Rabbi Moti Garmach, Kyoto, Japan - Part 7

00:22 Speaker 1 Did you hire a contractor who knows what kind of concrete a mikveh needs?

00:27 Speaker 2 Ah, that’s it. With Hashem’s help, tomorrow—we’re leaving tomorrow evening on the bullet train, the Shinkansen, which they’re planning to bring to Israel, with Hashem’s help. [unclear] No, no. Three hundred and fifty.

00:44 Speaker 1 Only three hundred and fifty. Well, all right.

00:46 Speaker 2 In Israel, there’s no stretch where it could reach that kind of speed. The highest speed they’re planning for is 240 kilometers an hour.

00:55 Speaker 1 Where will it go? Will it reach Eilat? Where will it go?

00:57 Speaker 2 From Eilat to Kiryat Shmona, via Tel Aviv, along the whole coast up to Haifa.

01:04 Speaker 1 Ah, from Eilat it’ll go up to...

01:06 Speaker 2 That’s what they told us here. From Eilat to Ashkelon—Ashdod, Ashkelon—uh, Tel Aviv, Haifa.

01:16 Speaker 1 So basically, Be’er Sheva, Ashkelon, and northward.

01:23 Speaker 2 Yes, but actually, Be’er Sheva—I don’t know if it goes through Be’er Sheva either.

01:27 Speaker 1 That would make the most sense, because Be’er Sheva is the biggest city in Israel today.

01:31 Speaker 2 Yes, but it could depend a lot on the terrain. Sometimes you don’t have much room to maneuver with it, or it goes above—I don’t know.

01:41 Speaker 1 The topography, the topography.

01:43 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. No, there was a delegation here. But let’s talk about the Shinkansen.

01:54 Speaker 1 Right, right. Okay, so in any case, you’re going to build the mikveh. What I was asking was: Did you hire a contractor who knows how to pour the concrete?

02:05 Speaker 2 Right. We taught them according to the rabbi’s instructions. Actually, we also built a mikveh in India, so we have a little experience. We showed them everything that needs to be done and how to do it. There was once an artist who painted the Rebbe. The Rebbe told him, “It’s the same thing—the original.” And the Japanese, too—you wouldn’t believe how they work. They chose the thickest reinforcing bars, sixteen millimeters for every bar. They say that because there are so many earthquakes here, it has to be extra, extra strong. So they’re making the walls thirty centimeters thick. It’s more than a bomb shelter. It’s nuclear-grade concrete.

02:52 Speaker 1 But you’re going to make it something very beautiful, something especially fine.

02:55 Speaker 2 With Hashem’s help, of course, of course. It’ll have a Japanese style, with more wood, and fit in with... [unclear].

03:06 Speaker 1 There’ll be a kimono instead of a robe. But tell me, how long does the trip to Tokyo take on that train?

03:17 Speaker 2 Two and a half hours, two hours and forty minutes, I think.

03:21 Speaker 1 About eight hundred kilometers.

03:25 Speaker 2 More. Yes, I can check exactly. If we did it by car, it would take seven hours, or late at night, five and a half to six hours.

03:45 Speaker 1 Not by car, then. It’s not worth it. Not worth the effort.

03:48 Speaker 2 No, certainly, certainly not. But it costs accordingly. How much is it? I don’t have my phone on me, but it comes to a hundred—maybe now it’s less than a hundred and twenty dollars each way.

04:05 Speaker 1 All right, the ticket is worth [unclear].

04:08 Speaker 2 Yes. A trip like that is like a flight. A flight is sometimes cheaper than the train, but then you have to get to the airport and arrive at just the right time. You’re tied to a schedule. With the train, there’s one every fifteen minutes.

04:23 Speaker 1 Ah.

04:24 Speaker 2 And for a flight you have to travel out of the city to get to the station—sorry, the airport.

04:29 Speaker 1 I understand.

04:30 Speaker 2 Whereas the train station is in the city center. You don’t have to... Yes, it changes the way you think about distances.

04:39 Speaker 1 Help me understand the mikveh you’re building now. I’m asking a genuine question: What kind of building will it be? How big, and how beautiful? What’s the plan? Because with mikvaos, the details of the mitzvah are so important.

04:55 Speaker 2 Well, there’s beauty, and then there’s fulfilling the mitzvah in the best possible way.

04:59 Speaker 1 I’m talking about the beauty.

05:01 Speaker 2 As for the beauty, with Hashem’s help, there’s a Japanese architect preparing the plans for how it’ll look and how it’ll fit in with the houses and their Japanese-style roofs. Not pagodas, because a pagoda is already a religious matter.

05:20 Speaker 1 Ah, a pagoda has to do with idol worship.

05:23 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. But the roof’s slope, the shape of the slopes—that’s really because of all the rain here throughout the year. As far as rainwater goes, we have no fear, no worries.

05:39 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

05:40 Speaker 2 Yes, it rains here all year round. As a country, it’s one of the rainiest places in the world.

05:48 Speaker 1 Really?

05:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:50 Speaker 1 Interesting, interesting. Do you know how many millimeters of rain they get there?

05:54 Speaker 2 No, I don’t. I spoke about it with an expert on the subject, and he told me all the... He said that compared with a place in England that’s very, very rainy by European standards, here it’s so many times more—I don’t remember. He gave me all the figures.

06:09 Speaker 1 Interesting. Very interesting.

06:11 Speaker 2 Not literally all year, but it rains through almost the whole year. We get less in the winter, and then a little less in the summer, but in between it rains all the time. And there are typhoons that bring an enormous amount of rain all at once. Yes.

06:29 Speaker 1 Like I mentioned three weeks ago.

06:31 Speaker 2 In Israel, yes. But here, at the change of seasons, you always get a lot of those.

06:38 Speaker 1 I understand. Okay, so anyway, that’s the mikveh.

06:48 Speaker 2 They’re building the mikveh with such precision. Everything here is measured in millimeters. In construction here, they don’t talk in centimeters; everything is in millimeters. And the distance the rebar has to be from the edge of the concrete pour—they built a wooden box with a hoist that can raise and lower it. I’ve never seen a mikveh built this way. It’s extraordinary that someone would design a box like that. It holds the poured concrete between the wall and the earth. When you pour concrete, you have the earth on one side.

07:25 Speaker 1 Yes.

07:26 Speaker 2 They’ve reinforced that too, and on the other side you have the wood.

07:30 Speaker 1 Yes.

07:30 Speaker 2 And the wood can’t hold it on its own. Usually, when you pour concrete, you secure the formwork with steel ties running from side to side.

07:35 Speaker 1 Yes.

07:35 Speaker 2 With a mikveh, you can’t do that, because water could leak through.

07:38 Speaker 1 Uh-huh, okay.

07:39 Speaker 2 So the inner box has to hold up against the pressure by itself.

07:45 Speaker 1 I understand.

07:46 Speaker 2 That’s true of every mikveh. But to keep it raised from the bottom as well, so it isn’t touching the rebar underneath—usually the pressure of the concrete lifts the box a little, and then you’re set. But here they have hoists. They installed two motors. I’ll show you a video, with Hashem’s help.

08:05 Speaker 1 Interesting, very interesting. Very interesting. The subject of mikvaos is very close to my heart. First, because I was responsible for the mikveh in Morristown during the two and a half years I was there. And we also built one here in the city—Dovid Nachshon built it. That is, I helped him build a mikveh here for the yeshiva, of course, not for women—for the students.

08:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:27 Speaker 1 For the yeshiva students and the tankists. I was also responsible for it for about twenty years. So the whole subject—and we’ve been involved with it here in the city, too.

08:36 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:38 Speaker 1 So mikvaos are close to my heart. We also helped with the mikveh in Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

08:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:47 Speaker 1 And they claim the mikveh there is the most magnificent in the world. That’s why I asked about how lavish yours will be.

08:55 Speaker 2 Yes. I don’t know; I haven’t competed with them. But it’s a different style. I can show you pictures of what we built in [unclear]. It’s a very beautiful mikveh, and it really depends on the resources and on the style—what you actually want to create. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it also depends on the setting. Do you want a more natural style, or a more urban, cleaner style?

09:25 Speaker 1 Eli [unclear] is in charge of the construction and so on, right?

09:28 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, there in Tokyo. Now we’re also building a mikveh here in Kyoto, with Hashem’s help. We bought the plot two or three weeks ago. That’s our new announcement, our good news.

09:44 Speaker 1 That you bought the plot. Yes, yes.

09:46 Speaker 2 Yes. And now we’re working on leveling the land, clearing it, and getting permits.

09:51 Speaker 1 So that means you already have building plans.

09:56 Speaker 2 In Japan you don’t wait. You start doing whatever you can.

10:00 Speaker 1 Not like the Israeli approach, eh?

10:02 Speaker 2 Right. No, we’re clearing out the old things. There’s an old house, so you remove it. That’s [unclear], and it costs money—a lot of money. With the waste, you have to sort everything according to what it is. The roof tiles have to go with a particular kind of waste; the wood has to be cut to a certain size according to what they’ll accept. In short, even dealing with the waste here in Japan is a whole subject in itself.

10:29 Speaker 1 Tell me, since you’re building a mikveh there, how are you going to heat it?

10:37 Speaker 2 There are heat pumps here. But let’s start with this: In Japan, there’s a culture built around the onsen, the public bathhouse.

10:47 Speaker 1 Oh.

10:48 Speaker 2 Yes. In Japan, people didn’t have... The homes were small, and people didn’t have a bathtub or shower at home, so everyone went to the public bathhouse. Now, it isn’t just a bathhouse. It’s also a place with pools where people sit in hot water, and—how do you put it?—an atmosphere.

11:07 Speaker 1 A sauna.

11:07 Speaker 2 It’s a place where people meet.

11:09 Speaker 1 Yes, because a sauna used to be something...

11:12 Speaker 2 It isn’t just a sauna. There are actual pools, like a mikveh.

11:15 Speaker 1 Ah.

11:15 Speaker 2 That you sit in. Yes, you sit in them, because there’s a dry sauna, a steam room, and a Jacuzzi—everything. It depends on the style. But the whole system is very developed here, so there are cleaning pumps, with heating or without heating. There are whole schools of thought about it. Now the question is how to return the water to the mikveh in a way that keeps it kosher. So you return it through hamshachah.

11:44 Speaker 1 I see.

11:45 Speaker 2 And then, in any case—

11:47 Speaker 1 Like the internal filter they use in many mikvehs today.

11:51 Speaker 2 No, because with that... For every malfunction, you have to bring things in from outside, and that won’t hold up... I mean, everything has to suit the local water.

12:01 Speaker 1 I see.

12:01 Speaker 2 You have experts here, Japanese experts. You can’t compete with their equipment. That doesn’t rule out bringing in a device from outside. Fine, that’s also a hiddur. But how do you view that hiddur there? The device itself—the pump and the filter—would be inside the water. But if the water returns through hamshachah, and you build a mechanism so it never runs during immersion itself—whether it gives a warning or the door opens and stops the pump—you can come up with all kinds of solutions to the concern that it might keep running while someone is immersing. So you need to find a solution for that.

12:40 Speaker 3 You do it according to the Rebbe Rashab’s method, of course.

12:44 Speaker 2 Of course. One pool above another, only one pool above another. With a huge quantity of rainwater that remains kosher throughout, and the city water, after hamshachah, flows straight into the rainwater, aimed at the opening at the bottom, which is actually the—

13:13 Speaker 3 Wait, can you see me right now?

13:15 Speaker 2 No, not right now. You disappeared.

13:17 Speaker 3 There’s some problem here.

13:19 Speaker 2 So maybe we’ll start now with—

13:21 Speaker 3 Yes, yes.

13:22 Speaker 2 A video of the Rebbe. We talked about Rabbi Lau, who once came to Kyoto. I actually spoke with him and his wife about that visit. They were here in two thousand—sorry, in ’91, the summer of 5751. He came to a meeting of religious leaders, and they asked him to speak. They asked him to speak in Hebrew. Let’s watch the video; he’ll explain it. But the Rebbe brings up this point. As we said, the Rebbe raises the question: Have you heard that the Japanese say they’re one of the lost tribes?

14:04 Speaker 3 Wait, are you talking about a meeting Rabbi Lau had with the Rebbe in the Rebbe’s office?

14:10 Speaker 2 At the dollar distribution.

14:12 Speaker 3 The dollar distribution. Okay. Yes, all right.

14:15 Speaker 2 Here it starts.

14:28 Speaker 4 Yes, I’ve written to them about the Sheva Mitzvos Bnei Noach, and we’ve prepared a special memorandum and sent it to various people [unclear].

14:45 Speaker 5 How did he pick up on that idea?

14:48 Speaker 4 Japan. Japan. I was in Kyoto—no, in Kyoto. There were five hundred leaders of various Japanese religions. I was the only [unclear] over those two days. I had to speak about Judaism three times.

15:05 Speaker 5 A meeting?

15:06 Speaker 4 What’s interesting is that there were people from the Makuya there—gentiles, not converts, actual gentiles from the Makuya—who know Hebrew. They insisted that I speak Hebrew, and someone translated directly from Hebrew into Japanese. One of them was Dr. Akira [unclear], from the Makuya.

15:29 Speaker 5 There are quite a few Japanese [unclear].

15:35 Speaker 4 Some of them.

15:36 Speaker 5 Some.

15:37 Speaker 4 Some of them. You know, the Buddhists and others there [unclear]. But they held a prayer for peace. And they asked for it in Hebrew. They said [unclear], and I quoted Isaiah: “A shoot shall come forth from the stem of Yishai,” and “In the end of days... all the nations shall stream to it.” It was translated from Hebrew into Japanese. The Israeli ambassador was there with me, and he said that for them themselves it was [unclear].

16:17 Speaker 5 For the first time, look at the face of the grandson, Nachman. I know him, but this has to remain a secret. A stylist. Then we can come back strong.

16:33 Speaker 4 Listen, that’s extraordinarily impressive.

16:37 Speaker 6 Yes.

16:38 Speaker 4 Wow.

16:39 Speaker 6 The Rebbe brings up the subject.

16:41 Speaker 4 Notice, the Rebbe tells him that the Japanese say they’re from the Ten Tribes. Rabbi Lau starts telling stories—some yes, some no. The Rebbe doesn’t say, “Some of them are right.” In other words, as I understand it, for the Rebbe, they all say they belong to the Ten Tribes.

17:00 Speaker 6 I don’t know about all of them. The Rebbe brings up the subject: Have you heard that they say this? In other words, the Rebbe opens a discussion.

17:06 Speaker 4 The Rebbe said, “The Japanese say.”

17:09 Speaker 6 Yes.

17:09 Speaker 4 The Rebbe didn’t say “some Japanese.”

17:12 Speaker 6 Yes, he emphasized “some of them.”

17:15 Speaker 4 Not “some of them.” Lau said that.

17:17 Speaker 6 Right, right. And he immediately moves on to the fact that some practice idol worship and some don’t, but that’s the discussion.

17:26 Speaker 4 But the Rebbe didn’t say that.

17:28 Speaker 6 Right.

17:28 Speaker 4 He said to him, “You’re right.” He didn’t say, “I haven’t heard anything about it.” He didn’t dismiss the matter.

17:34 Speaker 6 Yes, the discussion sort of gets cut off, when you’d really expect... Let’s continue. I’ve heard... It could be that... On Rosh Hashanah, a family came here from Nagoya, which is about a three-hour drive, maybe two. Yes, nearby. The grandparents, two children, one married daughter, and the two grandchildren. They made that whole round trip just to wish us a good new year. They wanted to hear the shofar. We waited for a Jew to arrive so he could hear the shofar too, but their whole reason for coming was that they’re from the Hata family. Hata is the family name—Hata.

18:22 Speaker 4 Okay.

18:23 Speaker 6 And there’s a tradition in Japan that this family was a light-skinned family that came from elsewhere—that they looked more European. They had a major influence on Japan’s development in various areas. They’re identified as the Hata family, and within the family there’s a tradition connecting them to... that the Hata family is the Jewish family.

18:48 Speaker 4 Oh.

18:50 Speaker 6 So this is, how do you put it, a subject that comes up a lot here. People also invest a lot of money in it. You can hear about it and look at it from different angles, because it’s hard to prove something like that. And anything you see here—I don’t know, anything that resembles something Jewish—doesn’t prove anything. There could certainly have been Jews in the area whom someone imitated, or one person could have come and others learned from him. It doesn’t prove anything.

19:20 Speaker 4 Wait, let me ask you a professional question. Is there an expert who researches this?

19:28 Speaker 6 I don’t know one. There are people here, though. Let me tell you: there are many Japanese experts researching the subject and investing a lot of money in it. But what’s their evidence? It’s based on signs they’ve found. Something that resembles tefillin, something that resembles something else. There are several places of idol worship in different locations that, viewed from above—from an airplane—look exactly like a Star of David, and all sorts of things like that, including Stars of David with various inscriptions. In other words, they study the artifacts more than the question of how it happened or the families. They’re less focused on getting to know the Jewish people and more on...

20:13 Speaker 4 Looking at external symbols.

20:15 Speaker 6 Yes. They see pictures of ancient Japanese people who appear to have curled peyos. Then they compare those pictures to chassidim today who have curled peyos.

20:26 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

20:26 Speaker 6 So... so you’re saying that isn’t serious, because it’s not the Jews who... Yes.

20:31 Speaker 4 So you don’t have a researcher who investigates the origins of the Japanese and says, “I found a connection.”

20:37 Speaker 6 There are, there are. Honestly, I’m not deeply enough involved in it. I know there are Israelis who have gotten into it and study it too. How to get to the bottom of it is... There are many movements involved—that’s what I’m trying to say. There are many different schools of thought within this subject.

20:59 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

21:01 Speaker 6 And each has its own interests, and each presents it differently. So it’s not straightforward. Some of it is really quite superficial.

21:13 Speaker 4 Even so, you could say there’s no smoke without fire. Why would they just say they’re descendants of the Jewish people? What, don’t they have enough going on in their lives?

21:23 Speaker 6 Right, right. No, what I see and hear here isn’t what makes me think in that direction. But after you see a video like this, where the Rebbe brings up the subject—it wasn’t that someone... Rabbi Lau brought it up and the Rebbe responded cautiously. It’s a subject the Rebbe suddenly raises, seemingly out of nowhere. They weren’t talking about it at all.

21:46 Speaker 4 No, they were talking about something completely different.

21:49 Speaker 6 He was talking about the Makuya. The Makuya are—

21:52 Speaker 4 No, before that he was talking about a different subject, and then the Rebbe connected the subject to Japan.

21:58 Speaker 6 Right, he was talking about the Sheva Mitzvos Bnei Noach, which he was spreading among leaders.

22:02 Speaker 4 Exactly.

22:03 Speaker 6 And then he says that he told him he had been here in Kyoto at a gathering of religious leaders, and somehow he spoke—he spoke very strongly about Judaism. He spoke in Hebrew, and the people translating for him were from the Makuya group. The Makuya are Japanese, a Christian movement that broke away from Christianity and puts the emphasis on the Jewish people. They believe that now that the Jews have a state, they need to support them, and that’s the solution—that through this, we’ll reach enlightenment. So they’ve donated a lot of money, they study Hebrew, and they send representatives to Israel to study Hebrew. We had a Makuya woman here who came to visit, and you could really see that for years she had carried the pain of not having been born Jewish—how much she felt she was missing. Eventually she went through a process within herself and came to understand that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created non-Jews too, and they have a purpose too. And all of this was in Hebrew, yes? She speaks fluent Hebrew. She spent several years in Israel.

23:12 Speaker 4 Yes.

23:13 Speaker 6 There are a lot of them here. And it’s a group—a fairly large group—that comes here too. But it’s fascinating how the Rebbe raises the subject. So at the end, the Rebbe tells him that he hopes many people will follow his example.

23:33 Speaker 4 Yes. No, and we still don’t know whether the Rebbe means the Seven Mitzvos in general, or the Japanese specifically.

23:40 Speaker 6 Well, I see it as the Seven Noahide Laws for the Japanese. It’s both.

23:47 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

23:49 Speaker 6 Meaning, in the place where we are. The Rebbe speaks about Kyoto and about following the example of this work: meeting non-Jews, speaking to them about Judaism, and awakening in them a desire to love Hashem and a belief that Hashem is one—and, accordingly, to guide their conduct by the fact that there is one Creator of the world.

24:11 Speaker 4 Yes, yes, absolutely. So the question really is whether anyone there with you is working on these things, because it’s a very big undertaking in its own right.

24:22 Speaker 6 That’s just it. It really is hard to take it on when you also have a Chabad House and the Jewish visitors, and you’re constantly trying to make time for that. Now I have someone here who has really devoted himself completely to the Noahide work. He even loses money because of it. He’s a doctor who could be doing other work, and he’s our secretary. He works here at the Chabad House partly as a volunteer, and he’s just finished reading the—what’s the book called? Judaism... Jewish Awareness?

24:59 Speaker 4 Jewish Awareness, by Nadav Cohen.

25:01 Speaker 6 Yes. In English it’s called GPS—I’m not sure exactly what the title is. So he finished reading that. And we put together a course here during COVID, Judaism for Japanese people: seven sessions on seven stages. It was all in Japanese; I worked in English and he translated. And now we’re working on turning it into a book, with Hashem’s help. It’s not simple, because it’s written in Japanese and I can’t read Japanese, so how can I proofread it? It has to be translated into English, and then I go over the English, and—hold on a second. Mom is slipping. Sorry.

25:51 Speaker 4 Anyway, it’s a huge amount of work.

25:54 Speaker 6 Yes, yes, because when a book comes out under your name, you have to be very precise. So he took the summaries of the classes we gave and wrote them in Japanese. Now I’m going through them one chapter at a time, having them translated back into English so I can understand what he meant. And after that, I need to find a Japanese Jewish convert who reads Japanese well—or not necessarily a convert, but an observant Jew—who can read the material and see whether the intended meaning really comes across clearly enough. But now he’s decided he wants to write a book of his own about building emotional resilience through an awareness of holiness, of the fact that there is one Creator. We had another Japanese man who came here over the holiday. Stress at work had brought him to a very low point emotionally, and when he discovered Torah, he began reading and studying all the time, learning about Judaism online. He wants to hear something real. He wants to meet a rabbi and really learn, not just in theory from websites and books.

27:08 Speaker 4 You’ll have to open a yeshivah there.

27:10 Speaker 6 That’s just it. With Hashem’s help, we’ll need more staff for that, but one of our dreams really is to open a kollel and a kind of Judaism museum for Noahides, to teach them, because there’s a thirst here. This is a country without antisemitism, and there’s a thirst here. Materialism and work are... I mean, the people here don’t call themselves religious, but they are spiritual. Spirituality touches all sorts of areas of their lives. So they are looking for something. The churches are emptying out. In other words, people are searching, but they don’t have anything that feels substantial enough.

28:01 Speaker 4 I understand.

28:02 Speaker 6 That’s our area of work.

28:03 Speaker 4 By the way, do you and Rabbi Edri talk regularly? Do you consult each other about how to carry out this work?

28:10 Speaker 6 Of course, of course.

28:12 Speaker 4 I see.

28:13 Speaker 6 Of course—almost every day.

28:17 Speaker 4 I see. Uh-huh.

28:18 Speaker 6 Yes.

28:19 Speaker 4 Wonderful, wonderful.

28:21 Speaker 6 Everything that...

28:23 Speaker 4 Okay, so we’ve covered Rabbi Lau and the subject of the Rebbe and the Japanese as descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. Look, I’d be glad if you could bring in another perspective on this—someone else who knows a little about it, to ask him what we’ve done. So let’s move on and go back in time to your Chabad House in Hampi.

28:50 Speaker 6 Yes.

28:50 Speaker 4 Because we’re in the middle of the story of your shlichus in Hampi: you’re looking for Hampi, you find Hampi, and then you begin looking for the right place for the Chabad House.

29:03 Speaker 6 Yes. So we were looking for a place. At first, you don’t know how it’s going to work out or exactly how you’ll find one. You start going from... Yes?

29:19 Speaker 4 Had you unloaded the car already, or were you still driving around with all the equipment in it?

29:23 Speaker 6 No, no. We unloaded the car right away and called it “Amarti”[?]. We took two rooms at a guesthouse, one for ourselves and one for the equipment, and the next day the operation began. We had to look for places. So we went from guesthouse to guesthouse, seeing what was available to rent and asking around. And before long—you know, it’s a village, right? Everyone passes information along to everyone else. Right away, everyone knew there was an Israeli here looking for a place to run activities. So leads started coming in. Most of the places really weren’t suitable. We were left with two: one in the center of the village, but less inviting; and another with a beautifully tended garden and a much nicer atmosphere. We wrote to the Rebbe to ask what we should decide, what we should do.

30:31 Speaker 4 How did you write to the Rebbe from there? How does that work?

30:34 Speaker 6 We had brought two Chitas books[?] and one volume of Igros Kodesh with us.

30:41 Speaker 4 One book of Igros Kodesh? One volume, or a whole set?

30:45 Speaker 6 One volume.

30:47 Speaker 4 Oh, one volume. Okay.

30:51 Speaker 6 Yes. We didn’t have... Our equipment hadn’t arrived yet. We hadn’t... I mean, you arrive with almost nothing. Maybe we can show the picture of the equipment for a moment.

31:06 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

31:10 Speaker 6 That’s a picture of the room with the equipment.

31:12 Speaker 4 Oh, okay. Looks good.

31:17 Speaker 6 Yes, you can see the Torah scroll on the right, wrapped up.

31:20 Speaker 4 Yes.

31:20 Speaker 6 And toilet paper, and... what’s that over there? Some matzos. There’s a jar of matzos in...

31:27 Speaker 4 All kinds of containers, all kinds of...

31:30 Speaker 6 Yes, pots for making wine, and the plastic containers at the bottom.

31:33 Speaker 4 Ah.

31:36 Speaker 6 A food processor. Anyway, that was our first room. Then we went out to look. We wrote to the Rebbe, and the answer pointed us toward the place that was more inviting, greener.

31:53 Speaker 4 Okay.

31:53 Speaker 6 So that’s the one we took. This is the place we rented. That’s the kitchen, and this was on the day...

32:00 Speaker 4 Who are those people working in the kitchen right now?

32:03 Speaker 6 They’re travelers we told that we were going to open a Chabad House and needed to get the place ready by Shabbos.

32:10 Speaker 4 Wow.

32:10 Speaker 6 The first thing was to make the place kosher. Now, we’d arrived with pita bread and a few spreads. Wait, so this is the meal.

32:23 Speaker 4 Yes.

32:25 Speaker 6 We got there on Monday, and on Tuesday and Wednesday we had to look for a place. We were living on cans of tuna and pita bread. We’d brought a package of frozen pita bread from Pune[?], and some of it had gone moldy. We had to scrape off the mold until we had a place of our own. And we had spreads and chocolate. Anyway, then we had to go into town to pick up the rest of the supplies we needed.

32:57 Speaker 4 This is the town, right?

32:59 Speaker 6 Yes, this is the town.

33:00 Speaker 4 Wow, it looks nice.

33:02 Speaker 6 Yes.

33:03 Speaker 4 An industrial area.

33:04 Speaker 6 This is the street. This is the main street in town. An ATM—where do you withdraw money? That’s what it looks like. The town is called Gangaramati [?]. Well, compared to—because it has a train station, it’s considered a somewhat developed town, but this is the town. And here we are, paying the deposit to secure the place. That’s the owner of the place. So, where were we? We start getting ready for Shabbos. First, of course, we kasher the countertop and whatever else needs kashering, and immediately call the travelers to see who can lend a hand. We don’t have any staff yet, nothing. The owner’s daughter came by in the middle and helped out, and we started getting things done. Thursday. What else needs doing? Sorting the rice. Everyone who comes lends a hand. Hummus. Now, as we said, that village is a village, and there isn’t enough electricity.

34:02 Speaker 4 Right.

34:02 Speaker 6 So they divide it among all the villages. There are six hours of electricity during the day and six hours at night, and it switches every week. In other words, one week the electricity is on from six in the morning until noon; the next week it’s from noon until evening.

34:21 Speaker 4 Oh.

34:22 Speaker 6 And it alternates like that, week by week. Now, we didn’t know that, and we started making hummus and tahini—and then the power went out. That was it. Whatever had been blended was blended; whatever hadn’t, you had to finish by hand. We hadn’t planned for a power outage. So, those are the Shabbos preparations. Here you can see a Tanya, Or HaTorah and Igros Kodesh. That’s the Chabad House library.

34:45 Speaker 4 But the place looks relatively well organized, considering...

34:49 Speaker 6 Yes. No, it was—they had a restaurant that wasn’t operating, and we rented the restaurant. That was... Here’s candle-lighting for Shabbos.

34:57 Speaker 4 How beautiful.

34:59 Speaker 6 Yes. So, what happened that Shabbos? Here are pictures from Shabbos. This is already a farbrengen—help yourself. So we sat down to eat. We sat on the floor, as you can see in the picture. There were no chairs. We said we’d invest the money first in what we needed most. As we said earlier, we’d raised money in the United States and arrived with what we had on hand, and we had to make do with that.

35:29 Speaker 4 Right.

35:30 Speaker 6 So we said chairs and tables could wait. We sat on mattresses that came with the place, on the floor for the Shabbos meal, and started eating. Then the power went out. Now, as we mentioned, we didn’t have an oven. We’d brought matzos with us—regular, non-Pesach matzos—so we had matzos. In the middle of the power outage... Yes, the non-Jewish neighbors turned on... We had candles, so we put them on the table. And when the power goes out—maybe I didn’t mention this, but the area has lots of rice paddies. Rice paddies mean lots of water, and lots of water means lots of frogs.

36:18 Speaker 4 Right.

36:19 Speaker 6 So when the lights go out and you’re sitting on the floor, suddenly lots of frogs start gathering around you on the floor.

36:24 Speaker 4 Really?

36:26 Speaker 6 Then the lights came back on, and we suddenly started singing. We hadn’t thought the power would come back, because at that point we still didn’t understand the schedule of outages and electricity. Suddenly it came back on, and the ten of us started singing joyous songs. At the end of the meal, one of the travelers came over to my wife and said, “That really was the Exodus from Egypt! We had the plague of darkness and the plague of frogs. We ate matzos, and then we actually sang songs of Geulah...”

37:03 Speaker 4 Wow.

37:04 Speaker 6 About getting out of that power outage. So that was our first Shabbos of the Exodus from Egypt.

37:12 Speaker 4 Was that just then?

37:14 Speaker 6 It was exactly 19 Kislev.

37:16 Speaker 4 Oh.

37:17 Speaker 6 Yes, we arrived—we got to the area on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, and it was exactly a year.

37:26 Speaker 4 I see.

37:28 Speaker 6 Maybe a little... Maybe we arrived around Rosh Chodesh and reached the actual location a week later, but it was exactly a year since the attack in which the shluchim Gabi and Rivka were murdered in Mumbai. And that was... Yes, another mikveh in their memory. Another Chabad House in their memory. So the pictures here are out of order. This was kashering the place, with the stone and the...

37:56 Speaker 4 You’re saying there are experts at kashering.

37:58 Speaker 6 Yes, to get some lighting. Chanukah was just around the corner, and we needed a menorah. Now, how do you put it—there was no time, and we wanted to make one with what we had locally. So how do you make a menorah from local materials?

38:14 Speaker 4 Right, right, right.

38:15 Speaker 6 Well, look—

38:17 Speaker 4 Bamboo? What’s that?

38:19 Speaker 6 Yes, bamboo and water bottles—you can see disposable water bottles cut in half.

38:26 Speaker 4 Right.

38:26 Speaker 6 Add a little sand and a candle. That was...

38:30 Speaker 4 Very impressive.

38:32 Speaker 6 Yes.

38:33 Speaker 4 Do you have a picture of it lit, too?

38:35 Speaker 6 I think I do, further on.

38:37 Speaker 4 I see.

38:38 Speaker 6 Everyone comes to you. There isn’t really a market. That village is an area with less... So you constantly have vendors coming by, each carrying [unclear] and trying to sell you fruit, fish, vegetables. That gives you a bit of the atmosphere. Chanukah. In the middle of...

39:03 Speaker 4 And how many travelers are there in the area?

39:08 Speaker 6 It depends on the season. At the busiest time, there can be five hundred Israelis there.

39:17 Speaker 4 Wow.

39:18 Speaker 6 At any given time, yes.

39:21 Speaker 4 You need a relatively large Chabad House.

39:24 Speaker 6 Yes, yes, yes.

39:25 Speaker 4 Sorry.

39:25 Speaker 6 It’s all right.

39:30 Speaker 4 What’s this here? Are these travelers sitting with you at...

39:33 Speaker 6 This is our Chanukah mivtzoim. We went from guesthouse to guesthouse to light candles. We barely had any menorahs, so each time we made do with what we had and some candles. You go from guesthouse to guesthouse, from restaurant to restaurant, and light with everyone.

39:55 Speaker 4 A challenge all its own.

39:57 Speaker 6 Yes. That was quite something. Here, this is how it worked. Everything was very makeshift. You had to—how do you say it?—put up a sign with [unclear]. Everything was held together with string. In other words, you arrive and start with what you’ve got.

40:13 Speaker 4 Wonderful. Wonderful to see this. How beautiful.

40:19 Speaker 6 This is our own “Haneros Halalu,” with the oil.

40:25 Speaker 4 Very impressive. Very impressive.

40:29 Speaker 6 I remember there was a story about a young man who didn’t... Wait. No, not there. Sorry. No. Here, now. Sorry, one moment. It threw me off. There was a young man who didn’t want to... I tried inviting him to the Chabad House, and he said—we were talking about... He said, “I’m not Jewish.”

41:02 Speaker 4 Oh.

41:02 Speaker 6 In Hebrew, yes. I said, “What do you mean, you’re not Jewish?” He said, “I don’t believe in that. We’re all the same. We’re all equal. We’re all...” Anyway, we tried to talk a little, but he wasn’t interested in going there. Then Chanukah came, and I was going around the guesthouses. My wife had made sufganiyot—and sfinge on another day—and as I went around, I saw him. Anyway, I was handing them out to everyone, and I said to him—I don’t remember if I teased him—“These are for non-Jews too. They’re for everyone.”

41:40 Speaker 4 Right.

41:40 Speaker 6 Anyway, he enjoyed the sufganiyah. The next day, if I’m not mistaken, it was this same young man. We were in a restaurant, everyone was sitting there, and I was looking for someone to come light the candles in front of everyone. And here you have to choose your words carefully, right? Because if the first person says no, the next person might say no too. Sometimes nobody wants to be the first.

42:02 Speaker 4 Of course.

42:02 Speaker 6 You have to find the—

42:03 Speaker 4 It’s a familiar situation.

42:06 Speaker 6 So while I was looking around, suddenly there he was—if I remember correctly, his name was Tom—sitting and watching. I said to him, “Would you like to light?” I’d been looking for someone to ask to light and say the brachos. And he said, “With pleasure.” So we lit the menorah, and everyone took out their cameras. They were moved to see Tom saying the brachos over the Chanukah candles. This was the person who, just a few days earlier, had said there was no such thing as being Jewish and... Anyway, that’s the power of a sufganiyah. The power of jam.

42:41 Speaker 4 The power of—of shlichus.

42:43 Speaker 6 Exactly, exactly.

42:44 Speaker 4 Amazing.

42:45 Speaker 6 The sfinge—those sfinge went like hotcakes. Anyway, that was the period, our first Chanukah. We still didn’t have any bochurim, and we didn’t fully know the place yet, but we were learning on the ground. Learning, little by little.