Ep. 52: When I Discovered the Reality That Was Always There with Rabbi Simon Jacobson

00:00 Speaker 1 For me, a fabrengen was like a l- living Torah, Torah coming alive in so many multi-dimensions. You know, there's one hand, there's the mechon, the, the ideas that the Rebbe shares in a ma'amar or a sicha. Then there's the emotional feelings, whether it's the nigunim or even the ideas the Rebbe's sharing that are very personal or, you know, that, that stimulate the emotions. And then there was the whole, the whole vibe. You felt the ma'alamah sar et sfachim. You know, a fabrengen by the Rebbe was-- you felt like you were traveling to another time and place.

00:34 Speaker 2 This episode is made possible by Kerem Hamish. To learn more about Kerem Hamish, stay tuned later on in the episode for more details. If you've been enjoying this podcast, please like and subscribe so that others can enjoy it as well. In addition, if you've benefited in any way from Among Chassidim podcast and would like to give something back, you can do so today at derher.org/donate. I'm Yossi Kamen. Welcome to Among Chassidim by Der Her, an ongoing fabrengen about life as a Chassid, our vibrant connection with the Rebbe, and inspired living shaped by the way he teaches us each and every day. Shalom Aleichem, HaKot HaVa, Rabbi Jacobson. How are you?

01:27 Speaker 1 Aleichem Shalom. Baruch Hashem. Wonderful to be with you.

01:31 Speaker 2 Okay, great. This is a special edition of Among Chassidim as we're recording it live. There's an audience at the Kinus Hashluchim Hazeri, the regional Kinus of New York and New England in Southfield, Connecticut, and I hope everyone here enjoys and all our listeners enjoy.

01:50 Speaker 1 My pleasure. We look forward.

01:52 Speaker 2 Okay. So I'm curious, um, I would, I would like to know, you have two zeidas and they're both-- they both have, uh, a fame in different ways, and I wanna hear about your zeidas and, uh, especially about your father, and then we'll move on to Rabbi Siman Jacobson. So you pick which zeida you wanna begin with.

02:16 Speaker 1 Okay. So I'm a, a good interesting combination of Tsug Dikumenah and Gezah. You all know what that means, right? Um, I'll start with my, my father's side, okay? So actually, our name is not Jacobson. Family name is Jacobashvili. And, uh, for many years, that was, uh, a family secret. But now Georgians have become very wealthy, so it's like everybody wants to be Georgian. So now Jacobashvili, we're thinking even of changing it back, but we haven't come to a consensus on that. So Jacobashvili means in Georgian, shvili is son of Jacob. When surnames were given, just as an example, since we're talking Chabad, Alt Rebbe's name was not Schneerson. The Mitteler Rebbe is the son of Schneur. Alt Rebbe was Schneur. Schneuri.

03:09 Speaker 2 Machabaz Schneur.

03:10 Speaker 1 Yeah. So, uh, so Jacobashvili was the name of my father's father. His name was Simen Jacobashvili. I'm named after him. Um, and he himself was a Georgian Jew born in a city called Kutaisi or Kutais, Georgia. Um, just for the record, Georgian Jewry goes back, traces its origins all the way to Bayis Rishon. Meaning by Golus Bavel, when the Jews went to Babylon, so then they migrated north. It was-- included Armenia, Georgia, and so on. So even when the Jews returned to build the second Bayis Hamikdash with Ezra, many remained in Bavel. Bavel would be Persia, Iraq, and so on, and many re-remained in Georgia. Uh, just again, aside, you'll see there are very few Kohanim, if any at all, in G- Georgianim, 'cause Ezra made a condition, "If you wanna stay, I need the Kohanim and the Leviim."

04:10 Speaker 2 Mm.

04:11 Speaker 1 Okay. So my, my father's father's family traces its way back thousands of years, literally. I met many of them, cousins and so on. And, uh, my grandfather was, uh, obviously not a Chabad by birth. He was a Georgian Jew. They're considered somewhat Sephardim. Um, and, um, but in Taf Resh Ayin Ches, or Ayin Tes, that would be equivalent of nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, he was traveling to Italy on behalf of his family business. And the war, World War I, was taking place, which is one of the reasons that Rebbe Rashab moved from Lubavitch to Rostov, 'cause it was the front lines. So he couldn't really travel, so he ended up in Rostov for Rosh Hashanah that year. And, uh, he saw Chassidim running to the Rebbe Rashab. So he was intrigued, and he followed along, and he was taken by the Rebbe Rashab's Tish Rebbe and that whole Rosh Hashanah experience. It's a long story, which I don't wanna-- I know we wanna keep time limited, but briefly, bottom line, he ended up staying in Rostov. Uh, the Rebbe Rashab told him to become-- go to Temchetimim.

05:21 Speaker 2 One second, but when you-- a Georgian Jew ending up in Rostov, like he spoke Yiddish?

05:26 Speaker 1 He spoke Hebrew. He didn't speak Yiddish at the time. La-later he spoke Yiddish. Um, I remember I never met him 'cause I'm-- He-- I was born after his passing. Um, so he, yeah, he spoke Hebrew with the Rebbe Rashab, but then he joined Temchetimim, became a Talmid.

05:41 Speaker 2 So instead of going to-

05:42 Speaker 1 To Italy

05:43 Speaker 2 ... Italy for business-

05:43 Speaker 1 Matter of fact, the Rebbe Rashab told him that, "One day you'll go to Italy on my behalf." The Rebbe, in the first fabrengen, Yud Chet 5600, says, "There's a Yid," he's referring to my grandfather The Rebbe, the Rebbe in the, in when he-- when Kabbalah in the Sears. There's a year that the Rebbe told him he'll be going to Italy, and it was 37 years later. And it was a whole... Again, there's a lot of details around it. So bottom line, he stayed there, began to learn Temimus and was taken by Chassidus and became a full-fledged Chassid. And he ended up marrying, um, the niece of Rab Shmuel of Viton, who was a Schlichas of the Rebbe Rashab to Georgia.

06:37 Speaker 2 Shmuel was the Schlichas.

06:38 Speaker 1 Right. So he made a Shidduch of his niece. It was like the first intermarriage between, uh, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, between Tsug Kumina, you know, and, uh, my grandfather. And my grandmother was a blue blood Chabadnik, goes all the way back to the Alter Rebbe. My grandmother's name was Frieda. Uh, Chodos was their family name. Her father was Rachmiel Chodos. My father's name, Gershon Ber, is named after Gershon Ber Pahader, 'cause his mother, his mother, Frieda, was a great-granddaughter of Gershon Ber Pahader, the great Chassid of the Tamach Sadik. So that's covers more or less. My grandfather became Simon. That is one of the ten Yidden in Taf Resh Pe Gimel in 1923 that made the Krisis Beris, the Friedi Rebbe, that they would do everything possible to the last drop of blood to be Mesir Nefesh with the Jews in, uh, i-in Russia.

07:33 Speaker 2 He was part of that group.

07:34 Speaker 1 So he was one of the ten, and he was arrested, ended up in Siberia. But because of his Georgian connections, Stalin, and Beria were all Georgians. So they were able to-- Their mafia was able to figure out a way they didn't get shot. But my father was the oldest of three children that he had. S- My father, Gershon Ber, has-- had a brother, Betzalel, and a li-- a young, a younger brother, Shalom Jacobson, who was born actually in Pucking, later in Germany, after they left. So they left, like many Chabad families, nineteen forty-five from, uh, Moscow. My father was born in Moscow, and they ended up in Pucking. The Rebbe's mother, for example, was in Pucking in Germany, one of the DP camps. And they ended up in Toronto, nineteen fifty, fifty-one, where my grandfather and grandmother are buried. And he passed away-

08:28 Speaker 2 Passed away.

08:28 Speaker 1 -in fifty-three, nineteen fifty-three. He met the Rebbe, one of the Rebbe. Um, and, uh, he was there by Fabregin based Tamos, like the Rebbe referred to him in the Fabregin Toshi Alaf. But he was really broken physically by the torture in Siberia. They broke his spine, you know. His spirit remained strong, but, uh, my father would tell me that. So he passed away at age maybe fifty, fifty-one years old. And then my grandmother passed away within another year or two later. So my father was left as a yossem, was called a Kail Gediki Yossem, both from father and mother, by nineteen. And he had two little brothers that he had to take care of. So that's briefly covers. So my father-- grandfather was a Yichuz, was Mesirus Nefesh, and then he continued that work in Italy on behalf of the Rebbe then, uh, thirty-seven years later in the Taf Shin Zayin, Taf Shin Ches.

09:23 Speaker 2 It's the Friediker Rebbe's sentence.

09:25 Speaker 1 It, it's a little confusing. It looks like the Rebbe Rashab was the one that actually mentioned it, but the Friediker Rebbe obviously reinforced it. So we are still working on the details, to be honest, not-

09:36 Speaker 2 And then he went to Toronto afterwards.

09:38 Speaker 1 Yeah. He went to Italy and, uh, in Europe, and he was continuing the Schlichas of, uh... S- I mean, I-- If you want me to go into details, I can go a lot. I don't know. You, you control the time here.

09:49 Speaker 2 Well, I think that-

09:49 Speaker 1 We have till, uh, six AM.

09:51 Speaker 2 Six AM is good, yeah.

09:52 Speaker 1 Yeah.

09:53 Speaker 2 I think that, um, a general overview is good because you have a lot to share on your own, and I wanna hear about your father.

09:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

09:59 Speaker 2 So maybe, maybe tell us a little bit about, uh, your other zeide, Yankel Lipsker.

10:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. So that's my father's side. My mother's side, my mother's a Lipsker. Her name is-- maiden name is Lipsker. She's the oldest of nine children of Yankel Lipsker, who, uh, married to, um, Luba Alta Teibel, her maiden name was Labkifka. So we're like cousins with the Labkowskis. We're cousins with, uh, Feldman. We're cousins with the Offens. They're all sisters of my mother's mother. My mother's father, Lipsker, that was born in Poltava. So the, the big Lipsker family is a big one in Netzchesro. He was Leibel Lipsker. Leibel Lipsker was the older brother. Yankel was the younger one. Michol Lipsker is another brother. Menucha Lazarov, for example, Shimon Lazarov is a, is again a cousin of my mother's. Batsheva Shem Tov, who married, uh, Velvel Shem Tov, is also a Lazarov, just to give you the... So these are large families. They were born in Poltava. They were originally, I think, not Chabad Hasidim. The Lipsker-- Um, I think they were, um... I don't remember right now. Different sug. So the-- But bottom line, then in Russia, you know, people went to the yeshivas. So my fa-- my grandfather, Yankel Lipsker, came very similar. He ended up in Kutais, ironically. Not-- Nothing connected to the Ak- the Akimashvili side. Because he ended up doing b-the work there and business, and he also-- they opened a shtikel yeshiva there. And, uh, my mother was born in Kutais. My father was born in Moscow.

11:41 Speaker 2 Yeah.

11:41 Speaker 1 So it's a little twist of things. Last year, my mother turned ninety. We actually took her to Kutais, to her birthplace, which was also an old cemetery of my, my, my ancestors. So Yankel Lipsker, to cut to the chase, was in Paris for a number of years. Some people may know that the Rebbe, when he came to Paris to meet his mother, Chana, Rebbetsin Chana, he trusted my grandmother's cooking. She was the one that brought him food. He was only trusted her Just to put things in context. Then they came to the United States in around 1947. But they saw the Friediker Rebbe, and they, the Friediker Rebbe told them to buy a farm in New Jersey. Farm was still a industry. There were people who bought farms in Vineland and in other cities in J- New Jersey. And then that was not chic anymore, chinuch, so he moved to Crown Heights, my grandfather, Yankel Lipsker, with my grandmother, uh, with my mother and her si- and her siblings. So I have a very famous, uh, uncles, you know, the Gabbai of 770, Zalman Lipsker, Bella Lipsker, Avraham Lipsker, you know, um, um, and, and others. And, um, he became a Gabbai after Rebbe Yechanan Gordon, who was the main Gabbai in 770. He passed away , I think it was 1969. So then three Gabbaim were, uh, were, were elected or appointed. My grandfather, uh, Reb Bulsowski and, uh, Shea Pinson. So my grandfather became one of the Gabbaim of 770. He was involved

13:17 Speaker 1 mostly in the chaz- choosing the chazzanim. Um, I remember him always arguing with my grandmother. You know, he would always say, "What do you think about the chazan, tumah the chazan that davened for the Rebbe?" My grandmother, "couldn't hear the chazan." And my grandfather says, "Better a chazan you can't hear that knows nusach than a chazan you could hear and doesn't know nusach." Every Shabbos they would have this argument. I'm the oldest grandchild, so I was always sitting there, just to give you a little taste of, uh, that world. My grandfather had a famous grace-- grocery store, Lipsker Superette, which, um, lost more money than it made.

13:53 Speaker 3 Today it's, uh, Kahn's.

13:54 Speaker 1 Today it's Kahn's. Today, Kahn turned it into a whole empire. But my grandfather, first of all, he gave cigarettes either at cost price or free to the bochur. Uh, the, all the grandchildren were getting ice cream for free. A-anyone that said that they can't afford it, he'd, you know. I mean, it was, uh... Let's put it this way, it wasn't a business. It was more of a, a therapy session 'cause my grandmother, people would come to her for counseling. This is my childhood. I don't know if any old timers from Crown Heights, but it was a fixture on Kingston and Union where Kahn's is today. So my grandfather was the chazan. He was also a, a, um, a, I guess a, uh, an amateur carpenter. So he would build-- He had the woodwork in his basement. 770 is that the Rebbe's table has a certain look. There's a certain-

14:42 Speaker 3 The chazan stand there.

14:43 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

14:44 Speaker 3 Upstairs also.

14:45 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:45 Speaker 3 And upstairs, the whole set.

14:46 Speaker 1 Yeah, anything that looks like those, uh, I don't know, how do you define it? Whatever. Checkerboard, I don't know. You know, is-- So he built it all in the basement. And then, um, they lived on President between, uh, Albany and Kingston. My grandfather passed away in nineteen eighty-five, my grandmother years later. And, um, and that's my mother's, uh, genes. And I'm this, uh, strange mix of Georgian, Lipsker, you know, it's, it's, it's a complicated situation.

15:19 Speaker 3 But behind it-

15:20 Speaker 1 We, I mean, we're not gonna do group therapy here, but if you wanna understand the some of the meshugas of the Jacobsons, you have to get to know the-- how these gene-- the gene pool. Uh-

15:30 Speaker 3 That, that's why I asked about it. We need to get the background.

15:33 Speaker 1 No, I understood your what's going on here. Yeah.

15:36 Speaker 3 Okay, so let me ask you about your father.

15:38 Speaker 1 Just for the record, if you wanna complicate matters more, when I met some of my Gruzina cousins, they let me know that my grandfather's, Simin, father actually was born in Yerushalayim 'cause he had to run away from Gruzia, and he was born in Yerushalayim, his great-grandfather. Then he came back to Gruzia. So that really messed everything.

15:57 Speaker 3 And now you have the-

15:57 Speaker 1 Now you have the Yerushalayi-

15:57 Speaker 3 Shami angle.

15:58 Speaker 1 Shami genes. Yeah, I don't know how that fits in. But, uh, so in other words, if you guys think you're weird, uh, so am I.

16:06 Speaker 3 Okay.

16:06 Speaker 1 Okay.

16:07 Speaker 3 Let me ask you about your father, Gershon Ber Jacobson, which is a unique figure in Lubavitch and a unique yachas with the Rebbe.

16:16 Speaker 1 Yeah.

16:16 Speaker 3 Journalist and later algemeiner. So let- let- let's hear a little bit about that. And also this-- some of this you witnessed firsthand, I imagine.

16:24 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. My g-- My-- As I said, my grandfather passed away before I-- He was born-- passed away in . I'm born , so nineteen fifty-six. Uh, it's probably w- noteworthy to mention my birthday is , . I turned thirty when the Dan Notzach happened. Um, so my father is the oldest, as I said, of three boys, three children. He came to Crown High even though his parents were in Toronto, he came to 770, basically 1951. So you'll see him in pictures-

17:00 Speaker 3 He's a bochur.

17:01 Speaker 1 Yeah, he's a bochur, yeah. He got married in 1955 to my mother. I'll tell you the story in a moment. So my grand-- my father came to 770, and you'll see him in pictures. There's quite a few pictures like at, uh, the Hasides, you know, uh, well, in the early bochurim those years. Um, he was already had a chushak siva how to write. As a matter of fact, in Breinwa, when he learned in the yeshiva, my father was in Breinwa. Um, so he was, uh, caught writing an article in Yiddish for a Yiddish newspaper in Paris.

17:35 Speaker 3 To-- Already then.

17:36 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. He was already a troublemaker.

17:38 Speaker 3 What did Reb Nisson do?

17:39 Speaker 1 Oh, don't ask. Um, that's why I was sharing it. So Re-- So I was never in Breinwa, but my father told me that there was a room that was like a cathedral, like, you know, where the-- I guess where galachim wants me to do confession. So Reb Nisson would call in a bochur there. And he got my grandfather to come from Italy, and they're sitting there, and then my-- Reb Nisson's was, like, trembling. He says, "Gershon Ber." This is my way my father would tell the story. "." To schreibst a zeitung mit dein Namen noch. I'll translate. He says, for a Bochur to read a newspaper in Lubavitch, it was like completely no one ever read a newspaper, and du-- and you're writing a newspaper with your name. At least you should have changed your name. My, my father was like this guy, I guess, I guess he was never a conformist. So, you know, he said, "I may believe I'm like have-- I feel bad," but it didn't really-- I felt bad that he schlep my father from Italy. And, uh, so I think they threw him out of yeshiva for two weeks. Um, and, uh, after I said, "So what happened?" He says, "My father--" I said, I said, "But how did your father react?" He said, "My father says, 'Gershon Ber, as long as you're in yeshiva, you have to follow the rules. Afterwards, do what you want. But now you're-- you're...'" Well, that was, uh-- So he was already a

18:58 Speaker 1 writer, basically. I mean, I guess, it wasn't like-- he wasn't professional. So when he came to United States, he went straight to journalism.

19:06 Speaker 3 See, wh-while he was in the yeshiva in five seven?

19:09 Speaker 1 Yeah. No, but not like a-- like part-time. It wasn't like a full-time job. He started writing. Like he would write an article for the Herald Tribune. There was a newspaper called the New York Herald Tribune.

19:19 Speaker 3 In English?

19:20 Speaker 1 In English.

19:20 Speaker 3 How did he know how to write English?

19:21 Speaker 1 He knew. He-- I guess he learned how to write. His-- And he always had a very strong Russian accent, but, but writing was, was perfect.

19:30 Speaker 3 Do you know if the-- if he spoke to the Rebbe about this then?

19:32 Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm sure he did, because I'll tell you why. So my father started-- No, he wasn't writing like professionally, like a, a-- He would write-- he'd submit an article here and there. And then he got, I don't know what year, he began to write for the Tog Morgen Journal. That was a daily Yiddish newspaper. Um, daily. Probably mid-- the mid-yuds, like probably Tosh tes vav, when he got married, approximately, I would say. I know because the Rebbe, you know, you familiar with Khevets Lubavitch? It's a whole Parsha of its own. You ever cover it?

20:05 Speaker 3 It was reprinted.

20:06 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah.

20:07 Speaker 3 It recently got reprinted.

20:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. So the Rebbe was the editor of it. That's where Truver Sublim-

20:11 Speaker 3 I heard he wrote an article-

20:12 Speaker 1 Yeah

20:12 Speaker 3 ...covering the Khevets Lubavitch.

20:14 Speaker 1 So Truver Sublim, the Rebbe had a column. But it also covered Lubavitch events and simchas in the Tovsh-- in the Tovsh vav, Tovsh zayin. What years was Khevets Lubavitch? Tovsh hei?

20:24 Speaker 3 Yeah. The, uh, the-

20:25 Speaker 1 Then it stopped. In Tovsh Yud Daled or Tes Vav, I think, the Rebbe renewed it, but he had Shmuel Zalmanov, who was a very talented writer himself. Uh, he did Sefer HaNigunim and stuff like that. He had Shmuel Zalmanov become the editor, and the Rebbe suggested to my father to work for Shmuel Zalmanov.

20:43 Speaker 3 In Khevets Lubavitch?

20:44 Speaker 1 Khevets Lubavitch. So my father was definitely involved in writing. Uh, I don't know-

20:49 Speaker 3 And that's Tovsh Khet this?

20:50 Speaker 1 Tovsh Khet this. But was there columns in Yiddish at all?

20:53 Speaker 3 I think it's in Hebrew, no?

20:54 Speaker 1 It's all in Hebrew? So it could be. My father was fluent in Hebrew. In writing, he could write Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, uh, even German. He was a-- he was good at languages. I saw stuff from him. But I never really-- I can't tell you exactly how much he wrote, but that's where I know Tovsh Tes Zayin when Nafa Bringen, Yud Beis Tammuz. My father was married Hanukkah, Tovsh Tes Zayin. So we're talking now nineteen fifty-five. So Yud Beis Tammuz, Tovsh Yud Za-- Tovsh Tes Zayin, on tape you could hear the Rebbe says, "Gershon Ber, zog l'chaim, aber nisht af tint." Say l'chaim, but not on ink. So clearly, he was a ink guy, and the Rebbe wanted to make sure that he should say l'chaim on the real thing, not on ink. You know, as a metaphor. So he was clearly involved in writing. And then I guess-- I know, I know he became a-- he-- There was a thing called Radio Free Europe. I don't know if you ever heard of that.

21:50 Speaker 3 No.

21:50 Speaker 1 It was radio broadcasting that was reaching the Soviet Union because, uh, you know, Soviet Union was a Iron Curtain. You couldn't get in. But radio could get there. It helped people get information outside of, uh, Soviet Union. So we have pictures. I saw my father speaking on radio. So he was involved in media, basically. Uh, years later, I asked my father, why did he go into media? You know, every-- all your friends became, you know, trikotage, selling shmatas or whatever they did. So he said, "Because newspaper covers everything. Everything in life is co-- is covered in a newspaper." I also asked my father then, I was a little kid, I said, "What do you do on a day there's no news?" You know, w- there's no such thing. But as a child, you think one day, what's happening if there's just no news, you know? So my father said, "The headline will be that today there's no news." You know, that's the-

22:38 Speaker 3 That's news.

22:39 Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the news. Um, so those years, fifty-five, fifty-six, basically when I was born, he began to be a, an ongoing writer and editor in Tog Morgen.

22:49 Speaker 3 Tog Morgens.

22:50 Speaker 1 Tog Morgen Journal, and it was a-- in St. Louis, there's a newspaper was called the Jewish Post and Opinion or something. Anybody knows? Uh, uh, St. Louis Jewish... Hmm? Um, so he was writing. He was a, he was a writer. Uh, he was very good friends with Elie Wiesel.

23:11 Speaker 3 From the Tog-- Elie Wiesel wrote for the Tog Morgen Journal?

23:13 Speaker 1 And for the Forward also, for the Forverts.

23:15 Speaker 3 Your father wrote for the Forverts?

23:16 Speaker 1 No. No, my father-- The Forverts was a socialist newspaper.

23:20 Speaker 3 Right.

23:21 Speaker 1 Um, there was a, a Yiddish newspaper called the Yiddishe Freiheit. That was a communist newspaper, all daily. That means they had readers. Um, and they were all on East Broadway, downtown in the East, the Lower East Side. I remember I would sometimes go there. You had all these Yiddish writers. You know, they were all like, you know, grobbe yungin, but they were brilliant. Chomping on cigars and, and, you know, whatever. My father was only frum Yid. It's a yamaka and a beard. But I remember going there. It was an interesting sight. 'Cause I-- all like the Yiddishist and all, all this-- these intellectuals that, that my father hang-- hung out with. And, and Tog Morgen Journal was more the conservative, more, you know-

24:01 Speaker 3 Was it a frum newspaper now?

24:03 Speaker 1 It, it, it was more conservatives. It was more-- There were none of them are frum, frum. There was no such thing as like a Hamodia or what you have today. Frum world was very small then, and they didn't have newspapers. But it was, uh, L'fi'erek, it was more conservative, more... So my father, uh, met Elie Wiesel, and they both-- They-- He was a journalist, Elie Wiesel, at the time, and he was a correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth. I mean, it's irrele-- it's relevant. You'll see in a minute. It's connected to the Rebbe. He was a correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth, which was the largest daily Israeli newspaper at the time. And in nineteen fifty-nine, nineteen sixty, he went to publish his book, Night. It's a very famous book in English.

24:48 Speaker 3 Memoirs.

24:48 Speaker 1 Huh? Wiesel.

24:49 Speaker 3 It's a memoir.

24:50 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah. But it's a very-- But it's more than-- It's a very-- It became-- That was the book that, you know, put him on the map. So he asked my father to take over his position, so my father, at night, would, would-- Th-those days, there was no email or anything, so it was called file. They would send it, like, by telegram, articles. So my father was the correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth in New York, in the, in the UN. And so that's w-- just broadened his, uh, journalistic connections. Um, and that's what he did. That was his work. He worked for the government for a while as well. So nineteen, just to give a few little a- you know, anecdotes about my father-

25:29 Speaker 3 No

25:29 Speaker 1 ...and the relationship with the Rebbe, uh-

25:30 Speaker 3 You said Elie Wiesel, you're connecting it some with the Rebbe?

25:34 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You'll see in a minute. Yeah. So, so this is now early sixties now. Um, the Rebbe was obviously always into, um, really, uh, you know, the, the idea of hafatsah, using newspapers. We know even back in Europe when he was working for the Frierdiker Rebbe, the Rebbe himself would publish some of Frierdiker Rebbe's, uh, sichas in the newspapers in Warsaw, Warsaw and so on. So the Rebbe was always using newspapers wherever possible to be publicized. Like, Nissim Gordon was a colleague of my father's, and he-

26:08 Speaker 3 He's another Lubavitcher that, uh-

26:10 Speaker 1 Yeah. And the Rebbe also-- the Rebbe came out to his levaya when he wasn't coming out anymore. He was also very machshav him 'cause he did a lot of good work for-- He would write about the Rebbe, write about Chassidus.

26:20 Speaker 3 The Rebbe had him, and the Frierdiker Rebbe did the, uh, citizenship.

26:23 Speaker 1 Yeah.

26:24 Speaker 3 The Rebbe made sure that Nissim Gordon was in the room.

26:26 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah?

26:26 Speaker 3 Yeah.

26:27 Speaker 1 Yeah. So Nissim Gordon was a son of, I mentioned before, the Gabbai of Seven Seventy, Rabbi Yechiel Gordon. Um, so the early sixties, I don't know-- I can't tell you every interaction, like what was the first time the Rebbe spoke to my father about newspapers. I don't really know. But I said, like, Kevis Lubavitch, so my father clearly was interacting with the Rebbe. Um, my father was also a Yossem, remember, and the Rebbe, a special kiruv to people who didn't have parents. 'Cause like the Rebbe felt it was, uh... So my father, before getting married, the Rebbe actually, like, called him in, gave him some hadracha, who didn't have parents. My father went to Chuppah without his father and mother. Um, um, so I'll, I'll just say that. So my father, 'cause he had a Yossem, two, two brothers that were-- So Bazalo was already sixteen, seventeen, so he was in the dorm, Lubavitch, Lubavitch Yeshiva. But Shalom was a seven-year-old boy. So my father asked the Rebbe what to do. His parents are-- He has no parents. The Rebbe said, "Bring him to New York and hire..." The Rebbe told him, "Hire a family that has a lot of children. Pay them to take him in." The Rebbe said, "Don't go to family members. Find strangers."

27:41 Speaker 3 Mm.

27:42 Speaker 1 Yeah. Uh, the obvious reason, the Rebbe didn't say the reason, the obvious is because they don't wanna have favors from them, and then they'll feel, you know, it's uncomfortable. So my father looked, who's the biggest family in Crown Heights? The Lipskers. They had nine children. So he went to my grandfather, Yankel Lipsker, in Seven Seventy, and said to him, he has a, a seven-year-old boy, and he's ready to pay every month, whatever. And my grandfather said from his end, "Absolutely," but he has to ask his wife. And he went, and my grandmother said immediately, "We have-- Now I will have a tenth child." And they took him in like a fam-- like, like with all the love. Actually, she probably treated him better than she treated her own children. So my father would go visit him. And of course, there's a, uh, an eligible, uh, bachelor, my father, and an eligible oldest daughter of the Lipskers, my mother. So they met. That was the shidduch, and they got married in Teshเต Zayin. So that's one part of it. The Rebbe was beside the condition. Um, in the early sixties, uh, um, the first interaction I know, the Rebbe with my father was, um-

28:53 Speaker 3 Interaction you mean in-

28:54 Speaker 1 Like a-

28:55 Speaker 3 With his work

28:56 Speaker 1 ...conversation, yeah, was in, in, in the Vatican City of, of Via Vese. There was what was called the Ecumenical Council. The Cr-- the Catholic Church was going through a whole change of, like, eliminating, officially blaming Jews for killing Yoshke, et cetera. So my father asked the Rebbe that he's being offered by his newspaper to go fly to Vatican. It was a historic event to the Vatican City. Should he go? 'Cause on one hand, Vatican City is like, you know, ved isara. So my fa-- my-- the Rebbe said, "Absolutely. Should definitely go. And before you go, you should read a lot of books on Catholicism."

29:38 Speaker 3 Yeah.

29:38 Speaker 1 "Because they have all these secret ways of doing things, and the more you know, the more they'll trust you, so you'll be able to get more information." That's what the Rebbe told me, "You should do his research." So my father became an expert. Like, like I, I couldn't believe it. Like, and every time one of the, you know, the half dollar, half dollars, they chose a new Ave Ave's. My father knew every secret, like, you know, the white smoke and the blue smo-- I don't wanna go into... It's not really the point of that, that had, uh, um, a podcast. But, but the Rebbe had this interaction with him, and my father was there for a few weeks, and he covered the story. Another interesting point, Eichmann in nineteen sixty-one was caught in Argentina by the Israelis, and they-- you know, the trial of Eichmann was a big deal. My father was the one that broke the story.

30:23 Speaker 3 In, in general, in the world?

30:24 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

30:25 Speaker 3 What do you mean?

30:25 Speaker 1 Because he was inside connections with the Shin Bet, with the-

30:29 Speaker 3 In the Tagesspiegel journal?

30:30 Speaker 1 Yeah.

30:30 Speaker 3 That was the-

30:31 Speaker 1 Tagesspiegel-

30:31 Speaker 3 Tagesspiegel was the first one-

30:32 Speaker 1 He was the first one that broke the story. He knew already that they're going to do it, but it was a secret. So as soon as they were-- he's able to publicize, he was the first one. He had to-- He had his-- He was very well trusted. He's a good journalist. He knew how to get people. He, he knew-- So the Rebbe used my father in that way in a very-- more than I've, I even I know. And even my mother, not at-- We all don't know as much. The Rebbe would probably speak to my father almost daily. I found this out later.

30:58 Speaker 3 In person?

31:00 Speaker 1 No, on the phone.

31:00 Speaker 3 The-

31:01 Speaker 1 Through Khadikov. Rabbi Khadikov would call. The Rebbe was on the phone. That's usually- But the Rebbe would speak. I'll, I'll share a few, uh, interesting, uh... I mean, this could be itself its own-

31:09 Speaker 4 No, no, sure, sure. Yeah

31:10 Speaker 1 ... it's, it's made it. So later-- My father didn't talk about it. It was very confidential, everything. Um, but later I f- I found-- 'cause, uh, 'cause my-- the Rebbe saw my father like a trusted source 'cause my father had connections in Washington, in Israel, in Russia. So, uh, so this, uh, my father broke the Eichmann story, and I don't know if the Rebbe-- if my father interacted with the Rebbe on that. I, I don't know. But with the co- with the Vatican City, for sure. Then just to go through a few other Parshas. Um, in nineteen sixty-seven was, of course, the Yom Kippur, Six-Day War, and the Rebbe, that was of course a big thing by the Rebbe. Um, after the Six-Day War, my father decided, I'm not sure how it came up, that he wants to go to Egypt. Wants to go to Egypt. Now, he's a Jewish writer, not just a Jewish writer, with a beard and yarmulke. You're talking about President Nasser in Egypt was a, a Rosh HaMelech. And, uh, my fa-- mother said to my father, "You wanna go to Egypt? It's a Sukkah. They can suddenly-- You can disappear. And, uh, where are you, you know?" So my father said it, it would be a, a real big scoop for him to go because right after S-- And that moment was the Tosha Chaf Ches the next year. So my, my father said, "You know what?" He asked the Rebbe. And I asked the Rebbe. The Rebbe says,

32:33 Speaker 1 "It's a good idea." But because it's Sukkah involved, the Rebbe gave him a whole bunch of a, a-advice. He said, "The first thing, as soon as you arrive, go to all the embassies, the American Embassy, the French Embassy, the Russian. Everybody should see you and take pictures with everybody." So in other words, they can't suddenly say he disappeared, you know, 'cause he's here. "Go to all the embassies and be very public. Everyone should see you there." That was the Rebbe. Then the Rebbe said, "Send postcards from Egypt to any-- everyone you know, wherever they may be." So like, you know, just make sure they know that you're not-- They can't just, like, make believe you just, you know, one night. And the Rebbe actually, in the Yechidus, gave my father two pairs of film. I'm not sure what were what. And he said that, "When you go there, there's an old Cairo synagogue. There's no one there, really. But if you go there, you'll meet a Jew." And he met a Jew there, and he gave him this film, the Rebbe Shlitas. My father-- I, I asked my father, "So what was this?" He said he had no idea, like a, like a, uh, Tsadik Anister type of thing. So the Rebbe was involved in that sense, and my father went and, uh, and it was a big thing. Then he, he couldn't go from Israel. He went through Cyprus, and then he went back to Cyprus. And from Cyprus, he went to Israel, and

33:53 Speaker 1 he was a big hero. Like, all the front page newspapers, they had pictures of my father and a camel, on a camel sitting with his Arab garment, you know, clothing and all that. And he was like, you know, 'cause he was like-- And he interviewed Nasser. You know, it was a big, a big thing. Um, that's that. Then-

34:11 Speaker 4 Um, some of the individuals that you mentioned, like Elie Wiesel-

34:14 Speaker 1 Oh, I was gonna-- I'm gonna talk about Elie Wiesel.

34:16 Speaker 4 And, and these other characters that the Rebbe had a whole Yachas with-

34:19 Speaker 1 Natan Yellin-Mor, that story

34:21 Speaker 4 ... T-Talk about some of those characters that the Rebbe had Yachas, and I think it was because of your father. It's the whole-

34:25 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The truth is, I-- We could do-- talk-- Um, and I wanna respect your structure here. I could talk about-

34:33 Speaker 4 I wanna hear a little bit more about these characters and then the Algemeiner-

34:36 Speaker 1 Okay

34:36 Speaker 4 ... and then we'll move on to Rabbi-

34:37 Speaker 1 Okay

34:37 Speaker 4 ... Simeon Jacobson.

34:38 Speaker 1 No, no, good. I'm-- D-- I, I don't mind any way you wanna do it. Um, so Elie Wiesel was very close with my father, really close. And he was very angry and very... You know, his-- the Holocaust had really affected, as he writes, his, his Emunah and all that. And he didn't wanna get married. You know, for him, it was like God disappeared for him. And, uh, and my father would always tell him, "You can't live that way." And, um, they would have these conversations. And then my father said to him, "Why don't you go see the Rebbe?" He didn't wanna go. You have pictures already in Tosafot Gimel. There's a picture of him in a beret sitting behind the Rebbe. You ever see that picture? Very early picture. If you can get a hold of it, it's, it's Kadai. He didn't go to Yechidus yet. He came to Farbrengen.

35:26 Speaker 4 And that was through your father?

35:28 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, for sure. 'Cause no, he was not, he was not interested. Uh, my father said, "You should go see the Rebbe. Talk-- You could talk to the Rebbe openly about all your things." And in Chav Gimel, I think, maybe even earlier, he came to Farbrengen, and, uh, and he wasn't yet so famous. He was just, he was just beginning to... And then over the next few years, um, again, I don't know the whole really, but at some point, there was a Yechidus, a famous Yechidus, and then there's the follow-up letters that are printed today. This was-- My father was the one that orchestrated it, meaning got him to go, and, and then with the rest is history. Basically, the Rebbe telling him that you're creating a second Holocaust. You know, you're just-- You're doing what Hitler wanted, There shouldn't be a continuation. And the Rebbe persuaded him and then wrote him this long letter in Yiddish. We have this, the long letter. It's printed, called the Sichas. Um, beautiful letter, like a real chizuk. And that's when they connected. You know, he tells the story that he's a Viznitzer, and the Rebbe said, "Say l'chaim." Then he came to Farbrengens. I remember the Farbrengen Lamed Aleph Simchas Torah, the second Farbrengen, Shabbos Breishes. After Yom Tov, he came to that Farbrengen. That's when the Rebbe spoke an hour Sicha on the Holocaust. It was because of him.

36:47 Speaker 4 Him.

36:48 Speaker 1 Yeah. He spoke about, like, you know, how do you, how do you address it? It's, uh... I, I used it also, that, uh, Sicha in my book, Toward a Meaningful Life, 'cause where you say this, the, uh, the whole Rebbe's Hashkafah on Sheitecha Cholel Makshava, and yet we have Taynus. Like, you know, you don't have to defend the Eibish. All the, the Rebbe's Hashkafah was definitely, yeah, he, he was there, which was not uncommon when there was a writer or something, the Rebbe would often-

37:10 Speaker 4 He's famous with Chaim Potok

37:11 Speaker 1 Chaim Potok, yeah, exactly So, yeah. So my father was, like, instrumental in many cases like this. I'll give you another story, for example. Um, uh, he was a rabbi in Queens, the y- largest Young Is-- um, largest Young Israel in Queens. He was the head of the RCA, which is the ...</i You know, the YU up on him. If you know the name, everybody-- It's a famous name. When my father passed away, uh, then I heard a lot more stories 'cause people came to Shiva. So there's this rabbi came, he was really older, and he told me-

37:47 Speaker 4 Hollander.

37:48 Speaker 1 Not Hollander. Not... No, no, no.

37:51 Speaker 4 Bamzer.

37:52 Speaker 1 What? Not Hollander. Famous name.

37:57 Speaker 4 Bamzer.

37:57 Speaker 1 Not, not Hollander.

38:00 Speaker 4 Bamzer.

38:00 Speaker 1 Who?

38:02 Speaker 4 Bamzer.

38:02 Speaker 1 Not Bamzer either. No, no. This is the common Chabad, uh, trendy-

38:05 Speaker 4 Hollander, Bamzer.

38:06 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, no, there's another one. It's lesser, uh, uh... It'll come to me or it won't come to me, but we'll, we'll, we'll stick it in somewhere. But it was very fascinating. He said to me that around the ..., called the RCA, Rabbinical Council of America or something, um, wanted to come out with a macha, uh, about something the Rebbe did. I don't know what. Like, something the Rebbe said that they didn't agree with. And they were gonna come out with it publicly, like that they disagreed with the Rabba-Rebbe. And my-- He says, "Well, your father called me," 'cause he knew me well, and he says, "Before you come out, why don't you talk to the Rebbe? You know, let the-- May-maybe you can, uh, resolve it without, uh, coming out." He says, "The Rebbe's gonna talk to me? The Rebbe does everything on his own. He doesn't talk to anyone." He says, "No, I'll talk to you." It was, it was good. So my father got him a yechidus. He went to yechidus, and he told me. This he told me himself. He said-- And everything was resolved. They discussed it, and he came back to me, he says, "You know, we resolved it."

39:14 Speaker 4 There's no issue here.

39:15 Speaker 1 So it was not even a-- We don't even know something. So he says to me, "You can't know how many things your father prevented be-behind, you know, back, what they call back, uh, and, uh, diplomacy-

39:26 Speaker 4 Back channel.

39:26 Speaker 1 Back channel diplomacy, because that was one. He says there were others also. Because he knew a lot of people, so he was able to diffuse things that could have been ..." So, um, this was what he told me, which was very interesting. So-- And my father didn't talk about much, so I don't know how many, but there's no question that he was like a liaison. I do know this, that anything happened in the news, he'd get a call right away from Rabbi Khodakov to double-check what's going on. So he was like-- I'm not saying he was the only source, but he was one of the main sources for the Rebbe.

40:00 Speaker 4 So he was the Rebbe's man in the, in the journalistic-

40:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, like in jo-- Especially Israel. I'll soon share about the diplomats. He would bring some . So this was, um, um, those years. Wiesel, I mentioned. And, uh, the next-- Well, I should mention quickly. Many-- And people know these stories 'cause my father publicized them. I've shared them. Um, he went to Russia. Again, the Rebbe gave him-- He had a long, long yechidus with the Rebbe. Russia was very tough then on the Yidden. A year later, they would start letting them out. But Brezhnev was the-- So my father went. My father spoke fluent Russian, so nobody trusted-

40:44 Speaker 4 Was he a Russian citizen?

40:46 Speaker 1 I don't know if, I don't know if he was a Russian citizen anymore, but, uh-

40:48 Speaker 4 He was able to go.

40:49 Speaker 1 Yeah, even now, for sure. As a journalist. And, um, and nobody trusted him. The Russians thought that he was a Israeli spy. The J-- The Hasidim thought he was a Russian spy, 'cause he spoke all these... So it was, it was a, it was a . But he ended up going, uh, and the Rebbe gave him a lot of shlichus in there because a lot of Russian Jews. And the Rebbe told him-- This is so-- This we could talk for an hour, just for the record. The Rebbe told me, "You come back, come right into yechidus to me 'cause I wanna hear from the Russkiy. So the Rebbe said, "Very close to my heart." And we know the Rebbe would talk about them all the time. So that's what happened. The Rebbe then-- My father had a yechidus, it's a famous yechidus, all night, from eleven AM till six AM. Seven-hour yechidus when he came back, and it's an unbelievable yechidus. Uh, it's-- most of it is, is . It probably deserves its own, uh, parasha. The Rebbe spoke-- My father gave the Rebbe the panim-- the tzetlach that the Russian Yid-- 'Cause remember, it was a prison. You couldn't write in America. And they all wrote, , they, they couldn't write Rebbe. And when the Rebbe got, uh... My father gave him like a few hundred of such notes, and the Rebbe took it, like my father said, the Rebbe was holding it like, like a child.

42:11 Speaker 4 Mm.

42:11 Speaker 1 Like it was like a... And the Rebbe started reading slowly. It was, like, tied up and the Rebbe started reading very slowly, and so the Rebbe started crying. So my father felt very uncomfortable. He's standing there. So he decided to edge himself out to go out of the room. When the Rebbe wants him back, he'll come back. You know, he doesn't know, you know. So my father's about to make his escape, you know, and the Rebbe said, "Made like this, then you should stand." So he stood in the corner. He says it was a sight like being a Kadesh Kadoshim, the Rebbe crying like a baby, reading the, the notes from the Russian, 'cause they, like, you know, poured their hearts out. So it was a yechidus of that nature, very emotional. And at, at the end of that yechidus, the Rebbe looked out the window, and it was starting to get light outside, and the Rebbe stood up. My father said the Rebbe was like fresh, like, like, like the night didn't even pass. And that's when the Rebbe said a famous ending of the yechidus. He said, "Ah, ." That's what the Rebbe said. He saw the light. And so you could take a lot of Perushim in that, 'cause after they spoke about a lot of dark things, and the Rebbe said, "Ah, ." Uh, I remember 'cause back when my father came home, he said, "I'll tell you what the last thing the Rebbe said, You know, . You know, that

43:29 Speaker 1 there's always a new day, a new hope. The owner, his name was Jacobs, um, closes down the o- the doesn't tell anybody it's closed. My father comes home middle of the day. I never saw my father, even at night, let alone middle of the day. My father was very dramatic. He says to me, "I'm out of a job." I, I said, "What does that mean, Ta?" Like, you know, like I thought, like, are we, we, we gonna lose the house? Like, you know, are we gonna live in the street? He says, "No, not exactly," but he ma-- like he made it like I-- out of a job, and then Stalgeminer was born, and-

44:12 Speaker 3 When it was born, what happened?

44:15 Speaker 1 There was a conception and a birth.

44:18 Speaker 3 Was there some-

44:19 Speaker 1 Just kidding. Um like, like babies are born. I, I'll tell you. I'm gonna tell you. Relax. Um, uh, so the Algemeine-- the Dooyewech Journal was closed. It was a big shock for the whole Jewish community 'cause it was un-- without warning. The Forverts was owned by the radio stations. They had a lot of money. The, the unions were killing it, and there were less and less Yiddish readers. I mean, there's many reasons. And my father, um, he was a young man. He was . He was born . That would make him what in ? Uh...

44:54 Speaker 3 You're the math major, no?

44:56 Speaker 1 I am? Um, okay. So let's-- let me count.

45:01 Speaker 3 I'll let you do the math.

45:02 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, is, uh, okay. Whatever. He was, uh, thirty-two, thirty, thirty-eight years old. So he right away felt he wants to do something, but he didn't have money. And the Rebbe, the Rebbe was a big encourager. The Rebbe right away said, There's a lot of stories. The Rebbe then, opened the Zeitung right away, and the Rebbe said, , you know, the Rebbe says, "I'm here and, and nothing's happening." And-

45:33 Speaker 3 So, so it's-- But I think their, their newspaper was a Satmar newspaper. Algemeine was supposed to be a Lubavitcher newspaper?

45:42 Speaker 1 Oh, that. I'll, I'll tell-- I'll share exactly what happened. So the Rebbe was encouraging him a lot. My father needed some money, a little, you know? So then a few people came together. Mendel Shemtov was one. Um, he brought a few partners of his, not Lubavitch, Zelda and a, a few people. Um, I remember Michoel Teitelbaum and Leibe Mochkin owned a building, so they put the building up. Whatever. They put together thirty thousand dollars maybe. That was relatively a lot-

46:12 Speaker 3 That's money

46:12 Speaker 1 ...but they weren't looking to make money. It was just to get it going. Just you need something.

46:16 Speaker 3 It was a, it was a puller.

46:17 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, it was. Um, and my father was the, the person, the editor and the publisher. And, uh, so a lot of stories about this, but just to briefly, you asked about -- My father asked the Rebbe, does he want a Lubavitcher Zeitung? So the Rebbe laughed and said, "." He said, "Lubavitch's a Zeitung's is ," which means subscribers. And to get ab-- You know, it's two different objectives. So it's-

46:56 Speaker 3 Why, why are they not-- Why, why are they different?

46:58 Speaker 1 'Cause Lubavitch is-- Because then the whole newspaper is not for your . You have to do other things.

47:03 Speaker 3 Oh, so it's-

47:03 Speaker 1 And Chabad and Lubavitch-

47:04 Speaker 3 To intrigue other people.

47:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

47:06 Speaker 3 To intrigue readers, you need to write things that are not necessarily in line with

47:10 Speaker 1 Ex-exactly. And it's also not the mission of the newspaper. For the mission of the newspaper, then it's more of a-- It would be more like a, you know, like a- Uh, exactly. Good. Very good. Exactly. Right. And the-- And it wouldn't be credible. It wouldn't be seen as-- It would be seen as Chabad, uh, propaganda, you know, Chabad teachings. That's not a newspaper, basically. And then a few other things. My father, uh, just to give another story that a good one with the Rebbe. Um, the-- My father says some Maskalim are saying that the newspaper needs, uh, a Vaad. You know?

47:48 Speaker 3 Va'ada Yichud.

47:49 Speaker 1 Va'ada Be'kus, censorship bureau, and people who'd look at all the articles-

47:54 Speaker 3 Like a ruchni-- ruhnistik?

47:56 Speaker 1 No, no, to make sure all the articles are right, the ads, so LP, Halacha-

48:01 Speaker 3 Jewish, spiritually.

48:02 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So my father said to the Maskalim that, "I'll ask the Rebbe. I don't need the hasharas." So my father asked the Rebbe whether the Rebbe thinks there should be a Vaad, like Rabbonim or Mashpi'im, whatever. So the Rebbe, the Rebbe said, "What, what will you do if they tell you to close the newspaper?" So my fa-- my father said, "The Rebbe says I should get them and I have to listen to them. I'll do it. I'll listen." So the Rebbe then picked up his hands like this, and he said, "Rabbonim. That was the has to learn Torah twenty-four seven, and one second that he doesn't is Bital Torah. Reading a newspaper is Bital Torah, so how could a Rav give a Hashgacha for Bital Torah, even if it's kosher articles?" You know, that's what the Rebbe said. He said, "A newspaper is for Jews that don't ask Rabbonim-- don't listen to Rabbonim or don't ask Rabbonim. And then when you put in a word from Torah of the Hasidism in such a place, you're reaching even such Jews."

49:10 Speaker 3 The Rebbe liked talking about Zeitung.

49:12 Speaker 1 That's what he said.

49:12 Speaker 3 No. They read a Zeitung before Davening, and like the American-

49:15 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah

49:16 Speaker 3 ...orange juice.

49:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

49:17 Speaker 3 The Rebbe, the Rebbe liked picking on the-

49:19 Speaker 1 Yeah

49:19 Speaker 3 ...reading newspapers.

49:20 Speaker 1 He said there are times when , you know, like that. So my-- So you see the Rebbe is like not just common sense, the wisdom. The Rebbe was not saying have a newspaper that's . It's, it, it, it's not, uh, Halacha says you should learn Torah. So that was the Rebbe's approach to it, and, um, and, uh, yeah. That, that's when the Rebbe told my father the story actually that when he was in Warsaw, the told me to go find a newspaper to print the Likutei Dibburim. So my fa-- So he said, "I went to look, and I came back with a list of three newspapers, four newspapers." So the Rebbe said, "Yiddish," 'cause Warsaw was like a million Jews before the war. So the Rebbe said to the Rebbe -- He's telling this to my father. That's So the Rebbe started laughing, he said, and said, "For frumme Tzaddik, for frumme Yidden, come and lay in the, the kuntresim in the shtieblach. Davon verstehen kein Zeitung." I wanna reach Jews that don't go to shtieblach. Right. So my father says, "So which newspaper did you find?" So the Rebbe said, "We found a liberal socialist, uh, you know, one of these, uh, socialist newspapers." So the Rebbe's pointing out that there's, there's different kibbushim. It's not, you know, you wanna have a kuntres and teder, a kevet seder, that's one thing. This is a newspaper. The Rebbe also gave the name Algemeiner. That was the Rebbe. He had the name. Yeah, yeah. My

50:49 Speaker 1 father asked the Rebbe why. Algemeiner Journal. Algemeiner Journal. And my father asked the Rebbe why, 'cause Algemeiner is like saying like general newspaper or, you know, it's a strange name. So the Rebbe said, "That's what a zeitung. That was a klal hakal, Algemein aus." That's what the Rebbe said. Then my father asked, "Should it be Algemeiner Wochenzeitung?" 'Cause weekly, 'cause Tagesspiegel Journal was daily. So the Rebbe said to him, "Was darfst das Magal sein, Sabbath?" So I remember my father saying to me, "What is the Rebbe thinking, that there's gonna grow Yiddish readers?" So I said, "I don't know." And today, it-it's with internet, you can't even call it daily- Right ... 'cause you update it every minute. And the Rebbe said, "Why do you have to be Magal?" So- There was English right away also? No, no. That was later. That came later. Another outstanding thing that I can mention is, so the Algemeiner became for the Rebbe very... The, the-- I think from then on, the Kiruvim just dramatically changed. My father became even more closer to the Rebbe, uh, because it was like, you know, he is a publisher. At the, at the end of the day, it's not a Lubavitcher newspaper, but whenever the Rebbe came out with a Miftza, whenever there's something going on- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ... there's, there's major coverage. Yeah, but remember, the credibility was that it wasn't a Lub-- it wasn't being paid by Lubavitch to, to publicize the Rebbe. My father was independent.

52:05 Speaker 1 Right. And it was news. It was news. Yeah, and my father independently chose to do it, so it has a different meaning than- He right away started with the Sichas in the, in the- No, no. Meir Blau came later, a few years later, started the Toire Gedanken. Toire Gedanken. Yeah. Um, and, uh, there's a lot to say about this, but I'll just say one thing. The Yom Kippur War was a Lammed Dalet, right? So Yom Kippur War, um, my father was of course covering. The Rebbe went out, there was a Levaya, you know, uh, before Succos, and the Rebbe went to be Melaveh. On the way back, I mean, the Bochum from that time will tell you the story. On the way back, the Rebbe saw my father standing there, and he called him over, and he began to talk to him as he's walking back from Kingston to the Seven seventy. And he ended up talking to my father like twenty minutes, and he gave him a full interview. He said it's an interview. So my father made a special... The, the newspaper was once a week. That week, it came out twice with a full interview. Interview. Front page, exclusive interview with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. That's when the Rebbe said to my father, later he would say it in the Farbrengen, that they should co-conquer Dama- Damascus and Cairo. You know, the Rebbe in the Succos Sicha, the Chol Hamoed, uh, Succos Sicha, and Erev Succos Sicha, the Rebbe speaks about it. The

53:20 Speaker 1 Sima Mesectechala. So the Rebbe-- so my-- That was like a, a full interview. That was like a scene on the street. The Rebbe spoke to my father like twenty minutes. Mm-hmm. And he pu-- and he published the whole thing. And then over the years, this became, uh, the Al- main-- I told you, I don't even-- I know maybe ten percent of it because it was ongoing. Uh, maybe people-- I, I will correct a few people think that the Rebbe was my gear, every article. It's not correct. Uh, when my father wrote something that the Rebbe said in the Farbrengen, he would often send it into the Rebbe to make sure it's accurate. And the Rebbe was often my gear that. But overall, my father didn't take dictation from the Rebbe what to write. My father was a smart man. He understood the Rebbe's shita and Hashkafa, and he presented. And there were also controversial things. There was a guy, some weirdo, that decided to put an ad in the Algemeiner and signed it Seven seventy Eastern Parkway. And my fa-- the Rebbe would get the first newspaper. They'd bring the Eshta Eivin, so to speak. Wednesday night, they would deliver right to the Rebbe. The Rebbe saw this ad. My father got a call within minutes from Rabbi Kadikov, "Who's, who put an ad, Seven seven Eastern Parkway?" It was like some strange ad. I don't even know what it was for. My father said, "I thought it w- it was cleared by, you know,

54:37 Speaker 1 from, from, from you." So he says, "No." That was But my-- the newspaper was already printed, but it was not delivered to the newsstands yet. So my father called them, they threw them all out, and they got rid of the ad. They changed it, and they reprinted the whole newspaper. There was, I mean, there were some events like that. There was another example story. It was a guy called Shloime Shamir, was a writer in Algemeiner, and he was a-- his, his grandfather was a Gabbai by the Geder's Rebbe. So he came from Geder Hasidim, but he was, like, more liberal and more secular. So the Rebbe was very strong behind Tainas Chass. There was a few Tainas Chass, right, Cislo in Mamalov and a few other times. So he wrote an article criticizing the Tainas Chass, saying, "First maintenance, Abir Achim is the good thing. Cislo, you need an army. You need to be smart. What's supposed to be-- A Tainas isn't fast and think it's gonna save, uh, Israel." The Rebbe by the next Farbrengen- So is-- So you're saying that th-th-there's no censorship. Like, your father- Right, right. No, no ... allowed an article- Yeah, exactly ... that was, you know, criticizing. He didn't say the Rebbe. He didn't mention the Rebbe. He mentioned the-- 'cause that was like, "Good to set up on him officially." Right. But the Rebbe was behind it. Okay. So he didn't mention the Rebbe. He didn't mention any names. He just said, "What do they think? That,

55:53 Speaker 1 uh, they're gonna make a Tainas?" Yeah, my father published it, and, uh, also he was a weekly columnist. My father couldn't-- You can't tell a weekly columnist, "Write this." And the Rebbe was fine with that. I mean, I'll show you what happened. The Rebbe yelled by the farbrengen about it. "Come to Eid, there's not G- G- The Rebbe said, "I come from Chassidishe mishpacha. " You know, like, the Rebbe was very upset about it. And my father was sitting at the farbrengen. At the end of farbrengen, if I may say this, the Rebbe goes over to my father, "Manuval." 'Cause he calls the Rebbe . My father wasn't happy, so my father wrote to the Rebbe that he apologizes that he aggravated the Rebbe, and the Rebbe wrote back to him or said it ba'al peh, I'm not sure. The Rebbe said, As a doctor for-- You know, you're the publisher of a newspaper, you have a columnist, you can't tell him not to write something. And I do my... The next week, my father wrote an article criticizing Shamir. That he could do. That's the way you do it in the journalism. You can't-- 'Cause then the newspaper loses its- Credibility. Yeah. So that's another portion. Then there's the famous Natan Ya'alon story. I don't know if you wanna go into that, because I did a few gems on that, a few- And, and you said there was, um Israeli diplomats. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Those are the two things. Natan Ya'alon is a

57:13 Speaker 1 longer story. He was like a writer for the Algemeiner, but also a very anti-Israel. And this famous story about Kesher Blacha. Say it, say it. You want me to tell it? Yeah. Okay. So briefly, Natan Ya'alon was a-- actually came from-- Before the war, he came from Poland. He was a knowledgeable guy. He was one of the-- Well, who's the most aggressive? There was Haganah, there was Lehi, and there was the Stern Gang. Yeah, they were the, um, Irgun. He was from the very radical anti-British. You know, they bombed King David Hotel, et cetera. Um, so he was a big, big Zionist. But then when the country became-- the State of Israel was founded in nineteen forty-eight, he saw the politics and the corruption, so he became very anti. You know, 'cause he was more of ideological type of Zionist, and he was-- became very pro, uh, unfortunately, pro-Palestinian or whatever you wanna call it, pro-Arab. And he would write these articles that people, like, were furious. So my father, in his, in a colorful way, decided a perfect writer for the Algemeiner, you know. Um, now he wrote a lot of beautiful articles. He was a good writer. But from time to time-- So my father's c- contacted him. He knew him, and said-- He wrote-- He read-- He wrote beautifully Yiddish. "Would you wanna be our columnist?" So he says, "You know what I write about?" You know, he says, "Yeah." So, you know, people can criticize it. So my father, he became

58:39 Speaker 1 a writer. So I'm not saying every month. You know, once every few months, he got an article that my father got all the hate mail. "How do you print the such articles?" Whatever. Um, you could say it was a sell-- it sold newspapers, okay? You wanna say that. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. I, I, s- I know how Chabad people think. Um, I, I grew up-- I have, I have soft spot for Chabad, you know. Um, so anyway, but the story that comes out of this may be worth the whole parshah. Some-- But he was also very anti-religious because he was, like, very anti-religious. Even though he was a, he was a For people I know you're not afraid of, 'cause you know, you wrote the-- But from the-- I wanna know if you have a, you know, yirat Shamay, any fear of Hashem So when he told the story, he said he didn't wanna lie and say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. "" You know, you know, like that. And he also didn't wanna say the truth. It, it was respectfully, he didn't wanna say the Rebbe, "I don't believe, uh, this Ebersohn." So he said, "I "" A Jew thinks. That's how he answered. A Jew's thinking. You know, like I say, so the Rebbe said, " So this was a little taste of, uh, Gershon Ber Jacobson. Before, b-b-but- That's, uh- I think that it'll be a sin to talk about the if you don't speak about the Okay, that's Lamed-Vav. Also that

1:08:27 Speaker 1 same year. Yeah. So my father, after Tishrei Cheshvan Lamed-Vav, my father printed a picture of the Rebbe with two fingers, you know, the famous picture. Motioning to whistle. Yeah. But the f-- two fingers are in the Rebbe's mouth. It's not just, uh... And this I remember, I was nineteen already. I was a bachur in seven seventy, and my father comes Friday night to shul, and I see everyone a-- uh, he's attacked by Gan Shpritz Chabad, you know. Uh, I'm not gonna say all the names. You know, that, uh-- and they would attack all people yelling at him. to print the Rebbe a picture like the Rebbe you know, that, that is just My father was like-- he was, he was, he was b-b-perplexed what's bothering them. He did-- Not it's just there was a disagree. He didn't even understand the Rebbe. It's by Kishla Bracha. It's not like some secret picture from Machneesville. Not, not everyone. There were people who, th-they're not-- that said absolutely, but there were people, they attacked. My father, he was not-- my father was not a guy you could intimidate, uh, but he was uncomfortable obviously 'cause they were yelling at him. So he said, like my father would always say write a letter to the editor. That's what he always would say. I use that also when people have comments. I say, "Write a letter to the editor." They go, "You're the editor." "So write a letter," you know. And what did my father do? So they wrote a

1:09:57 Speaker 1 letter that in the name of Tzemach Tzedek Hasidim, they're pro-- making a Machal- Hashem, I think. Hashem Chabad, whatever. So my father, in classic style, what did he do? He prints the letter, prints a picture of the guy that wrote the letter, prints a picture of himself 'cause he's being criticized, and prints a picture of the Rebbe Pfeiffen again. So people should see the full story . This is my father. This is classic, you know. It's a story and he writes, "Beshem Tzemach Tzedek Hasidim." Now, the Rebbe saw all this, but he didn't react. It's Cheshvan Lamed-Vav. So it goes Kislev, Teves, Shevat, or th-- four months later. They Mitten, I think the sixth or seventh Sicha, put him Lamed-Vav. You could, you could all hear it. That's how the Rebbe started. And you can read the Sicha, it speaks for itself. The Rebbe did not like the protest, you know. That's when he brought that, that Michol Ba-- Mich-Michol, Michol Bashol also had the same problem. is making somersaults, et cetera. And the Rebbe said, "A five from Kedusha." You know, the whole, the whole thing. What I will say on this is the stam-- and I gave a dov, it's my father, but I knew my father very well. He was, he was a very intelligent man. He understood the Rebbe's approach extremely well. everyone makes mistakes. But he-- when I printed a picture of the Rebbe Pfeiffen berabim, it's not-- was not... You know, today, most people would say, "The Rebbe did

1:11:33 Speaker 1 it." It's not like, uh, we have nothing to hide. Um, and he was, he, he was Mekubavim, and the Sokosidim were still like, you know, old school. Uh, same thing happened, by the way, with the Rebbetsin's pictures, Mem Hes. Also, my father got from Yitchka Gansburg a bunch of pictures the day of her wedding, Yud Aleph Kislev, and he printed a whole spread after the . A few pictures. Yeah, a few pictures. And there was also people complained. That was less, but still there were people say, "How you print pictures?" Like, "Is it Rebbetsin?" You know, like, I, I remember my father saying, "Well, you want the Rebbetsin has to look like a Satmar Rebbetsin? We have a beautiful Rebbetsin. What's wrong with having a beautiful Rebbetsin?" you know. But, uh, whatever. And, um, here too, my father didn't have an issue. First of all, it's a newspaper. He's not printing Beshem Chabad. If it-- If it's his mistake, it's, it is a . It's not like, uh, it's not a say, you know. With the Emma Malco, there was a whole Parsha there. It's a answer. Yeah, it's a sinner, right. The whole thing. And even there, the Rebbe did not- Yemeinu HaMalchut. Huh? Yemeinu HaMalchut. Yeme-- Right, Yemeinu HaMalchut. And there's that sattel where the Rebbe r-- like explains. Rebbe explains it. Yeah. But then he gave it also to the bachurim. The bachurim, the whole- Yeah. But first-- But my father's not a ps-- is not a, a, a, a shiva bachur,

1:12:52 Speaker 1 you know. So after, after Shiva, after Chabad-- after the Rebbe stood up from Shiva, the Rebbe called in three people into his room in the house. He called in, uh, Yudel, and he called Zalman Grill and called my father. And my-- the Rebbe gave my father ace, uh, two-- four hundred and seventy dollars, and gave him a for the article and the pictures. So my father said to the Rebbe that . And that's when the Rebbe said to him, he says, um, uh, the Rebbe said to him, "" You know, the Rebbe was like-- the Rebbe said he should print more. So next week was another spread. Yeah. Um, the Rebbe Besorah as COVID, uh, Niftaris. The Rebbe once told my father that pe-- my father said people say the newspaper is . And the Rebbe says, "." You know. It's, it's, uh, that's the story. So that's a little picture. But in between over and under, my father was involved in so many things. I heard, um, after my father passed away, Beyond McKline and Yudel and Label told me, "Whatever everyone knows, there's even more." My father had a mini stroke, uh, on, uh, in Tash Reem Hey, I think it was. Yeah. Before Pesach. And my father went by for matzah. The Rebbe wasn't giving matzah yet. He was giving through the Kohelet and the light. But my father got every-- uh, he got four matzahs and everything. My father walks by, and he was very depressed and also weak,

1:14:22 Speaker 1 you know. And, uh, my schwager, Berel Gansburg, was standing behind my father 'cause he was a Kohelet gamma. And the Rebbe sees my father like this, and he says, "" Like he said, "What's bothering you?" He says, "." It's my father, you know, like he said, "I can't do anything." Like he's weak and the Rebbe put down the matzahs, and the Rebbe raised his hands. He says, "I'm older than you, and I do everything." That's one nice story. The final one I'll say-- Well, final, we can ta-- As I said, I can go on and on. Tov Shenon. Erev, uh, Tov Shenon was the only time the Rebbe Fabregin the first day of Rosh Hashana also. Um, my father was in the hospital then 'cause he had diabetes. He was in Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in the hospital then. By the Fabregin Rosh Hashana, the first day,day, which was never. I think only the, maybe the first year the Rebbe spoke a little, but the Farbrengen was only then. So middle of Farbrengen, the Rebbe, the Rebbe looked for me 'cause I was-- It's a surprise Farbrengen, so I was sitting, like, was right under the Rebbe's table. So the, the Rebbe wanted me to say l'chaim. I said l'chaim. Rebbe Gruner told me later, off the record, this Farbrengen was zechus of your father.

1:15:36 Speaker 5 Mm.

1:15:37 Speaker 1 I didn't ask him how he knows, but, you know, that's what he told me. So which was not a pele because my father had this, like, you know, the Rebbe was mechshav, not him, what he did, his position, you know. So, uh, but listen to the story. Erev Yom Kippur, suddenly everyone's calling me. I don't know where I was. My wife was calling me. Uh, my office was calling me. My brother's calling me. Rebbe Gruner is desperate, "The Rebbe wants to see you." Erev Yom Kippur. So I come running. The Rebbe comes out to garden Achron, and he gives me two pieces of lakach, and he tells me, "From Taten a gezunt-- a gezundheit un gezunte year." A sweet and healthy year. And then he says with a smile, That if he finishes the shlichus for which he was sent to the hospital, they'll release him. So he was in NYU Hospital, and it was at First Avenue and, mm, twenties. I ran, you know, I took a cab, I remember, and I went there right away, brought the cake, and I told my father. My mother started running around doing mitzvah. My father called her back, he said, "It's my shlichus, not your shlichus." "You know, you're a visitor here." Um, and I don't know what my father did. He probably did his thing, spoken to doctors. But, uh, at Kade Kach, Rabbi Khadikov was very, very old then. He was, like, not weak, now. The day after Yom Kippur, he visits my father.

1:17:09 Speaker 1 The Rebbe asks, Second, yeah. And, um, so a meyerdik story, I think. I tell the story a lot because it's the Rebbe's attitude. Even who ends up in a hospital, who goes on hospital to shlichus. You go to the hospital 'cause you have no choice.

1:17:24 Speaker 5 Oh.

1:17:24 Speaker 1 'Cause the Rebbe sees everything as a shlichus.

1:17:27 Speaker 5 Shemes Adigev Kenuns.

1:17:28 Speaker 1 Right. So that's a little taste of, uh-

1:17:30 Speaker 5 And that's the whole story of your father.

1:17:32 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:17:32 Speaker 5 He had a talent to be a journalist-

1:17:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah

1:17:34 Speaker 5 ... but Rebbe made him to a shlichus.

1:17:35 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, I, you know, I'm very proud of, obviously, but I'm also-- I know that, you know, uh, it's-- people see it's like I'm subjective a bit. But, uh, yeah, he was a-- He brought the Rebbe a lot of-- He did-- He was a warrior. I didn't even go through the Parshah of Satmar and Aguda. Don't get to-- That's a whole other story. I don't know if you guys know the story with the, you know, the Satmar start attacking the Rebbe. He went to war. And that was-- I think that was where he was zechar to his biggest, uh, kiruvim because he mamash was mesing nefesh. My father lost-- It's to send us-- I mean, they would-- Th-they terrorized my father. They beat him up. They beat him up in Satmar, sure, once. But he was like, "This was the la- the late Lameds."

1:18:18 Speaker 5 The Halacha and the openings.

1:18:20 Speaker 1 Yeah, the Halacha, the pogrom in Cr-- in-- Well, his-- My father was the central figure there 'cause he, every week, he called them the fasanta mais, the s-- poison mice. He, he, like, brought them to their knees. He was like-- He went, uh, he mamash went to war. And I know the Rebbe was behind. It was machas. I don't know. I don't-- You want me to talk about it? You know.

1:18:41 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:18:42 Speaker 1 Okay. It's fine. Um, so you probably know, of course, Satmar shitas about Israel. And even though the Satmar Rav and the, and the Rebbe did see each other, Tosh HaHei and Tosh Giml and so on. But as, as the years passed, um, the tensions rose, you know, especially after the Six-Day War when the Satmar, uh, came out with, uh, a lagola of Altmuda attacking Six-Day War with Meisersutton and not allowed to go to the Kosel. So you can imagine, and Chabad Shita was very different. But it really, uh, it really exploded in Tebe, in Lamed Vav. Uh, where the Rebbe says a b- m- can make Birchas Hanissim, Mamish Mais Nissim, and the Satmar went crazy. By then it was Peishe Yisroel, you know, no, the Rebbe said, "What do you mean? A doctor saves your life. It doesn't matter if he's Frum, not Frum." The whole thing, you-- this kisil, the Rebbe asked the three questions that I brought him. You know, you know that Parshah, right? I'm not going through all the details, but bottom line is that they then began to do their Satmar shtik real terrorism. They printed then a kevitz. Mam-- I don't even wanna repeat it. The worst possible thing you could write about the Rebbe. I mean, like, like, Mamash Pash-Pashkevil. The Pashkevil came out then. And then I was on the Mitzvah tank when they almost turned over a Mitzvah tank in Williamsburg. Put him Lamed, uh-

1:20:11 Speaker 5 You were on the tank?

1:20:12 Speaker 1 I was on the first tank. It was-- happened twice. They almost turned it over, and they were burning the Rebbe in effigy. I mean, I didn't wanna repeat it, such a bushah, but I have to say it for the story. They did things Mamash Chilul in the worst part, Chilul HaKodesh. You know, things you hear. I mean, later they would throw the d- the, the-- a dead dog in the oil. That was a little late. You know, the things, Mamash be-behavior of Nazis. The guys just cut the beard of, of, of Mendel Wachtler and the same thing with, uh, with Pinya Korv. And, and the Rebbe was their target. So my father began to go. He had the newspaper. Every week, he would attack them. And for them, that was the worst because it bad-- you know, they wanted a good name. He attacked them, and they say, "Why are you attacking? There's a few terrorists." "Yeah, yeah, a few terrorists." You know, he, he went to war against them every week in the Algemeiner Ten pages maybe. Ten full pages of protests. Gershon Mendel was involved. They would get every rav from Antwerp to, to, to Chuesvu. Macha of the Bizayon Ha-Kodesh of the Rebbe.

1:21:13 Speaker 6 Of the Rebbe or what was the, the Sheinus? It was-

1:21:16 Speaker 1 No, it was the Rebbe. It was all covered of the Rebbe. 'Cause they were mevaz the Rebbe directly. Pictures, I mean, the worst possible way. It was a, it was a real war. But the media, my father-- Algemeiner was a very big newspaper then. It was very popular. It was the only-- There was no all-- There, there was no Ami's and there was no Ami Diaz. There was no Yet-Ted Naaman. There was Jewish press, and there was Algemeiner. Fervent, but, you know.

1:21:39 Speaker 6 As Gimmel Tammuz approaches, many will be donating to Keren Hamamesh. Keren Hamamesh is a fund that was established shortly after Gimmel Tammuz. The objective of the fund is similar to the Kranes that the Rebbe himself established, and the idea is that a fund needed to be established to strengthen and continue all of the Rebbe's Puus, the Rebbe's Shlichas, Battei Chabad, and so on. Over the years, Keren Hamamesh has engaged in many activities, offering seed money and various Puus of Shlichim around the world. Most recently, Keren Hamamesh has engaged in supporting and financing mitzvah tanks to combat the negative forces in the world and do the Rebbe's work of Afatz Alamayanes Chutza and Afatz Ayadas Chutza. As Gimmel Tammuz approaches, many feel that it is an appropriate and positive thing to donate to Keren Hamamesh in honor and in connection with Gimmel Tammuz. You can donate to Keren Hamamesh through going to magbis.org, M-A-G-B-I-S.org, and looking for the tab of Keren Hamamesh.

1:22:56 Speaker 1 I remember when-- Wednesday night when the Algemeiner would come to Esenbench, it was a line till President Street. I'm not exaggerating, but hundreds of people were buying the newspaper because it was, it was exciting news.

1:23:07 Speaker 6 At the time, yeah.

1:23:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. And the Rebbe, of course, would get it every week. And a member of the Lubavitch, Hasconim, came to my father and said, "It's affecting our business. We have partners, Satmar Partners." So my father said, "They're not affecting my business," you know. So the Rebbe's covered. Um, and, uh, we would get every Motzei Shabbos, and we're getting twenty pepperoni treyfer pizza pies. They broke our windows. No, I'm, I'm, I'm not-- This is not exaggeration, by the way. If you know that, it's hard to imagine today. Mamish terrorism, they broke windows. My mother-- My father worked late 'cause he would send-- He, he worked late at night. So my mother would get calls in the middle of the night, "We, we kidnapped your, your husband," or, "He's dead." And they knew where he was. So, like I said, my mother was always, you know, terrified. I remember my brother was learning with his chaver in, in our house, and a stone came flying in. It was, it was just co-co-common. And, uh, but my father was the opposite. They didn't know who they're dealing with. You know, he's a real Sinus Nefesh person, my father. You know, he's not, he's not tim-intimidated. So it got stronger and stronger, and he went every week. I mean, I'm trying to remember every-- It was just, uh, it was, it was endless. But slowly he, he won. I mean, the Lubavitch won. That's when the Lamed Zion, the Talucha. I was there. So we, we-- The Talucha, we went

1:24:32 Speaker 1 to Williamsburg, and, um, we were warned already that they're gonna-- that we shouldn't come, but the Rebbe said we should go. We go every year. As soon as we got into Williamsburg, Jewish Williamsburg, right away, they're already surrounding us and throwing eggs and meissis, and they didn't let us go to the shuls. And then they started looking. They started-- And Shlomo's achi got beat up because of my father. And I think, uh, another-- Rebbe Groinov got-- They all thought it was my father. They thought my father came. He didn't come to the Talucha. They're looking for Gershon Bet, you know, Gershon Jacobs. The Gemina Zana, they call it. Gemina Zana. Anyway, that's when the Rebbe said basically no longer the Birurim are finished there. That was, that was a real, uh, big one. And, uh, that was Lamed Zion. Then Lamed Hes. And, um, it, it slowly got-- Th-then what they did was probably the final straw. They firebombed the Algemeiner. The Algemeiner had an office in Bay Ridge, and they pushed it, firebombed it the night of the newspaper was supposed to come out the next day, middle of the night. They threw Molotov cocktails. I'm talking about real terrorism. The whole building was on fire. Everything. The whole building was burned down. My father came, and he-- Well, remember, when he saw that, they did the wrong thing for him. He said, "Oh, no, no." He went to Empire Press. They redid the whole newspaper with big pictures of the fire, and he

1:26:01 Speaker 1 wrote the big headline. He said, "Ni-- Not Stalin and not Hitler brought us down, and definitely not the Fasante Mais between the Satmar," you know. That's how-- That was his headline.

1:26:15 Speaker 6 Is that what-

1:26:16 Speaker 1 'Cause Stalin and Hitler didn't, uh, destroy us. We're not gonna let the Satmar. That was his, uh, voice. And that was, like, a big one because he, like, really... And then finally, they became-- they could not withstand the pressure 'cause everybody was reading that Satmar was, was a terrorist every week with pictures. So they finally quieted down, but not entirely. They still w-went after Pinyo Korff and Mendel Wachtor. And then the story with the oyel, with the dog. That was, like, by the Rebbe, that was, like-

1:26:48 Speaker 6 That was so good.

1:26:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. What year was that? Mem Alef?

1:26:51 Speaker 6 No.

1:26:51 Speaker 1 Mem Bet?

1:26:53 Speaker 6 I don't know. I think it was before-

1:26:54 Speaker 1 No, Pinyo Korff was Mem Gimel.

1:26:55 Speaker 6 That was in Lameds, I think.

1:26:57 Speaker 1 No, it's a La-- Late Lameds?

1:26:58 Speaker 6 Yeah. I think so.

1:26:59 Speaker 1 Maybe, maybe. Yeah.

1:27:00 Speaker 6 Pinyo was, like, in Mem Dalet that-

1:27:01 Speaker 1 Mem Gimel. Mem Gimel

1:27:02 Speaker 6 ...Mem Gimel. That was, that was later.

1:27:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, Parsha Pinchas it was. Yeah. So there you go Pretty colorful, right?

1:27:09 Speaker 5 Indeed, indeed.

1:27:09 Speaker 1 Starting to understand some of, uh, the psychology of, uh, the, the Akabas Philies.

1:27:14 Speaker 5 You're getting it.

1:27:15 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:27:16 Speaker 5 Okay, I think it's time to, um-

1:27:18 Speaker 1 To go on

1:27:18 Speaker 5 ... start the podcast with Rabbi Simon Jacobson.

1:27:21 Speaker 1 How, what-- How many-- H- okay, uh, whatever you want. I'm not as-

1:27:25 Speaker 5 So-

1:27:25 Speaker 1 ... colorful as this. What can I tell you? I'm very boring compared to this

1:27:28 Speaker 5 You have a very different colorful, uh, you know, different experience.

1:27:32 Speaker 1 Okay. You guys are enjoying?

1:27:35 Speaker 7 Yeah.

1:27:36 Speaker 5 So

1:27:38 Speaker 1 Okay, let me say the time.

1:27:39 Speaker 5 Say the time.

1:27:41 Speaker 1 Ay. So we're here in the Fasantamize Agad.

1:27:50 Speaker 5 So you obviously grew up in a very colorful, unique, um-

1:27:57 Speaker 1 Yes

1:27:57 Speaker 5 ... Chabad Mishpacha in Crown Heights, and the same time you're in- ... with everyone else and everything like that.

1:28:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:28:06 Speaker 5 So, so everything that's happening in Lubavitch is basically in the beiner from, from when you're a child. But we, we all know that you have unique, um, this unique story with yourself, with the Sichas and with Chazal and with Hanachos. So that's kind of unique to you. That's not something that your father did. So I wanna-- I'm interested in a little bit briefly about what it was like for you to grow up as a child. You mentioned a lot about your father, but, but about around the Rebbe.

1:28:35 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:28:37 Speaker 5 And the whole idea, the way you got into the Hanachos and, and everything like that, before we get into the details, was that something you knew you were doing at twelve years old, or this is something that developed at a later point? What, what, what's the story over there? I asked, I asked a long question, but-

1:28:50 Speaker 1 No, no, I got it. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Okay, so I was born the oldest of five children. A boy, girl, boy, girl, boy. Uh, some of you may be familiar with my youngest brother. Um, and yes, I went, I went one year. The first year I went to Holotei, the kindergarten, but after that, I went to the Lubavitch Yeshiva, Bedford and Dean, famous Bedford and Dean. Till Tofshink Of Tess, nineteen sixty-nine, there was a fire, then we moved to Ocean Parkway. I'm just giving you a little lay of the land. I was bar mitzvah in the year of Tofshin Lamed, the year of, uh, S-S- Meshi-- Sima Meshiach Sefer Teda. We all thought Meshiach was coming that Fri-that Friday afternoon. Um, and yes, I'm a, um, a old-time Crown Heightser. Born in Crown Heights. I born on St. Mark's, lived on Sullivan Place, Montgomery Street, where my mother still lives. And, uh, that was my so-called upbringing. Now, because I lived in an interesting home, I mean, what was unique was, on one hand, it was very intense because, uh, you know, obviously, it was all the traditional Chabad, uh, customs. Pesach was, uh, the Russian-style Pesach, where no processed food, period. Everything was made, you know, at home. Uh, po-tater-potater starch, uh, s- boiling sugar, cholent, no milk. Especially when we went to my grandparents, Lipska's are the sugar in the canoe, um, OCD level. Um, so no, it's important. You'll soon see. But, but, but it was beaut-- I honestly

1:30:38 Speaker 1 had beautiful experiences. I was in the right place at the right time. You know, um, only really wonderful memories. My grandma, as I said, Pesach by my-- by the Lipskas was, was something else. You know, everybody had their own plates and all that. Um, so I had a lot to laugh at as well.

1:30:58 Speaker 5 Um-

1:30:58 Speaker 1 So I remember sitting by the Pesach said I was maybe seven years old. Um, my uncle, my youngest uncle, Shmuel Lipska, um, I'm sitting near him, and it comes to the first, uh, Kos. Um, this, this will taste a little of my, uh, upbringing. Um, so there's a saber, right? You have to le-lean, recline. So I'm reclining, and he decides I'm not reclining enough. Like, you know, seven years old, let alone. And he starts telling me, "You, you have to recline more." He starts, like, pushing me. So I said, "How much-- What's the, like, share of reclining?" I-- You ever heard this? Like, you know, "How much do you have to recline? Like, what angle?" Um, and so I said, "But wait, what?" But then I, I got, like, upset, so I said, "So why do you have to recline anyway?" He said, "Der a cheyder." He starts hanging my head and says, "Der a cheyder. You have to be free. Be free." That was a classic example. And I-- So again, I did not need therapy for this. Uh, it wasn't one of those. I found it amusing. You know, I found-- I, so I had a taste of what we call a dogmatic Judaism, for lack of a better word.

1:32:07 Speaker 5 You had a lot of that.

1:32:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. But my parents' home, especially my father, it was the exact opposite. It was a beaut-- It was like-- It was never-- You know, I never got a slap from my father, ev-even though the principal thought I did. You know, that was one of the ways that... Um, but my father was very laid back and very, uh, easygoing, very comfortable in his own skin. So today, when I look back at it, I see there are a lot of insecure Jews, and they use Yiddishkeit as, like, a, a crutch. But no, I still, I-- There's no... By the way, I speak openly because I don't f-- again, I don't feel that I was abused. I've, I was-- I, I feel I was entertained, you know. Um, that's how I feel. So I look at it more like-- I'm saying it because I had friends, to be very honest, my classmates that were abused, that they had fathers that were, you know, mamish, terrorized them. You know, I have guys that I know from my class that today, um, completely left Yiddishkeit, part of it 'cause they were-- it was trauma-- trauma-- traumatic for them. I'm not justifying that. I'm just saying So I was aware-- I became aware later. I wasn't aware then, I was a kid. But so I ha-- the, the reason I'm mentioning it is 'cause it helps explain a lot of my own life, 'cause on one hand, I was exposed to it all, but on the other hand, I had the,

1:33:29 Speaker 1 the freedom, 'cause of my own parents, to be very skeptical. I could ask questions. You know, in an environment like that, questions were not allowed. You asked a question-- Like I remember, I'm not gonna say which teacher in the Bobov Yeshiva, I asked a question, I said: "Why do we have to learn all these hair-splitting details in the Gemara? You know, y-y-you give mor-mortgage contracts and credit card statements to lawyers to read for you. You don't have to read every possible scenario." I remember the-- my teacher came over and gave me a slap. He says, "Bist a peyde gel mit no zensores fun dir." You know? He was half right. Um I'm not gonna-

1:34:10 Speaker 5 So you did-- You, you-- There was some abuse.

1:34:13 Speaker 1 What?

1:34:13 Speaker 5 That's not, that's not abuse.

1:34:14 Speaker 1 No, no, also not because-

1:34:16 Speaker 5 That was normal.

1:34:17 Speaker 1 No, it wasn't... Yeah, yeah, no, it was-- Again, it was... Uh, trust me, compared to real abuse, it was not at all. I found it, uh, it, it troubled me for a different reason. So for me, and I'm being very open with you, this is not something common in the Chabad circles, but I'll say this: I was not inspired. I was uninspired. I was bored. That was really the biggest thing. And so I learned, I learned. I had a good head. I was able to learn a Gemara, but sometimes I learned and sometimes I didn't. There were, there were months I didn't even know what masacht we were learning. You know? Uh, being very straight, it was a lot of waste of time. And there was no real... And a lot of good, uh, rebbeim, there were a lot of good teachers we had, Yiras Shamayim, but they didn't know how-- They d-like... A guy like me, you know, I was also more of a, like a more rebellious in a way, more troublemaker. I wasn't like a goody-goody Kabbalah Selnick. You know, you have to-- I was more creative and so on. I'm talking in retrospect. I didn't know it at the time. And it was like Yiddishkeit was very mitzvos hanashim ulemada. Let's put it that way. Very cultural. We did it. Why? Ya raisu why? Um, you know, davening, we all know. I mean, I'm telling-- What I'm saying here, I don't think anyone in this room or anyone that grew up

1:35:29 Speaker 1 is gonna disagree that they have similar-- They maybe didn't bother them. Me, it did bother 'cause it was, like, mediocre. It wasn't like... You know, I always felt that you wanna be-- do something passionate with your life. And this was when I started becoming-- thinking about things like this. I'm talking about now fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Uh, I was very curious.

1:35:49 Speaker 5 I was saying, was the yachas with the Rebbe also, like, mediocre then?

1:35:53 Speaker 1 The, the yachas with the Rebbe, the Rebbe was like, like, the, the king on the mountain. I respected the Rebbe, of course, but I didn't have a personal connection. The Rebbe, the Rebbe's the Rebbe. Went to yechidus. I remember, uh, those years we went for b- for Yom Immaledus to yechidus, to Lamed Heh. Chayil, the Rebbe stopped it. So I went, but what, what, what was yechidus? I wrote the same note I wrote last year. They told me-- I said, "What do I write?" They said, "Write what you wrote last year." I posted a copy of what I wrote last year, and I said to myself, "What? It's ridiculous. I'm wasting the Rebbe's time, wasting my time. What am I going to yechidus for?" So there was a machlikess then between bochurim. Some said, "Megade-megadei-megadei tzayde. Tat, megadei tzom tat." Others said, "So take a work on yourself. Prepare yourself." So it was very mechanical. So it was not negative. It was not-- It was nothing. It was like that. So the Rebbe was there. I, I was part of the scene. Some chasuneh, Purim, uh, Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, you know, the... I, I, I got caught up in the excitement of it. But, uh, personally, no, I didn't, I didn't understand chasidus yet at all. Uh, Rabie was our mashpia. I remember he asked me in a farher, a bechina, he said, "So what's, what's the untersheyd between chachma, bina, and daas?" So I said, "Chachma hibtsa chamet haches, bina met ha-bet, and

1:37:09 Speaker 1 daas met ha-daled." I, I remember he said to me, "Du gezayna a groysn maskil. That's what you told me." He said it like a joke, but, uh, that was, that was my yechidus. Um, but I'm not surprised because today I talk to people, and I recognize right away where-- One guy said to me, I said, "You learn chasidus?" He says, "Yeah, lamed tes melachos and eses sefirots." You know, this thirty-nine plus ten, this, hakadainia, four worlds. You know, there's four worlds. He says, "I don't know where it is exactly in outer space, but there's four worlds." You know? Th-th-this-- I, I'm not trying to be funny. I'm just really trying to describe wh-what it was like.

1:37:48 Speaker 5 So what happened?

1:37:48 Speaker 1 I was bored. I was bored. I played basketball. We went to a, a pool room once in a while. The big trouble we made was no-- Remember, th- we didn't have a lot of options. Uh, drugs had not entered yet. There was no such thing as pot. Didn't exist. Not that m-- I was looking for it, I'm just saying. So it was very innocent. And I was not rebellious in the mice of a pale sense. It's not like I needed to go out and do things out there. In machshava, I was very rebellious. The truth is, as I look back, I was looking for a purpose in life, and I was not really feeling it. Yeah, I know it sounds strange 'cause Chabad is all about purpose and mission, but I was not getting it at a fifteen-year-old boy. It was like, you know, it was not said that way. Maybe the language, maybe... I don't know. I'm not blaming anyone, by the way. I'm-- But that's what was my, my life experience.

1:38:35 Speaker 5 So what happened to you?

1:38:36 Speaker 1 Um, I still don't know. You know, I'm still wondering. Uh, that's, that's why we're here. I thought I'm gonna learn from this, uh, der heer is gonna teach me- ...which a der heer na-anenen, you know? Um, so, so I, I... And I wasn't, I wasn't miserable. I was just bored. You know, you means bored. You just sit around and, you know. Um, and again, there was no-- nothing very dramatic about it. Like, I didn't... You know, I saw guys in my class that had real problems. At home, this, and they, they got into trouble. Guys got in trouble gambling and this. I mean, there were, there were problems. I didn't... But me, it was like, you know, going through. But I was like a rebel without a cause. That's probably if you wanna sum it up. I wouldn't know those words then. Now I know. And, um, I really was thinking, I was looking for, can I f-find-- can Yiddishkeit be legitimate for me? Not because my parents and everyone around me says it is. Can I live my life as an adult and embrace it because I feel it resonates with me? That was, in a way, the-- if I, if I were to able to pose it as a question. And I asked people, and I knew you couldn't talk about it much because as soon as you say anything like that, you're right away labeled as a, a heretic, you know? Um, so it was more quiet, it was more internal. Um,

1:40:01 Speaker 1 and again, I didn't do anything that was-- that would jump out if someone saw me, they wouldn't think that I'm going through, you know? But I was struggling internally. And what happened was, it's a series of events. I got a little older, and I was like fifteen, sixteen now. I remember the first thing that really struck me was I used to ask all the Mashpiyim and my-- the counselors, you know, the, the head coun- you know, the guys you knew. I said, "So how do you know there's a God?" Uh, and I wanted to hear what they... And everyone said the same, you know, the same, uh, slogans. But I remember asking one guy, I said, "How do you know there's a God?" And he said to me, um," I can tell you who it is. It was Zusha Wiener. Zusha Wiener. He's a rabbi in Brighton Beach. He was the head counselor in camp. I think it was Lamed Gimmel. And he said to me, "Because the world is gvul." These were the words he told me. Everything is finite, and finite things can never turn into infinite. So it has to have a beginning. That was what he said. And I happened to like mathematics a lot. I like physics and math. I, I, I did a lot of reading on that, and I knew that's correct. It's a, it's a mathematical rule. You know, the finite never reaches infinite. And I said, "How do you know? Where'd you hear that?" 'Cause it

1:41:15 Speaker 1 intrigued me. It intrigued me personally. So he said, "I'll show you." And he shows me, opens a Derech M'Tzva'acha, a Monos Elokus. And he shows me, and I was... First time I ever saw something in a sefer that I said, "Oh, you know, this is, uh, it's very, very, very intriguing." And I started reading it, and I started looking more. And this was like... I mean, as you know, life is accumulative. There's no one thing that happens. I didn't have one thing, oh, I saw the truth. You know, there's no-

1:41:42 Speaker 8 Uh-

1:41:42 Speaker 1 So it just triggered something, and I began to look more. And again, I was looking for, for emes. I wasn't looking to... It wasn't like a yetzer hara thing that I'm looking just to, to have fun. I was looking for real, real answers. And that began a process. The way-- The best way I put it is that I began to hear, uh, the music of Yiddishkeit through Chassidus. I realized it's the spiritual that I really need, that the mechanical... 'Cause I knew. I, I learned, I learned Gemara. I learned Halakha my whole life. That was just not... You know, I knew the rules, and I understand the importance for rules. It wasn't bothering me. But the rules didn't-- I, actually, it didn't excite me, let me put it that way. It didn't excite my soul. I don't know, maybe it excites yours. Um, and this did-- I be-- I, I realized that the spiritual, uh, resonates with me. I started understanding, you know, soulful things. And then I started hearing the Rebbe differently. Then I heard a sicha no longer as just, uh, a diyuk and a Rashi, and then the answers. Brilliant. You know, as brilliant as they were, they were more academic. I started hearing that there was like a, a kind of, a poetry, a music, a moshe.

1:42:52 Speaker 8 Were you listening to the sichas before?

1:42:54 Speaker 1 Yeah, but it was, but it was... I, I learned the s-- I read a sicha like I read a Gemara.

1:42:58 Speaker 8 No, not read.

1:42:59 Speaker 1 No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:43:00 Speaker 8 You went to chabriniks.

1:43:01 Speaker 1 Yeah, it was by chabriniks, yeah. But they were-- They didn't... Also the same type of lack of inspiration, really. Not the nigunim and the Rebbe himself. I'm talking about the tekst. Tekst was very deep, but like learning deep, deep learning. It was not emotional for me. It wasn't-- It didn't touch my, uh, neshamah.

1:43:20 Speaker 8 Yeah.

1:43:21 Speaker 1 Does that, uh, shake it? What?

1:43:23 Speaker 8 But I'm, I'm trying to understand. No, I'm trying to hear from you, like, this change and, like-

1:43:28 Speaker 1 No. So then I, then I realized, you know, there's a certain maturity. I started realizing the Rebbe speaks, you know, uh... Y-you all learned the Bar Mitzvah maimer? Yeah. When you, when you said the Bar Mitzvah maimer, you understood one word you said?

1:43:42 Speaker 8 Um-

1:43:43 Speaker 1 Besides, uh-

1:43:43 Speaker 8 Like a resembling gloss.

1:43:45 Speaker 1 Okay, there you go. And then the Rebbe says that's not even the right translation. Right?

1:43:49 Speaker 8 And they took it out.

1:43:50 Speaker 1 Right.

1:43:51 Speaker 8 It's like

1:43:52 Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. So that, that's how I heard it. You know, again, a Rashi sicha, I could hear the Rebbe. But if the Rebbe was, uh, a, a gone, a London, I, again... No, no. They're not to resonate. I would run. I need to hear this because it's so important for my life. No, I did not have that. And again, I look at myself, «אם אראה כו' מכם הוא». I'm not, I'm not blaming anyone. And that changed. Then I started... I, I, I-- It resonated with me. I started understanding, like, Esos Sfas was no longer just a number. It was like ten building blocks of what makes us tick. I, I, I understood that very pretty quickly. I didn't... Then I started, the more I got involved, the more I enj- I was intrigued by it, and I, like, was drawn to it. And then I realized this is a profound system. I always knew that Yiddishkeit is here for four thousand years. It's not by accident. It's not like a bunch of idiots just passing it on generation to generation. Jews are smart people. But I just didn't know what the code was. It's like, you know, I can... You see there's something here, but I don't know, but I don't know what it is yet. Chassidus changed that dramatically. W- It didn't take long. After a few months, I started-- I studied Derech M'Tzva'acha. I learned a lot. And then I started understanding that it's code language, really. You know, you say the word

1:45:07 Speaker 1 Atzilus, it's just a word. You have to explain what it means in a, in a spiritual way, in a personal way. And it became clear. Then I started understanding when the Rebbe says, «כל מלשון הדר», that's what he means. That every word, the mitzva. Who cares about a mitzva today? But when you understand the mitzvas are הדר באבידס השם, then there's lessons. You know, that, that... It came alive. The «חיינו ואורך ימינו עובדה» came alive for me.

1:45:33 Speaker 8 Beautiful.

1:45:33 Speaker 1 That's really what happened. And this is the year... Then when that happened, I'm, I'm almost like an extremist. Once I get intrigued, I'm in. I don't need... Like, you know, I w- I w- I wasn't, like, lazy. I then, like, became excited about it. That was the end of Ocean Parkway. Then we went to Morristown, and then I started getting very intrigued by the process of chabriniks, the Chazara. And I, and I went, I went... As I said, I-- Once I'm in, I'm in all the way.

1:46:01 Speaker 8 So that because... I guess you said you're an extremist, so now that you're in, you're in. So if I'm in I need to be not just by Fabringen, I need to retain it. I need to-

1:46:11 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

1:46:12 Speaker 8 I can, as the-- I could-

1:46:13 Speaker 1 And to be very honest, I wanted to go to the top.

1:46:16 Speaker 8 Right.

1:46:16 Speaker 1 Not beside Gaiva. You know, I wanted access. You know.

1:46:18 Speaker 8 You don't have any Gaiva.

1:46:20 Speaker 1 No, I have plenty of Gaiva, but this was not what's driving me. Here was more I want-- Like if you like music, I wanna be good at it.

1:46:26 Speaker 8 Right.

1:46:26 Speaker 1 Like that.

1:46:27 Speaker 8 Okay. So-

1:46:28 Speaker 1 So then I, I began to, uh, hang out by Chazara, and Rebbe Chaza and I would listen.

1:46:35 Speaker 8 But while you're in Maristan?

1:46:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

1:46:37 Speaker 8 So you'd come every-- I mean, on this Fabringen?

1:46:38 Speaker 1 We're here for Fabringen, so stay up with the bus, go back to Maristan after Chazara.

1:46:43 Speaker 8 Okay.

1:46:44 Speaker 1 So I would like hang out, and I started getting to know who the Chaza were, the Manichim. You know, I became friendly with Dovid Feldman, with Dovid Oladot, Shamkhartanov.

1:46:52 Speaker 8 What year is this?

1:46:54 Speaker 1 Lamed Vav, Lamed He, Lamed He. Lamed He is really-

1:46:58 Speaker 8 So who are the characters? Dovid Feldman, all the-

1:47:00 Speaker 1 Lamed-- Hanakas-- They, they were just beginning to reform. You know, you, you had on your podcast. They were beginning to reform Hanakas.

1:47:07 Speaker 8 We had that Oladot and-

1:47:09 Speaker 1 Right.

1:47:09 Speaker 8 And, uh, Nantico.

1:47:10 Speaker 1 Nantico, yeah. So who are the guys? Dovid Feldman, Dovid Oladot, Shamkhartanov, Zvi Grimblot. Um, and then they had a, a team that helped, uh, to name Wahlberg.

1:47:21 Speaker 8 Yeshua.

1:47:22 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:47:22 Speaker 8 He was also-

1:47:23 Speaker 1 He helped in Marcamus more research. And I didn't get involved directly with them, but I got to know them. And by Chazara, I would like pipe in. Something they said, I would say, "You know, I heard this." I would just tell them.

1:47:37 Speaker 8 There was a little, there was a little democracy by Chazara.

1:47:39 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rebbe Chaza. But, but anyone could say, "Oh, you know, there's the, the..." And Rebbe would sometimes say, "The Rebbe doesn't like the apartment much better," you know. And it was very easy in that sense. And, uh, as I, as I... And then that was Lamed He, Lamed Vav. Then when I came back to Maristan with Chaza for the Yeshiva Sunday night. So I already started Chaza. I was the-- I was intrigued also by the process of memorizing, that the Rebbe speaks and there's no recording, and you have to remember it. It was like a challenge. It's like, you know, "Can, can you remember?" I didn't know if I could or not, but then I began, I said I was, I was, I was pretty good at it. Then you get better, you know. Um, I remember I Chaza-ed a Fabringen once, and Rebbe actually walked by, uh, and, and he, and he came over to me, he said, "They're good, they're good," I remember. So it was like encouragement, you know, from someone that... And, uh, and I-- But, but really, nobody really, you know. As in Chabad, they don't give you any compliments, and nobody cultivates you. You gotta cultivate yourself. So you need to have a lot of self-confidence because if not, everybody's bavatal you right away. Who do you think you are?

1:48:47 Speaker 8 Who you?

1:48:48 Speaker 1 Yeah. Who you? Yeah. Um, or go away, stay, go. You know, like that. Um, then that was Maristan then, and Lamed Vav, I came to Seven Seventy. And I was not a, a, you know, gonna cro-- what are they called? Uh, a bre- a bench presser. What do they say? I wasn't like that type of mass mid. And then the Rebbe sent a gift, little night the Rebbe called in Rabbi Mentlick, and I was there in the zal.

1:49:23 Speaker 8 W-w-what, what's going on? What is it?

1:49:26 Speaker 1 I thought I'm talking to insiders here. Okay. I'm just kidding. It's all right. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. So I came Lamed Vav after Lag BaOmer. They sent all the Bach in my class to different shlichas. Seattle began, then Miami was ready, Yeshiva, Melbourne was Yeshiva. In New Haven, Cincinnati, uh, a few other places I don't remember. So I don't know, maybe this is confession time. here again. I went to Shmulik Heber, who me and him would always have and he said to me-

1:49:57 Speaker 8 He was the, he was the Maristan.

1:49:58 Speaker 1 He was the Maristan, the Rosh Yeshiva. Meylech Tzvi was the Mashpia. And, and once I was intrigued, I learned a lot from Meylech and these 'cause I was absorbing, and I was like very... I was-- It was the good year. But I learned Nigla too, but Nigla you know. Um, uh, I remember, so, so Shmulik Heber told me, "You, I'm gonna send away to the worst possible shlichas." So I remember the last Fabringen, we're all dancing, we're half all shaker. So I went over to Shmulik, I said, "If you wanna really do me a favor, I know you don't want to. Don't send me anywhere. I belong to Seven Seventy. I gotta be there." So he said, "If you wanna be there, then I'm not gonna let you to be there." But I anyway ended up not going anywhere, thank God.

1:50:42 Speaker 8 It's amazing the relationship that you had with your-

1:50:45 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:50:45 Speaker 8 -sh-shiva.

1:50:46 Speaker 1 No, we're, we're actually very good friends nowadays. Um, anyway, I ended up Seven Seventy, learning. And then the Rebbe, uh, Nitel was Friday night. That's not a usual Krias. It's like a little uncommon. And the Rebbe, the classic way the Rebbe transforms everything. So Nitel, what do, what do Bach do Nitel night? There's no chess. It's Fr- Shabbos, right? There's no, uh, anything else. So it was an official bull session. So this is a bull session in long Shabbosim that start five o'clock. So from five to nine o'clock, he's sitting for four hours officially, uh, you know, shooting the breeze, whatever. You know, people would actually have topics they came to talk about. You know, all the Loshan HaRas and the politics. That was the Nitel Friday night. So we're sitting right after Ma'ariv, and Mentle goes into the Rebbe's room, and we don't know why. And suddenly Mentle comes out. Hasifa. Nitel night, making Hasifa. The, the zal upstairs in Seven Seventy, all the Bach was packed. All the Bach were there. The Rebbe has a rah, two rahs. We were all so intrigued, like, "What's going on here?" And it's interesting, Nitel night, you know, you're not supposed to learn, but the Rebbe came out of a hidrah about learning. You know, interesting. And the, the hidrah was that the Rebbe wants to establish two things Sefer HaLikutim Dach Tzemach Tzedek and Maftechas on Ayin Beis, 'cause it was Kislev that year, Lamed Zayin, a few months before, a month before Nittel, the

1:52:19 Speaker 1 Rebbe came out with Ayin Beis.

1:52:20 Speaker 8 The Rebbe said, uh, who printed.

1:52:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. It was a big chiddush, and he wanted the Kol Yungleit to make a Maftech on Ayin Beis. Until Yoshvat, they should finish. And bochurim, whoever wants to volunteer, encyclopedia of the Chassidus of the Tzemach Tzedek.

1:52:35 Speaker 8 Sefer HaLikutim.

1:52:36 Speaker 1 It's called Sefer HaLikutim. The Rebbe gave the name, everything. And the bochurim that do it, it's like hit-- like Shemiras HaGdol. That was the, the real, uh... And I-- to me, it was like a gift . I thought it was for me. 'Cause I was like sitting and learning alone, but research and preparing and worry, uh, was, like, up my alley. And, uh, and then Ma- Motzei Shabbos, we all started, like a hundred and fifty bochurim, and by Sunday morning, it ended up six guys as usual. And I was a part of that for a good few years. Then-- And while I was also involved in the writing of the and the Chazaras. So this was begi-- this is my beginning of my career.

1:53:17 Speaker 8 So you were telling-

1:53:18 Speaker 1 So to speak. Unpaid for the record. Yeah. It's almost still unpaid, but, uh, you know.

1:53:25 Speaker 8 It's coming soon.

1:53:25 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:53:26 Speaker 8 So-

1:53:27 Speaker 1 Maybe once people hear this podcast-

1:53:29 Speaker 8 Sure, yeah

1:53:29 Speaker 1 ... we'll make a, a charity campaign. No.

1:53:32 Speaker 8 A hundred percent.

1:53:33 Speaker 1 I'm just kidding.

1:53:34 Speaker 8 For the hair or maybe.

1:53:35 Speaker 1 Huh? We'll split the-- We'll split the proceeds.

1:53:37 Speaker 8 Okay. Split, split the proceeds. So Sefer HaLikutim-

1:53:41 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:53:41 Speaker 8 ... I was discussing with you last week about some of the process. What, what, what did it mean? What, what, what was the undertaking?

1:53:51 Speaker 1 Well, nobody knew about the Tzemach Tzedek Chassidus bekol. We knew there was Ei Laterei, but that was like form-- overwhelming. The forty, fifty volumes. The everyone knows, but that was it. So we had no clue what it was, but it was clearly the Rebbe wanted it. In the beginning, we had no idea. I remember even talking to Rabbi Yael and to Meir Swibel, and I said, "What does the Rebbe want?" They said, "I don't know. Nobody ever really learned Ei Laterei." I mean, these guys learned Ei Laterei privately, but it was like, like, you sh- you know. Even today, how many people know what Ei Laterei is? Um, 'cause so many... The-- But now in retrospect, I see the value. Ei Laterei basically has Kol Hakeses in it. Tzemach Tzedek is like Das, brings everything from the Alter Rebbe, Mitler Rebbe. And, uh, so essentially it's, it's creating erechim, which are entries. Let's say you wanna know about snow. What does say about Sheleg? You go to Erech Sheleg, you'll have everything you need. Now remember, this is before Google and before AI, so it's all a physical encyclopedia. Today, we understand that probably, this is a speculation, the Rebbe wanted Sefer Erechim from Rabbi Yael, but Rabbi Yael was working snail pace of one volume every ten years. I'm not exaggerating. So I think the Rebbe was another way of getting an encyclopedia, and that's why the Rebbe said we should start from tough and work our way backwards. We thought maybe he could

1:55:21 Speaker 1 meet Rabbi Yael halfway. W- Well, we didn't actually do that. But, um, s-so it was six years a project that bochurim did. I was-

1:55:31 Speaker 8 So you, you're working with only the printed or for ?

1:55:34 Speaker 1 No, no. We started with printed , which were many, at least forty printed . And so let's say I did, let's say, the first erech I did was . So you find everywhere near a talks about . We would make photocopies of it, then organize it like a structure. What is ? When will it happen? And then you had, like, what's called a full entry. You know, the same thing on... I did Tferes. There was . was a big erech. Um, this was taking all the printed books, and the Rebbe said at the end of every entry, all the indexes from all the Rebbeim on the same topic. So if you go to , at the end of it, you'll have everything from the Alter Rebbe to the Rebbe, to Rebbe Yitzchak on , all in one place. So at the time, we didn't understand the value. Today, a lot of people use it. It's, uh, excellent for research. I'm telling you, you want anything, um, you could find it there. And the Tzemach Tzedek all the Gemaras and all the Chazal. So you, like, fi-- You can-- It, it takes you everywhere, Kol Hator, Kol Hashat, Ramiz, Derush, Sod, and of course, Chassidus. And every Friday, we had to give in a list to the Rebbe what we had ready. We'd give in, and the Rebbe would comment. And there was a, was a real-- It was, for me, it was a gift from above because it's gave me a real project. It was

1:56:57 Speaker 1 research. It was everything I was good at. I, I, I knew I could be-- I wasn't good at it yet, but I, I, I learned on the job. It's like a research project, essentially. I've told, I told you s-- Before I spoke a few months ago to the and Yeshiva, I said, "You have to create projects like this for bochurim who can't-- Not everybody's ready to sit and learn six hours, you know. They need research. Learning, research learning. What's wrong with, uh, uh, uh, it's, it's learning."

1:57:25 Speaker 8 Projects.

1:57:26 Speaker 1 Yeah. And we did it. It was, uh, it was fascinating. And the Rebbe would interact. Then I remember the first time the Rebbe was like a big simcha. Then later when the manuscripts started being coming to-- from Va- from, you know, the handwriting of the Tzemach Tzedek, the Rebbe told us to compare-

1:57:44 Speaker 8 From, from-- You mean from Poland.

1:57:45 Speaker 1 From Poland, yeah.

1:57:46 Speaker 8 The came from Amad Khes.

1:57:47 Speaker 1 So, yeah. So then the Rebbe told us to compare it, and it was a big job.

1:57:52 Speaker 8 So what happened when you compared?

1:57:54 Speaker 1 So I think I shared some stories with you, right?

1:57:56 Speaker 8 Yeah, but n-no one else was here.

1:57:58 Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good point. Um, so I'll have to give a little history. In , uh, the Rebbe, when he left Russia- So we know he left some libraries in Russia. That's where the Schneerson Library that the Rebbe once wanted to-- wants to come out. But he took some things with him. We know this whole story with this Seforim he took with him. But by the Na- the Nazis confiscated some of it, so the Friediker Rebbe didn't bring everything. So in nineteen seventy-eight, they found boxes of Samach Sadik, the Marash, the Mitteler Rebbe's handwriting. So it was a big simcha by the Rebbe. He sent, uh, Ana- Rabbi Ana Chitzrak, alav hashalom, and Rabbi Avraham Moshemtev, uh-

1:58:47 Speaker 8 There's a nice, uh, article in the, the Her-

1:58:50 Speaker 1 On this?

1:58:50 Speaker 8 On this story, yeah.

1:58:51 Speaker 1 Okay. So they brought the books. So being that we were working on Samach Sadik, the Rebbe said we should compare everything to the original manuscripts, because the Rebbe, when he published it, didn't have the original ksav yaad. He had a hataka. Hataka means a copy, and the copies usually had mistakes. So there's a lot of interesting stories how the Rebbe, the Rebbe would sometimes in a-- when he had a bad copy, he would write in a footnote that there's missing a word here, and the Rebbe would fill it in. Then when we looked at the Samach Sadik, the Rebbe was mechaven in most cases, but there were a few places where the Rebbe wrote something that was different than what the Samach Sadik wrote.

1:59:29 Speaker 8 It's what happened.

1:59:30 Speaker 1 So we asked the Rebbe what to do. I'll give you an example. Uh, I think it's in the Eretz Moshe. Talks there about the Gevia Kesef of Yosef. So he says something like, I think, that the k- the geviyah is gematria. Uh, I don't remember what, but this maybe. And Blank. In the Rebbe's ksav yaad that he had, it's just a blank line.

1:59:58 Speaker 8 Likutei Tahalre-

1:59:59 Speaker 1 From the Arizal. Likutei from the Arizal. Now I'm looking at the Samach Sadik's actual handwriting, and he writes, "Likutei Tahalre," And I look it up. Yeah, and it says there, the Rebbe, when he had a blank, he wrote a footnote that he looked in Likutei Tahalre, did not find it in Likutei Tahalre. But look in Taami Amis from Arizal, the same idea. So what do you do now? Samach Sadik is telling us where it is. The Rebbe writes he didn't find it. So most people would say, "Yeah, the Rebbe's ha'arah is not valid anymore." Now you have the Samach Sadik who wrote the Ma'amar in the first place. Everybody following? Okay. So I wrote to the Rebbe, and I asked, "What do we do?" And the amazing answer, the Rebbe said, "Leave my ha'arah as it is, and in the footnote under the ha'arah write the achaz man." After a while, the original manuscript of the Samach Sadik came, and that's what it says there. So in other words, the Rebbe's words are just as holy, and the Rebbe left that and the Samach Sadik. There's a lot of examples like this that we had, interactions. Now, you have to remember, for a bachur like myself, this was exciting 'cause you were, like, interacting with the Rebbe and learning and research. And, you know, I remember waiting for an answer on this. I want-- I was so-- I couldn't even-

2:01:18 Speaker 8 You were, you were-

2:01:19 Speaker 1 I just couldn't breathe. I wanted to hear what the Rebbe was gonna answer.

2:01:21 Speaker 8 Who wrote, who wrote all these things in?

2:01:22 Speaker 1 Well, see, if we could-- I wrote a lot of them or other people in the Mareches. We had a few guys. The first-- the, the original editors were myself, um, uh, Menashe Perman, who's now in Chile, um, Shliach. Uh, Mayor Schneer, he's in Montreal. Uh, Itzhak Rivkin. A guy called, um, uh, Shlomo Chaim Feldman. He's Israeli. Amir Margolin. And, uh, what was his name? Um, Matasov. He's a Shliach in, um... One of the oldest, one of the older brothers. Hi- older than Ella.

2:01:57 Speaker 8 In Madison?

2:01:58 Speaker 1 No, no, no, much older. He's married to a Pinsan. Uh, anyway, there was guys. Now, they were older bachur. I was the youngest. By Tav Shalom and Ches, Lamed Tes, they were all married. So I'm suddenly left alone in this whole Ma- Mareches. So I, I created a new sta-staff, Meir Asi, Alter Tenebaum, a whole bunch of these guys that were here that told me they were-

2:02:21 Speaker 8 Right.

2:02:21 Speaker 1 Yitzchak Graskin was part of it. So it ended, the project finished Lamed Gimel. So it was one of the few projects that began and ended.

2:02:30 Speaker 8 Actually ended.

2:02:31 Speaker 1 Actually ended, and the Rebbe was very happy. Six years. It was a project that took six years. I, I, I only worked there for three years 'cause Lamed Tes I started really getting involved in the Sichas.

2:02:41 Speaker 8 Okay, so now tell us about the Sichas.

2:02:42 Speaker 1 Okay. So now comes the Sichas. I started helping. I started becoming more involved, and I started looking over the Hanachos, a- adding. I s- I wrote a few of them. But the main writer is Dovid Feldman was the main writer in the Yiddish Hanachos. There was no Lahak. Nothing was Hebrew. Dovid, uh, Aldot and Sham Charatonov took over after Sri Greenblatt went to Argentina, my Morim. Um, and that was the, the work. The night Tav Shalom Lamed Tes, Dovid Feldman decided to go on Schlichas to Eilat, Israel. So y- the-- I was the natural guy to take over. He asked me to become the writer. So I became the official writer. The-- and, uh, basically Shabbos Hanukah Tav Shin Mem, my first Hanoch Shabbos that I wrote from beginning to end. And, uh, that I did till Tav Shin Nun Beis, till the Rebbe stroke the week of Pasha VaYakel, Tav Shin Nun Beis. So I did this for thirteen years as the official writer. Chezerah I was already from Lamed Zai and Lamed Ches. So basically fifteen, sixteen years that I was fully immersed in this work.

2:03:51 Speaker 8 Okay.

2:03:51 Speaker 1 You know, when the Rebbe had the heart attack, for example, in Tav Shalom Lamed Ches, so you know, he was Magya, the Sichas That's when I really started working with Rabiel very heavily. Rabiel was writing the Sichas, and I would sit work, work with him. So I learned a lot on the job.

2:04:10 Speaker 8 See, typically, he wasn't writing Hanchos.

2:04:11 Speaker 1 No, no. But that was a special-

2:04:13 Speaker 8 That one-

2:04:13 Speaker 1 The Rebbe wanted to-

2:04:13 Speaker 8 The Rebbe wanted Magya.

2:04:14 Speaker 1 Yeah. I, I always tell this story just as a funny anecdote. Rabiel was a, a character, tremendous. I mean, of tremendous Hakoras HaTov 'cause I learned a lot from him 'cause he was, uh... The, the things that he had, his strengths were unbelievable. He had also Mishagas, like everybody. Um, and, uh, we-- but we were very close. And I remember he would, uh... One night, it was like four o'clock in the morning, like now. What time is it? Um, and, uh, he was working and, and I was like, you know, bringing him a Sefer. I was looking up things, whatever. And he says to-- suddenly he says to me, """ You know, like middle of four AM, someone's asking you, like, uh, "I wanna do a favor for Kal Isro." So I thought, "What does he want? Cigarettes or coffee? I don't know. You know, what's, what's the favor for Kal Isro?" He wasn't sending me to-- as Isro to, with Anna Schlichas or something. So, um, so I said, "Uh, ." He says, "." So he tells me, "I should learn the whole ." So I told him, "Right now?" He says, "" You know. So I said, "Why? Why is that a favor?" He says, "Everything is . If you knew , we didn't have to sit and look and search and ISIS and Zach and everything would be half, half of the work would be done already." So I said, "I'll get back to you, and I'll let you

2:05:36 Speaker 1 know." You know. Anyway, that was a funny-- And he told me a story, actually. He said when he was a bachur, the Rebbe asked all the bachur yeshiva in seven seventy to take a safer and chassidus and learn it from beginning to end for that year. You know, learn it solid. So he took Likutei Torah, and the Rebbe told him, "Likutei Torah is a ma'amar. It's not-- You should do Derech M'sa Isacha." So he did Derech M'sa Isacha. He knew Derech M'sa Isacha like nobody. E-every letter. He could-- You tell him a letter, he could tell you what page it was on exactly. He was like, uh, Derech M'sa Isacha because, you know, the innocent bachur, the, he learned the-- But that's when he-- That's when I, I remember that was like-- So I-- Uh, this was the experience. Uh, like, every day I was surrounded by such experiences. It was very rich. Uh, what should I say? You learn a lot from, uh, Abiel was there from the beginning, so it was a tremendous experience. And then when the Rebbe was Magya, you learn from the Hagahs. I mean, I-

2:06:33 Speaker 9 So one sec, one sec.

2:06:34 Speaker 1 Okay.

2:06:34 Speaker 9 So-

2:06:34 Speaker 1 Go, go, go, go ahead.

2:06:36 Speaker 9 So I wanna ask you about some of the process and Hagahs and the Rebbe's interaction with it. But before, can you explain to me the Rebbe's fabrengins general? W-what is the, what is the uniqueness of it? W-what is the contribution that the Rebbe brought with fabrengins that didn't exist before by all the other Rebbe? And like, w-what-- The fabreng-- What's going on here?

2:07:05 Speaker 1 You want me to say this to a Chabad audience or to-

2:07:07 Speaker 9 To me

2:07:08 Speaker 1 ... a larger audience?

2:07:09 Speaker 9 I'm Chabad.

2:07:10 Speaker 1 I don't know what you are 'cause we didn't interview you. Ah, the mystery of, of the, the, the Mr. Dehead. Uh, okay, I'll answer in the broadest way I can. Um, remember, I know Chassidus, um, through the Rebbe's lens. So even though we learn about Alter Rebbe, Tanya, Tzedakah, Likutei Torah, of course, Mitnaredder, Tzemach Tzedek. Tzemach Tzedek especially I'm very familiar with 'cause I worked in it. Um, so when you ask a question like that, for me, the challenge is, can you really talk about the Chassidus of the Rebbe without talking about the Chassidus of Chassidus in general? 'Cause the Rebbe didn't come out of nowhere. The Rebbe took Chassidus Chabad, and he added to it and added them. And so I-- And that's why, you know, to really a full good answer-

2:07:57 Speaker 9 Can I narrow my question?

2:07:58 Speaker 1 Huh?

2:07:59 Speaker 9 I wanna-- Can I narrow the question?

2:08:00 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, of course.

2:08:02 Speaker 9 W-what's the uniqueness? W-what, what of a, of a, of a, of a fabrengin? What, what is this-

2:08:07 Speaker 1 Okay

2:08:07 Speaker 9 ... what is this experience?

2:08:08 Speaker 1 Okay.

2:08:08 Speaker 9 What's going on here?

2:08:08 Speaker 1 Okay. So you don't mean the, the Torah per se, you mean the fabrengin.

2:08:11 Speaker 9 Well, that includes the Torah also.

2:08:12 Speaker 1 Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Well, it's a very, um-- It's a great question, to be honest, and I think many people have different answers, and they're probably all right. You know, 'cause it's like s-asking someone, "Listen to a nigun. What's the experience of a nigun?" You'll have one experience, I'll have another experience. You know, for me, a fabrengin was like a l-living Torah, Torah coming alive in so many multi-dimensions. You know the expression multi-sensory. You know, it gets all your senses going, your sight, your sound, taste, touch, and smell 'cause it had everything. You know, there's one hand, there's the mechon, the, the ideas that the Rebbe shares in a ma'amar or a sicha. So then there's the emotional feelings, whether it's the nigunim or even the ideas the Rebbe's sharing that are very personal or, you know, that, that stimulate the emotions. And then there was the whole, the whole vibe. You felt the . You know, a fabrengin by the Rebbe was you felt like you were traveling to another time and place. If you really were involved, you know, you're immersed, like going to a different world. To me, that was like you travel to a different world, especially the years once I really was in hazara. To me, I was not even there. I was just, like, in the-- just listening and absorbing. I wasn't, I wasn't processing. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, you know, this is a nice scene. Here's how I'm gonna describe it." I was, like, in the scene,

2:09:40 Speaker 1 if you know what I mean. It's like, you know, you ever get-- You're lis- you're listening to a nigun, and the nigun completely consumes you. You don't even know where you are, you know. That's how I-- For me, it was like just tr-it transported you to another time and place. And it's like the Rebbe captured the whole nisus of Torah, of Elokus, of Emes. You know, my ba-- In my book, Toward a Meaningful Life, I write in the epilogue that I wanted to name this book Reality. Reality. Um, because for me, the Rebbe captured Emes. This is what's real. You know, we live in a world that's-- But the table is real, the food you eat, these are all superficial things. You know, Chassidus calls it the, the outer garment, outer levush. A fabrengin, you, you had an experience of the inner forces. I remember thinking many times, I remember Shavuot taf shalamed hei, um, the Rebbe was speaking about I'm not speaking now exactly as I remember the fabrengin, and I was then eighteen years old. And, uh, it's about the Chassidusha Matan Torah. So it wasn't, it wasn't a scholar, it wasn't nigla, it was you feel like experience, like you're experiencing Matan Torah. Now, here's ex-exactly a hergish I had. I felt like the Rebbe was seeing something we don't see and describing it to us. Like, you know, imagine someone's looking behind the curtain And you're sitting on this side of the curtain, and he's telling you what he sees. And

2:11:08 Speaker 1 I remember the Rebbe describing how you-- how the, the Matan Torah was the bitlach zeh between 猶 denims and tahtanim, where you can take now a hefza, a material object, and turn it into kedusha. So you're taking here, take a piece of wood, and you turn it into energy. You know, that's like a big thing. You know, you're taking something, you're transforming it. And I remember, like, the way the Rebbe was speaking about it, you could feel it was happening for me. Now, you could say this is all fantasy and so on, but I didn't feel it that way. I felt like it was a real... That was the Mia Fabrengen. It was an experience, a otherworldly experience, and then you had to reenter into a, a dark, corrupt world. That's, that's another challenge. And, uh, and as I said, multi-- on many, many levels. I remember times when we, Yitzhak Kislev, when the Rebbe would come in, they sang, uh, they sang Padu Shalom Nafshi or other certain Negunim, and you just felt. You know, you ever see the videos when the Rebbe walks out, like, by a parade, they sing Ani Mamin. You know, it gives you, like, a shiver, like your spine. You know, you feel like it's a different... You know, the Rebbe walking with their-- that regal malchus Dica look, and Ani Mamin, you know. And times by Fabrengens when the Rebbe was very emotional about Galus or Tzaras, it was life. I, I-- There's no real-- I don't have...

2:12:30 Speaker 1 You know, I, I don't wanna limit it to a, an, an intellectual, um, experience. It was a human, full human experience. And in many ways, it was like, like love in a way. I mean, in a kedusha Dica way, you know, like love. Love of-- You feel love of God. You feel the love of people. You just feel an emes. And then, uh, the sad part is when you come back to your reality, and it's so different. I mean, I'm just giving you a little taste of, uh, experience.

2:13:02 Speaker 9 Okay.

2:13:03 Speaker 1 So now when I-- I just have to add that now when I do my work, I write or teach, I try to capture that feeling and convey it. Yeah, I'm not saying you always do it well-- you can always do it successfully, but I think that is-

2:13:15 Speaker 9 That is the thing

2:13:16 Speaker 1 ... our shlichus, 'cause if you can give people the thing that transformed you, then that's like the ultimate. To me, that's like the repaying the debt, that what you receive, you're able to share. And I re-really believe that, that when people, like, teach Torah Chassidus, especially the Rebbe's Inyanim, it's not just teaching facts. You're teaching life, and you want people to feel. It's like, almost like when anyone that's a parent, it's not you're just teaching your children do this, do that. You're teaching them, uh, how to live a life.

2:13:48 Speaker 9 Right.

2:13:48 Speaker 1 How to be a mensch, you know.

2:13:50 Speaker 9 So you, when you started writing the Hanachas, so, so in a sense, you were helping, then eventually you started basically transcribing the entire Farbrengen yourself-

2:13:57 Speaker 1 I'm gonna tell the-

2:13:58 Speaker 9 Every single Shabbos.

2:13:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:13:59 Speaker 9 So what, what happened over there?

2:14:00 Speaker 1 Okay. So I already shared how I started getting involved with Chazzara, hang out. I started looking over the Sichas. Uh, at the end, end of Lamethes, early Mem, David Feldman moves to Israel. So my official first Hanochah I wrote was Shabbos Chanukah, Shabbos Parsha Miketz, Tofshin Mem. The end of basically seventy-nine, nineteen seventy-nine. And obviously, I remember it very well because I worked very hard at it. And the Rebbe gave me a good Kabbalas upon him. He-- I, I've probably at least five, six pages of Kisvei Yad that I have just from that Farbrengen, questions. The Rebbe made a Hadran then on Shas, made a Hadran on, uh, Tanya, Hadran on Shulchan Aruch of the Alter Rebbe. For some reason, I felt the Rebbe really, like, laid it on, which made it very hard for me 'cause it was very hard at Farbrengen to write. But that was the first one that I wrote. And I remember the first night after Chazzara, I came home. I had a typewriter. There was only typewriters then. I started typing. And I tell you, uh, the f-first page, you know, it didn't work. I took the pager-- page and crumpled it up, threw it in the garbage can. Probably thirty pages like that. And it was already four o'clock in the morning, and I said, "I, I-- Maybe I took upon myself a job I can't do. This is ridiculous." I couldn't get by one page, you know. And, um, my father woke up early. He comes out.

2:15:38 Speaker 1 He says, "What's bothering you?" I said, "Ta, I'm supposed to write this Farbrengen. It's a Farbrengen of four hours. I can't even get one, one page done." And I was like, I really was frantic almost 'cause it was like everyone's-- 'cause I, I took this Mayacharis. And I said, "Maybe I just took-- I th- I thought I was overconfident." So my father told me he was a writer, so he said, "You keep doing it. Maybe it'll be another thirty drafts, and ultimately you'll get it done. And years from now, it's still gonna be difficult. The only difference is you know you could do it." Which is, mamish, the best advice he gave. So by six o'clock in the morning, I got one page out. And I ended up doing it, obviously. That was my first, uh, Farbrengen, Shabbos Parsha Miketz Tofshin Mem. There was no Farbrengen Vayigash. There was a Farbrengen Vayechi, and that's how it started going.

2:16:30 Speaker 9 So what was the, what was the process? How did it work on a typical Shabbos? How did it-

2:16:33 Speaker 1 So that's the say that now... Remember, we had to write a Farbrengen before the next Farbrengen, and then it had to go out and mailed and so on. The process was like this. The Rebbe spoke, as you know, Sicha by Sicha. There's a whole process of Chazzara, which I didn't even get into, how you remember. I'm not gonna go into that right now. Um, but you right away start Chazzaring immediately in your mind. Right after the Rebbe finishes the Sicha, you have to review the whole thing.

2:17:03 Speaker 9 In between Sichas.

2:17:04 Speaker 1 Yeah, when they're singing.

2:17:05 Speaker 9 So by the Negunim, you're busy thinking the Sicha.

2:17:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you make, like, a mental map of the whole Sicha And then there's a process of how you remember, and you remember very important rule. Memory, you don't remember what was said, you remember what you remember that was said. You understand? So you have to constantly make a copy of a copy of a copy in your mind. So by the time Shabbos ends, depends how many times you reviewed it, that's how well you remember it. Because as every minute passes, it starts fading. But the more you re-impor-- but the more you review it, the more you remember.

2:17:40 Speaker 9 So you do it in between the sickers? Yeah.

2:17:42 Speaker 1 Between the sickers, then I would do it right after the farbrengen as I was walking home, and then ano- maybe four times before the-

2:17:49 Speaker 9 Before-

2:17:49 Speaker 1 -Shabbos was over. Then, then, uh-

2:17:52 Speaker 9 Motza'i Shabbos is the chazzan.

2:17:53 Speaker 1 And, and before Motza'i Shabbos, even at the table, when we sat at the table-

2:17:56 Speaker 9 The leaders.

2:17:57 Speaker 1 Uh, no, no. Even by, by, by, by like the seudat Shabbos after-

2:18:00 Speaker 9 I'm sorry. The, the mem, the farbrengens could go, like, till end of Shabbos.

2:18:04 Speaker 1 Oh, those you didn't have time. Yeah. But those that you had time, yeah.

2:18:07 Speaker 9 You did it by, by the-

2:18:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. Then by Motza'i Shabbos, like an hour after Shabbos, we'd come together by chazzan, which was downstairs in seven seventy, in the center. There's pictures of it. And Rabbi Yael would usually be the one that chazzans. Sometimes he'd ask me to chazzan, and then everybody would pipe in. Would take around an hour and a half, two hours. There was always someone writing notes, and we slowly reconstructed everything. Um, and then we had at least a document, so there was something to work with. Then I would sometimes remind myself something in the middle of the night, "Oh, you know, we forgot this piece." Or someone would call me and say, "Yeah, you know, I remember this." And then Sunday, I spent most of Sunday researching, like learning the Maimon in Torah or the Torah.

2:18:56 Speaker 9 You didn't do before? Torah-

2:18:58 Speaker 1 No, 'cause I didn't know what the Rebbe would say. No, I did in general terms, but now you know what the Rebbe said. So researching more on what the Rebbe said. I would research usually till Sunday evening. By Sunday night, I started writing the first draft, 'cause by then I had-

2:19:15 Speaker 9 Did you write notes by chazzan?

2:19:17 Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, sometimes I wrote or someone else wrote. I had the notes. Um, but you have to like, you know, Chassidus talks about . You have to forget everything before you start remembering. So I remembered, then everything became one big confused mess. I don't know if you ever wrote anything. There's always confusion before you get clarity, and everything got confused. Then you slowly start picking it up. You start saying, "Ah, this is the inyan." So whatever you heard by the farbrengen was just an initial understanding. Now, after research, you really start getting to see the real Chassidus of the Rebbe. And, um, and that's when I would start writing. So by Monday-- Well, it took around two, three days. By, let's say, by S- Monday morning, I w-- slept very little because sleep is not good for memory. Um, and by Monday morning, I usually had the first sikha, and I would give it out to a few people. I'd give it Rabbi Yael, who at times would review it, sometimes he wouldn't. And then I would give it to Shom Chartonov, um, Ola Dutz, if he was available, Label Altine, different people, you know, a typed draft, and they would give me back their notes. And meanwhile, I'd continue writing the next sikha, the next sikha. Uh, simultaneously, the Maimon writers, this then was Shom Chartonov and Ola Dutz would write the Maimon. And by Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, un-- de-depending on the size of the farbrengen, I usually had the full farbrengen ready,

2:20:50 Speaker 1 first draft. But then I would pla- take everyone's comments. Sometimes the comments were very aggressive. Some people said that, "You wrote it the wrong way. I don't agree with how you wrote it." Sometimes people did agree. I, I remember with Rabbi Yael, I had such arguments. He said he thought it was a different approach. You know, because you were not creating . Remember, we didn't have a tape to refer to. It was all from memory.

2:21:15 Speaker 9 So it's possible that somehow there's some subjectivity based on the .

2:21:19 Speaker 1 Well, so what, what, what-- Let's define what subjectivity means.

2:21:22 Speaker 9 I mean, you're relying on humans that could be, be making errors.

2:21:25 Speaker 1 No, it wasn't the like in the you know. It was what-

2:21:27 Speaker 9 I mean, no, but-

2:21:28 Speaker 1 No, subjectivity in the sense like that's why I wanted others to comment.

2:21:32 Speaker 9 Right.

2:21:32 Speaker 1 You know. But c-- for example, sometimes people comment, and I said, "Yeah, you're right." They, they pointed out that, uh, you know, sometimes I wrote something, and when you read it-- when I read it myself back, something's wrong. I'm missing, you know, 'cause it wasn't... Uh, but, but a lot of things would become clearer as you wrote because then you suddenly realize that what did the Rebbe actually say here? You know, once you write it out, once you saw, for example, a and you see, "Ah, the Rebbe was using this ." Then you s- realize, "Oh, what did the Rebbe add to it?" It's hard to explain without showing you real examples. But it's a real process, a real serious process of a combination of memory, research, and understanding on inyan in Chassidus. Like-

2:22:14 Speaker 9 And an average farbrengen is, uh, thirty pages, forty pages?

2:22:18 Speaker 1 Much more.

2:22:19 Speaker 9 Fifty pages?

2:22:20 Speaker 1 No. An average-- The Rebbe's pace of speaking, every hour of speaking yielded twenty pages, double-spaced, eight and a half by eleven pages. So five hours of speaking is a hundred pages. An average farbrengen was three, four hours, so you're talking about at least sixty pages. And we did pretty good. Almost a hund-- We almost got almost a hundred percent. Like, in other words, we didn't-- The, the, the memory was, w-- So it's a combination of all the things. I'll give you an example. Um, here, that first farbrengen, Miketz, the Rebbe spoke with . So Chassidus asked, "What's Roni and what's Simchi?" Okay, so the Rebbe spoke about it, and we remembered. Then I look in Torah, what the Rebbe said. It says in Torah, but in Torah, there's more details. And then you realize the Rebbe added a detail that didn't say in Torah, but you don't know that until you look in Torah. So you have to combine what stayed and what you remember. Instead, and then you look at there's, there's another deal. It's, it's, it's, it's quite a, quite a c-complex process, and then you get something that's solid. Now, sometimes the Rebbe says something that doesn't say anywhere, so you have to just make-- reconstruct it correctly. Then there were times that you heard the Rebbe, that we had a question, and then I would write right away to the Rebbe that this is how we understood what you said. The Rebbe said, "Leit hafasnu," and the Rebbe would clarify.

2:23:46 Speaker 9 Okay, so I wanna-

2:23:47 Speaker 1 So, so bottom line is by Wednesday we had everything pretty much in place.

2:23:52 Speaker 9 So I have a question for you. What was, um, what was easier for you to write? The sichas before, till the Ma'amarit or the second part with the Rashi Sichas and and everything else?

2:24:06 Speaker 1 It's a, it's a good question. There's no rule depending how complex those sichas were. Sometimes a sicha, like, like going back, the first sicha was so difficult 'cause the Rebbe spoke about a very chassidic inyon, ‹...›. So the inyon was very complicated. Um, on the other hand, the Rashi Sichas were easier because it was structured. You had a Rashi, you knew the Rashi. The Rebbe, we knew he asked four questions, so it was more structural. ‹...› easier to, uh, to, uh, to write. But it all came down to how complicated the topic was. You know, how well understood it was. Um, if it was well understood-- There were times I didn't understand the sicha well till I finished writing. Then I realized, "Ah, that's what he meant." You know, there's things like that. Um-

2:24:56 Speaker 9 How could you write it if you don't understand?

2:24:58 Speaker 1 'Cause you write what you heard, and you try to make a structure-

2:25:02 Speaker 9 So it's like a, so it's like a tape recorder?

2:25:03 Speaker 1 Yes. Stickle like that.

2:25:05 Speaker 9 It's a memory. It's not understanding.

2:25:06 Speaker 1 It's a memory, right. And then you start seeing some-

2:25:09 Speaker 9 So you have to have a good memory to be, to be a-

2:25:10 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Memory was more important than understanding first, for sure. And then comes the understanding part. And then came questions. That was a very exciting part because once you had questions, you could ask the Rebbe, but you could only do that after you really heard about it. You can't just ask the Rebbe, uh, you know, a question.

2:25:31 Speaker 9 So tell, tell me about what was the interaction and the questions that the would ask. Like, give me an example or two.

2:25:37 Speaker 1 I'll give it. I was g-- I was actually g-gonna give this example that I started. Maybe this is a good time. But I'll give another one first, an easier one. I'll give you an example. Um, in Samach Vav it talks about the rotsen and taynu, which is higher. And the Rebbe-- it's a topic the Rebbe spoke about. So I remember one sicha the Rebbe writes that, uh, independent what it says in Samach Vav, eineg is always the highest level. Because we see even the case where, let's say, taynus column, that's the example given. On Shabbos, eineg is eating, meal, a, a taynu, a . But let's say a person had a bad dream. So for him, taynus is eineg because the taynus will, like, get rid of his bad chola. So is this a ray that rotsen is higher or that taynu is higher? So Samach Vav it says, it's a ray that the rotsen is higher because the rotsen not to eat is stronger than the taynu to eat. But the Rebbe said in the farbrengen it's a ray that eineg is higher. So we asked the Rebbe, "How does it stem with Samach Vav, what it says?" 'Cause the Rebbe quoted the Samach Vav, but it seems to have a different conclusion. So the Rebbe's answer was, "If you look closely, the, the halacha says, ‹...›." If, if eineg is lower, why does he have to say eineg even if it's not eineg? You wanna fast. The fact that the, that the rotsen

2:27:04 Speaker 1 turned it into eineg mean eineg is really ultimately what you want. The only difference is that here rotsen created the eineg, but you still need eineg. So this person has eineg from not eating. That's an example, very quick example. We have hundreds like this, probably hundreds of hun- such questions. Sometimes they are more complicated. I'll give you another example, uh, about, uh, Bnei Noach, um, with Shabbos Parsha BeShalach, Taf Shin Mem Gimel. The Rebbe said in the farbrengen Moshiach is about to come, and Alex Zeides, Malchamas Gog and Magog, and now it's gonna be only Menucha and Shalom, no more wars and no more death. Again, like Moshiach. That's what the Rebbe said mid-level sicha. So I wrote to the Rebbe on Sunday morning, the Gemara Sanhedrin on the passage Charkir, Charkir Bnei Shis. It says that either two-thirds-- Bnei Shis is, is thirds, two-thirds. Either two-thirds of the world or two-thirds of two-thirds of the world is gonna be destroyed before Moshiach comes. So how does it stem with what the Rebbe said? We always wrote it respectfully and so on. And the Rebbe wrote back to me, uh, "Bli neder, yedubel bezeh, bisvad ha'kodesh haba aleinu l'tov." So I knew the Rebbe has a lot to say on this because he didn't just write an answer, he says he's gonna speak. So then, uh, Sha-uh, B'sha-uh, Yisrael was no farbrengen. Mishpatim Mem Gimel, the Rebbe starts second sicha with gefrekt. I knew he was referring to this question, and a whole sicha just

2:28:37 Speaker 1 on this topic. So that's another example, and the Rebbe's basic Likut there was-- It's already printed today, Cheider Chaf Gimel, Boloch. You look, it's not a Boloch sicha. It's Mish-Mishpatim, what is-- The Rebbe goes, "As this whole sicha grew out of a question." And there are many. There are many sichas that purely came from our questions. And many times the Rebbe said that he's-- but first wants to-- we should ask in order that he should answer. So the Rebbe's answer was, bottom line is that he said the Kashas of the Gemara Nisht Afmir. 'Cause the Rebbe says, "Rahama kol ma'asav." Why would-- How could he destroy his two-thirds of his own creation? So the Rebbe's answer then was that he's not gonna destroy them. It'll be Shinuy Hatzura, so it's like a Bitul Ha'atzara. So that's, like, called... It doesn't say Misa, it says Keloyan. Keloyan is like Bitul. I mean, it's, it's a whole sicha on this topic. That's some examples. There are many. There are many-

2:29:30 Speaker 9 What was the story that you were-

2:29:31 Speaker 1 So this one was already-- I'm just gonna give a little more controversial one. So, um, briefly, Cheshvan, Shabbos Parsha Bo Mem Bet, the Rebbe says connection Cheshvan is ‹...›. Time of Yeshu, all the Skanim passed away in Cheshvan. Connection to Yud Shevat, Yud Shevat is Halkas of the Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe. Cheshvan is Halkas of the Skanim. The Rebbe said, "But Skanim Lo She'rabbim." The Rebbe-- Ain Rebbe. Skanim is, uh, Botchofsken. So the Rebbe said something that he never said. He said, "The truth is a generation could have many Rabbeim, but it's too mu-too much oyer." It's like Eila Shemesh. If it's too-- It'll blind us. So that's why you have one Rebbe." So really many schtenim because it's a bigger Gily. We always know a fakert, the dabber echad l'daas. So then no Rebbe, ain kein Godol, ain Teyte, you know. So I wrote to the Rebbes, and I quoted the Rebbe himself said, Yud Beis Tammuz Tov Shakav Heh. When he asked the Fridi Rebbe that, that-- but the Semach Tsadik in the time of the Mitler Rebbe. So the Re-- Fridi Rebbe said to the Rebbe, the Rebbe said his name, his second name. He said, "There's ." The Rebbe said his name. Our Rebbe is not Reiner. So I quoted all that, and that was that. And I wanted to see what the Rebbe-- you know, the Rebbe said, here he's speaking, Usually it's Mesad HaMeila. You have one Rebbe, you don't have two Rebbes. Then I decided I'm gonna go

2:31:05 Speaker 1 on the limb, I'll take a risk. I'll write something that I know it can get a good flick, you know, a real chelek. And I wrote, maybe with what the Rebbe's saying, it co- it could be mazbut what will happen after all the Rabbeim come back, Mashiach. So you'll have the Alter Rebbe, the Mitler Rebbe, all the Rabbeim. Who's gonna be the Rebbe? So based on what the Rebbe's saying, it could be many Rabbeim 'cause the Gilyonim will be so big. You understand? So it's not something, uh... And I knew that this could be very-- the Rebbe may not like what I'm writing And, uh-

2:31:39 Speaker 10 It was a question.

2:31:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. And maybe it is. So the Rebbe responds. He didn't answer the rest of the questions. He just circled this, and he wrote to me, You understand? In which sniff, in which, uh, branch of Temchet Mimim are they learning and, and being mafalpul, trying to figure out these very so- sensitive matters like this? In other words, where-- who, who is mechanech you, basically? You know, what are you-- ask me such question. So I don't have any regrets asking. You know, getting a chelek like that from the Rebbe is, uh, s- similar to say-

2:32:27 Speaker 10 There were other halachim, no?

2:32:28 Speaker 1 That haglet is chesed, and apach is chesed sheba chesed. So I felt chesed sheba chesed.

2:32:33 Speaker 10 There were other halachim that the Manichim got about the-

2:32:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, we got plenty of halachim.

2:32:37 Speaker 10 About the lashon sometimes.

2:32:38 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Sometimes the lashon maviel. This-- Yeah, there's a lot of bad critique. I have a lot of stories like that. But thank God, I got-- the people got a lot worse than me.

2:32:48 Speaker 10 So how did you take those, those things?

2:32:51 Speaker 1 I always took it professionally that the Rebbe is a, a, a, ultimate surgeon, and he's teaching you precision and, you know. 'Cause a- at least for me, many of the mistakes were not stupid mistakes. They were like d- dakkas, like, you know, things that were subtle. The Rebbe caught it. I remember the Rebbe once wrote to me, "Maviel, that I missed a whole Maamer Chazal." You know what it was? There's a story with Nachum Chernobyl. If you have two things to do, how do you know which is the right thing to do? So there's-- one way is by knowing what-- where you have most resistance. The thing you don't wanna do is the thing you need to do. So we wrote it. We wrote the story. The Rebbe writes, "Maviel that we missed the Maamer Chazal befurush." Now you tell me which Maamer Chazal. So the Rebbe-- Maamer Chazal, there's a din that says, If you have like, you know, a person that is w- carrying a heavy weight, and he's your oyev, and there's a sena, you have to help your sena first. So by the Rebbe, that's a rayit to the story, the thing you don't wanna do. Same by the Rebbe, that was a maviel.

2:33:57 Speaker 10 Maamer.

2:33:58 Speaker 1 Okay, but when you're on the Rebbe's level. So no, I did not feel bad. I was-- We learned. I learned. I saw it as a learning experience. From the Rebbe, I learned how to write much more precise. I learned dakkas, dikka things. The-- I, I-- For me, it was training. It's like, it's like imagine a master, uh, musician, and he's showing you that you're playing the piano not so perfect. That to me was a beracha. I mean, I'm just lahavdel. I'm just giving you an example. I learned. I-- You learn from the best. I, I saw the Rebbe's the best, you know. The, the-- By all means. I, I was-- I embraced the Rebbe's critique very positive. There were guys that had thin skin, and I remember there were guys that had big egos, and they're like, you know, not. They were competing with the Rebbe, but they got insulted. You know? I never got insulted. I saw it always as, you know, pour it on from my point of view.

2:34:51 Speaker 10 So there's a m-- there's many, many shailas on Manichim and the answers. Not gonna cover all of them. Um, in fact, we've been printing, uh, a lot of them recently in the Der. Um, what happened la- in the later years, the change that the Rebbe started to be magiya every farbrengen and every Shabbos, and then the whole, the whole sigment of the farbrengens changed also. It's much shorter, and the, the classical anach has stopped. What, what happened then?

2:35:21 Speaker 1 Well, um, a few things, I think. First of all, we got better and better. The better we got, the less saggas the Rebbe needed, to be honest. Because like Rabiel told me many times, in his early years, the Rebbe would sometimes rewrite, not because the Rebbe-- 'cause it wasn't written well. So we learned a lot. I learned a lot from the Rebbe himself, so we got better. Also, technology. The Rebbe recognized that, for example, the sichos being printed in Chabad or Algemeiner, and faxes and other technology. So I think the Rebbe saw that as an opportunity to get more of his words out there. So I think the Rebbe put more time into... Basically, the end of Mem Bet, the Rebbe started being magiya more often But it came to Mem Zayin maybe, and also the court case, Chetes. And the Rebbe, you know, usually 」。 So the Rebbe started being Magiya every week. Basically from end of Mem Vav, early Mem Zayin, the Rebbe's Magiya every Fabregan almost.

2:36:25 Speaker 10 So in the beginning it was more of like Hanacha, but then it changed to more like a Likoth, no? Then it started changing.

2:36:30 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Hanacha is built in Mogen. Um, then the Rebbe started being Magiya, these built-in Mogens. So we started preparing them in a b- in a much more thorough way.

2:36:39 Speaker 10 Why?

2:36:39 Speaker 1 'Cause the Rebbe's gonna be Magiya.

2:36:41 Speaker 10 So it's not just a transcript.

2:36:42 Speaker 1 Yeah. So now you can elaborate more.

2:36:45 Speaker 10 You're saying since the Rebbe's being Magiya-

2:36:47 Speaker 1 Yeah

2:36:47 Speaker 10 ... so therefore could-- it, it should be reworked a little bit.

2:36:50 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:36:50 Speaker 10 Like, like look at the sickness.

2:36:51 Speaker 1 Exactly.

2:36:51 Speaker 10 Okay.

2:36:52 Speaker 1 And, and then we started doing that. So by the time Mem Zayin came around, we were preparing the Sichas a lot more, knowing the Rebbe was Magiya. Now if the Rebbe was not Magiya, we wouldn't have printed it. We would go back to the original Hanacha. In other words, Hanacha could be a little more br-- you know, not so everything is spelled out. You know, when the Rebbe's Magiya, you can really go much further into it, to any topic.

2:37:17 Speaker 10 Okay. So I wanna, I wanna go to Nanali from the Base, and maybe we'll conclude with-- on the, on this-

2:37:25 Speaker 1 Okay

2:37:26 Speaker 10 ... over here. So obviously the Rebbe's Ma- it's a whole different thing. The Rebbe's, the Rebbe's being Magiya every week, you know, the whole thing, it's different than-- there's no shailas. I mean, the shailas too, but it's, but it's a whole d- it's a different work. You're writing something with Magiya, it's a whole process.

2:37:40 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:37:41 Speaker 10 Um, and then in Nanali from the Base, there's a, there's a-- the signaling of the Sichas is very different. Things are changing, the way the Rebbe's speaking and what the Rebbe's speaking about. W-what is something you wanna highlight from, from that?

2:37:55 Speaker 1 Well, f-first of all, where did you hear that Nanali from the Base is so different than Nun, for example?

2:37:59 Speaker 10 I don't mean, I don't mean Nanali from the Base versus Nun. I mean later, later years.

2:38:02 Speaker 1 Well, let, let's-- I have to clarify this. After the Rebbetsen's stalkers, things changed dramatically. Not right away, by the way. The first Farbrengen after Chabad Shvat was Shabbos Parsha Mishpatim. I wrote that Farbrengen. That was pretty much a usual Farbrengen, I mean, same structure. Obviously, the Rebbe spoke about the Rebbetsen and so on. After Pesach, Mem Ches, the Farbrengen started shortening, like half. Instead of a Farbrengen going till six o'clock, it went till three o'clock, or five thirty, s- three o'clock. The Rebbe started cutting out the Rashi Sichas, the Zoya-

2:38:41 Speaker 10 Mem Ches.

2:38:42 Speaker 1 Mem Ches already. End of summer, Mem Che-- After Sesrim, it's either Mem Ches, more or less almost everything went. The end of Mem Ches, the Rebbe stopped saying, "My Morim." So the whole structure of Farbrengen changed. Then-- and that's one thing. Secondly, the Rebbe started combining the-- like, everything was, like, connected. And Geulah became very much, as the time passed, like by, by the time Mem Ches and Nun, especially Nun, the Rebbe start-- everything was Geulah. The Yesh LaKashe, the Parshah with the Geulah. And it became harder to, uh, discern, identify the theme. Like in the early, before Mem Ches, it was very clear the Rebbe was speaking about Yut Shvat or he's gonna speak about Shavuot, whatever. Here he started mixing Shavuot and the Parshah and this. So the Sichas were a lot harder to, um, to write 'cause we had to, like, find what is the central theme. And the Rebbe would always give us a structure. Now we had to create a structure. By the Rebbe, it was almost like everything was like-- he was combining everything. So it was the Rebbe's style of speaking changed. And, um, but we still used the same method of writing like we always did over the years, 'cause we-- that was the only model we knew. So the only-- the real changes I would say is not so much in the structure of the Sicha, it's the themes. Geulah became very, very dominant. Like you'll see Geulah's everywhere. Like the Rebbe will say right away,

2:40:09 Speaker 1 "Sh'et in the Parshah, Yesh LaKashe Zeman DeGeulah." That was not the style before Mem Ches. So Geulah became-- that was a, a main difference in my mind, and, and harder to, to identify the themes. But since the Rebbe was Magiya, we could ask the Rebbe and, and that's how we got through it. But it was a lot harder work. It was a lot more difficult. Does that make sense?

2:40:31 Speaker 10 Yeah.

2:40:32 Speaker 1 That was the main changes. Um, you know, I mean, I'm not getting now into about, about, uh, you know, in this time of bedside bedroom and what that means. That's really another discussion. But all of it became also a sense of urgency. You could sense that the Rebbe was speaking much more Otzat K'mashiah. There was that language was much stronger.

2:40:53 Speaker 10 So maybe we'll conclude with this. The, you know, the, the, the Sichas Nanali from the Base is the Esat and the last Sichas that we have and Teyre we have from the Rebbe.

2:41:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:41:07 Speaker 10 So in a way, there's a 」。 From the Rebbe, Halavai, Sheyam Dakhtechim, the Friedik Rebbe in the last year.

2:41:14 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:41:16 Speaker 10 So what is that message? What is the overarching message that the Rebbe is giving Texudim in the, the, that, that Tsukuffa?

2:41:26 Speaker 1 Okay, good. Very good. It's a good place to sum up. I, I think I'll answer it a little more broadly, being that I started writing Sichas, you know, I'll connect it to everything we've been told. I started writing Sichas Taf Shamem. President Reagan became president Taf Shamem, nineteen eighty. The Rebbe started very strongly Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Ek in nineteen eighty. So I see s- many, many ways my career in the Sichas very much aligned with, like, the so-called last, the last Tsukuffa, the Esat that is. That, you know, the Rebbe was building up. Like, in Maimon Bos Legani Taf Sheal, the Rebbe says, "Dei Rashvi." But then you don't hear Dei Rashvi a lot more in the early year, you know, those years. And then the Rebbe built the Moizes and then the Shlichas Chabad houses, Mivtzoim, but in Tof Shin Mem, the Rebbe starts, you know, a little more before Tof Shin Mem, starts 」。You know, with, with, okay, the Rebbe went from melech Yisroel to melech kol ha'aretz, sometimes the way chassidim put it. So you saw that clearly. I saw it every day in s- you know, every-- all the sikkos. I saw the, the shift, the Rebbe was becoming much more global, more universal. You know, the Rebbe takes to God, you know, Kibosh Elim. So when it came Mem Ches, and the Rebbe started much stronger about geulah, that when Sugie puts the kneplach, the, you know, ef in the eigen, the velt is great. I'm, I'm using all the

2:42:48 Speaker 1 lashons. Tutals with Sirken, everything. All that wasn't like an out of the blue. It was a continuation of like, okay, we're coming now to the end of the story. So the Rebbe gave us the final marching orders, like, uh, like Rabbi Kazniansky said, and many of chazat from Chay Sai Nun Beis, that now Kabbalah's premier machine. Now we h- we're ready to do the final push, geulah. So I think it's what the Rebbe said Chaf Ches Nissan, that we have to do everything possible to bring the geulah. Now, it was always that way there, but it was more through Mivtzoim and more through puulas. Now it became like, you know, we gotta teach the world the real thing, Ein Od Milvade, that this is it. And when the Rebbe started with, um, the Yaakov Shmini and all that, it was all-- If you look, think about it, it was all a logical process. People make a big mistake. They say the Rebbe was-- I don't wanna even use the word, but like, you know, the Rebbe. After the Rebbe, some of the Rebbe was more, uh, desperate, Kav Yach, Lachman Aluf Slam. I don't see it all that way. The Rebbe was very methodical. It, it was the stages. So what the Rebbe left us with, you know, I don't know Gimel Tamuz. I'm not trying to explain Gimel Tamuz. He left us with the w- the final marching orders, that the world is ready to hear the real thing, you know, teach them real

2:44:06 Speaker 1 siddus, the maines, Malach Dayess Hashem. Look now with AI and everything. It's obvious. The world is ready. The things that, you know, the Rebbe was ahead of his time and said it already. I saw Mem Ches and through Nun Beis in that lens, that the Rebbe was seeing that this was now coming to like, like the, the eruption is about to happen, and that was the tone of the Rebbe, very urgent and so on. So we got a job to do. That's what the Rebbe left us with.

2:44:34 Speaker 10 And the fact that it didn't happen then is, is our fault?

2:44:37 Speaker 1 Is the Mem-- Is, is-

2:44:38 Speaker 10 Is our fault?

2:44:39 Speaker 1 I-- No. Yeah, it means we didn't do what we had to do. But, but you know what? We could also say, why did the Rebbe have a little rachmanus on us? You know, we're simple people, so bring the geulah already. But yeah.

2:44:51 Speaker 10 Two thousand sixteen.

2:44:52 Speaker 1 Yeah. I, I don't like to say Sonny wants-- I, I, I will say that I did not do everything I have to do. You have to answer that question yourself, or your audience should answer that question. You have to look at yourself. You can't start pointing fingers at others, so that's not the derech. Everyone's gonna say, "It was your fault. You didn't do on this." You know, like the guys that have machlikes, they say, "I'm not machlikes. If you stop machlikes, I-- there'd be no-- there'd be peace." I said, "What does that mean? He has to agree with you." Yeah, if he agrees with me, there won't be a machlikes, of course. And s- My point is that we have to look at ourselves. And the Rebbe g- the, the words are there. He says-- The Rebbe said, "Derech Yeshoto, Arein Shtel the Alef from, uh, Aluf Ish Chayalim in g- in Geylam makes the geulah." It's, uh-- To me, it's all about a revolution of Yefutz Min Hasacha Chutza. You know, the herd should reach eight billion people, not just, uh, a billion. How's that?

2:45:42 Speaker 10 Between the herd and the algemeine.

2:45:44 Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. And the Nefer Life Center, yeah.

2:45:47 Speaker 10 Yeah, the Nefer Life Center.

2:45:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:45:49 Speaker 10 Shekayach gadol Rabbi Jacobson.

2:45:50 Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Did that click? We have a show till three o'clock in the morning.

2:45:58 Speaker 10 Three o'clock in the morning. Okay. Very good.