Rabbi Moti Garmach, Kyoto, Japan - Part 6

00:19 Speaker 1 Last week, we were in the middle of this amazing story.

00:22 Speaker 2 Getting there... Yes, I’m on my way to Amphi[?].

00:25 Speaker 1 About establishing the Chabad House in Amphi[?]. You also showed us some very impressive pictures.

00:32 Speaker 2 So I was—

00:35 Speaker 1 Actually, I’d like us to continue that story: how, in fact, we—how you—

00:40 Speaker 2 open a new Chabad House.

00:42 Speaker 1 You arrived in that big vehicle, that wagon.

00:46 Speaker 2 Maybe we should start with the question everyone asks: What does it mean to open a Chabad House? What is a new Chabad House? I mean, what’s the journey to get there? There’s each person’s practical story of how they arrive in a particular place. But the idea of a Chabad House is that the Rebbe wants to reach the whole world, so that wherever there’s a Jew, they’ll have somewhere to turn for both material and spiritual needs. That’s how we’re raised, as we’ve talked about until now. And then the dream—well, it’s not a dream; it’s built in—is that your life will be a life of giving, a life of shlichus. Wherever you are, you’ll be giving, and you’ll be a signpost for Jews looking for any kind of mitzvah, or any help or assistance—which is also a mitzvah. And—

01:46 Speaker 1 Any aspect of Judaism, you’re supposed to—

01:50 Speaker 2 Not even just an aspect of Judaism. Avraham Avinu opened a tent and served food. The Rebbe emphasizes this in a yechidus with the Chief Rabbis: a Jew’s material needs are spiritual matters. The fact that a Jew has somewhere to eat, something to eat—and kosher food, of course—is itself a mitzvah. The fact that we sit together... When a Jew comes into your home, into Avraham Avinu’s tent, that’s already a connection. That itself is something spiritual. All the more so when you can talk together, talk about that connection, and ask questions. Ordinarily, you might not have anywhere to bring those questions. In everyday life, you don’t necessarily have the opportunity to come and ask a rabbi about life, or about the questions everyone has. This is an opportunity to open up and learn. So that’s a formal Chabad House. But my father-in-law was a banker until he retired. He was a banker all his life, and everyone at the bank knew that anyone on the staff who needed help with anything—checking mezuzos, a class, a memorial gathering—could come to him. He was like their gateway into the world of Torah and mitzvos, the person who could arrange those things for them. Today, with the internet, it might be easier to find information. But you still want a personal answer. You want to hear firsthand what a particular holiday means, what you do on it, how you observe it. Today there may be lots of YouTube videos showing how to conduct a Seder or put up a mezuzah. But unless you go looking for them—or let’s go back a little, to before the internet—who do you turn to? Am I going to walk into a shul

03:41 Speaker 2 and ask somebody? What am I, crazy? Ask how to put up a mezuzah? I want a mezuzah. It takes courage to make that move. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, established an army—he established points everywhere that invite a Jew to come and ask for anything they need in Judaism. You won’t be judged for asking, because that’s what this place is for. No question you have is strange. We’re ready for it, and that’s why we’re here. “How do you get married?” or “How do shidduchim work?”—all that background. It’s fascinating, and at a Chabad House, one of the things people constantly ask is: What does it mean to open a Chabad House? How do you decide to do it? How does it happen? So there’s the broader story, which begins at the start of the Rebbe’s leadership. Actually, let’s begin at the beginning. The Baal Shem Tov revealed the teachings of Chassidus, another way to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—a way of joy. The Alter Rebbe continued with that path of joy through understanding: understanding what I believe, strengthening my faith through understanding, building my personal connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, working on that connection and developing it. To spread these teachings, you need shluchim who go out among the Jewish people—including among the very observant, though everyone was observant in those days—and share this approach, another way to connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That continued through the generations. As the Haskalah movement grew stronger, Chabad’s shlichus in each generation also meant reaching Jews who had become involved in that movement and bringing

05:19 Speaker 2 them back. Like the story of the Rebbe Maharash and the wine—“non-kosher wine dulls [unclear].” The Rebbe traveled for hours to a tavern and sat there in a pub, a place it wouldn’t seem fitting for a rabbi, for a Rebbe, to sit. He sat there to find a Jew and awaken his personal connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So this is expressed in every generation. With the Rebbe, in our generation, it had already begun to develop under the previous Chabad Rebbe, the Frierdiker Rebbe, who sent shluchim to Australia. In a sense, Chabad Houses began under the previous Rebbe, the sixth Rebbe, and with the seventh Rebbe of Chabad, the whole journey became about reaching every Jew, wherever they are. So every Chabad child grows up with the understanding that you’re a shliach. You’re there to give. You’re an address, a signpost for a Jew who wants to ask questions; you’re there for them. That’s how you’re raised. It’s built in. You don’t go through workshops for it; it isn’t training. It’s in your blood. You’re disappointed when it doesn’t happen. If someone wanted to ask a question and you were hurrying somewhere else and maybe didn’t get to answer, you feel, “Come on, why was I there at that moment if not for them? How could I tell them, ‘Wait, I have a train,’ or ‘Wait, I have a bus’?” It’s built in. It’s the Chabad drive you’re raised with. When the time comes and you get married, you ask, “Where am I going to open my Chabad House?” Education is a Chabad House too. The Rebbe made that clear—

07:06 Speaker 2 there’s a book with pictures of all the Rebbe’s shluchim around the world, and the Rebbe insisted that teachers and educators be included as shluchim too. They are the Rebbe’s shluchim, because being the Rebbe’s shliach means reaching every person, wherever they are. So education is also part of this journey. That’s the background for understanding why, when someone gets married, they ask, “Where am I going to open my Chabad House?” Each person then has their own journey as things unfold. Today, boruch Hashem, there’s already a Chabad House just about everywhere in the world. But when the Rebbe began, in the early years of his leadership, in the late 1950s, he would call in a young married man and tell him, “You’re going to Italy now. You’re going to open a Chabad House in...” There was a generation that experienced the Rebbe calling in a young man and saying, “You’re going to this particular place.” Then, as the story goes, at a certain point the mothers began to complain: “You’re taking our children and sending them to...” They were going to places that were a wilderness in terms of Jewish life. We’re talking about sixty or seventy years ago. It wasn’t part of the landscape then; it wasn’t something ordinary. They were starting from nothing, in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t like today, when you have Amazon and ways to get what you need. You were starting out and leaving your parents and your community behind. That isn’t simple. So in the second stage, the Rebbe said, “I won’t tell anyone to go. But whoever wants to go and feels suited to it should come to me, and I’ll tell him where to go.” That was the second stage of going on shlichus. The third stage, which I think began in the 1980s,

08:49 Speaker 2 The Rebbe said, “I won’t tell anyone whether to go or where to go. Each person should look into places that need shluchim, Chabad Houses, and consider what suits the place and what he feels qualified to do. Then he should write to me, and I’ll tell him where to go.” My father asked the Rebbe about several places, and the Rebbe directed him to the Chabad House in Beit Dagan. I’m sure Rabbi Shmuel also felt that there was a personal story here—that the Rebbe directs you to where your life’s shlichus is. Where do you need to focus? But the point is that you yourself look for the place you’ll go to—

09:32 Speaker 3 I saw a sicha of the Rebbe from 5751 in which the Rebbe says that, in fact, every Jew in the world is his shliach. So are you saying that every Jew should come and ask the Rebbe, “What is my shlichus, and where should I go?”

09:49 Speaker 2 I think we’re talking about two... Every Jew is a shliach. Everyone needs to feel that responsibility. What the Rebbe said there is that everyone should feel responsible for bringing the Geulah. We all need to be partners in this journey. Nobody can run away from that responsibility and say, “Someone else will do the work.” We’re all partners in it. The people are the feet of Moshe Rabbeinu. So to carry out this work of Moshiach, we are all his shluchim. Every mitzvah we do, and every positive influence we can have, is part of that same shlichus. But I’m talking about taking formal responsibility for a particular area. Let’s put it that way—or define it as it was before 5751. Before 5751, the idea was that each person received an official assignment. But I think that even after 5751, there’s still a place for receiving responsibility for a particular area from the Rebbe. That’s where you are the shliach—

10:56 Speaker 3 Let me ask you a question you haven’t answered. The Rebbe says that every Jew is, in fact, his shliach. So according to what you’re saying, every Jewish man or woman in the world is carrying out the Rebbe’s shlichus, whether they’re consciously aware of it or perhaps don’t know it yet. But once they know, they can come and ask what they should do.

11:29 Speaker 2 I agree. That doesn’t contradict what I’m saying. We’re talking about—

11:35 Speaker 3 I wasn’t trying to contradict you. I’m asking a question based on what you yourself said. You quoted the Rebbe as saying, “Whoever feels suited to shlichus should come and say so, and I’ll help him find his place.” And when the Rebbe says that every Jewish man is a shliach and every Jewish woman is a shlucha, then any of them, wherever they are, can ask a simple question: “If we’re shluchim, and we feel genuinely connected to this, tell us where we should be.”

12:13 Speaker 2 Of course. That’s the continuation of it. Every Jew... I’ll put it another way. When people come here, I tell them, “You’re all Chabadniks.” You may say you haven’t discovered it yet, but you’re Chabad. What makes you a Chabadnik? Doing what the Rebbe wants: being the Rebbe’s chossid by giving your time for the good of the community, to bring Moshiach, by influencing one more person and helping one more person. We’re all in that position. We just have to notice it. If you have a neighbor who might not make Kiddush, invite him over. You don’t need a Chabad House sign, a long beard, a white shirt or a black hat. You. That’s what it means for every Jew to be a shliach. Every Jew has a responsibility toward the Jewish people, to keep caring for all of them. We’re responsible for one another, and Moshiach appoints us to work toward his revelation. Each person needs to connect to that responsibility personally.

13:21 Speaker 3 Okay, so in any case, we were at the point in your story where you were in one of the most out-of-the-way places in the world: South India, a remote corner that perhaps even Indians hadn’t heard of yet. You decided this was your place to meet Jews and give them the spiritual nourishment you had to offer. And you realized that, to do that, it wasn’t enough—

13:48 Speaker 2 We set out on the journey.

13:49 Speaker 3 Talking alone wouldn’t do it. You had to do something. So you bought household items and other things needed for this kind of shlichus, loaded everything into a vehicle, and drove to a place called Hampi. Describe your arrival for me. What did you see there? What was there? What did you choose? What did you do?

14:12 Speaker 2 No, wait. Give me the option to share. Yes, to share the image.

14:17 Speaker 3 Hold on, let’s share it for a second. Just a moment—is this working?

14:32 Speaker 2 So we’d driven fourteen, fifteen hours. The driver fell asleep twice on the way, and the vehicle was packed with equipment on every side. We were trying to reach our destination. Anyway, we drove and drove, arrived somewhere in the morning, and asked him, “Okay, is this Hampi?” He said, “Yes, this is Hampi.” We could see a sign that said “Hampi” too. You look at it and say, “If this is Hampi—well, here’s the picture.”

15:21 Speaker 3 How did he know it was Hampi?

15:22 Speaker 2 If it’s Hampi.

15:23 Speaker 3 If he’d never been there at all, how did he know it was Hampi?

15:27 Speaker 2 Signs, signs. He was following the route through the different areas. He’d done a little homework beforehand. So we arrived, all of us exhausted from the drive and from not sleeping beforehand. Anyway, okay, this place is Hampi. Now I have to find somewhere to settle in and open a Chabad House. Where are the Israelis? Where are the tourists? All you can see here are rocks. So they showed us the river. You cross the river to the other side, where all the tourists are, especially the Israelis. Now this river... I’ll try to show another video. Wait, I’ll close this for a moment. Anyway, the river is the Raj[?]. I’m going to share a video now.

16:35 Speaker 4 Please, share it.

16:39 Speaker 2 Wait, let’s stop this. How do you do that? This is “stop share,” and then share this.

17:00 Speaker 4 So those are the boats. That’s their ferry?

17:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

17:05 Speaker 4 Oh my goodness.

17:07 Speaker 2 This was at a different time. If you arrive at more suitable hours, there’s a motorboat. So that’s the river you have to cross. The video is from another time, of course. You can see boxes in front of us with kosher food, or tahini. Judging by its size, the one on the right looks like a bucket of tahini we brought with us. Let’s pause for a moment. We have all the equipment from that vehicle, as you’ll remember, and we need to cross this river, so taking it across like that is out of the question. We asked how we could get across with a vehicle. There must be a crossing—it’s land on the other side, after all. There’s a bridge somewhere, so he tried to find out where it was. Now, the driver we’d brought was from Maharashtra; he lived in Pune. In Pune they speak Marathi. We’d now crossed into a state called Karnataka. Around this river they speak Kannada, and on the other side they speak Kannada and Telugu. So [unclear] at the river—and he didn’t really understand the language. Hindi may be the official language, but it’s spoken in the big cities, not everywhere. He found someone there who spoke Hindi, and the man explained that driving to the crossing on the other side would take two hours.

18:26 Speaker 4 Wow. Why? Oh, to get to the—

18:28 Speaker 2 Two hours’ drive.

18:29 Speaker 4 To reach the bridge and then cross it.

18:33 Speaker 2 Yes, so it was like going back in a certain direction and then returning. Uh, today that’s a problem. I know that... yes. Where can you turn be—before reaching the area—Hampi itself, but instead go straight to the travelers’ village? How do you get in there? Anyway, we get into the vehicle. Now, these are villages where the roads aren’t really roads, right? There isn’t enough of a budget for every village, and so people won’t drive too fast, they put a speed bump at every village entrance. But it isn’t a speed bump. It’s a speed hill. And I’m praying, thinking, wow—a flat tire now, after all these hours, with all this equipment, is the last thing I need. I mean, I want him to drive gently over every one of those things, but he just wants to finish his trip. He’s exhausted too, and now he’s getting a little lost. He doesn’t know the language or exactly how to get there. So, anyway, I get out of the vehicle. I look for someone in the village who speaks a little English, and once again ask for directions toward Hampi, toward the Israelis, the travelers. Now, looking back, when I know the places, it really was a miracle, because there was no—we’re talking about before everyone had internet on their phones. The driver didn’t have it, right? If you have Waze or Google Maps, you can get there easily. But as far as I remember, we didn’t have it. The driver certainly didn’t. So it was all guesswork and a general sense of direction. You ask one person, then another. And you have to do the asking, because the driver is embarrassed to ask; he feels uncomfortable that he doesn’t know the language, and I keep looking for someone who speaks English. And that’s how the journey goes. We, uh, yes, after the... wait. We arrive after all of that,

20:35 Speaker 2 driving and driving, and then you start recognizing things. Wait, I’ll see if there are pictures. I’m sure there are. Anyway, I’m looking for pictures of what I recognize, looking for an area with Israelis. Anyway, we keep driving. We reach a village that doesn’t even have a paved road; it’s all dirt. Then you start to feel it—you see more of a travelers’ atmosphere. Anyway, we look for a guesthouse. We see Israelis. Yes, this is Hampi, yes. Great, let’s go. It’s this excitement, like, we’ve arrived.

21:22 Speaker 5 We’ve arrived—

21:23 Speaker 2 You get there. I saw one Israeli. I remember I was jump—like, I saw a bus. So I tell the driver, “Stop, stop!” You can tell by the faces. This is the place. There are travelers here. Yes, you’ve reached the village. You’ve reached the place. So, okay, we’ve arrived. What do you call it—one obstacle along the way. We did it. Now where do you get out with all this equipment? So we drive around and arrive at some guesthouse that looks... We said at the beginning that we’d do it like travelers. Let’s see what they have. We take a room. We wanted two rooms, one for us and one for all the equipment. That’s it, I can’t find the picture of the...

22:06 Speaker 5 Did you already have—

22:07 Speaker 2 There was a picture of the—

22:08 Speaker 5 Did you already have children?

22:10 Speaker 2 No, no. Not yet. We were still—

22:13 Speaker 5 You had just gotten married.

22:15 Speaker 2 We hadn’t just gotten married, but we waited a few years. So, how do you say it? Here’s this picture. Where’s the gate? Here, this is the picture.

22:34 Speaker 5 Is this when we arrived at the guesthouse?

22:37 Speaker 2 This is when we arrived at the guesthouse. All the equipment is here on the ground. You can see here—

22:41 Speaker 5 All the equipment that was—

22:42 Speaker 2 A box of matzos in the back.

22:44 Speaker 5 Unloaded onto the ground. Wow, wow.

22:47 Speaker 2 Yes. We brought some of it inside. We asked someone to help, and the guy took advantage of me over the money. How much for helping you, how much will you pay me, how much for this. So he helped a little and ran off in the middle. You can see there are two boxes of supplies here.

23:00 Speaker 5 He took part of it, half the equipment.

23:04 Speaker 2 Yes. This is some of the equipment. There might be... Wow. You have to learn how to deal with that. Anyway, we arrive and bring everything into the room. What do you do after a journey like that? Especially my wife. From what we’d seen and read on the internet, all the rooms had straw roofs. And straw means any animal can get into your room. We had booked there. My wife wanted, at least for the first night, a solid roof.

23:46 Speaker 5 Uh-huh.

23:47 Speaker 2 That’s what we were looking for. Our first stop was to find a guesthouse with a solid roof, not to sleep in a sukkah.

23:56 Speaker 5 Yes.

23:56 Speaker 2 You could literally see schach. You could see straw and hay on the roof.

23:59 Speaker 5 Yes.

24:00 Speaker 2 Anyway, we go in, unload, and so on. You walk in and see that the Indians, so they won’t have to paint the walls, have the idea of putting tiles on them. So the room often looks like a bathroom, because they choose some random tiles, and in most cheap guesthouses in India the room looks like a bathroom. There are tiles all over the walls so they won’t have to paint. It saves on paint, since you can always clean the tiles. Anyway, after a journey like that, my wife wants to take a shower. Right? That isn’t an unusual request. So we go into the bathroom. There’s a showerhead and one tap. What does one tap mean? You turn it on and get cold water. Okay, if I want hot water, what do I do? So you ask at the guesthouse. “No problem. It’s a few rupees. Just wait a bit.” Anyway, we wait and wait. In India, everything involves waiting. I go out and say, “Well? What’s happening? Where’s the hot water you mentioned?” Anyway, I follow him. At the side of the guesthouse, he has some pieces of wood on the ground, with an iron bucket above them, and he’s heating the water. When the water is hot enough, he’ll bring you a plastic bucket of hot—practically boiling—water. Then you get a little cup, turn on the cold water at your tap, mix some in to get the temperature right, and that’s your shower. Okay, it takes time for the water to heat up. The hot bucket arrives for the shower, and just as the shower starts, suddenly—no light. Darkness. So I go outside and ask, “What happened?” Now, this is another thing in all the guesthouses in India. Outside the room you have

26:06 Speaker 2 a switch. Let me paint you a picture: every guesthouse door, and doors in India in general, have a bolt on the outside. When you leave your room and lock it, people can see that it’s locked. It’s a bolt. When you’re inside, the bolt is open, so they know whether you’re in or out. There’s no... That’s how most houses are too. That’s India. An outside bolt shows whether someone’s inside or outside. Now, if the bolt is closed, it means no one is in the room. So there’s a main switch outside the room that turns off all the electricity in the room. That way you don’t waste electricity. If you’ve left a light or anything else on, they switch it off for you. Anyway, I thought they’d probably switched off our main power. I go outside—no, it’s on. So what happened? Did a fuse trip? We hadn’t turned anything on. Anyway, he says, “No, there’s no electricity now. It’s a power cut,” and he brings a few candles. So our welcome to Hampi was a shower with a bucket of water by candlelight. That was our welcome to the village. Now, it turned out later that there wasn’t enough electricity for the villages. So they rationed the electricity to each village: six hours during the day and six hours at night. And you had a rotation. One week it was six hours in the morning; the next week, six hours in the afternoon. And the same at night: six hours at the beginning of the evening, six hours starting... It alternated week by week, as I remember it. So that was our village. Now, preparing for Shabbos—you had to plan which week it was and whether you’d be able to grind the chickpeas in the food processor in the morning or the afternoon. If it was a winter Friday, the day was short, so you’d do it on Thursday. You’d also plan not to open the refrigerator, because every time you opened it, you let heat in. So you tried not to open it when there was no electricity. Anyway, you start figuring out how to adapt to the place. That’s Hampi.

28:00 Speaker 2 Who was the first Israeli you met there?

28:23 Speaker 6 Who was the first Israeli you met there?

28:27 Speaker 2 So, that’s it, I have, uh... No, the first Israeli we met—I spoke to someone. I don’t even... Yeah, we went on to... We knew we’d arrived at the right place. But I remember going out to daven in that same courtyard the next morning. I recognized it because the night before, all the suitcases had been there on the floor. So it was the same guesthouse. There was an Israeli staying there. He got up, and those were the first tefillin in the village. We arrived that morning, I finished davening, and I said to him, “Come, put on tefillin.” I don’t even remember his name, but it was one of those moments: our feet were on the ground. The work was starting.

29:06 Speaker 6 We’d begun, begun, begun the work. Well, listen—

29:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

29:10 Speaker 6 Let’s pause here, okay? We’ll leave the beginning of the work there in Hampi for the next episode.

29:20 Speaker 2 We’ll start, we’ll start looking for a place.

29:22 Speaker 6 A story, a truly fascinating story.

29:25 Speaker 2 No, how do you do it? Because you really arrive on the ground, and now you need to find a house. In short, it really was... Until we returned to Israel after that first season, you’re so deep in it that it all seemed natural. Only after we started telling the sto—how things happened, and saw people’s reactions, did we understand the journey. I mean, today it doesn’t seem like an obstacle. Looking back, it really was... But at the time, it was just: this is how things work. This is how it has to work. There’s no other way.

29:55 Speaker 6 The extraordinary journey—

29:56 Speaker 2 But maybe that’s a bit...

29:57 Speaker 6 It really is amazing.

29:58 Speaker 2 It became more developed.

29:59 Speaker 6 It’s amazing, truly amazing. Okay, go ahead—