Rabbi Shneur Kopcik - Delhi, India - Part 2

00:18 Speaker 1 What suddenly prompted—what, India wasn’t born yesterday. Why did you suddenly need to go to India? What prompted it?

00:27 Speaker 2 It really started in Rosh Pina, which I mentioned earlier. My parents still have very close friends from the time they ran the Chabad House in Rosh Pina. Some keep Shabbos; some, less so. There was one Jewish man, a good friend of my father’s, who would record anything he saw on television that he thought might interest my father and bring it to him. Anyway, there was a news report. Ezer Weizman was president of Israel at the time. As much as people today think India has always been a friendly country, its ties with Israel weren’t official for years. There was no embassy here until after Oslo. There was a consulate, but no embassy. They wouldn’t receive any official visitor from Israel, either. Then an opportunity came up. Back in the day, Ezer Weizman had been one of the founders of the air force, and at that time—

01:25 Speaker 1 He was a pilot himself.

01:27 Speaker 2 Yes, he was a pilot, but when the State of Israel was established, he was one of the founders of the air force. Apparently, he had some background from his time with the British or something like that—

01:37 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:38 Speaker 2 And in India, the British had left that same year, and they had established an air force too. So he had friends in senior positions in India, and perhaps through them it would be possible to get Israel’s ties moving, to strengthen them. He flew here as Israel’s president, the president of the State of Israel, but not officially. It was a visit to his friends. India receiving him was still a big step, but it wasn’t an official visit; he had come to visit friends. Of course, news crews traveled with him, and since they were already flying to India, they went to make some reports, to see what this India was all about. I’m talking about ’96. We didn’t have today’s media yet. People were always hearing about Israeli travelers in Goa. “I got to Goa”—that was what people knew about India. So they came to do a report. Finally, there was an Israeli television crew there. They started filming in various places, and then they got to Pune, went into an ashram and filmed. Suddenly they saw someone with tzitzis sticking out from under his ashram robe. So the interviewer asked him, “Hey, what are you doing here?” And he said, “I came to explain to everyone that this isn’t where they belong.” That’s a story in itself. It turns out he had received an answer from the Rebbe, which he understood to mean that he should travel—

03:02 Speaker 1 Who’s “he”? Who is this person?

03:04 Speaker 2 A young man named Shai Avnon. He wasn’t a Chabadnik or anything, but he wanted to travel in India and had started becoming more involved in Judaism. He wrote to the Rebbe through Igros Kodesh and got an answer that he understood to mean he should go and hold—I don’t remember, perhaps a 19 Kislev farbrengen or something like that. So on television they showed him explaining that he was there for another purpose. Then the reporter ended the piece by saying, “In Pune, they’re waiting for the Rebbe.” My father got the recording, watched it and said to himself: If, by hashgachah pratis, he had heard the words “In Pune, they’re waiting for the Rebbe,” then even though he didn’t know what Pune was, he had to find out what it meant that they were waiting for the Rebbe there. And—

03:46 Speaker 1 If you keep going straight, you eventually get there.

03:50 Speaker 2 Yes. He reached out—it’s a long story—to a good friend in Tzfas named Yaldan. As far as we were concerned, he was the India expert, because he had returned to Judaism while in India and had come to us in Tzfas. So that was the closest connection we had to India. Granted, it had been almost a decade, but my father told him, “Come on, I need to go to India. I need someone who’s already been there.” So they went together and celebrated Purim in India. Back then, Chabad activities for travelers still weren’t widespread. It was something new. Hundreds of travelers from all over India came to celebrate Purim with Chabad in Pune.

04:33 Speaker 3 Really?

04:34 Speaker 2 And for my father, it was an enormous surprise to arrive somewhere and have hundreds of young people show up who just wanted to learn, just wanted to listen, just wanted to come closer. Again, today when you say “Chabad House,” people immediately think “Chabad House, India, Thailand.” They picture Chabad Houses for travelers and meals and... what we all know today. People don’t even realize that Chabad Houses for travelers make up only a tiny percentage of Chabad Houses worldwide—barely a few percent—and they’ve only existed for less than thirty years. So it was really in its infancy. There was something in Thailand. In New Delhi, Rabbi Nachman Nachmanson was running a room in a guesthouse. This whole field was truly in its infancy, and my father was surprised. He was genuinely surprised by the response and by the Israelis’ thirst for it. At first, he kept making short trips for the holidays. The following Purim, he brought Avi Piamenta with him, and they held a party with music and a whole atmosphere. Eventually it reached a point where my mother told him, “Either Israel or India. You can’t keep going back and forth.” And so the whole family flew out.

05:57 Speaker 3 Ah, now I understand. What year was that?

06:02 Speaker 2 When the whole family flew out?

06:05 Speaker 3 Yes.

06:07 Speaker 2 If I’m not mistaken, Rosh Chodesh Kislev 5768, twenty-four years ago. Twenty-five years now.

06:17 Speaker 3 So it was one of the first Chabad Houses in India.

06:22 Speaker 2 Yes. As I said, when he arrived in Pune, there was already one in New Delhi. Rabbi Nachman Nachmanson had been running a Chabad House in a room in a guesthouse in the capital for about a year. So you could say the one my father opened in Pune was the second Chabad House in India.

06:41 Speaker 3 The second, but perhaps the first in terms of its reach, its size, its—

06:46 Speaker 2 As a family, it was the first—the first family of shluchim. But the Chabad House in New Delhi is, to this day, a very, very—today it’s a very active, large, bustling Chabad House. It’s a slightly different style, because the Delhi Chabad House is essentially like a bus station or train station: people arrive and move on. At the Chabad Houses in Pushkar and other places, Israelis settle in and put down roots. So the atmosphere in those places is a little different. But yes.

07:21 Speaker 3 India is a little bigger than Israel, so I imagine the character of the places varies a great deal too. And every Chabad House has its own uniqueness.

07:38 Speaker 2 The places have different styles, but there’s also a difference in the kinds of travelers who come to each one. I joke that they’re different “states of matter.” That’s what I call them. At one stage of a trip, a traveler is one way, and at another stage, he’s different. So when he’s in one stage, he laughs at the people over there, and a year later he suddenly finds himself there. In the language people use here in India, let’s say there are stoners and there are straight types. One place has the stoners; another has the straight types. But they’re the same people at different stages. That’s how I see it.

08:15 Speaker 3 Later they switch, you’re saying.

08:18 Speaker 2 Yes, later they switch. Those people grew and became like these people. But yes, it’s interesting.

08:24 Speaker 3 Would you like to share a few experiences from your childhood there in India?

08:29 Speaker 2 When my father went out there for good, I didn’t go with him. I only heard the stories and shared in the experiences when he came back to Israel. But by the time my family went out, I was already a yeshivah student in yeshivah ketanah. As I said, it was Rosh Chodesh Kislev. Three of us brothers stayed in Israel. Our parents went abroad, and we stayed in Israel, since we were already in yeshivah. I was in my second year of yeshivah ketanah. When they left, we didn’t know when we’d see each other again. It wasn’t as though we knew what the plan was. They left, and we didn’t know when we’d see our parents, or whether we’d be able to get together for Pesach. In practice, Hashem helped, and by Pesach my parents were able to fly the three of us—the three oldest children—out to join them. It’s an interesting point, actually: almost all shluchim worldwide go out on shlichus as a young couple, with one child, or two at most. That’s usually when people make major changes. My parents went out when they already had ten children. The eleventh child was born in India, but when they left, there were ten of us. They left three in Israel and flew with seven young children to an unfamiliar land, to a place that, at the time—when I look at it today, it’s a different world. But back then, even using the telephone wasn’t simple. We corresponded with our parents by letter, as if it were who knows how many years ago, and faxed things to each other.

10:09 Speaker 3 Things like that happened.

10:11 Speaker 2 Yes, at first there were faxes. Then, at some point—I really can’t remember when—things moved forward and suddenly there was email. That was the first big change. But in India, there was hardly any communication, hardly any cell phones back then. My parents got there, and sometimes, just to make a call back to Israel, you had to stand at a public phone, go through an operator, and wait. At first we didn’t have any reliable way to keep in touch with the family. Then, as Pesach approached, they managed to do it. They had the financial means to bring the three oldest of us over to join them in India. I remember landing in Bombay, the shock of seeing India, and the warnings we’d been given beforehand not to give the beggars anything, because then hundreds would swarm around you at the airport. I felt so sorry for them that I brought them some containers of salad I’d taken on the flight. You know, those Miki salads. I don’t know if Miki is still around, but—

11:18 Speaker 3 Miki’s still around, Miki’s still around.

11:20 Speaker 2 I’d brought them on the flight so I’d have kosher food. At the end of the flight I thought, I’ll give them the salads. They’re hungry—let them have something to eat. I had no idea what was going on. Before I could say “abracadabra,” I saw the children’s mother eagerly take the containers, dump the food onto the ground, and walk away with the empty containers. She didn’t need the food; she was excited to get a container. Then we traveled by jeep. The road wasn’t paved, and there was honking the whole way. I think the drive to where my parents were took somewhere between four and six hours. And for those four to six hours, you’re constantly seeing things you’ve never seen in your life and hearing the truck horns. They make melodies: toot toot toot toot, tootoo toot toot toot toot toot toot. The whole drive had this strange atmosphere. Then we arrived. My parents were still in a guesthouse, not a house of their own. They had two rooms there: one for my parents and one for all the children, on mattresses. I remember everyone coming out to greet us. We stood there in the street and just doubled over laughing. We couldn’t say a word. We just laughed and laughed. Who would have believed we’d meet up on this strange street? That was my first encounter with India. It was Pesach, and right afterward my parents moved into the first Chabad House. Until then they’d been in the guesthouse, and there had been over a hundred travelers at the Shabbos meal. Pesach was coming, and just two days before it began, they signed a lease on a new house. We moved the entire Chabad House into the new place. And throughout

13:12 Speaker 2 Erev Pesach—again, there was probably already a Seder in Dharamsala, New Delhi, and Pune. Today there might be twenty Seders across India; back then, I think there were those three. I think that’s how it was in 5760. So you have to understand, travelers didn’t have much communication either. It’s not as though they could call you and register. Travelers heard there was going to be a Seder, so more and more kept arriving. People were still registering on Erev Pesach itself. You kept increasing the quantities and realized more people were going to come. Then we realized there wouldn’t be enough room in the Chabad House hall. Fine, we’d hold it on the roof. We set up on the roof, and the Seder began there, but within minutes there wasn’t even room to stand. What could we do? We went downstairs and started setting up a second Seder in the Chabad House hall. But almost immediately we saw there wasn’t enough room there either. Luckily, it wasn’t Shabbos; it was Yom Tov. We took all the chairs and tables out of the hall. My father had already started the Seder on the roof, while we took the tables and chairs and arranged them in a long row out on the street. That’s where the second Seder took place, with room for everyone. And at the same time—

14:35 Speaker 4 Are there pictures of all this?

14:38 Speaker 2 There wouldn’t be pictures from the Seder. And at the same time, two young men who’d arrived went to hold a public Seder for the local Jewish community. So, in a sense, there were three Seders going on. But my mother was in the kitchen on the ground floor. One Seder was on the roof, on the third floor, and the second was out on the street. From the kitchen she had to time when to send the maror, when to send the karpas, when to send everything else—sometimes upstairs, sometimes downstairs. One of my brothers stood on a balcony between the roof and the floor below, shouting, “We need this now! We need that now!” So she sent things up and down while holding her own Seder with my sister in the kitchen. She was preparing the lamb, rice, and karpas, all while directing everyone to put together another meal for another fifty or sixty people who’d sat down at the improvised Seder in the street. It was an experience that won’t happen again. The sheer scale of the surprise, the number of people, and all the improvising we had to do back then—I don’t think things like that happen anymore today—

15:54 Speaker 4 That sounds absolutely amazing.

15:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:58 Speaker 4 All right. One second. First of all, thank you so much for this first conversation, and we’ll continue, with Hashem’s help.

16:04 Speaker 2 Good news.

16:05 Speaker 4 Thank you very much. Good news.