Rabbi Moti Garmach, Kyoto, Japan - Part 2 - Section B

00:21 Speaker 1 And that’s all the time.

00:22 Speaker 2 Your father is like a chossid: when he sees someone, he sees the Jew in him. What’s around him doesn’t matter. There’s a Jew in front of him, and he has to take care of that Jew.

00:31 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, in the way of the Baal Shem Tov. Really. So even if he’s in the middle of a phone call, even if he’s in the middle of something—yes.

00:41 Speaker 2 That happened. That happened with a Jew who lived there in—

00:45 Speaker 1 Bayit Vegan. Yes, in the neighborhood—

00:46 Speaker 2 Bayit Vegan.

00:46 Speaker 1 Today he’s already become observant, and today he’s a Chabadnik himself. I mean—

00:51 Speaker 2 So this was a Jew who, G-d forbid, thought, “That’s it. Me, my life—I have to end it right now, because I can’t—”

00:57 Speaker 1 I mean, there are stages, yes, of facing so many things that happen, or so much... But this is an example of how it’s possible to be active. Anyone who comes to the Chabad House and leaves saying, “Wow, we had such a great time. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Rabbi,” I say, “What did you take away? What did you take away from this place?” Because those thank-yous don’t help. We’re not here for that. “Where are you? Where are you opening a Chabad House?” Then everyone laughs. “Open a Chabad House? I’m wearing a tank top. I haven’t put on tefillin since my bar mitzvah.” I say, “No. What’s a Chabad House? The Rebbe wants every Jew—we’re one family, and you can keep an eye out and take responsibility for even one more neighbor. And if you know how to put on tefillin, help someone else put on tefillin. Even if you don’t know how, because you don’t put on tefillin yourself, then do something else. Ask him if he needs help. Say good morning to him.” Ahavas Yisroel is one of the Rebbe’s mitzvah campaigns. So this was a place where everyone, every Chabadnik and every Jew, needs to discover that point: it isn’t one person who took responsibility for the Jewish people. We’re here because we’re part of the family, and all of us have to take responsibility. It’s like going back to what we said about Kfar Chabad. When there are ten, each person is responsible. Each one knows the responsibility rests on him. You can’t rest today. But when there are eleven, each one knows the other person will do the work.

02:33 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:34 Speaker 1 That’s human nature. Everyone has his... Yes, yes. Everyone has his own load, his own life. Everyone has his own concerns. So sometimes you really get pulled along by the gravity of the material world.

02:47 Speaker 2 If we think about it, [unclear], then on the one hand, what you’re saying is true. I mean, we all have the same shlichus, and each person has his own area of responsibility. But within that whole picture, there are souls. Every soul has its own uniqueness—what it focuses on, how your father operates. I mean, what this soul focuses on. Your father focuses on the fact that every Jew he sees is someone he has to pay attention to.

03:19 Speaker 1 Yes, and it’s like what I said about Tzfas. I looked at the reports[?]. It’s something he was living even forty years ago. I mean, it isn’t—

03:31 Speaker 2 Apparently it’s something he was born with, and at some point—

03:34 Speaker 1 With a desire.

03:37 Speaker 2 Sorry.

03:38 Speaker 1 So that’s what we grew up in. I mean, all the children, the whole family. Sometimes, in Kfar Chabad, you really didn’t feel so comfortable, because you felt different. Your home was a little different. Dad’s activities were different from other people’s. There were parents who worked in a bank, or someone’s mother was a mashpia in a yeshiva, or they were teachers, and so on. We also had a few children of shluchim in our class. A good friend of mine was the son of the shliach in Rishon LeZion, Rabbi Gruzman.

04:12 Speaker 2 Rabbi Gruzman. Well, yes, he certainly, certainly deserves to be remembered fondly, in any case. Yes.

04:19 Speaker 1 Yes. No, my friend is now a shliach at a horse farm.

04:25 Speaker 2 Where?

04:26 Speaker 1 In Tzfas.

04:28 Speaker 2 In Tzfas.

04:29 Speaker 1 Yes. So again, it’s about taking responsibility. Where can you develop things? Doing good for a Jew, good in both material and spiritual matters. And you ask yourself: where are you coming from? Are you coming to work, or are you coming to give? Are you coming to receive, or to give? We also had the Mark family, who at the time lived in...

04:57 Speaker 2 Certainly, certainly. Meir Mark, of course.

04:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:00 Speaker 2 We also worked together. I studied with him too.

05:03 Speaker 1 Yes. So, the school. I mean, we grew up in Kfar Chabad, where there are two schools. There was the original school, which also taught general studies. And Reb Mendel Futerfas, the chossid who came from Russia and gave his life for this, together with another chossid, Rabbi Schatzky, established another cheder in Kfar Chabad, another school where they studied only sacred subjects. Only Torah studies.

05:32 Speaker 2 What years are we talking about?

05:35 Speaker 1 Uh, wait. I was born in ’84. [unclear].

05:42 Speaker 2 So that’s in the nineties.

05:44 Speaker 1 No, earlier.

05:46 Speaker 2 Earlier.

05:47 Speaker 1 At age three, you’re already going into first grade.

05:51 Speaker 2 Yes, of course.

05:52 Speaker 1 Four, yes. First grade—that’s like kindergarten or pre-kindergarten in Kfar Chabad. There are ten grades. You’re already entering a framework to learn to read and, uh, to speak a little Yiddish too. They called it the Yiddish cheder.

06:10 Speaker 2 Oh, you were in the Yiddish cheder?

06:12 Speaker 1 Yes, the one—

06:14 Speaker 2 Next to the Bukharian yeshiva?

06:16 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, both of them are next to the Bukharian yeshiva. It’s one school—they’re right beside each other, with a fence between them. Again, Kfar Chabad really gives you a lot. On the other hand, you always feel that it’s not... There’s something here that isn’t... Something you get at home is missing here. So the question is: where is the right place? Is it in what everyone does, or in what you get at home, or in what Dad is doing all the time? And then those things clash.

06:57 Speaker 2 You mean you had that dilemma?

07:01 Speaker 1 Yes. It came up especially during the period when people were talking about Moshiach, but it also showed itself in matters of the integrity of the Land of Israel. For Dad, that’s also connected to his family background: he’s the son of Holocaust survivors, and Jewish blood being spilled is something that touches him very, very deeply. To this day, whenever, G-d protect us, there’s a murder or a terrorist attack, Dad is sure to be standing at an intersection that day with a sign saying, “Jewish blood is not free for the taking.” To this day. It doesn’t matter who’s in the government, or when it happens. There are no political games involved. Every time, he’s at the intersection with a “Jewish blood is not free for the taking” sign they made at home. It isn’t politics; it’s something that touches him. And again, that was something different from everything else in Kfar Chabad. During the Oslo period, I remember the Shin Bet was monitoring the phones and stopping everything before it even got started. So when, G-d protect us, there was a terrorist attack, one time they came and arrested Dad at home. They took him to the police station for the whole day because they knew he would go out and protest the situation that day. Now, what does “protest” mean? Today people talk about the right to protest. He’d just stand there with a sign, never anything beyond that. The police came to the house—I was in my room—and arrested him at home. They took him to the police station in Rishon until the end of the day. So he caught up on Rambam and Chitas[?] and made friends with all the guards. But it was something unheard of. You can see what happens today—it’s hard to imagine that reality.

09:16 Speaker 3 Yes.

09:21 Speaker 1 I mean, no. Anyway, so—

09:22 Speaker 3 And then it’s time for you to go to yeshiva. What happens then?

09:27 Speaker 1 Well, maybe we should add those years of Moshiach, when the Rebbe was urging us on and constantly adding fuel to the fire: Moshiach was about to come and be revealed in our generation, and we needed to make the final preparations for a guest who was coming in. The house was already clean and ready; all that remained was to put up the balloons and set the cake on the table, and the guest would walk in—to set off the fireworks because the guest, the birthday celebrant, was coming in, right? We were really at the very last moments. That’s how the Rebbe was preparing the Jewish people, preparing Chabad chassidim. But even today, we know—and I think it’s fair to say this—that every Chabadnik has his... Every person has the traits of character Hakadosh Boruch Hu created him with. Everyone has them. There’s Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai, and everyone has his natural inclination. One of the goals of Chassidus is to change your character traits. And not just to change your traits—changing your traits means that if I behave badly, if I’m a disorganized person, I become an organized person. But Chassidus also means changing the nature of your traits. That means that even when you’re meticulous and organized, you shouldn’t do it just because that’s your nature. Because when you do it because it’s your nature, you aren’t really doing it; you’re doing it because it’s built in. It’s robotic. It isn’t you. You need to do it because it’s the right thing to do. So sometimes you need to... The meticulous person needs to know where to be flexible. That’s changing the nature of your traits. It doesn’t only change your behavior; it changes the, the—

10:52 Speaker 3 Why do you say that about shlichus?

10:55 Speaker 1 I’m talking about the place where I grew up, Kfar Chabad. Everyone has their own nature, too. So when the Rebbe began the whole subject of Moshiach—meaning spreading the message and talking about it, in 5751 and 5752—

11:12 Speaker 3 Longing for Moshiach to come—that’s what began.

11:15 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

11:15 Speaker 3 Okay.

11:16 Speaker 1 Even then, growing up in Kfar Chabad, you could feel that not everyone was comfortable with it.

11:22 Speaker 3 Who wasn’t comfortable?

11:24 Speaker 1 Not all the Chabad chassidim in Kfar Chabad approached this mission of preparing ourselves for Moshiach and preparing the world for Moshiach in the same way. Some took a more inward approach: I’ll prepare myself and my family, learn more, and daven more for the moment when Geulah comes to the Jewish people. Others took it as a call to go out into the street and prepare even the non-observant neighbor—to explain what Geulah is, what Moshiach is, and how we prepare for it.

12:03 Speaker 3 Yes.

12:03 Speaker 1 To this day, my father has a Moshiach campaign. One day a week, he goes out with a study partner. For years it was Velvel Marantz—anyone who knows him knows he’s the grandfather of the whole Marantz family. They go door to door, knock, and people ask, “Why are you here? What are you selling?” “We’ve come to prepare you”—no, “We’ve come to talk about preparing for Moshiach’s coming.” To talk, to explain what it is and what will happen, answer whatever questions people have, and explain how we can hasten it. Maybe replace a mezuzah. Or light Shabbos candles—or, when lighting Shabbos candles, have in mind, say “Yechi Adoneinu,” and say something else so that this mitzvah, too, will be a merit for the Geulah of the Jewish people, so that things will be good for everyone. And he still does this once a week. You could feel the differences even then. You felt it socially, you felt it in shul: some people ran forward with it, and others—some people, by nature, as we said, are more deliberate, calmer. You see one person in academia and another in music; their personalities are different. You see it in how they approach everything. It’s, it’s...

13:22 Speaker 3 Let’s talk about specifics. What happened?

13:26 Speaker 1 Maybe sometimes the feeling... I wouldn’t say people mocked it. But sometimes you could feel uncomfortable because you were from a family—or had a father—who was charging ahead...

13:47 Speaker 3 So you’re saying there was a group of people who were a little crazy—Moshiach-crazy, let’s call it.

13:54 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:55 Speaker 3 That was you, your father, and your group.

13:58 Speaker 1 I was a child, I...

13:59 Speaker 3 And the silent majority was saying, “Guys, stop running. Let this whole thing—how do you put it?”

14:05 Speaker 1 “Let’s take it at a certain pace.” There are the horses that race ahead and pull the older ones along. So in Kfar Chabad, that could sometimes be uncomfortable, because you want to fit in with everyone else. But then you have moments when it clicks. You see, wait, there’s something real here. Everyone means it, and everyone wants to get there. You see it on Simchas Torah, when everyone dances to “Yechi,” whether they call themselves Meshichists or not. And in all sorts of situations, people suddenly say things to my father like, “Wow, you really mean it. You’re for real.” So you pick up from all those moments that they genuinely appreciate it. It’s just more comfortable to be on the...

15:10 Speaker 3 Sane side.

15:11 Speaker 1 Yes. Anyway, all of that was the lead-up to yeshiva. For yeshiva ketanah, there weren’t many options to weigh in Kfar Chabad. Everyone in my class went either to the yeshiva in Lod or, at the time, to Bnei Brak. That was—

15:35 Speaker 3 Those were yeshivas that, on this subject, weren’t Meshichist at all.

15:40 Speaker 1 No, that’s not... Both of them were Meshichist.

15:44 Speaker 3 Both of them were?

15:46 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

15:47 Speaker 3 Ah.

15:47 Speaker 1 Lod... We’re talking about [unclear]. These were boys born in 5759, 5760. When is that, 2000?

15:58 Speaker 3 2000, yes.

16:00 Speaker 1 Yes. That makes it 2009, 2010—even 2009, I think. So Lod was a mixed yeshiva in that sense. Sometimes the Moshiach focus was stronger there than at other yeshivas. I mean, I don’t know about all the yeshivas.

16:20 Speaker 3 Who was the head mashpia there in Lod?

16:23 Speaker 1 In my time, it was Rabbi Chaim Ashkenazi, Rabbi Boaz Ashkenazi’s brother.

16:28 Speaker 3 He was certainly a major Meshichist.

16:30 Speaker 1 Absolutely. I remember an older bochur coming—not just visiting, but really coming to talk and influence people. So on Friday night, Rabbi Ashkenazi gave a talk about bochurim who weren’t welcome in the yeshiva and had come to cool people’s enthusiasm about Moshiach. There was no doubt where he stood. But when you first enter, you don’t really understand. As a child, you’re still figuring out your direction. The little Moshiach flags had only just come in, and I wore a little Moshiach flag on my shirt all day. They asked people in the yeshiva to take them off because it wasn’t accepted, but they didn’t ask me, because—

17:15 Speaker 3 They knew you were the son of the chief Meshichist, and it was best not to bother you too much.

17:21 Speaker 1 No, because it wasn’t just a trend for me. It was like when our class reached bar mitzvah age and they told everyone to switch from colored kippahs to cloth ones. A colored kippah wasn’t considered appropriate anymore; it was more for children. So again, I didn’t...

17:40 Speaker 3 Do you know what it was like with Yossi Farber? You’re saying he was in Lod too?

17:43 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. Yossi and I have been together since then.

17:46 Speaker 3 Were you in the same room?

17:50 Speaker 1 No, no, but Yona was with us too.

17:54 Speaker 3 His room was the most incredibly tidy room in the whole yeshiva.

18:00 Speaker 1 I’m trying to remember where he slept. I remember his older brother Dovber very well. They come from a fine family. No, but that was Yona. Yona is also a groom. I remember his room. We grew up in the middle of... Anyway, that was the first year when you really saw where Moshiach fit in and how it all worked. You saw that it went together: the people who were always pushing forward, always looking for opportunities to talk about Moshiach and Geulah and what we could do about it, were also completely dedicated to learning and to their responsibilities. I’m not saying those who weren’t like that weren’t dedicated. But you saw that these things really did go together. You see many things, and then you open the Rebbe’s sichos and start learning them properly on your own, with the quotations and everything. There isn’t much room for confusion. The Rebbe says it in the clearest terms. As a child in Kfar Chabad, you do it because you’re part of it, because it’s your family. We talked about it a lot at home, too. What happened on Gimmel Tammuz wasn’t something hidden away; it was something we discussed. Where is the Rebbe today? We traveled... [unclear]. That brings me to another difference in Kfar Chabad. Boruch Hashem, thanks to my father, I was privileged to be with the Rebbe. I don’t know how many times—in 5747, I can’t remember if it was 5749, then 5750, 5751, 5752, 5754. It was almost a rotation at home: who would travel with my father to the Kinus Hashluchim, my brother or me? And when my mother traveled, she would take someone else. By contrast, classmates my age—I don’t know. As far as I remember, only a handful, if even that, had—

20:06 Speaker 1 Been with the Rebbe. We were children born in ’84 and ’85, and they hadn’t been with the Rebbe in person. That’s another point.

20:19 Speaker 3 And you were there several times. Do you remember? Do you remember those occasions in the Rebbe’s presence?

20:25 Speaker 1 There’s one year I remember: the Kinus Hashluchim in 5752. That was the well-known sicha in which the Rebbe said that the work of shlichus had been completed. The shluchim come to the Rebbe once a year, and there’s a conference where they learn from one another and everyone brings ideas. That year, the Rebbe said, in effect, “Until now, we’ve had plan A for shlichus. Plan A is finished; now we’re moving to plan B.” That’s how the Rebbe put it. The Rebbe’s words were that the work of shlichus has been completed, and from now on, the gateway to all aspects of shlichus is welcoming Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Everything you do at a Chabad House needs to be dedicated and connected to that: How do we hasten Moshiach’s revelation? How do we bring Geulah to the Jewish people? I heard that sicha.

21:18 Speaker 3 Here I think we also have to bring in what the Rebbe said: “What more can I do so that every Jew will cry out that he wants Moshiach?” In other words, the Rebbe defined every shliach’s role as thinking not only about the Jews he sees on the street, but about the entire range of Jews he might ever be able to reach.

21:39 Speaker 1 Non-Jews too. Everyone in the generation. That’s from the sicha on Shabbos, the weekly parsha.

21:46 Speaker 3 Yes, of course, Jews in particular, but everyone in the generation too. I think we’ll pause here.

21:56 Speaker 1 Wait, because I just remembered something I wanted to say.

21:57 Speaker 3 Please. Yes, yes, let’s hear it.

21:59 Speaker 1 Maybe we’ll save it for another time. That trip—the flight to the Rebbe. I mean, I heard that sicha at... I remember. Oh, yes, people have regular places in 770, in the Rebbe’s shul.

22:12 Speaker 3 Of course people have regular places. Yes, and they’ll fight for them.

22:16 Speaker 1 And we arrive as guests from Israel. Yes, in ’92. My father knows someone sitting in the middle of a row facing the Rebbe, and he picks me up and walks across the tables to him. Then I sit there, half on top of him, with all his friends around. They don’t just make faces—they say, “Hey, what are you doing?” But we stayed there for the whole farbrengen.

22:44 Speaker 3 But yes, that’s the thing—how do you say it? You come into a place that isn’t...

22:49 Speaker 1 I remember, though—I remember that my father’s Chabad House in Beit Dagan had moved to its new place. It was the dedication of the building. So my father went in that Friday. He brought a bottle of vodka to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe would definitely pour some from his own cup into it, then give you the bottle. You’d take it back to your place of shlichus, and the farbrengen you held there would be a continuation of the farbrengen with the Rebbe.

23:16 Speaker 3 You mean, Moti, that your father had to approach the Rebbe in the middle of the farbrengen by climbing onto the table?

23:25 Speaker 1 And I stayed there. I was eight—eight or nine—and stayed in my place by myself. My father climbed over the tables, right there in front of thousands of people, and made his way toward the Rebbe. He received the bottle and announced what it was for. Then he came back to his place. And I remember that everyone along the way asked him to give them a little l’chaim from the bottle.

23:49 Speaker 3 Of course.

23:49 Speaker 1 At some point he put it away, so there would be some left for later, so some would make it to Beit Dagan. But that’s something I can still see before my eyes. I really remember it. Ah, those sichos of the Rebbe.

24:03 Speaker 3 Which farbrengen do you remember? Which Shabbos was it?

24:06 Speaker 1 25 Elul.

24:08 Speaker 3 Oh, on the 25th itself.

24:09 Speaker 1 Yes. I remember there were a lot of sichos and a lot of... dollars that week, that year. At the end of every sicha, the Rebbe distributed dollars, and there was a Torah scroll dedication, so the Rebbe distributed a kuntres with lekach and two dollars. I mean, there was so much—real abundance. And I remember the sicha. All that time, I didn’t know Yiddish properly, and every word I heard from the Rebbe in Hebrew that I understood, I would say out loud, as though I were telling my father. If the Rebbe said, “And Hashem said,” or whatever, while quoting something—I would repeat every word I understood. So that was how I... the sicha... Ah, if we continue with that same visit: every time, we children would stand in a row. The Rebbe would enter the shul on the western side and walk the whole length of the shul to his place at the front, on the eastern side.

25:21 Speaker 3 That’s what’s known as the famous path. The path.

25:24 Speaker 1 Yes, the path. A path would open up: everyone in the shul would move to the right or left, leaving a passage down the middle for the Rebbe. It ran right across the room, from one end of the rectangle to the other. Children always stood in a row. You could always slip between the adults’ legs and get into the front row. And every time the Rebbe passed, he would gesture to me like this with his hand.

25:51 Speaker 3 You mean he would look at you and gesture to you like this.

25:54 Speaker 1 And my father was standing behind me. It happened every time, and I remember starting to count: one, two, three. At some point you lose count. Every time the Rebbe came in or went out. My father told me it had started to feel awkward, because there were other children and other friends there too. But I remember it as something I took for granted: if I stood there and the Rebbe passed, the Rebbe would gesture encouragement with his hand. And... how do I put this? Why was that? When I look back on it today, from the farbrengens, the Rebbe would encourage people who needed encouragement.

26:37 Speaker 3 Or give strength to people who needed strength.

26:40 Speaker 1 Yes. Maybe we’ll leave that for the next part. I mean, there was a personal tragedy in our family, with...

26:46 Speaker 3 Indeed.

26:46 Speaker 1 With her sister, who passed away that week.

26:48 Speaker 3 All right.

26:48 Speaker 1 So maybe that’s...

26:49 Speaker 3 So we’ll—

26:51 Speaker 1 We’ll connect that to next time, but...

26:53 Speaker 3 Maybe we should also say l’chaim. Do you have a little something for l’chaim there on the side?

26:56 Speaker 1 Honestly, I didn’t come prepared. I have a bottle of, uh, water.

27:00 Speaker 3 Zusha[?]. Zusha Wilimovsky[?] always, always had a—

27:04 Speaker 1 A bottle in his pocket.

27:04 Speaker 3 A bottle in his pocket.

27:06 Speaker 1 Yes. So, one of the things my father does—it’s not an official job, but every Rosh Chodesh he goes into the school, goes from class to class, and tells them what’s happening that month. He’s done it for years, for as long as I can remember. And each time he has to find—

27:27 Speaker 3 The school in Beit Dagan.

27:28 Speaker 1 In Beit Dagan. Now, you can’t cover every class yourself, so you’re always looking for someone else to come along. Every time, you have to find someone, persuade someone. “I can’t, I can’t.” Find someone who’ll come and speak to the children, and then spend an hour going around the classes. It’s in the morning, you know? But once—I don’t remember it personally—my father brought Zusha Wilimovsky[?] to speak in the classes. Afterward, one of the children came running over—

28:03 Speaker 3 He said, “Hey, did you bring the Lubavitcher Rebbe this time?”

28:07 Speaker 1 And he really enjoyed hearing the children...

28:11 Speaker 3 “You brought the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”

28:13 Speaker 1 Yes, “This time you brought the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”

28:15 Speaker 3 L’chaim, l’chaim. Long live our master, teacher, and Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.

28:21 Speaker 1 L’chaim, l’chaim.