Ep. 16 // “Growing Up a Chossid” with Mrs. Fradel Sudak

00:00 Speaker 1 The Rebbe Sarifka says to my mother, little girl of eight, "Would you marry a boy?" Look out of the window. His coat was torn. She said, "Yes, but I know that when I'm older, I will not want to marry him." And that makes me cry. So Rebbe Sarifka got up from her chair, and she went to my mother and put her hand on her head, on my mother's head, and she said, "I give you a bracha. You will marry such a boy, and you don't need to cry."

00:37 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-three. My name is Bentzi Offson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. This next episode is a very personal one to me. I grew up, uh, my whole life hearing about, uh, different grandparents and great-grandparents. Amongst them, my great-grandfather, Rebbe Shashem Tov, and his wife, Esther Golda Shemtov, and her mother, uh, Mariasha Futerfas. They went through, of course, very, very difficult times in Russia and the Soviet Union. Uh, Mariasha, even before those difficult times, had lost her husband suddenly while she was still pregnant with her last child, who she named after him. I'd always heard of them, especially my great-grandfather, Rebbe Shashem Tov. I'd always heard of them as larger-than-life figures, almost mythologies. Um, and while very often that was, uh, something I was proud of, something that was inspiring, I did feel like I was missing that sense of who they were as a father, as a grandfather, as a husband, as real people. And I always felt like I would like to know more about them in that way. When the opportunity arose for me to go to London and speak to my great-aunt, Mrs. Fradel Sudak, I, I was thrilled to be able to do so. Besides growing up with them as a child, um, she lived with them later on in London. Um, she married her husband, Rabbi Nachman Sudak, and became shluchim in London. And so she spent many, many years

02:17 Speaker 2 with my great-grandparents, both my great-grandmother until she passed away, and my great-grandfather, who actually moved in with them after, after his wife passed away. And, and so I figured she would be able to give me some added insight into who they were. And besides the obviously personal, uh, insight and gain that I would have from this story, I feel that even for this podcast, learning about these kinds of individuals on this level, uh, would add for me and for those listening to underst- to better understanding the fabric of, of the people who lived in those times, what kind of people they were, what kind of relationships they had, and, um, what inspired them, what moved them, what worried them, what held them together. And, um, I couldn't be happier to share this podcast with you. I hope that you enjoy. All righty. Um, thank you very, very much, Aunt Fradel, for agreeing to come on this podcast. This actually, this idea of sitting down with you here is a few years old. It predates the podcast. Um, really, I, I would, I would trace it back to when my wife and I named our third daughter Mariasha after your grandmother, my grandfather's grandmother as well. And I figured that, um, I figured that I owe it to her. I owe it to her to tell her the story or to find out the story of who she's named after. And that's when the first idea was planted to someday come and, and talk to you

03:57 Speaker 2 and ask you some questions about the family story. But, uh, for all those who don't know, uh, I'm sitting with my aunt, Mrs. Fradel Sudak, who is, uh, the shlucha, the first shlucha in England together with my... Not the first shlucha? Who was the first?

04:16 Speaker 1 My parents were the first.

04:16 Speaker 2 Her parents. Okay, so she's gonna correct me, but has been a, has been on shlichas here for how many years?

04:22 Speaker 1 Since I'm here. First I was a daughter of my parents, and then in nineteen fifty-nine, I came as a shlucha with my husband.

04:30 Speaker 2 All right. So for many, many years she was on shlichas here in-

04:33 Speaker 1 Sixty years

04:34 Speaker 2 ... s- sixty years, s- sixty plus years here in, in London, England.

04:40 Speaker 1 Yeah.

04:40 Speaker 2 And she is my great-aunt. She is my grandfather's sister. And, um, I figured I'd come here and speak to you and find out more about my family history and our family history, and not just the family history, but what that tells us about the history of Lubavitch as well. So thank you very much for doing this. Um, let's l- I, I wanna start with something that you mentioned to me on the phone when I first called you up about this, and you said that me coming to you to ask you about the past is something that you found very surprising and is something new to this generation. Why do you think that is?

05:26 Speaker 1 Why is, why, why do you think? Why are you asking?

05:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:33 Speaker 1 I find it very interesting, and it must obviously be an interest of the young generation that our generation didn't go down that road. Although I myself was very interested to know the background to our family-

05:57 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

05:57 Speaker 1 ... or to life as opposed to the Chumash and the history and Lubavitch history. And all this. I found it interesting, but the world around me was not interested. They just wanted to break away from the past and find a better way of living. They saw the world as a way to run away. Everyone was running away.

06:30 Speaker 2 Even the frum world? Even within the frum world?

06:34 Speaker 1 Even the frum world is difficult to say. The frum world, yes. The frum world was Lubavitch running away from being Misnagdim.

06:46 Speaker 2 Hmm.

06:48 Speaker 1 Lubavitch was building a new way to live.

06:52 Speaker 2 Hmm.

06:53 Speaker 1 The way of the Misnagdim, or the way the Yidden lived before, was being destroyed in every single way.

07:04 Speaker 2 Hmm.

07:04 Speaker 1 So how can Yiddishkeit, how can the Aibishter be in this world if we carry on living the way it was?

07:13 Speaker 2 Hmm.

07:14 Speaker 1 So Lubavitch was a different way.

07:17 Speaker 2 Hmm. So when you're busy doing something new, you're, you don't have time or have energy to think about the past, is what you're saying.

07:27 Speaker 1 There was... A lot of the past was lived by people, was suffered by people.

07:32 Speaker 2 Hmm.

07:35 Speaker 1 If we break it down, when my mother had to go to school, she had to make sure that she doesn't go to a school where they speak Yiddish. Because if they speak Yiddish, they are Yiddishisten. They have formed themselves that they will be a nation by literature, by theater, by a way of living, not with God.

08:07 Speaker 2 Hmm.

08:08 Speaker 1 She couldn't go to a school. God was out. So she'll go to a school where they speak Hebrew. Chas v'Shalom, you can't go to a school where they speak Hebrew, because that is the Zionist world. Am Chofshi, no more Aibishter.

08:27 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

08:29 Speaker 1 She'll go to a school that, um, the Russian school, the communist, because the king is revolutionary, killed the king. No way. It's a wonderful way to live, but no God.

08:46 Speaker 2 Right.

08:47 Speaker 1 So nobody had a place for God. And the frum world, Lubavitch saw, that without Chasidus, where do you see God?

09:02 Speaker 2 Hmm.

09:04 Speaker 1 So Lubavitch was involved fighting all the isms.

09:11 Speaker 2 So do you think that today, if someone like myself or others like me are asking about the past, that's a sign that we have stopped thinking about the future? Do you think that's a bad thing? Like we've stopped trying to change, and we're look-

09:26 Speaker 1 No. No. I think your generation is asking about the past, how we actually outgrew all the negative forces of the world-

09:41 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

09:41 Speaker 1 ... and are involved in a proper Yiddish life.

09:45 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

09:48 Speaker 1 We got rid of the past.

09:50 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

09:52 Speaker 1 We found a way that no Yiddishism, no Zionism, no commu- uh, communism, and we found a way. How did Lubavitch bring, how did the Rebbe bring the world to a future, to a present?

10:11 Speaker 2 Hmm.

10:13 Speaker 1 It's phenomenal. We have a world now that we don't have to fight. We just have to develop all the Inyonim of Chasidus, of... The Rebbe has brought us down. He's come down to every little level. He's taken on how we should talk to our little three-year-old girls, how we should do from the w- He's laid it all out for us, where the zchus to live and be actually present now. It's phenomenal.

10:46 Speaker 2 Right. But I guess the question would be, um, if, if, if we are, if, if, if people my age are spending too much time asking about what happened when you were our age, doesn't that mean, or someone would- might argue that, okay, so you, you, don't you have better things to do? The same way that you, when you were our age, you were having better things to do than talk about the past.

11:13 Speaker 1 The past before was very difficult.

11:16 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

11:17 Speaker 1 It was very difficult to maintain. You knew Yiddishkeit was good. You knew God was good. But you had everybody fighting you.

11:28 Speaker 2 Hmm.

11:30 Speaker 1 Everybody. Every aspect. You had to bring up a child so they shouldn't have any friends.

11:38 Speaker 2 Right.

11:40 Speaker 1 And now, Baruch Hashem, just explore more, learn more. How many people survived those horrible years? We lost millions of Yidden in Russia. I don't know how many Yidden there were. People come out of Russia now. They can speak Yiddish. Never heard of a yarmulke.

12:03 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

12:04 Speaker 1 Never heard of anything Jewish, of tefillin. Never mind they don't put it on. Never heard of it. But they've kept on, they, they still speak Yiddish.

12:19 Speaker 2 Right.

12:19 Speaker 1 And now we have everything laid out for us. Tefillin, mu- uh, mezuzah. But we have to now develop it and live it and enjoy it.

12:32 Speaker 2 Mm. So what I'm understanding from you, and, and from this we'll start heading into the actual story. What I'm understanding from you is that there was a time where there was basically a war going on just to survive, right? Just to, just to survive, overcome very, very determined forces that wanted to destroy. But once you survive that, then it does make sense to think a little bit more of, how did we survive? What did we survive with? What, what are we left with? What are we taking from this? Correct? Like-

13:02 Speaker 1 It's beautiful.

13:03 Speaker 2 Okay.

13:04 Speaker 1 Yes, it's true.

13:05 Speaker 2 Right.

13:05 Speaker 1 You want to know where, how did you get it? How did you plant it?

13:08 Speaker 2 Right.

13:08 Speaker 1 How does it grow?

13:09 Speaker 2 Right.

13:11 Speaker 1 Your generation benefiting now-

13:14 Speaker 2 Mm

13:14 Speaker 1 ... from all the few... How many, how many people were there at the end of Russia war, at the end of communism, that really have lived through and kept Shabbos all their lives?

13:33 Speaker 2 Right.

13:35 Speaker 1 It's like a museum piece in Russia to go and see somebody that actually lived this life.

13:41 Speaker 2 Right.

13:42 Speaker 1 And they have taught us under all conditions how they lived it.

13:45 Speaker 2 Right. I, I understand what you're saying, that, that we see all the people that survived. We don't see all the people that didn't.

13:53 Speaker 1 That's right.

13:53 Speaker 2 Right? Like we, we, we, we, we, we see... We-- And, and, and because of that, we take it for granted. But when you lived it and you saw all the people that didn't make it, you realize how, how, how, how, how big of a miracle that was, right? And how big of a deal that was. And, and so for you, you naturally don't take it for granted. But for us, if we don't speak about it and don't learn more about it, then we-- there is a risk that we take it for granted, and that would be a problem. So I, I think that's a great introduction, um, a great introduction. And, and I'd like to jump into the family story. I, I know in a way that may sound a bit, um, self-absorbed that we're just talking about the family. Well, first of all, maybe I'm a bit self-absorbed, but I think, I think, I think, I think, I think each family that went through that time reflects not just on itself, but the larger picture as well. And that is also the story that you happen to be the most intimately familiar with. So I think that's-- I think it makes sense for us to just sit and focus on that story. Why don't we start... I know we, we were talking a little bit before, before we started recording. But why don't we, why don't we lay the-- for the people listening who aren't so familiar, why don't we start with, with the

15:14 Speaker 2 kind of the family tree? There's the, there's the Futerfas family tree, and there's the Shem Tov family tree. But why don't we start with the Futerfas family tree of, you know, who your... Who, who was your mother? Who was-- Who were her, who were her brothers? Who were her parents? Where did they come from? What kind of life were they living? So we could just set the background for the story.

15:41 Speaker 1 Let's see where, where you want to present it. All right. You see, in our lives, we did not dwell on my family and this family. The main thing is, was to survive and to develop and to know the purpose of life.

16:02 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

16:04 Speaker 1 And the purpose of life, Hasidics, is the place, the learning that talks about the purpose of life.

16:16 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

16:18 Speaker 1 Lubavitch didn't have a yeshiva until the Rebbe Rashab.

16:21 Speaker 2 Right.

16:22 Speaker 1 Hasidics didn't have a yeshiva. You went to yeshiva, and then there was to other yeshivas, and you did your own learning.

16:31 Speaker 2 Right.

16:32 Speaker 1 A lot of people never went to yeshiva. They learned at home.

16:35 Speaker 2 Mm.

16:36 Speaker 1 Mohamed came, they learned at home. Lubavitch set up, the Rebbe Rashab set up a yeshiva. That's what I was taught. Because he knew communism was going to come, was coming, and Yiddishkeit is having the biggest attack. Yiddishkeit, eradicate under all conditions. So the Rebbe prepared his Bochurim that they should survive. And we see that in Hasidics, you sit and you learn for hours, and you daven for hours. Not like Mivtzoim now that you go and run and help all the people. A Hasidic will sit and concentrate. And I was often wondering, why? Why do people sit and spend so many hours davening? We don't have time for it now. And then I just saw very practical, and I don't know if I'm right or wrong. My father-in-law, Hasidic, were in prison for ten years, seven years, and they came out more or less, everyone in a different way, as normal human beings. How did they survive solitary confinement? Uh, suffering, physical suffering. I know my father fasted seven days.

18:07 Speaker 2 Straight?

18:08 Speaker 1 For the tefillin.

18:10 Speaker 2 Wow.

18:12 Speaker 1 How did they survive?

18:14 Speaker 2 Hmm.

18:15 Speaker 1 And they came out happy people, not depressed, not mentally de-defective. Not abusive. Normal human beings coming out of prison after so many years. I think they were able to live and think about siddurs for hours.

18:42 Speaker 2 Mm.

18:44 Speaker 1 They could take a tallis and daven for hours, even if they didn't have a siddur in front of them.

18:52 Speaker 2 Mm.

18:52 Speaker 1 So their normal mental stage-- state didn't get affected.

19:00 Speaker 2 They were strong mentally.

19:02 Speaker 1 Pardon?

19:02 Speaker 2 They were strong mentally.

19:04 Speaker 1 You know, they were strong. The learning of siddurs-

19:07 Speaker 2 Right

19:08 Speaker 1 ... in their time-

19:09 Speaker 2 Right

19:10 Speaker 1 ... which they had to practice so much in yeshiva, enabled them to ignore their ev- uh, environment.

19:19 Speaker 2 Mm.

19:20 Speaker 1 Now, if you don't give somebody something immediately, they already feel faint, like I would feel faint right away. They, they just sat down and thought about the things that mattered to them. So whether they were in prison or whether they were in the park or wha- they had themselves, they had the Meiberstein with them. They had to think out what does it mean and daven for hours, so it didn't matter whether daven for hours with the wife at home or they daven for hours in the prison.

19:55 Speaker 2 Right.

19:56 Speaker 1 How does that-

19:57 Speaker 2 No, it, that-

19:57 Speaker 1 That is sort of my... What is the connection between Rebbe Rashab that he gives all those mamorim to learn Baal Peh?

20:07 Speaker 2 Right.

20:08 Speaker 1 And the action that we have to do as soon as we came out of Russia, go and teach the whole world about the Meiberstein. Where was the connection?

20:18 Speaker 2 Right.

20:21 Speaker 1 And you have to be with simcha and, and all that.

20:24 Speaker 2 Right.

20:25 Speaker 1 Not that you have to be with simcha. You are lucky that you've got the maimer, you've got the siddurs, you've got the Meiberstein. They didn't feel that.

20:38 Speaker 2 Right. But I think-

20:40 Speaker 1 It's-

20:40 Speaker 2 ... I think it's still important even if, even if we're talking about... Even if it's true that, that it wasn't just about their yichus or, or how they grew up, but how the yeshiva changed them, I think it makes sense to put a person to the story and to humanize them so we understand what kind of people they were.

20:57 Speaker 1 Yeah.

20:57 Speaker 2 So that's why I'm asking if we can talk about just where the family grew up. Um, you know, who, who was the Futerfas family? Who was your grandmother, Mariasha? Who was her husband? What were they, what were they doing in Russia? What, what was their we-- They, they lived in Kharkov, right?

21:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. So this is very good, but why we don't have much written on it is because of that. Otherwise, I, I was born into a family. I didn't have to find my way to Yiddishkeit. It was all done for me. I was born into a family who have had this Yiddishkeit and didn't lose it when their cousins, and their friends, and everybody lost it. That's why we get Baal Shemes.

21:47 Speaker 2 So who was this family? Who, who, who was this family? For people that don't know.

21:50 Speaker 1 So the people I knew, I knew my grandmother, Mariasha. Mariasha Badana, but she called herself Mariasha. Segalovic was her husband's name. And I knew my parents-

22:07 Speaker 2 What was, was her father's name? What's her maiden name?

22:09 Speaker 1 Her father's name, Avram Yitzchak Segalovic.

22:12 Speaker 2 His-- Her husband's name was Futerfas.

22:13 Speaker 1 Husband's, yeah.

22:15 Speaker 2 Right.

22:15 Speaker 1 And I'm... My grandmother's father was Segalovic.

22:21 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

22:23 Speaker 1 Her husband's name was Futerfas.

22:25 Speaker 2 Mendel Futerfas.

22:25 Speaker 1 Mendel Futerfas. Mendel Futerfas' father was a Hasid of the Tsanach Zedek, I suppose.

22:34 Speaker 2 What's his name?

22:35 Speaker 1 Mendel Futerfas.

22:36 Speaker 2 Mendel Futerfas' father's name was?

22:38 Speaker 1 Mendel Futerfas.

22:40 Speaker 2 No, his father.

22:42 Speaker 1 The, the grandfather was-

22:43 Speaker 2 Yes

22:43 Speaker 1 ... that I don't know.

22:44 Speaker 2 You don't know. So Mendel Futerfas and, and Mariasha Badana were your grandparents.

22:49 Speaker 1 Yeah.

22:51 Speaker 2 Uh, they lived in Kharkov.

22:52 Speaker 1 Yeah.

22:53 Speaker 2 What were they doing in Kharkov?

22:55 Speaker 1 They were a young married couple. My grandmother was two years older than my grandfather. My grandmother was twenty-four, and he was twenty-two. Or they never paid attention so much to their age at that time. And they opened a business in Kharkov. They were very entrepreneurs looking into life differently, and they were the first, uh, factory that actually had electric sewing machines.

23:30 Speaker 2 Mm.

23:30 Speaker 1 It was a big wow then. And they were sewing rubber coats for the winter against the rain, coats made out of rubber.

23:39 Speaker 2 Mm.

23:40 Speaker 1 And it was a very exciting, uh, development. There were about 100 machines in that factory. And then the communists came and took everything away.

23:56 Speaker 2 Right. But the communists came and took it away. We're skipping a few steps. Didn't he first pass away?

24:01 Speaker 1 Pardon?

24:01 Speaker 2 First he passed away, right?

24:02 Speaker 1 No, no.

24:03 Speaker 2 The-

24:03 Speaker 1 Uh, yes, yes. First he passed away.

24:05 Speaker 2 So, so, so, so w- talk a little bit about, um, the kids that they had, um, Mendel and, and Mariasha Badana, the kids that they had, the fa-- And, and then how he passed away at a young age.

24:19 Speaker 1 Right. So Mariasha and her husband, Mendel, had four-- had three children, and she was expecting the fourth. So she had Handle, who afterwards called himself Lieberman, because the communists shouldn't know that Mendel Futerfas has a brother in America. So Handle was the oldest. Then he had a sister, my mother, Esther Golda. And then he had a younger sister, Brocha, who was married to Serebransky in Australia.

25:05 Speaker 2 Right.

25:06 Speaker 1 And then she, three months after her husband suddenly passed away, she had a baby and called him Mendel Futerfas,first, the son of Mendel.

25:17 Speaker 2 So Mendel then Mendel.

25:19 Speaker 1 Yeah.

25:20 Speaker 2 And you said he passed away suddenly. One day he just-

25:22 Speaker 1 Suddenly he said, "I'm just not feeling well," and he laid down. It was the 10th of, of the Iyar. I know it because my grandmother was so traumatized 60 years later, and we all knew that after the 10th of the Iyar, my grandmother relaxed. But before that, she was in hiding. So, um, everything was fine, and she says he does not feeling well, and there was a cr- stomach cramp of some kind, and he just passed away on his bed.

26:05 Speaker 2 Wow.

26:06 Speaker 1 And she was left with the family. Now, in those days, the natural, um, development was when a widow was left, the parents of the widow, uh, took the family.

26:24 Speaker 2 Right.

26:26 Speaker 1 And that was going to happen here as well. The parents lived in a shtetl, Plieshchenitz. It was all Frum, all Hasidisher shtetl, and that was the norm that the f- grandchildren came to live there. And my grandmother would've stayed in Kharkov running the business, and this would've been normal, except that my mother did not agree with that, and she would not move away from her mother. And she stayed with her mother in Kharkov. And that caused quite a bit of difficulty how to handle, how to cope, and... But she, there was no, no discussion. She never left her mother.

27:22 Speaker 2 Hmm. Did-- So you said your grandmother... Uh, so I, I guess we're skipping a little bit here. Eventually, your grandmo- y- y- you said that your grandmother would, every year by the Yahrtzeit, uh, or t- up close to the Yart-- the days leading up to the Yahrtzeit would, would be very different and very tense.

27:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. Quite traumatic.

27:41 Speaker 2 Very tense. So we're skipping. After the war, she came to England together with your parents-

27:47 Speaker 1 Right

27:47 Speaker 2 ... and lived with you.

27:48 Speaker 1 So she always stayed with my mother. Now, there were times in Russia that she stayed with her other daughter, Bracha Serebranski.

27:59 Speaker 2 Mm.

27:59 Speaker 1 Because we didn't... You know, after they were married, depends where the family was. But when we came out of Russia, my grandmother came with us, and then the Serebranskis moved to Australia, and my grandmother lived, carried on living with us in London.

28:21 Speaker 2 Did you feel with your grandmother that, like, it's very-- I, I can't imagine what it was like for her to lose her husband in that kind of way. Was, was it, was it something-- Was it like a cloud that, that hung over her the rest of her life, or she somehow managed to...?

28:38 Speaker 1 The one who knew how bad it was, was my mother.

28:42 Speaker 2 Hmm.

28:42 Speaker 1 But in general, I wouldn't know. Except I know that after Pesach, when the Yahrtzeit was coming, she would just keep to herself.

28:53 Speaker 2 Wow. Hmm.

28:59 Speaker 1 But otherwise, she was very regular. She was a very intelligent lady, and we had some interesting discussions as a grandchild.

29:16 Speaker 2 Anything that comes to mind?

29:19 Speaker 1 Um, yeah, she told me a few stories when I asked her, "Bobi, how did you manage when you were living a comfortable life and all of a sudden the communists came and took everything away from everybody? And you, if you had a house with five bedrooms, five families moved in or seven. Every room a family moved in, and you handed over all your possessions. And how did you manage that when they took everything away?" And she said to me, "Oh, no. From me, nobody took away anything." I said, "That's interesting. How did you manage that?"

30:02 Speaker 2 Hmm.

30:04 Speaker 1 She said, "They couldn't take away because whatever I had, I gave to the children chinuch. And when they came, there was nothing that they could handle, and they couldn't handle, take away the chinuch I gave my children."

30:26 Speaker 2 That's so sad.

30:26 Speaker 1 So she spent all her money-

30:28 Speaker 2 But, but explain how that-

30:29 Speaker 1 ... on educating her children.

30:30 Speaker 2 Explain how that happened, 'cause you were telling me earlier-

30:32 Speaker 1 Sorry?

30:32 Speaker 2 Explain what that means, that she gave it to chinuch.

30:35 Speaker 1 Well, she was-- She had the business, and the business was a good turner, which was a successful business. So at the end of the month or the year, whenever she made the accounts, she didn't look at the maaser to give away, but she worked out how much does it cost her to live a comfortable life. She had a housekeeper. And how much would it cost her to have that her dress is presentable? And stylish the way it wants to be, that her shoes are never worn out, and she go- looks correct. And the rest of the money she just sent to yeshiva in Lubavitch.

31:26 Speaker 2 She sent... The rest of the money she sent to yeshiva in Lubavitch-

31:29 Speaker 1 Yeah

31:29 Speaker 2 ... with, with a certain tanai, with a certain condition.

31:32 Speaker 1 Uh, not a condition. She asked in return, she asked that she wants to pay for the cost of at least two teachers that the yeshiva pays, and these two teachers, each one should take an interest in one of the boys. Because to educate boys who are very, uh, um, energetic and intelligent and exploring at a time when everybody explored the world, she doesn't have a husband who will check up on their learning, so there should be somebody in yeshiva who will take an interest in each of the boys. And that was the arrangement that yeshiva was happy to do.

32:20 Speaker 2 So y- your, y- your, your, your mother, y- your grandmother, um, goes through this with her h- losing her husband while she's expecting their fourth child. She ends up sending three of her four children to her parents and subsequently, um, giving money to the yeshiva to take care of them when they got older. Your mother stays with her.

32:46 Speaker 1 Yeah.

32:47 Speaker 2 Um, and then eventually the, the Soviets come in, the communists come in and take everything over, right?

32:55 Speaker 1 Right.

32:56 Speaker 2 Did your mother talk to you or did your grandmother talk to you about what life was like then in, in, in Soviet Russia and, and, and how things changed?

33:06 Speaker 1 Nothing happened suddenly. It developed gradually. It was all prepared. At that time, when the communists take over, there is no young person ever stayed home after the age of 15, 16, I don't know. They used to go... Everyone belonged to some kind of, uh, um, club or organization.

33:34 Speaker 2 Right.

33:36 Speaker 1 Nobody stayed at home. Parents didn't have... had lost connection with children.

33:41 Speaker 2 Parents lost the connection with children?

33:43 Speaker 1 Yeah.

33:43 Speaker 2 I mean, that was deliberate. They wanted to se-

33:45 Speaker 1 Well-

33:45 Speaker 2 They wanted to separate the generations.

33:46 Speaker 1 No, even the generations, one decided the way we live is no good, to have a king is no good. We'll become a communist. One decided the way we live, um, the Haskalah movement had had very bad re- results. Uh, they had bad results for us. They have brainwashed the Frum youth that Yiddishkeit is no good. The Haskalah has had their success that you leave yeshiva and go to France and go to universities across the world.

34:23 Speaker 2 Mm.

34:23 Speaker 1 Go become... Hazzanim became opera singers.

34:26 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

34:27 Speaker 1 Because a yeshiva boy had the discipline of learning, had the dis- discipline of developing the brain, and they persuaded them all to give up Yiddishkeit.

34:41 Speaker 2 And as a result?

34:42 Speaker 1 Pardon?

34:43 Speaker 2 And as a result?

34:44 Speaker 1 As a result, the yeshivas became empty. So by the time the communists came, they didn't even have such a hard job.

34:52 Speaker 2 Mm.

34:54 Speaker 1 They had, 'cause some wouldn't budge.

34:57 Speaker 2 Right.

34:57 Speaker 1 And they started imprisoning yeshivas that kept bochurim. They started eradicating the... But a lot of the work of the Haskalah has penetrated people already.

35:11 Speaker 2 So when, when the communists took over, uh, your brothers... your uncles, I'm sorry, your uncles, Hendel and Mendel, they were still in the yeshiva, so still just your mother and her mother together?

35:21 Speaker 1 Um, the yeshivas went from place to place.

35:25 Speaker 2 Right.

35:26 Speaker 1 They already got married. It was already... My mother was already married 1920. It, it didn't happen overnight, but what happened overnight is in 1927 when the Rebbe was arrested, the Friediker Rebbe was arrested and sent away, and there was just this nucleus, this small group of Lubavitch Hasidim that held up Yiddishkeit.

35:54 Speaker 2 Mm.

35:56 Speaker 1 And they were very strong. Hendel and Mendel were very strong in this. And my father, and there was the story of the 10, um, people that made a, a shvua, the Rebbe was one of them, that whatever will happens, they give up their lives. They will fight for it. They're not giving up Yiddishkeit. And when my parents got engaged, my father, a bocher, he was already in prison. I didn't tell you about that story. You want to hear?

36:30 Speaker 2 You can tell me now.

36:31 Speaker 1 So he was in prison. And my brother, my uncle Mendel, Feter Mendel, call him, was a bocher in yeshiva. And Zalman Serebranski, who married the other sister, went to Australia. They were three very strong, committed bochurim to do the Rebbe's work. So he made a shidduch between my mother and my father. He made a shidduch between Zalman Serebranski and Bracha, who went to Australia.

37:05 Speaker 2 But why, but why... My question is, your, your mother is, is not in Tekhetririm. Your mother's not in that- ... uh, intense, like you said earlier, preparation for communism. She's just the daughter of a, of a storekeeper. Uh, of course, Lubavitchers, but for all appearances, regular people who are not ins- deep inside Tenchietmuim. Why is she ready to get engaged to not only a bachur who's intense clearly, but already in prison? Why, why would, why does she choose that way of life?

37:40 Speaker 1 You're amazing. Can you cut that off?

37:43 Speaker 2 C- cut what off? The sec- the fact you said I'm amazing? Yeah, that I can cut off.

37:47 Speaker 1 You are just amazing.

37:49 Speaker 2 Yeah.

37:49 Speaker 1 You are so sharp.

37:51 Speaker 2 Okay, we'll cut all this out.

37:53 Speaker 1 But no, you're so sharp. You're really a great man.

37:59 Speaker 2 Thank you.

37:59 Speaker 1 And I would like you to know that you're very great.

38:02 Speaker 2 Thank you. All right.

38:05 Speaker 1 Because this is spot on the question.

38:09 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

38:14 Speaker 1 There were very few people who would marry a boy like my father. I... Yeah. So I'll tell you the story. It's just amazing. When my mother stayed at home with her mother, there was no one friend she could have. My grandmother orchestrated it. She found a school at the other end of Kharkov. There was a private French school. They hated Jews, and my mother had a very Jewish accent, and she looked Jewish like nobody else.

38:59 Speaker 2 Hmm.

39:01 Speaker 1 And her Russian pronunciation was Jewish, and they hated Jews. My grandmother found this an appropriate school for my mother, 'cause the biggest danger was to have friends. They would take you either to communism, to Zionism, to Yiddishism, to hascalut, everything away from God, and it was very dangerous. So she sent her there, and that school charged a lot of money. A lot. And she paid all the money, and that guy loved the money, and she made sure that nobody hurt my mother, but nobody ever invited her to their house either. And that was great. But where did she take to give my mother ?

39:57 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

39:58 Speaker 1 So she had... Once a year, she went to see Rebbetzin Rivkah in Lubavitch, Tishrei, and she took my mother with her.

40:07 Speaker 2 Rebbetzin Rivkah was?

40:10 Speaker 1 Reb- the Rebbe Rashab's mother.

40:12 Speaker 2 Mother, right.

40:14 Speaker 1 And Rebbetzin Rivkah would entertain them.

40:18 Speaker 2 Where did she have a relationship with Rebbetzin Rivkah from?

40:20 Speaker 1 Because her mother, Rebbetzin, uh, her, her mother, Rochel Leah-

40:24 Speaker 2 Right

40:25 Speaker 1 ... had a c- close relationship with the Rebbe's house.

40:28 Speaker 2 I see.

40:29 Speaker 1 She used to be a winemaker.

40:32 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

40:32 Speaker 1 And she used to bring the wine for the Rebbe's house.

40:36 Speaker 2 Okay.

40:37 Speaker 1 And Rebbetzin and my grandmother's mother, Rochel Leah, was a very educated Jewish woman, girl.

40:47 Speaker 2 Mm.

40:48 Speaker 1 And she was involved in teaching women that they should learn.

40:54 Speaker 2 Already back then?

40:55 Speaker 1 Back then. That was her, uh, mission in life.

40:59 Speaker 2 Hmm.

41:00 Speaker 1 That women should learn. So she would go to... She had a close relationship with the Rebbe's home, so she introduced my grandmother. And my mother came from Kharkov, all dressed very nice. Spoiled little girl from Kharkov, not... And in Lubavitch, there was very big poverty.

41:31 Speaker 2 Right.

41:32 Speaker 1 There was nothing. Why they didn't have money, I'll tell you another time. And the Rebbetzin Rivkah says to my mother, little girl of eight, "Would you marry a boy?" Look out of the window. His coat was torn, and he looked not well-kept, hungry. He looked a poor. She said, "Yes, but I know that when I'm older, I will not want to marry him, and that makes me cry."

42:07 Speaker 2 Hmm.

42:10 Speaker 1 So Rebbetzin Rivkah got up from her chair, and she went to my mother and put her hand on her head, on my mother's head, and she said, "I give you a bracha. You will marry such a boy, and you don't need to cry."

42:28 Speaker 2 Hmm.

42:28 Speaker 1 Now, why did she say that?

42:30 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

42:31 Speaker 1 Because she saw what was going on around her. All the educated, sophisticated young people were all becoming frei, and nobody would consider marry a ‹‹baton››, a yeshiva boy. It was out.

42:49 Speaker 2 Even within Lubavitch? Even like other Lubavitch-

42:52 Speaker 1 There was no Lubavitch. People just lived.

42:53 Speaker 2 I'm saying even other Lubavitch families.

42:55 Speaker 1 There was not Lubavitch families. People just lived.

42:59 Speaker 2 There was no such thing as a Lubavitch family back then?

43:01 Speaker 1 No. People lived on their own. The only place where they lived was in the shtetl. ... Frum people lived in a shtetl.

43:12 Speaker 2 Right.

43:12 Speaker 1 So she saw people come to my grandmother from, from homes, but then became sophisticated and they went to university.

43:22 Speaker 2 Right.

43:22 Speaker 1 And who would look at a Frum boy?

43:25 Speaker 2 Right.

43:26 Speaker 1 The Yiddishist Shalom Aleichem made fun of Frum people.

43:30 Speaker 2 Right.

43:30 Speaker 1 The Zionists made fun of Frum people. Halutzim.

43:35 Speaker 2 Right.

43:36 Speaker 1 And my mother would have been one of those people who would have been, uh, go to fight for Israel. That was her. And she... Then that's what she said.

43:49 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

43:51 Speaker 1 And that was, that was my mother.

43:58 Speaker 2 So cle-clearly she was... If she was already worried as a young girl that she would not be interested later. I mean, that story is so rich on so many levels, right? Because she was... That's what she wanted, but she also was concerned that she wouldn't want it.

44:15 Speaker 1 She understood that that's her nature.

44:18 Speaker 2 Right.

44:18 Speaker 1 But you live like the world lives.

44:20 Speaker 2 Right.

44:21 Speaker 1 And it's not the done thing to marry a boy like that.

44:24 Speaker 2 Right. It's a very honest reflection, right? It's a very honest reflection. It's also, it's also so interesting to think about a time when... 'Cause I guess growing up in yeshiva, where, you know, yeshiva, I grew up... I went to yeshiva that was Ten Chatzim, meaning it, it traces itself back to the original Ten Chatzim. And so you see the time of Ten Chatzim as almost like the, the best time of Lubavitch. But what you're saying is, is that maybe within Ten Chatzim it was the best time, but outside it, around it, everything was falling apart, right? No, even before the communist came.

45:05 Speaker 1 Yeah, years before it was falling apart.

45:07 Speaker 2 Everything, everything was falling apart. So like Lubavi- And I just asked you, like, what does it mean to be a Lubavitcher? You're like, there was no, like, Lubavitch as like a, as like a group, as a community. There's a Lubavitcher here, a Lubavitcher there. Every... The person identifies as a Lubavitcher. So it's so interesting that already back then there was... It wasn't like Ten Chatzim kind of solidified everything and now everything's okay. To the contrary, Ten Chatzim was almost an antidote to chaos. It was chaotic, right? Everybody's falling apart. It's such a different picture than, than I grew up with, and I think that story is also such a nice reflection of that because here is someone who knows what her aspiration is but isn't sure that she'll be able to live up to that aspiration. She wants to, she wants to marry that kind of person and build that kind of family, but will I be able to?

46:06 Speaker 1 No, she says she won't be able to.

46:07 Speaker 2 Right. Right, but that's, that's an honest, that's an honest understanding that my aspiration doesn't ne- Just because I aspire to something doesn't mean I'm gonna do it, right? Life is li- life is a challenge, in other words.

46:20 Speaker 1 You know, this is what's so beautiful for me to talk to you, because honesty was my mother's wow word.

46:30 Speaker 2 She was an honest person.

46:33 Speaker 1 She drove me crazy. Honesty.

46:36 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

46:37 Speaker 1 She couldn't live... Honesty was very, very important. And you pick it up. I can see from what I tell you, you pick it up.

46:50 Speaker 2 So, so let's, so let's move along a little bit. So, so your, your mother, your mother marries your father. He's already, he's already in-

46:57 Speaker 1 No, he's not married yet. They're not married yet. They've got to get engaged.

47:00 Speaker 2 They gotta get engaged. So we're skipping.

47:01 Speaker 1 That's an interesting story.

47:02 Speaker 2 We're, we're skipping, we're skipping. So that's-

47:04 Speaker 1 No, you can't skip that.

47:05 Speaker 2 One, one step at a time then. Let's not skip. Let's not skip. Go ahead.

47:12 Speaker 1 Because when she's about 20-

47:14 Speaker 2 Right

47:14 Speaker 1 ... and there was my father, who is not ready to get married yet.

47:20 Speaker 2 Right.

47:21 Speaker 1 He secretly sends her a message with Mendel, her brother. She should move out of Kharkov from her mother and go and live on her own in Moscow.

47:33 Speaker 2 Okay.

47:36 Speaker 1 Because there was somebody who wanted to marry my mother, a dentist, or I don't know whoever it was, and the rabbi had to keep her safe. So without a question, she went to live on her own and fend for herself and... But Mendel Futerfas lived in Moscow then.

47:58 Speaker 2 Hmm.

47:59 Speaker 1 So she... And then-

48:06 Speaker 2 So how did she get engaged?

48:07 Speaker 1 How did she get engaged?

48:09 Speaker 2 Mm.

48:09 Speaker 1 So one day, Mendel Futerfas tells her he has a shidduch for her. But how does he pers- how does he persuade her to marry a boy like my father from, uh, the, from the yeshiva? My father was in prison already, but they allowed my father to go out for the week of Pesach before they sentenced him. Oh no, they sentenced him to go to Siberia for four years.

48:49 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

48:49 Speaker 1 Because of his crime of making Chadura.

48:52 Speaker 2 Right.

48:54 Speaker 1 He was very active and very successful, so they arrested him. My father was a very charming, nice... People liked him a lot, and he got on very well with the officers, with the police, with the prison people. And he worked on it that they should allow him to do the most outrageous thing. He promised them he'll come back, but they should let him out for Pesach. He should be able to go for a week so he can keep Pesach.

49:38 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

49:39 Speaker 1 And they let him. Was very unusual. He could have run away.

49:45 Speaker 2 Right.

49:46 Speaker 1 But he didn't run away. They let him out, and he... Mendel arranged that they met Pesach. And my mother said if that's going to happen, she'll never meet anyone again like that without knowing whatever it is. They met, and they got engaged, and they knew that they would wait four years before they'd get married.

50:13 Speaker 2 Hmm.

50:16 Speaker 1 And the problem was she had a younger sister who got engaged to Zalman, the other friend of Mendel.

50:26 Speaker 2 Right.

50:27 Speaker 1 And everybody was very sorry for my mother that she's not engaged, and her sister is engaged, and they had to keep it a secret. And so for four years, she was in Moscow or Kharkov, and she waited, and she waited until Pesach. He was sentenced Pesach, right? Of the Pesach was four years. So the year before, in Elul, she took a train and went to Siberia, and they got married on Yud Elul. Hmm. And so my brother, Mendel, started his neshamah in this world in Siberia.

51:18 Speaker 2 Why-- If she was waiting already, why didn't she just wait till the end? At some point, she said-

51:24 Speaker 1 Well, you don't know enough about life.

51:26 Speaker 2 Uh, well, she was waiting. At, at some point, she just had enough.

51:30 Speaker 1 She at every point, she had waited enough. She wouldn't wait an extra day.

51:36 Speaker 2 Right. So they allowed... Th-then suddenly they allowed-

51:38 Speaker 1 There was a very, very strong relationship between the two.

51:43 Speaker 2 Did they meet up in between then during the go... So how did they communicate?

51:47 Speaker 1 He was in prison.

51:48 Speaker 2 So how did they communicate?

51:49 Speaker 1 There were letters occ-occasionally.

51:52 Speaker 2 So he came out of prison, and that's when she went to-

51:55 Speaker 1 No. She ca- she came to him in Siberia. It's not a prison.

52:00 Speaker 2 Right. So he was first in prison-

52:01 Speaker 1 In Siberia exile.

52:02 Speaker 2 So first it was prison, then exile.

52:04 Speaker 1 When he finished prison in Moscow, in Kharkov, he went to Siberia, and Siberia is exile.

52:13 Speaker 2 So, so the-

52:14 Speaker 1 He-

52:14 Speaker 2 I'm just... I'm not understanding. The prison was f- the full four-year term, and then he was sent to Siberia?

52:18 Speaker 1 No, no. The prison finished, and he was sent to four-year term in exile.

52:24 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

52:26 Speaker 1 And there is, uh, a lot of suffering.

52:31 Speaker 2 So they got married right at the beginning of this ex-

52:34 Speaker 1 Elul

52:34 Speaker 2 ... of the exile?

52:35 Speaker 1 Pardon?

52:36 Speaker 2 When did they get married?

52:38 Speaker 1 Of the, the last year, like six months later, she could go. They left Siberia.

52:46 Speaker 2 Oh, so they got married towards the end of his we-

52:50 Speaker 1 Towards the end of his sentence.

52:52 Speaker 2 And she lived there with him the last six months?

52:53 Speaker 1 She was there with him.

52:55 Speaker 2 Wow.

52:57 Speaker 1 But there, if she became pregnant and had the baby, she didn't have to have the baby there.

53:01 Speaker 2 I understand.

53:02 Speaker 1 The baby was born-

53:03 Speaker 2 Yes, I know

53:03 Speaker 1 ... already here.

53:04 Speaker 2 So now I understand. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's so, it's so amazing to think about how people beg-began their families under these kind of circumstances, right? It's not just like people, uh, the nature of people. It's, it's, it's... I think it's deeper than that, uh, you know, um, 'cause she chose to marry him knowing what he was getting... She chose to get engaged to him knowing what he's getting, what he's getting into. She could have said, "It's not for me." And, and somehow these people decided that it's better to marry this person and bring up a family with this person in this situation, in this world, than to try to take the easy way out. And she could have taken the easy way out is the point, right? She could have-

53:52 Speaker 1 Well, there is-

53:52 Speaker 2 She could have found, she could have found somebody else

53:54 Speaker 1 ... also such a thing of feeling for people. There is more to life than just eating and drinking, than-

54:00 Speaker 2 But why did she meet him in the first place?

54:02 Speaker 1 Pardon?

54:02 Speaker 2 Why did she meet him in the first place knowing-

54:04 Speaker 1 Well, she met him in the first place because ideally, remember what you said to the rebbetzin, that's the life she want.

54:09 Speaker 2 But there were other hoyre, weren't there? There were other bochurim.

54:15 Speaker 1 Can't answer you.

54:16 Speaker 2 Right. I'm just saying that-

54:17 Speaker 1 It's not... It also has to be a person who their level of, uh, relationship was very, very unique and united to these levels. There's levels. Not easy life. She didn't have easy life, but she had a living life.

54:47 Speaker 2 So, so s- they get, they get married, they move back from exile. Uh, so around when is that? That is right before W-World War II, or you still have a few years?

54:57 Speaker 1 Not World War II. No way.

54:59 Speaker 2 This is when?

54:59 Speaker 1 Um, 1927, 1930.

55:03 Speaker 2 Okay. So there's another... So for 10 years, where did they live before they moved?

55:07 Speaker 1 They lived all over the place. They had to always run away from the police. They were... I... He... I don't know if he was always in prison, but he managed to escape prison. My father had a very, very colorful life, and my mother provided everything. I asked my mother, "How did you give your children such a chassidish life? I mean, where did you learn? Where did you know? And why did you always satisfy your husband?"

55:37 Speaker 2 Right.

55:37 Speaker 1 She said, "My husband was sleeping in the parks on a bench. He couldn't come home. He was in prison, and I shouldn't do what he really wanted."

55:50 Speaker 2 Right.

55:51 Speaker 1 How can that be?

55:52 Speaker 2 Right.

55:53 Speaker 1 Because the actual learning of whatever it was came from my father, but the understanding of what is a Chassid was my mother.

56:06 Speaker 2 Hmm. What do you mean by that?

56:11 Speaker 1 Well, at the age of eight, she tells you the story. At the age of eight, she told you that she wishes to marry a boy. That is her person, but she knows the circumstances in life, you don't do it.

56:30 Speaker 2 Right.

56:31 Speaker 1 It doesn't happen.

56:33 Speaker 2 Right. So almost because she is outside of the world of Tench Etim, she's able to appreciate the, the, the difference.

56:40 Speaker 1 And not because even though she is outside, I would say.

56:44 Speaker 2 Right. But you said, you said she underst- she appreciated what it means to be a Hasid, in a way.

56:49 Speaker 1 Yeah.

56:49 Speaker 2 'Cause your father was living it. She saw it and could compare it to other... Is that what you meant?

56:54 Speaker 1 Yeah. She was idealistic. She, she didn't think she was very clever or she, she was special or anything like this. She was real.

57:05 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. So, so you're, you're running around the place. Uh, were you born during that period of running around the place in, in, in, in Russia?

57:16 Speaker 1 It's interesting you ask that question. So we, the three of us, your grandfather, I, and my brother, Yisroel, were born in two and a half years, and that's very unusual in Russia. The wi- the midwife said, "You're still here?" Meaning you, you didn't go home from the last baby.

57:39 Speaker 2 Yeah.

57:39 Speaker 1 You know, people didn't have more than one baby there. And we were born just before the war broke out.

57:48 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

57:49 Speaker 1 Very most important things come in the most, um, un- uh, can be inconvenient times.

58:01 Speaker 2 Right. Everybody has their children right before they need to move.

58:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

58:07 Speaker 2 So, uh, so when, when do you start remembering your childhood? Is it on the run, or is it already in Tashkent?

58:16 Speaker 1 I remember leaving Moscow. Like, I remember. Tashkent is what I am, what I do know. But we were always on the run. My father was always a wanted man.

58:27 Speaker 2 In Tashkent also?

58:29 Speaker 1 Ev- even when we land- left Tashkent, we left as a wanted man.

58:35 Speaker 2 So the, the... Even during the war, the Russians are fighting the Nazis. They have their hands full with the Nazis, they were still, they were still after you.

58:43 Speaker 1 They are hassling Lubavitch.

58:44 Speaker 2 Still harassing Lubavitch.

58:46 Speaker 1 Yeah.

58:48 Speaker 2 Hmm. So, so what was like... What was life like in Tashkent? Was it... H- how do you remember it? Was it, uh, was it a, a difficult time, a sad time, a happy time? One second. Let me just-

59:05 Speaker 1 See, depends what age you were.

59:15 Speaker 2 Okay. Depends what age.

59:17 Speaker 1 That's another... That's, that already you can... This you will, uh... How long do you have here?

59:24 Speaker 2 As long as you want.

59:25 Speaker 1 I know, but we can have a break. How long do you...?

59:30 Speaker 2 Do you want a break?

59:31 Speaker 1 I'm just trying to think. Um, it's a different era now. It's different and not different. You see, my father always spoke how lucky he was in Lubavitch.

59:47 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

59:47 Speaker 1 That's how I was brought up. Because of Lubavitch, he's saved four times the Malach Hamos, death.

59:55 Speaker 2 What do you mean?

59:57 Speaker 1 I didn't tell you how my father left Drohitch to go to yeshiva. That's a very interesting episode. So first, he left his home and never went back again. He couldn't travel from, uh, Po- from Russia to Drohitch. And when he wanted to go, the war broke out, but he'd have him before the war. So what was the question I'm ask- answering?

1:00:31 Speaker 2 What, what was, what was it like in Tashkent growing up?

1:00:36 Speaker 1 Right. So that's a very interesting... In Tashkent, for me, it was great. I didn't have what to eat sometimes, but it wasn't my worry. I knew that there will be food. We went to sleep, there was nothing to eat, but my father would come home at night, would not come home without bread, and we'd wake up, and we would have like a midnight feast every time.

1:01:10 Speaker 2 In Tashkent?

1:01:11 Speaker 1 In Tashkent.

1:01:12 Speaker 2 How did he manage that? You, you have no idea.

1:01:16 Speaker 1 He sold whatever we had, every time something else, and he'd go and go and go, and until he finds bread, he didn't come home. My mother would tell him, "Let them sleep. They're asleep." But he said, "They know that they, they're hungry." He couldn't bear anyone hungry. We'd wake up, and we had the ball. So I, as a child that didn't know all the trauma of how to get and everything else, wasn't worried by it. I had a friend who did... Her father was in the war, and the mother went to work, and she would stand by the window, I have a picture in my eyes, waiting for her mother to come home. I never had to do that.

1:02:04 Speaker 2 Right.

1:02:06 Speaker 1 I didn't have. I was never left I was always of trauma, and my mo- uh, my mother will leave me, and I'll be left by myself. That was my fear. I lived with the fear. So... And I saw more or less my father quite a lot because he couldn't really go away.

1:02:25 Speaker 2 Right.

1:02:25 Speaker 1 He couldn't travel. But-

1:02:28 Speaker 2 Was your grandmother, Mariashi, with you there too at the time?

1:02:30 Speaker 1 At that time, he wa- she was in Samarkand.

1:02:33 Speaker 2 With?

1:02:35 Speaker 1 Zalman.

1:02:35 Speaker 2 With the Sorotzkins.

1:02:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. 'Cause my father was on the run a lot. And in Samarkand, life was more settled than in Tashkent.

1:02:47 Speaker 2 Did you understand back then, like, that your father was a wanted man and why he was a wanted man? Was that something that you understood as a child?

1:02:55 Speaker 1 I lived with it, so I thought that's how all fathers are.

1:02:59 Speaker 2 So did it... Because I mean, it must be so difficult for a child to... Like how did you understand that? Like, your-- "My father's wanted by the government-

1:03:09 Speaker 1 Yeah, but I, I don't know

1:03:09 Speaker 2 ... but it's not because he did a crime."

1:03:11 Speaker 1 But life was you don't understand anything. You wake up, you, you, you grow up. You don't understand anything, why somebody's going to work, why somebody is this. I understood I was privileged that I had a father and my mother didn't go out to work.

1:03:28 Speaker 2 Right. No, no, I understand that. My question-

1:03:29 Speaker 1 You see-

1:03:30 Speaker 2 My question is more if you understood that... 'Cause your, your father was being persecuted for, for-

1:03:35 Speaker 1 You see now, Avremel, your grandfather, understood more than I did.

1:03:40 Speaker 2 Right. No, that I underst- He was older than you.

1:03:43 Speaker 1 But besides older, his mind was along with Mendel and Berel, and they didn't like that he was interfering with their life. But his understanding of the world was their age.

1:03:56 Speaker 2 I see. So for them it was a different... They understood a little bit more the, the, the dark side of what was going on.

1:04:03 Speaker 1 I w- I'll tell you what. They used to have meetings in our house.

1:04:06 Speaker 2 Who's they?

1:04:07 Speaker 1 Uh, my father with his friend, discuss the war, discuss Heyder, discuss whatever it is. I was allowed to stay in the room, but your father couldn't stay because y- children weren't allowed to hear.

1:04:20 Speaker 2 My grandfather.

1:04:21 Speaker 1 Your grandfather. Your grandfather would send me in, "What's Reyden say?" Sit under the table, run out and tell them.

1:04:31 Speaker 2 So you were-

1:04:32 Speaker 1 He was-

1:04:32 Speaker 2 You were their spy.

1:04:33 Speaker 1 Yeah. He was involved in a much older way.

1:04:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:04:41 Speaker 1 I think I need a little break.

1:04:43 Speaker 2 After close to an hour and a half of talking, my great aunt told me she needed a break, which is understandable, and, uh, we went back into the kitchen to continue talking a little bit. In general, I, I was at her home for quite a few hours talking on and off the camera. Um, but when she was ready, we came back on, uh, to rec- to continue the podcast. Um, I wanted to move on from Tashkent and talk about what life was after the war, but she had a few thoughts that she wanted to finish off with from Tashkent. Uh, the first few seconds are a bit shaky. The audio's a bit shaky, but afterwards, uh, it goes back to normal. I apologize for that, uh, for that technical difficulty.

1:05:21 Speaker 1 For me, Tashkent was the happiest place. I had parents, I had my friend, but we had to sneak out. I went to sleep. That's how we lived in Tashkent. I went to sleep at night. I got up in the morning. The room was empty.

1:05:39 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:05:39 Speaker 1 Just my bed, empty. Not a scrap of paper, nothing. Get dressed, and the car was waiting, and we left. Nobody knew that we were leaving. I met my friend 30 years later when she left Russia, and she came to Eretz Yisrael. She came to London. She said for a year-- for months, she would come and cry how I just disappeared. I cried for her as well because we were such good friends.

1:06:15 Speaker 2 So just one day, Tashkent was over? One day the war was over-

1:06:18 Speaker 1 One morning I got up, was gone.

1:06:22 Speaker 2 Tashkent?

1:06:22 Speaker 1 Tashkent.

1:06:23 Speaker 2 The, that whole world?

1:06:25 Speaker 1 The whole world was over, and it took me months to recover. Nobody was allowed to know that I'm going. If I would have told my friend that we are moving, it would have been dangerous for us.

1:06:39 Speaker 2 Mm. Do you-

1:06:39 Speaker 1 And that was the greatness of my mother.

1:06:41 Speaker 2 Do you want me to move the crutch for you? I don't know if you-

1:06:44 Speaker 1 I'll hit you if you start with me.

1:06:46 Speaker 2 No, it's gonna, it's gonna... Oh, fair enough. It's good to have a weapon of self-defense. Um, so l-let's, let's move, let's move, let's move on from Tashkent. Let's move on from Tashkent. Um, so I... And I think we skip a little bit 'cause we're not gonna cover the whole story, but l-let's skip to moving to England. What, what I'm, what I'm curious about is, you know, you grow up with this father. I understand you said earlier you were only a few years old, and so you didn't really think about your father.

1:07:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. So you were very clear before. All my ears went down.

1:07:18 Speaker 2 Okay. So I'll start talking louder. Uh, you were talking, you were talking earlier about how your father... A-about how you were younger, so you weren't thinking about your father being, uh, wanted by the government. That was just a fact of life, what was going on, right? Um, but you were in Russia. You were in the Soviet Union. You must have understood that something was afoot.

1:07:41 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:07:43 Speaker 2 Uh, you come... It took-- I know it took a few stops, but eventually you end up in England.

1:07:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:07:49 Speaker 2 How, how does a girl who was born under the, the shadow of the Soviet Union see this new world of the West, of England, of general, of quote, quote unquote, "the free world"? How is that viewed by you? How is that viewed by Lubavitch in general? Do you remember what the feelings were about this new era? Because a few years earlier, Lubavitch wasn't planning on being in that part of the world. They felt it was not good. Right?

1:08:19 Speaker 1 Which part wasn't good?

1:08:20 Speaker 2 The Free World, the, the, the treife Medina, America, England was not-

1:08:24 Speaker 1 Was not good.

1:08:26 Speaker 2 Lubavitch didn't go there until they had to.

1:08:29 Speaker 1 It was always good.

1:08:31 Speaker 2 No. Yeah?

1:08:33 Speaker 1 It wasn't good earlier on. It was... There were dangers in... Because they would drop Yiddishkeit.

1:08:40 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:41 Speaker 1 Right. But leaving Russia, Tashkent was we were-- we as children were in Mitzrayim, and now we're getting out of Mitzrayim. It was amazing.

1:08:54 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:55 Speaker 1 So crossing the border, first of all, was the stages. It-- we left 1946, we arrived here 1949.

1:09:04 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:09:05 Speaker 1 Three years of my life when I was eight, and I came here 11.

1:09:11 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:09:12 Speaker 1 It's a very big thing. So it was a gradual... We came to remind me some stories. So we came to Poland, the first from Lviv, we arrived in Poland. That was a wonderful experience. We came to Poland, and we walked out from Russia, we walked out Shabbos. We left the lacht on the table. Everything. We could wear a few clothes and a bag of food. We must have taken some sheets and li- and candles. I don't know where we got that again, 'cause we never missed a Shabbos. Friday night there was always a tablecloth. And we came to Poland, and there was a bull. We had a wonderful time. They hire... They rented or they gave us a old school building.

1:10:13 Speaker 2 Who's us?

1:10:15 Speaker 1 The whole Lubavitch. That's when we became a community. The whole Lubavitch community.

1:10:19 Speaker 2 That's when Lubavitch became a community?

1:10:22 Speaker 1 That's when a kibbutz we were called.

1:10:24 Speaker 2 You were called a kibbutz?

1:10:26 Speaker 1 Yeah. And that's where I-

1:10:28 Speaker 2 One second, one second, one second. So Lubavitch you're describing until then was a bunch of individuals flung around the corners of the Soviet Union.

1:10:38 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:10:38 Speaker 2 And-

1:10:39 Speaker 1 A-actually, when we came to Tashkent, when we evacuated, it became a Lubavitch community.

1:10:44 Speaker 2 Lubavitch kibbutz. Who called you a kibbutz? It was a joke that you-

1:10:47 Speaker 1 Kibbutz. No, no, because when we left Russia-

1:10:50 Speaker 2 Right

1:10:51 Speaker 1 ... Let, let's go back a little bit to-

1:10:54 Speaker 2 Okay

1:10:54 Speaker 1 ... Russia. When we came to Tashkent, then we became a Lubavitch community.

1:11:00 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:11:02 Speaker 1 And we had people from Poland who came to Tashkent because they could escape, evacuate to Tashkent, and there was no Frum people besides Lubavitch.

1:11:13 Speaker 2 In Tashkent?

1:11:15 Speaker 1 In Russia.

1:11:16 Speaker 2 In Russia.

1:11:17 Speaker 1 Anyone who was Frum came to Lubavitch.

1:11:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:22 Speaker 1 Finished.

1:11:23 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:24 Speaker 1 Everything.

1:11:24 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:25 Speaker 1 Nothing you can imagine that. A whole Crown Heights, a whole... I mean, a whole Boro Park whole Monsey, Shmonsey Ponsey, everybody.

1:11:36 Speaker 2 Gone. Right.

1:11:39 Speaker 1 Anyone who wanted to be Frum, Yontel Erlech and all the songs that-

1:11:43 Speaker 2 So I see what you're saying. You're saying that before there was enough Frum, uh, life that Lubavitchers had kind of gotten... Were included in this larger picture.

1:11:53 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:11:53 Speaker 2 But then when the picture fell apart-

1:11:56 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:11:56 Speaker 2 ... all that was left standing was Lubavitch. So that's when Lubavitch began to feel like a community.

1:12:02 Speaker 1 Yeah. There was nobody.

1:12:04 Speaker 2 Very interesting. Very interesting.

1:12:05 Speaker 1 We had Yontel Erlech.

1:12:08 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:09 Speaker 1 You know, he's the singer.

1:12:10 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:10 Speaker 1 We had some very rich people here, Freshwater.

1:12:14 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:14 Speaker 1 Uh, the Bobovers, uh, whatever.

1:12:16 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:17 Speaker 1 They came to Tashkent.

1:12:19 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:19 Speaker 1 The Polish were allowed to come.

1:12:21 Speaker 2 Right.

1:12:23 Speaker 1 If you want to be Frum, you wanted Shabbos, you wanted the matzah, you wanted the mikveh, you wanted the shul. Nothing. Russia, gone.

1:12:34 Speaker 2 Okay. So, so you're... So who, who calls you a kibbutz? Is that like a joke?

1:12:39 Speaker 1 When... No. When we left Russia, when we left Poland, the Israeli... The Americans, the Joint sent parcels and money and food for us, and we arrived to the town Pocking-

1:12:58 Speaker 2 Pocking

1:12:58 Speaker 1 ... in Germany.

1:12:59 Speaker 2 In Germany.

1:13:01 Speaker 1 And we were wegschut in Austria. We came to Vienna. There in Vienna, the Zionists sent Haganah, their soldiers, to protect us, to let us cross the border, to cheat, you know?

1:13:23 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:23 Speaker 1 It was dangerous.

1:13:24 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:25 Speaker 1 So the Haganah came to help us.

1:13:28 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:13:29 Speaker 1 And they taught us a song, Ados Hamikdal, Yesh Bam HaGadol and Shalom Aleichem. They s- taught us these songs, and my father did not like it. But they called us kibbutz.

1:13:46 Speaker 2 They called you a Kibbutz Lubavitch?

1:13:49 Speaker 1 Yeah, that was the kibbutz. And they tried to bring in these, um, Zionist things.

1:13:58 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:13:59 Speaker 1 Then they came... We moved to, um... Nobody ever asked me about, so I haven't really practiced it. Then we moved to, um, DP, what was it called? Camp refugees, and there was like... It was an army camp with barracks, and each one was given a place to, to sleep there. We had settled there and came a parcel from the Joint, all food, and Zionists came to sing with us all songs, and they'll teach us football, and they'll make a show. On Shabbos we'll play football. That wasn't very welcome. Then the Joint sent us chocolates, and the Haganah people were giving out the chocolates.

1:15:02 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:15:03 Speaker 1 And you line up to get your chocolate. "Where are you going?" "To America to see the Rebbe." No chocolate. We didn't get chocolate because we said we're going to the Rebbe. So someone said, "Don't say you're going to the Rebbe." "No, I'll say I'll go to the Rebbe, and go get chocolate." And we didn't get chocolate.

1:15:26 Speaker 2 Why were they obj-- Oh, 'cause you said you're going to America and not going to-

1:15:29 Speaker 1 We're going to the Rebbe

1:15:30 Speaker 2 ... and not Eretz Yisrael.

1:15:31 Speaker 1 And not Eretz Yisrael. And yet-

1:15:33 Speaker 2 So, so, so did you see at that time, did you... I, I, and I understand you're a girl, so maybe you're not thinking of it in these terms. I mean, uh, that you're a young girl. Uh, an older girl, of course, would think of it, but a, a younger girl, um, did you think of England and America as... What was it? Is it that's where the Rebbe lives? Did you see, see it as, like, that's a place where people are free? Do you see it as a place where people are not religious? Like, like, what was the thinking of-

1:16:00 Speaker 1 Our thinking was just to go to the Rebbe.

1:16:04 Speaker 2 That's America.

1:16:05 Speaker 1 The goyische world didn't, didn't worry us.

1:16:08 Speaker 2 Didn't worry you.

1:16:10 Speaker 1 No. And then-

1:16:13 Speaker 2 If you just-

1:16:14 Speaker 1 ... the parcels arrived

1:16:15 Speaker 2 ... come closer to the mic.

1:16:15 Speaker 1 The parcels were arriving from the Joint, and a big parcel came for the girls of this camp.

1:16:26 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:16:27 Speaker 1 And we opened the box, and it's a parcel from the Rebbe. "Open the school for girls now." And there are siddurim, chumashim, Sifrei Noam, Unzer Buch. And we quickly sat down and opened the school for girls. The boys came from Tashkent with their gemaras.

1:16:50 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:50 Speaker 1 But nobody took care of the girls. The Rebbe made us... I remember the first writing books that arrived.

1:16:57 Speaker 2 The, and this is the Frierdiker Rebbe, right?

1:16:59 Speaker 1 Our Rebbe was in charge of the schools.

1:17:01 Speaker 2 Oh, so... Okay, okay. Good, good to, good to clarify.

1:17:05 Speaker 1 The Rebbe was in charge.

1:17:06 Speaker 2 Right.

1:17:07 Speaker 1 And this parcel came, and we said the first time we sat down on a chair like a classroom. There were amongst us a few women who were learned.

1:17:18 Speaker 2 So this was the first time you were having a semblance of normalcy-

1:17:22 Speaker 1 As a class of girls

1:17:24 Speaker 2 ... in your life.

1:17:25 Speaker 1 In my life. Was very impressive. I was one of the very few girls of my age who could read the Siddur.

1:17:34 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:17:34 Speaker 1 I made my business to find out, asking my grandmother what does this Chumash mean and that, what, what things mean. So I could already daven, and I could already, um, maybe translate some Chumash.

1:17:49 Speaker 2 So you... S- so, so this is where this is?

1:17:52 Speaker 1 This was in Austria.

1:17:54 Speaker 2 Austria. So after Pucking.

1:17:56 Speaker 1 No, there was Pucking one place and Austria another.

1:17:59 Speaker 2 Okay. So when did you come to England?

1:18:02 Speaker 1 So then we went to France.

1:18:04 Speaker 2 Right.

1:18:04 Speaker 1 And there was already... Bis Rivke established a school.

1:18:08 Speaker 2 Right.

1:18:08 Speaker 1 And I went to school there for two years. And then I came to England in 1949. France we came 1947, and here 1949. And the Rebbe sent us here, wrote to my father, "Go to London and build a school for girls."

1:18:27 Speaker 2 So that was your father's original shlichus in London, was to build a school for girls. Did, did your... Did you see any, any difficulty for your father adjusting to, to this new... Like, in a way, like, all... up to all this time, he's fighting the Soviets, and it's, it's a different, it's an entirely different set of circumstances. And he come here. Was it... Did you see any change in him, or was just the same s- same person?

1:18:57 Speaker 1 This is the first time we met Jewish people that were not Lubavitch.

1:19:03 Speaker 2 Oh, very interesting.

1:19:04 Speaker 1 It was such an interesting experience. It blew me.

1:19:10 Speaker 2 Right.

1:19:11 Speaker 1 We come to London. They're all this area were Frum people. No. They... Jewish people lived there, but none of them were Frum.

1:19:20 Speaker 2 In Stanford Hill?

1:19:21 Speaker 1 In Stanford Hill.

1:19:22 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:19:23 Speaker 1 But-

1:19:24 Speaker 2 Where did the Frum Yidden live?

1:19:25 Speaker 1 Pardon?

1:19:26 Speaker 2 Where did the Frum Yidden live?

1:19:28 Speaker 1 As many as there were lived here, all in Golders Green.

1:19:31 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:19:32 Speaker 1 When we moved here, it was so phenomenal. We were on top of Satmar. Satmar did not come out in public that they were Satmar. It was a secret. So we were on the attic floor. And then there was sukkahs, and they built a sukkah. And they made a roof on it. Oh, we were shocked. And then they had little scraps of paper which they decorated, and every year they stuck it on the wall. And I said, "Why do you do that? And when did you do-" "We kept it from last year." "From last year? But Mashiach could come this year. You keep these little papers?" We thought it was hilarious. In Tashkent, my father came out of sukkahs with three boards and nails, stuck it together. We had the sukkah. Here, till this day, they build a sukkah, the storms won't break it. So strong, and the roof, and everything. So that shocked us. But here was a Frum-- There was F- Berels came in Paris. He says, "You know what? I saw a Yid, he never heard of the word Lubavitch. Can you imagine? We have to change the world." That's where we met Yidden

1:21:04 Speaker 2 So you met Yidden. So, so interesting. So you, you met Yidden in, in this new world, which I'm thinking of it as a place where you met-- where you meet non-Yidden, and you're saying that that's actually where you met Yidden for the first time.

1:21:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, first time I met Yidden.

1:21:21 Speaker 2 How did that change your thinking?

1:21:23 Speaker 1 I was so... I was shocked at what, how, how I met. So I went, I met-- I went to the frumme school in Ceil a'Teirum. My father didn't stop me to go to a Misnagdish school. It wasn't Misnagdish, Ceil a'Teirum, that was the frummeist. But as soon as 15, he took me out. And I just saw that they frum, but, you know. And Basie put the story right. Basie, my sister, your moth- your father's sister, came home one day. She was seven. She said, "You know, Fraulein, I was going to school today, and I was thinking, 'Hashem made such a big world, but most of the people are Goyim.' Then amongst the Goyim, he makes-- made Yidden, but most of them are not frum. And then I go to school, that's a lot of all of them are frum, but I'm the only one of Lubavitch. I am so lucky. I must try and go and tell my friends to be Lub-Lubavitch as well." She was seven years old.

1:22:39 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:22:41 Speaker 1 She had the brain. She was phenomenal.

1:22:46 Speaker 2 Was it interesting to see how your parents interacted with this new reality of other frum Yidden that they-

1:22:53 Speaker 1 Yeah. So my father had the shlechas to come here and bring Hasidims-

1:22:58 Speaker 2 Right

1:22:58 Speaker 1 ... to a place that the people came frum people from Poland, from-- Not so much Poland. The Yekke is a community very strong here.

1:23:08 Speaker 2 Right.

1:23:09 Speaker 1 The Yekkes came before, uh, before the war. And he went to teach everybody Hasidims. How do you go into a frum person and tell them about Yiddishkeit where they put on tefillin? He used to go collecting money, a meshulach. And one of them said, "You know, very strange about your father. He is the only meshulach that comes and asks me what I need. How am I?" A meshulach comes, he says he needs this, this, this, this. Give me, give me. And he takes out and wants to know how am I, who is healthy, who needs a shidduch. That's what my father did.

1:23:55 Speaker 2 Did-

1:23:56 Speaker 1 But to go in, you go in asking for money.

1:23:58 Speaker 2 Did it bother you, did it bother you to see your father go from this almost like warrior in Russia to going and to become a meshulach just collecting a few dollars here, a few dollars, a few dollars here, a few dollars there?

1:24:12 Speaker 1 No, he came to collect money for the Rebbe, so not a few dollars. He came to talk to the people that the Rebbe needs money.

1:24:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. But it's not-

1:24:21 Speaker 1 And the Schneersohn of Lubavitch, they knew very well.

1:24:24 Speaker 2 But it's still not the same as what he was doing in Russia, no? Did it feel-

1:24:27 Speaker 1 No, it was a different thing.

1:24:29 Speaker 2 So did it-

1:24:29 Speaker 1 He came to England, he had to do what he does in England. He had to come to England and find all the people and write reports to the Rebbe how they are. By the time we came to England, my-- the Rebbe already had a list of a few hundred people here in London.

1:24:47 Speaker 2 No, right, right. I, I was-- I know, I know this may be a very silly question while I'm thinking it through, but I, I think it's still worth asking. Like, a lot of times you'll have people, you have, for example, people that go to war, soldiers that go to war, and they come home, and they can never adjust back to normal life-

1:25:05 Speaker 1 Right

1:25:05 Speaker 2 ... because e-even who wants to be-

1:25:07 Speaker 1 They-

1:25:07 Speaker 2 ... in a war zone their whole life? But once they see that and they experience that-

1:25:11 Speaker 1 They can't

1:25:12 Speaker 2 ... they can't live a normal life. Did you ever feel that with your father after he had g- been running away for years and years, and suddenly he's in a place where he doesn't have to run away anymore? Did-

1:25:22 Speaker 1 Very interesting question. But no.

1:25:26 Speaker 2 You didn't see that?

1:25:27 Speaker 1 Hasn't changed nothing.

1:25:28 Speaker 2 He didn't change. And how did your mother take to England?

1:25:36 Speaker 1 Oh, my mother.

1:25:38 Speaker 2 And your grandmother. At this point, your grandmother's living with you.

1:25:40 Speaker 1 No, no change.

1:25:46 Speaker 2 Like, did you feel like you were living in England, or did you feel that I'm just surrounded by my parents and it was used to be Tashkent and now I'm in England? That's what I'm trying to understand.

1:25:59 Speaker 1 These frum people were strangers to me. I knew they have different lives, different things. I was welcomed. People liked what I had, my experiences. They liked what I had to say. I was brought up a nice child. I came to school. I knew-- I don't know how I knew whatever I knew.

1:26:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:26:26 Speaker 1 I had to learn English. Nobody sat and taught me to speak English. I sat in class, and I learned how to speak English.

1:26:34 Speaker 2 Your parents didn't mind that you were learning English?

1:26:37 Speaker 1 No. They sent me to school. They didn't mind. But I just lived. We carried on. My mother's house became the h-- the, uh, the cheder. It was-- People gave money. They were very rich people here, I'm telling you. So when the, um, refugees came like we came, people put down a deposit for our house.

1:27:05 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:27:05 Speaker 1 Only 100 pounds. Bought us a house.

1:27:09 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:10 Speaker 1 But when my father- Before he died, before, before, he sold the house, and he gave away all the money. He gave half the money to prin tzadikhas in London and half the money to prin tzadikhas in Far Rockaway. He didn't give the children anything. He didn't keep any of the money. So whatever people gave, he gave back to the shtetl. It's important to know.

1:27:38 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:27:42 Speaker 1 So-

1:27:42 Speaker 2 No, but I guess, I guess-

1:27:43 Speaker 1 ... there was a cheder.

1:27:44 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:27:45 Speaker 1 And I went knocking on the doors. I was only 11, 12, 13. Knocked on the door, "Do you want to send your child to cheder?" And they came to our house after 4:00. At that time, all the Yid, non-frum, but they used to go to cheder from half past, from 5:00 till half past 6:00 every day. There was a culture of a Jewish, modern, not Orthodox. Again, Seder Chabad, but tha- that's how they were Jewish.

1:28:14 Speaker 2 But what was the mission here? Because until you come to England, is it, or maybe France, but certainly England, um, un- until then, the mission is to survive, right? When you're in Tashkent, your father would have no problem spending a whole day trying to find a loaf of bread.

1:28:33 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:28:33 Speaker 2 And that would be a day wealth-- Uh, that would be a day well, well, well done if he could find it, right?

1:28:39 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:28:39 Speaker 2 But you come to England, and you're not wor- worrying anymore about a loaf of bread. You're not worrying anymore about e- escaping from the KGB. So then what is, wha- wha- what is the, what is the mission-

1:28:51 Speaker 1 The mission

1:28:51 Speaker 2 ... at that time?

1:28:52 Speaker 1 The mission, you have to bring Hasidus to the whole world.

1:28:56 Speaker 2 So you knew that right away?

1:28:58 Speaker 1 Right. So my father went to see the Rabbonim, and he went to see the, um, what's the name? Schoenfeld. He was here, the whole leader of Hasmonean School.

1:29:13 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:29:13 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe asked him, "How much Talmudic Hades do they learn in that school?"

1:29:18 Speaker 2 Right.

1:29:19 Speaker 1 My father said, "I don't know." "Go and find out." My father comes back, and he says, "One hour a day." "One hour a day?" The Rebbe's face became white. My father got a-afraid. "Go and tell him he's got to teach more Talmudic Hades." He goes back. Schoenfeld says, "When hair will grow here, that's when you'll have more." And it was a brief that we have to make a school so that he, he will give more. "Go and teach the Bobover about the Mrevin." One of the Bobover didn't have children. The Rebbe spoke to them. They wrote to the Rebbe. They had a child. "Go and speak to..." He went to, to talk about the Rebbe, the Mrevin, Friediker Rebbe first, and then the Rebbe. And the message of the same was Yitzhak Yesiv. I went to Pinter School. I cleaned it out, and I put a tablecloth of a bring in for Yitzhak Yesiv. Nothing changed.

1:30:25 Speaker 2 But everything changed because until then-

1:30:28 Speaker 1 That-

1:30:28 Speaker 2 ... in Russia, your job was to survive. Now suddenly you're tr-

1:30:31 Speaker 1 It wasn't to survive. No. In Russia, for two years, there was plenty. I don't know how it happened that the financial markets have changed. Lubavitch made money, and they became very rich.

1:30:45 Speaker 2 In, in, in Tashkent?

1:30:47 Speaker 1 In Tashkent. And they could save up money to be able to g- to take the whole yeshiva out to go to America. So he told the people here his heroism from Russia, my father, and the people were very intrigued. And my father would go up and down the bus, you know, the big red bus. "Oh, the resembling, come, we'll learn Tanya of the day." He would sit down alone with somebody, the Tanya of the day. The message didn't change. The people, the customers changed. It was very interesting question you asked.

1:31:28 Speaker 2 So already back in Russia, there was this goal to spread Hasidus to other people, other frum yidden?

1:31:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, always.

1:31:36 Speaker 2 Always.

1:31:36 Speaker 1 But there were no communities. There were no people.

1:31:38 Speaker 2 There were no customers. And now suddenly there were customers.

1:31:41 Speaker 1 Now there were customers.

1:31:44 Speaker 2 So it, it must have been a very exciting time.

1:31:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, and then the Satmar started fighting Lubavitch. The rabbis were Zionists.

1:31:57 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:31:58 Speaker 1 That was terrible.

1:32:00 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:32:01 Speaker 1 And, uh, nobody had here a piece of shmura matzah.

1:32:07 Speaker 2 Right.

1:32:07 Speaker 1 The Rebbe told my father, "Go to Gateshead and take 350 pieces of matzah. Every Yid in Gateshead should have a piece of handmade matzah." They said machine matzah is better. Nobody saw a piece of shmura matzah.

1:32:26 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:32:27 Speaker 1 And they were all frum.

1:32:29 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:32:32 Speaker 1 You see? So the message is the same. Doesn't matter you speak French or English or Japanese or Turkish. It doesn't change.

1:32:43 Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, what, what's interesting to me is that, is that... 'cause it, it's, it feels like, at least from, from the outside, it feels like such a monumental shift to go from Russia or the Soviet Union to Britain or the United States. And what you're saying is, is that internally there wasn't that much of a shift. Like a lot of people, for example, the, the, the typical story of immigrants is that they come from, I don't know, a country like Russia or another country to a place like E- England or United States. And they start finally building themselves up. They build a... They, they get a small job, and they save some money, and then maybe they send their kid to college, and two generations later, their grandkid is wealthy, let's say. And here you're saying that you come to England, and essentially it's the same old. You're not thinking of, "Look at this opportunity. We can-"

1:33:38 Speaker 1 Esther, give me that Sechas from Venishlam. A good Sechas. You see, that's what's so interesting about... I know some people, they came to Paris. They ran quickly to the shops.

1:33:55 Speaker 2 Some Lubavitchers.

1:33:56 Speaker 1 Yeah. And they bought this dress and that dress, and all the fashions and the cinemas and the entertainment and the roundabout. They were so excited. Some people, yes. The people came to America. How did Lubavitch come to America? The Rebbe started very strong. They took the American customs.

1:34:25 Speaker 2 Right.

1:34:25 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe said, "No flowers, no photographs."

1:34:30 Speaker 2 At the weddings.

1:34:30 Speaker 1 At the weddings. And, uh, they used to have those... They have everywhere else, the chuppah inside, and they have a little hole at the top.

1:34:41 Speaker 2 Right.

1:34:42 Speaker 1 The Rebbe fought it very strongly. Mechitza.

1:34:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:34:47 Speaker 1 Nobody had a mechitza here.

1:34:50 Speaker 2 Right. America-

1:34:50 Speaker 1 The frum people were without a mechitza

1:34:52 Speaker 2 ... America also not.

1:34:53 Speaker 1 For sure. So when they come there, they had the same thing.

1:35:00 Speaker 2 Right.

1:35:00 Speaker 1 The same thing.

1:35:01 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:35:02 Speaker 1 Go and say Tehillim in the street, in the shops. In... The Rebbes would sit with three children, seven seventy, and teach them.

1:35:13 Speaker 2 It's just, to me, it, it's, it's... I, I, I believe what you're saying. It just... It's, it's so-

1:35:18 Speaker 1 It's very unusual

1:35:19 Speaker 2 ... it's so hard to, to, to grap- to, to, to grasp, where you finally have the opportunity to be free. It's like w- 'cause you're talking here about your father, who was my great-grandfather, right? So clearly I, I relate to him. You said also earlier that he used to sit here.

1:35:38 Speaker 1 It was his chair.

1:35:39 Speaker 2 It was his chair when... Later on. And, you know, he, he's a man, he has children, he has a family to support, to provide for. He spent years fighting just for a piece of bread for his kids. He finally has the opportunity here in England to maybe not be a rich man, but a shtikel parnassa, you know-

1:36:01 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:36:01 Speaker 2 ... live like, live like a mensch. And instead he is collecting money and, and, and, uh, you know, just... He's not, he's not, he's not ex- he's not taking advantage, it would seem, of, of, of, of what this country has to offer him.

1:36:20 Speaker 1 You know, I wrote that-

1:36:20 Speaker 2 I, I, I think, I think it's easy. Of course, you know, Ben Shem Tov would do... But I, I, as I see him as a, as a great-grandfather, I see him as a father to his kids. I'm amazed by it. That's all I'm saying. And he wasn't the only one.

1:36:33 Speaker 1 But because I'll tell you something, we never felt disadvantaged.

1:36:37 Speaker 2 Y-

1:36:37 Speaker 1 I always felt... We were in Tashkent, yeah?

1:36:39 Speaker 2 You didn't feel disadvantaged?

1:36:41 Speaker 1 There were no... Never felt disadvantaged. The... We were in Tashkent.

1:36:44 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:36:45 Speaker 1 There were no toys. Nobody had toys. Actually, I taught my granddaughter how to play with a child with the fingers-

1:36:52 Speaker 2 Right

1:36:52 Speaker 1 ... because that's needs development and-

1:36:55 Speaker 2 Right

1:36:56 Speaker 1 ... you used to play with each baby with fingers, pulling them and it, it needs it.

1:37:01 Speaker 2 Right.

1:37:02 Speaker 1 I had a doll. My mother managed to acquire a doll for me. Nobody had toys, but I had a to- a doll. How she got, what she exchanged for something. But after a week she says, "Fradel, where is your doll?" "Here it is." "Give it to me." "Why are you giving it?" "There is a girl, Rivka, she's crying. She's not well. She needs a doll." "But then you gave it to me."

1:37:30 Speaker 2 One second. One second.

1:37:31 Speaker 1 That was cute.

1:37:32 Speaker 2 Let's just wait for the phone.

1:37:40 Speaker 3 Hello?

1:37:41 Speaker 1 She said, "But you had it for a whole week."

1:37:44 Speaker 2 This is-

1:37:44 Speaker 1 "Now somebody else needs it."

1:37:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:37:47 Speaker 1 But I had a doll.

1:37:49 Speaker 2 So you, you're saying you didn't feel, you didn't feel disadvantaged. Why do you think you didn't feel disadvantaged?

1:37:58 Speaker 1 The parents didn't give me, because their goal in life, they were living it. I don't know. There wasn't... We were hungry.

1:38:13 Speaker 2 You're talking back in Tashkent?

1:38:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. We were hungry. This doll was also in Tashkent. We were hungry, but it's not that we are a hungry people. And now to this week, we don't have money. But next week, we have money. But when we had money, my father was always a leader, and there was enough money for everyone to eat. And there was butter besides the bread. So his friend says, "Why don't you buy the, buy butter? Your children will have bread and butter." My father said, "When everyone will have bread, I will buy my children butter. There is somebody there that still doesn't have money for bread."

1:38:58 Speaker 2 So your father didn't care about money at all?

1:39:02 Speaker 1 He cared about money very much. My father died, he didn't owe anyone a penny. He always lived on borrowing and using money, not to keep money. He didn't believe in keeping money. Money's f- he's was a very big businessman, really, my father. If you have money, you use it. You invest, you make, you buy. You don't save money.

1:39:27 Speaker 2 You were telling me earlier, he came from a family of businessmen.

1:39:30 Speaker 1 Yeah. So you use money. You don't save money. Money isn't you. You're more than money.

1:39:38 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:39:39 Speaker 1 My father didn't let us take state money, child benefit. He said, "I haven't given England any money. I have no rights to take."

1:39:50 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:39:50 Speaker 1 "I haven't paid it." Very high-

1:39:55 Speaker 2 So he, he-

1:39:55 Speaker 1 ... very simple

1:39:56 Speaker 2 ... he took money seriously, but he, he didn't let money... He didn't like let money dominate his life, is what you're saying.

1:40:03 Speaker 1 No. You see, I had 40 pounds for the machine. He's not going to buy a machine for 40 pounds.

1:40:10 Speaker 2 Right.

1:40:11 Speaker 1 He'll buy 80 pound machine.

1:40:13 Speaker 2 Right.

1:40:14 Speaker 1 At a break the cup.

1:40:16 Speaker 2 So talk a little bit about your, your grandmother, Mariashi. You were telling me earlier about how she also... She, she came-- She and her husband had been pretty wealthy before, before the communists took it from them.

1:40:29 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:40:29 Speaker 2 Talk a little bit about how she looked at money and how she looked at, uh... She-- You said that she gave a, a bracha to her whole family to never have money?

1:40:37 Speaker 1 No. That they should have money for everything they need, but they shouldn't have the nisaron of money.

1:40:44 Speaker 2 She gave a bracha to all her kids to not have a-

1:40:46 Speaker 1 She didn't have a bracha. They said she gave a bracha. She said she, she wishes people, because having money for the sake of money is not as, is not easy, is not good.

1:40:59 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:41:00 Speaker 1 You should have money as much as you like, as you need. You need to have good shoes, you need to have clothes, you need to have a home. Whatever you need.

1:41:08 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:41:09 Speaker 1 But not on the level of money where people become sold to money.

1:41:15 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:41:15 Speaker 1 And they exchange their life for money.

1:41:20 Speaker 2 Look, I mean, you know, I, I... On one hand, we're talking about family here. Some of the things I've heard before, of course, um, and in many ways also some of it's very personal. But, you know, what I'm thinking about, which I think is more than just the personal, is that, you know, w-what, what, w- how does... You-- We started earlier talking about the

1:41:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:41:49 Speaker 2 And you had a theory of how that translated into the Bochurim or the younger light being able to survive the prisons.

1:41:56 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:41:57 Speaker 2 Yeah, but you can, you can draw the question further and say, how did that translate into them living in England when they didn't have to live in prison?

1:42:04 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:42:05 Speaker 2 And what, what you're talking about in this instance is to not be in the prison of consumerism and, and, and, and, and, and just, just money for the sake of money and, and, and, and materialism. Your father was able to resist or to... Was able to resist that, that, the enticement of materialism. Like I, I know very often that's taken for granted because, you know, he was a Chassidish Yid, so obviously he didn't care. But you were telling me earlier, he came from a family of businessmen. His father was a wealthy man, right? Or-

1:42:39 Speaker 1 My father looked at money as, um-

1:42:42 Speaker 2 But he came from a family of businessmen, right?

1:42:44 Speaker 1 I know, but he, he u- Do you know how he went to yeshiva?

1:42:47 Speaker 2 No.

1:42:48 Speaker 1 When he went to yeshiva, they had money. How could they send money to yeshiva?

1:42:55 Speaker 2 From where he lived in Poland?

1:42:56 Speaker 1 Yeah. They... At that time, it was very fashionable. All the youth went to the navy schools, a matros. All they wanted to be. Cheder is no good. All the Jewish children left shul. They went to be a matros. Navy army.

1:43:13 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:43:14 Speaker 1 The navy schools.

1:43:15 Speaker 2 The officers, yeah.

1:43:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. So they wore a blazer with gold buttons, you know?

1:43:22 Speaker 2 Sure, sure, sure.

1:43:23 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:43:23 Speaker 2 It's called, it's called the navy blue.

1:43:25 Speaker 1 The navy blue, yeah. My father got such a jacket. His parents sewed on heavy gold buttons on his jacket, and they sent him to yeshiva like that.

1:43:39 Speaker 2 And he sold the buttons.

1:43:40 Speaker 1 He didn't sell the buttons.

1:43:42 Speaker 2 He didn't?

1:43:43 Speaker 1 They took off the buttons for yeshiva.

1:43:46 Speaker 2 Right.

1:43:46 Speaker 1 And they kept it.

1:43:47 Speaker 2 And they sold the buttons.

1:43:48 Speaker 1 And they supported the yeshiva. That's the level of money that they had, but you couldn't transport it. If they would have given him money sewn in anything, it would have been stolen.

1:44:02 Speaker 2 Right.

1:44:02 Speaker 1 So that's how he went.

1:44:04 Speaker 2 No, so I, I'm, I'm bringing that just u- I'm bringing that up to say how, you know, this was a... Again, and maybe for some people listening to this-

1:44:12 Speaker 1 But money is for a purpose.

1:44:14 Speaker 2 Right. Right. But I, I wanna take a step back for a second because maybe for some people listening to this, they, they, they... This, it's obvious to them. But for me, it's not the story of a person who comes from Russia, who's never seen money before, doesn't understand what money is, doesn't understand what it means to be successful, and so, yeah, he never thinks about... No, no, he must have known very well what England offered him.

1:44:39 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:44:39 Speaker 2 He must have known what it offered, the opportunities it offered him. He must have understood very well what he could be doing here, and yet he chose to live his life the way he thought was the right way to live. And that's a very powerful way of living. It, it's a testament to, to his, to, to what he had been taught in yeshiva and what he had internalized. It, uh, it, it could be, it could be what I'm saying is, is just like, it's so obvious to you.

1:45:10 Speaker 1 I understand.

1:45:10 Speaker 2 It's so obvious to you.

1:45:11 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no. I hear what you're saying.

1:45:12 Speaker 2 'Cause, 'cause I grew up with Ben Tzemach, even though he was my great-great-grandfather, he's a caricature. He's... Like, he's just there. He was born this way. That's who he is, right? That he's this radical or very extreme, intense Hassid who was a baal mesir nefesh. So, like, all of this is like, like you say in Hebrew, muvan me'eilav. It's, like, obvious that he wouldn't, uh-

1:45:34 Speaker 1 No, but he was very, very conscious of money.

1:45:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:45:38 Speaker 1 He was very conscious of money can do.

1:45:40 Speaker 2 Right.

1:45:41 Speaker 1 He was very conscious what one needs money. Very conscious of it.

1:45:48 Speaker 2 Right.

1:45:48 Speaker 1 And he was also very able to turn money into business. He would see people do business, and they don't know what they're doing.

1:45:57 Speaker 2 Really?

1:45:58 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:45:58 Speaker 2 He would advise people on their business?

1:46:00 Speaker 1 He could advise people on their business. And- He had a purpose in life.

1:46:08 Speaker 2 Right.

1:46:08 Speaker 1 He didn't feel himself, but his whole purpose in life, he was just like you're sitting there the last time I saw my father. And he had a tallis on his head, was late in the afternoon, and the taxi was coming to take him to Eretz Yisrael. He had... His friend's brother came from Russia, and it didn't work out for him, the business, and he's very upset. And Dovid Bravman's brother, and I must go to help him, and he organized a taxi to take him. And he's sitting with his tallis on his head, and the taxi phoned me. They're coming for him. So for the first time in my life, I tapped him. I said, "Tate, they're waiting out there." And he takes the tallis off, and he's got the book. Have you seen The Challenge? The English book? I said, "Bring me The Challenge. It's in the back bedroom." Right? And he's looking at that picture of 770, not the Rebbe's picture. Uh, Jacques Lipchitz, he was a sculptor.

1:47:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:47:27 Speaker 1 And he became Frum and became the Rebbe's chassid.

1:47:30 Speaker 2 Right.