Ep. 15: The Real Deal on the Shape of the Menorah with Rabbi Mendy Greenberg

00:00 Speaker 1 You can tell from the descriptions that, that there's-- this is something that the Jews in America never really experienced. To be by-- to see, to see a Rebbe, to see-- to, to, to be like, like in the Rebbe's presence, the ruchnius of that was some... It was very, very powerful. And the people would later has the Mayim or they would has the things over to their shuls or to the people that, uh, you know, that what the Rebbe said and which parts, and everybody would compete, you know, did, uh, who understood what and how much did you understand.

00:26 Speaker 2 I'm Yossi Kamen. Welcome to Among Chassidim By Der Her, an ongoing fabrengen about life as a Hasid, our vibrant connection with the Rebbe, and inspired living shaped by the way he teaches us each and every day. How are you today?

00:44 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem. Thank you for having me.

00:46 Speaker 2 Of course. It's, uh... When, when we started, I knew that you're going to be on. Baruch Hashem, you have s- done many, many very in-depth and very interesting articles that you have written for the Der Her over many, many years, and they're s- they're still being featured monthly. And I felt that it would be very interesting, um, to either talk about, uh, something that you wrote about in the past. And in this case, I think there's two topics that you are, um, researching, which are going to be featured in future Der Her magazines, which I think are very interesting topics. I guess we'll give a sneak preview and at y- in conversation, the-- ultimately, there's going to be more details than what is going to be in print. So I think this might be interesting. Specifically, the two topics that I wanna talk to you about, and hopefully we'll have the time to discuss both of them. But number one is the article that you're working on, the story of the Friediker Rebbe's visit to the United States. Um, not when he moved in Taf Shanalif, but the visit. And the second topic that you're writing about, which is very, very interesting, is the shape of the Menorah in the Beis Hamikdash and everything that that entails. So let's start with the, the visit of the Friediker Rebbe. Sounds like a plan?

02:22 Speaker 1 Absolutely. What you have in the... What you... Mm-hmm.

02:26 Speaker 2 Go ahead. Go ahead.

02:28 Speaker 1 What you have in the printed article is never gonna be the same in a conversation. People, you know, sometimes people ask, you know, they want hashmatas from whatever we didn't put in. The reality is usually the best hashmatas we put inside 'cause that's what makes it more interesting. It's, uh, if the story's more entertaining or interesting. Um, but yeah, you're right, you're right. There's probably... There's definitely things that don't go in our article, especially about the Friediker Rebbe's visit to America. It's, it's, it's a very, very unique story, and it's so large that it really deserves a book. There's-- The Friediker Rebbe was here for ten or eleven months. This wasn't a visit like to visit Eretz Yisrael. The Friediker Rebbe went to Eretz Yisrael right beforehand in Taf Sh- in Taf Shpay Tess. Um, it was, it was about twelve days or fourteen days, the entire visit. He went, he was there for two Shabbats, and Shabbos Nachamu and Shabbos Hazon. And we wrote about that, and that was something that we felt like he could put into an article. But sitting with the story of the Friediker Rebbe's visit to America was-- it was just so immense. It was impossible to fit in everything. Um, there are so many beautiful, beautiful descriptions, so s- so many amazing, uh, stories that ain't the Dvar Asei. If I wrote on my status that I'm writing about it, and I asked, you know, I told people, "If you have, anyone has something interesting, they should send

03:39 Speaker 1 to me." I got so many, so much stuff, and I almost didn't include any of it because the story itself, I mean, people, people usually send is they found that the Friediker Rebbe was in their city of Shlichas, and they, and there was a, a news article about it, and there was a story here and a story there, and I met someone. But the story itself, as it was reported in the newspapers, as it's already been published in Chabad publications in, uh, in, uh, Toldos Chabad Bar Sabris, the story is so extensive and so amazing that the, the... it ju- it was just never ending.

04:06 Speaker 2 Okay. I'm very excited. Sounds like-

04:09 Speaker 1 I have to tell you the whole story. Yeah.

04:11 Speaker 2 So yeah, so w- where does it begin? W- what, what, what, first of all, what's the context? Um, so we're talking about it was Taf Shpay Tess, right?

04:20 Speaker 1 Friediker arrived here in the very end of Taf Shpay Tess.

04:23 Speaker 2 Right. Then he was here the whole, you know, most of Taf Shsadi.

04:25 Speaker 1 For most of, most of Taf Shsadi.

04:26 Speaker 2 So nineteen twenty-nine, nineteen thirty. Um, so he's coming from, I guess we're, we're, we're, we're... This is the next step after the podcast that we had a few episodes ago with Davor Margolden about the Beis Hamoz, about that whole story. And the Friediker Rebbe now has left Russia and has moved to Riga. And I-- So the trip is from, from, from Riga, right? That's the-

04:54 Speaker 1 From Riga, yeah, yeah.

04:55 Speaker 2 Okay. So-

04:56 Speaker 1 The, the, the trip-

04:57 Speaker 2 Take it away.

04:57 Speaker 1 Yeah. The Friediker Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe leaves from Riga. I mean, he went to Eretz Yisrael first. From Eretz Yisrael, he, he went straight to America.

05:04 Speaker 2 What was the purpose? What was the purpose of the trip?

05:06 Speaker 1 So the, the purpose of the trip was the fact that the Friediker Rebbe was now l- ha- was now le- um, I would say, pushed out of Russia, or however you wanna describe it. Till then, he was the Rebbe, he was the Nazi in Russ- in Ru- in Russia. And all the Russian Jews, I mean, if you, if you-- Just to jump back in the history a little bit, all the Rabbeim were basically the, the, uh, if you... The term Nazi Adler is a very physical, gashmistika one when it comes to when you talk about Russia, the, the, the Eden in Russia. All from the Alter Rebbe down, every one of the Rabbeim was at the forefront of, of the gashmistika leadership. Not even ruchnist, gash-- simply gashmistika leadership of the Eden in Russia, of taking care of them in every way. You have the Alter Rebbe was started, started the stories of the Colonias, and that was with the Mitteler Rebbe too. We had-- We wrote articles about that, and the Tsamach Tzedek was the stories of the Kantinisten, and the Marashi of the stories about the pogroms. The Ebra Shab, you have a million different, uh, Askonus things that he did on behalf of the Eden in Russia. And in general, in Russia, the understanding was that there's... If, if you ask a Jew in Russia, "Who is the leader of the, of, of Russian Jewry?" He would tell you the Lubavitch Rebbe. And maybe of the Misnagdim also. The, in other words,

06:08 Speaker 1 the, if they were Chassidim and they were Misnagdim, so in the time of the Mitteler Rebbe, you had the Mitteler Rebbe and the Mitteler Velozhiner. Or you had, uh, in the time of the Rebbe Rashab, there's Rav Chaim Ozer or, or Rav Chaim Brisker and the Rebbe Rashab. But they were always viewed as at the forefront. And this is actually... It's interesting, it's not the case with of the other branches of Chabad. There was Kopust, there was Liadi, there was Niezhen, the other sons of the Tzemach Tzedek who, who became rebbes in their own right. You don't see the same level of, of, uh, of, uh, um, I don't know what the right word would be, but you don't see that same idea. The, the, the rebbes in Kopust or Liadi, the... If you look in Beis Rebbi, the way he describes them, he says they said Chassidus, and they were Mekabel Be'evri part in the office, and Yechidim who came to visit them, and that was this the, the basic relationship. It was a rebbe who says Chassidus, and he's, and he's Mi Yaitz, and Yechidim will come, and that he's the, he's the rebbe. The... But by the Rebbe Rashab, he writes on a, on a whole different level how, uh, Totzemite Yunge, and he's, uh, he and he... And in the, in the leadership and... So basically, what you have at the end of what... By the Frierdiker Rebbe's times, there were many, many, um, many Rabbonim, many, uh, Rashi Shivas that

07:13 Speaker 1 simply when it came communism, they just picked up and left. And they said, "We can't be from here. It's clear that the Russians are trying to shut everything down. We're leaving." And anyone who could, could leave, and they sent all the Yeshivot Bachurim over the border. And many, many, uh, famous names of, uh, of people who did that. There were... I mean, there was tons of Yiddishkeit. They were talking about the whole Belarus, the whole, the whole Ukraine. There was... It was full of rebbes and Chassidim and Misnagdim and, and Yeshivas and all sorts of stuff. And Lita, parts of Lita, yeah. I'm not sure. Uh, Lithuania wasn't part of the Soviet Union at the beginning. Um, but there were portions of it that probably were. So you have all these people running away, and there's... And, uh... And I, I've, like, even heard from various historians, like a criticism, "Why didn't the Frierdiker Rebbe leave? Why? 'Cause there's no future. If there's no future, if we know that the future is everyone's gonna be underground, we'll just tell all the Chassidim to leave." But if you, if you read a little bit about the history of where the Frierdiker Rebbe... Of the, the background of where the Frierdiker Rebbe is coming from, um, to leave means to abandon your children. You don't... You know, if this... If the communists would tell you, "You could leave Russia, but you have to leave your babies behind," you don't leave your babies behind. And the Yidden of

08:09 Speaker 1 Russia, um, that was the cradle of Chabad Chassidus. I mean, the, the Yidden of Russia, not just the Chassidim who came and saw the Frierdiker Rebbe on a regular basis, all Yidden of Russia were his children. So to, to pick up and leave is, is unthinkable. So the Frierdiker Rebbe's there. There's-

08:20 Speaker 2 You have to point out that I think most Yidden li- in the world at that point lived in the Russian Empire. Isn't that accurate?

08:25 Speaker 1 Right. Yes. I, I, I think so. Yeah. Um, by that time, America may already have been bigger, but it was definitely in Europe it was the biggest. Um, Europe was kind of-

08:31 Speaker 2 There's a letter from the Rebbe. The Rebbe says that, uh, that the rave minyan opinion of Yidden were in Russia, right? Uh, th-

08:37 Speaker 1 Right. Yes. Yes. There is such a letter. Um, I don't know if Rebbe-

08:40 Speaker 2 No letters in Chassidus

08:40 Speaker 1 ... at what point Rebbe was... I don't know if Rebbe was talking about then. No, you're right. It was Yud Bais Tammuz. Yeah. I think, I think it's about that, that Gufah. So, so the Frierdiker Rebbe's not leaving. But then the events of Yud Bais Tammuz happen, and at the end, the Frierdiker Rebbe is forced to leave. So... And he writes the letter on, on the train. It's a very beautiful letter where he writes... I don't remember if I remember the lesson by heart, but, um, that, that, that no, uh, no iron wall will, will Chas v'Shalom. "Layafid tikvasitam tseini" that there won't be any, um, shelayafid beineinu, the, the whatever the distance is. The distance. Richak hamakim layafid beineinu. Chas v'Shalom uchaver chas v'Shalom. And, and the whole, the whole idea of being in Riga is, is that, is that it's very close to Russia, and that he can still deal with Russian Jews and take care of them. And, and, and he's fundraising for them, and he's writing letters to them. And the Frierdiker Rebbe is not, is not, is not abandoning them, abandoning them in, uh, in any, in any way. It just... The mikah hamatzias. Now he's, now he's stuck in Latvia. So that's, that's where America comes in because when the Frierdiker Rebbe left Russia, he's now, um... And what's, what's Yiddishkeit in Europe? In... There's, there's Poland, there's Hungary, there's Latvia. These are all places where Chabad is actually not, not very commonly well known.

09:49 Speaker 2 Not dominant.

09:50 Speaker 1 Um, not, not dominant at all. And many of them never even saw... Many Chabad Chassid, they never even heard of Chabad. Um, Mash"a again-

09:56 Speaker 2 Yeah, I heard from-

09:57 Speaker 1 Yeah

09:58 Speaker 2 ... I heard from, um, uh, Rav Avraham Flint alav ha-shalom, my mechutan in Crown Heights, says his mother was from Lodz. He says, "My mother always used to say, 'In Lubav-- In Lodz, we never heard of Lubavitch.'" I think there was. I think Rabbi Shneerson was, was in Lodz, I believe, but there were some Lubavitch, but that was the idea. Like in Russia, everyone knows Lubavitch. In Poland, we never heard of, we never heard of Lubavitch.

10:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. It was just-

10:20 Speaker 2 But the-

10:20 Speaker 1 ... this strange that there was a name. I, like my, my own grandfather also grew up in a shtetl in Romania, Moshe Greenberg, and I don't think he... They didn't even hear of Chassidim. Forget about like the, the... They were just simple Jews. They had never even... The word Chabad for sure they never heard of. And they... Well, it's interesting because I, as... Like I once found an old book about Russian Jewish history in, uh, written in 1913, and it's like while Russian Jewish history is still happening, and the guy's writing the history, and he writes about the, the Chassidic movement of the Bashetev and, and the different... And he says, "There's rebbes in Hungary, and there's rebbes in Poland." And he describes them, you know, as a, as a, as a, as a historian might describe them. And then he says, "But the rebbes in Russia are different." And he's gonna... And, and there's three. There's three. There's the Alter Rebbe, the Mitteler Rebbe, and the Tzemach Tzedek. He says the Alter Rebbe was very famous in his leadership. And then he says that his son was considered more Mushfet. I forgot the words in English. But... And the grandson was again very, very dominant. Now, w- the... It's, it's actually... We know Chassidim Takas described this thing about the Mitteler Rebbe that, that he w- that he, uh, that he li- he never looked at the, at the, at the face of a coin, that he was a Mushfet from Gavshnits, but it...

11:22 Speaker 1 That didn't come as a stira to, to what he did for the Colonias and everything. But that's how he describes it. In other words, by him, i- as far as the Yiddishkeit in Russia, the Lubavitcher Rebbes are very, very present. So, so the Frierdiker Rebbe is now... Actually, on that note, so I just found a story of the, about the Mitteler Rebbe that it said that we wrote an article for Kislav about Reb Nochum, the Mitteler Rebbe's oldest son. And he says that the... One of the stories that Chassidim write is that, um, he, he used to go along with the Mitteler Rebbe to various things, and there was once a meeting where the Mitteler Rebbe had... There was a Yechidus, and two Gvirim came to the Mitteler Rebbe for, for a, uh, for an arbitration or for a, just for a Eitzah on how to, how to, how to make a partnership work. And the, the Mitteler Rebbe wasn't happy about the state of the, of the Yishomaim of these two Gvirim. So he told them, he told them very straight That, um, you know, and you want me to help in a ? And he told him very sharp. And Reb Menachem was sitting next to, was sitting next to the Mitteler Rebbe, and he felt uncomfortable, and he decided that he's gonna help the situation. So he started to tap his father's foot under the table to nudge him a little bit. And the Mitteler Rebbe just... And, and the way the

12:29 Speaker 1 story is written is that he says the Mitteler Rebbe was an so he just said out loud, "." Uh, "Menachem's kicking me." Um, so but anyway, anyways, we're getting off topic. The, the Friediker Rebbe is now, is now in Riga, but everything about him is, is about helping Russia, and the Yidden in Poland and in Latvia and in all these new places, they don't... And maybe La- Latvia is different, but Poland and Hungary, that's not their issue. That's not what they know about. That's... It's the Friediker Rebbe's like a, a new person showing up. They hear that there's Jews in Russia that are suffering, and they're all willing to help, but they don't really... It's not, it's not their story. But America is very unique because the... All the Yidden in America, a vast majority of them were coming from the Russian Empire. So you have by then, you have already millions upon millions of Jews who came through Ru- came from Russia. In the early years, it was not people that were very excited about the Yiddishkeit. The, the, the Rebbeim were very against people moving here. And, and the, uh, and most of them did it... Like, if they asked, they, they didn't, they didn't really get Rishon's. But regardless, there were tons and tons of Yidden, millions of Yidden living here. These were all Russians. Their parents were Russians, or they were Russians, or their grandparents were Russians. And you have a huge amount of Hasidim, of Ein Klal Hasidim. Now,

13:38 Speaker 1 when they say that some Hasidic had six hundred thousand Hasidim, uh, it didn't mean that six hundred thousand people were coming for Rosh Hashanah. It meant that every, you know, uh, the, uh, the Hasidim who came to the Rebbe in those days were like the, let's say, the Klishkedish, the Rav of a city, the Shaigets, the people who are really a little more in the know. But every Pashut Yidden in the town that they, that they lived in knew that there's a Rebbe and they knew that the Rebbe would take care of them, and if they needed a Bracha, they wrote to the Rebbe. And, uh... But I mean, but they were still very simple Jews. That didn't change the situation. So they come now... So let's say their kids or grandkids come to America, they're Russians. They, they, they have a, a affinity for Russian Jewry, and also they have a very close relationship with Chabad. They know that the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather either we- either went to the Rebbe or saw the Rebbe when the Rebbe came to visit them. And they... And there's, oh, there's tons of Nusach Ari Rishons in, in America. I believe there were... When the Friediker Rebbe was in jail and, and, and, uh, a good Hasid Chabad was lobbying the American government to help the Friediker Rebbe, they wrote that there's a hundred or two hundred Nusach Ari Rishons and on, on behalf of two hundred thousand followers. The Friediker Rebbe has two hundred thousand

14:38 Speaker 1 Hasidim in America. That wasn't a lie. That wasn't an exaggeration. There were two hundred thousand people belonging to Nusach Ari Rishons. Maybe it was a slight exaggeration as, as, uh, you can expect. But there were many hundreds of thousands of, of Jews that were belonged to Nusach Ari Rishons and that had a history with, with, uh, with the Shaigets to, to Chabad. So it's only natural for the Friediker Rebbe to say, "Okay. So now is if, if we're working to help the Russian Jews, where are you gonna fundraise for them? Where are you gonna raise awareness for them? It's gonna be in America." And that's why, that's where the story... That's why, uh, it looks like... That's why it seems that he chose to come to America right then.

15:10 Speaker 2 So the stop to Eretz Yisrael on the way is... I mean, I know the Rebbe explained it once, right? The Rebbe said that, that all of the Rebbeim never went to Eretz Yisrael, period. And the Rebbe said, and this, that Friediker Rebbe went to Eretz Yisrael is 'cause he didn't have access to the Eyalim of the Rebbeim 'cause he w- couldn't be in Russia, so he went to the... he went to Eretz Yisrael to, to the Mekames HaKodeshim instead. So is that the reason? Is that the only reason? I mean, or-

15:38 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Friediker Rebbe said that, said that too. The Friediker Rebbe also said that he's going to the Eyal. It's clear, it's clear in the, in the Friediker Rebbe's writings. Obviously, with the Friediker Rebbe traveled a lot, and the Friediker Rebbe went to see Hasidim everywhere. So when he goes to Eretz Yisrael, he's going to see the Hasidim there. And in America also, he's obviously coming to visit the Hasidim in America. That's obviously a big part of it. Um, but I don't know if, if, if that would be, if that would be the central reason. Now, there is... That, that was the official reason. When the Friediker Rebbe r- um, announced that he's coming to America, it's, it's on behalf of Russian Jewry, to raise awareness for Russian Jew- Jewry, to raise funds for Russian Jewry. Um, and but there was also the aspect that the Friediker Rebbe was not l- looking to settle in Riga. All... Even the stationery says, "Riga, Latvia is, is money, temporary." The Friediker Rebbe only... always wrote that he was living there only temporarily. So he was looking where is gonna be the next place for, for Chabad, for Chabad headquarters. And the payah was Poland, but we know that he was looking in America.

16:30 Speaker 2 There's a Svara that the Friediker Rebbe would stay in-

16:33 Speaker 1 Not only a Svara, it's, it's a... It's not only a Svara, it's clear. It's, it's, it's obvious, and it's documented. And even in the, in tho- in those, in the articles themselves that describe the Friediker Rebbe's visit. So first of all, they say that it's on behalf of Russian Jewry. Then also, a lot of times you see that the Friediker Rebbe is coming to see the state of, of American Jewry. That's what the Friediker... That's what, like, Rashag explains it to one reporter. He wants to see what's going on in America because the Friediker Rebbe attack started working... I mean, America in those days was a, a world away. But even the Rebbe Rashab in the last final years, he told the Friediker Rebbe, I mean, uh, he told, uh, Shmal Evin, I think would say, that he heard from the Rebbe Rashab that, that we have to start looking at America. And the Friediker Rebbe-

17:09 Speaker 2 There were certain, there were certain Hasidim from the Rebbe Rashab that Rebbe Rashab told him to move to America, like if Saul Jacobson, right? There's I think a few, few people like that.

17:17 Speaker 1 The Hs- They, they moved in the time of the Friediker Rebbe. I think we wrote in the Deher that Rav, Rav Avram Elia Akselrod seems to be the first person that moved to America with the permission of the Friediker Rebbe, with... of, of any of the Rebbeim. There were other... There were people who came before. There was a Hasid, his name was Reb David Shifrin, who was the head, the center of all Chabad in Yanom in, in, in America, but he didn't ask permission before he went. He went, and he, he told the Rebbe Rashab that he's going, and then he did a lot, a lot of work on behalf of the, of the Rebbeim in America. Before him, there was also Reb Avraham Chaim Rosenbaum. There's a beautiful, a very interesting book, Tildes Avraham Chaim. He came to America too. He came because he was running away from the Russian police. They were trying to arrest him. He had already sat in jail, um, for helping bochur avoid the draft, so he came to America. Even before him, there was s- uh, Rabbi Vidovitz. I forgot his first name, but he was a Hasid of the Samach Zadek. He was one of the editors of the Shut Samach Zadek when it came to print. He was a Hasid of the, of the Samach Zadek. He was the Rav of Moscow, and then at some point, the Russians kicked all the Jews out of Moscow, so he came to America. And he was the first...

18:18 Speaker 1 He's the first known, um, serious Hasid of, of that caliber that lived in America. But that was all very, very small and, and very, very little

18:24 Speaker 2 There were some more also. I mean-

18:26 Speaker 1 Later there was... Yeah. So, so now when by the time the Frierdiker Rebbe was coming, once World War I broke out, many, many from people came, many Hasidim came too. And now, and after the Russian, Russian Revolution, there was even more. So by the time the Frierdiker Rebbe was writing, he's coming to America, there's a very decent group. There's, uh, Yisroel Jacobson. There was, um, Elia-Elia Simpson, I think, lived here. Um, there was a, a whole long list, actually.

18:47 Speaker 2 We just, we just wrote about the Frierdiker Rebbe's Melamed that lived in Worcester. We just wrote about that in the-

18:52 Speaker 1 Right, right. Yeah. The Moshe Binyamin, or Moshe Binyamin the Melamed, I think. Um, and there were many, many other Hasidim, but even Tmimim of people like... So the Frierdiker Rebbe's Melamed is not someone that we know as part of like... I don't know if he has any connection to the Lubavitch today. But even from like the Lubavitch that we know, the families that are here, there are already many that came. Um, there was Ye-Yechiel Gordon came very early, um, Elias Simpson-

19:11 Speaker 2 And, uh-

19:11 Speaker 1 Yisroel, Yisroel Jacobson, and there was a whole long list. It was not-

19:14 Speaker 2 Sha-Sha-Shalom, uh, Shalom Posner also came early-ish.

19:18 Speaker 1 Shalom Posner, Shalom Posner came... Yeah. He was in Eretz Yisrael when Frierdiker Rebbe visited Eretz Yisrael, and I think he was doing bricklaying, and the Frierdiker Rebbe told him not to stay in Eretz Yisrael and to move to America and to open a, to, to in America. So he came right then. I believe he came very quickly, right, right... While the Frierdiker Rebbe was in America, I think that's when they moved, but I, I could be mistaken. So but one of the reasons... So the Frierdiker Rebbe says that it's, it's a, it's a time to look into American Jewry, um, and that was something the Frierdiker Rebbe already did years, years before. The Frierdike-- Um, Avraham Eliyahu Axelrod's father was, his name was Shlomo Aharon Axelrod. He was living in Marietta, Ohio, in a little town here, and he, and the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to him that there's, there's fifty states, and every one of those fifty states must have shuls and Yidden and Nusach Ari shuls. And he says it's, it's only, it's only a question of, uh, of the Tamul of connecting with all the people in fifty states and making Maises in all fifty states and, and, and there should be Shiurei Chassidus, and there should be Chinuch Al Ta'aros Hakodesh. And the Frierdiker Rebbe basically tells him, "We have to have shluchim in all fifty states." Um, in, in, in Taf Resh pei beis or pei gimel or pei daled. That's when the Frierdiker Rebbe writes, wri-writes this to him. So

20:21 Speaker 1 the Frierdiker Rebbe was already doing these, this, the, these yohanim. But when he... So when he comes to America, it's, it's to look into the state of American Jewry. The part that they weren't saying publicly was part of what the Frierdiker Rebbe was looking for in the state of American Jewry was to stay here and to settle in America, which is a very natural thing. If all the Russian Yidden are transplanting themselves in America, so it's very natural for the Frierdiker Rebbe's place to be in America. However, the Yiddishkeit here was, was, uh, was in, was not, not up to par. There was no... It wasn't shy to make a issue with them Chassidim yet. That took many more years. Um, there was no, there was no Chinuch. There was no ch-- um, real, um, gathering of Hasidim in a way that the Frierdiker Rebbe felt that he could say, apparently. There, there's letters that were, in where the Frierdiker Rebbe writes... Um, not the Frierdiker Rebbe. There's... The Frierdiker Rebbe's shvere, Reb Avraham Schneersohn, wrote letters to his daughter, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, and he writes in those letters during the Frierdiker Rebbe's visit in America. He writes, "I hear that you're, that they're staying in America, and that the... It, it's only a question of going back or wrapping things up in Riga and moving to America." He writes with a Pashtus that that's what's happening. And the Hasidim over, over the months in America, the Hasidim in America started to ask and started

21:22 Speaker 1 to request and to put, uh, make Vadim and to make efforts to actually make it happen. But in the end, the Frierdiker Rebbe said he's not, he's not ready to come, he's not ready to stay, and there's a few reasons, but he ended up going back to, to Warsaw, and it's-

21:35 Speaker 2 What are the reasons?

21:36 Speaker 1 Right. So one reason the Frierdiker Rebbe writes is that he told Yisroel Jacobson many years later that mein Inyan is Hasidim and Hasidis. And when he came to America, it was also asking Siburi. The Frierdiker Rebbe was coming, and he was fundraising money, and he was raising awareness, and he felt that that's not the, the, the image that he wants the, the Frierdiker Rebbe to show up with, that that's... It doesn't, it doesn't fit what he wanted to do. So it was, it was on the wrong... It was the wrong style, basically. It was the wrong approach, and he wanted to do it separately. There's another one where the Frierdiker Rebbe just said that the Ruchnius is, is not, is not there. And when the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to Hasidim that he's not staying in America, he said, "Keep on making bimyehas Hasidim, keep on working on Chinuch Hakodesh." He working on all these things, and the implication is pretty clear that as, as soon as America is a, is an appropriate place, um, for, for the Frierdiker Rebbe to come and to open a, a Timchei Tmimim, for example, then he's going to do it immediately. And in Tzadik Tes, um, Reb Yisroel Jacobson spoke... The Frierdiker Rebbe told Reb Yisroel Jacobson that he's coming to America. They already made plans, uh, right before World War II broke out. It, it so happens to be at the exact same time that Reb Yisroel Jacobson brought the American Bochur from Torah Vodaas to Timchei Tmimim

22:41 Speaker 1 in, in Poland. In other words, as, as soon as there's enough, there's a nucleus of people to make a Timchei Tmimim in America, you see at the exact same time the Frierdiker Rebbe is, uh, is, is planning a visit, is planning to move to America L'paim.

22:54 Speaker 2 So you're say- you're saying that the Frierdiker Rebbe was planning on moving to America in nineteen thirty-nine regardless of the war?

23:01 Speaker 1 Regardless of the war. The Frierdiker Rebbe says in, um, that in, in one of the Sichas, early Sichas, the Frierdiker Rebbe's, uh, I think by the Kabbalas Panim in, during the war, the Frierdiker Rebbe says, "I didn't come here as a refugee." And when you hear that, it's strange. What, what do you mean you didn't come here as a refugee? You came here as a refugee. You were saved out of the war. But the Frierdiker Rebbe had already had plans to move to America. Someone once argued to me that the Frierdiker Rebbe had already given the power of attorney to Reb Yisroel Jacobson to move the Frierdiker Rebbe's library to America. In other words, he already been... He ha- he had already been making his library to Agudas Chassidei Chabad of America during that visit of Reb Yisroel Jacobson. I haven't seen it printed. I didn't look too hard, but-

23:35 Speaker 2 During a visit of Y- of Yisroel to Poland?

23:37 Speaker 1 Dur- So during Reb Yisroel Jacobson's visit from America to Poland, the Frierdiker Rebbe spoke to him about the move to America, and there was already plans to get visas for the Frierdiker Rebbe's family and for a group of Bochurim and a group of Hasidim to come to America. And all the plans were... The plans were in motion, and the war broke out in the middle of those plans when... And the plans didn't have a chance to, to pla- to, to actually happen. So when the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived, he didn't, wasn't, he wasn't here as a refugee. He was moving to America because he wanted to move to America to bring Chabad here and to do, and to do it in America. And, uh, it just so happened, unfortunately, that, uh, you know, the, that, uh, that the war broke out in middle, and the Frierdiker Rebbe had to be saved from the Nazis.

24:13 Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

24:14 Speaker 1 Yeah.

24:15 Speaker 2 Okay, so back to, uh, nineteen twenty-nine.

24:20 Speaker 1 Yeah. So the Frierdiker Rebbe is coming to America, and there's one... There's a very, very interesting resource of descriptions of the Frierdiker Rebbe's visit here. So in general, it's very interesting that in c- in, in Eretz Yisrael, the Frierdiker Rebbe was in Eretz Yisrael. There's beautiful descriptions of everything, but the... What's even more is that there's the Sichas and there's Ma'amarim and, and there's a Yuman, a detailed Yuman from the Hasidim who wa- traveled around because, uh, Eretz Yisrael was a foreign place. It had a lot of Hasidim there. So when the Rebbe came, it was, it was the Rebbe coming. They did whatever Hasidim do around the Rebbe. In America, there were some Hasidim here, but the Frierdiker Rebbe was traveling for ten months, and it's, there's nothing of the sort. There's many, many Sichas, and the Frierdiker Rebbe spoke in every single city countless times, and we have very, very few Sichas from there. Um, there's not that many Ma'amarim either. That, uh, th- which usually the Frierdiker Rebbe himself wrote, but he didn't write everything. But what there is, is amazing, amazing, uh, newspaper descriptions 'cause the J- the Jewish press in America was very, very excited. Um, this is a, this is, uh, a major, major figure. It's very interesting. I, I, I was trying to see if, is there any other, um, you know, Jewish figure, Manhig Yisrael, use whatever term you want, that had that type of reception when the Fi- like, like the Frierdiker Rebbe had in 1929?

25:32 Speaker 1 The, the amount of the thousands of people that came out in every city, city after city, time after time, thousands and thousands of people, literally thousands. Um, it's just, it, it's mind-boggling, and the excitement, and there's all... 'Cause, you know, if, if a Peleg Rebbe came, how many of the Russian Jews knew this specific Peleg Rebbe? If the, if someone, if a Rav came, no, say there. But the, but when the Frierdiker Rebbe came, it was this is the last Rebbe that they all heard about from their grandparents and great-grandparents and great-grandparents. It's that same dynasty. It's the same in a goal. It's, uh, a-a-and to top it all off, this is right after the Frierdiker Rebbe had been, had been very, very famous in being in Russia itself as the only Jewish leader who's in Russia fighting the communists, and the one who's keeping Yiddishkeit alive.

26:11 Speaker 3 He was in prison.

26:11 Speaker 1 And that he was arrested, and he was in prison, and he was released, and that was on world news. So the Frierdiker Rebbe was at a l- it was like, it was like a, a pinnacle of fame that everybody, everyone in the world knew about the Frierdiker Rebbe at the time. And what's even more interesting is that because it was right then, the Frierdiker Rebbe hadn't yet, it... No, Chabad didn't really exist as a huge institution anywhere else. So all the regular politics that happens when you have an institution, um, didn't exist then. It's not like, like if today, uh, uh, if, if a Re- if the Rebbe would come in any, in any specific city, well, you would have the Reform synagogue who's offended by the Shliach here, and it... Like, uh, there's all the natural politics that would happen in a place based on whatever the meistahs are. But when the Frierdiker Rebbe comes to America, there's none of that. It's only excitement.

26:52 Speaker 3 It's like unknown.

26:52 Speaker 1 It's, it's unknown. The only people that weren't so excited is that Rav Yisroel Jacobson writes that the heads of the Joint were afraid of the Frierdiker Rebbe's influence, so they tried to, to, to block the richest American Jews from meeting the Frierdiker Rebbe. They tried to, to dampen the enthusiasm. But on the out-

27:06 Speaker 3 Wasn't, wasn't, w-wasn't the Joint, uh, contributing to the Frierdiker Rebbe financially?

27:12 Speaker 1 Yes. Yes. The Joint was supporting the entire Russian efforts, but that's what he writes. He writes th- I, I don't remember exactly which organization-

27:18 Speaker 3 Maybe, maybe they wanted, maybe they wanted the, to control it instead of, uh-

27:21 Speaker 1 That could be. That could be. Yeah. Yeah. He writes that they were te- they were afraid of the Frierdiker Rebbe's influence, and they w- they tried to dampen the excitement a little bit. But in the regular Amcha, the regular people, this was very, very exciting. You have pictures of full Hebrew schools coming, like full da- uh, you know, schools, kids in, in, um... Rabbi Landa from St. Louis made a beautiful article on chabad.org about the Frierdiker Rebbe's visit to St. Louis. You see all the... They brought all the kids in a choir with flags, and like all the regular Jewish community people, everybody was coming, everyone was coming to see the Rebbe. It was, it, it was a, it was, uh, an excitement like no other. And you see, you have all these beautiful, uh, newspaper descriptions, but what you also have is letters from the Frierdiker Rebbe himself to Rebbetzin Chana Dina. She didn't come along on the, on the trip, so it means the Frierdiker Rebbe was away from, from the Rebbetzin for a whole year. So he writes these beautiful, beautiful letters to her. It's very different than his own Yuman. The Frierdiker Rebbe's Yuman in those years is very, very short. He just writes like scheduling, two hours for a Ma'amar. He prepared a Ma'amar. He davened. He wrote letters. He just writes like a schedule pretty much. But in these letters, he writes the full Arechas with the full description of everything that's going on, and he writes also... Like

28:24 Speaker 1 it's almost surprising to write how candidly he's writing, to see how candidly he's writing about the success and how, about how many people. And he always ends off, you know, 1,000 people came, 500 people came, 2,000 people came. „Yidden zey shoin geflucht un losen." And he writes that, that, uh, they say that Americana Shiden are quick to warm up and quick to cool off, so... And we, and we ".... And it se- it seems like almost, I, like he... In other words, the Rebbetzin's there for a whole year, so the Frierdiker Rebbe's trying to give her a taste of what is really and, and what, what's being accomplished. And, uh, like in the opening letter is he writes, uh, it's very interesting how he says that on the, on the ship to America... You know, usually the Frierdiker Rebbe traveled a lot. He didn't always travel with a big entourage. He traveled with a few people. So he has a cabin on a ship, and then the... If you don't sit in the cabin all day, you go sit on the deck or you sit in the writi- they had writing rooms. And the Frierdiker Rebbe would sit with a sav or with papers or with whatever he was u- doing to write or to learn or to, to read. And he just... And, and he said he was always comf- And he writes that he's always comfortable. He doesn't, doesn't care that people stare at him. He always gets stares 'cause the Frierdiker

29:28 Speaker 1 Rebbe's coming with a kapota, and usually you sit with it, sits open, and a yarmulke and a beard, and, and, and he doesn't look like any, like anything of the, of the regular people there. So he gets some stares, but he do- he minds his own business and nobody bothers him. Then he writes that on the ship the same thing happened. But at some point, like two days before they arrive in America, all of a sudden when he came out to the deck, he noticed that the whole ship was staring at him. The people were whispering, things were going on. There was a big ta-da-ram around who, uh, around his, his, uh, the, the Frierdiker Rebbe being there. And then he writes that later he heard that the captain of the ship had just received a message from, from land saying that, "Before you come into the harbor, there's going to be... You're gonna stop. There's a boat's gonna... A small boat, a tugboat's gonna come meet you, and there's a very important personage on your, on your ship, and he's gonna be taken out, um, on this boat instead of going through the regular customs of Ellis Island or where- wherever it would, wherever it would've been. And he's gonna get his, like, VI- his... Someone's getting VIP treatment." And he heard that. He told people on the ship. Suddenly they... They chavez that there's a VIP person on the ship, and now, and the Frierdiker Rebbe says he walked out, and all of

30:26 Speaker 1 a sudden he sees everybody staring at him. And, uh, nothing, uh, nothing happened. But then... And then he came to America. He came to America and he didn't tell-

30:32 Speaker 3 Did, did the Frierdiker Rebbe get very, um, sick on the, uh, trip on the boat?

30:37 Speaker 1 That, that's a story about Dr. Volokh. They... That while he was... No, actually it probably wasn't that ship. So the Frierdiker Rebbe left Eretz Yisrael to come to America, but the way you did that was through Europe. He went on a ship back to Berlin. In Berlin, he met with a Rebbe and the, and, and the Rebbetzin and other ‹settlement› in Berlin, and then he went from there. From Berlin, he came to America. So-

30:58 Speaker 3 So it's really an independ- So the trip to Eretz Yisrael is an independent trip

31:02 Speaker 1 He didn't go back to Riga, but-

31:04 Speaker 3 Okay, I'm saying, what I'm saying is it's-

31:06 Speaker 1 But yeah, yeah. But it was-

31:06 Speaker 3 Eretz Yisrael, he came back to Europe, but then he went to America.

31:08 Speaker 1 When he just came back to Europe. Exactly, yeah. In the middle there was this, there was a, a few days that he was in, in Berlin. At some point, the Friediker Rebbe gave the Rebbe all the Ksavim. I don't know if it was before Eretz Yisrael or it was before America. So the story... I'll tell you the story of Dr. Volach, and then I'll tell you this thing that the... With Doc- the Dr. Volach, I think, uh, see, I don't remember, I don't rea- I don't have the story from the sources. It's a story that's told, but I, I imagine it was on the ship from Eretz Yisrael right after the Friediker Rebbe left Eretz Yisrael was the, was the pogrom in Hebron and throughout Eretz Yisrael, the, the toughest P-

31:39 Speaker 3 Mass-massacre in Hebron.

31:40 Speaker 1 The 1929 massacres. And it was right after the Friediker Rebbe had visited Hebron and had been at Maaras HaMachpelah. And so the, when the Friediker Rebbe heard about it on the ship, he got very, very sick, he felt terrible, and Dr. Volach was there on the ship. Dr. Volach was the, a very famous doctor of Eretz Yisrael, of the Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Yerushalayim, and he was on a trip. So I imagine this is out of Eretz Yisrael. He was an Eretz Yisrael Dika guy, so he's leaving on the ship, and they say that he asked the Friediker Rebbe for a Tikkun afterwards. And the Friediker Rebbe said, "Why do you need a Tikkun? You took care of me." And the Friedi- And he said, "If, if the Aibishter is . If I wouldn't have been on the ship, the, the Aibishter would have never allowed you to become sick in the first place." So that's why he wanted a Tikkun for being present there. So in, in Berlin, the, the Rebbe came there. The Rebbe was living in Berlin, and the Friediker Rebbe came there and he, and gave the Rebbe all the Ksavim.

32:26 Speaker 3 By the way, when the Friediker Rebbe left, for example, for Tisha, the Friediker put the Rebbe in charge of the Chassidim during Tisha in Riga.

32:35 Speaker 1 Right.

32:35 Speaker 3 It's a whole another thing. And, uh, the recent-

32:37 Speaker 1 The Rebbe-

32:38 Speaker 3 And recently a newspaper article came out about that, how the Rebbe with the, with the, uh, the Chassidim, Rebbe, the, the-

32:44 Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't see that.

32:45 Speaker 3 You didn't see it?

32:45 Speaker 1 That's... There's a letter. No, I didn't see that. I didn't see that article, but-

32:48 Speaker 3 There's a new ar- there's a new article that came out just now for Gamot HaMu's, and it's, the title I believe is, uh, the Rebbe, the Student.

32:58 Speaker 1 Oh, interesting.

32:58 Speaker 3 They're basically writing about the Rebbe who's not the Rebbe yet.

33:01 Speaker 1 Right. But he's being on.

33:03 Speaker 3 No, that, that, there's, there's this Rebbe, there's this student, the student Rebbe.

33:08 Speaker 1 It's very, very interesting.

33:08 Speaker 3 And it describes the Rebbe, describes how the, uh, you know, you know, how the Rebbe, how the Rebbe looks. But the Rebbe like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a Rebbe. And there's- A very nice article. Yeah.

33:21 Speaker 1 The main letter is, is . But -

33:24 Speaker 3 Yeah

33:24 Speaker 1 ... is a beautiful description of that Tisha. I think we printed it many years ago. Um-

33:27 Speaker 3 Yeah

33:27 Speaker 1 ... maybe 10 years ago or so under the Hare.

33:29 Speaker 3 Rebbe Fabarin, the Rebbe, the Rebbe, Rebbe ran the whole, the whole thing, uh-

33:32 Speaker 1 Right

33:32 Speaker 3 ... the whole

33:33 Speaker 1 And, uh, Yachim writes, uh, Yachim writes to the, to the Friediker Rebbe that he's pained that you'll n- he says, "I'm pained that you'll never ever see this, uh, side of the Rebbe because in f- because, because in front of you he's always a, as a , so you'll never, you, you never gonna see-

33:45 Speaker 3 He writes it to the Friediker Rebbe.

33:46 Speaker 1 He writes to the Friediker Rebbe directly.

33:47 Speaker 3 Yes.

33:47 Speaker 1 He says, "I feel sad that you'll never see this side of, of, of, of your Adam." Yeah. And so the... But, but for the, during... That's Tisha. The Friedi- the Rebbe was there during Tisha, so the Friediker Rebbe gave the Rebbe all the Ksavim to, for safekeeping during his, during his trips.

34:02 Speaker 3 What Ksavim?

34:02 Speaker 1 And someone told me something very interesting.

34:03 Speaker 3 The Ksavim that, what Ksavim?

34:04 Speaker 1 All, all the Ksavim of the Rebaim. The Friediker Rebbe had suitcases or one suitcase where he kept all the Ksavim of all the Maamarim of the Alter Rebbe, Mitler, , all the early Ksavim of the Rebbe Rashab. Whatever he had, whatever the Rebaim ha- kept, those weren't part of the regular library. That was a special suitcase or, or, or a few suitcases that he kept all the Ksavim were there. And he, and he took, and he watched over it like it was in the Yechidas room in the, by the Friediker Rebbe. It was, it was behind his chair. In the fireplace, there was a... It wa- it looks like a fireplace. It's a closed fireplace. There's a... That was where the Ksavim were held. So during his trip to America, the Friediker Rebbe gave it to the Rebbe, and that's when the Rebbe made all the Mafteichas of Chassidus. And that's when he made copies of Ayin Beis and Samech Lamed and all, all the Chassidus that the Rebbe printed later because all or many of those Ksavim, I hope I'm not mixing up a few stories here, but those Ksavim were later stuck during, uh, from, after when the Na- when the Friediker Rebbe ran away from the Nazis, many, many Ksavim got stuck there, and they only came back with the, with the Ksav from Poland that I believe you wrote about, um, maybe 15 years ago on the Dehare, a very interesting article.

35:01 Speaker 3 Yeah.

35:01 Speaker 1 So there, there was no the... So all, all they had was the Rebbe's copies.

35:05 Speaker 3 Lamed Tes.

35:05 Speaker 1 Lamed Tes, yeah. So till Lamas Tes they had only the Rebbe's copies.

35:06 Speaker 3 Some of them are . Yeah.

35:08 Speaker 1 Right. So we only had the Friediker Rebbe's copies, uh, the Rebbe's copies. And what's interesting is someone told me that, that in the... If you look in Rebbe's Mafteichas, there's things missing there. Not only the Sichas from the Friediker Rebbe in America are missing 'cause nobody was there to write them, but even the Maamarim, the Friediker Rebbe said Maamarim America. Before leaving, he took with him the Ksavim that he wanted to base the Maamarim off of. Uh, the, the, uh, Friediker Rebbe says a Maimar, the, any Rebaim said a Maimar, it's based on a Maimar from the previous generations or a few Maimarim. So he took with him the, the specific Ksavim, he planned ahead. He took whatever Ksavim he wanted for the year. So when the Rebbe wrote all the Mafteichas, there's, there's missing Divrei HaMaschal from the collection. And if you look carefully, it's the same Divrei HaMaschal that the Friediker Rebbe says in America. That's just an interesting, an interesting aside about what the Rebbe had. So it's-

35:51 Speaker 3 Why didn't the Friediker Rebbe wanna take them with him to America?

35:54 Speaker 1 I would imagine it was probably a safety thing. You know, you know, schlepping on a long journey and who's, who's gonna be... You know, they... I thought he probably was probably more safe in, in Berlin.

36:01 Speaker 3 Okay.

36:01 Speaker 1 So yeah, the Friediker Rebbe came, and they say he came to America. It was , right before Tisha, he came to America. That's, that's, that's, that's when the visit started.

36:11 Speaker 3 Among Chassidim is brought to you by Chassidei Dehare. We live in a chaotic world, a world where for us Chassidim as they say, , we do not have the ability to hear and see the Rebbe on a daily basis. Yet we know that the Rebbe is very much with us, and Chassidus Chabad is alive and thriving more than ever before. One needs to only tap into it. Chassidei Dehare provides you and your family with the tools necessary to tap into all of this, whether it's the monthly magazine, the way it all began, whether it's Dehare books, Dehare online content, and so much more. Men, women, and children throughout the world benefit and use these tools on a daily basis.

37:05 Speaker 4 Whether it's children enjoying the children's magazine that comes along with the regular Der Her or enjoying the children's podcast, whether it's bachurim in yeshivas receiving the Der Her, whether it's girls in high schools enjoying Der Her club in their local high school, people all over the world and from all walks of life enjoy and utilize these tools and take advantage of it. If you're not already subscribed to the Her monthly magazine, do so today at derher.org. That's D-E-R-H-E-R.org. Der Her is a dynamic organization which is committed to continue providing these tools, grow on a constant basis, and do all that we can to help this effort. Baruch Hashem, it takes a lot of resources and finances to make this all happen. You can be part of Der Her through your financial support as well through visiting our website, derher.org, or through contacting us to setting up a meeting. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of the podcast.

38:15 Speaker 1 And you see from the very beginning... Another interesting thing, I don't know if we wrote much about this in the article, is that the Chassidim, there's a small group of Chassidim-

38:23 Speaker 3 Which one? I think in the coming article

38:24 Speaker 1 ... in, in the current article. And the article, the article is written, it's coming out in Cheshvan, mit Hashem. So the- there's a small group of Chassidim who have to take care of the Friediker Rebbe. Yisroel Jacobson is the main person, and he also wrote his Igeres. There was Agudas Chassidei Chabad there, so there were people like Chazzaka Kramer, who was the head of Agudas Chassidei Chabad. He wasn't a Chassid, he was a Baal Bas. And there was a Mendel Lukshin was another... I think that's w- that was his name. I think it was a Mendel Lukshin that was, uh, the head of Agud- Aguch, uh, on the Chassid-- As a Cha- he was the Chassid that was the head of Agud- Aguch. And there was a few, a bunch of yungerleit. And suddenly, you know, the Rebbe's coming. How do you, how do you treat the Rebbe? The Rebbe's showing up. You have to make sure that the Rebbe has a place to stay, and the Rebbe is, is fed and, and like what- whatever you would think. And for a Chassidim, they're going out of their minds. "How in the world are we going to take care of the Rebbe?" And the Friediker Rebbe's coming. You know, the people that usually took care of the gashmius of the Friediker Rebbe weren't there because that was his family. And, and the Rebbe's in 770 staying home, and, and, uh, and, and no one else is coming. It was... The Friediker Rebbe came with Rashag

39:22 Speaker 1 and a few, a few, uh, a few other people in, in his entourage. There was, uh, Mordechai Dubin came at the beginning for a short period of time. Uh, Rabbi Moshe Harnshtern, the Friediker Rebbe's uncle, was there also during the visit for, I think, a period of the visit. And the two, two secretaries, Chaim Lieberman and, and Itche... Sorry, and Chache Fagan.

39:43 Speaker 3 Chache Fagan.

39:43 Speaker 1 They were... Yeah, Chache Fagan. So those two, the two secretaries, they came a week early to help set things up. And they were... Okay, so the Chassidim had to try to figure out, "Where are we gonna-- Where's the Friediker Rebbe gonna stay?" So Eliya Simpson, Rabbi Simpson had... Was the Rav of a shul, and they had just built a new shul in Boro Park, and there was an apartment on top of the shul where he was going to live. And they said, "Perfect. We have a shul. We have an apartment for living." He had... It was brand new, so he said, "It's perfect." And, and Rabbi Simpson was excited that the Friediker Rebbe was gonna inaugurate his own home. Uh, that was, that's the biggest kavod in the world. And, and the problem was that they, they saw... The, the Chassidim suspected that this is not masim for the... This is not masim for royalty. I don't know how... I don't know exactly why. They, they don't say why. They don't-

40:25 Speaker 3 The apartment.

40:26 Speaker 1 The apartment. Uh, maybe it was too small, maybe, maybe it was just simple. But the, but the Chassidim had this, this feeling that, that when, when the Rebbe comes to town, it's past nisht that there's a, there's a little apartment on top of a shul. Uh, it looks like a, like a little shtiebel and, uh, a little Peyshe, Peyshe Rebbe who has a, who has a, who has a shul in his dining room, and that's the whole story. There's something there that wasn't, that wasn't up to par for what was past when the Rebbe comes. And, and he, and Yisroel Jacobson writes that he tried to bring it up, and they... It was part of the discussion. But Chazzak Kramer, the head of Agudas Chassidei Chabad, I mean, he was basically the one paying, or I guess he was running it, and he didn't understand. And he says... Yisroel Jacobson says that, that Kramer himself had never met a Rebbe before. He was... Came from a Chabad town in, in Europe, but he was living in... He was in America. He was now living in America. He had never come from... He didn't come from a Chassidish family. So all he had met were the-

41:13 Speaker 3 I thought the Kramer, I thought the Kramers are Ch- Chabad family.

41:16 Speaker 1 No, no, they weren't. They came from a Chabad town, a, a Chabad town that had a lot of Chassidim, so they had a lot of Shaliach Chassidim, and they knew, like, they, they got the, the, the... They, they related well to Chassidim, but I don't think they themselves were from a Chabad family. Not at least what from R- what Rabbi Jacobson writes.

41:30 Speaker 3 So how did they become the, the go-to people?

41:33 Speaker 1 They needed a gvir and a, a, bar poel to have, to be in- involved in Agud- in Aguch. And he was very close with Chassidim anyway because they... 'Cause in those days, people were close with their landsman. If you came from the same town, you joined the shul. Nusach, you know, there's Nusach Ari in Yazd, and there was Nusach Ari, uh, Babriz, and there was... And these were like, they were, these were city shuls. People were close with the people where they came from. So Chazzak was close with Chabad Chassidim, so they, so they, they, they brought him in, and he became the Baal Bas. And he, and he was very helpful. It wasn't like... Now, but he, but what Yisroel Jacobson says, he didn't get. He says, in his mind, the Rebbe was just another one of the Gute Yidden that come to America, Chadashem Habkarim to fundraise. And they're, you know, they're, they're, they're the people. They come, they, they do their fundraising, and they go. And he, in his mind, he said, "The Rebbe's the greatest of these Gute Yidden." He didn't under-appreciate that, that this is on a, on a whole, this is a whole different farinen. This is a whole different story. So, and then, but then the Friediker Rebbe came, and Taka... And he say, Taka didn't work. And, and the poel, they moved to, they moved. So y- you see in the video, the Friediker Rebbe stands on the second floor of a balcony, and he looks down

42:31 Speaker 1 and he says a sicha to the crowd. That's Rabbi Simpson's shul. That's Rabbi Simpson's shul.

42:34 Speaker 3 It's in Boro Park.

42:34 Speaker 1 But very quickly... Yeah, that's in Boro Park. But very quickly they moved, and they moved to a house-

42:40 Speaker 3 So he did stay there?

42:41 Speaker 1 He stayed there for a little bit. And they realized right at the beginning that this past nisht, and they quickly moved to a house in Crown Heights, which doesn't exist anymore. Um, I think it's on Brooklyn and St. John's, where, uh, anash.org just had a whole article on all the different places where the Friediker Rebbe stayed and spoke, and, uh, Shmuly Super wrote a very nice article, and he has all the pictures there. And he writes there that this, it just ha- happens to be that the same house later was bought by the Baba Rebbe, and that was his house. It's just interesting. But the Friediker Rebbe was in that house

43:07 Speaker 3 'Cause the Bobov Rebbe, his headquarters was in Crown Heights

43:11 Speaker 1 Yeah, he lives in Crown Heights in the early years. Yeah

43:12 Speaker 3 In the fifties and sixties. Yeah

43:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. So that was there. That was the headquarters, I guess. But-

43:15 Speaker 3 And that house doesn't exist anymore

43:17 Speaker 1 No, the house-

43:17 Speaker 3 Yeah. I saw that article

43:18 Speaker 1 ... it's a building. It's a building now. I believe it's a building or, or something like that. But-

43:21 Speaker 3 But then it was a nice house. I saw the picture from the-

43:23 Speaker 1 Big... Yes, a big beautiful home

43:25 Speaker 3 Yeah.

43:25 Speaker 1 Yeah. And, and you can see right away that it's a... That, that it's much more than the original-

43:29 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm

43:29 Speaker 1 ... place that they had, which was a stable and an apartment, and I'm sure it was, it was okay and decent, but it wasn't, it wasn't what they needed. And Yisroel Jacobson writes even more that, that they didn't understand how to keep a place... Like they... He said, he said, "We were ." That's what he writes about himself at the... Like when he was writing the story, and he says that they didn't know how to prepare food. They didn't know how to... So at, at some point, they didn't know how to keep s- keep a place clean, and they realized that this is a big problem. This is like they didn't know what they're doing. So they finally, they hired someone. They hired a, a who was worked in one of the highest high-class hotels and knew how to, knew how to serve a meal and knew how to set up a place and knew how to... So they come when they, when they bring food to the Friediker Rebbe, it should be like on the highest level anywhere. And, and he, and he told them... He, he saw the Friediker Rebbe. He, he would bring the food to the Friediker Rebbe, and, and he said later that... He told them that the Friediker Rebbe's, um, table manners are at the highest level of even the most aristocratic circles. Which, which confirmed to Reb Jacobson that he didn't know what he was doing, and like But, but... And the, and the other, and the other

44:29 Speaker 1 problem he writes is that the Friediker Rebbe didn't eat. The... He writes that Hachafagan would compl- complain to him when he walked... He came once to see the Fr- to see the Rebbe after they came back from a visit to another city. He came back to New York, and he comes to Hachafagan, and Hachafagan says he doesn't know what to do. The Friediker Rebbe doesn't eat anything. And it... The first thing was that on a day the Friediker Rebbe came to a new town, he would fast. And when he came to Chicago, and 10,000 people come out to see the, see the Friediker Rebbe on the streets, and then he would go to... There would be a big where more thousands more people would come see him. And then people would come for that day, the Friediker Rebbe wouldn't eat anything. And Yisroel Jacobson says that he heard from this in Talushkin that the Friediker Rebbe said, maybe he heard this even from the Rebbe Rashab, . You have to fast out COVID. On a day the Friediker Rebbe got COVID, he didn't eat anything. And that was just, that was the rule.

45:17 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah

45:17 Speaker 1 There was no food. Yeah, 'cause, uh, 'cause it was a thing. The Friediker Rebbe if he, if he was getting COVID and, and based off, uh, uh, not, not of us to, to imagine what the Rebbe, what, what, what, what the COVID feels like. But whenever there was COVID, the Friediker Rebbe didn't eat. And, and, uh, and then even after that, he wasn't eating. The, the... In the, I think in the the Friediker Rebbe himself, he writes on Pesach, which Pesach, Pesach was extra because, uh, 'cause of all the that what, what Friediker wanted to eat. On the the Friediker Rebbe ate only the of and by the Seder. Basically didn't eat anything else and some hot water. On Chol Hamoed, on one day or maybe two days, he ate like two hard-boiled eggs that Hachafagan boiled up. The, the Friediker Rebbe didn't eat, and Hachafagan was going crazy, and he said he felt, he felt like the Rebbe's here. The Rebbe's on his 'cause there's no one else. And... But which Hasid is gonna tell the Rebbe that you have to eat? I... That's not something that Hasidim do. And Yisroel Jacobson writes that he and, and he gathered the courage, and he went to . And he told the Fi- he said... Told the Friediker Rebbe that the are not here to watch on your health and, and, and, and we're, and we're all very worried, and sh- the Rebbe should eat. The Rebbe shouldn't, shouldn't, uh, shouldn't fast so much. And the

46:21 Speaker 1 Friediker Rebbe basically up, and he said, "I don't need the food." Uh, whatever. And, and he said, "Yeah." The Friediker Rebbe told him, "when you made... Your wife made a . I, I, I last night. We came back. I ate one from that y- that your wife made." You know, that he had... That they had made sure... That they had worked very hard to prepare. So the Friediker Rebbe says, "like, you know, his wife worked hard." The Friediker Rebbe says, "ate one, but only one and not, not the whole thing." And, and it, it's very interesting to see this whole, the whole description, and it continued throughout the, throughout the whole visit where the Hasidim, the, the close Hasidim are struggling on how do you, how do you treat the Rebbe? Like what, what are we doing here? There was... There's one Forward article that I, that, that... A very interesting Forward article where, uh, the Forward correspondent in Washington, D.C.-

47:04 Speaker 3 For- Forverts

47:05 Speaker 1 Forverts. Forverts, yeah. The Yiddish Forverts, which you can imagine is not exactly, uh, a newspaper that is excited about or and mitzvahs and anything like that. So the correspondent in Washington wrote an article about his vi- his visit with the Friediker Rebbe in Washington. At the very end of the visit, the Friediker Rebbe came to Washington, D.C., and met with President Hoover.

47:25 Speaker 3 He met President Hoover. Yeah.

47:26 Speaker 1 Met with President Hoover, and he said it was to thank President Hoover for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish people and for the Jews of Russia. And there's no details about the meeting, uh, at least not printed. Maybe somebody has, and I, I have... Don't have access to that. But there's no details of what actually happened in the meeting. It just we know that the Friediker Rebbe went there and spoke and met with the president. So but this Forward, uh, reporter writes, writes a whole article, and he describes a whole how he imagined how disappointed he would be. He thought that an old, an old-fashioned Rebbe from the, from the Old World is gonna come see the president. it's gonna be because the American Jews in those days were all about fitting in. And if, you know, if you didn't , if you didn't do exactly what the Americans think, it was considered very embarrassing. It was, it was very, very embarrassing. So he was traumatized. Here's a Hasidic Rebbe's gonna come and visit the president. What's he gonna do here? It's a, it's a disaster. And, and then he comes to... Then he comes, and he... Then he writes how, how, how, how impressed he was and how he's had a, he's had a with the Friediker Rebbe for fif- fifteen minutes. Then he spoke with the Rashag for a few hours, and he writes how they're speaking to intelligent people. He says the Friediker Rebbe is such an intelligent person and such

48:26 Speaker 1 a spiritual person and it's, it was so beautiful. And, and he's... The Rashag, he was so impressed. He's so well-spoken. And then, but then he said he was disappointed. He was terribly disappointed 'cause he looked in the Friediker Rebbe's hotel room, he saw matzahs. And he said, "Matzahs? J- old Jewish matzahs in a fancy, uh, Washington, D.C. hotel room?" S- uh, he couldn't believe that the Ma-- Like you're bringing matzahs into a hotel room? And he says at the, at the end, he says in his conversation with the Friediker Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe told, um... He mentioned about a certain Jew, and he told the Friediker Rebbe, "He's a Jew with his entire heart." So the Friediker Rebbe told him, "I'm not impressed with a Jew who's ." You see, you have to be a Jew with all, with the ent- your entire body too. In other words, you have mitzvahs . So and then he says, "And as I'm listening to the Rebbe say these words, and I said... I thought to myself, and for sure you mean that a, a Jew with a whole body means you have to matzahs into the fancy, into the fancy Washington, D.C. hotel room, hotel room." And he was, he was, he was traumatized, terribly traumatized. And then he says how he went, he took Rashag and a few of the other people there to a, a kosher restaurant in Washington, D.C. to eat something. And, and, uh, and he says he... And he was again

49:31 Speaker 1 disappointed because in a, in a fancy establishment you take off your hat, but the Rebbe Rashab... The, the, the Rashag sat with his... He calls it... He, he has some, some funny name. I don't, I don't remember what, but for the, for the, the top hat that the, the Rashag had a tall hat that he wore in America, a top hat, and, and he says the, the Rashag sat with the hat the entire time. He didn't take off. He says you don't take off your hat. And, and he said he was very, very disappointed. That, I mean, that was, that was the, the extent of his disappointment there. Uh, but again, you see the Friediker Rebbe's, you know, matzahs in Washington, D.C. That was just an, an interesting aspect of this, of the, of the entire trip.

50:08 Speaker 3 Um, so what, what was the, um, what was the fundraising efforts? Like, the Fid- Fidei Club met with, uh, the Rebbe, people came to the Fidei Club. Like, what, what was the... What was that like?

50:22 Speaker 1 The fundraising efforts were mainly... The, the main fundraising efforts were appeals that they would make in every city. There was an official announcement in the newspapers that David Rebbe was gonna come to us, to whatever shul, and he's going to, he's going to speak, and there's gonna be appeals. And it was a very formal event. You would have one of the very big shuls of the city. They would have... They would find one of the biggest shuls or one of the biggest, uh, frum shuls, and you would have thousands of people there. And usually, usually there was more people that, than the, the shul could handle. And there would be a series of speakers. In, uh... We have a description of Detroit, a description of St. Louis, there's a description of Chicago, uh, where the Fidei, where the, the... There would be a speaker who would introduce another speaker, and then introduce another speaker, and they would speak about Lubavitch in Russia, and they would speak about what the Fidei Rebbe did in the Soviet Union, and they would speak about the Fidei Rebbe in general. Uh, like one reporter says how the Fidei Rebbe was then introduced by someone who knew the Rebbe, r- by Rabbi Fine, who knew Rabbi Schneersohn back in Russia, and he had some interesting things to say about the matter. And then they would introduce the Fidei Rebbe. And it's, in some articles, it looks like the Fidei Rebbe would sit there the whole time. In some articles, it

51:23 Speaker 1 looks like the Fidei Rebbe would show up at that point. But that was like a, a moment of electric shock. The, when the, the Rebbe's coming, the Rebbe's standing up, everybody would stand up and look and look to see. In one, in one article, they say the Fidei Rebbe, that everybody stood the entire time while the Fidei Rebbe was talking. Like a, like a Sichan 770. The... Everybody was standing and, and everybody would give guys-

51:44 Speaker 3 Like the Fidei Rebbe said in 9/11? The-

51:45 Speaker 1 So, so in these events, the Fidei Rebbe would give a speech, and he would speak about Yidden in Russia or about... And he would speak about Yiddishkeit in America and about Torah mitzvahs. And he, and there's little snippets in the descriptions where one, one article says how the Fidei Rebbe said that when it comes to Russian Jewry, it's l- better less words and more action. In other words, the Fidei Rebbe couldn't, is, can't come. He's fundraising for Russian Jewry, but at the same time, he knows that if he's gonna speak out against the Russian government, they're gonna know immediately, and they can have retribution against the Chassidim in, in Russia. So the Fidei Rebbe is always being very careful what to say and what not to say. And another time it says how he speaks about how American Jew- Jews, you need to know that you can be Yid, uh, a Yidden in America, and you can be frum in America, and you can do Torah and mitzvahs here. And, uh, and you have to strengthen Yiddishkeit. And part of that entire event, there would be an appeal. One of the rabbis gets up and says, "We're making an appeal for Russian Jews." And people would pass, take out money. I mean, in appeals. There was no credit cards or anything. It was all cash on the spot. So everybody took out cash. Maybe they had checks. I'm sure they had checks too. So people would right away just pass out money from the rafters

52:44 Speaker 1 and from the, from the vibber shul and from the back of the shul. Money would just come get thrown to the front, and they would collect it. And the, the problem was, the sad thing was, when the... Two months after the Fidei Rebbe came was the stock market crash and the Great Depression of 1929. So a lot of people did not have a lot of money. So, and the results were actually very, very un... Not what, what the, what, what they hoped for. In one description in, in Detroit, they say they collected eight hundred dollars that night. In St. Louis, they got sixteen hundred dollars. And in those days, that was a lot more money, but this wasn't the erech to what the Fidei Rebbe was actually hoping to get, to get from American Jews for, for Russia. But so that was, that was the appeal.

53:19 Speaker 3 Do we have co- Do we have from the Fidei Rebbe where he writes this? How do we know this?

53:24 Speaker 1 The... It's, this is, this is widely reported, and it's, I think it's pretty much common knowledge. I, I can't remember right now-

53:29 Speaker 3 I mean-

53:29 Speaker 1 ... if it's in the articles. Yeah.

53:31 Speaker 3 Yeah. And I, I heard the same thing. I'm just wondering if we have anything from the Fidei Rebbe about this.

53:36 Speaker 1 I don't think... I don't recall offhand seeing anything from the Fidei Rebbe, uh, a disappointment about the amount of money.

53:39 Speaker 3 When, when was the crash? When was the crash? It was, um, October?

53:42 Speaker 1 It was in Cheshvan, in Cheshvan time. I don't remember the English date, but I looked. I s- I matched it with Hebrew dates. It was, the Fidei Rebbe came Yud Beis Elo or Yud Gimmel Elo, and it was on... It was in Cheshvan time, right after. So the Fidei Rebbe was here Tisha, and he didn't travel anywhere until, until after, until, you know, Kis LeCheshvan, Kis LeSeh Avot Shav.

53:58 Speaker 3 He started the traveling, uh-

54:00 Speaker 1 So the traveling and the real fundraising-

54:01 Speaker 3 ... after the Great Depression

54:01 Speaker 1 ... happened after the Great Depression. And there was also, there was also an aspect, is that, you know, a Rebbe is not a fundraiser. A good fundraiser, um, you know, to fundraise money, you do whatever you need to fundraise money. And some people, you know, uh, so what- you do what- whatever, whatever it takes. Um, but the, the Rebbe's the Rebbe, so he, he doesn't come to fundraise money. I think the Rebbe once said a whole sharp lashon that he doesn't fundraise money. The word fundraising even was like a fagrep lashon. So the, so in Detroit, there's a story that there's a, a person, Isidore Starr, who was later close with, uh, Rabbi Shamtev, Berel Shamtev in, in Detroit. So he wrote his description of what he remembered from the visit. He was a boy. He was a bocher from a Nusach Ari family, and he was the Fidei Rebbe's translator in Yichidas during the visit to Detroit. And he said that a, a message came from Agvir. Agvir, who claimed to have been the Fidei Rebbe's classmate in, in Russia, in, in Lubavitch. And he said he's going to give a hundred thousand dollars if the Fidei Rebbe will come visit his home. And the Fidei Rebbe said that... He, the Fidei Rebbe thought about it and then came back and said that, um, there's many worthy people that, that are deserving of visits, and, and to give or to do it for money would, would, would make them, would, would, uh, put down

55:16 Speaker 1 all the people, the, the very worthy people. And the Fidei Rebbe said he doesn't wanna make any, any differences. Uh, if he wants, he can make the donation, and he'll get a letter of appreciation, but the Fidei Rebbe was not coming to his house. And that donation obviously never happened. And from hearsay, I've heard from people that, that heard from people, like the way the story was told in Detroit, that from what Isidore Starr told over is that... And he didn't write this in hi- in, in his Zecheres. I don't have it on paper, but he... That it was als- also about Shmiras Shabbos, that this Agvir wasn't Shomer Shabbos, and the Fidei Rebbe comes to a place and, and is telling everyone to be Shomer Shabbos. V'safar Aparan Mochtes that he goes to the guy who grew up apparently with the Fidei Rebbe himself in Lubavitch. Maybe he was in Cheder in Lubavitch, and now he's not Shomer Shabbos. V'safar Aparan Mochtes said the Fidei Rebbe is gonna give the only visit in Detroit is gonna be to this guy. So that's the type of thing, the type of problems you have when, when the Fidei Rebbe is... When people are giving money. I mean, it w- it was yana gelt ultimately. It w- it wasn't... It didn't bring

56:08 Speaker 3 But didn't, didn't the Friediker Rebbe meet with c-c-certain special people? The, the... Like, didn't he meet Justice, uh, Brandeis?

56:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. There were s- there were trips. The Friediker Rebbe made special trips. There were meetings that he made with specific people. Those were like-

56:21 Speaker 3 You know about, you know about Justice Brandeis?

56:22 Speaker 1 Yes. Yes. I think, I think it's, it's in, it's in, uh, um, T-Toldos Chabad, they write about it. There was other people, there was planned meetings, and he met with the Jewish leadership, the Jewish-

56:31 Speaker 3 There's a whole, there's a whole story, there's a whole story about this. And a shout-out to Rabbi Levi Mendelov who, uh-

56:38 Speaker 1 Okay

56:38 Speaker 3 ... told me about this little anecdote, which I didn't check. I didn't, I didn't corroborate this. But apparently, when the Friediker Rebbe... Justice Brandeis was in- was instrumental in helping the Friediker Rebbe escape from the Nazis-

56:53 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

56:53 Speaker 3 ... later. Now, apparently, when the Friediker Rebbe was in Eretz Yisrael, the Friediker Rebbe met with Rav Kook.

57:02 Speaker 1 Yeah.

57:02 Speaker 3 And there's a whole story 'cause Rav Kook's mother was from-

57:05 Speaker 1 Was Chabad, from Chabad family

57:07 Speaker 3 ... from Chabad family, so she asked the Friediker Rebbe for a bracha. She was there.

57:11 Speaker 1 Yeah.

57:11 Speaker 3 And the Friediker Rebbe s-asked Rav Kook who he should be going to visit in, in the US.

57:21 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

57:21 Speaker 3 And I think... I, I thought for, like for fundraising purposes, but I'm not sure. And, and apparently Rav Kook told the Friediker Rebbe, "You should meet Justice Brandeis."

57:30 Speaker 1 Hmm. Very interesting.

57:32 Speaker 3 So, a-and the Friediker Rebbe then met him, and then later he was instrumental in helping the Friediker Rebbe anyway-

57:37 Speaker 1 Come out of Nazi Germany.

57:39 Speaker 3 Yeah, I think so. If I'm, if I'm-

57:40 Speaker 1 Very interesting

57:40 Speaker 3 ... if I, uh, uh, ju- everyone should please double-check if I got the whole story right. But something like that.

57:46 Speaker 1 I, I, I didn't see that story. There were definitely meetings. The Friediker Rebbe definitely went to meetings with major leadership. But in a regular city, he came, there was the appeal, and then people came for Yechidus. Many, many people came for Yechidus. There was a never-ending line of people who would come for Yechidus. And it's int- the... I think one of the... But the... Like, in other words, the... It seems like the money side was a disappointment, but what was not a disappointment was the, was the Yiddishkeit side. Thousands of people came to see the Friediker Rebbe, and people w-went to the Yechidus, and they came out with Echadas Tavos. There was Shiur when the Friediker Rebbe started in places. There were... The, and the, the effect is unbelievable. You see it in the newspaper articles, how they say young women who, who seem to, who seem to be far from Yiddishkeit. The re-reporter says, "These women seem to be far from Yiddishkeit, like the North Pole to the South Pole, and yet they come and they promise the Friediker Rebbe that they're gonna keep Taharas Hamishpacha or they're gonna keep Shabbos, or they're gonna keep something, uh, then whatever mitzvahs the Friediker Rebbe told them to keep." And the, the, the... And the Friediker Rebbe himself writes, you have also a lot of descriptions, wh- which is very special. Besides for these appeals that would make, like the Kabbalas Panim and the appeals, the Friediker Rebbe would say Yechidus. And they would... It would

58:45 Speaker 1 be at a special announcement that was usually in a shul that was a Nusach Ari Shul in whatever given city. The Nusach Ari Shuls in those days were very big. In... The Friediker Rebbe davened on Rosh Hashanah in a Nusach Ari Shul in Brownsville that had 1,200 seats. Like, today pe-people know, like I know here in Cleveland, there's a Nusach Ari Shul called Temach Tzedek, which is a tiny shul. It probably ha... I don't know if they have... If they can fit in 100 people. But, um, but it... That's probably a newer shul and the, the, the previous version of that shul probably had many more seats. That's, that's, you know, like in the downtown areas where there are no, no Yiden any-anymore. So the, the Nusach Ari Shuls were big shuls, and it would say-

59:15 Speaker 3 Yeah, all over the place. Also in Canada.

59:17 Speaker 1 Every sh-

59:17 Speaker 3 Toronto had a, a Nusach Ari, big Nusach Ari Shul. Yeah

59:19 Speaker 1 ... Hanshe, Hanshe Lubavitch or Nusach Ari or Temach Tzedek or something like that. And they would have... They would be... They would put out no-notices that the Friediker Rebbe's gonna say Yechidus or a Ma'amar, Ma'amar Yechidus. And, and the people would come, and, you know, everybody would s- uh, the, the, the Friediker Rebbe would come in. There would be crowds of people crushing. And, and there would be too many people outside and inside, and the whole, the whole shul will be packed to the rafters. And the Friediker Rebbe would come in, and it... There's whole long descriptions how he wa-he walked in slowly and carefully, and he would sit down at the, at the head, usually, you know, where they have the Hashfa seats at the, at the front of a shul in those days or maybe on the bimah. And he would sit for a few minutes in utter silence, thinking, being Mizbeinen. And the whole shul would be, you know, standing there quiet, totally quiet. And then he would start the Ma'amar, and he would say a Ma'amar. And the Ma'amar, or... And the Friediker Rebbe says, uh, how he writes, he says the Ma'amar are always have a Yoniym that everyone can understand, even if it's not everything. And you could look to Ma'amar from America, talk very, very easy, although they're still, they're still Ma'amar. There are certain pieces that I'm sure not everyone understood. And they... And, uh, it would be a Ma'amar, let's say, for an hour, 45 minutes,

1:00:18 Speaker 1 an hour and a half. The Ma'amar in those days were long. And afterwards, people would chazer it, and it was, it was a very, very special thing. You can see... You can tell from the descriptions that, that there's... This is something that the Jews in America never really experienced. To be by... To see, to see a Rebbe, to see... To, to, to be like, like in the Rebbe's presence, the Ruchnius of that was some... It was very, very powerful. And people would later chazer the Ma'amar, or they would chazer things over to their shuls or to the people that, uh, you know, the, the, what the Friediker Rebbe said and which parts. And everybody would compete, you know, did, uh, who understood what and how much did you understand. And, uh, um, one of the most special things is, is the, is the, is the people who themselves have been to Rebbe. You have... Russia was... Uh, America was full of old Alte Yidden who had themselves gone to Rebbeim previously. If it was their Berushav, their Marash, even the Semach Tzedek perhaps. And you also had Chassidim of the other streams of Chabad. You had Kopusters, you had Liadi, you had Niezhen. There were people from all of those places, and some of them, like Babruisk, the last branch of Kopust that, that, the, the, before, before n-none of those streams existed was, was, uh, Babruisk. And Mishmayenech Babruisk, he passed away only five years, six years before this visit. He entire... He passed

1:01:26 Speaker 1 away in Taf Shbeh Gimel. This is Taf Shbeh Tes, Taf Shbeh Tzadik. So you have tons of these people that are 40, 50, 60 years old. They had been to Lubavitch. They had, they had experienced all of this with their parents. And, and they... And the newspaper articles describe how they're, they're, they're there and they're just in tears. A-and they're, they're emotional like, like it's so... This is, this is... It's the most emotional thing that has ever happened to them. One, in Chicago, there's one description. A reporter says he sees an old Jew standing there with his kids and his Eyniklach, and he's dancing, and he's excited, and, and he's, he's crying. And, uh, "What are you so excited about?" And he said, "I can't wait to see... The, the Rebbe's gonna come. I saw his grandfather. I saw, I saw the Marash." And he says, "You wanna know why I'm now... Why I'm so old? Why I had Arichas Yamim? Why I'm 90 years old today? Because every time I saw the Marash, I got another 10 years of life." That's what it meant to see the Licht Hakapanu from Rebbe. And now... And I saw... I knew his son, I knew the Rebbe Rashab, and now I'm gonna see the Eynikl. And he started dancing And, and you see this again and again and again of Chassidim resembling upklef and the, and the Friediker Rebbe in his own diaries, in his own letters, he-- in letters primarily, he writes... You see him, he

1:02:26 Speaker 1 writes how he sees when he walks out, when he shows up in the train station, when his face appears, and the looks of people, he sees how people are crying and excited all at the same time. Chedva, that, that the, the, the, the emotions were overwhelming. They're so excited to see the Friediker Rebbe, and they're... And, and it brought back such memories, such strong memories from home. And, and the Friediker Rebbe always writes how, like a Yerot that it should be poel and that it should have a pool in Emshachas, that these people should taka stay connected afterwards. And there were taka many people that, that, that changed after, uh, in, in the, in the years following and, and had a much stronger shachas Yiddishkeit.

1:03:01 Speaker 3 When, when the Friediker Rebbe ultimately came to settle in America, uh, of s- of some reason I don't... You, you don't see such a thing of like the outreach to, to all the Chassidim all over the US or maybe, maybe because the Friediker Rebbe just didn't travel as much. First of all, he did go. He went to Chicago. I guess maybe the Friediker Rebbe wasn't traveling as much then.

1:03:21 Speaker 1 Yeah. The Friediker Rebbe barely traveled when he came to America, and, and maybe like you... Like, like, like I said, the Friediker Rebbe said that that time he came as askan tiburi, and this time he came as alt Chassidim uchsiddis. But you do see there were letters and there were connections. When the Friediker Rebbe went to Chicago, part in Tufshin Beis, on the itinerary was to visit the shir, Gemara shir that he had told people to start in, in the, in the, in the previous visit. There had, there had been Yunga light there that came to visit the Friediker Rebbe, and the Friediker Rebbe told me, "You have to start a shir Gemara." And they had a shir Gemara for a long time. And ten years later, the Friediker Rebbe was coming back. Twelve years later, and he's gonna come visit Lu- he's gonna come visit this Gemara shir. He's gonna reno... And but lepoel, uh, Rebbe Sholem Schneersohn passed away, and that's, that, that trip was cut off-

1:04:02 Speaker 3 Yeah, because visit

1:04:02 Speaker 1 ... and the visit never happened. But you do, you do see that. A-and it's, and it's... You see also that types of connections in the years later by the Rebbe too. But it... The, the sad thing is that many of these people, they were basically a dying breed. If they were already forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years old, in all likelihood, their children were no longer, um, had a... No longer had the sa- same shachas like they had. And many of these people just went off. Either they came back, or they went off and assimilated and, and, uh, you know, we don't have a shachas with them anymore. So that process was already happening. When... By the time the Friediker Rebbe came in Taf Resh Peh Tes, Taf Resh Tzadik, Jews had started... Had been coming to America for fifty years. So the process of assimilation but it happened, but it was already, it was already, already in full swing. So you had either the Friediker Rebbe caught them in Taf Resh Peh Tes, ten years later, you have to catch them again, or, you know, there's already less... There's ten years less of people that are, that are there to work with. And, uh, and that, that's the reality. Like e-even here in, in Amer- in Cleveland, my great-grandparents, Zalman Kesin came here. Zalman Sholom Kesin, they came. They... He became the Rav of the Tamach Tzadik Shul. The president of the shul was a family member, their own family member from back in Russia,

1:05:10 Speaker 1 and who had... I think they were coppers there in, in, back there, but he was the president of the Nusach Ari Shul. Uh, where's the family today? I mean, they're-

1:05:16 Speaker 3 They were, they were related to, to, to-

1:05:18 Speaker 1 They were related to us. Yes. They were my... It was my great-grandfather's cousin or second cousin or third cousin. They... There was a family that we... Was the Madorsky family that, that they knew, and they knew they had a relationship to Alt's family. But over the generations, either the... Eith- you know, the, the way the Rebbe said in the Sicha in Yud Beis Tammuz, I think that was in London, Zion. The Rebbe says that, that when he speaks about Am Yisrael, that there... That we know that pretty much th- there's a three-generation, four-generation rule, that if, that either you have a... If you, if, if the parents and the grandparents are not gonna have shachas Yiddishkeit, at some point, the grandchildren are just gonna be lost, and, and we, we have no, we have no shachas with them anymore. So and, and you see, you see that all over, and you see that unfortunately with a lot of the Nusach Ari people in, in, uh, in... Yeah.

1:05:57 Speaker 3 There's someone that I know that has a whole thesis how basically, um, how so many famous Jews in America are mamash direct descendants of, uh, of the Babsha Chassidim. Like, uh, and, and, and related to, to other people, you know? So for every person you know, there's, uh, many family members or relatives that, uh, that were, were already here and, uh, eventually assimilated.

1:06:25 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, the, the same thing was true about Russia too, that, that many of the people in Russia-

1:06:30 Speaker 3 I know, I know, I know. I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna say any names, but I know a few people where I live here that have Labatcher names, Am-Americanized n- versions of-

1:06:39 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah

1:06:39 Speaker 3 ... like very famous Labatcher names, and they're taka related. I mean, and, and they know. They know that they're-

1:06:43 Speaker 1 Or Sdishar towns.

1:06:45 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:06:45 Speaker 1 There's also Sdishar towns. There's, uh, you know, there, there were sim- similar things, similar names. There's many, many. Yes. There's no question. So the Friediker Rebbe there was making the shachas in the Taf Resh Peh Tes. I mean, there is a continuation in Taf Resh Tzadik. This Isidor Starr in Detroit, for example. He was the translator for the Friediker Rebbe during his visit in Taf Resh Peh Tes. Well, um, his family came... He came from a Nusach Ari family. His father, he writes, when the Friediker Rebbe's heard the... When they heard the Friediker Rebbe was coming, the, the... It was the Simchat Shabbat in his house. It looked like a Yom Tov if you would walk inside. That's the, the, the level of excitement. Even though his father had never seen the Rebbe or any of the other Rebbeim. But then he... Later, he writes that he was at the inauguration of Ten Chatirim on Bedford and Dean. I don't know what exactly the connection was over, over the years, but you see he had a shachas with the Friediker Rebbe there, and then he came later to the... And, and he, and he saw, and he was by that Hanakas, uh, whatever, the Hanakas Havan Apino or the, or the inauguration. And later, he had a shachas with the Schlochum when they came to, when they came to Detroit. So the shachas is there. You definitely see pieces of shachas everywhere. Um, in the article about St. Louis, Rabbi Lando has there a very

1:07:46 Speaker 1 interesting thing where, where while the Friediker Rebbe was in St. Louis, there was a few Frumer women who were upset that there was no good mikvah in St. Louis. They... And, you know, in those days, Jews know how to build beautiful shuls. Beautiful, beautiful shuls were everywhere in, in America, but a, a good mikvah, that nobody cared about. So w- while the Friediker Rebbe was sitting in the shul with a thousand people there, these... A few women started making a no- making noise from the vibrator shul. They started banging with the, with the benches or something, and the Friediker Rebbe looked up to see what the ruckus was about, and they called down that St. Louis needs a mikvah. So the Friediker Rebbe said, "Okay, we're gonna make... There's gonna be a mikvah." He made a, made a committee And he left them, and he gave them a few rolls of pennies to give out to anyone that donates to the mikvah. So they had a dinner afterwards, and they had fundraising, and people got the pennies. And whoever was the community, they, they, they gave out the pennies with a little card that had a picture of the Frierdiker Rebbe. There's a picture of the Frierdiker Rebbe in a spodik standing over a bookshelf with a safer like this, uh, from like the early years, in the early pays. And they say, um, they say, "This coin..." It, it says in Yiddish, "This coin was given by the Lubavitch Rebbe to anyone who donates

1:08:47 Speaker 1 to the mikvah, and it should be..." And he said, "There should be a, a berakhah and hatslakhah for anyone who holds this, this coin." And, and Rabbi Lando, he writes that, that he, he, he didn't get it from, from Nora. There was a family in St. Louis that still has the coin and still has the connection, and they have a shayaikh of the shokhem. So the, the, the... There is the, this-- the long-term shayaikh as you do see. But of course, for, for, um... You know, if someone came and saw the Frierdiker once for five minutes, I mean, there's a peltaft in Hashemma, but uh, but over generations, uh, the, it's the unfortunate reality is, is, is the, is the, the assimilation of Jews in America. That's, that's the, that's the, that's, that's what we're doing, right?

1:09:22 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:09:22 Speaker 1 That's, that's what we're trying to, that's what we're trying to fight.

1:09:25 Speaker 3 It continues. Um, what, what are some of the other highlights of the Frierdiker Rebbe's trip? He went... Didn't he go to Wisconsin also?

1:09:34 Speaker 1 Frierdiker Rebbe went to Milwau-Wisconsin. He went to Chicago for a very long time, and from Chicago, he went for a short time to Milwaukee. After Chicago, he went to, uh, Detroit and St. Louis. Those were like short visits just for a few days or even for a few hours. For a few days. Um, then he also went to Boston, and he went to... He went, um, m-ma-many, many cities. I don't remember all of them. And in every city, he went from shul to shul all over New York. Um-

1:10:00 Speaker 3 He-

1:10:01 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:10:03 Speaker 3 But he was based in New York the whole time?

1:10:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. The w- It was based in New York. The Frierdiker Rebbe was based in New York.

1:10:08 Speaker 3 In Crown Heights.

1:10:08 Speaker 1 He comes back. So in Crown Heights was, was the official house. And Rabbi Jacobson says that e-even though, e- once they realized that even that they're not sure v- how to really fear on, uh, fear Zakham with the Rebbe, so they, they decided that a hotel is better, and they just went to a hotel that still actually exists today. You can... I don't know what it looks like today, but on the article on Ash.org, they had a, they had a picture of it, and they have the address there where the Frierdiker Rebbe would often go to a hotel for a few days. And, but Tishrei was in, was in that house in Crown Heights. And the Tishrei was very, very special because there was lots of chassidim came, a chassidim that had been there previously and, and, and, and younger generations. Everybody came to see, um, you know, what's gonna be... What the Rebbe in Lubavitch. You know, how does, how does the Rebbe do, do Tishrei? And before Tish-- before Rosh Hashanah, a delegation came from the biggest Nosso HaRishon in Brownsville that had twelve hundred seats, and they asked the Frierdiker Rebbe to come davven by him, and the Frierdiker Rebbe agreed. Big d- a big shul. And the Frierdiker Rebbe davened there Rosh Hashanah three hours, uh, on Rosh Hashanah night, and he, and he came there. When he came do- He says that when he came down the street walking into the shul, every window was open, every balcony was full

1:11:09 Speaker 1 of people looking out. Uh, he came with a shaimel, with spodik, and, uh, and he'd said davened Rosh Hashanah for three hours. And when he turned around, there were still... He said there were three thousand people in the shul, and when the Frierdiker Rebbe turned around, there were still a thousand people there waiting to say, uh, L'Shana Tova to the Frierdiker Rebbe. And Shaul Jacobson writes that he met someone twenty years later that said, I... "That I'll never forget, till the day I die, I'll never forget the cries that, that we heard from the Frierdiker Rebbe on that, that Rosh Hashanah. The, the cries that you were able to hear from wall to wall, you were able to hear the davening." And so there was Rosh Hashanah, and he said a Ma'amar that he said two Ma'amarim there on the second night, then Matis Rosh Hashanah, and the entire city came to hear the Ma'amarim. And Yom Kippur was there too. Yom Kippur, the Frierdiker Rebbe just stayed in the shul. It-- For Rosh Hashanah, it's Brownsville. They had to get a special place for him to stay in Brownsville for Rosh Hashanah. But Yom Kippur, the Frierdiker Rebbe just stayed in the shul the entire twenty-four hours. And the, and Sukkos and Simchas Torah was done in Crown Heights, and they had a big Sukkah there. And there was many, many people. There's many des-descriptions of all the farbrengens that the Frierdiker Rebbe does the Simchas with the Rebbe farbrengen. And there's a, and

1:12:10 Speaker 1 there was Simchas Torah, the Hakafas. The Frierdiker Rebbe writes how he, uh, how... The Frierdiker Rebbe writes in his own letter that he was sitting by Atara Resa in the, in the big room in the, in the, in the home there. And everybody, they were s- they were selling Atara Resa. And the Frierdiker Rebbe said he was sitting towards the wall, which is exact like by the Rebbe Simchas Torah. They used to sell all the, all the psukim. The Rebbe sat facing the wall by his place, uh, like not, not being involved. So the Frierdiker writes how he's sitting facing the wall, and he decided that Hakafas is gonna be just like in Lubavitch. There's gonna be no differences. So, and there was that. There was the full Hakafas there. The, the, the Frierdiker Rebbe danced the first and the last Hakafa, and then everyone else danced in between. I think in those years, everyone used to dance for the other Hakafas in a circle. In Lubavitch also, the Rabbeim would dance in the middle by the first and seventh Hakafa. The middle Hakafas, everybody danced in a circle like regular Hakafas. But by the Rebbe, I guess, I guess it just the, the space did no longer allowed it. That's probab- I don't, I don't know if that's why it stopped. By the Rebbe, everyone just stood in the place and danced, uh, facing the Rebbe. But the Frierdiker Rebbe, there, there was Hakafas, and then there was a farbrengen all night. The farbrengen

1:13:06 Speaker 1 ended on Simchas Torah night at seven AM, and everybody was saying that America never, has never ever seen such a thing. It's unheard of. That there was, and there was Ma'amarim, and there was Sichas, and there was Simchas with Rebbe. And it, and it's really, it's, it's really very an amaz- an, an amazing description to see how people are coming to see a snapshot of Lubavitch. But it's like the Frierdiker Rebbe on... But totally not in his element. There's only a few normal chassidim there, and yet the whole... It's, it's the Rebbe with the whole, with the whole hispashtus of this is how the Rebbe does things, and this is how it's gonna be. And the, and the item is just, uh, uh, the, the hispiles is, is unbelievable. I don't... I, I, I was wondering to, I was wondering if there's any other visit to America that has, that has anything dim it to that. I don't... In the... Just the sheer numbers of people that came out to see the Frierdiker Rebbe and the impact. And like I, I, I read a little bit about Jewish American history, and I, I haven't seen anything that, that even comes close. Not before, not after.

1:14:00 Speaker 3 And you see, um, and you see when the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America the second time, you see the, the, the, the crowd that's, that's there to greet the Frierdiker Rebbe is also, uh, immense.

1:14:12 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:14:12 Speaker 3 Tremendous-

1:14:13 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:14:13 Speaker 3 ... tremendous crowd.

1:14:14 Speaker 1 It's actually much bigger than the first time because the first time, the, they put the Frierdiker Rebbe on a tugboat that came to a regular pier. It wasn't the official place where they really, where they received gu- where they received ships. So it was like a... It was just like any pier. If you go walk on a boardwalk in, in Br- in Brooklyn or anywhere, and there's just a sidewalk along, along the, along the water, that's what there was. There was nowhere to stay, there was nowhere to go inside, and it was raining. And, and the people came early in the morning, and the Frierdiker Rebbe showed up. The, the tugboat came by midday af- afternoon. So after six, seven hours of rain, a lot of people had fallen away. And so you see the crowd is actually not as big as it, as it had been earlier. But by, but the second time you see the, the, the crowds are immense and, uh, and it's, it's, it's a very, very interesting story. And it's also interesting to... 'Cause you read all, you read these stories and... But the Rebbe's tune was in Gans Namders, like the Baal Shem Tov used to travel around everywhere, and the Maggid was, uh, Peish of Kivisi, or the Maggid stayed in one place, and, and people came to the Maggid. Then you see the same thing by the Rebbe. The Frierdiker Rebbe was traveling to all these places. The Rebbe is, is, uh, is, is stays in seven

1:15:12 Speaker 1 seventy and that's it. And it's a very interesting contrast. Although there is a letter where the Frierdike Re-- where it seems that the Rebbe planned a visit to Eretz Yisrael in but, uh, but that never happened in the end.

1:15:25 Speaker 3 Okay. So, um, and then the... So when did the Frierdiker Rebbe leave?

1:15:34 Speaker 1 The end was in Cheydishov. I don't remember the exact date. Um, in Cheydishov, Taf Shadeck, the visit came to an end. There was a big Yubetz Tammuz fabric engine that hundreds and hundreds of people came. It was like the, 'cause the, the, uh, taste from the Shalom for the Frierdiker Rebbe. And then there was another... There was a-- there's a video of the Melavve Malkin, the Kramer home, that's also at the end right before the Frierdiker Rebbe leaves. And then there was a small fabric engine. The Yisroel Jacobson writes... He doesn't write exactly what happened. This is an interesting story where he says that all the Tmimim came for the last Shabbos. I think it was one of the Shabbats in Tammuz of. And they stayed in the same hotel that the Frierdiker Rebbe was staying in, and they assumed that after davening, after Shacharis in the morning, they'll get invited in for a fabric engine. And he says, which the Frierdiker Rebbe would sometimes daven very long on Shabbos. Sometimes if he wanted fabric engine, he would daven short. So but he says the Frierdiker Rebbe davened very long, and Mincha time, they davened Mincha, and then they were called in for a fabric engine. And it was only the people that were really close. These are the Chassidim that grew, that were in Lubavitch for many years, and Timche Tmimim, and the, these-- the Frierdiker Rebbe could, could speak openly to them, and the Frierdiker Rebbe was not on show. And, and he

1:16:43 Speaker 1 says that the Frierdiker Rebbe spoke to them for an hour and a half. He spoke a very, very sharp sicha. He doesn't say what. And he says, he says the... A-and he writes that, that it was very, very difficult. He says, like we w- we wanted this, the floor to swallow us. That's what he writes. And it's, it seems like, it sounds like, like a sicha like Beis Kislev or something like that. 'Cause there were, there were moments throughout the, the visit of the Frierdiker Rebbe where the Frierdiker Rebbe is, is seeing the Chassidim in America. Chassidim in America, they're, you know, to, to some extent, they're Americanizing. There was one time where Chacham Fegan told the Frierdiker Rebbe that he can't... He doesn't know how to talk to the American Chassidim 'cause they all wear shirts and ties. 'Cause in, in Russia, the, the invention of shirts didn't exist. They, they wore like undershirts. I don't think they were full undershirts, but they didn't wear top shirts like we wear today, and, uh, especially for sure not ties. So Chacham Fegan said, "I don't know how to talk to these, the American Tmimim. They all wear shirts and ties." And, and the Frierdiker Rebbe said It's not the ties are not perfectly in place. Like, uh, it's okay. So but there were all... There were indications, I mean, that the, the state of the, the... Even the Chassidim, the Frierdiker Rebbe held, wanted to hold the Chassidim to a higher standard. Maybe that's what

1:17:50 Speaker 1 the sicha was about. I'm not entirely sure. Or another theory I had was that it was about Hafetz Mayim. The Frierdiker Rebbe was pushing the entire time that the Chassidim in America needed a Hafetz Mayim. By Tafish Pay, the Dalet, the Frierdiker Rebbe wants Shluchim in every state, something that didn't ha... It took ninety years for that to happen. But the, that... The Frierdiker Rebbe is talking in, in, in, in terms, in very, very broad terms. And, you know, you can imagine a Chassid that ca- came from Russia. He barely speaks English. He doesn't know the language. It obviously wasn't, wasn't matching up, and that you see clearly in the letters. But anyways, I don't know what the Frierdiker Rebbe spoke about, but there was a very sharp sicha to the... only to the very, very close Chassidim, right, as they were leaving. Uh, but then, and then the, uh, Frierdiker Rebbe wrote very, very warm letters and very beautiful letters about, about, about continuing to and to, and to raise Ch- Chassidim in America, and that in the future he'll take a comeback to live there. That's... It, it's not... It's almost directly said. It's very, very implied. And, and, uh, and then, then the Frierdiker Rebbe left. It was, it was in, in Tammuz of Tafish Sadek. And, uh, after that, the Frierdiker Rebbe saw that he wanted to keep the Hashgacha going, so he... That's when he sent a, a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, the Shadarim. The Itshada Masmid

1:18:56 Speaker 1 came for, for a few years, and Motrai Chefitz was not as famous, but he was one of the biggest Chassidim of the Frierdiker Rebbe. He also came, and then Shmolovitten came. Shmolovitten came closer to the war, and he got stuck here, and that's how he ended up in America. And that, that was the story. It's, it's, it's really, it's really a beautiful, beautiful story. Um, the... Uh, I wrote, I wrote the article, and one of the editors already messaged me how, how touched he was, and someone else told me he was really getting crying. I don't know if everyone will cry, but that was... It's a good, uh, it's a good beginning. But, but, but it, it's, it's really, it's really an, an amazing, amazing description to, to see, to see what happened when the Frierdiker Rebbe came here.

1:19:30 Speaker 3 And from there, the Frierdiker Rebbe went back to Riga, then a little... Then a while later-

1:19:35 Speaker 1 And, uh-

1:19:35 Speaker 3 They moved to Poland

1:19:36 Speaker 1 ... Yeah. In Tza- in Tzadikimol they went to Poland, yeah. Yeah. In Tzadikin-- I think in Tzadikimol-

1:19:39 Speaker 3 Three years later.

1:19:41 Speaker 1 Right. There was... For two years, the Frierdiker Rebbe traveled a lot in Europe also. He went to Latvia. There's a, there's a trip to Rakshik with my Marmar in Rakshik, and saved my Marmar Yiddish, and there's, there's, there's a whole... many, many trips that the Frierdiker Rebbe took.

1:19:51 Speaker 3 That's where, uh, that's where Rav Shmolovitten was.

1:19:54 Speaker 1 The Rakshiker Rav, right. Right. He was the Rav in Rakshik. That's true.

1:19:59 Speaker 3 Hmm.

1:19:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:20:00 Speaker 3 And there's a lot of the Po... Uh, the Frierdiker Rebbe in Poland is a whole another story 'cause the-

1:20:04 Speaker 1 That's a story in itself. I guess we'll have to do a whole, a whole another article for that. Yeah.

1:20:07 Speaker 3 The Frierdiker Rebbe built a whole empire in, in, in, in the, in the few years that he was in Poland.

1:20:11 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really every, every five years of the Frierdiker Rebbe is another book or another, another whole, whole Ariks because the... In Russia, he was doing in Poland, it was about making Chassid- Chassid Chabad in a, in a new area, and in America, it was about teaching Aleph Beis to kids. And, uh, uh, the Frierdiker Rebbe basically reinvented himself. It was like a... The whole Aveiro was entirely different every time he, he moved to a different place, and he was moving, moving places the entire time. That, uh, that, that was, uh, that was constant.

1:20:41 Speaker 3 Right. One of the integral components of being a Chassid are the Chassidishe Yamim Tovim and Yemei Depagra. Whether it's Hey Teves, Yitshvat, Yid Aleph Nissan, or Gimel Tammuz. These days give us an opportunity to connect with our Rabbeim, to connect with each other, and be better Chassidim. What is the story behind each of these days? How did the Rebbe commemorate and celebrate these days? And most importantly, what are the lessons, the takeaways, and the action items, ˈhamayse hu 'ikre needed for each of these days? All of this and much, much more are answered in the new set recently published by Der Herr. Our Days is a journey through the Chabad calendar in story, meaning, and practice. With over seven hundred beautiful glossy pages with elevated content, beautiful, beautiful photographs, you, your family, and friends will enjoy and live with each Chassidishe Yom Tov. This book is a must for every Lubavitcher home, for every shul, for every school. It is a perfect gift item. This will not collect dust. It will be used day after day, month after month, year after year. You can have this set. Go to derher.org/ourdays. Order your set today and start living like Chassidishe Yom Tov. All right. So let's, uh-- that's very fascinating, and let's, um, let's move right along to, to the next topic that I want, I wanted to cover. And that is also a future article coming up soon about the Menorah, which is a very, very famous topic that, uh, the Rebbe advocated for this

1:22:41 Speaker 3 that it says in the Rambam and Nashi that the Menorah is diagonal, tzalachen. Not like is in the Sha'ar Titus, in the Arch of Titus, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Most people, you know, there's a lot said about it. Recently, it has been highlighted this Tisha B'Av, the Hamivin Yavin, people know about it. We could talk about it maybe if you want. But anyways, but, uh, I'm sure... Okay. So let, let, let's dive right into it, and I guess I'll ask questions if I have them.

1:23:15 Speaker 1 No, it-- That video was part of a... A few people reached out and said we have to make an article on the Menorah 'cause based on whatever they were watching on Tisha B'Av on the Yoel Gold movie on and where he has some, some people, some, uh, or at least the claim is on the video that there's an edas of people that went down and saw the Menorah in the Vatican. And one of them says that he saw it. He says, uh, he doesn't say it clearly, but he basically says that he saw, uh, the Menorah's tzalachen. And that is in contrast in the video, in the entire video and, and anywhere else in archeology that, that there's much more archeology, um, with, uh, with a round Menorah. That was the symbol that you, you did it. It's in Rome like that and all over Rome and, and a lot of the archeology in Eretz Yisrael is round Menorahs.

1:23:53 Speaker 3 So you're saying, you're saying the elephant in the room, so to speak, is that besides, besides the, the, the, the Arch of Titus that has a round Menorah, all over the world in Rome and in Eretz Yisrael. Now, by the way, in archeological Menorahs that have been found, some are diagonal.

1:24:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:24:12 Speaker 3 But I would say majority-

1:24:13 Speaker 1 The majority-

1:24:14 Speaker 3 The majority are round.

1:24:15 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:24:15 Speaker 3 The majority are round. Okay. So, so-

1:24:17 Speaker 1 The majority are round.

1:24:18 Speaker 3 I think, I think you have to go... I don't know. T-t-talk about-

1:24:21 Speaker 1 Oh, oh, it's a very interesting thing because the, the whole conversation about Menorahs is really it's, it's a, it's a, it's ˈtanach behit ˈnehidel bevsa'erem. It's, it's two different conversations happening at the same time. It's like Lubavitchers are talking in one direction, and other people are talking in the other direction, and it's not a real conversation because where do you s-- What-- The, the real question is, what's your point of entry? Do we take things from Torah, or do we take things from other places? What's true? Is the historian... Are the historians true? Are the... Is archeology true, or is Torah true? And everything else has to match up. So when the Rebbe talks about-

1:24:53 Speaker 3 You're saying al deta-

1:24:54 Speaker 1 Menorah

1:24:55 Speaker 3 ... al deta for many years, people said that archeologically, there's no proof of the Jews in Egypt until one day-

1:25:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah

1:25:04 Speaker 3 ... recently... Oh, by the way, we, we did find proof.

1:25:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:25:07 Speaker 3 Like, okay. So then-

1:25:07 Speaker 1 The whole story, the whole story of biblical-

1:25:09 Speaker 3 Now-

1:25:09 Speaker 1 The whole story of biblical archeology is, is that, is l'chatul, the start of was saying none of it is true, and then now slowly you have to back off 'cause slowly you find one thing, then you find another thing-

1:25:16 Speaker 3 Right

1:25:16 Speaker 1 ... then you find another thing. It's not a good place to be.

1:25:19 Speaker 3 As opposed to saying everything is true, and then let's, uh-

1:25:22 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:25:22 Speaker 3 ... you know, w-w-a, will, well, time will tell or i- when or if we'll find the archeological proof as well.

1:25:28 Speaker 1 Exactly.

1:25:28 Speaker 3 Okay.

1:25:28 Speaker 1 So, so for a regular person, and it's, it's totally, it's totally farshtandig that a guy, um, you know, he sees the Arch of Titus and it's round, and you see archeology, it's round. So what was the Menorah? But pashut is it was round. The Rebbe didn't talk much about... didn't talk about archeology at all. I don't think-

1:25:41 Speaker 3 He spoke about, he spoke about the Arch of-

1:25:43 Speaker 1 About Titus, Titus.

1:25:43 Speaker 3 Titus.

1:25:44 Speaker 1 Exactly. In other words, it was, it start-- Oh, the whole thing started. It was like a, it was a, a very short piece of a sikha. There was talking about the luchas, and the luchas are, are supposed to be straight, and that's clear in the Gemara. And the Rebbe said, "By the way"-

1:25:54 Speaker 3 Not straight. Not square. Not straight. Square

1:25:55 Speaker 1 ... square, right. The top is, the top is straight. The-- And the Rebbe says, "By the way, the same is true about a Menorah." And the Rebbe says that the Rav put out the picture of the ˈKsav Yad of the Rambam. Rabbi Kappach had published a, a Pirkei Avos Mishnayos that he had, and he included the picture of the ˈKsav Yad of the Rambam. I think he was the first person to put it out with the ˈKsav Yad of the Ram- of the picture. And the Rebbe says that you see the ˈKonen Klei Menorah are straight. And in Torah, it's-- the, the indications in Torah are that it's straight. And yet, what are all the Menorahs everywhere? They're, they're, they're round. And where-- what's the most prominent one? The, the Sha'ar Titus. The Rebbe says it looks like we're all copying the Sha'ar Titus. And v past this, it's in, it's a m'shiyach D'kanin also. V past this that we are, we are all copying the Menorah that expresses the, the, the worst part of our goal is the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Instead of p- uh, doing the Menorahs Hamikdash, the, the way the Torah says, which is that, which is the Menorah that's gonna be by-- with the Gula. So on the ˈKach HaMashiach, how, how, how... To use the Titus Menorahs is a, is a, is a, is a contradiction. And that it was a very short thing.

1:26:55 Speaker 3 Aren't there some early sources in Torah that say that they're round also?

1:26:59 Speaker 1 No, no. They're not, not direct, not clearly like that. So what there is, so then there were reminders on the, on the Sikha, and then a week later, the Rebbe s-spoke about it again, and the Rebbe spoke about more on the Torah aspect. So you have Is, where in Torah do you see it's round? There's nowhere in Torah that says clearly in round. The, the... Actually, if you-- the only-- I mean, from what I was reading on the topic, the only "" you're able to make in the I don't mean in Torah. There, there, there's a saying in- I understand ... there's a saying in the Torah. Yeah, yeah. So there's the Eben Ezra said-- The Sifri says, the Si-- One of... I think it's the Sifri. He says that the, that the, the all the branches of the menorah were surrounding the central one. It's not clear if that means, you know, round, it was like a candelabra or was it a half circle. Then the Eben, the Eben Ezra says that it was, that it was round. He seems to be saying that it was in a half circle, that they came up in like a, like a twirling way to be in, in like a, like a, like a, like a round circle, but, uh, from the top. It's not so clear. There are some people... In the Sikher, the Rebbe sp-speaks about both options, that, that either, either he was saying there was a round menorah the way we would talk

1:28:01 Speaker 1 about a round menorah or that the top was round. That's the Eben Ez-- the, the, the Eben Ezra. And that seems to be based on... It might be based on the Midrash, the description in the Midrash. But in as far as Torah, in other words, as far as Halakha is concerned, you have, you have the Psukim in Torah, and then there's the, the description in, in, in Masechet Tamid on how the, how the menorah is supposed to look. And then there's the Rambam who takes from there and, and writes it Halakha. So the Rebbe spoke of this even more about when it was about the tzitzt that we look for what does the Torah say. And as far as the Torah says, the "" of the, uh, "" of the Beis Hamikdash, especially when it's Halakhadic, you have to look at the Rambam because the Rambam is basically the Pesak Achron of the, you know, the "" of Geulah or the, or these "". So the Rambam says that he-- the, the Rambam makes no indication that they're round. And the word kana means reed, it means pipe. A, a kana is a straight thing. The Torah uses the word kana many, many times, and there's never any indication that it will be round. And in the Psukim, the one interesting Riah that I saw someone write that he says th-this is, this is a Duke that's, you know, other Right. Some people wanna say that the Rambam himself, this is the Rebbe in the

1:29:43 Speaker 1 Sikher. The Rambam himself says he's not being Midak. So that means that the Ra-Rambam wasn't Midak. The, the Rebbe says, no, he wasn't being Midak in the, in, in, in the, in, in, in the cup. The specific... The, the... Yeah, yeah. The Rambam says- But, but the Rambam's son, the Rav Avraham writes that, that, "No, my father meant Bedik, that it's, that it's, that's straight." A hundred percent. The Rambam writes that "" He writes that this is the general image, and he says he's not going to be Midak in certain things because it's just not easy to describe- I am still upse- I'm still upset at myself that when it was on display in Manhattan for a few months, and I planned on going to visit it tomorrow and the next day and the next day, I didn't do it, so I have to wait. I think it's in Oxford, right? I have to wait to my, to my trip to Oxford. From there. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. It, it, it's very... So, so the Ra-- the, the Rambam writes that he... This is to, to Rasi bichlalos, and then he writes he's not being Midak. And it basically, if-- And the Rav Avraham ben HaRambam is Midak out of that picture many things that the Rambam doesn't identify specifically. In other words, the Rambam identifies that the main purpose of the, of the picture is to show you where all the stuff go. Where do the cups go? Where do the go? 'Cause that's

1:30:43 Speaker 1 a very complicated thing to describe in text. He's gonna make a picture. But he still says, "" like, "This is the general... This is how it looks." And Rav Avraham ben HaRambam, he's not only Mid-- He doesn't only say that it's straight, he says he also is Midak in another place in his Pirush that the bottom of the menorah, the base, is round. And there's no makker in Torah anywhere that the, the base being round besides for the Rambam himself. That, that picture. The Rambam doesn't even write it in Halakha. It's just round there. And Rav Avraham ben HaRambam writes that, writes in his Pirush HaMishnah that the base was round. So... And, and by the way, the same thing that the, the, the idea that the Rambam had a difficulty making round, round branches is, is, uh, to some, some extent, uh, disqualified by the fact the ba- the base is round. There's a beautiful round base that the Rambam wrote. He clearly had the keilim that you need to make to draw a nice circle and a nice, a nice straight line, and he did both. So he could have made, he could have made a round menorah. Essentially, the idea that the Rambam was not being Midak would mean to say like this, that we're supposed to imagine that the Rambam in his Halakha says the word kanim, which means straight. He draws a picture with the kanim are straight, and yet in his mind, the entire time, he was imagining a

1:31:47 Speaker 1 round menorah. That's a very, very bizarre timing to make. And it's also... It's, this is... I mean, Rashi writes cl- also clearly that it, that it's, that it's alaksan, that it's a diagonal. Rashi writes that it's alaksan. The Rebbe got... Spoke a little bit more about that also when c-- in, uh, regarding the other mikvahs. The Rebbe, the Rebbe based ma-mainly on the Rambam, but Rashi says the word alaksan, and the common understanding of the word alaksan is that it's straight diagonal. And I saw one article- Yeah, but I saw someone trying to challenge that, that alaksan doesn't def-- doesn't mean diagonal. Did you see this? Doesn't... So yeah, I did see that. And, uh, it... So like, like I said, the conversation goes in two different directions because the shailah is where are you coming from? Is the Torah true and everything else has to match, or is archeology true and the Torah has to match? So there's an article that goes through all the To-Torah tinus that the Rebbe makes and tries to twist them to fit the archeology. So for example, this fellow says, a book called "" So he says that, "Why is the Torah using the word kana if kana means straight?" He says, "Kana is not about straight. Kana is about being hollow. It's about being hollow. It's a hollow reed." Um, the only problem is the menorah is mikша, the making of the menorah is not hollow. It's a bit of a problem that, that you can't, you

1:32:50 Speaker 1 can't say that the word of the kana is all about being hollow when the, when the menorah is not hollow. And he's makes the same thing about alaksan. He says alaksan is not straight. It's, it's a, it's any, any line that's not straight. So, uh, he lo- and he says in the Mikvas, he... And the Mikvas that I saw so far are the Rashis in the description of the Gula of Eretz Yisrael, where the Rashi explains how you draw the line of Eretz Yisrael around the different places. And he says that if you look there It's not, it's not . But if you open up any map of a... any Chumash with a map, uh, you open up Rashi or Peshat, it is diagonal. It's pretty much a straight diagonal. There's one description of the Yarden going, moving diagonally into the Kinneret. Um, on top of the Kinneret, the Yarden continues, and it moves in a, in a, in a right-- to the right side. And that's-- There's no implication in Rashi that it, that it doesn't mean diagonal. You could easily say it's diagonal. If you want to say that it's not, you can make that argument, but there's no indication in the text. It could be there's other Mekates for this, I don't know. But the Lachsan argument wasn't a good one, and the, and the economy argument wasn't a good one. And it came down to the point where he says that the Rambam was a rationalist. The Rambam spoke about the

1:33:50 Speaker 1 fact that the Torah has to make sense in the, in, in, in Gashmius. So he says, "Had the Rambam seen our archeology, he would have for sure said that the Menorah was round." That was the basic Mascon of the article. And that, like, it, it doesn't... Whatever. Ob-obviously, um, coming from the Rabbi's perspective, that's, uh, that's, that's not, that's not even worthy of a conversation. So the, so in Torah, the Mekates are all straight. They, they... So there's the Evan-- The Ibn Ezra says that it's round. It's not even clear what round means there. There's another one that has a whole Duke in the Rav Rambam to say that, that we-- when he says it's straight, he's not talking about the economy, he's talking about the top. But again, but that's also... But, but Rav Rambam is Medayik so much in the, in the, in the, in the picture that, that it's, it's, it's really impossible to say that, that it's not Medayik there. It's crazy to say that it's not Medayik. It's just a question of what are you comfortable with? If the archeology seems to say everywhere that it's round, then there's only a myud that say that it's straight, what's Takap Shot? So that, you know, from, from, you know, so if we're writing an article on, on the Menorah, so that whole question is really irrelevant. If we are going with Torah, the Torah says that it's straight, so it's straight. Now, you wanna have some enter-- for entertainment purposes only,

1:34:54 Speaker 1 you wanna have a discussion about the, about the archeology, fine, then you can make that, you can make the crazy argument.

1:34:59 Speaker 5 So, so entertain me. No.

1:35:01 Speaker 1 I don't know. I, I don't know if it qualifies as, uh, good entertainment, but the, but the... There's many, there's many, many Menorahs, first of all, that are straight. And the, this, ba... The, the, the simple thing that you see when you go from Menorah to Menorah is that all the descriptions of the round Menorahs... The Titus Menorah is hard to, to... Is, is not so credible because the base of it is clearly not the Torah's base, and it has Aveh Dezarah there. And it was made thirteen years after the march anyway. So it's hard... So by what, by what indication are you gonna say that it is true? There's one theory that the base of the Menorah got broken on in transit, and they made a new base, and that's why it has Aveh Dezarahs on it. Fine. But even the branches, and this is a problem that goes through e-every Menorah that I've seen. There's-- I don't, haven't seen yet, at least, a round Menorah that has the Duke of the Torah on it. In other words, there's a, there's a Sefer of the Menorah that was found in a home of Kohanim, not far away from the Beis Hamikdash. And it's a beautiful round Menorah, but there's bulbs on the entire thing from top to bottom. That's clearly not what the Torah says. So y-you right away, you're always stuck asking these Menorahs that everyone's depicting, uh, you know, to, to what extent is that the Menorah of the Mikdash? It do--

1:36:08 Speaker 1 It, it never really looks like the Menorah of the Mikdash. And it, it... This guy that wrote and made the Menorah look like bulbs in the Kohen, it, it looks actually very similar to the Titus Menorah, which has a lot of bul-- which also seems to have a lot of bulbs or a lot of, uh, indentations along the entire, along the entire bar. So the question basically it comes down to, is there in the Beis Hamikdash... We know for sure that there was other Menorahs in the Beis Hamikdash for lighting. So are they depicting those Menorahs that were in the Beis Hamikdash? And the Roman architecture, the Roman style would be to make a round Menorah. That would be the fancier Roman way to do it. So-

1:36:42 Speaker 5 Where, where were the, where were the other Menorahs in the Beis Hamikdash?

1:36:45 Speaker 1 Everywhere. If they lit up, uh, the Simchas Beis HaShoeva at night, then they needed, they needed Menorahs, they needed candelabras to hold the-

1:36:51 Speaker 5 So-

1:36:51 Speaker 1 ... to hold the fires.

1:36:52 Speaker 5 Who even saw the-

1:36:53 Speaker 1 had, uh, te-ten Menorahs in the Beis Hamikdash.

1:36:55 Speaker 5 Who even saw the, the Menorah of the Mikdash i-in the Kodesh? No one went into the Kodesh.

1:36:59 Speaker 1 That's a, that, that's a very good question. So in this article, Berech they... he says that everyone knew what the, uh, the Menorah looked like, so if you're finding round Menorahs, it must be ba-- that it must be, it must be based on the Beis Hamikdash Menorah. And he writes a few Mekates that everyone saw the Menorah. What's the marker? It says they used to bring out the Kelim of the Beis Hamikdash to see, for people to see during the Shalosh Regalim. But if you open the Gemara Chagigah, what it actually says is that they used to bring out the Shulchan so that everyone would see the nest that the, that the Challas were still warm. It doesn't say that about the Menorah. There is one place in the Yerushalmi where they say that they b-- they took the Menorah to be tevelit. So there were people who saw the Menorah. Kohanim saw the Menorah, and you can't say that nobody saw the Menorah and that the Titus Menorah i-is, is, is unreliable because of that. Because for the simple, simple reason that there's a... One of the coins that Eretz Yisrael has, one of the modern day, uh, um, I think ten agorot or something, i-is there's a round Menorah there. That's, um, that's a mock-up. That's a copy of the coin that was made by one of the Hashmonai kings, Mattathias Antigonus. He coined that m-- that coin, and it has a round Menorah on it. And he was a Kohen. The Hashmonaim,

1:38:01 Speaker 1 the whole base was this Beis Hamikdash. Half of the Hashmonaim kings were the Kohain Gadol, Kohanim themselves. I don't remember if he was the Kohain Gadol. But you can't say that he didn't know what the Menorah looked like or that he wouldn't know or people wouldn't tell him. That's... I, I think that's not a fair argument. So he, so there's a g-- There's a Kohen, may-- probably not a Kohain Gadol, but he's a Kohen, and he's making a coin that has a round Menorah. So you're left with two options. Either bec-- for aesthetic purposes, they liked depicting, depicting round Menorahs 'cause it's nicer, 'cause that was the Roman style, which would make sense 'cause these Hashmonaim, the, the Hashmonaim weren't exactly... By that time, they weren't exactly holy Jews. They were all tsitsukim. So the fact that they weren't concerned with what the Torah says about a Menorah is, it, it totally makes sense. So either they're depicting what's not the real Menorah, or they fashioned the Menorah, the Shloi Al Pi Halacha, which means that the, the Menorah in the Beis Hamikdash itself, the, the Beis Hamikdash was controlled by tsitsukim for many, many years. There were the, the... There was all sorts of this, uh, problems and fights and, uh, tsitsukim were a big force. They're controlling the government.

1:39:02 Speaker 5 So you're saying, you're saying it's possible that in the times of the second Beis Hamikdash, they possibly didn't have the real Menorah?

1:39:07 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Rebbe didn't make this argument, just to be clear. I'm, I'm just saying, if we're looking for explanations to say why the Menorah's are round, maybe the second Beis Hamikdash, at least after the, after Hanukkah. 'Cause after Hanukkah, there was no Menorah. So they first made it with Shfonim Shel Barzel, and that was, uh, that was straight. That's clearly straight. That means straight. Then they, uh, when they, when they got rich, the Gemara says they made it out of gold. Okay, who made that gold one and who designed it? It could be they made it round, and especially that the Rebbe never argues that a round Menorah is possible. The, there's no, nowhere in Halacha that would indicate that a round Menorah is no good. So it could be that they made a Tai-- uh, Menorah that was Shloi, that was, that was, that was not, you know, hid their mitzvah, let's say. So maybe that was what they had.

1:39:48 Speaker 5 So w-what happened to the, what happened to the Menorah from the first Beis Hamikdash?

1:39:51 Speaker 1 It was probably taken to, it was probably taken to, uh, to, into captivity. The, the, like, like one day in Gemara says even the Aaron was taken to, to Babel. So it could be the Menorah was taken to Babel too. I, I, I would imagine they took it and finished. So the Menorah in the second Beis Hamikdash, it's not even the second Beis Hamikdash. It's the Hashmon- It's the, it's the, it's the Menorah post-Hashmonaim, post-Hanukkah, when they were rich enough. And when they were rich enough, it's very that they're already big, big time stuck in there. So the idea that w- that's a, a basis to say what the Torah Menorah is, uh, is, is, is, uh, is just very weak. And f- uh, f- and take, take, take it even further. So there are some arguments, if you just read online, that, that it's very difficult to make a Menorah stand if it's pure gold in a, in a s- in a diagonal Menorah, and that it's just, uh, much easier if it's round. Now, I don't understand the, the, the argument, but I'm obviously way out of my depth when it comes to those things. But there are arguments, uh, to, uh, to the opposite. There are people who say that's not true. But there is also the Medesh. This is just very interesting that the Medesh says that Moshe Rabbeinu was Niskashah basia Menorah until the Ibishter not only showed him, the Ibishter made it for him. There's other things that Moshe

1:40:55 Speaker 1 was Niskashah. What's the Chatzishekel? What's this? What's that? But, uh, Niskashah basia Menorah and the Ibishter made the Menorah. So if you want, I can, I can just argue to you now that the Menorah, uh, a r- a straight Menorah is talking very difficult to make. And in the second resembling Mikdash, they didn't succeed in making a straight Menorah. But Moshe Rabbeinu, what's the Menorah of Torah? What does the Ibishter want? The Ibishter wants a straight Menorah.

1:41:28 Speaker 6 He doesn't say, he doesn't say clearly, but that's what his, his implication is.

1:41:31 Speaker 1 He indicates... His, his implication is very, very clear. It, it's, uh, Eino Mishtamal on the She'eapon him that he, that he's talking about, uh, having a straight Menorah. But, uh, but, uh, I mean, un-until video evidence comes out, you can never know if it's, if it's, uh, h-how true, how true that, that Eidis is. So, yeah.

1:41:44 Speaker 6 An-another thing from that, uh, from that, uh, Tishbov, um, um, I saw that was a little compelling to me archaeologically is that he, he has like, I don't know what it's called, like a mural or something. There's some archaeological artifact from, from then that basically on the same artifact, they have two Menorahs. On the same one.

1:42:07 Speaker 1 Yeah. One... And one is straight and one is round.

1:42:08 Speaker 6 One is round and one is, one is straight. That's, that goes with the whole theory that maybe, maybe there's multiple Menorahs, but like, why would you make on one thing two Menorahs of two different shapes, one round and one... And to be clear, from the archaeological evidence that we're finding, I just saw recently one was found. There, there are archaeological... It's true the majority are round, but there are straight Menorahs archaeologically found as well. So there are both.

1:42:32 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely both. In the-- On the Torah side, there's one interesting aspect that the, that a lot of mekirah say that the Menorah is connected, the Shemesh and Yareach and the, and the Galgalim. And that raises the question, why is it named the Galgalim? The seven lamps are connected. They, they have the exact Lashonus, uh, I don't have in front of me. But, uh, but does that mean that it's round? Some people argue if, if it's named the Galgalim, Galgalim are round, what does that mean? It probably means that the Kanam are round. But that's the, uh, that's, that's been debated also in these articles. I go back and forth, and it's a big Lav Davka. The, the Yerushalmi has one interesting thing where they say that the, the Prushim were being Matbil the Menorah in a Mikvah, and the Tzukim said, "Look at the Prushim. They're, they're being Tevel Galgal Shemesh." That's what they call the Menorah, Galgal Shemesh, the Galgal of the, of the sun. So that's a very interesting, uh, Lashon. But all of those mekirahs don't even say that the Kanam are round. They say that the Menorahs are round. It seems much more that the Menorahs themselves, the top of the Menorah, were round. And I don't even know to what extent a person in those days imagined Galgalim to be round. I mean, they're standing on Earth and they see up, and it goes, it goes from one side to another. I don't know if round is

1:43:34 Speaker 1 really the right description there. So that's another interesting thing. But in the archaeology, there is... It is very interesting that there are Amiot that have straight, and that raises the question, why would someone... Why, why would they make the difference there? So... But, but as far... But, but, but the, but the point is still that the Torah says that it's straight, so it's straight. And, and, uh, what will come out will, um, it'll probably come out. You know, there's a story where, uh, I think Rabbi Berel Levin says that the, the Rebbe would always say that the Fidika-- the Baal Shem Tov Siddur in the, in the Fidikar's library has Hagdusha. Instead of it saying Ha- uh, Ha-

1:44:09 Speaker 6 Hagdusha.

1:44:10 Speaker 1 The over-Hagdusha, the over- the overflowing or whatever the right word would be. And Berel Levin saw... At some point, he got his hands on the, on the Siddur for the first time, probably after Heteyvos when the two libraries, the Fidikar's library and the Rebbe's library were combined. So he g- he looks in the, in the Siddur, and he sees it says Hakdesha. So he wrote to the Rebbe. He says, "Something's wrong here." That, that he, that he always heard that it says Hagdusha and, and, and-

1:44:33 Speaker 6 The Rebbe said-

1:44:34 Speaker 1 ... instead it says Hakdesha. And the Rebbe didn't argue with him. The Rebbe just said that, that we always heard from the Shever that it says Hagdusha, and that's it. So he went back and he opened the Siddur again, and then he discovered that there's two benchings in every Siddur 'cause there's a benching and then there's Hagdasha Pesach benching. And then Hagdasha Pesach benching, it technically says Hagdusha. The Rebbe didn't even argue with him over is the Fidikar right? Was it true? Was it a mistake? Was he remembering wrong? The, the, the Rebbe said the Pashtus. The Rebbe said, "Azoy, Azoy. Uh, now go fi- now go figure it out yourself." And he went to figure it out, and he figured it out. And he discovered that it was true. So there, when it c- when it comes to the question of like-

1:45:08 Speaker 6 Which is, which is generally the Rebbe's approach, you know, the Torah and science-

1:45:11 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:45:11 Speaker 6 ... questions. The Rebbe is against the apologetic, um, style-

1:45:17 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:45:17 Speaker 6 ... of, of, of trying to, uh, take s- you know, take Torah and make it fit with science. Rebbe's attitude is always no, Torah is true.

1:45:25 Speaker 1 Right.

1:45:25 Speaker 6 Science, we'll, we'll figure out later.

1:45:26 Speaker 1 That's true.

1:45:27 Speaker 6 We'll deal with, we'll, we'll deal with it, but that, you know, that, that's, that, that's, that's a second agenda.

1:45:32 Speaker 1 Right. Uh, it, uh, it, it's true about everything in Torah. The Rebbe t- by the Rebbe, every... Torah is Torah's Emes. So everything has to now find a way to match up with that. If the Rashi said that ... Hagdusha Has to mean that it has to mean halakha. We once had an article of all the stories in Rambam that the Rebbe learned halakhas out of. If you would ask me, why is there a story? I would be very easy, it would be very easy to say. Or like at the end of the halakhas, where the Rambam kind of goes, goes a little more spiritual and says the ruchniske inyun, or the, the, the spirituality.

1:46:18 Speaker 6 The... I call, I call it the fabringens, the Rambam's fabringens.

1:46:20 Speaker 1 Exactly. Rambam's fabringens. Someone once printed a whole book of that because, you know, to learn the whole Mishneh Torah is boring, but you're gonna if, if... Meister of Cook or someone of the Meisters, they once put out just all the, the ends 'cause that's very interesting. So but like why, why does that have to mean halakha? But by the Rebbe it's a davar ha'ashah that each one of those is halakha, is a clear halakha. So the same thing is, the same thing is here, the menorah straight. What now you effects me conscious on archeology? Whatever. One day we'll figure it out or we won't figure it out, and that, and that's totally fine. We're not really concerned.

1:46:49 Speaker 6 So that's the, that's the going kav of the, of the article?

1:46:53 Speaker 1 The article didn't happen yet, but that's, that, that's, that... Those are my thoughts right now. Unless somebody will listen to the podcast and come with good arguments to either way to explain it, a, a good point to add, to add here. But that's broadly speaking the, the... That's broadly speaking the picture. So yeah.

1:47:07 Speaker 6 Um, and by the way, when, when it comes to the other conversation with the luchas, this whole there's no shakaf atari about it. Meaning as far as, as far as I know, it comes to the, the menorah, there's, there's, there's... There might be even different opinions i-in, in Mefarshim HaTorah itself. When it comes to the luchas, I mean, it's, uh, it's clear. I mean, the, it's, it's black and white that, that, that, that square. There's... Right? There's no, there's no, um-

1:47:37 Speaker 1 There was once, there was once a, an attempt, I think, Tsacho. In Eretz Yisrael there's once an idea to mint a special coin in honor of Hanukkah, or to give a Hanukkah gelt from the Rebbe. There was, there was some story about making a special coin or a special stamp, or maybe this is two stories that I'm mixing. But they wrote to the Rebbe about it, and the Rebbe wrote that if there's any possibility that you're going to make luchas that are not, that are round, then you should absolutely not do it. There's nothing, there's no, there's no, uh, no, no coming to terms with that. If it's the menorah, you should push for a straight menorah, but you... But a straight... But a round menorah is okay because there were this in Torah that do talk about a round menorah. And it seems like the Rebbe's talking about the Ibn Ezra, which, which according to one version of the understanding it, is talking about a round menorah or the Sifri, or the Sifri, I'm not really sure. But the Rebbe doesn't say which day. But he says, "You don't have to achshav nin on a menorah if it's not, if it's not possible." But the, but the luchas, there's nothing to talk about. The luchas is, it's, uh, it's befe- it's befeir shel Gemara. It's clear. There's nothing else to talk about. Yeah.

1:48:32 Speaker 6 And the only reason why they're round is from, I don't know, Christian, uh, artists or some-

1:48:38 Speaker 1 Publishers. I believe it was publishers. The... It was the people who published books would make a sefarim, would make a, would make a... And they were copying an art, uh, so-someone that depicted the, the, the, the, uh, the luchas as round. So that it's, uh, totally from a goyishe makor. There's no, there's no I think the cups go into each other and it's, uh, it's-- that's questionable if that's what the Rama meant. If the, if the-

1:51:58 Speaker 6 No, I mean, I mean the height. The height.

1:52:00 Speaker 1 Oh. I'm not, I'm not sure. I never measured it, but it's something very similar. It can't be too different. It looks... I mean, it was the, it was the height of a person. The Menorah in the Beis Hamikdash was the height of a person, and there's a sifra where the Rebbe says that you didn't even need the steps to light it. The steps are an inyan for itself why they had steps for the King Goddard to go up. So that's the general, uh, image of the, of the Menorah that we have.

1:52:17 Speaker 6 Oh, so the Menorah in seventy-seventy I don't think it was not much round. It was like a s-- those square Menorahs.

1:52:21 Speaker 1 It was square. Yeah, yeah. It went out to the sideways, but the point of not being ba'al achzain was there, and that's what the Rebbe spoke about. And, uh, it was-

1:52:27 Speaker 6 What about the Menorahs that are like, uh, a achzain, like, you know, they go like this, and then they go straight?

1:52:33 Speaker 1 We're gonna have to make a Shulchan Aruch on what type of Menorah you're allowed to have. Exactly straight this way or straight that way. And like a lot of the arguments are, uh, a lot of the archeology is stones. And the stones, there are more stones that seem to have straight Menorahs, but that's like... But again, it's not such, not such a good argument because, uh, uh, stone is harder to carve. You can just say it's easier to carve straight. There's-- but there's plenty of, uh, of a achzain Menorahs that are not stone too. But, uh, but yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a good question on what exactly.

1:53:00 Speaker 6 Okay.

1:53:00 Speaker 1 We'll make measurements in thedare. Measure your Menorah this way. No, but the, the Rebbe said it's a achzain. That's... The, the inyan, the, and the, the, the ikar and the koda is that the, the, uh, uh, I'll say the inyan of Titu- the Sha'ar Titos is, is the worst, worst inyan of Gallos. It was made there to be mashul yid, and it was made to remember the, the thing of Titos. And Rebbe mentions there that whenever they wanted to be mashul yid in Rome, they would bring them to the Sha'ar Titos. That was the source of the hashalah to say, "Look, uh, Titu-- uh, you, you know, we won," and the Jew-- and the, and Judea Capta like they had on coins. That was, that was the source. So as, as Megilas HaMachir Saidkenu, um, uh, it's, it's obvious that the round Menorah has no place and, and, uh, and a straight Menorah is the way to go.

1:53:42 Speaker 6 Okay. So we should, uh, be zecher to, uh, the Menorah, the Beis Hamikdash Hashlishi, the achzain Menorah.

1:53:51 Speaker 1 Amen. This year.

1:53:53 Speaker 6 Amen.

1:53:53 Speaker 1 Before my article comes out.

1:53:55 Speaker 6 Um, okay. Looking forward to both articles and, uh, yes, Shekeach Gadol, and, uh, we should do this again on a different topic.

1:54:03 Speaker 1 Thank you for having me. Nobody will read the magazine if we say all the secrets on the, on the podcast.

1:54:08 Speaker 6 Or maybe we're whet-

1:54:09 Speaker 1 It's all out

1:54:09 Speaker 6 ... maybe we're whetting their appetite, so it's a good strategy.

1:54:11 Speaker 1 Right.

1:54:13 Speaker 6 Okay.

1:54:13 Speaker 1 Put up a link to subscribe. Yeah.

1:54:15 Speaker 6 Thehered.org. Tagazit.