Frierdiker Rebbe’s Ultimatum at a Chabad Dinner

Welcome to our weekly program, Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel archives. Today is Tes Adar, the day that the Frierdiker Rebbe finally came to America to settle. He had come to America once before, as a visit, in 1929, but in 1940 he came to America to settle.

I mentioned a couple of times that this was in 1940; it was wartime, and the travel was illegal. He took a plane — a small plane, seventeen passengers — and that plane went to Sweden, and from Sweden he took a boat to America. He was on the ship for thirteen days.

He had manuscripts with him; he had them on his lap, he didn't let go of them. Rabbi Mindel said he was on that plane with him, and the Frierdiker Rebbe was holding them the whole time.

He went with his wife, the Rebbetzin; also [Rashad?] and his wife, their daughter; also [Berkeley?] went; his mother[-in-law?] was there; Manya [?] was there; the nurse of the Rebbetzin [?] was there; and Rabbi Hodakov and his wife were there — that's all, eleven people.

Rabbi Mindel's wife had left earlier because she was afraid to stay during the war, so the Frierdiker Rebbe said she could go, but her husband wanted to stay — and the Rebbe said, very, very good. Later on, when he came to America, he picked her up from England.

So there were eleven people, and there were a few seats left — six seats left. The Frierdiker Rebbe said, "I cannot leave; it's wartime, I cannot leave whatever seats are empty — we should fill them up." And they filled up those other seats, and they went to Sweden.

The trip was a very, very hard trip for the Frierdiker Rebbe. He wasn't feeling well; he wasn't well, and he knew he was coming to America — and we know what America was like, it was a very hard journey. [unclear] about her son.

So that ship — here is the name of the ship, which I'll show you, and the names of all the people who were on that ship. About the people who were there when they came to America — that's another program, I'm not going to get into it now, but there's a whole story about them, and the children, and what happened to them later, because they did see the Frierdiker Rebbe off at the boat. But that's something I don't want to discuss now.

So the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America. Those days, America was a midbar shmama — a desert in the spiritual sense. People didn't want to come here; it was called in those days a treife medina. As a matter of fact, the Frierdiker Rebbe also had questions whether he should come to America, but he did come.

There was very little concern for Yiddishkeit. The Orthodox rabbis [unclear] wrote about Shemiras Shabbos — people couldn't keep Shabbos those days. If you had a job, and worked Friday, and didn't come in on Shabbos, they gave you a pink slip. So people were under a lot of pressure — it was very difficult. The Frierdiker Rebbe came, and he said to Rabbi Hodakov and Rabbi Mindel, "We're coming to America. America is an empty nation, America is a piece of ice, and we're coming to break the ice of America." And he told him, yes.

So, I mean, that was how terrible America was in those days, and he came to such a land. And by the way, I think I mentioned to you once that I heard this from this person's daughter — that her father got so many pink slips that for Sukkos he had hundreds of pink slips, so he decorated the sukkah with them. So when people came in, the whole decoration was those pink slips, to show what it was like then.

When the Frierdiker Rebbe came, he had no money, so he went to the Graystone Hotel with the eleven people. There were some well-to-do people who paid for that. Now, how did they get the money for that? So here I have a letter, dated 1939, showing that people here — Stillman — made a melaveh malkah before the Frierdiker Rebbe came, at the Jewish Center — this was Rabbi Jung's shul, I think — and this is a letter in which the Frierdiker Rebbe thanks them for the melaveh malkah. So they had some money to take him to the Graystone Hotel.

After a month or two, those people — Stillman, and the Kramer Brothers, and others — decided, "We have to have another melaveh malkah, another dinner for the Rebbe. The Rebbe needs money — he came to America, he wants to build Chabad, he needs money." So they decided to make another melaveh malkah.

The Rebbe was not in America yet, because he came in 1941, in Sivan. So at this dinner, the Frierdiker Rebbe wasn't well; he was in a wheelchair. So after Shabbos, they wheeled him into the kitchen; he was waiting in the kitchen, [unclear] was also there, and Rabbi Mindel was there.

The people were getting ready for the melaveh malkah. They got ready, and they told Rabbi Mindel to tell the Rebbe that they're ready for him to come out to the dinner. I don't know how many people were there — maybe a hundred, a hundred twenty.

They said, "Tell the Rebbe we have a program," and they showed it to Rabbi Mindel, who told the Rebbe about the program. So they gave him the piece of paper, and he took the program, and he went to the kitchen, told the Frierdiker Rebbe that they're ready and they have a program. The Frierdiker Rebbe read the program. The first thing on the program is a song — a niggun, a Zionist song. So he stopped and said, "We're not going to sing that now." Rabbi Mindel was shocked — here, people are trying to help, to help build Chabad, and the Frierdiker Rebbe is telling them that they're not going to sing this. This was important before a dinner — this was their minhag, this was the custom, to sing a Zionist song. But the Frierdiker Rebbe said it's not going to be sung.

So he went back to the people and told them that the Rebbe said that song they cannot sing. They were shocked, and they said, "We're going to go home — this is our minhag, this is our custom." So he went back to the Frierdiker Rebbe and told him that they said they're going to walk home if they don't sing the song. So the Rebbe said, "Just as in Europe, so too in America — tell them they should go home and be well; just like God was with us in Europe, God will be with us in America."

So he went and told them what the Frierdiker Rebbe said. Many of them took their coats and left — they didn't stay. He went back to the Frierdiker Rebbe, and only a few people were left. He wheeled the Rebbe in to the dinner. They didn't make much money, because most of them left, but the few people who stayed made a few dollars. That's all, that's all — but they started from there.

Anyway, years later — probably in 1947, '48, I guess — because this melaveh malkah was the beginning of raising a few dollars to build — so they bought the building, 770; they had already bought it, and were learning there, in '48, '49 — the Rebbe was here already. So the money to buy it came from these people — a few of the people who remained: Stillman, the Kramer Brothers, and others.

So two people — Stillman, I think, and one of the Kramer Brothers, I'm not sure — came to the Frierdiker Rebbe and said, "Can we go and see 770? We want to see — we never saw it, we gave money but we never saw it." The Frierdiker Rebbe said yes. So they went to see 770; they looked around. Unfortunately, they didn't like what they saw. Certain things, you know — they were baalebatish people — they saw bochurim eating, sitting on a milk box — instead of sitting on a chair — and eating, not with a fork, but with their hands — and they felt you have to eat with a fork. And they saw, you know, things that have to be clean, but they saw things that weren't — they didn't like what they saw, the cleanliness.

So they went back to the Frierdiker Rebbe and told him what they saw. So the Frierdiker Rebbe said, "Go to my son-in-law" — he was called [?] then — "go to him and tell him what you saw." And the son-in-law said he will speak to them, to the bochurim, to tell them that they should eat with a fork, sit on a chair, and fix the other things that they saw.

But he asked them, "Tell me, were you ever in a place where they make glass, crystal?" They said no. So he said, "If you go to a place like that, you see people walking around — it's a factory, walking around with bandages, with aprons, and it's not that clean. But when that glass is ready, and you put it in a store, in the front, and you write ten dollars — ten dollars in those days was a lot of money — would you ever believe that that comes from this factory? So the money that you give — that's where it comes from — when these bochurim get married and go out into the world and have families and children, they raise their children according to Torah and mitzvos, and it all comes from this factory. This is where your money goes." And these people were very, very happy to hear what he said.

And this is what I wanted to share with you today, Tes Adar.

And this is when the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America. Here is a letter that I have — this letter was written two days before his histalkus; I believe this was the last letter that he signed. This is a letter to — here, this is to Stillman. This Stillman was one of the people who was a big supporter of the Frierdiker Rebbe — we spoke about him once — he was one of the people who gave a lot of money, and he was visiting 770 those days.

Now, before I finish, I just want to mention — last week I forgot to tell you, I told you the story of the Baal Shem Tov, the handwritten story. But before the story, the Frierdiker Rebbe told Rabbi Mindel — and maybe he wrote it down in the sichos, I'm not sure — that in order for parents to have nachas from the children, parents should say brachos and Kiddush all the time, that the children should know that Shabbos comes with Kiddush. They should have the children next to them at the table; the parents should make sure — they should also teach the children to kiss the mezuzah when they come in; and also, even a newborn child should have a yarmulke; and make sure that children, from the time they're maybe a year old, should also wash negel vasser — the mother and the father should see to it — and this will give the parents nachas. This he told them before he gave him the story that I read you last week.

Next week we'll continue our weekly program. Thank you.