Rabbi Yaakov Ben Ari - Part 1: Shliach to the Kibbutzim and Initiator of Degel Chabad

00:19 Speaker 1 We very much want the shluchim all over the world to feel that they’re part of something enormous, a tremendous undertaking that the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, established to advance the cause of the Geulah. That’s one side of it. On the other hand, we want the worldwide public to understand what the shluchim want from them. After all, every shliach sits in his Chabad House. In your case, it’s a huge Chabad House, perhaps the biggest in the world, because it actually covers almost the entire Land of Israel.

00:56 Speaker 2 Yes, but like Yaakov Avinu, who takes hold of the farthest reaches. I saw that those farthest reaches were interesting, so that’s where I went.

01:03 Speaker 1 Your Chabad House.

01:05 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:06 Speaker 1 Is actually the biggest in the world.

01:08 Speaker 2 Right. I really did take on something rather ambitious. Though I had no such pretensions at all; I had no grand ambitions.

01:16 Speaker 1 Yaakov Ben Ari.

01:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:18 Speaker 1 Your Chabad House is a project[?] that’s responsible for all the kibbutzim in Israel.

01:23 Speaker 2 One hundred and eighty kibbutzim.

01:24 Speaker 1 One hundred and eighty kibbutzim, yes, approximately.

01:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:26 Speaker 1 And where did your journey begin? First, tell us about yourself, about your life. You were born, I think, if I remember correctly, on a kibbutz. Kibbutz Ma’ayan Tzvi.

01:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:38 Speaker 1 One of the well-known kibbutzim in Israel. Tell us a little. Tell us where it began, how you—how—

01:42 Speaker 2 How it all began.

01:43 Speaker 1 What were the beginnings like?

01:44 Speaker 2 Yes. I was born on Kibbutz Ma’ayan Tzvi, and I’m also named after Ma’ayan Tzvi. It’s a kibbutz at the foot of the mountain below Zichron Yaakov. My parents came from Tunisia to the kibbutz for an ulpan in ’56. About eight years earlier, my father’s brother had come. His name was Yaakov André[?], but they deported him to Cyprus. He did eventually get to Israel, though. An Egyptian plane dropped a bomb on the central bus station in Tel Aviv, and he and his new bride were there. They had met in Cyprus and decided to get married. The plane dropped a bomb on the central bus station. Unfortunately, they were sitting on a bus, and everyone on that bus was killed. My parents came eight years later and went to Ma’ayan Tzvi. When I was born, a year after they arrived, they were in the ulpan and so on. They decided to name me Yaakov after him, and—

02:57 Speaker 1 After whom? Your grandfather?

02:58 Speaker 2 After—no, my father’s brother.

03:00 Speaker 1 Your father’s brother.

03:01 Speaker 2 Who was killed in the bombing in Tel Aviv, that terror attack. They named me Yaakov after him and added Tzvi after Ma’ayan Tzvi. So my name was Yaakov Tzvi. I didn’t even know what that “Tzvi” was; nobody had told me about it. In the army they read out the register, my personal details, and said, “Yaakov tzadik”—they saw the letter tzadik there. I came home and said, “Mom, what’s this tzadik?” So they told me it was Yaakov Tzvi. Then she told me about Ma’ayan Tzvi and my uncle and everything. Then it made sense. I lived on the kibbutz until I was about five. I loved kibbutz life very much, even as a child, so unfortunately I found myself in the city of Be’er Sheva when my parents moved there. At home we spoke French; my mother tongue is French. My parents didn’t know much Hebrew, so they spoke more French at home. Later I picked up English too, so I speak both. That’s helpful and convenient in my travels and in my work all over the world; it really adds a lot. It’s a shame I don’t know Yiddish, Spanish, Russian, and all the other languages too, but for now, that’s it. At fifteen I discovered Bialik and started writing poems in his style. I wrote close to two or three hundred poems, and I really was a poet. It’s like now, when I spend hours and hours thinking through certain things for the various projects I produce—I’ll tell you about those later. They take my time and energy, and these days my life is filled with productions and nonstop activity. At twenty-one I finished my army service and went abroad, to England. Back then, travel to the Far East wasn’t such a big thing, and the guys told me, “Go—

05:16 Speaker 2 “to Scotland. It’s beautiful there, and the people are good and warm, not like the cold English.” So I went up to Scotland. I really discovered the beauty of the Scottish countryside. I worked at a restaurant run by a non-Jewish couple who had come from South Africa, and I stayed there for quite a few months. I earned some money and came back to Israel. With the little I’d saved, a friend’s mother said to me, “I’ll teach you how to publish your own book.” I gathered my poems, chose sixty-something that I liked out of the hundreds, and decided to make a book of them. I laid it out at a print shop in Be’er Sheva called Dfus Sheva. There was no email then. Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, Melech HaMoshiach’s shliach to the university campus, came to that print shop to print his weekly parsha—

06:35 Speaker 4 Oh, you studied at the university?

06:37 Speaker 2 No, no, no. I hadn’t started studying.

06:39 Speaker 4 Oh, he was at the university, but that had nothing to do with it.

06:41 Speaker 2 Yes, he was a shliach. He left Kiryat Malachi; he became a baal teshuvah, grew close to—meaning, he had been Brisker, then moved to Chabad, and from Chabad went on shlichus. I think the Rebbe told him to go to Kiryat Malachi, and from there the Rebbe sent him to be a shliach on campus. He was one of Chabad’s great speakers and lecturers, truly someone whose every word was a gem, and he was the campus rabbi. There was no email then, so he came in person to bring his weekly parsha sheet for printing, and he brought the—

07:14 Speaker 4 Oh, he owned your print shop, Dfus Sheva.

07:16 Speaker 2 He owned the print shop.

07:17 Speaker 4 I see.

07:17 Speaker 2 And he brought in his weekly parsha sheet. He brought it every week. There was no email then, so he had to bring it in person. He found me sitting there. “What are you doing here?” he asked. I said, “I’ve written a book, and I…” “May I see it?” “Yes.” He looked at it and started offering comments. It was the first time in my life I’d spoken with a religious man—with a bearded man, a man with a black kippah, and—

07:42 Speaker 4 Not someone working out at the gym.

07:43 Speaker 2 And a bald head, and all the things about how religious people look—and he was talking about poetry, about prose, about the world and life and philosophy and science. Wow. It really opened my eyes. I liked him. He invited me to his home, and I came the following Shabbos. We talked. I’d come for an hour, and it turned into four hours. I found myself very, very interested in the things he was talking about. I printed the book. Then Hebrew Book Week came around, and I promoted the book there, and…

08:28 Speaker 4 He tells me.

08:30 Speaker 2 Yes. I felt I wanted to go abroad again and continue my travels. He said, “Okay, listen, here’s what we’ll do. You’ll go abroad, we’ll keep in touch, and you’ll write a letter from overseas to the Rebbe of Lubavitch.” Back then people didn’t say “the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach.” That wasn’t in the announcements or anything like that. So I said to him, “Sounds good.” Then he said, “Listen, take on one mitzvah and keep it all your life.” I said, “That sounds good. Which mitzvah? I don’t know the mitzvos.” He said, “Take tefillin.” I told him, “But I said I’m not religious. I don’t know what tefillin are.” “What do you mean? Didn’t you have a bar mitzvah?” “I did, but I wasn’t really introduced to tefillin. I don’t even remember whether I put them on or not. I know they bought me tefillin, but whether I put them on, and how to put them on, I don’t know. I’m telling you the truth.” He said, “Go to your mother and see if you have tefillin. Bring them to me. I’ll explain how to put them on, and you can go abroad and put on tefillin.” I told him, “I can’t; that’s too much for me.” He said, “No, it takes two minutes. How long does it take to put them on, say Shema Yisroel, and take them off?” I said, “It really doesn’t sound like much.” He said, “Bring them and I’ll show you. If you don’t have tefillin, I’ll give you a pair. Go abroad with tefillin.” I said, “All right, why not?” I found a pair—not that I’d call them shabby, but they were small, those inexpensive ones made of that Formica-like material—and brought them to him. He showed me how to put them on. I said, “Okay.” Then he said, “Listen, do you know why I’m telling you to do a small mitzvah like this? In the Beis Hamikdash there was a very special mitzvah—”

10:30 Speaker 2 It was called the korban tamid. They brought this offering every day, morning and evening. A little lamb. And that lamb was for the entire Jewish people. “Do you know how many people there were in the Jewish nation?” he asked me. I said no. He said, “According to the Gemara, and according to the count of the offerings they brought on Pesach, we’re talking about millions of Jews. Millions upon millions, tens of millions. The Gemara says that when the Romans killed them, the river filled with blood. That’s millions. Millions. Hundreds. So many.” He said to me, “If you take an offering weighing a few kilograms and divide it among millions of people, how much of that offering does each person get?” I told him, “I don’t know. A little.” You divide thirty or forty kilos by even one million, let alone millions, and it’s not even the size of a pinhead. “So what do you think? Why not a few lambs? A few bulls? Something so that everyone gets a share?” Yes, so everyone would get something, even a gram or so. I said, “I don’t know. What value does that have?” I told him I really didn’t know. “I’ll tell you. Its value is that it’s the korban tamid. Its constancy—that’s its character, what makes it special. Morning and evening, morning and evening, like a Swiss watch. Its constancy is its strength. Pick one mitzvah. I’m not telling you to become religious. Pick a mitzvah and stay with it your whole life. Tefillin.” I said, “Listen, that sounds interesting. Sounds nice. All right, I’ll do it.” I landed abroad. I don’t know if it was on the first day or the second day, but I put on tefillin on the second day. After that—he hadn’t told me morning or evening—so I may have put them on at night too, and on Shabbos and Yom Tov. It got complicated. I put them on all the time. I felt good about it. One day I wrote to him, and from our conversation he understood

12:52 Speaker 2 that I didn’t know when to put them on. So he let me know it was once a day, in the morning, and that I should try to do it in the morning. He told me, “By the third hour after sunrise. And write to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Here’s his address.” He dictated the address to me. “Write, and you’ll see what miracles and wonders the Rebbe will do for you. He’ll watch over you, bless you and protect you. He’ll be with you.” I told him, “Great, wonderful.” I went and bought a fourteen-karat gold pen and wrote a letter to the Rebbe with it. It was one of those pen-and-pencil things, and I sent the letter to the address. Right away, a few days later, the non-Jewish woman who had hired me—she hadn’t known how much they paid and had named a figure, and her husband had said, “No, what kind of figure is that?” But he was committed to paying what his wife had said—came in and said to me, a few days after the letter, “Jacob, what are you eating?” I said, “What do you mean? I’m eating what everyone else eats.” “No, but you’re not allowed to eat this meat. Eat beef, eat chicken, but don’t touch this. Jews don’t eat it. You are a holy man from the Holy Land.” She was always showing me off: “You’re holy, a holy man from the Holy Land. You’re not supposed to eat this.” I told her, “Okay, fine.” “Come, let’s call the chef. From now on, make sure he never eats this. If there’s nothing else, make something for him.”

14:40 Speaker 5 What do you say to that?

14:41 Speaker 2 Yes. From that day on, I stopped eating that meat, that particular kind of meat, the lowly kind. Well, one Shabbos, maybe the following Shabbos, she comes in. “Jacob, what are you doing here in the restaurant?” I said, “I’m working.” “What do you mean, you’re working? This is Saturday. It’s a holy day. You’re not supposed to work on this day. What is this? I told you you’re a holy man. Come, let’s call the chef. From now on, he doesn’t work on Saturday. Saturday will be his day off.”

15:23 Speaker 5 That’s amazing.

15:25 Speaker 2 The non-Jewish woman is telling us to do this. Well, a few days go by. She comes to me with something new. “Jacob, next week, Monday or Tuesday, Kippur day is coming.” I said, “What? Kippur day?” I asked her, “What’s Kippur day?” Honestly, I didn’t know. She said, “It’s the holiest day. You’re not supposed to eat or drink, you know, do nothing, just pray. It’s a day when you’re not supposed to eat or drink. Kippur day.” I said, “Oh, Yom Kippur. Say Kippur! All right, Kippur, Kippur, all right, all right.” “Don’t worry. Let’s call the chef. What do you like to eat? Have him make you this and that. Stay with us, spend your time here, pray, write songs. It’s all fine; we’ll take care of it.” The non-Jewish woman is telling me to observe Yom Kippur. That may have been the third time I’d observed it. Once in the army, as a joke, and maybe once since I was twelve. That was it. I observed Yom Kippur. Afterward I continued traveling abroad, came back to Israel and started studying at university. I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into, so I studied various things here and there. By the way, I met... In the building entrance next to mine, on the top floor, there was an apartment of medical students. One of them is a doctor today, but he was a student then: Dr. Tal Nir. He was studying medicine, and—

17:07 Speaker 6 Where? In England?

17:08 Speaker 2 No, no, in Israel.

17:10 Speaker 6 Oh, you’d returned to Israel.

17:11 Speaker 2 Yes, I’d come back to Israel, and my parents lived in that building. He lived in the next entrance, on the fourth floor, and I said to him, “Tal, listen...” Oh, I forgot to say: I had started studying at university, and one day I remembered Rabbi Sofer. He had told me, “Come, I give classes in this room, on this floor, on this campus. Come Monday at eight fifteen for a class.” Of course I didn’t come. I was very afraid of him. But one day I was bored, with nothing to do, and I’d made an appointment but the person wasn’t there. So I went up to the class, sat down and heard things I’d never heard in my life. Wow, what classes! What Jewish philosophy, what wisdom, all of it. Well, after a few series of classes and Shabbos retreats with him, I dragged Tal along. I told him, “Come hear something you’ve never heard in your life.” “Yes, I like that kind of thing too.” He came and got excited as well. We both got excited. And one day, after the Shabbos retreats he held with the minyan downstairs in the synagogue, which split in two, half—

18:21 Speaker 6 So you and Tal Nir, basically, that’s where...

18:23 Speaker 2 Yes, I drew him in. He got involved a little later, but he did get involved. Then one day Chezkel said to us, “Listen, what do you think about coming to Kfar Chabad to see what it’s like, what goes on there?” I told him, “Sounds interesting. Why not? Tal, what do you say?” “Yes, yes.” “Okay, let’s go.” Some Tuesday came around. It was 18 Shvat, if I’m not mistaken, 5741, I think. And we went to Kfar Chabad. We stopped in Nachaliel and put on tefillin. I was already putting them on, but Tal started putting them on then. He hadn’t been doing it before. He put them on, and we continued to Kfar Chabad. We arrived in Kfar Chabad, sat down, and... I was hooked. Everyone descended on us with such generosity—people who are major shluchim today among them—and tried to bring the two young men closer. In those days, becoming observant wasn’t so much in fashion, and they tried to bring us closer, to strengthen us. By the first afternoon, Tal was already feeling a bit pressured. He found an excuse and went home. What do you mean, went? He left. He had to study medicine. You don’t cover that much material every day, and you have to keep up. You can’t fall behind. So he left. I stayed. What did I have to lose? Philosophy, nonsense. I used to call the Creator of the world “my philosophy.” He listened to Chezkel Sofer and, after a minute, found an excuse and ran away. But I saw that this was it. After Chezkel’s classes, I felt, “This is it for me. That university isn’t right for me.” But I would leave it later. I stayed, and on the first day I saw everyone heading in a certain direction. I didn’t understand what was going on. They told me, “No, no, sit and learn.” “No, tell me where everyone’s going.” “Sit, sit and learn.” “Where are they going? I want to go too.” “To the mikveh, but it isn’t clean and all that. Forget it, sit and learn.” I said, “They’re going, so I shouldn’t go? Come on.” I went and saw a pit

20:23 Speaker 2 It was so dark, and they immersed there. A tiny pit, a meter by a meter. Two hundred guys all immersed in it. The water was black and everything. I understood why they hadn’t wanted me to come, but I immersed. I came out. Interesting. After that immersion, I must have done something to myself through that self-nullification, that submission, that kabbolas ol. Then they taught Tractate Gittin, from the fifth chapter onward [?], if I’m not mistaken, and suddenly my mind opened up. I understood Rashi, I understood what Tosafos was, I understood the reasoning. I was excited. I said, “Wow, look at that. I immersed in the mikveh, and my mind opened up.” So I stayed the second day, and the third day too, and then I went home. When I got home, I decided I wasn’t taking off my kippah. I liked it. I was going with it. I got home, and my parents saw me. They were completely distraught and started showing how distressed they were. Right. Well, I told them I wouldn’t eat their food either, and so on. Then I went over to the television and switched it off while my father was watching. My father said, “What’s this?” I told him, “Why are you watching things like that? What nonsense.” Just like that. They went to Rabbi Sofer. “Take this boy, educate him, give him a good beating. What is this? What kind of behavior is that?” So Chetzkel immediately told me to come to his house. He gave me a talking-to about how I was behaving and all of that. That’s how I started spending more time at his home, and I brought Tal along too. We started coming to his place for Shabbos and so on. I bought myself a new tallis and gave my old one to Tal. I started putting tefillin on him, and I told him, “Talchik, listen. If you don’t put on tefillin every day, I’ll drive you crazy. I’ll come to your university, and you won’t get away from me. We’re in this together, and we’re going to keep going. And don’t be embarrassed to wear that kippah. Don’t be afraid of

22:25 Speaker 2 anyone. Not at all. If there are problems, bring Chetzkel to talk to them.” In short, we both grew stronger in our observance, and that’s how we got started. Then, after a few months, Chetzkel said, “The yeshiva in Tzfas.” I went up to Tzfas, started learning, and fell in love with the yeshiva and with it all. There was a bit of a crisis. I wanted to go home, and Koptchik [?] said to me, “Go on, go back to your mother’s apron.”

22:48 Speaker 7 Who was that? Oh, Rami Antin [?]?

22:51 Speaker 2 It was Rami Antin [?] then. He was the yeshiva administrator. I stayed in yeshiva and, boruch Hashem, I got excited about it, stayed, and enjoyed it. Gemara, no—no one took me under his wing. But I started learning Chassidus and Shulchan Aruch and so on. Chassidus truly amazed and captivated me, and I felt that I... Very soon after I started learning in yeshiva, I kept hearing, “The Rebbe, the Rebbe, the Rebbe.” What a wonder! I arrived in Sivan, and by Tishrei—at the end of Elul—I traveled to the Rebbe for the first time. I stayed with the Rebbe until Kislev, I think. I came back, learned in yeshiva for a whole year, then traveled to the Rebbe again, and then came back.

23:35 Speaker 7 What years are we talking about?

23:37 Speaker 2 Tishrei 5742 was the first time I went. Tishrei, yes. After that I came back and decided to try learning in Kfar Chabad for a while, to see what it was like. I learned there for a few months, from Kislev, when I returned from my second visit to the Rebbe, until Sivan. And there’s a story about how I got married—wonders upon wonders. I saw the Rebbe in a dream and asked him to help me find a shidduch. I’m shortening all of this; it’s a story in its own right. Then I tried to reach the Rebbe in a dream. I couldn’t, but I reached his entourage and asked them to request that I get married. Then one of them asked the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said, “Go to Abuchatzeira.” I didn’t know why, but kabbolas ol. I went to Abuchatzeira. He told me, “Very soon indeed.” I said, “Wow, those are the Rebbe’s words!” I came back and met my wife, and I put the question to her this way: “Do you believe in the Rebbe?” “Of course.” “Do you believe he can see souls?” “Of course.” “So why talk a lot?” I didn’t have much conversation with the woman. We’d talk a little. The Rebbe wants three meetings, so we met three times, for ten or fifteen minutes each, day after day after day. We sat down, and I said, “I don’t know you. The Koptchiks [?] know me.” “The Koptchiks [?]? Fine.” That was it. Within three weeks we were married. We had barely spoken. We believed completely in what the Rebbe said. After that, I went out on a special shlichus. You called me the Chabad driver.

25:20 Speaker 8 Ah.

25:21 Speaker 2 You told me that. That was already in 5745. We got married in Sivan 5744, on exactly 28 Sivan, the day the Rebbe came to America. Then I went on shlichus in Ashdod for a year. I came back from Ashdod and went to Tzfas again. In Tzfas, Yankele told me, “Come on, you know how to talk to kibbutzniks. You’re a kibbutznik. We’ll give you a car. Go around the kibbutzim and give Torah classes.” And I did that for four years.

25:50 Speaker 8 Tell us, tell us how it worked. You used to come on your scooter.

25:54 Speaker 2 I used to come on my Vespa.

25:56 Speaker 8 Yes.

25:56 Speaker 2 Take...

25:57 Speaker 8 Because today...

25:57 Speaker 2 No, no, no. Twice a week.

25:59 Speaker 8 Twice a week.

25:59 Speaker 2 I’d park my motorcycle, my Vespa.

26:03 Speaker 8 And take the Daihatsu [?].

26:04 Speaker 2 I’d take the little Daihatsu [?] and go to the kibbutzim around here. I’d try to set up Torah classes, make home visits, give some Torah classes up north. I did that twice a week for four years. I also worked with Aharon Leizer Zeitlin z"l in the Chabad kindergartens and in Machanayim [?], teaching girls who were just beginning to grow stronger in their observance. So it was two days here, two days in Nahariya [?], two days in Tzfas, for four years. After that I told David Dechan that I wanted to do more intensive outreach in the kibbutzim. He said, “Listen, I’m willing to fund the Torah classes, everything. The rest—do what you want. Open a Chabad House.” That was it; he’d thrown down the gauntlet, but I didn’t do anything with it. Then I organized a group for Aharon Leizer Zeitlin to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The two of us went, bringing a large group for the first time—almost eighty, a hundred people—and the Rebbe blessed the group and so on. When I passed by the Rebbe, at the end of... during the holidays, on the second night of Chanukah in Kislev, I was the last, or one of the last, in the group. I passed by the Rebbe and said, “Rebbe, I’m asking for a blessing for success in spreading Yiddishkeit in the kibbutzim in Eretz Yisroel, in a way of miraculous miracles.” That was 5750. The Rebbe kept saying it would be a year of miracles. 5750 was the year of “miraculous miracles.”

27:33 Speaker 8 Miracles and wonders.

27:34 Speaker 2 Right. So I said, that’s what the Rebbe says; I’ll go with that. I asked for a blessing for spreading Yiddishkeit in the kibbutzim. I was debating with myself whether that whole long request was exactly what I wanted to say, or whether I should say something shorter. Anyway, when I passed by, the Rebbe took a dollar, gave it to me, said “Amen,” and added another dollar. “Great success in all matters there.” Wow. A blessing like that—what more could you ask for?

28:02 Speaker 8 You couldn’t.

28:03 Speaker 2 No. That was in 5750. In 5754, I started... I got a car, bought a car, and began working in the kibbutzim. Starting before Pesach, I brought three shmurah matzos to each kibbutz. I left the mobile outreach operation and set up a little mobile operation of my own, making connections with as many people as possible. I prayed to Hashem to give me a formula like the one Yechezkel had mentioned, but one that would last a lifetime. I said: What I’ll do with the kibbutzniks will be small, with each kibbutz, but it’ll be for life. I won’t leave their minds for their whole lives. It’s an influence like a drop of water dripping onto a rock, as in the story of Rabbi Akiva. It’s the story of the korban tamid, the daily offering. That’s the principle. I’m going to reach all of them, and give each of them a drop. I wanted to develop that formula. That’s how I work. It suited me personally, too. I like variety; I like this and I like that. So at least that drop should be concentrated and potent enough to last until Pesach, and then Rosh Hashanah, with the matzos and everything. I’d come to the office of each kibbutz with a box of three matzos and a form for selling chometz. I’d knock on the door, and everyone would smile. “What’s this religious guy doing here? What does he want?”

29:30 Speaker 8 And how many kibbutzim were there then?

29:32 Speaker 2 No, there have always been three hundred kibbutzim.

29:34 Speaker 8 There are three hundred.

29:35 Speaker 2 But I drew myself a map. I worked out a route of 140 kibbutzim plus another 40—180 kibbutzim that suited me. We’d take the north and the south, spend a whole week traveling here and covering those places, and keep working there all the time. So I had 180 kibbutzim out of 300. Of those 300, 30 were religious, Mizrachi kibbutzim. That left 270 kibbutzim altogether, and I took 180 of them. The religious ones know how to manage on their own. I’m not suited to those people. So that’s where I focused. I would bring shmurah matzah, and little by little the work grew. Any kibbutz secretary who smiled at me a bit too warmly, I’d immediately say, “Here, take a box for your family too,” because they accepted it gladly. I started building a list. On a three-week route like that, I’d add about twenty to thirty new people each time. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. And the list grew at Rosh Hashanah too, with apples and honey and a calendar.

30:38 Speaker 8 You went from kibbutz to kibbutz to kibbutz to kibbutz every day?

30:41 Speaker 2 No. Around Pesach, yes and no. For Pesach I covered all the kibbutzim, made connections and built a list. Then at Rosh Hashanah it grew by another twenty-five. So another fifty people a year went onto the list. In my day-to-day work, yes, I traveled. I also had all sorts of administrative work in the office, entering records and everything. What I really built for myself was an activity of home visits. That was it.

31:10 Speaker 8 You were the one who gave me that famous birthday letter back then.

31:12 Speaker 2 Oh.

31:13 Speaker 8 A letter whose wording I still use today.

31:15 Speaker 2 Good. So here’s what I did. For everyone who went onto the list, besides getting their phone number and email address—there wasn’t email then, but I added it later—I asked a little about them. What were their and their wife’s dates of birth? Of course, I then asked whether they had been born after sunset. Once they told me whether it was before or after sunset, I corrected the date. The computer converted it to a Hebrew date for me. A date program did the conversion, so the computer had their Hebrew dates, and a computer guy would produce a list for me each month. That way I knew whose birthday it was each day. It didn’t mean I went to see them, though sometimes I did use that as a guide. I liked visiting spontaneously—whoever I felt like seeing, whoever needed it, and so on. I didn’t want the schedule to hold me back, but I did want to know whose birthday it was. So I’d visit according to birthdays, according to my heart, and according to need. I’d sit with people in their homes, put up a mezuzah, talk with them and form gentle connections that brought us closer. I wasn’t going to make them baalei teshuvah. But I wanted those connections so that, first of all, I could reduce the—these were the secretaries, the cultural coordinators, the kibbutz coordinators, the people who knew everyone, the important people on the kibbutz. Through my connection with them, I wanted to make religious people more likable to them, and ease the polarization, the hatred, and everything that existed between secular and religious people—the people called secular. To ease it. That was really my contribution: to take the sharp edges off. It was as if I went around with all these sharpened pencils—tap, tap, tap—breaking off their points. What could I do? I couldn’t do more, but at least there wouldn’t be sharp points here. And because I was speaking with the leading people on the kibbutz, the important people, they were the sharp point. I’d take the point off the point, so there wouldn’t

33:04 Speaker 2 be hatred. Then, when certain decisions came up, they’d be more favorable toward religious people, or they’d say, “Oh, they’re not all like that.” That would be my reward; that would be the result of my work. Besides that, there was also bringing people closer. People would start eating a little shmurah matzah. If someone wanted a mezuzah, there would be a mezuzah. Just talking with them—not immediately, but after a living-room conversation about this and that—I’d bring up a Jewish subject here, another one there. They’d ask questions and get answers. “What do you say about this or that?” “Really? I didn’t know it was like that. I didn’t know that.” So in effect, those were little Torah classes. I’d accumulate several Torah classes with each person. You might walk out thinking nothing had happened. No—it wasn’t nothing. You’d created a lot of spiritual things, and in fact, Torah study is equal to them all. They had learned; they’d had a little Torah class. I really liked putting ideas concisely and presenting them, and they liked the style and so on. In a half-hour visit—even fifteen minutes, half an hour, forty minutes, an hour—they’d come away with something new. They’d come away understanding some aspect of Judaism.

34:09 Speaker 9 Let me ask you something now. All these things need funding. You also need something to live on. Your wife needs to buy groceries.

34:17 Speaker 2 At first we lived on air.

34:18 Speaker 9 On air. I see.

34:20 Speaker 2 I mean, later my wife worked a little at various things—as a substitute kindergarten teacher, things like that. I don’t even remember what she did. So a few pennies came in from her, and then I started learning how to schnorr, too. I went to the yeshiva’s director and told him one day, when I was traveling to the Rebbe, “I don’t have money, I don’t have anything.” So he said, “Come help the yeshiva. Raise some money.” And I started doing that. That was how I learned, too. I planned routes and would literally go dollar by dollar, until the donations grew and grew. Then I’d drop the small donors, keep the medium-sized ones and look for the big ones. I lived off the medium-sized and large donations, and the amounts grew. That made more and more activity possible. But basically, it was a miracle. Now, in 5754, four years after I’d asked the Rebbe for a blessing for the kibbutzim, a new dimension entered the work. After all, I’d told the Rebbe—and the Rebbe made it happen—that I wanted a blessing for success in a world of extraordinary miracles. Words have a plain meaning, an allusion, an interpretation and a secret meaning. What I asked for was the plain meaning. What was that? “I want miracles and wonders, please.” I wanted an additive in my 95-octane fuel that would make miracles happen for me. Why? Because what was this undertaking—180 kibbutzim? I wanted a miracle: that I’d manage to get into a kibbutz, that people would like me, that they wouldn’t throw me out. That something would come of it. That when I brought something, it would be exactly what the person wanted. That I’d say the things that needed saying. After all, I come to see someone for half an hour once every—once in a long while. It isn’t Purim every day. Someone might see me once in a year, two years, three years. So I need to say the right things. “Hashem, give me the right words. Give me ideas.” That’s a miracle. You need that to succeed across all the kibbutzim. Besides

36:11 Speaker 2 that, I also do other projects, and I need everything to hit its mark without confusion, with the little I have. For that little to contain so much—that’s a miracle.

36:19 Speaker 9 And you’re talking now about how you began this work, which is really shlichus from the Rebbe.

36:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:28 Speaker 9 Was there a point when you stopped and said to yourself, “Wait a minute, I’m now becoming a shliach of the Rebbe”? After all—

36:34 Speaker 2 No. From the moment the Rebbe answered me with the words, “Amen. Great success in all matters there,” I received two seals of approval. I understood one; I still didn’t understand the other. Two seals on my request. One was for miracles and wonders. I didn’t understand what the second was: “Success in all matters there.” I didn’t know what “all” meant—all the things that could develop. Four years later I went to the mother of all demonstrations. There were almost a million people there, and people were carrying flags. I said, “What’s this? Why doesn’t Chabad have something to say? I need a flag too. Every respectable organization, every cause, has its own flag, its own logo. What? Why doesn’t Chabad have one?” I had the idea of making a Chabad flag. I had that crown saved somewhere in a drawer. I’d seen it somewhere, cut it out of a magazine and put it away. I took it to a flag maker and said, “Make me some flags.” And we made the yellow Chabad flag. I... most of the... I don’t have a flag. When Moshiach actually comes, try to find a flag. So, yes. And suddenly I understood, after... The flag was snapped up. It was like water on dry concrete. It was like a stopper for a bottle. It really helped people say, “Here’s the Rebbe, here’s Moshiach, here’s what it’s all about, here’s Chabad.” I didn’t have statements like that, but at least there was the idea of Moshiach. Everyone really liked it, but no one dared to go around waving it and all that. I had to work hard, very hard, to get it adopted. But it worked. Little by little, among different groups: another hundred flags, a hundred flags, another hundred flags, hundreds and hundreds of flags, thousands of flags. After that, Avi Taub’s wife—may he be well in Gan Eden—said

38:26 Speaker 2 “Tell me, do you have something for my workers in the diamond business? Something small for a suit?” I said, “No, I don’t.” “Take it, cut it, make something.” It didn’t look nice. I went back to my manufacturer. I said to him, “What...?” He said, “What are you... Look at the wall here.” I saw all the military branches and everything. I said, “Shall we make something like that?” He said, “Why not? Let’s do it.” We made it, and it was snapped up. Wow, was it snapped up. But nobody dared put it on their suit. [unclear]. For four years, only a few people took one and put it on their suit. Everyone liked it. They put it inside, put it here on their bags. Nobody dared wear it. They said, “It doesn’t look right. It’s... girls put things like that on their suits.” When the Twin Towers fell four years later, and Bush started wearing an American flag, everyone wanted to wear an American flag too, as a sign of solidarity, to support him, to support America, which had taken a punch in the face from Al-Qaeda. So people started wearing flags, and it became fashionable. Then they started wearing this one. Yeshiva students started wearing it, and then it took off. Then there were tens of thousands of flags, maybe we passed a million, I don’t know how many. That’s when it began to have an impact. Today, anyone who really wants to publicize Geulah and Moshiach without saying much puts it on. But at first, I would also go out to collect money, and I did the calculation: they won’t give you money if you go around wearing a little flag. They’ll say you’re one of the crazies. For quite a few years I’d take it off and put it back on, take it off and put it back on, depending on the fundraising and the area. Then I said, “Yankele, be true to yourself and wear it. If there’s no money, there’s no money, but you’ll stand for

40:17 Speaker 2 the truth.” And when I put it on, something in my body language must have changed. Far from people not giving me money, they began giving in a completely different way. Thousands of dollars, donations, things like that. Someone even once gave me a very large check. I saw that, okay, you suffer, as they say, but eventually you reach a crossroads, and at that crossroads someone comes along and makes up the entire difference. So yes, wear the flag and don’t be embarrassed. As Donish [unclear] once said—he used to buy hundreds of them from me and hand them out—he’d tell people, “Listen, if you don’t feel like saying much, put on the little flag. It will speak for you and do the work for you, and the message that gives people strength will spread. Don’t talk their ears off.” That’s what I say today. Later, I saw another instance of hashgachah pratis in it. The flag inspires enthusiasm, and who’s against enthusiasm? We have a few “friends.” One friend says, “What about dignity?” Another says, “What about money?” Another, “What about desires [unclear]?” “What about this? What about that?” All sorts of friends surround us, in quotation marks. There’s one whose “friendship” tells you, “Why are you getting so excited? Fine, we agree with you and everything. Calm down. You don’t need to get excited.” So what does that have to do with this flag? The flag is exciting. How do we deal with the one who wants us not to get excited—Amalek—using the flag itself? Why is it yellow? Then someone in Manchester once said to me, “Did you plan that?” I said, “No. What are you talking about?” “Tzahov, ‘yellow,’ is an acronym for ‘Go out and fight Amalek.’” I said, “Wow. Do you know what the Rebbe’s blessing was?” Then I understood. The Rebbe told me, “May you have great success in all matters.” He included a great many matters in those words. Not just the miracles and wonders in the work, on the kibbutzim, and in general, and the money and everything. He

42:10 Speaker 2 included miracle upon miracle. That includes flag upon flag, because a nes is a flag, as in “my banner upon the mountains.” So the Rebbe gave you a flag, which is a nes, and made it yellow, which means to fight Amalek. Everything contained in the flag—the Rebbe put infinity into this whole thing. So when I asked for a blessing, I received success in everything: miracles upon miracles, flags, whatever you want, all within the Rebbe’s words.

42:38 Speaker 10 Now I’ll tell you a little more.

42:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

42:39 Speaker 10 Tell us a little about the work itself. What? Who works with you? What do you do? What happens beforehand? Who are the people you meet?

42:47 Speaker 2 Yes. Fifteen years ago, I saw that it was hard to do it alone, so I brought in some fellows. I told them, “Go make home visits. I know these people, but fresh faces are always good. I’ve already squeezed the lemon. You go squeeze it—fresh faces can draw out of people what I couldn’t.” Pairs of young married men began going out on home visits for birthdays, and there was a good response. Then there was another pair, and another pair, and usually something came of it.

43:17 Speaker 10 Tell us a little about what...

43:18 Speaker 2 A birthday on the Hebrew date. They knock on the door and come in for a home visit. One day, one fellow’s partner couldn’t make it. They used to go in pairs of young married men. He told me, “Listen, my partner can’t come, but I can bring my wife.” I told him, “That’s interesting, and I’m willing to go with it. I’ve never tried it. Let’s see.” He came back with his eyes shining. “Listen, my wife and that man’s wife sat together, hugged, kissed, danced. You wouldn’t believe it. What a wonderful home visit!” Wow. I said, “That’s it. From today, no more pairs of men. No more a man and a man—a man and his household.” From then on, each person went out only with his wife. No more pairs of men. Since then, they’ve been going out as couples. It has an effect on them too: it brings the couples closer together, and so on. It’s wonderful for the couples making the visits, and the connection with the families is remarkable. Someone organizes the people, takes them back and forth, brings them in and out. He arranges for them to go to the kibbutzim, decides where they should go, and so on. At first I would intervene: “Go to this person, go to that person.” Later I realized: leave it to hashgachah pratis. Then I saw that they’d get confused on a kibbutz and be unable to find the house. Leave it to hashgachah pratis. Why? They knock on someone else’s door on the kibbutz and ask, “Where does so-and-so live?” In the meantime, sometimes another family gets involved, and so on. So every mistake—the Rebbe works with all of it. With the things you planned and with the mistakes and everything. The Rebbe mixes it all together and brings about what he wants. What looks like a mistake to you isn’t a mistake. That’s where you were meant to go, to that very “mistake.” So they sit with families in their homes and bring them closer. It’s a challenge for the couples who go out, and it also strengthens the bond between husband and wife. That’s a bonus, but it brings the family closer, and so on. A lot of good things have come of it. A lot. People, many women, fellows who became interested in putting on tefillin, and many fellows began becoming

45:12 Speaker 2 observant. Some still go without a kippah, but they’re observant: they keep many things, maintain the traditions, observe the holidays, pray. Modeh Ani. All sorts of developments. Now, I don’t have a net to gather up all the successes from “Cast your bread upon the waters.” Usually you cast the bread and afterward throw out a fishing line or a net and catch the fish along with the bread you threw out. I never know. I don’t have a net. I never ask what happened. I work on the assumption that something good happened, and as one soldier on my own, I don’t have the energy or the time. If you’re at headquarters, that’s one thing; when you’re in the field, you don’t have it. You can’t waste energy; you can’t waste anything. Start counting and writing things down along the way? I’m out here in the field. If you want, do it afterward, but right now I’ve succeeded. I wouldn’t even photograph the home visits. I thought, maybe people wouldn’t want that exposure.

46:07 Speaker 11 Uh.

46:07 Speaker 2 Maybe they wouldn’t like me stopping to suddenly put them on display. They themselves don’t understand what’s happening to them, how they’re getting drawn into a conversation with a religious guy. It startles them. They won’t want the occasion documented. So why photograph it? Why embarrass people? They won’t tell you not to take a picture, either; it wouldn’t be polite. It’s as if you’re betraying the friendship, the intimacy of that friendship. It’s like going with your wife to a café for your anniversary, bringing a television camera and filming the occasion. Come on, did we come to an event or to a restaurant? Do you have to film it? A hidden camera would be one thing, but this isn’t appropriate. No, no, no, it’s not appropriate.

46:42 Speaker 11 Sorry, yes, tell me something.

46:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

46:45 Speaker 11 On 28 Nissan 5751, the Rebbe delivered a very, very dramatic sicha to the chassidim. He told them that, in effect, everything he had tried to do over the course of decades—“It hasn’t worked with you, fellows. It hasn’t succeeded.” So he gave them a new approach. First, you take responsibility. Second, act in a way of, uh—

47:11 Speaker 2 Lights and vessels.

47:12 Speaker 11 In vessels of tikkun. What do you think? What do you think the Rebbe wants here? What does the Rebbe want from us?

47:19 Speaker 2 I remember—I’ll come back to this. One day I was at a farbrengen of the Rebbe. I don’t understand Yiddish. I stood on the pyramid; they gave me a little space, and after fifteen minutes they’d had enough and pushed me out. I told them, “I don’t understand.” So they said to me... and pushed me out. I sat down on a chair and said, “Rebbe, look, I have nothing. I don’t have Torah; I don’t know anything. I’m religious, but in my heart. What do I have? A desire that reaches the heavens. What’s going to become of me? Nothing? Am I not going to do anything for you? I don’t know Yiddish. I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I understand. Afterward I read what you said, but what’s going to happen? I want to do something for you.” Apparently they heard me in Heaven, and that’s when I was given something. I used to be a poet; I wrote poems. Then I saw that it took up an enormous amount of my time, so I stopped. I mean, I don’t have time to write. I love editing and everything, but it takes me a lot of time. Then I saw that in the kibbutzim I could accomplish things and do all kinds of things. I said to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Give me ideas, give me ideas for things I can do.” And that’s how I started creating this activity: home visits, matzos, stickers, productions and flags. And I felt—then people came and said, “Wait, wait. What are you doing? Who are you? Who sent you? We’re Chabad. We know what’s permitted and what isn’t. What you’re doing frightens people. Yellow, flags—it’s getting into our weddings, into our lives, into our veins. Now everything has to have your spice in it, this yellow turmeric of yours, and you’re offering it to us. [unclear]. What is this?” So I said to them, “Guys, what are you talking about?” The poet in me burst out.

49:11 Speaker 2 No more poems, so productions burst out of me instead. This is what the Rebbe wants. I saw what the Rebbe said as a green light for productions in every area of shlichus, and to convey it in a way people can accept. It was as though the Rebbe had challenged us: “Guys, look, we’re talking about ‘lights of Tohu,’ about things that are shocking and frightening, that frighten ordinary people. It’s outside the box, and you’re inviting everyone: Come, come, come, come, come—jump beyond the box, jump out into the wider world.” And a lot of people are afraid to make that move. But I saw that I had—Hashem didn’t give me Torah, or this or that. Hashem gave me... What had I managed to do? I hadn’t managed to learn, but Hashem gave me the ability to know how to go wild in a beautiful way. And since I’m an artist and a songwriter and so on, I also enlisted the whole world of art and aesthetics to make productions that would be just right in how people received them—appealing in their beauty, their aesthetics, their precision and so on. So when the Rebbe said, “Do all that you can,” it gave me, so to speak, a whole field of production, a field of creativity in which to create things among the people I come into contact with.

50:39 Speaker 3 So we see. Okay, you made the flags and you made the stickers.

50:44 Speaker 2 My cars go into the kibbutzim—cars with flags, everything. All the material I put out has this spice of Moshiach in it. I don’t put out anything without it, even if the material itself is pareve.

50:57 Speaker 3 I visited my mother.

50:58 Speaker 2 So I bring that in and connect it with Moshiach.

51:00 Speaker 3 I visited my mother at Kibbutz Sarid.

51:02 Speaker 2 Yes. Sarid?

51:04 Speaker 3 Yes. I’m leaving the parking lot, and I see a white car with a Moshiach flag. I said, “There must be a baal teshuvah here.” I called my son Schneur Zalman and said, “Listen, there’s some baal teshuvah here in Sarid.” He said, “No, that’s Yaakov Ben Ari.” What? What is Yaakov Ben Ari doing at Kibbutz Sarid? He told me, “He’s printing the Tanya there.”

51:27 Speaker 2 Right.

51:28 Speaker 3 So what happened there?

51:29 Speaker 2 About three years ago—I don’t quite remember anymore; time flies—the person who prints the Tanyas came to me and said, “Yankele, I have some donations.” He had a representative here in Kiryat Malachi, and someone to do the printing. He said, “Look, I can print about fifty editions of the Tanya. It’s a challenge. Do you have places to print them?” I said, “Of course. What do you mean? But you’re paying?” “Yes, you just organize it for us.” And so, over the course of a few weeks, at three printings a day, we completed fifty printings of the Tanya. That’s a story in itself—every single kibbutz. What a miracle. It was clear to us that—

52:16 Speaker 3 Did the kibbutz itself know you were printing?

52:18 Speaker 2 Not always. But our contact inside the kibbutz, an important person there, brought us to a particular spot, connected us to a wall socket, and let us hook up the machine and print.

52:29 Speaker 3 In other words, he was effectively the kibbutz’s consent.

52:32 Speaker 2 Yes. There was even a kibbutz in the Aravah. I remember having this dilemma. I said to Ezer, “Listen, they threw me out of this kibbutz. It may be only the second kibbutz out of all of them that told me, ‘Leave us alone. We don’t...’” Never mind which one—in the Aravah, a Reform kibbutz like that. “‘Go find yourself friends somewhere else. Leave us alone.’” I didn’t go back for ten years. After ten years I said to myself, “Are you all right? What’s with you? You’re a shliach of the Rebbe. Go everywhere. If they throw you out, get right back up and go. Come back, go again, come back—until it takes hold.” I returned to the kibbutz, got to know someone there, and came to print. I told Ezer, “Listen, this is a kibbutz. There’s no one for me to get permission from. I’ll go in, tell my contact that I’m here and need an electrical outlet to plug into, and that’s it.” He answered me, “Listen, I don’t know, but what can I tell you? Plug in and do what you want.” So I said to Ezer, “Let’s turn right inside the kibbutz.” It was really a jungle—the Aravah, an entire kibbutz spread across open space. “We’ll head toward the date palms, find a shed with electricity, plug in, print for an hour and a half, and leave.” We’d print the Tanya on the kibbutz’s land and have a spiritual effect on the whole kibbutz in a makif way. You know what? A makif of a makif for the kibbutz. Surely that would do something. What more could we ask for? We were about to plug in. I took the electrical plug and went to connect it to the wall, then turned to Ezer and said, “Ezer, I don’t think this is what the Rebbe wants. A makif of a makif and all that... The Rebbe wants it done in a way they can accept. They have to want it.”

54:17 Speaker 3 You know, at the time, when something like this happened, the Rebbe gave us the...

54:20 Speaker 2 No.

54:20 Speaker 3 [unclear]. [unclear].

54:22 Speaker 2 I imagine a lot of people received it.

54:24 Speaker 3 That it should be with the kibbutz’s consent, and that there should also be some participation from the place itself.

54:30 Speaker 2 Okay, so as for participation—sometimes one or two people came. A person would come, show us where to print, and leave. I said to him, “Ezer, we’re going to ask permission. Come on.” He said, “Okay.” I told him, “That’s how it’s going to be here. This is a kibbutz—”

54:47 Speaker 3 That was an hour and four and a half hours.

54:49 Speaker 2 No, we did one kibbutz at a time. This was the third kibbutz. I said, “I’m not giving up on this kibbutz. If they throw me out, they throw me out, but I’m not doing it behind their backs. I want G-dliness to permeate the place, and for them to accept His kingship willingly.” They have to want it, even a tiny bit—but there has to be something. The distance between a tiny bit and nothing is infinite. I want to bring that infinity in here. I went to the kibbutz office and walked in—Divine Providence. It was already evening, and I heard everyone sitting in a meeting. It was a very plain sort of kibbutz, simple people and all that. I went in and said, “Hello, good evening.” They were sitting in a circle, talking about some meeting of the kibbutz council. The wise—the kibbutz’s wise people.

55:37 Speaker 3 The kibbutz’s council of sages.

55:38 Speaker 2 Yes.

55:39 Speaker 3 Yes.

55:39 Speaker 2 I said to them, “Good evening. How are you? I came to wish you well ahead of Rosh Hashanah”—I think that was it—“which is coming up soon, to bless the whole kibbutz with every good blessing, and to bring you something that’s a segulah for livelihood, for health, for this and that, for all the good things you want.” They were all stunned. What? Where had I come from?

56:03 Speaker 3 Where did this rabbi [unclear] suddenly come from?

56:04 Speaker 2 “What’s he talking about? What does he want? What is this?” I told them, “I brought you the Tanya. I just need to plug in somewhere for a little over an hour and then leave. It’s all been paid for; everything’s taken care of. No problem. It’s just a physical act, but it will bring blessing to you and to the whole kibbutz for the rest of your lives. Is that possible?” They started smiling. “Why not?” One of them started laughing. They said to him—I don’t know what his name was, Ronaldo or Ritondo[?]—“Take him to the club, let him plug in and print the Tanya. Why not? No problem.” The kibbutz secretary himself got up, ponytail and all, went to the club, showed us where to plug in, and went back to the meeting. That was it. We won. The Rebbe won. How did he win? By convincing me, by giving me the inner strength not to commit that transgression—not to do it in some corner of the kibbutz, but to have us come in a way everyone accepted. And that’s how I do everything in the kibbutzim: never by sneaking around. I’ve always believed in that. Holiness requires consent. An awakening from Above needs an awakening from below; His kingship has to be accepted willingly. When people accept it upon themselves, it works. It works. The Torah could not be given until the Jewish people were ready to receive it, until Yisro came and said, “Blessed be Hashem,” and acknowledged G-d. Then the Torah was given to the Jewish people. Throughout Jewish history, Hashem has wanted there to be consent, for the place to be ready to receive it. If it comes from beyond what they can receive, it doesn’t take hold. As they say about our forefathers: Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov sat out in the desert. That wasn’t enough; Yosef had to be inside Egypt. And even that wasn’t enough. Why? Because he was above Egypt. His children, Menashe and Ephraim, brought it into Egypt itself. Now it’s right. Ephraim—“G-d has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Now there are fruits. That’s what I want:

58:22 Speaker 2 for it to enter the culture. That’s my aspiration. Give life to life.

58:26 Speaker 3 Life and life. Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe,

58:29 Speaker 2 King Moshiach, forever and ever.