describe the work of shlichus and the—

00:58 Speaker 2 The truth is, because of the nature of the Chabad House here, I call it a train station with many faces. People come and go. You don’t always get to see or follow the impact the Chabad House has on their later lives. But—

01:18 Speaker 1 Of course, but sometimes—first of all, sometimes there are people who leave a lasting impression, like members of the Jewish community.

01:24 Speaker 2 Right. What I’m saying is, there really are all kinds of cases where you see people who live here, or people through whom the Rebbe later sends you regards. That’s what I sometimes call it: regards from the Rebbe. He wants to encourage you and show you some of the things the Chabad House accomplishes, so he sends you these messages in one way or another.

01:48 Speaker 1 Think of what—

01:49 Speaker 2 Just yesterday, I saw the WhatsApp status of a traveler who’d been here. I said to my wife, “It’s so nice to see this.” He posted a video of himself doing mivtza tefillin, and I think he was here two years ago.

02:10 Speaker 1 Where did he come from? What place?

02:13 Speaker 2 Today he lives in Ramat Aviv, or he does mivtzoim in Ramat Aviv, anyway. So he came here, apparently in the middle of some kind of process, and arrived at our place for Shavuos. He didn’t know where to go or what to do. We told him that the important thing on Shavuos is hearing the Ten Commandments, but he insisted on saying Tikkun Leil Shavuos. Now, you’re supposed to stay up all night, but usually, if there are no travelers, no community, nobody around, then at three you can call it a night. This time I couldn’t, because he was sitting there learning. As long as he was learning, I had to stay. I couldn’t let him stay up all night while I went to sleep. I remember him sitting in a chair by the table, saying Tikkun Leil Shavuos, while I sat on the sofas at the other end of the living room. We stayed up until four or five in the morning. Then I saw how late it was and said to him, “Listen, there’s no point going back to your hotel now. Come, there’s a guest room here; go to sleep there.” And I went to rest. Two hours later I already had to get up to arrange the living room, the shul, the dairy meal for the community, everything. I was so exhausted that I barely slept an hour and a half or two hours. And in our exhaustion, we forgot to wake him for the reading of the Ten Commandments.

03:39 Speaker 1 Oh no.

03:40 Speaker 2 We felt so bad about it, but that’s what happened. I don’t remember—half a year later or something like that… I’m generally not in touch with most people afterward. Then, a year or a year and a half later, he suddenly sent me a wedding invitation. I saw it was a Chabad invitation. I called him and said, “Yaniv, what’s going on?” He told me, “Yes, I’m a Chabadnik. I finished my trip and went to the Chabad yeshiva in Ramat Aviv.” So, yes, boruch Hashem.

04:14 Speaker 1 Who is this young man? Tell us a little about him. Where in Israel is he from? What’s his name? What…?

04:18 Speaker 2 Honestly, I know his name, but I mean, he was only with us for one Shavuos. It stayed with him and with us because of that situation. It’s not as though I knew him before, or that we were in touch afterward, but it was an interesting experience.

04:38 Speaker 1 Who welcomed you when you first arrived in the community? After all, the way you got there was, let’s call it, entirely accidental.

04:46 Speaker 2 Right. First of all, when I say “we,” I mean the many shluchim who came to this place. There had been quite a few shluchim here before us, so the community was already familiar with the Chabad House in one way or another. But one of the Jews here—whose connection to the Rebbe, and how special that connection was, I only learned about later—is a man named Shmuel Brafman. I’m trying to remember where I first met him. I don’t remember. He didn’t even come to daven in shul. Maybe he davened at home; I don’t remember. After we’d been here a while—a month, two months, three months—I met him, probably because he was involved with the chevra kadisha. He gave me a ride back from a funeral, and then he donated an amount that, at the time, was very substantial for me.

05:45 Speaker 1 How much was it?

05:45 Speaker 2 Two hundred dollars, four hundred dollars—I don’t remember. Some amount like that. It really felt like it had fallen into my lap from heaven.

05:51 Speaker 1 In Bolivia, that’s a fortune, you’re saying.

05:54 Speaker 2 Yes, and especially at that time. Later on, he really did begin supporting us. In the early years he was our lifeline in all kinds of ways. But he’s a chossid, someone with a deep, inward connection to the Rebbe. It’s very, very interesting. In 5740, [unclear], shluchim from the Chabad yeshiva in Venezuela came here, and they stayed at his home.

06:31 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:34 Speaker 2 It was 20 Menachem Av. They were supposed to fly to Peru. They got to the airport, but the plane’s engine broke down, so they went back to his house and said, “Okay, it’s 20 Menachem Av; we have to hold a farbrengen.” By hashgachah pratis, it was his wife Brunia’s birthday—may Hashem grant her a complete recovery—and various Jews from the community came over, apparently not because of the birthday. They met the Chabadniks there, and they said l’chaim. The shluchim stayed overnight at his house, and it brought about some kind of change. Later, I saw their report to the Rebbe. They wrote that they’d returned and held a farbrengen. Apparently—I’m not certain, but I think there was a directive at the time that the Rebbe wanted communities everywhere to ask for a shliach to be sent to them. In other words, rather than a shliach simply coming, the community would request one, and then the community would undertake to help him and provide him with a place or a salary or… I don’t know the exact details. I think that was the directive. And I saw a letter: he was the community’s vice president at the time, and the president wasn’t here.

07:46 Speaker 1 That same Shmuel Brafman.

07:48 Speaker 2 Yes. So he wrote the Rebbe a letter on the community’s letterhead, asking that a shliach be sent here. He committed to providing this and that—I don’t remember the details anymore—and he asked the Rebbe for a bracha for a child, because they had three children then and wanted another. I really don’t know why a shliach didn’t come at that time. Today, boruch Hashem, it looks as though everyone is lining up to be a shliach. Maybe it was a little different back then. I don’t know what the considerations were.

08:33 Speaker 3 If I remember those years correctly, yes, it wasn’t like that yet. Shlichus hadn’t reached the point where everyone, shall we say, was lining up for it.

08:43 Speaker 2 And the thin air—maybe that had something to do with it too? I don’t know. But in any case, I saw the Rebbe’s answer, the Rebbe’s bracha, with my own eyes: they did indeed have a fourth child afterward. And I remember that we lived inside the Chabad House for over a year at the time. The conditions were not ideal at all. We had our room, a room for the bochurim, and a shared bathroom and shower.

09:17 Speaker 3 Wow.

09:17 Speaker 2 And our room also had our two children in it.

09:20 Speaker 3 Wow.

09:22 Speaker 2 And there was no kitchen of our own. Everything was in the Chabad House. There wasn’t the slightest bit of privacy.

09:27 Speaker 3 Why was that? Weren’t there any available buildings there?

09:30 Speaker 2 No, it’s… The real reason was that I didn’t want to take on a commitment to pay rent. What I told the bochur was, “Listen, I can’t find a place here.” And I really couldn’t. I looked and looked. The Chabad House is in an area that isn’t much of a residential neighborhood. It’s more of a market area, with shops and things like that. There are a lot of buildings, but they’re very old and smell terrible. Anyway, this bochur was a resourceful fellow. He said, “Okay, if I find you an apartment, will you move into it?”

10:01 Speaker 3 That was Shmuel Brafman?

10:03 Speaker 2 No. A Chabad bochur who came to help us on shlichus—Tennis.

10:07 Speaker 3 Tennis? Tennis, a man of action.

10:09 Speaker 2 Yes, Tennis is a resourceful fellow. He was with us for almost a year.

10:13 Speaker 3 Which of the Tennis family?

10:15 Speaker 2 Yossi, Yossi.

10:15 Speaker 3 Yossi Tennis. Well, he’s quite a resourceful fellow.

10:18 Speaker 2 So he—right before he left, he said to me, “If I find you an apartment, will you move into it?” I said yes, and two days before he flew out, he found an apartment. And... I had to sign a lease, but to get a lower price, I committed to paying six months’ rent in advance, and I didn’t know where I’d get the money. And by Divine Providence, it was Chanukah, and this Rofman invited the whole community to his home for a Chanukah evening. Of course, we came too, and there was a really beautiful farbrengen. It went on until about two in the morning. I kept wanting to leave, and each time he said, “Stay, stay, stay.” Staying until two in the morning with two babies wasn’t easy, but okay. We finished, and then he said to me, “So? What’s happening?” He’d heard something about the apartment; I don’t remember exactly. He’d heard something. I told him, “We’re signing the lease tomorrow.” He said, “What about the money? How will you pay?” I told him, “Honestly, I don’t know, but tomorrow we’ll ask my brother to deposit money into my account. I’ll withdraw it here, and we’ll see.” Anyway, we got home—he drove us in his car—and he slipped a few bills into my pocket. I thought they were bolivianos, the local currency. The bills are big, but they aren’t worth much. I didn’t even look to see how much it was.

11:45 Speaker 3 What, pesos? No, pesos are what they gave them.

11:48 Speaker 2 Yes, pesos are used all over South America. Here it’s called the boliviano.

11:51 Speaker 3 Boliviano.

11:52 Speaker 2 Anyway, I get home, and before going to sleep I take off my shirt and toss it aside. Suddenly, bills spill out everywhere, and I realize they’re hundred-dollar bills, every single one. I quickly turned on the bedroom light.

12:06 Speaker 3 Just like you, a Chabadnik. Really.

12:08 Speaker 2 I gathered them all up, saw the amount, and called him, because I was really excited. Anyway, he’d calculated how much six months’ rent would be. He told me, “When these six months are up, come to me and you’ll get the next payment.” And throughout the time we were in that apartment, until we eventually left because they put it up for sale, he covered the rent from beginning to end.

12:38 Speaker 3 Good for him.

12:40 Speaker 2 That’s it.

12:40 Speaker 3 Good for him.

12:41 Speaker 2 That’s when I saw—when I realized that sometimes we think we’re making things happen, but the Rebbe made them happen long, long before. There’s a story about Reb Reuven Dunin[?] that I’ve always loved. One morning he got onto his tractor and saw someone walking along the sidewalk nearby, looking completely exhausted. So Reb Reuven said to him, “Do me a favor. The tractor won’t start; I need you to push it.” The man looked at the tractor and said, “How could anyone push that?” “Don’t worry about it, just do it. I’m late for work; they’ll fire me.” So the man starts pushing and pushing, and says, “I can’t.” Reb Reuven encourages him from up on the tractor, and in the end Reb Reuven releases the clutch and drives off. His point was that the Rebbe is driving the tractor; the Rebbe is running the world. And the Rebbe tells us, “Friends, make an effort. Do things, do mitzvah campaigns, make things happen.” And we keep telling the Rebbe it can’t be done, while the Rebbe encourages us. In the end, the Rebbe gets things moving, and we’re convinced we turned the world upside down. These are things the Rebbe set in motion—how long ago was it? Twenty, thirty years earlier. So sometimes it takes time for an action to take effect.

14:02 Speaker 3 Very interesting. Where does the young man live today?

14:05 Speaker 2 At the moment he’s in Mexico. He had some problem here; I don’t know exactly what. When we established the mikveh—we built a mikveh here and brought the rabbi—

14:13 Speaker 3 As we said, the Rebbe had already taken care of him in advance. Yes.

15:45 Speaker 2 Yes. So it turned out that we couldn’t build at the community’s property, because there was something there that wasn’t legal, and if we built anything else, they would issue a demolition order. Anyway, these things took time. Then this Rofman said to me, “Listen, you said we need a mikveh here, over there?” Uh...

16:07 Speaker 3 We’re here to tell stories, not to—this isn’t a business meeting or a social visit. Tell the whole story. What are these hot springs? Where are they? What do you have to do to get there—climb on foot, drive, take a plane? What? Where are they?

16:25 Speaker 2 [unclear] It’s a seven-hour drive each way, toward the Chilean border, at an altitude of five thousand meters. There’s a volcano there, and at its foot are natural hot springs, because there are places with hot springs that aren’t natural, and that raises halachic questions.

16:45 Speaker 3 I see. So to immerse in a kosher mikveh, you have to travel roughly six or seven hundred kilometers.

16:55 Speaker 2 I don’t know the distances. Not necessarily—

16:57 Speaker 3 Never mind. Seven hours.

16:58 Speaker 2 The travel time is more precise. Driving here is much slower than in Israel because of the—

17:05 Speaker 3 And you’re saying there’s a village there with no electricity at all.

17:09 Speaker 2 No. The springs are out in the open. There’s a nearby village about forty minutes’ drive from there. It’s an area with nothing. There’s almost no electricity, almost no water. Houses made of clay.

17:25 Speaker 3 So who discovered these springs? How did anyone even know they were there?

17:29 Speaker 2 There was a Jewish man here, a veteran of Sayeret Matkal, who had lived here for many years. He was crazy about traveling and had explored practically all of Bolivia. So he—

17:42 Speaker 3 What’s his name?

17:44 Speaker 2 He had a—what?

17:45 Speaker 3 What’s his name?

17:47 Speaker 2 Shaul. Shaul Gilboa.

17:49 Speaker 3 Shaul Gilboa. How old is he today? I don’t really remember a Shaul Gilboa from Sayeret Matkal.

17:53 Speaker 2 No, because he... I think he was wounded fairly early on, at some point. He’s actually an IDF veteran.

18:00 Speaker 3 Oh. About how old is he?

18:06 Speaker 2 Probably around fifty today. I don’t know.

18:08 Speaker 3 He’s much younger than I am. That means he was in much later intakes.

18:14 Speaker 2 Anyway, um, there was—

18:17 Speaker 3 Those hot springs, and he told you about them.

18:20 Speaker 2 But sometimes getting there was a problem. Once, for example, there were protests around La Paz, and when there are protests, you can’t leave the city.

18:30 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

18:31 Speaker 2 All the main roads are blocked, and there are no deliveries of food or anything else. Protests are no pleasant matter. We had to find a crazy driver willing to take all sorts of trails and dirt roads, and risk having the locals throw stones at him if he went through the roadblocks. We paid bribes in certain places. Anyway, we knew we wanted to build a mikveh, but things weren’t moving forward. Then I remember speaking with Rofman about the need, and he said, “Okay, let’s see what we can do.” I didn’t realize that “let’s see” meant “let’s go look at a plot of land.” We used to learn together twice a week. We finished our lesson and talked, and he said, “All right, come on, get in the car.” I got in, and he drove me somewhere. He said, “What do you think of this plot?” I said—what could I say? He asked, “Would it work for a mikveh?” I said, “Okay, yes.” He said, “Let’s look at another plot.” We drove to another place. In short, he showed me three plots. It later turned out they all belonged to him. He told me, “Just tell me where you want to build the mikveh.” One of the plots really did seem the most suitable to me, and it was relatively close. Today it’s a twenty-minute drive from our home. So we decided to build the mikveh there. I called a contractor, and we made plans.

20:10 Speaker 3 Who made the plans for you?

20:12 Speaker 2 The contractor made the plans. I told the contractor, “Listen, there’s a rabbi who needs to oversee the plans, the construction, everything. You have to do it all according to halachah, and halachah says that a Jew who builds a mikveh has to put on tefillin every day.”

20:31 Speaker 3 Really.

20:32 Speaker 2 “So if you’re willing to put on tefillin every day, you can build the mikveh. If not, we’ll have to see what to do.”

20:39 Speaker 3 Well, if he doesn’t build the mikveh, he has to put them on twice a day. If he builds the mikveh, once is enough.

20:44 Speaker 2 He’s put on tefillin every day since then, baruch Hashem.

20:47 Speaker 3 Nice. You see? You’ve learned how to get things done, Nissi.

20:49 Speaker 2 I think he’s worried that otherwise the mikveh won’t be kosher. So...

20:54 Speaker 3 That’s nice of him.

20:56 Speaker 2 We approached Rabbi Gelshtok[?]. He’s relatively close, in Argentina. Close—it’s a seven-hour flight, a ten-hour flight. Close. It’s somewhere in between, and he speaks the language. He really took responsibility for the mikveh. He came here three times during construction. May he be well; I think he’s over eighty already, and he insisted. Once, while they were pouring the concrete, it was cold, and it was a manual pour that took time. I told him I was going home. He said, “No, I have to stand here until the end. I need to stay here and see with my own eyes that, G-d forbid, there are no mistakes, no problems.” That’s already—

21:43 Speaker 3 What year are you talking about, when he built the mikveh?

21:45 Speaker 2 That was seven years ago already.

21:48 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

21:49 Speaker 2 Before that, there was another... To build a mikveh, we figured we needed money. So I was in New York, by the Rebbe—maybe for the Kinus Hashluchim or something—and I went around trying to raise money. Everyone tells you it’s easy to raise money for a mikveh. Everyone has a story about how... But I found nothing. I was literally going from one hundred-dollar donation to the next, and nothing was moving. At the end of a very hard day, I drove past someone’s office. I’d already tried three times to catch him, but he hadn’t been there. He was someone who would always give me a hundred dollars, a hundred and eighty dollars—not large amounts. I saw a parking spot near his office. I thought, I’ll go in. It’ll take half a minute. Either he’s there or he isn’t. I’ll get a hundred dollars, a hundred and eighty dollars. It won’t hurt.

22:43 Speaker 3 Who is this? Who are you talking about?

22:44 Speaker 2 A young Jewish man in New York, a lovely guy, very warm toward the Rebbe’s work. I’d met him a year, two years, three years earlier. Each time he gave a hundred dollars. It wasn’t anything major—a hundred, a hundred and eighty, I don’t remember. I went in, and he said, “So, what is it this time?” I told him I wanted to build a mikveh and shared some of the details. He said, “Okay, how much does a mikveh cost?” I said fifty thousand dollars. That’s what I thought it would cost, since I already had the site. So he said, “Okay, let’s split it fifty-fifty. I’ll give twenty-five, and you raise the other twenty-five.” I was overjoyed.

23:24 Speaker 3 Overjoyed? You mean you were stunned.

23:28 Speaker 2 All those stories you always hear about help coming from Heaven, just like that. The next day he went to Colel Chabad to find out how to transfer the money. He wanted the plans so his rabbi could approve them, make sure they were according to halachah and all that. I went back to Bolivia and told the contractor, “That’s it. Start working. Whenever you need money, just let me know three or four days in advance and I’ll transfer it to you. I’ll withdraw it, I’ll get it somehow...” Anyway, he kept making progress each week and sending me a sheet with the costs for the following week. I don’t understand Spanish, so it didn’t matter to me what he wrote. I knew we had to keep going, and I was waiting for the money from that man, but it kept getting delayed. Still, I had told the contractor when we started building, “Never stop.”

24:16 Speaker 2 “Once you start building, you never stop. No matter what—whether there’s money or not—just give me a few days’ notice and I’ll give you the money.” Every time he needed money, I took out loans, because I knew that twenty-five thousand dollars would be coming through. Another Chabad chossid had pledged ten thousand dollars. I went to his house, and they wouldn’t open the door. Eventually they did, and his daughter saw me wearing a Yechi yarmulke. She said, “With a Yechi yarmulke, you won’t get a dollar from my father,” and closed the door. I tried this way and that, and meanwhile time was passing.

25:04 Speaker 4 Wait, I want to understand. Explain something to me. The man in New York who said he’d give you twenty-five thousand dollars—he went with you to Colel Chabad and transferred—

25:14 Speaker 2 He went to check how he could transfer the money, in terms of the nonprofit, taxes and things like that. He hadn’t actually transferred it yet.

25:22 Speaker 4 Ah.

25:24 Speaker 2 And we’d started building. I’d also raised a little money, so we got the process going. Slowly, I took out more loans and more loans, and we kept building.

25:36 Speaker 4 Okay.

25:37 Speaker 2 And meanwhile, the promises remained promises. Eventually the mikveh was built, rain had fallen and we’d collected rainwater, and it was time for someone to come and make the mikveh kosher for use. Rabbi Feigelstock told me, “Book me a ticket for two days in Bolivia.” I said, “What’s involved in making a mikveh kosher? It’s a few minutes, a few hours while the water flows in, and that’s it.” So I booked him for one day. He arrived, and we went to the mikveh together. At the time it was a forty-minute drive from the Chabad House. We got there and needed to lift the lower marble slab—the floor of the mikveh. We couldn’t lift it. We brought in four workers, and they couldn’t lift it either. Now, Rabbi Feigelstock is a rabbi, but he’s also a man of many talents, with construction expertise. Before he started building mikvehs, he studied engineering. He went to the library, took out books and really learned the subject. He told me, “Listen, I can see they built the stairs after putting in the marble slab. I think the bottom step sticks out by half a centimeter. No one can lift this slab except at an angle.” He said, “Hold on, let’s calculate how much the marble weighs.” He worked it out from the length, width and thickness—I don’t know exactly what else. He said, “It weighs about eight hundred or nine hundred kilos.” I don’t remember the weight. “We have to build a hoist here to lift the marble. It’s the only way we’ll be able to make the mikveh kosher, because if the lower pit is wet, we can’t let the water down into it.” He said, “All right, let’s go buy a hoist and build the setup.” I looked at him. What? What kind of hoist? How do you build one? He said, “No, come with me and I’ll show you.” He made some calculations and said, “We need a pipe this thick

27:30 Speaker 2 and this thick to support the hoist, and we need a frame like this.” He explained to the contractor what to go and buy, and we drove off to look for that kind of hoist. It’s a manual hoist. I didn’t even know such things existed.

27:44 Speaker 4 The kind with a chain.

27:46 Speaker 2 A chain, yes. I didn’t know they existed. That day there were demonstrations and all the roads were blocked. We drove for an hour and a half, and by the time we reached the hardware stores, they were closing, one after another. We couldn’t find an open store. At the last one, the owner was already pulling down the security gate outside. I ducked under it just before he closed and got the hoist. Now we had the hoist, and Feigelstock said, “Okay, to make the mikveh kosher, we need your wife. I’ll give her instructions, and she’ll be the mikveh attendant.” I said, “We have three or four children at home. It’s freezing—it was winter, below zero.” Okay, no choice. We took everyone in the van, drove there with Feigelstock, built the hoist and the whole frame, and raised the marble. He also explained to me how to tie it. The marble is lying on the floor, and you can’t get underneath it. You only have the two openings for the hashakah connection. How do you tie it up safely? But he’s a professional. You see? He did it all with the workers, explaining everything to them. It was something else. I don’t know if there’s another rabbi who knows how to do things like that on a technical level. Any other rabbi would have told me, “There’s nothing I can do. I’m flying back.” But through hashgachah pratis, he came, did it all, built the hoist and lifted the slab. Then he went down into the pit and said, “Yes, the floor here is damp, wet. We need a space heater.” He’d told us beforehand to bring a space heater with an extension cord—two space heaters to dry the concrete. We set them up, and little by little the concrete really did dry out; you could see its color changing. By then it was midnight. I think we’d started the whole thing

29:35 Speaker 2 at two in the afternoon—with trying to lift it, driving around, coming back and building the hoist.

29:41 Speaker 5 Right, and it took until midnight before you even managed to do all that.

29:44 Speaker 2 Anyway, then something very simple happened: the extension cord for the space heater burned out. He told me, “Listen, I can’t go on. It’s midnight, I’m not feeling well, and the oxygen level is low.” He had a flight in the morning, and he told me the next time he could come would be in three months.

30:08 Speaker 5 And our genius here had booked him for only one day.

30:11 Speaker 2 Yes, and I knew that two couples were supposed to come to the mikveh that evening. The timing was precisely hashgachah pratis. What do we do? I said, “I’ll call Brofman. Maybe he has an extension cord at home.” Anyway, I was sure he had a worker living at his house and that the worker would bring the cord. I called him and said, “I need an extension cord, and maybe another space heater too, and an oxygen tank for the rabbi.” About forty minutes later, the man himself showed up. I’d woken him up. He got up, took a cord and an oxygen tank, drove over and came to us. That’s when I saw the hashgachah pratis in it: he was the one who had donated the land, and now he got to take part in preparing the mikveh. Anyway, we connected the space heater with the extension cord, finished drying out the pool, and then let the water in. It turned out it took about two hours to fill the pool. Brofman refused to leave until he saw it full. I told him, “What could happen? The water’s running. We’ll go home and come back tomorrow morning to see it.” He said, “No, I need to see the whole thing with my own eyes.” And Brofman wouldn’t leave until the rabbi left. He sat with us until two or three in the morning—I don’t remember exactly when—and meanwhile we had a farbrengen. The rabbi got oxygen and sat there at the edge of the mikveh with the oxygen tank. It was very, very nice. The next day, Brofman sent me, with his worker, a very thick extension cord that would never burn out, so I wouldn’t wake him up at midnight again for an extension cord.

32:08 Speaker 5 But how did you have electricity in the building? You hadn’t gotten the occupancy permit yet.

32:12 Speaker 2 I think we still haven’t, because there’s no... Actually, I don’t know how it works. The contractor did it. There’s—

32:23 Speaker 5 Itzik, you’re all right.

32:25 Speaker 2 So that was the construction of the mikveh, and then I went to the man who had pledged the—

32:30 Speaker 5 Wait a second. You put in some decorations, some—what do you call it? You know, those nice stones and all that?

32:39 Speaker 2 No, the building is very, very beautiful. It still needs some finishing touches, but—

32:46 Speaker 5 How is it heated? How do you heat the water?

32:49 Speaker 2 Right now it’s electric. They’re finally bringing a gas line there, but there’s no kitchen in the building, so they don’t want to connect us to the gas because it’s only for kitchens. With Hashem’s help, we’ll see how to work that out. But you’re asking a good question, because sometimes there are problems with the electricity, and then we have to come with pots and gas and fill it. That happens too. But—

33:18 Speaker 5 And those two couples came that same day.

33:21 Speaker 2 Yes, the mikveh was ready for use in time.

33:23 Speaker 5 Incredible. Incredible.

33:26 Speaker 2 But the money is the most interesting part.

33:29 Speaker 5 Yes.

33:30 Speaker 2 So, that man finally sends a check, and I get the envelope.

33:38 Speaker 5 The one who pledged twenty-five thousand?

33:40 Speaker 2 Yes. He sent the check to my address in New York. I asked my brother to pick up the envelope, and my brother opened it and sent me a picture of the check. I looked at it: five hundred dollars. It turned out the poor man had gone bankrupt over some deal and couldn’t meet his commitments.

34:00 Speaker 5 Really?

34:02 Speaker 2 Okay, I’d already moved ahead. The mikveh was built; now I just had to pay off the debts. But Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends help from other places. There was a Chabad guy who’d been here once—I honestly don’t know if he’d spent more than two hours at the Chabad House. He heard I was building a mikveh, so he called me and said, “Listen, I want to donate money to the mikveh. The thing is, I don’t have money right now. I’m a young guy, I’ve got... I don’t have the money now, but I want you to save me the opportunity.” I told him, “Okay, put down a down payment. Give five hundred or a thousand dollars now, and with Hashem’s help, the rest later.” And he did give a thousand dollars or something like that. When I finished the mikveh—or maybe a month afterward, I don’t know; he didn’t know what stage the construction was at—he called me and said, “Listen, Itzik, I have a check for ten thousand dollars for you here in my office. I just closed a deal. This is the maaser money I pledged to the mikveh.”

35:13 Speaker 5 Really?

35:14 Speaker 2 And then there was the man whose daughter told me I wouldn’t get a dollar because I wore a Yechi yarmulke. He was supposed to donate near the beginning of construction. I went to his house once or twice, and they didn’t even open the door. I’d already given up; every trip out to him took time, and he didn’t live in Crown Heights. I don’t remember why, but I decided to try one more time. After the mikveh was built, I went there, and they opened the door and welcomed me warmly—as though they hadn’t shouted at me the previous time and said all those things. They brought me in to see him, and he said, “Yes, I really did make a pledge. Why haven’t I given you the money yet? What stage are you at?” I told him, “I’ve finished. I’m at the stage where I need to pay for it.” He said, “Okay, how much was it?” I said, “You pledged ten thousand dollars.” He said, “That can’t be. I pledged twelve.” I said, “No, you pledged ten.” We started arguing. “Well, in any case, I’m making it twelve.” And he gave the twelve thousand dollars.

36:20 Speaker 5 Really?

36:22 Speaker 2 And ever since then, he’s donated to the Chabad House regularly. He actually very much enjoys hearing from me each time, Yechi yarmulke and all. But I saw that when you go ahead and do things in practice, the Rebbe sends the money afterward.

36:39 Speaker 5 You know, I’m familiar with a letter from the Rebbe in which he writes to people building a mikveh and says, “I too will participate, as is my practice, with the final third.”

36:50 Speaker 2 Really? Interesting.

36:52 Speaker 5 “As is my practice, with the final third.” Folks, do your part, and at the end I’ll provide everything that’s needed.

37:02 Speaker 2 So that’s what I remember.

37:04 Speaker 5 But what about Brofman? He’s someone you have to stay in touch with. He’s no ordinary person.

37:11 Speaker 2 That donor—the one who’d pledged twenty-five thousand dollars—when the mikveh was ready, I had pictures of it made for several donors, printed on wood with wooden frames. I brought him one, and he said, “What’s this?” I told him, “This is the mikveh you built.” He said, “What do you mean? I barely gave you five hundred dollars.” I told him, “Listen, if you hadn’t made that pledge, if I hadn’t known I had twenty-five thousand dollars coming from you, I wouldn’t have started the project. I knew I had twenty-five thousand dollars, and I raised a few thousand more. I knew I could start building. You gave me the backing. Afterward, the Rebbe sent the funds, but it was all thanks to you.” He was very moved. He had tears in his eyes and hugged me. He said, “Listen, I used to give a lot to shluchim and to a lot of other people, but since I lost my money, nobody even knows how to say thank you anymore. And now you’ve come...” I told him, “Listen, it’s not me; this is the Rebbe’s work. And you didn’t do anything deliberately—fortunes change. You made a commitment and gave what you could, all that you could. With Hashem’s help, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will give you the means to do more in the future.” That’s something else I learned from him: to be grateful to your partners, even those who were partners in the past and can’t help right now—or at all. So that’s...

38:39 Speaker 5 But what about Brofman? You’re not in touch with him anymore?

38:43 Speaker 2 We speak from time to time. I’ve just remembered another story about him.

38:48 Speaker 5 Yes.

38:48 Speaker 2 There were some young shluchim here during the summer, and as Chanukah approached, they wanted to send menorahs to the community. They had his address and sent a package to his home with candles, menorahs and maybe some leaflets. From then on, for thirty years—twenty-five years, I don’t remember, until he left here—every year he would go to a local factory and have menorahs and candles made. Fifty, sixty, a hundred. Every time, he’d call me to ask how many menorahs I needed that year. As he saw it, he’d been given a shlichus to make sure there were menorahs here for the community, for travelers, for any Jew who...

39:39 Speaker 5 What a story. Amazing, amazing. What a special person.

39:45 Speaker 2 A very, very special person.