Ep. 12 // “Winning in the Marketplace of Ideas?” w/ Yanki Tauber

00:00 Speaker 1 If you believe in Torah and you believe this is the truth, you should be confident enough to believe that what's called a marketplace of ideas-

00:08 Speaker 2 It will win

00:09 Speaker 1 ... it can fend for itself.

00:10 Speaker 2 Yes. Exactly.

00:11 Speaker 1 It doesn't need protected. It doesn't need to be sugar-coated. What happens when you go ahead and you take something in Torah, a- and this happens all the time, right? Y- y- there's an idea in Torah, and you look around you, what everyone-- what the common wisdom is, what everyone thinks the truth is, and it, it's, it's completely against it.

00:28 Speaker 2 Right.

00:29 Speaker 1 So, so, so you wanna, you wanna make it fit. You know what's gonna happen? In another 20 years, people are gonna say, "Eh? Torah said this? It's so old-fashioned. That's so 2020s."

00:37 Speaker 2 Right. Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2023. My name is Bentzi Avsin, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. So I'm here today, or here tonight, with Yanky Tauber, who is the editor and writer and founder of Open Book Torah, or Open Book Press.

01:13 Speaker 1 Open Book Press is the-

01:14 Speaker 2 Open Book, Open Book Press, who, uh-

01:17 Speaker 1 The publisher. Open Book Torah is the book.

01:19 Speaker 2 Open Book Press have published Open Book Torah, and, uh, of course, I've, I've read much of what Yanky, or a lot that Yanky has written over the years. Um, as a bachur in yeshiva, there are many times that I read his adaptations of the sichas online and in print. And I really got to know Yanky, um, a couple months ago when I was asked by Yanky and his co-founder, Baruch Gorkin, um, to make a film about their new Chumash, which was, uh, truly a unique experience on many levels. Uh, mainly because it's not every day that I get to work with people who are so dedicated and so particular in their craft. And, um, you know, it was a chance to, to really learn from people who had put many, many years into this project and really treated every detail with immense care. And, uh, yeah, it made for a longer edit than usual and a longer process than usual, but, but it was, it was, it was truly a special learning experience. And, you know, as I started this podcast, I thought it would be, I thought it'd be great, um, to have Yanky on. I asked him on earlier on. What's that? The bell?

02:40 Speaker 1 No, that's, um, the clock.

02:41 Speaker 2 It's the clock. All right. I gotta get out more. Yeah. All right. So we-- I asked Ya- I a- I asked Yanky onto the podcast at the beginning. It was, uh... It didn't work out, but here we are. We're still in the middle of, uh, Chumash Bereishis, so we still got a few weeks left, and I'm glad that we finally had the chance to sit down. Um, we were talking earlier off-camera about, about the idea of living with contradictions and how the Rabbi would speak about how the Jewish calendar is both tries to absorb and does absorb both the s- the solar cycle and the lunar cycle, and how even though that ends up in essentially being irreconcilable and just, and, and a constant struggle and a constant tension that never gets fully reconciled, that's just part of life. You gotta live with the contradiction. And I think, I think even though that was off-camera, I think that very much sets the tone for this conversation because that's very much the idea of the Chumash, as you explained to me then, creating a book where people can figure out their own contradictions and figure out their own resolutions, or maybe just live with the contradictions.

03:57 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

03:57 Speaker 2 So I'd like, I, I, I, I would like to get there, but first, I would like to start with how we got to your thinking about a Chumash and how you got to thinking about presenting it this way. So I think we need to go back a little bit to your own history and find out how this young boy from Crown Heights learned how to write full sentences.

04:20 Speaker 1 Okay. That, that's the biggest mystery of them all.

04:23 Speaker 2 Yes, sir.

04:24 Speaker 1 I, I, I really-- A lot of people ask me that question, and, uh, you know, all the Torah has tried to turn me into the poster child for all the Torah to say that you can go to Torah and still know how to write. But, um-

04:36 Speaker 2 You don't buy it.

04:37 Speaker 1 I don't buy it. People ask me how I learned, and I don't really have an answer to that. Just by trying and having some very, very good people help me out along the line. I had some very good editors and, and advisors and, uh, you know, and, and it, it really boils down to just sort of convincing yourself and deluding yourself, for lack of a better word, that you can do it.

05:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, but how-- What, what brought you... Like, describe a little bit the Crown Heights you grew up in, because there weren't too many people that ended up doing what you did. So describe a little bit the Crown Heights milieu that you grew up in. When did you first start thinking about writing? Was it some-- Did you like reading a lot?

05:20 Speaker 1 Yeah. I always... As a matter of fact, I never-- I always loved reading, and I always greatly admired writers. Um, I would, I would say by the time I was maybe five or six years old, I was, I was reading anything I can get my hands on i-in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Um, I had come from a, you know, my grandfather, um, wrote under the pen name Tzvi Yair. He was Rabbi-- Tzvi Meir Steinmetz was his name. Uh, he was a, a Hebrew poet. He was very much a literary person. He spoke, uh, nine or ten language fluently. He actually wrote poetry in a number of them, edited the newspapers in languages that he only learned a few months before. I mean, he had a very-

06:04 Speaker 2 Wh- where was this? Back in Russia or here in America?

06:07 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, no, he was never any... Well, he mu- he was born in somepl- in an area that today might be Russia.

06:14 Speaker 2 Right.

06:14 Speaker 1 But unlike, uh, many Lubav- many people equ-equate Lubavitch with Russia, but he's not from Russia, no. He-

06:20 Speaker 2 He was a Lubavitcher?

06:21 Speaker 1 He was a Lubavitcher, but he became a Lubavitcher later in life. He was not born in a Lubavitcher family.

06:27 Speaker 2 Hmm.

06:27 Speaker 1 He was born, uh, in s- in the Carpathian Mountains.

06:33 Speaker 2 So what's his name?

06:34 Speaker 1 Steinitz.

06:35 Speaker 2 Steinitz.

06:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. It's my mother's father.

06:38 Speaker 2 His first name?

06:39 Speaker 1 Zvi Meir.

06:40 Speaker 2 So, so, so his, his pen name was Zvi Yr.

06:42 Speaker 1 He wrote under the name Zvi Yr. He was, I remember, very... He came as a very interesting... Talking about someone who, uh, sort of incorporates, uh, tensions and opposites in his life.

06:54 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

06:55 Speaker 1 Um, so he, uh, he grew up in a Hasidisha home, uh, not a Ha- not a Lubavitch home. I don't even think they even heard of Lubavitch where they lived. Um-

07:04 Speaker 2 And, and when was this? This was before the war?

07:06 Speaker 1 He was born in 1915-

07:08 Speaker 2 So-

07:08 Speaker 1 ... my grandfather

07:09 Speaker 2 ... so-

07:09 Speaker 1 He was actually born, he was actually born in Budapest. Uh, his family, uh, they're not, they're not originally Hungarian. Uh, my grandmother, the w- his wife, was from Debrecen. She was a, a true Hungarian. Uh, he, he lived in Budapest, and my mother was actually born in Budapest. But, uh, he himself, his own family, came from... They probably didn't know most of the time even which country they lived in. They were in this small village in the Carpathian Mountains, which sometimes was Russia, sometimes was Ukraine, sometimes was Romania, sometimes it was sometimes it was Czechoslovakia. It was... The borders were shifting so often there.

07:48 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

07:49 Speaker 1 They actually lived not far from the boundary between the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire. Uh, I don't... I think they were on the Russian side, I'm not even sure. But, um, they, you know, it was, it w- Jews lived in their own bubble, in their own universe over there.

08:05 Speaker 2 It didn't really make a difference 'cause all the goyim hated them anyway, so it wasn't...

08:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. Well, interesting is the, the interesting thing is, by the way, that his family, his father, and his sisters, he himself was actually saved by a Hungarian goy.

08:17 Speaker 2 Really?

08:17 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. He's actually rec-

08:18 Speaker 2 Well, this is during World War II?

08:20 Speaker 1 World War II under... And then, yeah, he survived, him and his family, him and his wife, uh, my grandmother. And my mother was actually born under Nazi occupation in, um-

08:32 Speaker 2 In hiding

08:33 Speaker 1 ... in Debrecen. No, no. Before they... Hungar- Hungarian Jews had a-

08:37 Speaker 2 Yeah

08:37 Speaker 1 ... sort of a respite.

08:38 Speaker 2 Right.

08:39 Speaker 1 They, they only started rounding them up... Well, it, a lot of it started earlier. The young- the men were s- were... I mean, I don't know if we wanna go into the whole-

08:47 Speaker 2 No. We don't. We want to spend the-

08:48 Speaker 1 ... history of World War II right now, but-

08:49 Speaker 2 Right

08:50 Speaker 1 ... but well, I'm just mentioning, you mentioned about the goyim hating them. But yeah, there was obviously a lot of anti-Semitism in, in Europe, but there were also many goyim, a minority unfortunately, but many goyim were really... I, I mean, my mother... I, I am here today because of a woman, a Goyisha woman, non-Jewish woman, who was a business associate of my grandfather's, who actually risked her life-

09:14 Speaker 2 Right

09:14 Speaker 1 ... to save them. She took them into their own home. My mother was a baby. My grandmother was a young woman. She made up a story that she's an unwed mother and that she worked in her as a maid.

09:26 Speaker 2 Wow.

09:26 Speaker 1 And she was literally at the risk... It was very, a few very close calls, and literally at the risk of her own life, uh, saved them, and actually they remained in touch very close after the war. I knew her. I met her many times as a child. She lived... After the war, she lived in New Zealand, but she would come visit us every once in a while.

09:43 Speaker 2 Wow.

09:43 Speaker 1 She was like a second grandmother to me.

09:45 Speaker 2 Wow.

09:45 Speaker 1 She was very interesting. Yeah.

09:47 Speaker 2 Yeah.

09:48 Speaker 1 So.

09:49 Speaker 2 So anyways, your, your-

09:50 Speaker 1 That's a bit of history.

09:51 Speaker 2 Yeah.

09:52 Speaker 1 So he was actually born in Budapest during World War I. His family were refugees from the war. The front arrived near their village, and they ran away, and I guess his mother was pregnant at the time, so he was l- physically born in Budapest himself. But then right after that, as soon as the war was over, they went back to their village.

10:13 Speaker 2 And after World War II, where did he go with his wife?

10:15 Speaker 1 After World War II, they were living in Vienna for... First they were living in Hungary, then they managed to get out of Hungary, I believe, in 1948. There was a short period of time when, when, uh, the communists, uh, either the communists were overthrown or the comm- there was a more liberal communist government for a short period of time that people were able to leave. They lived in Vienna for a number of years. In 1953, they came to America from, from Vienna. So my mother actually grew up in Vienna as a child.

10:42 Speaker 2 And when did he become a Lubavitcher?

10:45 Speaker 1 He became a Lubavitcher after he came to America.

10:48 Speaker 2 Mm, okay.

10:48 Speaker 1 After he moved to America, he lived in Crown Heights. And-

10:52 Speaker 2 Just randomly he ended up in Crown Heights?

10:53 Speaker 1 Well, he had a brother-in-law who was also living... Well, a lot of people lived in Crown Heights then.

10:56 Speaker 2 Right. Very-

10:57 Speaker 1 Not just Lubavitchers. Lubavitchers were actually a minority in Crown Heights-

11:00 Speaker 2 Of course. Of course

11:00 Speaker 1 ... in the '50s. Um-

11:01 Speaker 2 No, I was saying why did he come to Crown Heights? It was, it was just-

11:04 Speaker 1 He was a-

11:04 Speaker 2 ... just happened to be

11:05 Speaker 1 ... it was a Jewish... Like I said, his brother-in-law lived there already.

11:08 Speaker 2 Right.

11:08 Speaker 1 They lived on President Street, I think.

11:09 Speaker 2 Right.

11:10 Speaker 1 And he came to them. It's a whole story about how he ended up coming to America. He was actually unintentionally, wasn't even really intending to move to America.

11:17 Speaker 2 Right.

11:18 Speaker 1 'Cause he was doing very well in Vienna. In America, he was struggling for many years. That's a whole other story. This is, the podcast isn't about his life.

11:24 Speaker 2 No. No. But, no-

11:24 Speaker 1 It's a fascinating life, but-

11:25 Speaker 2 But it's important to set up, to set up-

11:27 Speaker 1 But, but-

11:27 Speaker 2 ... the milieu that you grew up in

11:28 Speaker 1 ... so what happened basically was, you're asking how he came to Lubavitch, I guess, is really your question here. So what happened was he, he, he was living in Crown Heights, and, uh, he had a connection, I don't know if it happened before or after, but he had a, a connection with Rabbi Jacobson, Rabbi Sol Jacobson, who was one of the leading figures even long before the 3rd Rebbe came to America.

11:52 Speaker 2 Right.

11:53 Speaker 1 Uh, Rabbi Jacobson was actually the shadchan of my parents, so that's another reason why I'm here. But anyway, so, um, he was living in Crown Heights, and he was actually hired initially to be the The principal of Bais Rivkah when they opened up Bais Rivkah with four or five children in Bais Rivkah.

12:10 Speaker 2 Really?

12:11 Speaker 1 Yeah.

12:12 Speaker 2 He had a history as an educator, or it was just like-

12:13 Speaker 1 He was a, he was a big intellectual. He was-

12:16 Speaker 2 Right

12:16 Speaker 1 ... so when he was in America, he was working. What happened was, um, he said we're not talking about his life story. To end up, uh, to answer your question, we ended up giving you his whole life story, but what happened was in... They, they came from a very wealthy family.

12:30 Speaker 2 It's not, it's not your fault that you have an interesting grandfather.

12:33 Speaker 1 Yeah.

12:33 Speaker 2 What am I supposed to do?

12:34 Speaker 1 So, so what he was, uh, definitely a very big influence in my life, especially when it comes to writing and literature, and the interest in writing, and the fascination with writing.

12:43 Speaker 2 So, so let me ask you. When you go, when you-

12:44 Speaker 1 So, so let me, let me just tell you-

12:45 Speaker 2 Right

12:45 Speaker 1 ... you know, I'll tell you quickly the story. What, what happened was he, uh, uh, the family originally was a very wealthy family.

12:53 Speaker 2 Right.

12:53 Speaker 1 His fa- his father was like what you would call the Gvir of the Shtetl. Like, everyone in that little town worked for his father. His father had a lumber business. He would lease, and he owned huge tracts of forest, and they would cut down logs-

13:04 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

13:04 Speaker 1 ... and float them down to the river. And, and, and all the Goyim in the town and all the Jews in the town, they all worked for him. And actually, at the end of the day, that's what also saved his life, 'cause he treated his workers very fairly, uh, unlike the, the, the, you know, the prototype of the exploitive capitalist or whatever. He had all these, all these people, the villagers working for him, but he treated them very fairly. And then when the Nazis came, ev- they were hiding out in the forest, literally in a dugout on the ground in the forest. And, uh, everyone in the town knew where they were, or a lot of people in the town knew where they were. They would bring them food there. They would not have been able to survive that way, and they protected him. Nobody told the Nazis where they were, and the reason for it was they said, "This man provided us a livelihood all these years. We're not going to betray him." So that was another interesting story about how, how he survived. But he was a very wealthy man, and after the, after the war, they reestablished it. Then, then of course, the Hungarian government became communist, and they nationalized everything.

14:02 Speaker 2 Right.

14:02 Speaker 1 All their property, they were left with nothing. But then they reestablished themselves in, in Vienna, and they were quite successful.

14:08 Speaker 2 As a businessman.

14:09 Speaker 1 As a businessman. And my grandfather also was, was an, was a businessman in Vienna, and he was very successful. He was doing very well. And just by chance, what happened was, uh, he had a brother-in-law in America, and his brother-in-law told him, "You know, it would be worth your while. I can send you an invitation, a sponsorship, and come to America and get yourself a green card, and it can't hurt." And you know, a Jew in the years after the Holocaust, to have another-

14:36 Speaker 2 Right

14:36 Speaker 1 ... insurance policy in their pocket, to have American citizenship or American green card was obviously a huge thing, as some stateless Jew in Europe was, would've, would've, would be very valuable for him. So they came to America, and the original plan was to stay in America a short while-

14:51 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

14:51 Speaker 1 ... get the green card, and, but the minute they came to America, he enrolled... He had three daughters. My mother is the youngest of three sisters. He had three young daughters, age eight to, to 14, or whatever it was, or 12, and he enrolled them in Bais Yaakov. And he suddenly saw, he said, "This is Gan Eden. This is my children have a, a Jewish education." And what did they have in Vienna? In Vienna, they had a... The most frumer people in Vienna had a two-hour Talmud Torah after public school. That's all they had.

15:21 Speaker 2 Right, right.

15:22 Speaker 1 So he decided to stay, and he tried bringing over his business. That was not successful. He was left with nothing. And after that was a real mesirus nefesh because he could've lived a very comfortable and very good life if he would've stayed in Vienna.

15:34 Speaker 2 Hmm.

15:34 Speaker 1 And he struggled for many years. He actually had three jobs, three teaching jobs. He was a big Talmid Chacham, and the only way he had of earning a living, he got a teaching job in a high school in, in, in, in Yeshivas Flatbush and in Aish Hatorah and a few other place. He actually worked three jobs. He would drive from one job to the other and pull over on the side of the road and sleep for half an hour, literally like that. And then my grandmother was taking sewing in the house, and they had many years of a lot of really hardship, real, real financial hardship and struggle. So at one point, they hired him to be the principal of Bais Rivkah. He was not a Lubavitcher. He had no connection with Hasidism, but they needed someone, a professional educator.

16:11 Speaker 2 But he's a Frummied at this point.

16:13 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. He was a Frummied. He was b- he was born a Frummied, like I said.

16:16 Speaker 2 Right.

16:16 Speaker 1 He underwent in his life different, um-

16:19 Speaker 2 Right

16:19 Speaker 1 ... before the war, you see pictures of him before the war. He has a beard with Payos and a Shtreimel and everything.

16:24 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

16:25 Speaker 1 Um, after the war, during the war, the beard, of course, didn't stay. He was hiding under assumed, uh-

16:31 Speaker 2 Right

16:32 Speaker 1 ... identity as a Goy.

16:34 Speaker 2 Right.

16:34 Speaker 1 And it took many years for the beard to come back. Eventually, it came back after he became a Lubavitcher. But, uh, essentially, um, they needed an educator, and they also thought of they'll bring someone from out. They didn't really have, um, probably didn't have anyone Lubavitcher who was capable of running a school at the time. And, uh, and, uh, also, they thought if they bring a guy from the outside, the whole Bais Rivkah then was four or six or eight students. I don't know.

17:01 Speaker 2 Right.

17:01 Speaker 1 It was a joke. And they thought if they hire him as a principal, uh, they'll, he'll bring in, you know, non-Lubavitchers as well into the school.

17:09 Speaker 2 Right.

17:09 Speaker 1 They wanted to expand the school, and the only Yid from school in New York then was basically made for girls was Bais Yaakov, and Bais Yaakov was an established school, and they were trying to, to build it up. So Rabbi Jacobson hired him to be the principal of Bais Rivkah, and of course, the Rebbe had to approve it, so he went into the Rebbe. He had his first Yechidus with the Rebbe, and he, like, his whole world, he... It was basically when he first met the Rebbe, he told me this is like what he was looking for his whole life.

17:33 Speaker 2 Hmm.

17:34 Speaker 1 Literally. Because his whole life he was torn between these two worlds. He was torn between his Hasidische Erziehung and between the intellectual world of the more intellectual, uh, you know, uh, side of Judaism. As a matter of fact, the, the first book of poetry that he wrote, he wrote a book of poetry called Gesharim. It was a, it's a very interesting book because there were actually a number of doctorates written on this book of poetry. What's unique about it, it was published in Debrecen in 1942 under Nazi occupation, under the Nazi government, not Nazi occupation-

18:06 Speaker 2 In Hebrew

18:06 Speaker 1 ... in Hebrew.

18:07 Speaker 2 Why, why, why would, why did he know Hebrew at that point? It was modern Hebrew, I assume.

18:12 Speaker 1 Well, it, his, his Hebrew was modern Hebrew, but-

18:15 Speaker 2 So he was a Zionist?

18:17 Speaker 1 Uh, I guess you can call him a Zionist. He was, he was a lover of language.

18:21 Speaker 2 Okay.

18:21 Speaker 1 And he fell in love with the Hebrew language as a young child.

18:24 Speaker 2 Right, but you have to be a pretty big idealist at that time to learn it, 'cause the country wasn't even established yet.

18:28 Speaker 1 Right.

18:29 Speaker 2 So it was a very-

18:29 Speaker 1 No, no. There were, there were all these groups-

18:32 Speaker 2 Zionist groups

18:32 Speaker 1 ... and there were these salons. Well, not only. Literary groups-

18:35 Speaker 2 That spoke Hebrew

18:35 Speaker 1 ... that would get together, Hebrew intellectuals, Yiddish intellectuals, all different kinds of intellectuals.

18:40 Speaker 2 Well, Yiddish I know, but Hebrew wasn't-

18:41 Speaker 1 Hebrew, yes

18:42 Speaker 2 ... a Zionist thing at that time.

18:43 Speaker 1 It was, obv- Yeah, obviously it was Zionist.

18:45 Speaker 2 Right.

18:45 Speaker 1 But I'm saying, uh, a lot of, I mean-

18:47 Speaker 2 It was more of intellectual pursuits than-

18:48 Speaker 1 People today tend to say, you know, Zionist or anti-Zionist. There was a whole spectrum in between.

18:53 Speaker 2 More, more complicated. Yeah.

18:54 Speaker 1 It's much more complicated. Yes. And, and definitely-

18:56 Speaker 2 He was more intellectually interested than politically interested, is what you're saying.

19:00 Speaker 1 Uh, probably. I mean, he was, it was, wasn't even intellectual. It was more, more literary side of it. He loved-

19:05 Speaker 2 He loves language

19:06 Speaker 1 ... he just loved language. He loved literature. He fell in love with Tanakh. He literally, he was a person who, from a young age, you can start any passage in Tanakh and he would finish it for you.

19:16 Speaker 2 Really?

19:16 Speaker 1 Literally.

19:16 Speaker 2 Wow.

19:16 Speaker 1 He knew the whole Tanakh in his mind. It wa- Uh, the... And, and he actually wrote a Hebrew, later when he published his poetry, a lot of, a lot of, uh, reviewers and, and, and critics in Israel who wrote about his poetry were, like, amazed how... Where does this person who grew up, you know, in Hungary, who lives in New York-

19:34 Speaker 2 Right

19:34 Speaker 1 ... never, you know, he visited Israel a few times but never actually lived in Israel.

19:38 Speaker 2 Right.

19:38 Speaker 1 And, and he's writing, like, this, this, this classic poetry. It was actually because he didn't live in Israel, he didn't have all the, the, you know, the modern Hebrew-

19:47 Speaker 2 Ah

19:48 Speaker 1 ... uh, s- uh, feel to it. It felt like, you know, like Yehuda Halevi's poetry or-

19:52 Speaker 2 Right

19:52 Speaker 1 ... you know-

19:53 Speaker 2 Right, right, right, right

19:54 Speaker 1 ... Ibn Gabirol. You know, like-

19:55 Speaker 2 Right

19:55 Speaker 1 ... the classic Hebrew poetry that's, that's this pure Hebrew-

19:59 Speaker 2 Wow

19:59 Speaker 1 ... that's coming from Chazal and from Midrash and from, from Gemara and whatever.

20:03 Speaker 2 But take me back to the Tehillos, 'cause that was-

20:05 Speaker 1 So he-

20:05 Speaker 2 ... such a fascinating point

20:06 Speaker 1 ... so, yeah. So I started thinking about this book. So this book is actually the last book of Hebrew poetry published in Europe-

20:16 Speaker 2 Mm

20:16 Speaker 1 ... before the Holocaust and since.

20:18 Speaker 2 Really?

20:19 Speaker 1 And that's why there actually have someone... There, there are a number of people today, uh, academics who've written, uh, have written, uh, what's it called? Have written, uh, dissertations, thesises on his poetry, because another fascinating feature of his poetry was that he was living under, first under the Nazi allies. The gov- the government of Hungary then was, was, was then allied with the Nazis. They were cooperating with the Nazis. They were sending Jews, uh, you know, uh, doing everything the Nazis were trying to do, cooperated with them completely, and then ultimately under Nazi occupation itself, and he was writing about the Holocaust, and publishing about it, and writing about what was going on, and writing these poems-

21:01 Speaker 2 As poems

21:01 Speaker 1 ... as poems, and writing about it in a veiled way.

21:05 Speaker 2 I see.

21:05 Speaker 1 Writing, like, supposedly talking about all the persecutions of the Jewish people, of the Gezeiras Tach Vetat or the pogroms that were earlier, but it was very clear to anyone reading it.

21:16 Speaker 2 Where was it being published?

21:17 Speaker 1 In Hungary.

21:19 Speaker 2 Oh, so it wasn't going out of the country.

21:22 Speaker 1 Well, it, it, it, it, it reached. It reached-

21:24 Speaker 2 During the war?

21:25 Speaker 1 During the war, it reached in Europe.

21:26 Speaker 2 Hmm.

21:27 Speaker 1 As a matter of fact, my grandfather heard that Jews in concentration camps had, had this poetry. There's-

21:32 Speaker 2 Re- really?

21:32 Speaker 1 ... there's, there's a poem that he wrote about the Holocaust that's actually engraved on the wall in Hungarian. There was a, a famous Hungarian poet who, who, uh, wasn't Jewish but was, you know, someone who loved, loved Jews and Judaism. What do you call them? Uh, uh-

21:47 Speaker 2 A Philosemite

21:48 Speaker 1 ... sem- philosemite, semi-phile, whatever.

21:50 Speaker 2 No, a Philosemite.

21:50 Speaker 1 Philosemite. And he, he translated this poem into Hungarian, and the, this poem is actually engraved on the wall of, of a, of a synagogue in Hungary.

22:01 Speaker 2 Huh.

22:01 Speaker 1 You can go see it even today. Um, anyway, so, so why am I bringing up his poetry? Because he... You're talking about the two worlds. So the, the first book that he published in 1942 in Debrecen, a book of Hebrew poetry, the name of the book is Gesherim, which means bridges.

22:20 Speaker 2 Sure.

22:21 Speaker 1 And he... The first poem, the opening poem in the book, he's talking about how he's standing on a bridge, and he has very clo- very dear and close friends on one side of the bridge that he's, has a, a amazing rapport with.

22:36 Speaker 2 Right.

22:37 Speaker 1 That's, like, his roots, his Hasidic world is that. And then there's the people on the other side, who are the more modern, intellectual, literary people that he was hanging out with in Pressburg, you know.

22:47 Speaker 2 Right.

22:48 Speaker 1 Uh, uh, 'cause he went there to get sort of like a secular education. And, and they, they're very, also very close to his heart, and how much it pains him that these two will never actually meet. Like, he's stuck in the middle. He's, like, b- in a way bridging the gap.

23:01 Speaker 2 Right.

23:02 Speaker 1 So he, a- as a matter of fact, he, he met... He actually developed a very close relationship with Dr. Yitzchak Breuer, because Breuer, Dr. Breuer, who was the son-in-law of Samson Raphael Hirsch, was like the father of, of, you know, of, of the, of, of the Hirschian school at, at the time, which was very intellectual, which took the whole Yiddishkeit, the whole Judaism, and, and gave a very intellectual summarizing to it, and he loved that. He had a correspondence with him. They ac- he actually only met him once. They spent a few hours together. He came as a young delegate to the Kneseiya Gedola in, in, uh, Marienbad when they had the huge convention of, of Agudas Yisroel. I think that was in 1939 maybe. I'm not sure when it was. In the 1930 sometimes, maybe earlier. Uh, and, uh, he met him then, and they, they spent many hours together, but at, but that was just, you know, when they had a face-to-face meeting. But, uh, in, in terms, he r- saw him sort of like, like a teacher and a rabbi and a mentor.

24:00 Speaker 2 Breuer or Samson Raphael Hirsch?

24:02 Speaker 1 Breuer. Breuer. Samson Raphael passed away many years before.

24:05 Speaker 2 Right.

24:05 Speaker 1 He passed away in-

24:05 Speaker 2 When did he, when, when did he live?

24:07 Speaker 1 He lived from 1808 to 1888, I believe.

24:09 Speaker 2 Oh, okay. I thought he lived later.

24:11 Speaker 1 No, no. So this is his son-in-law or his grandson maybe.

24:15 Speaker 2 Okay.

24:15 Speaker 1 Dr. Yitzchak Breuer, who was, who was, like, the leading thinker and the leading, uh, ph-

24:21 Speaker 2 Of that school of thought

24:22 Speaker 1 ... philosopher of that school of thought, and he felt very close to him, and he loved that whole intellectualization of, of Judaism, but it was missing the Chassidische Varumkeit-

24:31 Speaker 2 Right

24:31 Speaker 1 ... which he came from. Like, he came from his house, he would d- tell me how when his father... Like I told you, his father had this lumber business that would, that he would every... They, they, they, they would, they, they had these huge forests. They would go throughout the summer. Crews would go in and cut down the trees, and the trees were lying there in the forest, and then they had to wait for the snow. 'Cause once the snow came, and the snow was deep enough, these were huge logs of trees. The snow, if it was deep enough, they were able to drag the logs down the hill on the snow-

25:00 Speaker 2 Right

25:00 Speaker 1 ... to the river, and there in the river they would tie them into-

25:03 Speaker 2 Right

25:03 Speaker 1 ... rafts, and they would float them down. And, and if, if the snow was too late in coming, the rafts started to log, the, the logs started to, to raft.

25:12 Speaker 2 Right.

25:12 Speaker 1 So you're in trouble. So they would go running to rebbes and giving them pidyonos to daven for the snow, that there should be snow, there should be snow, so they should be able to slide their logs down the, down, down the... You know. So he describes this very Hasidisha background. His father was also a big intellectual.

25:27 Speaker 2 Right.

25:27 Speaker 1 Like, he, he hired tutors for him. That's how he learned all these languages. That's how he had a, a very broad education. So he was what you would call today, I guess, like the more modern Hasidic, uh, world. But bachlah back then, the whole Hasidic world-

25:41 Speaker 2 I mean-

25:41 Speaker 1 ... was more-

25:42 Speaker 2 Isn't it fasc-

25:42 Speaker 1 ... was more diverse, you know. It was a lot of different-

25:45 Speaker 2 Isn't it fascinating how, how we, we... I- like when you look at history, it gets flattened and we're like-

25:51 Speaker 1 Yeah

25:51 Speaker 2 ... in that, you know, that's how people were. They were, they were all like this. But as, but when you, like when you zoom in-

25:58 Speaker 1 When you look at particular people

25:59 Speaker 2 ... when you zoom in, it's like you talk about your grandfather, it's like, "Wait a second."

26:02 Speaker 1 What was he?

26:03 Speaker 2 Yeah. He, he was ki- like, he, he was, like you think because they were living in the ni- in the 19th century or the 20th century, sorry, the 20th century, so their brain was turned off. Like, they weren't thinking pretty much the same exact questions that you were. Like, how do I adjust to this new world?

26:18 Speaker 1 Right.

26:18 Speaker 2 Like, they... What do, what do you think? That because they didn't have running water in their houses, they, they, their brains were less sophisticated than ours?

26:25 Speaker 1 They probably had running water, but, uh-

26:27 Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay. I mean, uh-

26:28 Speaker 1 Yeah, no, actually, maybe not. They probably got water from the well in that little, in that little village.

26:32 Speaker 2 Well, you know, they certainly didn't have warm showers in their house, right?

26:35 Speaker 1 No, no.

26:35 Speaker 2 And, and they didn't have toilets, a lot of them. And like, so it's like we automatically assume that, okay, so if they didn't take a shower every day-

26:42 Speaker 1 They weren't-

26:42 Speaker 2 ... so then they weren't that smart. And it's like-

26:45 Speaker 1 Yeah. Obviously. Obviously.

26:47 Speaker 2 It's, it's like you don't get smart from the shower.

26:49 Speaker 1 But getting back to your question about the Rebbe.

26:50 Speaker 2 Right.

26:50 Speaker 1 So like he, what he told me, uh, later was that, like when he met the Rebbe, suddenly he saw both these worlds-

26:58 Speaker 2 Hmm

26:58 Speaker 1 ... in the same place. The Rebbe-

26:59 Speaker 2 And he saw that instantly? At the first yechidas.

27:02 Speaker 1 Well, he had, he had long... He had very long... First of all, he told me the first time he saw the Rebbe was actually not in that yechidas. The first time he saw the Rebbe was he just happened to walk into 770 once for a mincha, and he saw the Rebbe walk in. This is in the '50s, in the mid '50s, probably 1955, 1954, something like that. And, uh, you know, he, he was living in Crown Heights then, and he, he walked into, he walked into, uh, into 770 upstairs for mincha. And, you know, and then everyone was, "Shu, the Rebbe's coming in." The Rebbe was a young man then, you know, black beard, you know, young, tall, fa- slim. You know, he was a very, very dashing figure. And the Rebbe walks into the room, and the Rebbe stands in the, very quietly in the corner and davens mincha. Now, the Rebbe would daven, you know-

27:43 Speaker 2 Right

27:43 Speaker 1 ... barely moving, barely shaking. And he says, "Well, this is a Rebbe." Like, you know, he knows the Rebbe's, they're, they're, they're making a whole show and-

27:50 Speaker 2 One second. He came to see the Rebbe, or-

27:52 Speaker 1 No

27:52 Speaker 2 ... he just came for minyan?

27:53 Speaker 1 No, no. He walked in to daven. He knew this was Lubavitch. He knew this was-

27:56 Speaker 2 So it's another, it's another, it's another shtiebel.

27:58 Speaker 1 Yeah, it was a shtiebel. It's a shtiebel.

27:58 Speaker 2 It's a shtiebel with a Rebbe basically in his view.

28:00 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

28:01 Speaker 2 Yeah.

28:01 Speaker 1 Basically, yeah.

28:01 Speaker 2 Right.

28:01 Speaker 1 He... I don't know how he ended up there.

28:03 Speaker 2 Right.

28:03 Speaker 1 He just happened to be there. And he-

28:05 Speaker 2 No, 'cause it, it's hard for some, it's hard sometimes for us to comprehend that like someone would walk into 770 the way that we would walk into the Beis Midrash of Karlin or, or-

28:14 Speaker 1 Right. Right

28:14 Speaker 2 ... or, or, or Vizhnitz, and it's like the-

28:16 Speaker 1 This is 19- this is 1950. The shul downstairs wasn't even built yet.

28:19 Speaker 2 Yeah.

28:19 Speaker 1 Yeah.

28:19 Speaker 2 I'm saying he walked... In his mind, it was a shtiebel with a Rebbe. That's it.

28:22 Speaker 1 And he was very, very taken. He told me right away, the first time he saw the Rebbe, he was very taken.

28:26 Speaker 2 From that davening? No.

28:27 Speaker 1 From that davening, yes.

28:28 Speaker 2 You said he, you said he was shocked, like, "Is this a Rebbe?"

28:31 Speaker 1 No. He, he meant he was impressed. He, he-

28:33 Speaker 2 Ah, in a good, in an interesting way

28:34 Speaker 1 ... in a good way.

28:35 Speaker 2 Ah, interesting.

28:35 Speaker 1 He's saying, "This is a real person. This isn't a show. This isn't a guy, you know, uh, flying all over the place-

28:40 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

28:40 Speaker 1 ... yelling, screaming, jumping, clapping his hands." You know, he, he was, he, he was a smart man. He saw through the fakery.

28:47 Speaker 2 Hmm.

28:47 Speaker 1 And, and, you know, as a matter of fact, I asked him once, I asked him... You know, I told you before that in Hungary, and by the way, most of the Jews in Hungary refused to believe or, or that, that what was really happening. First of all, you have to understand, there wasn't internet then. There wasn't TV then. There wasn't... You know, news arrived, you know, in very, very haphazard-

29:09 Speaker 2 It's much deeper than that

29:10 Speaker 1 ... snippets.

29:10 Speaker 2 It's much deeper than that.

29:11 Speaker 1 It was also a refusal to accept it, but-

29:13 Speaker 2 Yeah

29:13 Speaker 1 ... but-

29:13 Speaker 2 The whole world was falling apart.

29:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. But I'm, what I'm saying is, you know, people are wondering, like, you know, th- basically hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Hungary. There were 400,000 Jews in Hungary at the time-

29:27 Speaker 2 Right

29:27 Speaker 1 ... and 300,000 of them were killed in six months by the Nazis, and it started in 1944.

29:32 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's crazy.

29:33 Speaker 1 So, so, and, and so you're talking about in '39, in 1939 to 1940, the Nazis were already murdering Jews in Poland and, and, and, you know, Auschwitz was already functioning. Uh, functioning is the what a, what a horrible word. In 19- starting in 1942-

29:49 Speaker 2 Right

29:49 Speaker 1 ... or '43. Uh, so, so, and, and there were, there, there were refugees. There were people, my grandfather told me there were people who had, who had ex- jumped off the train or even managed to-

30:00 Speaker 2 People were saying what was happening

30:01 Speaker 1 ... or even imagined, managed to escape from Auschwitz.

30:04 Speaker 2 Right.

30:05 Speaker 1 And they would come running and, and they would say, "Yidden, you gotta run anywhere, everywhere. Uh, do anything. They, they're killing us all."

30:14 Speaker 2 Right.

30:14 Speaker 1 And they looked at them like, "Nebach," you know?

30:16 Speaker 2 Lost his mind.

30:17 Speaker 1 You know, "This poor, this guy lost his mind. He had tsaraas. He had uh..." You know, they knew there were pogroms. They knew there were Jews killing Goy- Goyim killing Jews. That always happened, you know? So this guy, nebach, you know, had his family killed by a bunch of Goyish, uh, hoodlums, and he lost his mind, you know?

30:31 Speaker 2 Right.

30:31 Speaker 1 And so I asked my grandfather, like, but he's, my grandfather was writing about it, and writing about it in very, very explicit terms. He's writing about the Holocaust. If you read his poetry, he's a Habadist writing about the Holocaust in very, very ins- in, in, in coded language, but very, very-

30:48 Speaker 2 Right.

30:48 Speaker 1 And I asked him like, "How did you know?" Like no one else saw it. Now, no one else is a big statement, but most people, the great majority of people didn't believe or refused to believe or, or didn't... It just didn't add up in their minds that this is happening. What made you realize, and that's how, that's why he saved his family, right? He started taking steps to hide himself and to-

31:09 Speaker 2 Right

31:09 Speaker 1 ... try to... I asked him, he said, "I was, I was a student of Jewish history, and I knew enough about Jewish history."

31:19 Speaker 2 Right.

31:19 Speaker 1 "I understood enough about what the Jewish people have gone through for thousands of years to see what was happening, to understand what was happening."

31:27 Speaker 2 Right.

31:27 Speaker 1 So, you know, he, he was a person who, who saw through the, the, the BS, you know? He was a person who was able to... So that was, like, his first encounter with the Rebbe was he, I told you, was when he, when he just, uh-

31:38 Speaker 2 The Mincha.

31:39 Speaker 1 That Mincha. He, he told me that where they lived, they did- never even heard of Chabad. They never even heard of Lubavitch.

31:45 Speaker 2 Where they lived back in Europe.

31:46 Speaker 1 In Europe, yeah. He said-

31:48 Speaker 2 But in Crown Heights, it also seems like he was there for a while and didn't-

31:51 Speaker 1 Not for very long. It was, was pretty shortly after. I mean, you couldn't-

31:54 Speaker 2 But he, he came-

31:54 Speaker 1 You probably couldn't live in-

31:55 Speaker 2 But he said he came from India.

31:56 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

31:56 Speaker 2 He wasn't looking to meet the-

31:57 Speaker 1 No, he wasn't looking to meet the Rebbe at that point. What I'm saying is you probably couldn't live in Crown Heights even in the mid-1950s without being aware of Lubavitch.

32:05 Speaker 2 Sure.

32:05 Speaker 1 You know, there was a presence. There were a few other Rebbes. There was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, what was the other Rebbe? The, there was, I think Belz was there, and there was the, the, um, Modzitz Rebbe. I mean, there were a few Rebbes living in Crown Heights at the time. Klausenberg Rebbe, I believe. But, but the, the bottom line is he, uh, he, he, he told me another interesting story. He told me that once when he was still in Europe, he happened to be in a shul somewhere, and he saw Tanya on the table. Tanya. So he opened it up, and he started reading it, and this, this story, people who might know my grandfather would find this story hilarious because later in his life, he became such a... Tanya was, for him, one of the most amazing books. He had a very close relationship with, with, uh, with, um, um, Rabbi Weinberg, and, uh, a- and, and he, uh, and he gave Shiurim in Tanya in many shuls throughout his life. He gave many, many hundreds of Shiurim in Tanya, very in-depth Shiurim in Tanya. For him, Tanya was, like, one of the most amazing, fascinating books he ever saw in his life, and, uh, it, for his whole life, he was crazy about Tanya. But he told me when he was a young guy, he was in a shul somewhere. He opened up Tanya. He starts reading it. He got, he didn't get past the first page. Tzaddik, Russia,

33:20 Speaker 1 some pilpul. Eh, this is boring, whatever. He closed it. He says, "The Alter Rebbe would've had a, would, would've had a better editor," you know, tongue in cheek-

33:28 Speaker 2 The first, the, the first-

33:28 Speaker 1 ... "and would've started with the more juicy stuff, then, then I would've saved me 40 years until I ended up in Lubavitch." 'Cause I would've, I would've been taken right, right from the beginning.

33:39 Speaker 2 Well, I mean, the first page of Tanya is a bit, uh, is a bit cryptic. Like, like, is it really, is it really necessary to go through this whole pilpul before we jump into the deep end? Yeah.

33:48 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. What I'm saying, if he would've started right away with Nevuchadrezzar-

33:51 Speaker 2 Yeah

33:51 Speaker 1 ... and Moshe Rabbenu-

33:52 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah

33:52 Speaker 1 ... you have to, just one page he had to turn, but he didn't get that far. Like, you know, you open up a Sefer-

33:56 Speaker 2 Absolutely

33:56 Speaker 1 ... you pick it up from the table, you start reading it. Anyway-

33:58 Speaker 2 But, but it-

33:59 Speaker 1 You need a, at least a blurb, you know? Like-

34:02 Speaker 2 Right. But isn't, isn't, isn't that, isn't that so, like, isn't that so just typical of how life works that, you know, it, it's almost we, we, we don't like to think about it because it so deeply undermines our concept of rationality. 'Cause to, to realize that everything is about timing.

34:22 Speaker 1 Everything's about timing.

34:22 Speaker 2 Everything's about timing.

34:23 Speaker 1 And coincidence and-

34:24 Speaker 2 No, and like, and it's like, it's like, it's like, yeah, I'm all thought through. It's like you married your wife because at the time that you met, met her and she met you, it, it made sense.

34:33 Speaker 1 Right.

34:34 Speaker 2 Two months earlier, two months later, all bets are off.

34:36 Speaker 1 Of course.

34:37 Speaker 2 And, and, and that's, goes for every big decision in your life, every big happening in your life. And, like, it, it's just, it's so interesting, especially in the context of, of Yiddishkeit and Emunah and, and, and, or, you know, or identity, however you wanna frame it. Like, we're convinced that these things are, like, inevitable, right? Like-

34:59 Speaker 1 Right

34:59 Speaker 2 ... this is just, uh, like, this is how it n- needed to be. And it's like, yeah, and I'm not, I'm not denying Hashgacha Pratis and things like that, but, but Hashgacha Pratis is-

35:08 Speaker 1 But that is Hashgacha Pratis

35:09 Speaker 2 ... but no, but Hashgacha Pratis is the Aibishter's Cheshbon. I'm saying we think that it's all inevitable, like, on our Cheshbon, and it's like the first time he saw Tanya, he wasn't ready for it. Like, he wasn't-

35:18 Speaker 1 Right

35:18 Speaker 2 ... he wasn't ready for it, and it, and it wasn't talking to him. He needed this whole journey of surviving the war and, and sur- and, and, and building himself back up in Europe and then coming to America and going through whatever metamorphosis he had there, and to finally appreciate something that he could have had 40 years earlier.

35:38 Speaker 1 Right.

35:38 Speaker 2 But in a way, he couldn't have it 40 years earlier.

35:39 Speaker 1 Yeah, probably more like 30, would probably be more like-

35:41 Speaker 2 But I'm saying he, maybe, in a way, maybe he couldn't have had it 30 years earlier.

35:44 Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.

35:44 Speaker 2 Maybe he wasn't ready for it then.

35:45 Speaker 1 Right.

35:45 Speaker 2 Maybe he wasn't looking for it then.

35:46 Speaker 1 Obviously. Obviously.

35:47 Speaker 2 No, but what's the lesson? I'm not, I'm not trying to, like, investigate your-

35:51 Speaker 1 Yeah

35:51 Speaker 2 ... grandfather's life. It's more just such a fascinating insight about how, like, we think that for something to be true, it has to be inevitable all the time. Like, like, what do you mean? How does this child not buy into Tanya this moment?

36:09 Speaker 1 Right.

36:09 Speaker 2 And it's like patience. Patience.

36:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. It wasn't-

36:13 Speaker 2 The truth, the truth-

36:14 Speaker 1 He wasn't ready. The world wasn't ready

36:15 Speaker 2 ... the, the, the truth, the truth, the truth is here. Sometimes people b- they need their time. Like, I mean, it's not, it's not a, it's not a critique or a denial or a de- diminishment of the truth to say that this person isn't ready for it right now-

36:32 Speaker 1 Right

36:32 Speaker 2 ... or it's not their time right now for this encounter.

36:35 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well-

36:36 Speaker 2 We're not saying that it's less true by, by saying that a person may need, may... Right?

36:41 Speaker 1 Everything, everything is a matter of timing. I mean, even, you know, the Cheit HaEgedah is a matter of timing. Wait another three hours, the whole human history would've been different.

36:48 Speaker 2 Right.

36:48 Speaker 1 So many things are, are, are a matter of timing. A little bit earlier, a little bit later, everything would've turned out. The same, the, the event doesn't even have to change. It just has to move in time a few hours or a few days-

36:58 Speaker 2 Right

36:58 Speaker 1 ... or a few years, and everything is different. So sadly-

37:01 Speaker 2 But, but, but it, it, it's, it... But I'm saying Like time really, time really does a job on us. You know, you were talking earlier-

37:09 Speaker 1 Right

37:09 Speaker 2 ... about the calendar and, and, and, and the lunar calendar, the solar calendar. Time really does a job on us because it fragments our, our, our interaction with, with, with reality and our interaction with emes, right? So something that resonates with us in this moment doesn't resonate with us in the other moment. It's not a statement on the emes that we're... It's a statement on us living under the rule of time.

37:35 Speaker 1 Right.

37:36 Speaker 2 Right? And one moment is here, one moment is there, and you, you hear a story like this of a man who clearly journeyed, who clearly was a, a profound man, an incisive man, um, a man who saw so much and did so much, and like, would anybody say, "Oh, he was, he was too shallow back then," or... No, it's just like, it, it, it... Or, or would anybody say that his not picking up Tanya shows that Tanya is, is nothing? No. Later on, he, they, he fell in love with it.

38:08 Speaker 1 Right.

38:08 Speaker 2 It's all a matter of timing.

38:10 Speaker 1 Yeah. That's true. That's very true. That's very true.

38:13 Speaker 2 So, so I wanted to ask you, 'cause I, I, I have a feeling that, that if I don't, if I don't put the brakes on it-

38:18 Speaker 1 Yeah

38:18 Speaker 2 ... we're gonna spend an hour-

38:18 Speaker 1 Yeah

38:18 Speaker 2 ... and a half talking about-

38:19 Speaker 1 Right

38:19 Speaker 2 ... your grandfather.

38:20 Speaker 1 True. Yeah.

38:20 Speaker 2 And, and maybe we should.

38:22 Speaker 1 Yeah.

38:22 Speaker 2 Maybe we should, but, but then, but then we're, but then the marketing team is gonna be-

38:25 Speaker 1 Yeah

38:25 Speaker 2 ... upset about the Chumash.

38:26 Speaker 1 Okay.

38:27 Speaker 2 So you, you grew up with your grandfather. Um, clearly he was a very dominant figure in your life. Um, you know, cle- clearly someone that, that was a model to you on s- on, on, on, on many levels.

38:41 Speaker 1 Well, he was definitely a very big influence in my life, and-

38:44 Speaker 2 Right. Right

38:44 Speaker 1 ... there's also the context, like I told you before, my grandfather had three daughters.

38:48 Speaker 2 Right.

38:48 Speaker 1 And, you know, the European mindset, for all his broad-mindedness, he was also a product of his time. So, you know, this thing is, you know, a daughter, he loved his daughters, of course, and-

38:58 Speaker 2 Right

38:58 Speaker 1 ... and adored his daughters, but a, a son is a son. You're waiting for your son.

39:02 Speaker 2 Right.

39:02 Speaker 1 And his two older daughters went away as shluchas. All his three, his... Rabbi Jacobson realized that he has to marry, he had three daughters, he has to marry them all off to Lubavitchers. That's the only way he's, the style he's gonna ho- keep them Lubavitch.

39:12 Speaker 2 Right.

39:12 Speaker 1 So, so his oldest daughter married Moshe Lazar, Berl Lazar's mother, and she went as shlichas to Italy, and the second daughter's, uh, married Chaim Yaffe. They went as shluchas to Portland, Maine, which back then in the early '60s was almost like going to Italy.

39:26 Speaker 2 Right.

39:26 Speaker 1 It's an eight-hour drive with a station wagon.

39:28 Speaker 2 And today it's further than going to Italy.

39:31 Speaker 1 Probably, yeah. To get there probably take you longer. So, so, and then I'm the oldest son of his youngest daughter, which was the only daughter that actually stayed home.

39:40 Speaker 2 So you were like the son.

39:41 Speaker 1 So I was like the son he never had, you know? So-

39:44 Speaker 2 Right

39:44 Speaker 1 ... so I, I became like the focus of, of, of, of everything he would've done with a son if he would've had a son 20, 30, 25 years earlier.

39:51 Speaker 2 So, so how did you deal with the fact that you're growing up in Crown Heights, which is primarily dominated in the Lubavitch community by Russian survivors and their kids and their grandkids? Generally speaking, not, not, um, not children or grandchildren of European intellectuals. Like there aren't too many, I don't imagine there were too many classmates who had a similar figure.

40:19 Speaker 1 Well, I didn't, I didn't really think of my grandfather as a European intel- intellectual. I mean, today, you know, retrospect, you're talking about putting people in boxes. You know, you would put him in that box.

40:27 Speaker 2 No, but I, I, I, I'm not meaning-

40:28 Speaker 1 But I'll tell you how-

40:29 Speaker 2 My, my question is more you were a rounded person who was very different.

40:32 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

40:32 Speaker 2 So, so-

40:33 Speaker 1 But I'll tell you-

40:33 Speaker 2 ... not that you were thinking that he was your intellectual.

40:34 Speaker 1 But I'll, but I'll debunk, I'll debunk a little some, uh, misconception of yours.

40:38 Speaker 2 Okay.

40:39 Speaker 1 Um, it-- When I was growing up, I would not, I would not categorize Crown Heights as what you said, dominated by-

40:47 Speaker 2 No

40:47 Speaker 1 ... you know, what, what's called like the Gesher or the Russian Lubavitchers were maybe 50% of Lubavitch.

40:52 Speaker 2 Really?

40:52 Speaker 1 Not even. Not even. Like in my class, I would say half the, half the kids in the class came from all different kinds of backgrounds.

41:00 Speaker 2 What's that? One second.

41:02 Speaker 1 Uh, you know, so, so it's, it's, uh, you know, and it was actually a way, it was a small class. I mean, my class growing up in Old Tarrytown sounds crazy to you guys, but it, it was like 13 or 15 kids was the whole... And then there were maybe another 10, 15 in, in Ocean Parkway, and that was the whole Lubavitch when I was growing up in the, in the early '70s. So, uh, you know, the whole Crown Heights Lubavitch, and then you had, of course, you know, in Israel, you had here and there, but it was very small. Everything was very small. Crown Heights was small. Crown Heights was a few hundred families maybe. And-

41:32 Speaker 2 You're talking about the Lubavitch part of Crown Heights?

41:34 Speaker 1 I'm talking about L- Well, when I was growing up, it was already-

41:37 Speaker 2 Mainly Lubavitch

41:37 Speaker 1 ... either Lubavitch or blacks. That's, that's all there was-

41:40 Speaker 2 Right

41:40 Speaker 1 ... in Crown Heights left. Everyone had run away by then.

41:42 Speaker 2 Right.

41:42 Speaker 1 By the late '60s-

41:44 Speaker 2 I, right. Um-

41:44 Speaker 1 ... everyone had fled Crown Heights.

41:45 Speaker 2 So 50% of the remaining Yidden who were Lubavitchers-

41:48 Speaker 1 Of the Lubavitchers. There were a few-

41:50 Speaker 2 Sprinkles. But it was mainly Lubavitchers.

41:50 Speaker 1 There were, there were a few, the what they call the Shomer Shabbos.

41:53 Speaker 2 Right.

41:53 Speaker 1 I actually grew up very interesting. I grew up on, on, on Lefferts Avenue between, uh, between Kingston and Albany, which was sort of like an enclave. We were actually Lubavitchers on that block were actually the minority.

42:04 Speaker 2 Interesting.

42:05 Speaker 1 The Sternbergs and the Gararis lived there. They still do, I believe. Uh, you know, the-

42:09 Speaker 2 Duchman also, no?

42:10 Speaker 1 Duchman came much later.

42:12 Speaker 2 So, so-

42:12 Speaker 1 Duchman, Duchman, Shemtov. Shemtov was-

42:15 Speaker 2 Anyway, Mendel Shemtov, my grandpa

42:16 Speaker 1 ... was, was Mendel Shemtov. Mendel Shemtov was my next door neighbor.

42:18 Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

42:18 Speaker 1 Our houses were joined to each other. Uh, but so what I was saying, more-- But there were maybe, there were, in that block, there were maybe 10, 12 Jewish fa- Jewish families, and more than half of them were not Lubavitch at all. So, so tha- that was actually an enclave of, of, of, of the remnant of, of non-Lubavitch Crown Heights.

42:39 Speaker 2 Right.

42:39 Speaker 1 My closest friends growing up on the block were not Lubavitchers. But, but even in Crown Heights itself, or let's say in my class in Old Tarrytown, I would say maybe half of the class were, were, were, were what you would call the Russians, you know, the Russian roots.

42:52 Speaker 2 And the other half?

42:53 Speaker 1 The other half were, were, were a mix. Were a mix of, of what today you would call Tsug Ekumenor or people whose, whose, whose parents, uh-

43:00 Speaker 2 So you didn't feel out of place?

43:02 Speaker 1 No. No. Not at all. I mean-There was, you know, there was the good-natured ribbing between the gejas and the not gejas, and we would fight. Are there more geja? Where's the-

43:10 Speaker 2 But, but nothing, but nothing more than typical boys being boys. Like, there wasn't a deep kind of like-

43:16 Speaker 1 No, there wasn't-

43:16 Speaker 2 ... complex of any kind.

43:18 Speaker 1 There wasn't... No, not at all. I did not feel as an outsider in Lubavitch at all, no.

43:21 Speaker 2 Did, did you feel any kind of conflict or any kind of, um, tension between... 'Cause the yeshivas and you went to Alter Rebbe, right?

43:30 Speaker 1 Right.

43:31 Speaker 2 Alter Rebbe's Reb Mechal Tauberbaum.

43:32 Speaker 1 Right.

43:33 Speaker 2 And Reb Yossel Rosenfeld but, but the, the ethos was Reb Mechal Tauberbaum. That's Russia. That's hardcore Russia.

43:38 Speaker 1 Yeah, but he wasn't really involved in the day-to-day running of the yeshiva.

43:40 Speaker 2 Yeah, but he, but he found the whole idea of Alter Rebbe is-

43:43 Speaker 1 Yeah, but most of the teachers-

43:44 Speaker 2 ... no secular studies.

43:45 Speaker 1 Yeah, but most of the teachers were, were, were, were, were I would say were not necessarily, you know, born and bred Lubavitch.

43:51 Speaker 2 I'll just say there, but my point is, my point is that was not the Yiddishkeit that your grandfather was, was a champion of.

43:58 Speaker 1 Well, by the time I was born and I was growing up, my grandfather was very firmly in the world of Lubavitch. He considered himself a Lubavitcher, a full-fledged Lubavitcher.

44:06 Speaker 2 So he was not enamored anymore with the world of intellectuals?

44:09 Speaker 1 Of course he was, but it wasn't-

44:10 Speaker 2 So that's what I'm saying

44:11 Speaker 1 ... it wasn't a contradiction. I, I- Today-

44:13 Speaker 2 It w-

44:14 Speaker 1 You know, I'm, I'm looking at, uh, uh, now, you know, today I think we're living in a, or even inside Chabad is a much more polarized, uh, society. And when, I mean by polarized is it's very, very exclusive. Not exclusive, but exclusive of, of other, of other, uh, you know, uh... It's like everything is very, very staunchly Chabad Lubavitch, and anything that's not Lubavitch is, uh, either unknown or rejected. It w- it wasn't the world that I grew up with, even in Ole Tirem. Even in Ole Tirem, it was not like, you know... Lubavitch was much smaller then. Y- you didn't have this attitude that, that, you know, if it's not Lubavitch, it's not, doesn't exist or it doesn't need to exist. You didn't have that attitude at all. Uh, there wasn't the ethos, there wasn't the sense that you got grow, you know, in yeshiva or, or growing up. I mean, we were Lubavitchers, you know, Lubavitchers, and it was the, you know, the usual us and them kind of thing. But it wasn't, uh, it, it w-

45:15 Speaker 2 You're saying vis-a-vis outside Lubavitch?

45:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. It was, it w- the, the, the, the, the, the divide was not as, you know, as, as, as pronounced, let's say, as it is today.

45:24 Speaker 2 And this is back when? This is back when-

45:26 Speaker 1 You have to understand, my parents-

45:27 Speaker 2 Well, which decade-

45:28 Speaker 1 My par-

45:28 Speaker 2 Which decade would you say this is in?

45:29 Speaker 1 I was born in 1965, so-

45:31 Speaker 2 So we're talking about '70s

45:32 Speaker 1 ... we're all, we're talking about early '70s. I started first grade in 1971, 1970, 1970.

45:36 Speaker 2 So you feel that in the '70s there wasn't such a divide?

45:41 Speaker 1 My parents' generation, right? So my par- uh, my parents were Lubavitchers and, and all their friends were, you know, the, the, the people, like I said, the only people living in Crown Heights were Lubavitchers. But I would say at least 50% of the people of my parents' generation, w- if one was a Lubavitcher, the other c- the other member of the... Like, my mother went, my grandfather's, um my grandfather's stint as, as, as, as, uh, as principal of Bais Rivkah didn't last very long. It lasted about 18 months, but the reason was they never paid him. And he needed to-

46:17 Speaker 2 Something, something's never changed

46:19 Speaker 1 He ne- he needed to earn a living. He needed to earn a living, and even when he took the job, he was being paid less as principal of Bais Rivkah. Officially, what he was going to be paid-

46:28 Speaker 2 Right

46:28 Speaker 1 ... officially on paper, was less than what he was getting as a, as a part-time teacher in, in some yeshiva, some Talmud Torah in, in Brooklyn.

46:35 Speaker 2 Right.

46:35 Speaker 1 So, but he took it because, you know, he was a, he was a pr- you know, he was, he was very much, you know, he was... They tried, they, they tasked him very much to take the job, and he was, he had this meeting with the Rebbe, he was very impressed by the Rebbe, but at a certain point he just, he just had to leave because he couldn't afford to, to work for nothing. So, so my mother, um, went to school later. I mean, obviously when, during that year and plus something that my grandfather was principal of Bais Rivkah, my mother went to Bais Rivkah because if he's the principal, of course his daughter has to go to Bais Rivkah.

47:04 Speaker 2 Sure.

47:04 Speaker 1 But, but, uh, after that, she was in Bais Yaakov. And like half the shluchim of that generation were her classmates. You know, Bes- Bessie Gorelik is maybe a little older than her, but she also, they're all products of Bais Yaakov.

47:18 Speaker 2 Right.

47:18 Speaker 1 And Esther Sternberg is my m- my mother's classmate-

47:21 Speaker 2 Right

47:21 Speaker 1 ... in Bais Yaakov.

47:22 Speaker 2 Right.

47:22 Speaker 1 So her class, half of her class ended up marrying Lubavitchers, 'cause who were the frumer Jews-

47:29 Speaker 2 Right

47:29 Speaker 1 ... in Brooklyn?

47:30 Speaker 2 You're saying the idea of Lubavitchers only marrying Lubavitchers-

47:31 Speaker 1 And no, no, so there's one more... Hold on, I wanna make one more point. So, so half of her class-

47:35 Speaker 2 Right

47:35 Speaker 1 ... married Lubavitchers, and among those couples, half of them ended up being Lubavitchers both, and half of them ended up being not Lubavitch, completely not Lubavitch.

47:44 Speaker 2 Right.

47:44 Speaker 1 There were plenty of Lubavitchers who ended up marrying, uh, I know some of them from my parents or my parents' friends or my parents' generation. They ended up marrying non-Lubavitcher women, and they, th- these women were not interested in becoming part of Lubavitch and ended up being completely outside of Lubavitch. It was not-

48:00 Speaker 2 Right

48:00 Speaker 1 ... This whole thing of Lubavitchers only marrying Lubavitchers, uh, I'm sure Lubavitchers would have preferred to marry a Lubavitcher wasn't possible. There were simply not enough people -

48:08 Speaker 2 Oh

48:08 Speaker 1 ... that marriageable age. You married, if there was a frumer Jew available to marry, you married them. That's what there was.

48:14 Speaker 2 Well, look, my, my sister, my sister just got married to a Satmar fellow, so-

48:17 Speaker 1 Okay

48:18 Speaker 2 ... so, um.

48:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, but for you it, this is something like-

48:21 Speaker 2 As a yeshiva naklav.

48:22 Speaker 1 As a yeshiva naklav. That was what-

48:23 Speaker 2 But I mean, I'm saying, I'm saying-

48:24 Speaker 1 Over there it was a yeshiva naklav for, for two Lubavitchers to marry each other was the yeshiva naklav.

48:28 Speaker 2 No, but I, I'm saying what I remember when I, you know, when it became public and I, or when I first found out about it, my first reaction was, "Yeah, okay, fine." I mean, like this, this was normal until 50 years ago, right? It, it, it-

48:42 Speaker 1 Less than 50 years ago.

48:43 Speaker 2 Yeah. It, well, the '70s is-

48:45 Speaker 1 Right

48:46 Speaker 2 ... the '70s is already 50 years ago.

48:48 Speaker 1 It is 50 years ago. Yes, it is.

48:49 Speaker 2 Sorry to, sorry to remind you

48:50 Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true. You're right.

48:51 Speaker 2 Uh, so, so I mean, it's, it is interesting just the way you're kinda laying it out. You know, you wonder how much of that polarization that you're talking about where Lubavitch kind of separated-

49:02 Speaker 1 Listen, as the community, as the community grew-

49:03 Speaker 2 But it's more than that

49:04 Speaker 1 ... it's not just Lubavitch. It's, it happened in every community.

49:06 Speaker 2 But, but it's not just that it grew-

49:07 Speaker 1 When you're small-

49:08 Speaker 2 Right

49:08 Speaker 1 ... when you're small, when you're very small, you can't afford to-

49:11 Speaker 2 To-

49:11 Speaker 1 ... to just exist in, in yourself

49:13 Speaker 2 ... your own bubble. But it's more than that. It's also-

49:14 Speaker 1 You can't. You can't, because the, to be a frumer Yid in, in Brooklyn e- even then, or, or what, you know, I don't... Then the term Haredi probably didn't even exist yet, but what would today would be called a Haredi Jew, in other words-

49:28 Speaker 2 Right

49:28 Speaker 1 ... you know, to say you were such a minority in the first place, to start creating those division within yourself was, was not tenable then.

49:34 Speaker 2 Was suicidal, yeah.

49:35 Speaker 1 That is tenable. It wasn't practical.

49:37 Speaker 2 Right.

49:37 Speaker 1 It, it, it wasn't possible. It wasn't practical. You think, you think Ole Tirem in 1970 could have hired only Lubavitcher teachers? They wouldn't have had, wouldn't be able to fill-

49:45 Speaker 2 Right

49:45 Speaker 1 ... fill the, fill... So obviously everyone who came to work for Ole Tirem sort of assumed, uh, you know, like my grandfather, he came to work as, as principal of Ole Tirem. He became a semi-Lubavitcher-

49:55 Speaker 2 Right

49:55 Speaker 1 ... in, in the process.

49:56 Speaker 2 No, but I just wanted to point out on top of all that, that that's true across the board. On top of all that, Lubavitch had the d- had the extra situation where Crown Heights emptied out, right? So they were geographically isolated.

50:07 Speaker 1 Okay.

50:08 Speaker 2 Uh, you know, and one wonders how much that had, that compounded this, this isolation, right?

50:14 Speaker 1 So even then in the '70s growing up, the thing about Lubavitchers were that they keep to themselves, they're isolationists-

50:20 Speaker 2 Right

50:21 Speaker 1 ... you know, a post-

50:21 Speaker 2 So already then, already then-

50:22 Speaker 1 Already then Lubavitchers were, were, were let's say bad-mouthed, for lack of a better word, for this trait of theirs, that they're so, you know, they, they, they're just so, they're, they're so-

50:30 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

50:31 Speaker 1 ... um, what's the word? Um, you know, um-

50:33 Speaker 2 Elitist?

50:35 Speaker 1 Elitist or, or patriarchal, or they, they, they just, you know, the only way-- they only know about Lubavitch, they only learn about Lubavitch, they only get-

50:43 Speaker 2 Parochial

50:43 Speaker 1 ... by the Lubavitch-

50:44 Speaker 2 Parochial

50:44 Speaker 1 Parochial, right, right. They, they, they only, you know, the o- the only Tzaddik is the rabbi, you know, that kind of... My friends, my not Lubavitcher friends would make fun of me that, you know, you know-

50:53 Speaker 2 Yeah

50:54 Speaker 1 ... Lubavitchers are-

50:54 Speaker 2 Lubavitch are in your own head

50:55 Speaker 1 ... are so close-minded.

50:56 Speaker 2 You're in your own head.

50:57 Speaker 1 You're in your own head. But, but, but if you... That reality was a, it's all relative. It's all relative to how everyone else was. But I'm saying if you wanna compare Lubavitch then-

51:06 Speaker 2 Less so today, right

51:06 Speaker 1 ... to Lubavitch today, you would think of Lubavitch as being completely open-ended because it's so, there's so many other-

51:12 Speaker 2 Stuff is so interesting.

51:13 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So I w- I would definitely not say that, that, that I was an outlier. I, you know, the-- obviously the core of Chabad was the Russian Lubavitchers, but, but there was an equal number at least of Lubavitchers who came, like my parents, who grew up in other, you know, Baalei Teshuva also, but that started, you know, a little bit later. Uh, there were already quite a few Baalei Teshuva. Like for example, my uncle, the one who married my, my, my grandfather's second daughter, was a Baali Teshuva, um, from, from, uh, Sheffield in, in England. Um-

51:48 Speaker 2 Jaffe.

51:48 Speaker 1 Jaffe, yeah. Yeah, Yaffe. Uh, not Jaffe. Jaffe's a different family.

51:52 Speaker 2 Yaffe.

51:53 Speaker 1 They pronounce it Yaffe. It's written with a Y.

51:54 Speaker 2 He, he has a son who lives in Boston?

51:56 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shlomo Yaffe is his son.

51:59 Speaker 2 So that's your cousin.

52:00 Speaker 1 That's my cousin, yeah.

52:01 Speaker 2 Okay.

52:01 Speaker 1 Yossi Yaffe, yeah.

52:02 Speaker 2 Okay.

52:03 Speaker 1 It's a big family, you know, they had-

52:04 Speaker 2 All right

52:05 Speaker 1 ... a lot of them are in Shlichim in, in all different places.

52:08 Speaker 2 Sure.

52:08 Speaker 1 Anyway, but so, but you had Baalei Teshuva too, uh, but not as many.

52:12 Speaker 2 But in the '70s that was a small percentage, I would imagine.

52:15 Speaker 1 There were quite a few already.

52:16 Speaker 2 Really?

52:17 Speaker 1 There were, there were quite a few Baalei Teshuva.

52:19 Speaker 2 In Crown Heights.

52:19 Speaker 1 But, but very few of my classmates, for example, Baali Teshuvas were younger. Very few-

52:22 Speaker 2 Right

52:22 Speaker 1 ... of my classmates, let's say, would be children of Baalei Teshuva, but a, a very large percentage would be people who sort of joined Lubavitch, who fell into Lubavitch, either like I said, 'cause half of them were sort of mixed marriages and either they ended up Lubavitch or ended up not in Lubavitch.

52:36 Speaker 2 That's, that's, that's so interesting.

52:37 Speaker 1 Or, or, or, or just people like, like for example, my parents, both my parents, uh, I was talking about my father, my mother's father, but my father also, similar story, where he, he, he was born in Nitra, which is in the s- so-called Hungarian part of Slovakia, really. It's like the Hungarian, it's called Oberlanders, the-

52:57 Speaker 2 Right

52:57 Speaker 1 ... culturally it's, it's Hungarian, but it's not re- it's not really Hungary, it's more, it's Slovakia. Uh, and that's where he was from, and he grew up in Williamsburg. They all-- He was also born in the, uh, during the Holocaust, and he also, uh, is, came as refugees after the Holocaust with his mother. His father died, and, uh, I'm actually named after my father's father. He died in the camps. But my m- grandmother with three children came to Williamsburg after the war. He grew up in Williamsburg, and he went as a young Bachur, he went to Nitra Yeshiva, and then he ended up in Lubavitch. You know, there were a lot of-

53:31 Speaker 2 Right. I mean-

53:31 Speaker 1 There were a lot like that.

53:32 Speaker 2 I mean, the whole thing, uh, the whole Yeshiva in Pshevorsk was a bunch of Polisher, a, a lot of Amshinovers-

53:37 Speaker 1 Exactly. Exactly, yeah

53:37 Speaker 2 ... and a lot of other Polisher Bachurim.

53:39 Speaker 1 Yeah.

53:39 Speaker 2 That was the yeshiva that was available, and they be, uh, Rabbi Reichik and many others.

53:43 Speaker 1 And, and in Europe, for example, in the parts of Europe that were under communism in many places-

53:48 Speaker 2 Right

53:48 Speaker 1 ... people who cared enough to go to yeshiva and had Mesires Nefesh to go to yeshiva, the only yeshivas that were, that were still up in operation basically were the Chabad yeshivas. So-

53:58 Speaker 2 I mean, when we think about it, if we, if we really wanna think about it, I mean, Lubavitch, there was a time where all the Lubavitchers were Tsug Kovners, where was it the, the, the divide-

54:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, you have three families that trace their way to the, uh-

54:08 Speaker 2 No, but even, but even they, even they had to come. So, like, there was-

54:11 Speaker 1 Alter Rebbe also had to come from somewhere, right?

54:13 Speaker 2 Right. That's what I'm saying. He was a Litvak, right?

54:14 Speaker 1 Alter Rebbe was a Tsug Kovner, right?

54:15 Speaker 2 Right, right. Guberniya compared to the Guberniya, you know, like-

54:18 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

54:20 Speaker 2 It, it's, it's interesting because, I mean, this is not something unique to Lubavitch. This is, this is true about any movement, any company really. There's always, there's always a tension between-

54:30 Speaker 1 An influx.

54:30 Speaker 2 No, there's always a tension between, you know, the, the stage in which things are more in flux and, and, and, and, and, and, and the, uh, more-

54:37 Speaker 1 I'll tell you a funny story. I remember, it must have been, um, maybe in, in, in, in, uh, fourth grade or fifth grade. May- maybe we were 10 years old or 11 years old, and we're sitting in a classroom, and there's like the 12 or 15 of us, like I said, and we're having this argument about s- what's, what's bigger in Lubavitch. Is it the Geze or is it the Tsug Kovners? So we said, "Okay, let's count the people in our class." So we're making a list. "Okay, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da." Who has more? So the Geze came up with a list that the Geze is, is bigger.

55:06 Speaker 2 Of course.

55:06 Speaker 1 And, and the Tsug Kovners came up with a list where the Tsug Kovner was bigger. So it turns out they were, they were, um, they were, they were counting the mixed marriages as Geze, and we were counting- So, so I have a friend, Nachum Shapiro, he's the Shliach, and, uh, and this is like Geze, Geze. Shapiro, Levi Yitzchak Shapiro's son.

55:23 Speaker 2 In Sydney?

55:23 Speaker 1 Yeah.

55:23 Speaker 2 The one in Sydney.

55:24 Speaker 1 Levi Yitzchak Shapiro's son. He, he tells us, "Yeah, we're like the Reform, you know. Because we're, we're a dying breed, we have to go by patrilineal descent too. We count everyone as part of us, otherwise we'd be, we'd, we'd-"

55:36 Speaker 2 Right

55:36 Speaker 1 ... wouldn't be enough of us." So, you know, but it was a very good-natured kind of joke, you know, kidding around. But, uh, there wasn't, uh, I don't...

55:45 Speaker 2 I mean, but, but no, but I-

55:46 Speaker 1 I was not conscious of some kind of, uh-

55:47 Speaker 2 No, but it's the-- But, but think about it, 'cause today Crown Heights is, like, considered the bastion of Lubavitch. Like, that's where it's s- like s- whatever you wanna think about the different levels within, within Crown Heights, but, like, that's Lubavitch, right? And, like, there's the, the k- the Lubavitcher who grew up in Crown Heights surrounded by Lubavitchers, and the Lubavitcher who grew up in the, either out of town or Shlichim where there's not-

56:11 Speaker 1 Right

56:12 Speaker 2 And, like, what you're talking about is that Like Crown Heights just 50 years ago was itself a, a k- a sort of melting pot.

56:19 Speaker 1 Yeah.

56:19 Speaker 2 And was sort-

56:20 Speaker 1 Definitely.

56:20 Speaker 2 And, and there were people coming in from outside marrying in. There were people marrying out, not, not out of the religion, but out of, out of Lubavitch.

56:28 Speaker 1 Out of Lubavitch. Yeah, sure.

56:28 Speaker 2 Right? And their kids today had nothing to do, uh, bes- besides being related.

56:33 Speaker 1 Right.

56:33 Speaker 2 They- they're not Lubavitch in any, like meaning there was consequences. Like their-

56:37 Speaker 1 Right

56:37 Speaker 2 ... descendants were not gonna be Lubavitchers.

56:39 Speaker 1 Well, some of them did end up in Lubavitch in the end.

56:42 Speaker 2 But there was a... But I'm saying there was no-

56:43 Speaker 1 Like a lot of them that had one Lubavitcher parent-

56:45 Speaker 2 I'm saying there were-

56:45 Speaker 1 ... they, they went to schools that were not Lubavitch.

56:47 Speaker 2 A lot of them didn't. A lot of them didn't.

56:49 Speaker 1 A lot of them didn't, a lot of them, a lot of them-

56:50 Speaker 2 No, just to me what's fascinating is just that, it's just that, you know, it's, it's, it's so, it's so sometimes like, uh, comfortable to assume this kind of static quality where like this is what it is. It's not changing one way or another.

57:07 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

57:07 Speaker 2 And that's not the natural state of affairs. It's a very uncommon state of affairs is my point.

57:12 Speaker 1 No, things, things, everything's in flux. Things are always changing.

57:14 Speaker 2 Right. But, but we make believe though that it's static, right? We make believe sometimes, or we wanna make believe that it's static for whatever reason, and it's like, it's like it-

57:23 Speaker 1 I, I don't know who this we is. I mean, I never saw anything as static really.

57:27 Speaker 2 Say where, where do I see this, where do I see this as something not just inside my head? Well, I think, I think, I think today people would assume that their kid marrying out of Lubavitch is civ- is like a big, big issue I suppose-

57:49 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

57:49 Speaker 2 ... or something very, very undesirable or... And I, point taken what you said earlier is that a lot of what happened then wasn't because they wanted their kids to marry out of Lubavitch. It was just a matter of necessity. There weren't enough people to make a shidduch for everybody. I understand that it wasn't that they wanted it. Like they-

58:07 Speaker 1 Right

58:07 Speaker 2 ... probably would've also preferred that their kids-

58:08 Speaker 1 Probably their first preference would've been-

58:10 Speaker 2 Yeah. Of course-

58:10 Speaker 1 ... any Lubavitcher family, probably their first preference would've been that they-

58:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure

58:13 Speaker 1 ... to make a shidduch with a Lubavitcher.

58:15 Speaker 2 Right.

58:15 Speaker 1 But there were, there just simply were not lo-

58:17 Speaker 2 Right. But today, today we've, we've fallen into such a kind of... I, I feel there, there's this kind of assumption of, of like we're so walled off in our own minds-

58:29 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

58:29 Speaker 2 ... that the like, that the idea that this wall is permeable is something that I think most people would find-

58:35 Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

58:36 Speaker 2 That's what I think. Now, maybe I'm just projecting onto other people. Could be.

58:40 Speaker 1 No. No. You-

58:40 Speaker 2 There's always that risk

58:41 Speaker 1 ... no, you're, you're probably expressing, you know, the, what, what, like the reality w- that your, your generation grew up in.

58:47 Speaker 2 Right.

58:48 Speaker 1 That's not the reality that I, that I grew up in.

58:50 Speaker 2 Right. Right. Right. Well, that's why I find this so interesting. I'm not, I'm not arguing with you.

58:53 Speaker 1 Right.

58:54 Speaker 2 I can't argue with how things were anyhow-

58:55 Speaker 1 Right

58:55 Speaker 2 ... even if I didn't like it. But, uh-

58:57 Speaker 1 And you might talk to someone my age who might have a, might have had a different experience-

59:01 Speaker 2 Right

59:01 Speaker 1 ... and might, might tell you, "No, it was always this way." You know?

59:03 Speaker 2 Right.

59:03 Speaker 1 Maybe he's projecting backwards, or maybe you really did-

59:06 Speaker 2 Well, you had a-

59:06 Speaker 1 ... see it differently

59:07 Speaker 2 ... you had a grandfather who was a Tsadikk Kumenir, right? To Lubavitch.

59:11 Speaker 1 Right.

59:11 Speaker 2 You had, you grew up on a block-

59:12 Speaker 1 Well, both sides.

59:13 Speaker 2 Right.

59:13 Speaker 1 Both sides of my family were people who joined Lubavitch in, in, you know, both my parents joined Lubavitch, you know. Uh, my mother became Lubavitcher when her family-

59:22 Speaker 2 So even more. So even more.

59:23 Speaker 1 Right.

59:23 Speaker 2 You had pa- both of your parents as Tsadikk Kumenirs. Your, your, your fa- grandfather was a Tsadikk Kumenir. Your neighbors were, a lot of them were not Tsadikk Kumenirs. They weren't Lubavitchers.

59:32 Speaker 1 Right.

59:32 Speaker 2 So you, so maybe you had a different experience to other Lubavitchers.

59:34 Speaker 1 Right.

59:34 Speaker 2 But it doesn't change the fact that that's what was going on.

59:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

59:37 Speaker 2 Right? No, I, I, I, I don't think it bursts anybody's bubbles or, or like I don't think it, it's, I don't think there's any violence to-

59:45 Speaker 1 Right, right

59:45 Speaker 2 ... any concept of... Like I just think it's worth pointing out that it's, you know... So what's a, what's the value of pointing it out? I, I say it in a very constructive way. I say 'cause it, it just reinforces the need for people, and I know you don't wanna talk about this so much, but it reinforces the need for people to ask themselves, "What makes a Lubavitcher, and like why am I still here?" Like the idea that I'm just here because I'm here, and therefore I must be here forever, that goes against history and against human nature. People, people journey. People go from p- people move around.

1:00:18 Speaker 1 Right.

1:00:18 Speaker 2 People change.

1:00:19 Speaker 1 For sure people move around.

1:00:19 Speaker 2 And so you wanna stay a Lubavitch the rest of your life, and you want all your kids and grandkids, their, theirs to be Lubavitchers?

1:00:25 Speaker 1 Gezundheit.

1:00:26 Speaker 2 But you can't expect that to happen on its own is my point. It's not the n-

1:00:30 Speaker 1 Right

1:00:30 Speaker 2 ... it's not the natural state of affairs for things just to stay static. Things move.

1:00:36 Speaker 1 Right.

1:00:36 Speaker 2 And so-

1:00:37 Speaker 1 Of course. Of course

1:00:37 Speaker 2 ... if you want it to move in a direction, it better be concentrated is my point. So anyway, I just, I find fascinating. But I would like to, I would like to move it a little bit towards the Chumash.

1:00:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:00:48 Speaker 2 Because, um-

1:00:50 Speaker 1 That's what we're talking about.

1:00:51 Speaker 2 Well, at this point, at, at this point that boat has sailed.

1:00:53 Speaker 1 We spent an hour talking about something else.

1:00:55 Speaker 2 But you know, the truth is, the truth is, I mean, this is common in the podcasting space anyhow, but, you know, the Chumash everybody can buy.

1:01:02 Speaker 1 Right.

1:01:03 Speaker 2 This, what we're talking about here, is not in the Chumash. So the Chumash we'll let them buy.

1:01:09 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:01:09 Speaker 2 But now I feel that they're gonna appreciate what's in the Chumash a lot more. But I still wanna talk about the Chumash and tie it in 'cause I think it's very relevant. I, I'm not sensing here a conversation where there's a whole unrelated intro about your grandfather and your-

1:01:24 Speaker 1 Right

1:01:24 Speaker 2 ... upbringing, and then this Chumash, I don't see the connection. No, I very much see the connection. I would like to hear what, how, how you see the connection.

1:01:30 Speaker 1 Right. So, so I'll go back to the question that we, we sort of got on a tangent, and we, we sort of-

1:01:35 Speaker 2 Yeah

1:01:35 Speaker 1 ... schmoozed and schmoozed and schmoozed. But, but it really is-

1:01:37 Speaker 2 All right. Just, just folks, I just wanna make it clear, his writing is very concise and clear. This is not how he writes. This is only how he talks.

1:01:45 Speaker 1 But you know, we sort of went, went down on a ramble. But, but you started off by asking a question like, "What made me become a writer, and was it because I always-

1:01:52 Speaker 2 Right

1:01:52 Speaker 1 ... wanted to be a writer, and I love writing?" I started telling you about how I used to read so much-

1:01:55 Speaker 2 Right

1:01:55 Speaker 1 ... and how I loved writing, and I said, we started talking about my grandfather, and that's how we got into this whole long conversation.

1:02:00 Speaker 2 Perfectly.

1:02:01 Speaker 1 But, but the interesting thing that I, what, one of the things I started telling you, if you wanna rewind about an hour, is that I never really dreamed that I'll ever be a writer, and that's precisely because I loved literature so much, and I really appreciated what good writing is, and I just thought to myself, "I'll never be able to do something like this, and if I can't do something like this, I'm not even gonna try."

1:02:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:02:21 Speaker 1 So you know, if you spend your childhood reading world-class writers, like literally everything I can get my hand on- My grandfather had, talking about bringing up my grandfather again, but he had a house full of literature. He had all kinds of, you know, whether it was German poetry or whether it was anything, anything under the sun you can possibly imagine, anything that was written that had literary value, he was interested in. And it's funny 'cause I don't even hear this. It's like-

1:02:46 Speaker 2 I know, but the people listening to the podcast-

1:02:49 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:02:49 Speaker 2 ... are gonna hear it.

1:02:50 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:02:51 Speaker 2 Folks, this means that we've been here for an hour already.

1:02:53 Speaker 1 Yeah. Right. Anyway, so, so, you know, when you s- when you're such an avid reader and you're literally consuming dozens, if not more, books a week, and, and you appreciate what good writing is, you never dream that you yourself should, will be able to do it because it just seems-

1:03:07 Speaker 2 Sure

1:03:07 Speaker 1 ... so far, so out of reach.

1:03:09 Speaker 2 Sure.

1:03:10 Speaker 1 And, uh, and I got into writing, like every Lubavitcher gets into what they do as part of your life of being a Lubavitcher, you know, and just h- and just by, by, by just by the fact, talking about happenstance, of just being in a situation where something needed to be written, and I, I was the one who knew how to do it better than, than the others.

1:03:28 Speaker 2 Sure.

1:03:28 Speaker 1 Not that I knew how to do it. So whether it's writing camp songs in camp, or it's writing, uh, you know, the placards that needed for the Lag BaOmer parade. You know, I suppose I remember it was probably my first serious writing job. I must've been around 17 years old. And they, they, they, they, they, they, they, you know, one of the Lag BaOmer parades, they'd had this, uh, amazing idea that instead of having the-- in addition to having the floats, they'll have all these displays on Kingston Avenue, where they put all these different scenes from Jewish history-

1:03:55 Speaker 2 Hmm

1:03:55 Speaker 1 ... or things like the Lamas Tess Melachas and all these things, and they needed these large placards in, like, in a museum that explained. So I remember I was asked to write it. I sat for two days and two nights probably, and just writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. You know, I probably have it still somewhere. I look at it, I cringe. Uh, you know, so, so it, it, it, it sort of developed simply by doing it, and, and, and, and not really believing that I, that I really have any capability to really do it, but just doing it. By, by doing it, like every Lubavitcher who's trained, you know, if you're an Indian, you gotta do it, you do it.

1:04:27 Speaker 2 Okay. So, so now that we've got the nevas out of the way, now that we've got the humility out of the way-

1:04:32 Speaker 1 Yeah. No

1:04:33 Speaker 2 ... let's talk, let's talk a little-

1:04:33 Speaker 1 No, but, but, but what I wanted to say was that on the way, I had help from very, very, uh, talented editors who really had the patience to sort of play along with my fantasy that, that I'm actually writing something, and, and on the way, you know, correct me and, and, and guide me. And, and, uh, it is just by doing it, really, just in the act of doing it, that the various things through the years that I worked on, uh, that sort of developed the ability.

1:05:03 Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. In general, in general, with any creative work, it's always, it's always fascinating to hear how someone, you know, like, how did you believe that you could do this? And very often... I mean, sometimes there are people who they, they f- they, they're geniuses at it, and so, like, at a young age already, they, they're, they're-- it's very clear to them and to the world that they're good at it. But for everybody else, it's mostly, like, a decision of, like, "I can't. I'm going to do it because I have to or because I need to, 'cause I want to."

1:05:34 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:05:34 Speaker 2 And then, and then, and then kind of pressing along with it. But I'm not so... I mean, I, I, I have done some writing in, in my day. I, I, you know, I, I make videos for a living, so I'm personally interested in that kind of stuff. But I feel for the sake of the podcast-

1:05:50 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:05:50 Speaker 2 ... I think it's more relevant to talk about the, the Chumash and the style with which you went-- the, the decisions you made of how to incorporate the different Parashot, because I think it's very much connected to our conversation.

1:06:07 Speaker 1 Okay. Sure.

1:06:08 Speaker 2 Right? Right.

1:06:09 Speaker 1 So-

1:06:09 Speaker 2 I mean, I mean-

1:06:09 Speaker 1 ... let's dive in

1:06:10 Speaker 2 ... of course, the, the obvious, the obvious connection is your grandfather was a writer, so you ended up becoming a writer. I see that as a connection, but I, I see it in terms of the, the, the person your grandfather was and the Lubavitch or Chabad you grew up in. You know, you, you, you, you described to me when we were working on this project that you wanted this Chumash to give people a sense of the, not just the enormity of the P- Parashat on Chumash, but the diversity, and not even just the diversity, but almost the interplay. Like, how, how, how you di- I think you said, you emphasized to me time and time again, "I don't wanna tell people what to think. I wanna tell people what's there and let them draw their own conclusions."

1:06:53 Speaker 1 Right.

1:06:53 Speaker 2 Which, of course, is a very hard task when you're trying to condense everything. And so how do you, how do you editorialize this massive amount of work without editorializing?

1:07:05 Speaker 1 Well, I, you know, you know, uh, the, this is not the word that I came up with, but other people have come up with this word to describe what I did here, and, and I think that it's very accurate. They... You know, I've had a few people tell me when they ask me this question, you know, the question I always get is, "How do you decide which pieces to pick, which Parashat to pick? How do you-- What's your process?" And a lot of people like a- well, people who've read it and, and get it, so to speak, they ask me-

1:07:30 Speaker 2 Right

1:07:30 Speaker 1 ... "So, so what's the, uh, how does your curation process work? How do you curate?"

1:07:35 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:36 Speaker 1 And I think that's a more correct word than an editor.

1:07:40 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:40 Speaker 1 I'm more of a curator than an editor. Imagine a curator who's putting up an exhibit of-

1:07:44 Speaker 2 Right

1:07:45 Speaker 1 ... a certain genre of artists. They're not editing the pictures, obviously. They're not, they're not, they're not, um-

1:07:51 Speaker 2 Right

1:07:51 Speaker 1 ... uh, let's say you wanna have, you know, uh, the 19th century impressionists, and you're gonna make the, uh, uh, exhibit of the century that's gonna have, you know... So obviously, no one is gonna take a classic painting, uh, you know, by Monet and start, you know-

1:08:07 Speaker 2 Right

1:08:07 Speaker 1 ... making it fit and cutting it and trimming it and, and, and adding color to it or whatever it is. Um, but, but how do you pick what to put? How do you put, pick where to put it? If I have 100 great artists that I wanna represent, and I can only put one or two pictures from each one, which picture will it be?

1:08:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:26 Speaker 1 Which picture will it be that most represents- ... who this person is, what this person accomplished, and where he sits in the context of everyone else.

1:08:34 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:34 Speaker 1 So that's the curation process-

1:08:36 Speaker 2 I see

1:08:36 Speaker 1 ... which is as difficult, if not more difficult, than editing. 'Cause editing in a way is easy because you have your vision, you know what you want the end-

1:08:47 Speaker 2 Right

1:08:47 Speaker 1 ... message to be.

1:08:48 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:48 Speaker 1 Okay? I won't mention the Chumash by name, but I, you know, as you know, you can open certain well-known Chumashim, and they're bringing hundreds and hundreds of Perushim, but they have a certain vision of Yiddishkeit in mind.

1:08:59 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:59 Speaker 1 And they have a certain ideology and, and Kol Hakavod to them, like you say. It's their right. They, uh-- You know, if they're falsifying or they're manipulating-

1:09:07 Speaker 2 Right

1:09:07 Speaker 1 ... or they're doing things that are, they- that are d- you know, disingenuous is one thing. But, but it could be a very honest way of presenting a certain ideology and showing all these different supporting texts-

1:09:17 Speaker 2 Right

1:09:17 Speaker 1 ... that lead you to that place, which is fine. I have no quarrel with that.

1:09:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:21 Speaker 1 But that's not the Chumash that I want to make, because that's not real learning. That's just, uh, you know, if you wanna be nasty about it, you can call it being brainwashed, and if you wanna be more kind about it, you can say being guided or being directed by a certain person to reach certain conclusions.