What the Frierdiker Rebbe Said During the Second World War

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America through the Mindel Archives.

Last week I shared a letter from a Chassid who wrote to the Rebbe. He gave the letter to Rabbi Mindel because this was a personal story that he wanted to tell, and he wanted it to be written up in a magazine — for Chabad, or in the Algemeiner, or in Talks and Tales. So he sent it to Rabbi Mindel. He was the author.

And I mentioned last week that there are many, many letters that were sent straight to Rabbi Mindel — people who told the Rebbe personal stories and wanted them to be printed. So I said that in the future I will mention some of these stories.

But since today we are in a different situation — we're in the middle of a war, a milchama — I'll do that some other time. I just want to mention something about the milchama.

These past four weeks have been tragic, confusing, and difficult times for us and for the entire Yiddishe world. About 1,500 of our brothers and sisters, Yidden, were brutally massacred in Eretz Yisrael on Simchas Torah — on the holiest, the happiest day of the year — near the border of Gaza, and many were captured and are still held in captivity.

The hate and the violence and the poison coming from the enemies is not limited to Israel. It's not that they want Israel, the land; it's not about a cause, they want freedom, they want equality — that's not the reason now. The reason now is plain antisemitism, something that is different than the other times. Partial — they want to kill a Jew. And all the rallies that we have in this country, in the entire world — this is something that I don't remember in my lifetime. I don't remember such things. Partial — to kill a piece of [unclear — possibly "zera Yaakov," seed of Jacob].

So now we're in a different situation than the other milchamos. The same happened in our most recent history, almost 80 years ago. It was planned by Amalek, Haman, and Hitler [unclear]. And this is why we're experiencing today a war that's different than the Yom Kippur War, different than the Six-Day War, different than the Lebanon War, and different than Entebbe and what happened there.

Today we live in a different time. Partial — it's the Holocaust. So in Israel — [unclear] Israel — just because you're a Yid.

So I feel that we need more spiritual ammunition than what we've already collected. As we said in our previous programs, the Rebbe told us exactly after the Yom Kippur War about oiling the young king — what we have to do. So we knew what we had to do. By the Six-Day War, he told us about putting on tefillin then, and this is what saved our soldiers then. He was speaking about mitzvos, about giving — and this way we knew we had a direction, what we had to do.

This time, today, we are living through extraordinary and unusual times. So our effort has to be extraordinary also. So what the Rebbe told us then, we know, and we have to do it today also. But there is something more today, because we didn't have then what we have today.

So I was wondering, what would the Rebbe say today? People want to know — everybody's bringing up reasons, what should we do? Of course we have to do what the Rebbe said then, but there is probably something more we have to do.

I'm sure that the Rebbe would remind us of the Frierdiker Rebbe, because he went through the Holocaust. The Frierdiker Rebbe, the Rebbe Rayatz, was the Rebbe at the time of the Holocaust, in the '40s.

And I got calls last week — many people asked me, maybe Rabbi Mindel — he was with the Frierdiker Rebbe at the time of the Holocaust. He was there, as we've spoken many times — 1939, in Europe and in America, 1940, '41, '42, '43, '44, till the end — he was with the Rebbe, he and Rabbi Hodakov. And he wrote everything down.

So people want to know what the Frierdiker Rebbe would say, or what did he say — something special, because we're going through the same type of Holocaust.

So I would like to share with you some things that he wrote, and some things that we all know. He wrote it maybe in more detail, but we know what the Frierdiker Rebbe did at the time of the Holocaust — what he told us to do — so that we'll be able to learn a lesson, and I'm sure the Rebbe would say the same thing, I guess.

The main focus of the Frierdiker Rebbe during the Second World War, when the Nazis were carrying out their evil plans — his main focus started with teshuva. People should do teshuva.

And I don't know if many of you know — a lot of you probably did know — there's the Kriyas Kodesh. This is a magazine from 1941 till 1945. Every week there used to go out a magazine called the Kriyas Kodesh. I have the original copy, but I don't have it here — this is the new copy, but I have the one from then that Rabbi Mindel had. And here it's written — a lot of these things, some were written but the writer did not put his name, and some things came from Rabbi Mindel, but he didn't want to put his name on it, so he used other names.

But this is the Kriyas Kodesh that came out then, about the whole — this was the time of teshuva, of geula, of teshuva. So this is the magazine, the Kriyas Kodesh, and I think it's important for people just to read it, to see what happened at the time of the Holocaust.

Also, the Frierdiker Rebbe was very strong — he was, as we say in Yiddish, "gekocht" — boiling, passionate — about Mishnayos Baal Peh. I want to read over here a paragraph from the Hayom Yom that the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote about Mishnayos Baal Peh, which is included in the Hayom Yom that we learn every single day. I'll read the words:

"This world needs to have its air purified, and this can be accomplished only through the letters of the Torah that one recites. These letters afford both universal and individual protection. The division of the six orders of the Mishnah, to be studied by heart, fulfills the mandate to study Torah while you walk on your way. Every single Mishnah that a person reviews from memory, wherever he may be, lights up the connection between the Jewish people and God. The word Mishnah shares the same letters as Neshama, soul."

So this is what the Frierdiker Rebbe was then — "gekocht" in Mishnayos Baal Peh.

Talking about Mishnayos Baal Peh, I remember my zeide, who was the Rebbe's melamed, the Rebbe's teacher. Every minute with him was Mishnayos Baal Peh. He said that this purifies the air. I remember that he used to eat — even at the table, between the fish and the soup — he's singing a niggun, and what did he do until my mother served the soup? Mishnayos Baal Peh. Everywhere he went, Mishnayos Baal Peh. I mean, he was a gaon in Eretz Yisrael, he was a gaon, he knew — but the ikar for him was Mishnayos Baal Peh, because, he said, this is "metaher es ha'avir" — it purifies the air.

My zeide said that after 120 years, it says in Tanya about "kaf hakela," about punishment, but by learning Mishnayos Baal Peh this takes away this punishment. Anyways, so Mishnayos Baal Peh is something that helps, and also helps for the people that died al kiddush Hashem in the war.

The Frierdiker Rebbe also writes about Mishnayos Baal Peh — I believe in the Hayom Yom — that when a person walks and he has Torah, Mishnayos Baal Peh, by heart, in his mind — the ground, the earth, screams out. It says, "What right do you have to step on me? When you have Mishnayos Baal Peh, when you learn and you have it in your head, then you are higher than me, you are greater than me, you can step on me. But when you have nothing — no Mishnayos, no Torah in you — what right do you have to step on me?" So Mishnayos Baal Peh was something that, at the time of the war, it was the Frierdiker Rebbe's zechus to spread Mishnayos Baal Peh.

Also Shmiras Shabbos. He was encouraging very much that Yidden should keep Shabbos. The Frierdiker Rebbe cried out about Shabbos — in those days it was very hard to keep Shabbos, very hard. We've spoken about it in our programs. But Shmiras Shabbos was something that the Frierdiker Rebbe constantly spoke about — women walking with pocketbooks on Shabbos, carrying on Shabbos — "me tor nisht trogn Shabbos." The ikar is Shmiras Shabbos. So we should strengthen the inyan of Shmiras Shabbos. I think we should strengthen the inyan of going in a car on Shabbos — some people, if they come to shul on Shabbos, don't even know that you're not allowed to go in a car on Shabbos, and it's not even spoken about at all. This is chillul Shabbos. I think we should strengthen this.

Now, talking about Shabbos, it reminds me — I'm speaking about Rabbi Hodakov, olav hashalom. In the beginning, before he moved to Crown Heights — you know, the Chassidim of Lubavitch used to live in Brownsville. Rabbi Hodakov, Rabbi Mentlik, I think Rabbi Jacobson — they used to have to walk from Brownsville to 770, which was about a half an hour. So they lived there, and this was right after the war — I'm thinking the early 50s, or maybe late 40s, I'm not sure.

So a lot of people lived there — Brownsville used to be called the Yerushalayim of America. A lot of Yidden lived there. There was a street, Pitkin Avenue — remember Pitkin Avenue — so all the stores were closed. They were all closed because the Yidden wanted to close the stores on Shabbos, and they knew it — this was how the neighborhood was. One person said no — "What God did to us in the war, I'm not going to close this, I don't want to show that I'm open." So he was the only one open.

So Rabbi Halberstam, going from shul, passed by the store, passed by the street, and he always used to look in and see what was going on in the store — I don't know why, he always stopped to look in. One Shabbos he stopped and looked. The storekeeper, the man, was sitting there, and he didn't like it. He knew that he was supposed to be closed on Shabbos, but specifically didn't close the store on Shabbos. So Rabbi Halberstam was looking and looking and looking and he didn't leave — I don't know why he didn't leave. And the man became so angry, he opened the door and said to Rabbi Halberstam, "Please, go — okay, I'm going to close my store on Shabbos, leave me alone, and I'll close my store." And he became a shomer Shabbos.

So this is the kind of ma'aseh of Shabbos, those days — Shabbos was something. So this is something that the Rebbe also was involved with. Mesibos Shabbos — the Rebbe was very much involved. Mesibos Shabbos was under Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, and I think, as far as the notes of Rabbi Mindel show, the Frierdiker Rebbe asked the Rebbe — the Ramash, as he was then — that he should be involved in Mesibos Shabbos. Maybe he even once spoke to the children at a Mesibos Shabbos. So that's something that happened at the time of the Holocaust.

Now, I also found a letter here that you can read — a letter that the Gerer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, zecher tzaddik livracha — the Gerer Rebbe, I believe the grandfather of the current Ger Rebbe, in Poland — wrote to the Frierdiker Rebbe, the Rebbe Rayatz, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson. This is in Hebrew. He wrote, at the time of the war, I'll read it more or less in English — about the great importance of an authentic Jewish education. It goes hand in hand, he writes, that not only do we find ourselves in the middle of a military war — World War II — we are also in a spiritual war for the preservation of Yiddishkeit in Warsaw, Poland. "We established an Orthodox Committee whose goal is to preserve and protect all matters of Torah and mitzvos and Yiddishkeit to the utmost, and with strength."

The Frierdiker Rebbe did not answer this letter — I don't think he answered this letter. I think he wanted the Frierdiker Rebbe to participate in a good way then, but I didn't see any reply from the Frierdiker Rebbe. But during those years, the Frierdiker Rebbe stormed very much about chinuch, to all spiritual leaders. And our Rebbe, the Ramash, was very much involved — they wrote a letter to Rabbi Herzog, who was the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Eretz Yisrael, then.

And here is the handwriting of the Rebbe — this is the handwriting of the Rebbe and the Frierdiker Rebbe on the same page. The Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to all the rabbonim about chinuch, how to strengthen chinuch. You know, also the Yaldei Teheran [the Tehran Children] — there was that situation then too. The Rebbe was very, very much involved in chinuch then — this was to strengthen things at the time of the milchama.

What I'm saying is this is what the Frierdiker Rebbe did. And also, we know that the Frierdiker Rebbe established that we should say Tehillim every single day, besides what was already established before — Shabbos Mevorchim, also the Tehillim of every day.

Now, there's one more thing I want to mention — the Frierdiker Rebbe participated. We all know about the March of 500 Rabbis. This was in the middle of the war, when they marched to Washington, D.C. to see President Roosevelt. The Frierdiker Rebbe sent a delegation then. He was very much interested that they should participate, as far as helping the Yidden b'gashmiyus — physically — in what happened. I think it was 1943, '42, '43, about — I'm not sure. So he sent Rabbi Nissan Mindel, he sent Rabbi Benjamin Levitin, he sent Rabbi Quint, and Rabbi Zalman Gurary. And he asked Rabbi Mindel that when he came back he should come in to him, and he wanted to hear a 100% report. This was three or four days before Yom Kippur.

And Rabbi Silver, olav hashalom, he spoke, he cried, he begged, he was speaking outside, that something should be done about it, and they were ready to go in to President Roosevelt. But unfortunately — I don't want to say names — they told President Roosevelt that this delegation was not that important, that it was not important for him to go out. But since they were outside, so he — he walked out the back door and did not see them. And this was the problem — and this is what I see today — I heard today that when President Biden spoke, somebody stood up and said that we should have a ceasefire, and this unfortunately happened to be a Jew, and also happened to be a Reform rabbi, who told President Roosevelt that he should not see the Yidden.

Anyways, so the Frierdiker Rebbe was very much disappointed then, but he put in a lot of koach, he had a lot of agmas nefesh, that this happened — but he put a lot of koach into it then. Here I have some pictures — I showed you some pictures. This is Rabbi Silver going to the March of 500 Rabbis. I've shared this with you many times — there's a whole set of pictures that Rabbi Mindel took over there. Here also the Boyaner Rebbe came, Rabbi Silver — here we have, before they left — this is Rabbi Rashab [?], Rabbi Gurary, and Rabbi Kasanovsky. And we're speaking of Rabbi Silver — the Frierdiker Rebbe was very much into it, as was the Boyaner Rebbe, anyways.

So these are the things that happened then, that Rabbi Mindel wrote down. So since we are facing today a war against Yidden, and not only against Eretz Yisrael — we see it in demonstrations all over the world — so we should increase, besides what the Rebbe said we should do. We see what the Frierdiker Rebbe said at the time of the Holocaust — that we should say Tehillim, we should do the Michtav Klali, and Taharas Hamishpacha, and Shmiras Shabbos — and through this zechus, this uniting of our efforts, we should increase our mitzvos, so that we should get rid of our enemies, and the Rebbe should give us a brocha that we should get rid of the enemies now, and we should bring Mashiach Tzidkeinu bimheira v'yameinu, speedily in our days.

And the mitzvah — next week we'll go back to our regular program. Thank you.