‘Greater Than the Sputnik Satellite Launch’

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives. In the next few programs I want to share with you a very basic book written by Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mindel, the secretary of the Rebbe, with many, many hagahos — many notations that the Rebbe made.

Now, as I mentioned in previous programs, whatever book Rabbi Mindel wrote, the Rebbe wrote notations on. Rabbi Mindel worked with the Rebbe — articles that he wrote, he wrote articles in the newspapers, and the Rebbe looked them over and wrote notations. Every function that he attended — he went many times, he was a speaker in colleges, overseas — everything he wrote down, and the Rebbe said, "I want to see it," and the Rebbe made hagahos and notations. But this book, My Prayer, is a book that he wrote with many, many notations — it's like it's the Rebbe's sacred [work].

So before I go through the book with you, I want to give you a little background — the purpose of the Frierdiker Rebbe's coming to America. He brought with him Rabbi Mindel and Rabbi Hodakov in 1940. This is because, just like we learn in this week's parsha, Hashem said to Avraham, "Go out into the world and spread G-dliness" — this is why the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America with his aides Rabbi Mindel and Rabbi Hodakov — as he once said, "We have to open up [Yiddishkeit] to the entire world." He told Rabbi Hodakov and Rabbi Mindel, on the boat as they were coming to America, that America is a piece of ice and we have to break the ice of America.

Rabbi Mindel wrote everything down. So one of the things he wrote is that when they came to America — I think it was the second or third week — they came to the Greystone Hotel (we once had a program about that). I don't know exactly which week it was, or whether [it was then].

So the Frierdiker Rebbe said to them — Rabbi Mindel was there — that America is called "America," it's an empty nation, a cold climate, and he said that America is a midbar shmamah, it's a desert. America has, as it says in the Torah, snakes and scorpions. He put his hand on his forehead — that's what he writes — and he started to sing a niggun with kavanah, and he said that America has very little [Yiddishkeit] — that's the word he wrote — it was very decayed; there were rabbis who were warm, [but] in those days it's not like now, baruch Hashem, [when] we have yeshivos, we have [unclear]. In those days, I guess, Shabbos was barely kept, and that affected him greatly — that was very telling to him. And this is what the Frierdiker Rebbe [said] — this was, I think, the third week, I don't know whether this was at a farbrengen or this was when they were there for a Shabbos meal, I don't know.

Now here I want to add something the Rebbe once said: a poisonous snake, when it bites a person, chalilah, the body becomes hot and the person dies. A scorpion bites a person, and the body becomes cold and the person dies. The Rebbe mentioned the Mishnah — the Mishnah says that when a person is standing in Shemoneh Esrei, you're not allowed to move, and all of a sudden a snake goes around your feet — don't worry about it, continue davening. But if a scorpion — an akrav — goes around your feet, the Mishnah says then you have to stop, because it's much worse, a scorpion, than a snake.

And the Rebbe explained that when a person stands in Shemoneh Esrei, which is the highest level in davening, and all of a sudden a snake "falls" into his mind — meaning machshavos zaros, bad thoughts — he becomes "hot" and thinks about it: don't worry, don't worry, continue davening, you'll change this heat of the yetzer hara into the heat of kedusha. But what if an akrav falls into your head — coldness, apathy, "I don't care, I don't care" — that apathy, that "I just don't care" — that's much worse than the snake; then you have to stop and think.

So the Rebbe said that in America — the Frierdiker Rebbe said — there is a midbar shmamah, there is no [feeling of] Hashem, and there is coldness — these are different things — but it seems from here that the akrav, the coldness, is much worse than the nachash.

So the Frierdiker Rebbe, when he came, was waiting for the Ramash — our Rebbe was called the Ramash — he came in '41, a year later, and the Frierdiker Rebbe was waiting for him to come to help open up the world, [to open up] America. So he gave Rabbi Hodakov whatever Rabbi Hodakov had to do, and he told Rabbi Mindel what he had to do, and he told everybody what they had to do. Rabbi Hodakov had his job, and the Rebbe and Rabbi Mindel began — and this is how Chabad began its publications. He gave them responsibility. So he gave Rabbi Mindel — he told him to do the translations into English — that was the beginning; the Talks and Tales started, and he worked out, together with Chabad, the Memoirs, the commandments, and other things, and this is the beginning — there were no publications before, there was nothing.

So this was when the Frierdiker Rebbe was waiting for the Rebbe, the Ramash, to come. Also, the Rebbe at that time worked in the Navy Yard — and I think, the way it says here, the Frierdiker Rebbe originally wanted the Rebbe to work in a printing place, but it didn't work out, [he went] to the Navy Yard — whatever it is, I don't understand that, but in any case, this is how it started in America.

So one of the most important publications was Talks and Tales. Talks and Tales is like a treasure from the Rebbe, and there are hagahos and hagahos and hagahos on Talks and Tales. Every month there was a column — this is how My Prayer, the book — it's not that Rabbi Mindel wrote My Prayer as a separate book; My Prayer was a collection from Talks and Tales. "The Gallery of the Great," that we just gave out a couple of months ago, also comes from Talks and Tales. Then there was a column on Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah, Yom Tov, halachos, things to remember, let's visit other countries, and Wonder of Nature. This was every single month, and the Rebbe and the Frierdiker Rebbe looked over everything, and for them this was the most important of the early publications — Talks and Tales.

So Rabbi Mindel preserved the Rebbe's notations and his writings and made a book out of it — the Talks and Tales. And I once mentioned the Wonder of Nature — when I read the Wonder of Nature, I'm amazed — can you imagine, what Talks and Tales is, what the Wonder of Nature writing is — this was when Rabbi Mindel finished the Tanya, which the Frierdiker Rebbe [assigned] to him, and he did it with the help of the Rebbe. I think it was 1962.

He took the Tanya, the first copy, and gave it to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe took it with both hands, and my father-in-law [Rabbi Mindel] said that his face lit up, and he said, "There was a time of the Sputnik" — he said, "they made a whole turmoil over the Sputnik — the world should make a tumult that the Tanya came out in English — this is the achievement that people should make noise about."

When Rabbi Mindel finished My Prayer, he gave it to the Rebbe — the first copy. The Rebbe looked at the cover, he looked at the cover a long time, and then the Rebbe turns to him and says, "How come he didn't write 'Doctor' — by Dr. Nissan Mindel — he just wrote 'Nissan Mindel'?" I mean, whoever knew Rabbi Mindel — he was a very humble person, Rabbi Mindel; he wasn't a politician at all, he was a straight person, he was an emes person — and he didn't want to write "Doctor." He said, "Should I write 'Doctor' myself?" So the Rebbe said to him, "It's not for you, you don't need it, but the world needs that you should — I should say 'Doctor,' not you." This is what happened when he finished My Prayer.

So I once mentioned — what I want to say today, I want to mention something again, and the reason I'm saying it again is because about a month ago there was a magazine that came out, and they wrote again — which we mentioned a couple of years ago — that the Rebbetzin wrote the Wonder of Nature in Talks and Tales. Even though we already mentioned that this is not the case — she never wrote Talks and Tales, she was not a writer, she never wrote — she was an eishes chayil, no question, but she did not write the Wonder of Nature. And I want to tell you again, and I hope this magazine listens to this program.

When the Rebbetzin passed away, my children were in elementary school [unclear — school name], and they came one day — Rabbi Mindel was in the house — and they said, "We had an assembly, that since the Rebbetzin wrote the Wonder of Nature, we have to review parts of Wonder of Nature by heart — this is our project for the year." And I heard also that in Detroit they did it, and others did it, because of the Rebbetzin. Now, I know Rabbi Mindel wrote it, I saw it, so I couldn't understand [why people believed otherwise]. He did not answer, he didn't say anything. A few days later we went over to him and said, "Listen, say something, I know you wrote it." So he told us like this:

"I once met Rabbi Sholom Ber Gordon — Rabbi Sholom Ber Gordon was the son of Rabbi [?], he was [unclear], he was a rav in New Jersey — and Rabbi Sholom Ber Gordon asked me, 'Listen, I read every month the Wonder of Nature, this is amazing — who helps you, how do you do it yourself?' So I said, 'My Rebbetzin helps me.'" Rabbi Sholom Ber [Gordon] didn't hear the word correctly, and since he used to teach in the seminary, he went to the mesifta and said he heard from Rabbi Mindel that the Rebbetzin wrote it — but he hadn't heard "my Rebbetzin" [i.e., Rabbi Mindel's own wife] correctly.

So I went to him [Rabbi Gordon] afterwards and told him that the Rebbetzin did not write it — that this was [a misunderstanding]. He said, "Yeah, but they still say they heard it from Rabbi Gordon." But he said he meant "my [wife, the] Rebbetzin."

So here I want to straighten this out: that the Rebbetzin was an eishes chayil — as the Rebbe once said, [Rabbi] Mindel wrote it down. One of the reasons we don't speak lashon hara is because emes is emes, true is true. When you speak negatively about somebody, it could be a falsehood, or maybe sometimes people say too much or too little, so that it's not good for the person [being spoken about]. That's why we don't speak lashon hara — because we're talking about emes, truth is true — like if someone says a woman is pregnant, she's pregnant; she can't be "a little pregnant" — she's pregnant or she's not pregnant. Emes is emes, truly true. So therefore, to say that the Rebbetzin wrote it is not true, it's not so. The Rebbetzin was an eishes chayil, and she was the