Rabbi Moti Garmach, Kyoto, Japan - Part 1

00:22 Speaker 1 Well, Moti, you’re joining us from a very distant place. Moti, how far away are you from us? Ten thousand kilometers?

00:31 Speaker 2 I haven’t counted. Japan.

00:34 Speaker 1 Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto, Japan. Tell me, Moti, I’m asking you a genuinely serious question, not a put-on. The Rebbe of Lubavitch wrote to a businessman traveling to Japan that there is an opinion that the Japanese are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. Are you familiar with that?

00:55 Speaker 2 If we share the screen, we can show it later. The Rebbe was speaking with Rabbi Lau, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel. He told the Rebbe that in the summer of 5751, he had been right here in Kyoto. There was a gathering of religious leaders, and he came as a representative of the Jewish people. He told the Rebbe that they had specifically asked him to speak in Hebrew. There are Japanese people here called—what should I call them, a group? Makuya. That’s their name.

01:35 Speaker 1 Makuya.

01:35 Speaker 2 A movement. Makuya. Makuya is the Japanese translation of the word Mishkan, and they’re a Christian movement. One of them had a revelation that their purpose was to help Jews, and that became the whole focus of their spiritual work. They got very involved and helped during the—sixties or seventies, I’m not sure. They donated a lot. There’s a kibbutz on the way to Beit Shemesh; they built a lot and invested a lot of money. So they were the ones who asked him to speak Hebrew. They speak Hebrew and have Hebrew names. Rabbi Lau told the Rebbe about this encounter, about the kiddush Hashem and how they had asked him to speak Hebrew. And while Rabbi Lau was speaking so enthusiastically—he had finished a sentence, and at the height of his enthusiasm about this, the Rebbe raised a subject. The Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, raised a subject. What did he bring up? That the Japanese say they are descended from the Lost Tribes.

02:46 Speaker 1 You don’t say!

02:48 Speaker 2 And Rabbi Lau answered him: “There are some like that, but there are also Shinto followers and Buddhists. There are idol worshippers.” He didn’t really connect with what the Rebbe was asking.

02:58 Speaker 1 He didn’t go along with the Rebbe.

03:01 Speaker 2 No, I believe he wasn’t very familiar with the subject either. When you come for a one-time visit, you don’t see it; you don’t encounter it much. But it’s really—how do you put it?—alive everywhere. Books are written about it here, and people point to all kinds of signs. Whether it’s true, and whether what people say is true, we can’t say either way, because these are all very general things. But...

03:35 Speaker 1 Yes, right, I forgot you’re already on Sunday.

03:38 Speaker 2 Go ahead. The sun rises here first—we’re ahead of the world. So we’re ahead of the world for all the holidays too.

03:45 Speaker 1 Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, by Whose word all things came to be.

03:48 Speaker 2 By Whose word all things came to be. L’chaim, and blessings. May we merit to do the will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Rebbe brought us here, the Rebbe revealed our place here to us, and the Rebbe chose where to place each person’s soul and what each of us needs to do. May we merit to live with that all the time. L’chaim, and blessings.

04:09 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. L’chaim, l’chaim. In any case, Moti, since you’ve brought up this subject, let me say something, and you tell me what you think, because today the floor is yours.

04:24 Speaker 2 Yes.

04:25 Speaker 1 If the Rebbe of Lubavitch, who is Melech HaMoshiach himself, says that the Japanese say they are descendants of the tribes—well, the Rebbe doesn’t say that because it’s something someone would like to hear, or because it makes a nice story. The Rebbe says it with a real intention: there’s something here of great significance. The Rebbe can’t just be saying things for no reason.

04:49 Speaker 2 Right, and that’s a question that bothers me all the time. From a research standpoint, there’s nothing conclusive here. You can make connections with various things. There are all kinds of Star of David shapes here, and other things. There’s some sort of group who wear something like tefillin. It could be that Jews were in this region, because we know the Lost Tribes went away. Our Torah sources say they went beyond the Sambatyon River. Where exactly is the Sambatyon River? The India region, the Pakistan region. There’s Tibet here; there’s a lot of mixing. But it’s certainly possible that a Jewish family came here and had an influence, or that local residents saw Jews in the region and learned things from them. That doesn’t necessarily tell us who is Jewish. But there is definitely a thirst here, and we don’t encounter any antisemitism. We don’t feel it in any way. It’s the opposite: the Japanese are very curious about the success of the Jewish people. It fascinates them. Take Mein Kampf, such a negative book. Here, they’ll approach it as: “Okay, what can it teach us? How can we be like that? How are the Jews so successful? What can we take from it?” That’s not how we see it, but yes, Jews come from all over and teach. There was a plan here. There’s a book called The Fugu Plan.

06:32 Speaker 1 What’s it called?

06:33 Speaker 2 There’s a fish—fugu. The Fugu Plan. Fugu is a kind of fish. I think in Hebrew it’s called abu nafcha. It’s poisonous, but if you know how to cut it properly, it’s delicious—a delicacy. And here in India—sorry, here in Japan; we’ll get to that. Why do I keep mixing up India and Japan? Anyway, here in Japan they have a special dish made from it. They call it fugu. And there was a plan—I think this was before the Holocaust—about how to bring Jews here. But the Jews were like the fugu fish: if you don’t bring them in under controlled conditions, they take over. That’s why it was called the Fugu Plan. They wanted to bring Jews in to boost the Japanese economy. Bring Jews here, and they’ll bring us ideas and new things; they’ll lift us up and help us. But if we let them, they’ll—how do you put it? I don’t know. You have to read the book. I haven’t read it in English. It has all kinds of documents about the meetings, the interviews, and how they planned to move it forward. The Japanese see Jews as successful—not with the antisemitic envy, but as something to learn from: “What can I take from this?”

08:05 Speaker 1 Moti, let’s jump back a few decades. Let’s get to know you. Tell us a little about your—

08:12 Speaker 2 Let’s do it.

08:13 Speaker 1 Your family. Where are you from? Where do your parents come from?

08:18 Speaker 2 Let’s start with Aram Naharayim.

08:20 Speaker 1 Aram Naharayim.

08:21 Speaker 2 Grandfather Avraham. Well, let’s start a little closer to home. My parents—but I’ll begin with where my parents are from. My father is Australian, from Australia, and my mother is American, from Chicago. Going back a little further to their parents: my mother’s side has been in the United States for four generations. They came from—how do you say it?—Galicia, places and countries that don’t exist anymore.

08:53 Speaker 1 In Central Europe.

08:55 Speaker 2 Yes. One branch probably comes from Chernobyl Chassidus. But that’s four generations back, so we don’t really have information. The family story is that the father and children came to the United States. The children began fitting in and becoming American, but the father wouldn’t give up his beard. The children were embarrassed by it, so they told him it spread disease because you couldn’t clean it properly. They made him shave it off because they were embarrassed in American society. That was four or five generations ago—the grandfather who came over, my great-great-great-grandfather. That’s my mother’s side. She grew up with a Reform education and was called up to the Torah at her bat mitzvah. Later she went to university. At university she met—what’s his name?—in Minnesota. Minnesota is where Manis Friedman is, if I’m—

10:02 Speaker 1 Yes, Manis Friedman. Of course, of course.

10:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:04 Speaker 1 A shliach in—

10:06 Speaker 2 Yes. At university, that’s where she began learning more about what Judaism is. From there she came to the United States—came to Israel—went to Beis Chana in Connecticut, at the Rebbe’s institute in [unclear], and from there to Israel, to Tzfas, to Machon Alte, where she met my father, who had come—

10:31 Speaker 1 Moti.

10:32 Speaker 2 We’re talking about the late seventies and... Shlomo, Shlomo Galil[?]. Eighty-two. By eighty-two there was already the broadcast, but she began growing stronger in the late seventies. I believe it was also influenced by the success in the wars in Israel—by the way Hakadosh Boruch Hu watched over the Jewish people through great miracles in those wars. It stirred amazement: the unbelievable fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu was looking after the Jewish people in a country surrounded by enemies and saving them against all odds. That stirred an interest. Now, my father’s side. My father came from a family—my surname is Germach. Yes, it’s not very clear. It’s a German name. So my grandfather came from Germany, Luxembourg I think; I don’t remember. Somewhere around there. And my grandmother came from Krakow, Poland. They fled and reached Australia. My grandmother’s family had an antiques shop in Krakow, and the Germans, may their names be erased, kept them around to appraise everything they stole and looted from Jews—to tell them how much each thing was worth. And there was already a distant family member who had reached Australia before the war.

12:06 Speaker 1 Are you saying your grandmother was held in labor camps?

12:10 Speaker 2 No, no, no. To be honest, I don’t know enough of the details, but she wasn’t sent to labor camps. They still kept them... moved them from place to place so that, with everything they looted, they’d have someone to price the items and make money from them. You loot a Jewish home, and how much is this thing worth?

12:31 Speaker 1 Wow.

12:33 Speaker 2 Now, the family told a story about a rug they had. They asked the Germans, may their names be erased, to send it to Australia because it had been in the family for generations. They wanted to send it to family in Australia, and they were allowed to. It was actually a very old rug from Persia. After the war, when they survived and reached Australia, they started their lives with that rug. It was waiting for them there. They also managed to send a photo album.

13:01 Speaker 1 They sold the rug, and that gave them a little money to live on.

13:05 Speaker 2 That’s what they started with. Yes. That’s how they started life again. On my father’s side, during Kristallnacht, my grandfather ran into synagogues that had been set on fire to save Torah scrolls and talleisim. They weren’t a religious family. As far as I’ve been able to find out, for seven generations they hadn’t observed Torah and mitzvos in that way. Yes, they were German Jews, Yekkes, with a mix of things, but there was a Jewish warmth there. They didn’t give up on—I don’t know exactly what. But I know this story about Kristallnacht: running in with mesiras nefesh to save Torah scrolls and talleisim when you weren’t... How would you put it today? You wouldn’t describe them as close to Torah and mitzvos at all. They too survived and reached Australia. They married there and had two children, my father and my uncle, almost ten years apart. Both of them passed away by the time my father was sixteen or seventeen. They had survived with illnesses and didn’t live long. So I never had the privilege of meeting them. My father was very, very involved with Betar—a Betarist.

14:34 Speaker 1 Wow, very right-wing.

14:36 Speaker 2 Very right-wing. During the demonstrations in the early sixties, when he was a medical student in Australia, he went to demonstrations involving Arabs and Jews there and came home from one with a broken arm. Yes, Australia is a very quiet place, especially so, but that gives you a sense of the background. He was genuinely very passionate. And again, he came from a family whose Jewish life was Yom Kippur, Chanukah and the Seder night. It wasn’t Judaism lived day to day, but there was strength there, Jewish pride—very strong Jewish pride.

15:23 Speaker 1 What city in Australia was he in?

15:26 Speaker 2 Melbourne. Melbourne. Caulfield was the neighborhood.

15:30 Speaker 1 By the way, is that the largest Jewish community in Australia?

15:34 Speaker 2 I think so. The Chabad community too, even today. And he traveled to Israel to volunteer on kibbutzim, as a continuation of his Zionism. To come and help build, and... yes, to leave. He was a medical student with a future ahead of him. In the middle of his studies he came to Israel to volunteer on kibbutzim with a group of Australians.

15:58 Speaker 1 When was this? What years are we talking about?

16:01 Speaker 2 I can’t give you the exact date.

16:03 Speaker 1 Around the Six-Day War, sixty-seven, something like that?

16:06 Speaker 2 No, no, no, later. The mid-seventies, or—I can’t pin down the year. He came with a group of non-Jewish volunteers.

16:19 Speaker 1 Wow.

16:20 Speaker 2 I don’t remember. He was at Kibbutz Hashachar, and afterward at Kibbutz Saad, a religious kibbutz in the south. He was in several places.

16:29 Speaker 1 That one’s up north, and Saad is in the south, near my kibbutz.

16:35 Speaker 2 So I don’t remember. I need to ask him for more details. But one story he tells, which helps you understand his background, is that they brought meat—or, no, they went out to eat. All the students ate meat.

16:51 Speaker 1 Meat that wasn’t permitted.

16:52 Speaker 2 Treif meat. And the non-Jewish students said to my father, “Wait, you’re Jewish. You’re not allowed to eat that.” It gave him a bit of a shock[?] that non-Jews were telling him what he was and wasn’t allowed to eat.

17:07 Speaker 1 Amazing.

17:07 Speaker 2 But the real turning point[?]—the awakening and the serious questions—came when Yom Kippur arrived and he looked for somewhere to daven. That was his background: he didn’t know about kosher and non-kosher; he didn’t eat kosher. But Yom Kippur—as a Jew from abroad, you’re Jewish, right? Yes. What reminds you that you’re Jewish? What makes you Jewish? You have certain milestones: a wedding, a funeral, a bris, and then Pesach, Chanukah and Yom Kippur. Those are the milestones. Was it all done according to halachah? I don’t know. What exactly was there? There was something. So he arrived in the Holy Land, at a kibbutz, and looked for a minyan, looked for a synagogue, and there wasn’t one. That raised a lot of questions: What does it mean to be Israeli, and what does it mean to be Jewish? What’s happening now in the Land of Israel? The question of identity—what is this? What am I? What’s going on here? Why isn’t there a synagogue here? Wait, aren’t you Jews? You are Jews. You’re here because you’re Jews. Those questions came to him. And around the same time, he came across Ben Hecht’s book Perfidy. That was about—Kastner?

18:33 Speaker 1 Ah, Kastner, yes.

18:35 Speaker 2 Kastner. What happened with all the Hungarian Jews, how many he could have saved, the whole trial, how it shook Ben-Gurion’s government, brought down governments—the whole story. In our home, that was a book my father asked all the children to know. Because of what he took from the Holocaust, from what happened to his family. He himself hadn’t been there. But that Jewish pride also showed itself in the distance he kept: he never went near Germany and never landed there. He had a distant cousin, a third or fourth cousin, who had no one, no family. He also had the surname Geruch[?]. If my father went to Germany and signed the papers, he would receive the inheritance. But he said, “I’m not going back there. I’m not landing there. I’m not entering that country.”

19:33 Speaker 1 Very interesting.

19:35 Speaker 2 You can Google “Germach estate.” In the end it went to the Israeli government. There was no one to claim it. So that’s the background. I think it’s the personal place he was coming from—what his parents went through, and what the entire Jewish people went through. That’s why he felt so strongly: “My foot will never set foot there.” And then there was this story about the Jewish Agency and Zionism—how involved they were, or how little they did to save Jews, to put it mildly. Or even more than that, because after the war Kastner testified in favor of Nazis and saved their lives, in the trials that followed the Holocaust. That was too much, and my father said, “I’m going back to Australia.” Something here didn’t add up; something didn’t sit right.

20:34 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

20:35 Speaker 2 This whole dream of Zionism and Judaism—something about it didn’t fit together. It didn’t make sense.

20:41 Speaker 3 So your father was a man who sought the truth. That’s what you’re saying.

20:45 Speaker 2 Yes, this was where my father was a Jew. Not in any religious sense yet, or in terms of mitzvos, but: you’re Jewish, you’re different. You’ve been given something—I don’t know if he would have called it a mission. I don’t know if he had words like that yet. But his parents had suffered because they were Jewish. So, “I’m not going to erase that. I’m going to preserve it. I’m going to fight to preserve it.” He believed Zionism was about rebuilding the Jewish people, and that’s why he came to volunteer. That’s why he was so committed to volunteering. And then, suddenly, he discovered: wait, something here... this isn’t Jewish. There was no Yom Kippur, nothing. And that whole story about how they could have saved thousands, hundreds of thousands of Jews, and it wasn’t all that important, to put it mildly. Other things took priority. He went back to Australia with all these questions. He returned to his medical studies, and amid all those questions he also encountered Chabad. He had friends at the yeshiva there, so he started visiting them as friends. He tells how once, after lights-out, he was sitting and talking with his friend. The dormitory supervisor was very strict. Rabbi—I remember Rabbi Cohen. Every Australian boy that age knew him...

22:24 Speaker 3 Rabbi Cohen.

22:24 Speaker 2 Yes, and his friend said to him, “Get under the blanket.” There was an empty bed. “Get under it.” Now, my father didn’t study at the yeshiva; he was only there visiting, and they didn’t want the supervisor to see that they were still talking after hours. And my father had long hair at the time. Wait, I’ve skipped something very, very important. On his way to Israel to volunteer on kibbutzim, he had already met a Chabad friend. It hadn’t affected him deeply yet. But that Chabad friend told him, “You have to visit the Rebbe. You have to visit the Rebbe.” Now, flying from Australia to Israel is one thing. Going via New York means circling the world the other way. When it came to it, he said, “Okay, okay,” and tried to arrange it. So he was with the Rebbe in 5740. I don’t remember exactly; I think it was the winter of 5740.

23:31 Speaker 3 If he was there in 5740, I was there at the same time. I might even have seen him.

23:35 Speaker 2 Yes. He went to a farbrengen and didn’t understand a word, didn’t understand anything. So it must have been on some particular date—perhaps even 11 Shvat. And the niggun [unclear]—he had already heard the boys singing it in Australia. Suddenly he saw the Rebbe singing it. That shook him to the core. Afterward, he also had a yechidus with the Rebbe.

24:04 Speaker 3 A yechidus with the Rebbe.

24:06 Speaker 2 And that was with his hair down to his shoulders. I don’t know much about what happened there, but it was on his way to Israel, on his way to the kibbutzim.

24:22 Speaker 3 Ah.

24:23 Speaker 2 Yes. So with all of that together, when he returned to Australia, he already knew: the Jewish part of me needs to be built through deeper, inner work. Perhaps he became more involved and began going more often to the yeshiva there in Australia. Until, once again, he felt that real Torah study was in Israel.

24:48 Speaker 3 Ah.

24:50 Speaker 2 Because that still connected, I think, to his earlier thinking—but not as religious Zionism. The Zionist movement he had known was secular, not religious, so it didn’t connect for him in that way. But the Holy Land was the Holy Land. So he came to study in Kfar Chabad with Rabbi Gafni. I think he was with Rabbi Gafni for a year, and then moved to Tzfas, to Rabbi Lishansky’s yeshiva. There he flourished in mivtzoim. Everyone from that year in Tzfas—5741, I think, or 5742—talks about my father’s mivtzoim. He would go down to Tiberias and not come back until just before Shabbos. They were also working on the Torah scroll campaign, and I saw the records in the yeshiva; the archive is still there today. His numbers for letters in the Torah scroll and for mivtzoim were always at the top, in terms of how many people he reached in the Tiberias market and elsewhere. So mivtzoim was already a burning passion for him in those years. And... my father flew to the Rebbe then. [Unclear] had printed it for him. I don’t know why my father flew—perhaps he was on his way to Australia? I don’t know. When was [unclear]? Was that 5743?

26:20 Speaker 3 5742.

26:22 Speaker 2 5742.

26:22 Speaker 3 In the summer of 5742.

26:25 Speaker 2 So my father probably flew for the Yomim Tovim or for a certain period. And from Tzfas, yes, Rabbi Kaplan and Rabbi Sitsky [unclear] and Rabbi... who else was there? They were the ones who printed the Tanya in Lebanon.

26:42 Speaker 3 Rami Antiel [unclear], of blessed memory, was there at the time.

26:45 Speaker 2 Now they had to get the copies of Tanya to the Rebbe as quickly as possible. My father happened to be about to fly, so they gave him all the copies to take straight from Lebanon to the Rebbe. At a farbrengen, the Rebbe spoke about the copies of Tanya that had arrived from Lebanon. That’s another part of the story. Then my parents met in Tzfas. My mother, as I said earlier, was [unclear], and my father was studying in Rabbi Lishansky’s yeshiva. They decided to build a home together. There’s another story involving a letter from the Rebbe. I don’t remember the details now, but it was truly an extraordinary letter that arrived on the very day of the wedding. They were uncertain because the letter with the blessing for the wedding hadn’t arrived yet, and Rabbi Lishansky... I don’t want to be precise because I don’t have all the details right now, but it was something...

27:38 Speaker 3 Tell us what you do know.

27:40 Speaker 2 What? I’ll fill that in later. I’ll fill it in, because I can’t quite remember the point of the story.

27:46 Speaker 3 I understand.

27:46 Speaker 2 So they got married in Tzfas, in the Old City. The chuppah was at the Ari’s shul, and the celebration was at the Tzemach Tzedek shul. The American family came. My father didn’t have family there. He had one brother, who had no children. So we are the descendants of those grandparents. Of course, there are other members of the Grumach family—my father’s cousins. One brother was at Kibbutz Kadorim, another in Rishon LeZion; both had been at Kibbutz Kadorim. They had come to Israel, and there was another sister in New Zealand. But they, too, came from that same background. Even today, the kibbutz is still in their blood. Still, they’re good friends, family, close to us, and they come to family events. Family is family. Especially with Australians: they’re always cheerful and always together. Then my parents were in Tzfas, and afterward they moved to Kfar Chabad, where they were neighbors of Rabbi Gopin and Rabbi Freiman, a"h, and the Shifons [unclear]. There are interesting details about that period. Then they wanted to open a Chabad House. We’re talking about 5745–5746. My parents got married in Sivan 5743. My father always—

29:25 Speaker 4 What was your father doing for work at the time? Or your mother?

29:28 Speaker 2 He was learning in kollel, studying for semichah, and doing mivtzoim—mivtzoim all the time. Every Motzaei Shabbos, as soon as Shabbos ended, he would load a few chassidim from Kfar Chabad into the car and drive to Assaf Harofeh. They would gather the weekly [unclear] and the leaflets from the shul and go distribute them to patients who weren’t feeling well, to encourage them and cheer them up. It wasn’t a tefillin campaign or a Shabbos-candle campaign. It was a campaign to bring joy to people who were ill. They did that every Motzaei Shabbos, and it went on for years, until I was in yeshiva—even after the work in Beit Dagan had begun. I’ll get to that. During that time, there was a man with no legs whom they kept seeing at the hospital. Every Motzaei Shabbos they would meet him and encourage him. Then one week they came and he wasn’t there. Where was he? He had been discharged home. So where did he live? In Beit Dagan. “Let’s go cheer him up and make a celebration for him.” He had been in the hospital for so long that they had become friends. His name was Mordechai—that’s my name. I was named after the grandfather I knew. So they went to make him a celebration in Beit Dagan. My father filled the car with a few boys and counselors, and they held an afternoon farbrengen to celebrate his discharge after such a long time. And in the course of that, they asked: who’s doing outreach here? Who’s active here? Nobody. It’s right next to Kfar Chabad, but nobody was doing any outreach. There were no Chabad people there. It was across the boundary. So, if I’m not mistaken, it was before the Yomim Tovim, and my father made...

31:34 Speaker 2 Uh, he asked whether a Tanya had been printed. Because, again, it’s close to Kfar Chabad. Had anyone printed a Tanya there? They checked, and no Tanya had been printed. Anyway, my father got all the equipment and everything they needed ready, and they arranged to print a Tanya with Gopin and a few other rabbis. They sat down to study the first chapter.

31:53 Speaker 4 Did Chaim Rainboim do the printing?

31:55 Speaker 2 I believe so, with his truck, yes. Remember the white truck?

31:59 Speaker 4 Yes.

32:00 Speaker 2 Actually, in the pictures it might be without it, but yes, yes, with the truck. I remember the... Anyway, they printed the Tanya and finished studying chapter 32. Then Gopin [?] asked my father, “So, what now? You print a Tanya and leave? You need to see what comes next.” Anyway, I think this was before the holidays, and then the activities began. Around that time, my father asked the Rebbe what his shlichus was. He was finishing a year in kollel. I mean, this had all been a stage, a period of one activity and then another. He wrote to the Rebbe. In Ramle, I don’t think there was a shliach; someone had left or something like that. And in Herzliya, I think they wanted a center for English speakers, and Beit Dagan was another possibility, I think. They wrote to the Rebbe asking what his shlichus should be, and the Rebbe circled Beit Dagan. So the first activity was on motzaei—motzaei, uh, I think motzaei Yom Kippur. That was the Tanya printing, if I’m not mistaken. That was really their first activity there. In effect, they took responsibility for Beit Dagan. Now, to give you the picture: my parents were new immigrants, from Australia and the United States. To this day their Hebrew isn’t perfect, and neither is mine. Yes, yes, no one ever corrected us.

33:23 Speaker 5 No, no, no. Your Hebrew is perfectly fine. Let’s not—

33:26 Speaker 2 I have plenty... We’ll get to that later. And... what was I going to say? What was Beit Dagan like in those years? Beit Dagan was sixty percent Yemenite and forty percent Moroccan, or the other way around—forty percent Moroccan.

33:44 Speaker 5 Australian.

33:45 Speaker 2 Yes. Anyway, the Rebbe sent him there. Now, anyone who knows Beit Dagan knows that back then it was a place with very low socioeconomic standing. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of trouble, break-ins—everything you can imagine. Yes, I remember as a child a border guard at the entrance checking cars. [unclear]. There was all sorts of trouble. And it was precisely to this place. I mean, it was a community with tradition, yes, with many shuls, but socially it was in a different place. And here, of all things, the accent opened a lot of doors. Because you weren’t coming in to tell me what to do; you were coming from outside. With that accent, there was no mistaking it. So my father, with his smile—he knew everyone in the community by name. He knew their families, who was whose cousin, who was related by marriage to whom. He knew everybody. And that was the place to start: building up the social side, the material side. Whether it was preventing a divorce—I remember accompanying my father when he went into a home to talk, and he would ask me, as a child, to wait outside so I wouldn’t hear the arguments going on in there—or bringing a package from Mifal Chabad to another couple, and other stories. And there was always something: going to court to testify on people’s behalf, saying they wouldn’t go back to drugs because he would help them and look after them, to get their sentences reduced, and so on. All the time, how do you put it, really helping people get back on their feet, to do teshuvah. It doesn’t start with opening a book; first—

35:33 Speaker 5 Oded, can you describe one case like that? It doesn’t have to include names—something you know about.

35:41 Speaker 2 Well, I was a child then. Let’s add something that fits right into this picture. My parents wanted to move to Beit Dagan, to live where they were on shlichus. When you live on shlichus, it’s a completely different life. And for every Chabad House, the Rebbe wanted a board. A board means you don’t make major decisions alone; you always have people to consult with, and decisions are made by majority. So they wanted to move to Beit Dagan and asked the Rebbe for a brachah. The Rebbe said to consult with the board of the Chabad House.

36:16 Speaker 5 Wow.

36:18 Speaker 2 And the board... We know that, generally, when the Rebbe’s answer is to consult someone, it usually means no. So they sat down and discussed it, and said that since Kfar Chabad was so close to Beit Dagan, and the situation in Beit Dagan wasn’t so easy for raising and educating children—with what they would see and experience there... I mean, there was absolutely... We’re talking about—

36:47 Speaker 5 Not a good environment.

36:49 Speaker 2 Yes. I don’t know where you’re from—maybe somewhere in the Emek? I don’t know what to compare it to. But it was a very neglected place, with people who... hadn’t been invested in. Yes, we know the backgrounds; everyone had their own story. Anyway, my mother cried at that answer, because they wanted, really wanted, to live where they were on shlichus. It’s completely different. But that’s how I grew up. I grew up seeing my father mainly on Shabbos and in the morning before going to cheder. Usually, we’d be asleep by the time he got back from Beit Dagan. I mean, it was so close, but those were the hours of the work: giving Torah classes and being with people when they came home from work. So it really was... I mean, it’s fascinating, growing up on shlichus. Yes, walking from Kfar Chabad takes fifteen minutes today. They’ve grown much closer together—very close. But still, to be there, so fully immersed in the shlichus... So, again, I have many stories from those activities, but [unclear] about moving. There’s a story about my father going to court to give a character reference for someone named Shmuel. He testified that Shmuel wouldn’t touch drugs again, that he’d decided to live differently, and everyone burst out laughing—the judge, the lawyers. So he asked, “What?” “No, he’s already pleaded guilty. He’s already pleaded guilty, and there’s a plea bargain.” My father had come to testify that there was no way he’d touch drugs again, that he was a good person. Anyway, so—

38:37 Speaker 5 It worked very well.

38:40 Speaker 2 Yes, certainly. That was the point: giving people hope that things could be different. My father would give people Torah classes and encourage them to put on tefillin all the time. Sometimes the police would come to the Chabad House to conduct a search, because it was a good cover: someone would leave a package, and someone else would come and pick it up. My father was an innocent, trusting Jew, so it all happened behind his back. It got to the point where the police had to check, because the Chabad House was the place everyone came to sit and spend time. I mean, today we talk about people coming to a Chabad House in India to sit and spend time; it was also a place for them. A Jew can be in a very low state, addicted to drugs or alcohol, but a Jew is a Jew, and he’s our brother. Every Jew is our brother, no matter where he is. Not just the one in a tie, not just the respectable person who asks intelligent questions. The Rebbe sends us to every Jew. Moshe Rabbeinu takes responsibility for every Jew, for every lamb. And that’s what I saw in the shlichus in Beit Dagan. That was... Of course, there were always mitzvos, new mezuzos in every home, and encouraging people to have children. So many people were considering abortions, saying, “We can’t afford it; we can’t.” I remember bringing a Rebbetzin to speak to a woman and persuade her. Why do I remember these things so clearly? Because of yichud... Back then, the road from Beit Dagan to Kfar Chabad was completely dark. So if you brought a Rebbetzin to speak with a woman, or brought someone for women’s Torah classes, you always needed someone to accompany her so there wouldn’t be yichud. From the age of nine, we were always accompanying people to all those wonderful Torah classes.

40:29 Speaker 5 What’s it like there? Maybe you can tell us what it’s like there today...?

40:33 Speaker 2 Today, of course... I think property there is very expensive now, because, baruch Hashem, everything has changed completely. It started with most of those people getting their lives back on track. There were a few suicides, and a few people who spent time in prison. But today, my father, Shimon Bruner, certainly never brings it up with anyone; he doesn’t talk about it. Yet this one and that one and all the others are successful today. They have respectable families, children and grandchildren. But at another time, when they were young, they were [unclear]. Baruch Hashem. Sometimes—

41:13 Speaker 5 That really is...

41:13 Speaker 2 At those points. Sometimes you say, how can a Jew eat? First you have to give him something to eat before you give him a Torah class. First he needs to have something, so that, how do you put it, his eyes will be clear. In every area, every area, there’s sometimes so much room to stumble, and for all kinds of disappointments too. There’s a story about a chossid who was dancing with a Torah scroll on Simchas Torah, and it was so crowded that, with all the pushing, he fell with the Torah scroll. He was an older Jew, and everyone instinctively rushed to pick up the Torah scroll. The Rebbe said, “Wait, wait. There’s a Jew on the floor here. He’s no less holy than a Torah scroll.” So that’s the point. And it doesn’t take away from the Torah classes, which I remember people talking about here all the time. I remember that when we spoke about the IDF, one of the places at the top of the list for Torah classes, in sheer number of classes, was Beit Dagan. It’s not fair—it’s so close to Kfar Chabad. But my father was completely immersed in the work. At every opportunity. You’d walk down the street with him or ride up in an elevator, and he’d ask someone, “Wait, do you have a letter in the children’s Torah scroll? A mezuzah?” You’d be with him somewhere, I don’t know, riding up in an elevator to see someone he was going to help with something. He’s a Jew who is always immersed in the Rebbe’s work, no matter where or what. He’s on fire! That’s the home we grew up in, and the children were really, really part of all the activities.

42:53 Speaker 5 How many? How many brothers and sisters are there?

42:56 Speaker 2 There are eight of us. Four brothers, four sisters. And we were involved all the time, whether my father was out on shlichus or running an activity. Every Yom Tov, every child had a job. One had to hand out raffle tickets. Another had to collect payments. Another had to coordinate things here or gather things for everyone. Each child developed their talents precisely because they were given responsibility. My father is a chassidisher Jew, and he’s also, how do you say, I don’t know, a person with a certain innocence. But when things need to get done in practice, you need more hands. So by being given responsibility to move things forward and improve them, each of us developed the ability, baruch Hashem, to take action—to try to be the person who steps up. I see that in all my brothers and sisters. It’s truly a gift from Heaven, a gift from the Rebbe. As the saying goes, “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person.” You try to be that person wherever you go. I see it with the younger brothers too, even though there’s such a big age gap between us. You see that it matters. But that’s one side of it. I grew up in Kfar Chabad. I grew up in Kfar Chabad.

44:20 Speaker 5 Let’s sum up, and then we’ll continue next week, if we can.

44:26 Speaker 2 Gladly, gladly. Maybe I’ll just start, so I can finish this part about childhood.

44:30 Speaker 5 Yes, I’d like us to do some kind of, uh, yes, a summary.

44:34 Speaker 2 Kfar Chabad—how do you put it? Everyone has their own life, and the Rebbe’s mivtzoim are part of it, but they also have their personal lives. My father came from a place of just mivtzoim, mivtzoim, mivtzoim, and that really is how I grew up. Later, you could say, when the Rebbe began speaking a great deal about Moshiach, throughout the early ’90s, my father was always talking about Moshiach, Moshiach. And as a child in Kfar Chabad, you felt that your father was always talking about Moshiach. But it didn’t start then. I remember as a child—we were neighbors of Rabbi Gofin, and to his children I was, like, the son of the “Moshiachist.” We lived in the Memim neighborhood, and for him it was always mivtzoim, mivtzoim, mivtzoim. There’s a story that’s really etched in my memory. Today, as an adult, I know my parents went through a miscarriage. But my father would always daven in the yeshiva, every Shabbos, inside the yeshiva... yes.

45:37 Speaker 5 In the yeshiva... where he was, too.

45:40 Speaker 2 Yes. He always davened late, right? He’d daven until very late. He was always the last to leave the shul, late in the day. And Reb Mendel would daven in the yeshiva. On many Shabbosim I sat with him with the Chumash. I would point to the place in the Chumash, and we’d look at it together. But anyway, there was one Shabbos when my mother said to me—

46:06 Speaker 5 Rabbi Mendel Futerfas.

46:08 Speaker 2 Yes, Rabbi Mendel Futerfas.

46:13 Speaker 5 Not so much—

46:14 Speaker 2 No, a chossid with mesirus nefesh. We had a connection with him through various things—giving him rides from one place to another. There are many stories. People used to say my father was the Chabad House of Kfar Chabad. That’s what they always called him. He was the—no—

46:27 Speaker 5 Kfar Chabad.

46:29 Speaker 2 When the Rebbe started the farbrengen committees, so that every shul would have a committee to encourage farbrengens on Yom Tov and on every chassidic date, my father happened to walk into the shul. The gabbaim were looking for someone, and they said, “Oh, here you are. You’ll be the farbrengen committee.” And my father didn’t neglect them. He arranged a farbrengen for them every Rosh Chodesh and got everyone involved—all the Russians in the housing blocks and all the Jerusalemites. He kept after them: they had to remember there was a rav, there was a farbrengen, and there were dates to mark. In Kfar Chabad, it’s very easy to sit down, but hard to get up. There’s a strong gravitational pull.

47:02 Speaker 5 Yes, yes, yes, it’s...

47:04 Speaker 2 It’s a story. So what happened was that my father had already gone to shul, to the mikveh, to the yeshiva, and my mother said to me—I saw her in tears for the first time. It really shook me. I was maybe seven or eight. No, younger—five or six. To see my mother crying, and she said, “Tell your father to come home quickly.” It was so unsettling. I had to go on Shabbos to the yeshiva. Anyway, I don’t remember what happened next; I had to walk home alone. We lived in the housing blocks. It turned out that my father went to Rabbi Ashkenazi to ask what to do on Shabbos, and then took my mother by car to Assaf Harofeh Hospital. Today I understand that apparently it was a miscarriage. But what I went through in the housing blocks that Shabbos afternoon—what an ambush! People said, “Your father took your mother to the hospital to put tefillin on people? He went to do mivtzoim at the hospital?” They were talking to you like that. What year was it—’49? Probably. Or ’50. That experience... In Chabad, a lot of children have parents who are very involved in Moshiach-related matters, what people call “Moshiachists,” and they go through all sorts of things. So growing up in Kfar Chabad with a father who was always saying, “Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu V’Rabbeinu Melech HaMoshiach,” that was something. But I’m saying it didn’t start with that. It started with the mivtzoim. It was a process. It’s something I haven’t forgotten. I remember being in the playground with all the children around me, children from influential families, and you were the...

48:47 Speaker 6 And they went after you, in short. They went after you.

48:49 Speaker 2 Yes. Anyway, it’s something that’s really etched in my memory. At the time, you didn’t understand what was going on. Later you grow up, and today you realize: wow, what a way to develop a thick skin, growing up in the midst of shlichus. I mean, it could take you in either of two directions.

49:12 Speaker 6 But it took a good direction.

49:15 Speaker 2 For the whole family, all my brothers and sisters. We’ll get to that and talk about it later. And when there was a broadcast of the Rebbe’s farbrengen, there was a radio in Kfar Chabad where you could hear it, or you could listen by phone at a certain time. But people had to be woken up. My father would go down to the car in his pajamas and drive around at three in the morning, Israel time—whenever the farbrengen was, at four or two.

49:38 Speaker 6 Three, three.

49:40 Speaker 2 He’d start honking and drive through all of Kfar Chabad, honking because the farbrengen had begun. Now, he was missing part of it himself, because he wasn’t at the farbrengen; he was driving around in the car. But that’s... When I think about these things now, I’m sure there were people in Kfar Chabad who didn’t exactly appreciate it. You were waking the children, making noise. But again, it was something to do with the Rebbe’s concerns.

50:08 Speaker 6 Definitely an amazing story. All right, Moti, I look forward, with Hashem’s help, to hearing more about your childhood and, little by little, how you entered the life of shlichus yourself.

50:23 Speaker 2 Yes, all right. It starts in India, many years later, and eventually gets here. There are a few twists and turns.

50:28 Speaker 6 Let’s pause here for just a moment.

50:31 Speaker 2 [unclear].