The Mysterious Letter of the Rebbe

The Mysterious Letter of the Rebbe

**Historic Treasures, Episode 263 (18 Sivan 5785)**

Welcome to our weekly Motzei Shabbos program. A few weeks ago, I showed you hundreds of notebooks that Rabbi Mindel used to take dictation when he went in to the Rebbe, on all English letters and most of the Hebrew letters. He went home and he composed the letters.

So this week I opened up a notebook. You know, I showed you, it looks like this. And inside, I mean, I cannot read shorthand, but there was a line on top where it says "Ramash." Ramash means the Rebbe: before he was Rebbe he was called the Ramash. And it says "Arafus [Erev Pesach?] 1948."

I guess it seems like that Rabbi Mindel took dictation also before the nesius. And the Rebbe wrote a short letter to somewhere, to a big [unclear]. This I know is a [unclear] of the Maggid, and he was a colleague of [the] Rebbe [?]. So I was wondering, what does that mean? I saw the name; the Rebbe wrote a letter to the [unclear] hundreds of years ago? So I gathered together something here that I will show you, that I will explain to you.

In the Igros Kodesh of the Rebbe, volume three, page 114, there is a letter dated 1949, and that's addressed to Reb Avrohom Kalisker.

The letter was written in Yiddish, and the Rebbe encouraged him strongly to join the efforts of Merkos [?]. And the Rebbe writes like this, [unclear], and I'll translate that into English:

"We are about to receive the [Torah], in which 'love your neighbor as your friend' is a great principle, and 'you should surely help him' is one of its commandments. So how long will this go on? Either I should help you in your paint business, or it's already time, and has been for a long time, that you should work together with me in the [unclear]."

Then the Rebbe continues writing to him. This is only in Yiddish:

"What is the purpose of postponing and delaying another week, another month? Reb Avrohom, when will I begin to think about what is truly good for me, and you do the same regarding yourself, as I stated in [unclear]," if you look at it.

So I gather this is like... I thought that this had a connection. The publisher of the [unclear] doesn't write who Avrohom Kalisker was.

So who is Avrohom Kalisker?

We know that there's three Avrohom Kaliskers. One was a talmid of the Maggid of Mezritch, and he was very close to the Alter Rebbe, and he was [unclear] for Kalisker. He moved to Israel with Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Horodok. Years later he had a machlokes with the Alter Rebbe. So that we know of, an Avrohom Kalisker.

But who is this Avrohom Kalisker?

Then there was another Avrohom Kalisker, a chossid of the Alter Rebbe. Because of his great [unclear], he was called another one of Kalisk.

Then there was a third Avrohom of Kalisk, at the time of [unclear]. He was a tremendous gaon, and he was mentioned throughout the [unclear]. The truth of his name, it says his name was Ashkenazi, but he was called Kalisker.

But who is our Avrohom Kalisker? Who did the Rebbe write over here in 1949, a year before the historic [unclear]?

So let me explain to you something interesting. We find the answer in [unclear]. There was a hakdasha [?].

You know that now the letters of the Rebbe are in books. [Some] years ago, in the '50s, every week they gave out a pamphlet. It's like a green... I think I have it somewhere. I should have shown it to you, but I have a few of [unclear], every week, to speak in the shows. Then they gathered them together and they made a book.

So there is where it says [unclear]. He was nifter in [unclear]. And this pamphlet is [unclear] the new.

Now what's the story with this Kalisker?

Reb Avrohom Kalisker, a Heldererman [?]. He was born in Kalisk in the year 1890. He was born to parents; his father was named Rabbi Shaya and his mother was named Zelda. He had two brothers and two sisters, and they became orphans at a very young age.

And this Avrohom Kalisker, being a child, was sent to Lubavitch, where he learned in Tomchei Temimim [?], and he ate teg at the house of [unclear], and I think from then they called him [unclear].

Now, eating teg means... Nowadays bochurim are in yeshiva; there's a dormitory, there is a place to sleep and a place to eat. Those days they didn't have. They learned in [yeshiva], but they didn't have where to eat, so they ate teg. One baal habayis invited this bochur, sometimes even they missed supper. So they ate that. So he ate by [unclear].

Eventually, however, he lost touch with Lubavitch. He moved to America and slowly he dropped Yiddishkeit [?], but he had the passion, as we say. He was not religious, but he did have [it].

So we see when the [Frierdiker Rebbe] came to America in 1929, he offered to drive. He volunteered to drive the Frierdiker Rebbe around. So he was called the balagoleh. As a matter of fact, I think Rabbi Jacobson [unclear] said, if I remember, that the [Frierdiker Rebbe] couldn't go to... you know, we have a [unclear] to go to, so he didn't have... He wasn't feeling well, so he went. So Kalisker was the balagoleh; he was the driver of the [Frierdiker Rebbe]. He offered; he loved to do that, even though he was not religious.

So when the [Frierdiker Rebbe] moved to America, he came to every single farbrengen. He was not a shomer Shabbos. He even came [unclear]. He drove.

Of course, the Frierdiker Rebbe didn't like it. Of course he didn't. But the Frierdiker Rebbe did not say anything. He drove to listen to Chassidus [?] of the [Frierdiker Rebbe], and he said, "How can I hear Chassidus [?] from anybody else?"

So instead of being [unclear] him, the Frierdiker Rebbe was very much [unclear] of him, until eventually, later on, he became a shomer Shabbos. But right then he was not.

So the last Rosh Hashanah [?], 5709, the Frierdiker Rebbe instructed they should wait for him until he arrives. Wait for [unclear]! This is unbelievable. And the [Frierdiker Rebbe] was against, of course, you know, driving on [Shabbos], but he said, "Wait for him."

This reminds me: once I heard from Rabbi Adelman. He was a bochur. So the Rebbe came down the elevator from the Frierdiker Rebbe in 770, and he saw Rabbi Adelman standing there. So the Rebbe said, "Do you want to hear something just off the press from the Rebbe?" He means from the Frierdiker Rebbe. He said, "Yeah."

So he says, "The Frierdiker Rebbe said..." I don't remember exactly, so I'm going to say it in my words. The Frierdiker Rebbe said he was in a [unclear], I think, and there were a lot of [Yidden] from there, but some were mechallel Shabbos. So the religious Jews didn't want to have anything to do with these mechallel Shabbos, because it seems if they would, people would think that they like what they're doing, or they're friends with them, and they didn't want to show they were like them. These were frei people; they did nothing to do with it. But the Frierdiker Rebbe said, "I was there and I was [unclear] of them."

And then the Rebbe repeats that the Frierdiker Rebbe gave a mashal. He says when a father has a child and he loves a child [unclear]. There's no [love like] a parent's. What one parent would do for one child, 10 children wouldn't do for a parent. The love of a parent to a child is unbelievable.

Then the father, let's say, has another child. So the love is unbelievable, even more.

What if the father has a child which is a special need, or has a mum, born without a hand, without a foot, or special need? That love of a father to that child is even more [unclear] than to a regular child.

The same thing also the [Frierdiker Rebbe] told him: that [Hashem] loves everybody, all, but a Yid that is a mechallel Shabbos, or a Yid that does not [unclear], they have the [unclear], is the pity. The love that [He] has to them is unbelievable. It's [rachmanus] on them, it's a pity they're not [shomer Shabbos], but there is a big [love].

So this reminds me here: even though the Frierdiker Rebbe knows [it is forbidden] to drive on [Shabbos], still he was waiting for him to come to listen to [Chassidus]. Anyways.

So later on, years after the historic [unclear] of the Frierdiker Rebbe, this Avrohom came to every farbrengen of our Rebbe in the 1950s: '51, '52, '53. Once he had an accident, a car accident on Shabbos. So he was saying to himself, "How can I have an accident when I'm going to a farbrengen?" He had that... We have to understand that, I think, without learning it's hard to understand, but we have to learn to understand the love of [unclear].

Now his relationship with our [Rebbe] then started all the way in the beginning. The [Frierdiker Rebbe] said that: "We received a letter from Reb Avrohom with great joy, with deep heartfelt blessing for complete healing. [The] he gave was delivered through my son-in-law, the gaon Rabbi [unclear]." That's what the Frierdiker Rebbe writes. The Frierdiker Rebbe goes on to explain the great powers that a ken [kohen?] has. Rabbi Avrohom Kalisker was a [unclear] that has a blessing [unclear], and [he] encourages him to continue all his good ways.

At the last [unclear], the [Rebbe] was looking around for [a] guest to give mashke, a minhag [?] by farbrengen. He looked around and he couldn't find him. He's looking for him. Then he said, "I'm looking for my customer. Where is Reb Avrohom Kalisker?"

So [someone] remarked, then he is truly the Rebbe's customer. And the Rebbe replied that it's customary amongst merchants that when a person comes to ask about their merchandise, they say "pet" [?], means fool: "Fool, what do you understand about merchandise? Even a small amount of my merchandise is worth gold."

And the Rebbe then blessed him. He said, "You should have a good year." And, like it says, it was [unclear]. The Rebbe then told him that he should have, anyways, a good life, and the Rebbe wanted him to become a shomer Shabbos.

Now his relationship with Lubavitch grew after, where he came to every farbrengen. One time by a farbrengen the Rebbe spoke to him in Italian. In Italy, I don't know. Nobody understood what the Rebbe was saying. It says here, and Reb Avrohom became very emotional, and he took a ring of keys and he gave them to the Rebbe.

The Rebbe returned them, and afterwards we found out what happened. The Rebbe asked him to start closing his store on Shabbos, and he was torn. On the one hand, he really wanted to, and on the other hand, those days, you know, in the early '50s, to keep Shabbos was a tremendous test, a tremendous nisayon, as we once spoke about at this program. So at the end he handed over the keys to the Rebbe and he said, "Now the store is yours. It's not my store anymore." So the Rebbe handed him back these keys, and the Rebbe says, "I'm returning them to you for only six days a week." From then on, Reb [Avrohom] kept Shabbos.

When [it was] the Rebbe's Pesach [unclear], he came. He came from Newark. Reb [unclear], he was called, because he was the Frierdiker Rebbe's driver. So the Rebbe motioned to him he should drink wine. So he went to the table, and then [the Rebbe] gave him, and he drank wine.

[At the seder] you would drink four cups of wine. So after drinking the third cup, he wanted to eat some matzah. So the Rebbe said between the third and fourth cup it's forbidden to eat, you know, by the seder it's forbidden. So the Rebbe told him it's forbidden, and he told him to drink another cup. After the fourth cup, the Rebbe said, now, being the fourth cup, it's again before Kiddush, the first cup, and it's forbidden to eat before Kiddush. That's how the Rebbe was with him.

And later on, baruch Hashem, he became a shomer Shabbos. In the winter of 1959 he planned to travel to Russia to visit his brother, but unfortunately he passed away before the trip.

Now, this Avrohom Kalisker is buried in [unclear] section in New York, where there was a Shim [?] Gordon [unclear]. He officiated the levayah.

And on the 26th of Adar 5752, one day before the Rebbe had a stroke, one of his granddaughters passed by the Rebbe and she said, "I'm a granddaughter of Avrohom Kalisker, the balagoleh who helped the previous Rebbe. Does the Rebbe [remember]?" So the Rebbe answered, "Yes." The Rebbe said he was from Newark, and that he had a son who was killed in a war. So the Ladies' Auxiliary [of] Newark was named after him.

So anyway, this you can find in the letters. I thought I would share this story with you. I found it in one of the pamphlets. So Rabbi Mindel had to do with this.

And here we can learn a lesson: the ahavas Yisroel [?] that the [Frierdiker Rebbe] had to somebody, even though he was a mechallel Shabbos before. But [he was] a Yid, and look what became of him: later on he became a big [unclear]. To me this looks like a [unclear], and we can learn here how to love every single Yid.

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