Episode 223 - The Building of the First Colony by the Tzemach Tzedek

00:01 We’ll now talk about the Tzemach Tzedek’s work on behalf of the community. It’s worth saying that it isn’t a given that a Rebbe of chassidim would be involved in communal affairs. A Rebbe’s role is to guide chassidim in their spiritual path. For a Rebbe to take on communal work is something special: he sees his role as not only helping chassidim, and the Jewish people as a whole, spiritually, but also helping each person materially. The Baal Shem Tov himself had already begun doing this. The Baal Shem Tov said that first he helps a Jew materially, and only afterward does he help him spiritually. When a Jew’s material needs are taken care of, he can devote himself to his spiritual work with greater peace of mind. Here we’re following the Tzemach Tzedek’s communal work. As mentioned earlier, the Tzemach Tzedek began this work even before assuming the leadership of Chabad. When he became Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek established a committee of five elder chassidim: Rabbi Reb Moshe Meisels of Vilna, whom we remember from his days as a chossid of the Alter Rebbe—a highly educated, exceptionally wise man, and so on; Rabbi Boruch Mordechai Ettinger of Bobruisk, whom we’ve also mentioned many times; Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik of Homil; Rabbi Hillel of Paritch; and Rabbi Peretz Chen of Beshinkovitz [unclear]. These five would oversee all of Chabad’s communal affairs. In 5588, essentially the beginning of the Tzemach Tzedek’s leadership, the great and righteous Rabbi Hillel of Paritch began his journeys to the settlements in the Kherson region, settlements founded by the Mitteler Rebbe and the Tzemach Tzedek. Rabbi Hillel would spend three months there each year during the summer. Besides his influence on the settlers in matters of Torah, fear of Heaven and the ways of Chassidus, he had a great influence on how they conducted themselves with love, fellowship and good character traits. The Tzemach Tzedek was an excellent strategist and organizer, and he had a particular approach

02:53 to communal work: to do everything discreetly. Only those through whom things were carried out knew about them. When the law was enacted to draft young Jews into the army, the Tzemach Tzedek arranged for designated people to be stationed wherever groups of Jewish soldiers were concentrated. They took an interest in the soldiers’ moral and spiritual condition, encouraging them and strengthening their observance of the mitzvos so they would not fall into the trap of conversion that the Russians had laid for them. The whole purpose of drafting them into the army was to make them convert, G-d forbid. The Tzemach Tzedek advised chassidim to take up farming and also helped them financially, since government laws made it difficult to settle in villages. The Tzemach Tzedek conceived the idea of buying a large estate within the Pale of Settlement, in the Minsk region, and settling Jewish families there. In 5604, the Tzemach Tzedek bought a tract of land with a large forest from Prince Shchedrinov in the Minsk region. He founded the town of Shchedrin there and appointed a committee to manage the settlement’s affairs. The Tzemach Tzedek settled more than three hundred families there. They earned a plentiful living through their own labor and set aside certain periods during the year for study. The Tzemach Tzedek distributed plots of land in the town to the families free of charge. Each family received enough land for a home and the other buildings needed to run a farm, a vegetable garden, fields for planting and pasture. They also received financial assistance to buy tools. Every family that settled in Shchedrin to work the land benefited from certain government concessions. One was a loan of two hundred rubles from the state treasury, to be repaid over several years with specified amounts of grain. The land the Tzemach Tzedek bought amounted to some three thousand five hundred desyatinas, each desyatina being about ten dunams. In other words, we’re talking about roughly thirty-five thousand dunams.

05:47 That would mean each family received a little over a hundred dunams for housing and farming. The Tzemach Tzedek—wait, it says here how he divided it—divided the land this way: an area of seventeen hundred desyatinas, including all the fields, part of the forest and the streams, he gave to the farmers, meaning the Jews who worked the land. He sold an area of eighteen hundred desyatinas of forest to the wealthy chossid Ephraim Yosef Holodetz of Bobruisk, on condition that Ephraim provide timber for building houses and cowsheds in the settlement. The proceeds from the forest would pay the purchase debts and the costs of establishing the settlement. As mentioned, the Tzemach Tzedek sent part of the money received from selling the forest land to our Holy Land to support Kollel Chabad, which supports chassidim living here in the Holy Land. He gave the rest to the charity fund he had established to help with communal and individual needs. So we were a little mistaken. Yes, that makes it about fifty dunams per family. All right, that’s still a very substantial plot. The founding of Shchedrin made a great impression on the Jews and also in government circles. The governors of Minsk, Vitebsk and Mogilev reported it in letters of praise to the interior minister. The governor of Minsk informed the interior minister that Rabbi Schneersohn of Lubavitch had bought a large estate from Prince Shchedrinov and, with the permission of the Minsk regional [unclear], founded a settlement for Jews there. In doing so, he had improved the Jews’ situation and enabled them to avoid speculative ventures. Rabbi Schneersohn of Lubavitch, he wrote, had great influence over all the Jews living throughout Russia, including the Misnagdim and the chassidim of Volhynia and Poland, and he worked for the Jews’ benefit in material matters as well. The governor of Vitebsk informed the interior minister that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn—that is, the Tzemach Tzedek—the son-in-law of the Mitteler Rebbe of Lubavitch and grandson of the Alter Rebbe, who was

08:33 the Alter Rebbe of the town of Liadi, was registered as a resident of the city of Vitebsk. His conduct was good, and he had considerable influence over Jews who turned to him with questions about improving their economic circumstances. For about twelve years, from 5587 to 5599, the Tzemach Tzedek worked diligently to educate the community about economic matters, to protect Jews from the kidnappers who seized children for the army, and to help them settle in safe places. The Rebbe gave moral support to the Cantonists, meaning those who had already been drafted, and to Jewish soldiers. He also helped Torah students in yeshivos and kollelim when they faced interference from the Misnagdim or the Maskilim in Russia. Then a figure arrived who disrupted all of this. When Dr. Lilienthal came in 5598 to serve as head teacher at the school founded by the assimilationists in Riga, it became known that, about two years earlier, the German Maskilim had formed a special committee of four leading and prominent Maskilim. Their names were Philippson, Homberg, Mannheimer and Auerbach [unclear]. They had been appointed to maintain constant contact with the Maskilim of Russia, Volhynia, Poland and Lithuania, and to spy on the Tzemach Tzedek’s opposition in communal affairs—particularly his efforts to uphold the old ways, meaning Torah and mitzvos, to strengthen religious observance and to oppose the Haskalah. Lilienthal was born in Munich, Bavaria, and grew up among people who had abandoned the Jewish faith, the group known as the assimilationists. Lilienthal graduated from a school of higher learning in Munich and associated with the sons of the country’s nobles. When the assimilationist Jewish community of Riga invited Dr. Lilienthal to become their preacher and moral guide, and to establish a school for their children in the German spirit, he obtained a letter of recommendation from the king of Bavaria to the king’s brother, Prince Leuchtenberg, the son-in-law of Nicholas I. All of them were thoroughly wicked people. Once Lilienthal arrived in Riga and settled his affairs, he began frequent correspondence with the Maskilim of Russia. At their suggestion, and with the agreement of the committee of four—the four we mentioned earlier, those sources of impurity—Dr. Lilienthal set out to bring about the closure of the Jewish printing presses. That is,

11:36 The wickedness was so great that it wasn’t enough for you to abandon Judaism yourself; you wanted to make sure other Jews would no longer be connected to Judaism either. In short, they tried to shut down Jewish printing presses that printed books in the spirit of the Torah, and they also tried to impose mandatory censorship on books that had already been printed. This was stated in the petition—the denunciation—he wrote in 5593. In other words, we are getting into the details of the war the Maskilim began to wage against Jews and Judaism: a dirty and inexplicable war. Back in 5583, the Maskil Yitzchak Ber Levinsohn submitted to the heir to the throne—apparently the future Nicholas I—a survey of the sects among the Jewish people and a proposal to establish schools and seminaries to dispel what they called “age-old religious ignorance.” Yes, keeping Torah and mitzvos was “age-old religious ignorance.” For about four years, he wrote letters of praise to the royal household and government ministers, full of compliments and acclaim for the “pious king”—question mark, exclamation point—“who benefits the Jewish people”—question mark, exclamation point—“and wishes to reform them, to lift them out of the mire of superstition and place them in the light of education and upright faith.” Through this flattery, the Maskil Levinsohn opened a way for himself into the offices of government ministers and the royal court. He then sent the manuscript of his book, Teudah BeYisrael, to the minister of education, Prince Shishkov, requesting financial support to print the book, which argued for the benefits of the Haskalah. All of this is background to the tremendous struggle the Tzemach Tzedek waged against the Haskalah movement. About three months after the decree conscripting Jews into the army was published in 5587, there was wailing and misery throughout the Jewish communities. The men lamented, their faces dark with grief. The women mourned and poured out tears like water at their parents’ graves, asking for Heavenly mercy on their sons, that they not be assimilated among the non-Jews and that they be able to keep the mitzvos. Government officials knew about this, and some shared the Jews’ grief that their religion would be violated. And at that bitter moment, that same

14:41 Levinsohn wrote to the minister of education about himself, saying that he was among those Jews who felt great affection for the monarchy and for the people among whom they lived. He went on at length about the many benefits the government bestowed on the Jewish people. For this flattery, the Maskil Levinsohn was given a thousand rubles as a gift from the emperor for his book, which was supposedly intended to bring about the moral improvement of the Jewish people. The bribe blinded his judgment. He did not feel the sharp sting in the brief, cutting phrase: “I am sending you a thousand rubles for your denunciation; your moral rebukes are [unclear].” In 5591, that same Levinsohn submitted to the minister of education, Lieven, a detailed paper on the need to reform Jewish religious life. Along with its invented, illogical explanations and reasons—a paper that reveals their lack of logic, wisdom, and integrity—he also spoke disparagingly of Jewish customs concerning marriage, clothing, and the like. He mocked the words of our Sages concerning the evil eye, sorcery, and demons. He wrote that only coercive measures could spread the Haskalah among Jews. He proposed imposing severe penalties on rabbis, especially the rabbis of the Chassidic groups, who made up about three-quarters of the Jewish people, so that they would not lead Jews into superstitions that narrowed their minds and kept them from absorbing science and secular learning. For two years, Levinsohn continued writing to the minister of education about his proposal to reform Jewish religion, adding sections to his paper from time to time. In 5593—that is, 1833—he submitted a denunciation of observant Jews who kept Jewish customs, particularly the chassidim in Poland, Volhynia, and Lithuania. He proposed closing Hebrew printing presses in places without censorship. He attached to his proposal a list of old and new Hebrew books, distinguishing between old and new books he considered beneficial and those he considered harmful. The “harmful” books, of course, included works of Chassidus and mussar. There were several completely assimilated Jews involved. One was called Mapu, another Gottlober, a third

17:26 was called Ginzburg, and a fourth Levinsohn. We’ve already mentioned him, and there were also Schoenfeld and Greenbaum. All of them supported the proposals of that Lilienthal—or was he not one of that group? Levinsohn, Levinsohn. Eventually, in 5577, a decree was issued requiring all Jewish books to be reviewed. The closure of the printing presses had not yet been decreed, and the government had still not expressed its opinion on the list of beneficial and harmful books Levinsohn had submitted. Dr. Lilienthal, that assimilated Lilienthal, was given a threefold assignment: first, to close printing presses in places without censorship; second, to distribute the “beneficial” books—yes, quotation marks on both sides—and to rework the “harmful” books—question mark, exclamation point—as proposed by Y. B. Levinsohn; third, to establish schools for Jewish children, schools that would, of course, preserve them. This war continues to this day. As usual, Dr. Lilienthal appeared before Prince Leuchtenberg[?] and handed him a letter from the prince’s brother, the king, praising Lilienthal. The prince introduced him to the minister of education, Count Uvarov. Knowing that his father-in-law, Emperor Nicholas I, was an enemy of the Jews who hated their religion and wanted them to convert to Christianity, he told the emperor about Dr. Lilienthal, saying that he was the man capable of fulfilling the emperor’s wish to convert the Jews to Christianity. Emperor Nicholas summoned the minister of education and emphatically ordered him to cultivate Dr. Lilienthal and assess his character: was he capable, together with his associates who had abandoned the Jewish religion, of turning the Jewish people away from their faith and bringing them into Christianity? The emperor told Uvarov to submit a report on the matter within about a month. Count Uvarov summoned Lilienthal and introduced him to the heads of the departments in the ministry of education. He spoke in his praise and of his great learning, saying that, regardless of his Jewish background, he was among the finest students at the university in Munich, renowned throughout the world of scholarship. That highly distinguished introduction the minister of education gave Dr. Lilienthal to

19:55 his deputies and officials raised Lilienthal’s spirits and made such a powerful impression on him that he opened his heart completely to the count. He told him that Russia’s Maskilim were being persecuted with furious anger by Jews who believed in souls—in souls and superstitions. Not only were those Jews sinking in the mud and mire of antiquated beliefs, he said, but they were harming their Christian neighbors and causing them, too, to believe in sorcery and demons. The members of the Chassidic groups in particular, he claimed, were constantly urging Jews to believe that their rabbis could perform wonders. The believing chassidim then influenced their Christian neighbors to believe in the rabbis’ wonders as well. Instead of going to church to hear the priests’ prayers, they went to the homes of the many tzaddikim to see their wonders. And when educated, scientifically minded Jews exposed the deception of the chassidim and their tzaddikim, the rabbis persecuted them. The elder Maskilim in Russia, led by Levinsohn, whom the emperor had already honored with a substantial gift for his most excellent book, turned to their fellow Maskilim in Germany for advice on how to save their Jewish brothers, who followed the rabbis blindly. Those rabbis, they claimed, permitted them to commit all kinds of wrongs in trade, property dealings, and business with their Christian neighbors: to charge them exorbitant interest, a hundredfold, and deceive them with every kind of trick. What is more, the rabbis promoted separation from their good Christian neighbors and made them detestable in Jewish eyes, until the word “goy” became the worst possible insult. To all this, Lilienthal added that the rabbi of Lubavitch, together with [unclear], stood against government orders concerning Jewish customs. Through his great influence, he persecuted the Maskilim in every way and sent special emissaries to prevent young Jews from fulfilling their civic duty in the army. He printed and circulated books of Chassidus full of the doctrine of separation and opposition to the Haskalah. Ah, that Lilienthal. And Lilienthal concluded this way: “The Maskilim of Germany have authorized me to present to His Excellency the minister of education the reforms that have already stood the test and will lead to the fulfillment of

22:10 The government’s wishes. First, to close the Hebrew printing houses that print harmful books. Second, to destroy the harmful books. Third, to establish schools for teaching the language of the country and compel the Jews to attend them.” Count Uvarov thanked Dr. Lilienthal for undertaking this mission, traveling to the capital and going to such great trouble to help ease the work of the government, which was concerned for the welfare of its Jewish citizens. He asked him to convey the thanks of the great and benevolent Russian government to the enlightened Jews of Germany for their useful proposals toward fulfilling the government’s wishes for the benefit of its citizens. Count Uvarov instructed one of his deputies, the scholar Pavlov, to remain in constant contact with Dr. Lilienthal. As for the proposal to destroy the harmful books, Uvarov would appoint a special committee to consider it. The matter of the rabbis’ machinations would be referred to the office of the Third Section, the chief secret police, for review and action. The Minister of Education was already looking into the establishment of schools for Jewish children, and Uvarov would refer the matter of the printing houses to the office of the Minister of the Interior.