Episode 262 - The Rebbe Rashab's Efforts to Improve the Condition of the Jews in Russia.

00:01 We continue hearing about the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab was involved in communal work on behalf of the Jewish people throughout Russia and the neighboring countries, in a variety of areas. The one who tells us about the Rebbe Rashab’s activities is his son, the Frierdiker Rebbe. So we’ll hear it firsthand, from the Frierdiker Rebbe’s diary. This is how it goes. He tells it this way, and I’m changing the wording a little to suit the audience. The Frierdiker Rebbe writes: When my father, the Rebbe Rashab, returned from his trip abroad—he had left on 4 Kislev 5661, that is, eighteen hundred and one... nineteen hundred and one. Nineteen hundred and one, and returned on 7 Elul 1901—the number of guests coming to Lubavitch grew day by day. During my father’s stay abroad, in Wörishofen near Munich, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Hamburg, he spoke with Jewish communal activists from various countries. With all of them he discussed the economic situation of our fellow Jews in Russia, and especially the question of the Pale of Settlement, which was a pressing issue at the time. To obtain permission to enter areas of Russia outside the Pale of Settlement, some of our fellow Jews acquired certificates as dentists and the like—various documents that allowed them to visit towns outside the Pale. But in Cheshvan 5662, that is, 1902, word came of a major campaign by parties hostile to the Jewish people to impose new and harsher decrees on our fellow Jews. It also became known that several of our fellow Jews had been caught living outside the Pale of Settlement with forged documents. Over several days, many dozens of people were arrested, together with their families—about three hundred people in all. The heads of the families were imprisoned, their property was sealed, and it was a time of distress for the Jewish people. Communal activists in the various countries

02:50 were deeply distressed by the situation and very much wanted to help. At the same time, they felt hurt and insulted when they heard government ministers and dignitaries speak abusively of the entire Jewish people, and did not know how to answer. The Frierdiker Rebbe continues, now speaking about himself: I remember sitting in Mr. Eliezer Polyakov’s room when one of the ministers, [unclear] Melnikov, arrived. As I sat there, he poured out all his fury against the Jews, and ended by saying, “It is a disgrace for you, honorable Eliezer ben Shlomo Polyakov, to bear a Jewish name. Every decent Jew should convert to Christianity so as to separate himself from those [unclear].” While he was still burning with hatred for the Jewish people, Mrs. Rachel Raizel Polyakov entered. She was astonished by the sight before her: her husband sat as though thunderstruck; I was sitting beside him; and the minister stood there, his face aflame, speaking in the manner of a Moscow Ivan. Mrs. Rachel greeted us both. When I saw her, I rose, as did her husband. Minister M. turned to her and said, “Here I have come to a woman who [unclear].” Hearing him repeat those remarks, adding familiar expressions commonly heard on the lips of non-Jews, I became deeply agitated. Mr. Polyakov and his wife looked at me as someone who had been insulted. This was the third time I had met Minister M., and he knew who I was and where I came from. All the while he spoke, I restrained myself and my anger with great effort. But at that point I could no longer hold back, and I said, “Forgive me, my dear Mrs. and Mr. Polyakov. In your presence, I cannot give the answer that the man with the gold buttons, Minister M., deserves. But let no one imagine that there is no answer. How happy I would be to meet Minister M. somewhere I could speak without restraint.” Mr. Polyakov emerged from his deep thoughts and said, “The tragedy is

05:39 that the ministers do not know the conditions of life in the Pale of Settlement, which force people to take even dangerous paths.” It pleased me, the Frierdiker Rebbe writes, to hear Mrs. Rachel say, “I still remember what Reb Eidel, the teacher from Orsha, said: the Talmud says that poverty drives a person beyond his own judgment and the judgment of his Creator.” “I,” said Melnikov, “would wrap the Jews in pages of the Talmud and burn them together.” My patience gave out, the Frierdiker Rebbe writes, and I said from the heart, “And then where would the ministers get Smirnovka?” Smirnovka was a well-known drink in Moscow. “And how would they make up the shortages in the funds under their control, from which they take money for the time being until an opportunity arises to fleece a Jew?” A slight smile crossed Polyakov’s lips, a trace of satisfaction appeared on his wife’s face, and Melnikov’s face burned. I finished calmly with these words: “From the fleecing of a thousand Jews, they bring in ten million silver rubles a year, or twenty million bottles of Smirnovka. That is something all the ministers take into account.” I knew that Minister M. had come deliberately to frighten us about the forty people who had been arrested in Moscow. A certain group wanted a large sum to free them and destroy all the documents connected with their arrest. But the communal activists had decided not to give even a single kopeck. Instead, they would wait until the prisoners were brought to trial, when the leading lawyers would take up the case. My father, the Rebbe Rashab, held that first of all, with Hashem’s help, we needed to obtain temporary release for all those imprisoned in Moscow, Nizhny, Kostroma, and Smolensk. The aim was to prove that their documents were valid, have their property returned, and allow them to remain where they lived. On this mission, I spent about three weeks in Moscow, the Frierdiker Rebbe writes, speaking with communal activists and with the leading wealthy and influential Jews of Moscow. They also arranged meetings for me with prominent ministers, among them

08:31 upright and kindhearted people, some of them friends of the Jewish people. There were also enemies of the Jewish people—greedy, dull-witted, and cruel. It was then that I first met the well-known minister Durnovo, who took action on behalf of those arrested. Through his confidant, [unclear], we learned that a plot against the Jews was being hatched through the newspapers Moskva, Listok, and Novoye Vremya. At the beginning of Kislev, I returned from Moscow and Petersburg to Lubavitch. Throughout that time I had kept my father informed by letter of everything that was happening in the matter. When I arrived, I also told him the details of the situation as it stood. I described my meeting with Minister M., the unofficial confidant of Moscow’s governor, and what had been said. When my father heard M.’s words, he wept bitterly and said, “Such words cause me great pain. May this not, G-d forbid, lead to a pogrom. May Hashem have mercy.” I returned from my journey on Wednesday, 2 Kislev. On Motzaei Shabbos Kodesh, the eve of Friday, the eve of a day of forgiveness, the eve of 6 Kislev, my father, the Rebbe Rashab, took the express train that passed through Krasnoye station, on the Moscow–Warsaw railway line, at three in the morning. My father traveled to Moscow, and I accompanied him on his way. On the day he arrived in Moscow, he stayed at the home of the chossid Rabbi Dov Ber Monzon. At seven in the evening, the first meeting was held, and at ten that night Mr. [unclear] Yaakov visited him. On Monday, 7 Kislev, there was a second meeting, with people he himself had invited because he wanted to hear their views. He told me that he had decided to work on this matter in two ways. The first was through the usual communal activists, going through the doors already open to them. The second was through personal acquaintances and requests. In matters like these, my father, the Rebbe, was accustomed to making notes on a white ivory tablet, writing on it in pencil and then erasing what he had written. How distressed I was

11:37 each time I saw him erase what his holy hand had written in order to make room for new notes. Sometimes I tried, as best I could, to copy his brief notes and comments, for he would write on that tablet even during meetings. According to the schedule he set for me, he held two meetings that day: from four to six, a meeting with the communal activists, and from eight to ten, a confidential meeting. Afterward, at eleven that night, I was to travel to Petersburg on the mission given to me—that is, given to me by my father. Unless, perhaps, I needed to remain in Moscow that night to meet with one of the ministers.