Rabbi Moshe Dikshtein - Be'er Sheva - Part 2

00:19 Speaker 1 Moshe, we’re continuing your truly fascinating story. Tell us, what happened next?

00:25 Speaker 2 I left—I was away from home for six months. In...

00:30 Speaker 1 Where were you during that time?

00:32 Speaker 2 What?

00:32 Speaker 1 Where were you during that time?

00:34 Speaker 2 Well, I stayed at Nachalim, and on free Shabbosos I would travel to Kfar Chabad.

00:40 Speaker 1 Ah.

00:42 Speaker 2 That’s how I divided my time, until Pesach—until after Pesach. Then the matriculation exams began. I enrolled in the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad and stopped coming to Nachalim except for the exams.

01:01 Speaker 1 On your own initiative.

01:04 Speaker 2 What do you mean?

01:04 Speaker 1 You enrolled in the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad on your own initiative.

01:08 Speaker 2 Yes. Whose initiative would it be? I told my teacher, Rabbi Bogash, that as far as I was concerned, I was studying in Kfar Chabad. I would keep taking the matriculation exams because the Rebbe had told me to, but I was studying in Kfar Chabad.

01:36 Speaker 1 And how did your father find out?

01:40 Speaker 2 My father—my parents didn’t know about it.

01:42 Speaker 1 They didn’t know. So you actually...

01:43 Speaker 2 My parents didn’t know, and my brother did, but my brother didn’t make a fuss about it.

01:53 Speaker 1 Okay.

01:54 Speaker 2 In Kfar Chabad, they tested me in both Gemara and Chassidus. Then I had a whole conversation with Rabbi Katz, the mashgiach, and they assigned me to classes in Chassidus and nigleh. That was it. I had a room, room 103, a bed, and my things on the closet. I was in yeshiva, studying like any other student. On a day when I had a matriculation exam, I’d go to the mashgiach the evening before and tell him I had an exam at Nachalim the next day, and I’d get permission to go—like a yeshiva student asking the administration for permission, because I was under their authority. The most interesting thing was the Gemara exam. An examiner came in, some rosh yeshiva from some yeshiva—I don’t even know which. He’d give each student two passages to prepare: one new passage and one they’d already learned, both with Rashi and Tosafos. Then he’d give him about half an hour to study on his own before examining him. That was the Gemara exam.

03:18 Speaker 1 Ah. So he’d give him a passage of Gemara and half an hour to study it.

03:21 Speaker 2 Two passages. One he’d never learned, and one he had.

03:28 Speaker 1 Ah.

03:29 Speaker 2 He wanted to see how well a student could prepare a page of Gemara on his own with Rashi and Tosafos, and how well he could review what he already knew. Anyway, I arrived with a black kippah, a shaved head, peyos, a scraggly beard, and my tzitzis out. Rabbi Bogash said, “This is our Chabadnik.”

03:58 Speaker 1 Who said that?

03:59 Speaker 2 He was telling the other rosh yeshiva: “He studies in Kfar Chabad and only comes here for the exams.” So the man asked me, “Tell me, are you a Chabadnik?” I said, “I’m trying to be a Chabadnik. You know, I’m trying.” “Then tell me a sicha of the Lubavitcher Rebbe from this past Shabbos.” I said, “You want me to tell you a sicha?” “Yes.” I said, “Gladly.” And I repeated a sicha I’d learned that Shabbos in the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad. Then I worked in the maamar we’d learned, too. In short, I spoke for about twenty minutes about the sicha, the week’s maamar, Rashi’s question, Rashi’s answer, the Rebbe’s answer, and so on. The two of them just sat there looking at me. And this was after he’d given me the Gemara passages and I’d spent fifteen or twenty minutes studying them, right? Then he said, “Wow, you really are a Chabadnik. Rabbi Bogash, I’m giving him a hundred.” He didn’t ask me a single question on the Gemara. Before the matriculation exams, I wrote a pan to the Rebbe. Everyone laughed at me. “You’re writing a pan to the Rebbe to succeed in matriculation exams?”

05:25 Speaker 3 Who laughed at you—the students in the Chabad yeshiva or the one in Nachalim?

05:28 Speaker 2 In Kfar Chabad.

05:29 Speaker 3 Kfar Chabad.

05:29 Speaker 2 “You’re writing a pan to the Rebbe to succeed in matriculation exams?” I said, “I write to the Rebbe about whatever I want. The Rebbe is like... the Rebbe is like a father...” In short, I said, “I write to the Rebbe the way I write to my father, and that’s that.” I didn’t receive a written reply, but I got an answer in practice. I hadn’t studied for four years, and I passed my matriculation exams. I have a matriculation certificate—what my mother wanted.

06:01 Speaker 3 “My son will be a doctor.”

06:02 Speaker 2 Good grades. What? “My son will be a doctor”—exactly. Oh, I forgot to tell you: in eleventh grade—or was it tenth or eleventh?—you could do a project instead of a biology exam. A research project. So I did one on the heart, and I met Professor Morris Levy, the one who performed the first heart transplant in Israel.

06:34 Speaker 3 Oh, yes, yes.

06:36 Speaker 2 Yes, [unclear]. Our biology teacher at Nachalim put us in touch. I came with what I’d already written and what I knew, and he questioned me. He said, “Listen.” He called my mother and told her, “You must push your son to become a doctor—a heart doctor, a cardiologist. He’ll be an expert surgeon.” To her last day, my mother never forgave me for going to Chabad instead of becoming a doctor.

07:06 Speaker 3 You didn’t become a doctor. It’s not that you didn’t become a physician—you didn’t become a doctor.

07:10 Speaker 2 Yes, I didn’t become a doctor. Anyway—

07:14 Speaker 3 A Yiddishe mama, da-na-na-na-nai.

07:18 Speaker 2 A Yiddishe mama, right? Anyway, my matriculation exams were over. Thank G-d, the nightmare of Nachalim was over, and I was in Kfar Chabad. Fully in Kfar Chabad—finished, that was it. I studied there for a whole year, and that year was hell for me. With my parents, I... And I also had trouble with the yeshiva administration. In short, I started helping at the Chabad House in Bat Yam with Zimroni. Never mind all that. Zimroni had established a Chabad House and asked us to help him. Menachem Kleinman and I helped him a bit, and it sometimes took me beyond the yeshiva’s permitted hours. So one day Yankel Katz called me in and told me to kiss the mezuzah and leave—to kiss the mezuzah from the outside.

08:08 Speaker 3 From outside the study hall, or outside Kfar Chabad?

08:11 Speaker 2 Outside the study hall, not Kfar Chabad. But that very day, I received a letter from the Rebbe—the first letter I’d ever received from him. It said that I should work with even greater vigor and strength to spread Torah and the wellsprings of Chassidus. So I went to Reb Mendel and showed him the letter, and I saw how a chossid receives and reads a letter from the Rebbe. He stood up, put on his hat and gartel, washed his hands, took the letter, and began reading. As he read, he said, “We need to speak with Yankel Katz. We need to speak with Yankel Katz.” In short, they took me back into the yeshiva, and... he began talking to me about going to the Rebbe.

09:07 Speaker 3 About what? Wait, Moshe, you’re not speaking clearly.

09:09 Speaker 2 He began talking to me about going to the Rebbe.

09:12 Speaker 3 Oh.

09:14 Speaker 2 Going to the Rebbe was what all the students aspired to. But for me, going to the Rebbe meant going and staying there—not coming back. Staying there and not returning, because here in Israel, I couldn’t... I couldn’t stay.

09:33 Speaker 3 Because of?

09:34 Speaker 2 My parents.

09:36 Speaker 3 Your parents were stopping you.

09:38 Speaker 2 Yes. It was terrible.

09:39 Speaker 3 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

09:42 Speaker 2 So what could I do? In short, I worked nights—

09:51 Speaker 3 What could you do about the money for a ticket?

09:54 Speaker 2 About the money, yes, about the money.

09:56 Speaker 3 Okay, so what—

09:57 Speaker 2 I worked nights at a matzah bakery. I earned a few liras. I remember a one-way ticket cost 1,225 liras. One way—1,225 liras. That was three or four months of my father’s salary. It was a huge amount of money then. What could I do? I couldn’t manage it. I was 350 liras short.

10:37 Speaker 3 How many hours—

10:38 Speaker 2 Not for dollars or anything like that—I mean for the ticket. I did the craziest thing I could have done. I went to Tel Aviv, to my aunt, my father’s sister, and spoke to her. I told her I wanted to go to America and I was short 350 liras. So she asked me, “Do your father and mother know?” I said, “No.” “If they knew, would they let you go?” I said, “No. Just as your father and mother didn’t want you to go to Israel.” So she said, “Right, it’s youthful rebellion.” I said, “Call it whatever you want, but please, if you can give me 350 liras—and not tell my parents.” So she said, “All right,” and I got the mon—well, the money, bought a ticket, and got a visa. It was very, very hard to get a visa then. I came home to my parents that night. I said to them, “Goodbye. Tomorrow I’m going to America.” “What?” “Yes, tomorrow I’m going to America, to the Rebbe, and...” “What?” “There’s no point arguing. I have a ticket. I’m going to America, that’s it. I came to say a proper goodbye, and I’ll see you.” My father and mother, both of them—my father, my father never cries, but he started crying. My mother—anyway, my father took thirty dollars out of his shoe and gave it to me. And...

12:39 Speaker 4 He said, “So you’ll have something”?

12:41 Speaker 2 Yes, he said, “So you’ll have something.” Anyway, I took the 475 bus—I’ll never forget it—with a suitcase. The 475 bus to the airport. And that was it. I arrived at the Rebbe’s.