Ep. 67 // "He Stood Up For Me" w/ Rabbi Aharon Cousin

00:00 Speaker 1 I went in, and then when, when I went, I went in, I saw that the rabbi is, is holding his small pocket siddur, his red siddur in his hand. But next to him was standing Rabbi Yitzchak Gushpal, who's standing right next to him, uh, and he's standing so close to the rabbi's looking up to him like that, mamish, straight up and, oh, unbelievable. And he's reading his own siddur to the rabbi. But anyway, the rabbi stopped and stood up a- and leaned over the desk and gave me the siddur, and he said to me, "Zost davening besimcha umatzliach sein."

00:42 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2025. My name is Bentzi Yafetzon, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here with Rabbi Aaron Cousin. Third time is a charm, they say. Um, third time is a charm. Third time is a charm. Um, I was here a few months ago with my good friend and your nephew, uh-

01:18 Speaker 1 Yeah

01:18 Speaker 2 ... Rabbi Levi Rubin.

01:19 Speaker 1 Levi Rubin, yeah.

01:20 Speaker 2 And, uh- He came to interview for the family, and I was, I was on the video side of that one, and then I came again a few weeks ago for the podcast. And let's just call it hashkachah pratis. I forgot to upload the audio SD card from that interview. And so I had a wonderful video and even more wonderful memories of our conversation, but the audio was not up to snuff. So we have the audio working here, the video working here. Hopefully this time I'll get it right. And, uh, thank you very much for agreeing to tell your story again.

02:03 Speaker 1 My, my pleasure. Pleasure.

02:05 Speaker 2 Just so you know, I, the... Of all the concerns I had when I lost the, when I realized I lost the SD card, m- the, my last concern was that I would have to hear your story all over again. That was, that was something I was looking forward to. What I wasn't looking forward to was telling you that I would have to come back again.

02:23 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, listen, don't... Listen, the thing is that, um, uh, I under- accidents happen, you know? We, we... It proves that you're, you're a normal human being.

02:35 Speaker 2 Yeah, who'd have thought?

02:36 Speaker 1 You're not, you're not perfect.

02:38 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

02:39 Speaker 1 So, uh, you know, a mistake happens, nisht gefele.

02:43 Speaker 2 Right.

02:43 Speaker 1 We learn from our mistakes. You-

02:45 Speaker 2 Yeah

02:45 Speaker 1 ... I'm sure you'll, you'll, it won't happen again.

02:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:49 Speaker 1 Im yirtze Hashem.

02:50 Speaker 2 Yes. That, that's the best part of a mistake.

02:52 Speaker 1 But yeah, y- you always remember.

02:55 Speaker 2 Yeah.

02:55 Speaker 1 Yeah.

02:55 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.

02:56 Speaker 1 Yeah.

02:57 Speaker 2 So, so, uh, we will, we, there will be times, of course, um, that I will refer back to earlier conversations given that I've heard your story, although I, I intend to, I intend to, uh, have this conversation with- without trying to redo it again. We'll, we'll see where it goes, and I'm sure it'll take different turns than it did last time. But there may be some times that, that I ask you to say a story over that you said last time, and-

03:25 Speaker 1 Okay

03:25 Speaker 2 ... it'll be a little bit different than other episodes, but maybe it'll be better. Anyway, um, if, if you see what we do for you here on Homesick for Lubavitch, um, doing it a couple times and coming back again to make sure we have the story. If you appreciate the work we put into it, please like and subscribe on all the different platforms. It does help us. And if you are so inclined, please visit hflpodcast.com/donate to make a contribution. Anyways, Rabbi Aaron, pleasure again. Good morning.

04:00 Speaker 1 Good morning. Good morning.

04:01 Speaker 2 And, uh, let's begin from the beginning. Uh, y- let- let's des- if you could describe the growing up during World War II in, in... Not, not London, right?

04:15 Speaker 1 No, Leeds.

04:15 Speaker 2 Leeds.

04:16 Speaker 1 Leeds.

04:16 Speaker 2 Leeds in England.

04:17 Speaker 1 My hometown, yeah.

04:18 Speaker 2 Yeah.

04:20 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, first of all, uh, good Yom Tov because today is Yud Beis Tammuz, a very auspicious day. It's the day when the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe was given his, uh, his, his, um... Well, he didn't actually receive his, his, um, documentation till the next day, but he was told he is free to leave the country. Not only, he, he must leave the country. And in fact, uh, the Friediker Rebbe went to live in Latvia, in Riga, uh, capital of, uh, Latvia. But, um, so it was a very, very, very special, very beautiful happy day today in Chabad. Although I remember when I was a bocher in, uh, 1770, in the Tov Shin Yud Ches, 1958, the Rebbe for bring Yud Beis Tammuz, and, um, he said that, um, th- there are two, two celebrations. There's Gimmel Tammuz when the Rebbe was released from Shpalerke, from the prison, and then there was Yud Gimmel Tammuz, you know, 10 days later, Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz, when he was actually free completely. Uh, they, they had exiled him for three years to Kostroma.

05:41 Speaker 2 Right.

05:41 Speaker 1 But then they said, "You don't have to stay in Kostroma. You have to leave the country." So I remember the Rebbe saying that Gimmel Tammuz was even a bigger miracle than Yud Beis Tammuz because to get out of Shpalerke was virtually unheard of.

06:02 Speaker 2 Oh, one second. Just, just to clarify with that, that means to be saved from death, right?

06:06 Speaker 1 Well, right, right.

06:07 Speaker 2 But Shpilerke was execution.

06:09 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah, that's what it meant, you know.

06:11 Speaker 2 Right.

06:11 Speaker 1 99 times out of 100 anybody went into Shpilerke, he was put before a firing squad. The Rebbe, you know, in k- in the Kutie de Burum describes this in great detail. So the Rebbe said, "But how come then if that was a bigger miracle, and that was a greater simcha than Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz. So how come the Friediker Rebbe made Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz a big Yom Tov and Gimmel Tammuz, you know, amongst Hasidim, you know, we don't say Tachna, but there was no great big celebration." So here you see the Friediker Rebbe's tachlis, his purpose in life. You see, when he was in prison, so he was under the total jurisdiction of, of the prison rules and regulations. He, he, you get up when they tell you to get up, you go to sleep when they tell you to get up. You can't learn, you can't daven, you can't keep mitzvahs. You, you, you're totally under them. So when he was freed on Gimmel Tammuz, it was a personal, a personal redemption, but it wasn't a redemption for Kalisz roll. He still was under their jurisdiction as in exile. But when he was freed completely on Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz, that was a celebration for the whole of Kalisz roll because now he could carry on all his y- you know, strengthening for Yiddishkeit and, uh, have thoughts of some mayonas. The Rebbe said that, that Emerson by Hasidim, Gimmel Tammuz is even a greater simcha, a greater joy than

07:52 Speaker 1 Yud Beis Yud Gimmel Tammuz. Yeah, so to... That was just as my way of introduction, this, this Hashgacha protest that we're having it on this, uh, beautiful day.

08:02 Speaker 2 Oh, the, the, the... I, I didn't even realize that's, that that's how early I woke up this morning. But, uh, yeah, Magoglan's Husli Amzakai.

08:12 Speaker 1 Right.

08:12 Speaker 2 Uh, so, so then let's just, let's just, let's just sit on that for a little bit. What was it like? Describe the Fabregin in, in Tofshin Chai. What was... What, what, what did the Fabregin feel like, look like?

08:22 Speaker 1 Well, obviously in Tofshin Chai, uh, the Olam was a much smaller Olam than you have today. And then the Rebbe used to Fabreg in the Chalash, uh, the downstairs yard, you know. Uh, the upstairs Shul in 717 became too small. When I first came to 717, 1956, the Rebbe was still Fabreging in the Shul upstairs. Mm-hmm. But afterwards, after, you know, a year or so, it got too crowded and we moved downstairs to the Chalash, and it was covered by a tarp, you know, in, in case of rain. And, um, and that's where we had the Sukkah, you know, and so on and so forth. Um, but the Olam, I would say, was, you know, 500 people and, um, it was very uncomfortable because it was open on all sides. And in the winter, the wind and the rain and, and it was cold and, oh, it was, it was, it was agony standing there. You know, the Rebbe used to Fabreg seven, eight, 10 hours- ... you know, and y- you were huddled together with everybody and, you know, below you, you were shvitzing, you know, you were soaked through and the top half of you, your head and shoulders, that was freezing cold. Tell you, oh, it was, it was real Mesirus Nefesh to stand by and Fabreg it. But it was a very, very beautiful Fabregin. It was very close, very, very formal.

10:00 Speaker 2 Right.

10:00 Speaker 1 Yeah.

10:01 Speaker 2 So, uh, w- which that's a beautiful description. It's very real. I don't think I've ever heard such a description before.

10:08 Speaker 1 Well.

10:09 Speaker 2 Thank you.

10:09 Speaker 1 Yeah.

10:10 Speaker 2 But d- d- d- depict to me in your memory, what, what, what, um, what moments stand out? Is it, uh, is it the, the Negunim? Is it the Rebbe Sichas? Is it the-

10:24 Speaker 1 Well, it... The things that stand out in my memory are, in those days, m- for many years as well afterwards, people used to go over to the Rebbe in between the Sichas and ask for a personal brocha.

10:39 Speaker 2 Mm.

10:40 Speaker 1 And I remember once, uh, the Rashag, uh, the Rebbe's brother-in-law, Rav Shemaryahu Gurari, he went over to the Rebbe in the middle of the Fabregin, and the Rebbe at that time was looking straight ahead. We were singing a nigun, and the Rebbe just didn't notice him. He was standing here with his cup of wine in his hand, but obviously he's not gonna interrupt the Rebbe, but the Rebbe's just staring ahead like that. And he was standing... Don't know, he's, he's the Rashag, you know. He's, he's the older brother-in-law, but he's standing there with mammoth absolute total respect and amor, you know, with awe. And then after about, I don't know, half a minute or so, the Rebbe suddenly noticed him and turned round to him, and then I heard him say, uh, "Rebbe, Ich bet abrocha oif Tomchei Temimim." He said, "Rebbe, I'm asking for a brocha for Tomchei Temimim." The Lubavitch yeshivas are called Tomchei Temimim because he was in charge of all the finances of all the yeshivas. A very, very difficult position. So the Rebbe said to him, "Obitnai mazal rainem in merit talmidim." He said, "On condition-

12:07 Speaker 2 Hmm

12:07 Speaker 1 ... that you take in more pupils." So the Rashag said, "Ich bet ha brocha ona tnai. I'm asking for a blessing without a condition." So the Rebbe said to him, "A zoi hot geschver ibre gegebn. This is what our father-in-law told me to tell you."

12:28 Speaker 2 Wow. Oh.

12:30 Speaker 1 So that-

12:31 Speaker 2 That's-

12:31 Speaker 1 It's like things like that stand out. That was-

12:33 Speaker 2 Wow

12:33 Speaker 1 ... amazing thing.

12:34 Speaker 2 Wow.

12:35 Speaker 1 That was just a quiet conversation between the two of them, and I was standing quite close then. In those days you could get up fairly close. You know, I was standing very close to where Yochan used to stand, so I actually heard that myself. I don't know if other people heard or even noticed it, but I noticed, and that, that struck me. "A zoi hot geschver ibre gegebn" as if, you know, he's just been speaking to his father-in-law, his father-in-law told, told him to tell him. You know, that was like a, a moifis from the Rebbe.

13:05 Speaker 2 I mean, uh, what a story. What... I mean, there's so, there are so many layers to that and I... There's so many layers. You know, like you mentioned, he was the older brother-in-law, and, uh, there was some... There was a few years where there was difficulty in the transition, let's just say. And, you know, f- just for him to... You know, the idea of him going to the younger brother-in-law and, and saying, s- calling him the Rebbe, right?

13:32 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:33 Speaker 2 And then, and then that, just that dialogue. Who even knows what it really meant, but wow, what a, what a, what a moment.

13:40 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

13:40 Speaker 2 What, what did you, what, what did you... Like, when you, when you were getting ready for Farbrengen or, you know, you're, you know that there's gonna be Farbrengen in, on this and this day, what are you looking forward to? What are you coming away... And maybe more importantly, what are you coming away with? Are you coming away with, "Look at the, all these chidusim that the Rebbe said"? Are you coming away... What, what do you... What's a, what does a Farbrengen mean to you?

14:05 Speaker 1 Well, uh, in those days w- the Rebbe w- started to speak a lot about shlichus. And, um, the whole talk was, you know, w- would you go, you know, amongst ourselves, amongst the bochurim, you know, "Would you go on shlichus? Where would you go?" You know, and so on and so forth. And, you know, we all say, "Well, we'd go wherever the Rebbe sent us, you know. Even to Timbuktu, you know. If we, if we were told to go, we'd go." And, um, the Rebbe, I remember the Rebbe speaking loud and clear saying, "A bochur, uh, a student bashe'as as he is in, in Tomchei Temimim when he's sitting and learning in Tomchei Temimim, Torah nishtach ten kein shum tachlesim. He's not allowed to think of any t- things he's gonna do later on in life. Afilu tachlesim shel kedushah." Even things which is, is, is a good thing, you know, to go on shlichus. "No, a bochur darf zitzen un lernen un davenen un dos alles." Don't involve yourself in any other things except sitting and learning and davening and, and, uh, getting more yiras shamayim so that eventually when you go out from yeshiva, you will be able to, uh, you know, survive outside in the, uh, in the big, wide wor- big, wide world.

15:49 Speaker 2 Right. But- ... but a- after Farbrengen you felt that you had learned something from the Rebbe? Did you feel that you had, uh, developed as a Hasid? Like, what was the-

16:00 Speaker 1 Well, the thing, the thing that impressed me personally was the, the, the, the gevaldike chidusim, uh, of, of the sichas and the way the Rebbe analyzed the Rashi and so on and so forth. And, uh, you know, the bekius that the Rebbe had was absolutely unbelievable. His, his vast knowledge of kol haTorah kulah. And that, you... I used to come away and think about, you know, and the maimar itself was im- unbelievable. You know, how could one person have such a vast knowledge? I remember, you know, when I was, um-

16:36 Speaker 2 What did you feel when the Rebbe said a maimar?

16:39 Speaker 1 Well, you know, y- you felt like it was, um... What it says by Moshe Rabbeinu, you know, that, uh, that HaShem is speaking through him. That He, He is revealing, you know, uh, it, what, what Hashem wants us to hear, you know? It was, it was an, an incredible, incredible feeling. Uh, I'll never forget, you know, when I was, uh, when I was back in England, you know, and, uh, there was a Hasid called, uh, Rabbi Shmuel Grossman, alav hashalom. His father was Osher Nikolaev. He was a, a Hasid by the Rebbe Rashab, and he did a big tzedakah to, for the Rebbe Rashab, and the Rebbe Rashab... To do with the Tanya, and the, the Rebbe Rashab was forever grateful for this Hasid, you know? Uh, Osher Nikolaev. Anyway, this was his son, Shmuel Grossman. And, uh, he said he once stayed in the Rebbe's father's house, Rab Levi Yitzchok's f- uh, the Rebbe's father in Yekatirinislav. He was there for a few weeks. He didn't say why he was there. Anyway, um, he said every Friday night during the Sedras Shabbes, during the Shabbes meal, um, Rab Levi Yitzchok would, would say a dva Torah for s- 10, 15 minutes. And then he would say to, uh, to his oldest son, to, to, to Mendel, who was to, to later on to be- become the rabbi. He used to say, "Nu, Mendel, vu shteyt dos?" He would say to him, "Mendel, where does it say all this?" And, uh, Mendel, who's about 15-year-old

18:32 Speaker 1 boy, used to say, "Oh, it's, it's a Yerushalmi. It's a Midrash. It's a Sifre. It's a Gemara Bavli," and so on and so on. He, he would mention all the pla- all the Maran mikraim, all the sources from whatever the rabbi would... What his father would say. Then the rabbi would... The, the Rabbi Levi Yitzchok would say another talk, and again he would say, "Nu, Mendel, vu shteyt dos?" And he would mention Katbola and Zohar and this and that. And, and this wa- every week, he was there for three weeks. Every Friday night, this was what, what happened. So Shmuel, Shmuel Grossman said to Rabbi Levi Yitzchok, "Every time you stop and you, you ask the rabbi where it says, w- why do you have to ask him where it says? I mean, why can't you say yourself? You, you know where you, where you quote it from. Say the Maran mikraim, say the sources yourself. Why do you have to ask your son?" So he said, "My son is a gresserer bokki vi ich bin. My son is more knowledgeable of all the sources than I am, than I am. That's why I ask him, because he c- he knows more places where all these things are said than I do." So that was, that was... Rabbi was 15 years old , he already was bokki in kol haTorah kulah.

19:56 Speaker 2 Hmm.

19:57 Speaker 1 So when you hear the Sicha from the Rebbe, you know, it was, he was, he was mind-boggling, mind-boggling. And that was, that was the astounding thing that he used to go away from the Rebbe, you know?

20:09 Speaker 2 But the farbrengen wasn't only cl- it wasn't only Torah, there was also Nigunim, there was the atmosphere.

20:15 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, that was right, yeah. The Rebbe would sing and dance and stand up and dance and clap his hands, and that whole atmosphere. And he'd say l'chaim to everybody. Everybody in the, in the shul would, uh, say l'chaim.

20:29 Speaker 2 Hmm.

20:30 Speaker 1 L'chaim v'livrachah. L'chaim v'livrachah. L'chaim v'livrachah. You heard the Rebbe saying that all the time.

20:35 Speaker 2 Right. So, so, so, uh, what a, what a beautiful, uh, what a beautiful recollection.

20:40 Speaker 1 Hmm.

20:40 Speaker 2 So let's, let's, let's, let's, uh, start from the beginning and work our way back.

20:45 Speaker 1 Yeah .

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21:40 Speaker 1 When I was a young boy during the Second World War.

21:43 Speaker 2 Yeah.

21:45 Speaker 1 Yeah, well, um, I was born in, uh, 1938, uh, just about a year and a half before World War II broke out, and, uh, my father was called up into the army. And, um, I, I only saw my father once till I was about seven years old, till after the war. He came home once on leave for three days before he was sent abroad to, uh, North Africa to fight, uh, Rommel's, uh, uh, Rommel, the German general's army in North Africa. And, um, my mother, alav shalom, you know, she brought up a family, you know, four children, two sisters and two brothers. I was the youngest. And, uh, it was very, very difficult for us during the war. You know, we were, we're very, very poor. We lived in a... I can only call it a slum, which was normal for everybody in those days. There was no toilet in the house. The house was... Toilet was down the street, shared by all the people in the street. There was no bath in the, in the house. You had... If you wanted a bath, you had to go to the bathhouse and, you know-

23:07 Speaker 2 How often did you go to a bathhouse?

23:08 Speaker 1 Well, w- you know, once a week when I was already a bigger boy, but when I was younger, we, we had like a big, uh, a vano, my mother used to call it. A van is a, is a, is Russian word for a tub.

23:21 Speaker 2 Right.

23:21 Speaker 1 A, a bath tub. And so I used to have a, a... My mother would heat a kettle of water up, kettle of water up on the gas stove and then pour in hot water into, you know, mix it in hot water and cold water and have a little bath inside the, uh, inside the tub, and that was it. But, you know, once you got too big, you had to go to the bathhouse, and I hated it. I, you know, amongst all the, you know... It was not a very pleasant experience, I can tell you. Anyway, and-

23:49 Speaker 2 Better or worse than Union Street mikvah?

23:55 Speaker 1 No comparison. Anyway, um, so... And then, uh, you know, Leeds started to get bombed quite severely during the war. And, um, it was... It must've been about 1942 or '43, I'm not sure the exact dates, you know. I was only a little kid. Um, but, uh, my f- my earliest recle- re- recollection of anything is my mother, alav hashalom, during the war, carrying me hi- carrying me in her arms, uh, going on to, uh, co- on the platform of the station. We were being evacuated from Leeds 'cause it was... The bombing got terrible, you know? House across the road got bombed, the house down the street. You, you never knew, you know, w- w- who's next. You know? People never... Were getting killed. So they, they, they-

24:51 Speaker 2 You told, you told me last time that, that there was a neighbor that had a bomb fall into their bedroom and not go off, right?

24:57 Speaker 1 That's right, yes. He had a bomb come straight through the roof and, uh, uh, yeah, Colin Kyber was his name. His friend, I still remember it. Actually, years later, he moved to... He, his father, after the war, said, "I've had enough of Europe," and he moved to Australia. So this friend of mine, Colin Keibel, you know, uh, he moved to Australia as well. So I was there, uh, uh-

25:20 Speaker 2 A Jewish kid?

25:21 Speaker 1 Pardon?

25:21 Speaker 2 A Jewish kid?

25:22 Speaker 1 Yeah, Jewish kid. Yeah, Jewish kid. Um, and, uh, I was in Australia, uh, uh, I don't know, about 15 years ago for a chassan of an eynikl. And, uh, I looked up, you know, Keibel, Keibel. Anyway, um, i- Sydney, there was no Keibel, but I found in, in Melbourne there was a Keibel. So I phoned him up, and, uh, I said, you know, "Is there a Colin Keibel?" He said, "Oh, yeah, his father, our father's called Colin Keibel. He's away on holiday now. He's not here." "Oh," I said, "Well, tell him, you know, uh, his friend from Leeds, from Enfield Avenue out , you know, I'm here in Australia, you know." Anyway, I left him my number and, and he contacted me, you know. And, uh, we met together again in, when he was in London we met, we met together. But, um, that was, you know, fif- 60 years after the war or something like that. Um-

26:20 Speaker 2 So your mother was on the train station.

26:22 Speaker 1 Yeah, and, and, and so we... You know, I remember her carrying me, you know. I was only a little baby, you know. I, well, how, how old I was, you know. She was carrying me, and the other, my other brother and sisters, I was the youngest, so they were walking with them. She was holding on to, on, onto them. And, and then we got on a train and we went, we lived in the countryside for a few months-

26:42 Speaker 2 Mm

26:42 Speaker 1 ... uh, till it was safe to come back home.

26:45 Speaker 2 You were describing to me last time, which I found very, um, very, uh, very strong, the, the, the hunger, the hunger and the, and the, just the lack of food.

26:57 Speaker 1 Oh, right. Right. Yes, that's another important point, you know. There was, there was very, very little food around.

27:03 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

27:03 Speaker 1 And everything was rationed. Even when there was a bit of food, you know, you could only have some, you know, how many people in your family, you know, you had so many ration books according to, you know, you know. Or you can have three eggs. You could only have one egg, you know, and that type of thing, when there was food. But very often there was no food, and you used to come home and there was absolutely nothing to eat. So what did we do? We used to go out in the street, and we used to scrape off the tar, you know, the black pitch from the roads, and, um, we used to chew it, and we called it black chewing gum. And it, and it took away the, uh, the hunger pains, you know, till, uh, we, we got some, got some proper food. But, uh, you used to, we used to go to bed hungry very, very often at night, you know, nothing to eat.

27:49 Speaker 2 Crazy. How did you, how did you as children understand the war? Did you understand it as, like, a British war? Did you understand it as a Jewish, as a Jewish, uh, Holocaust? Did you have any idea what was going on at the time?

28:01 Speaker 1 No, no. No idea at all. We just knew that we're fighting the Germans. That's all we, that's all the, the news that we got through, you know. That's all the papers were reporting, was, um, you know, what the RAF are doing and what the, you know, this, you know. Then the Americans came into the war, so we got a bit more information about that.

28:25 Speaker 2 Right.

28:26 Speaker 1 But, uh, it was, you know, they didn't really give us the true, true picture, you know. It was always, you know, "We're winning, we're doing great, we're going ahead," you know, and so on.

28:37 Speaker 2 Propaganda.

28:37 Speaker 1 Propaganda, yeah.

28:39 Speaker 2 So, so, the, you- you're living through this, this terrible time of the war, and then the war ends.

28:46 Speaker 1 Right.

28:46 Speaker 2 What happens then?

28:49 Speaker 1 Well, then, you know, Baruch Hashem, my father came home in 1946. He-

28:53 Speaker 2 He, he was on the front?

28:55 Speaker 1 He was, yeah. My father.

28:57 Speaker 2 He was fighting on the front?

28:58 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was fighting, got wounded, you know.

29:01 Speaker 2 So on, in the continent. Not, not, not, not staffing in England, but-

29:05 Speaker 1 No, no. In, in North Africa.

29:07 Speaker 2 Oh, North Africa.

29:08 Speaker 1 North Africa, yeah.

29:09 Speaker 2 Oh, that's where they fought R- Rommel and-

29:11 Speaker 1 Rommel's, uh, yeah.

29:12 Speaker 2 So he was part of, uh, what was that, Montgomery?

29:14 Speaker 1 Yeah, Montgomery. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

29:16 Speaker 2 Look at, look at my education school-

29:17 Speaker 1 Yeah

29:17 Speaker 2 ... history classes.

29:18 Speaker 1 All right. Very good. 'Cause I've got a photograph of my father, uh, on a parade, you know. Afterwards all the, uh, the Jewish soldiers used to parade. Uh-

29:27 Speaker 2 Oh, so he was part of the Jewish Brigade?

29:28 Speaker 1 No, no, no.

29:29 Speaker 2 That was in Israel.

29:30 Speaker 1 He was part of, he was part of the, the British Army.

29:31 Speaker 2 Right.

29:31 Speaker 1 But after the war, there used to be a, a ex-servicemen's parade and a Jewish ex-servicemen's parade.

29:40 Speaker 2 Yeah.

29:40 Speaker 1 So he used to... And, and there's a picture of him, my, my father and Field Marshal Montgomery. And, uh, you know, he's, was marching along with his medals, you know, and, uh, Field Marshal Montgomery's, uh, nodding to him and that type of thing.

29:54 Speaker 2 Oh, so he was under, under, under Marshal Montgomery?

29:56 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:58 Speaker 2 Wow. Wow, what a story.

29:59 Speaker 1 Monty. Monty, they called him.

30:01 Speaker 2 Hmm.

30:01 Speaker 1 Montgomery, Monty, yeah.

30:03 Speaker 2 And your dad was a proud, proud British man? Like, a proud... He, he was proud-

30:08 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah

30:08 Speaker 2 ... proudly British.

30:09 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Yeah, of course. That was it. Anyway, but what happened was, uh, soon after the war, uh, the British mandate came to an end in Eretz Yisrael.

30:25 Speaker 2 Right.

30:26 Speaker 1 So, uh, you know, the, uh, various, uh, groups in Eretz Yisrael, you know, Haganah, uh, Lehi and so on, they started fighting the British.

30:39 Speaker 2 Mm.

30:41 Speaker 1 Uh, 'cause, uh, uh, the Yidden, they, they wanted to let in more Holocaust survivors. And, uh, the British were afraid of the Arabs, and they said, "No. No, no." So there was a lot of clandestine, uh, operations to get Yidden in. It was, it was terrible, terrible times. But I remember one thing that, where antisemitism went sky high, when- The British caught, uh, captured three Jewish soldiers from the Haganah, and they said that they're terrorists, not soldiers. Terrorists, terrorists have to be hung, and we're gonna hang them in the, i-in the, uh, prison in, in Acre. See, the Israelis said, "If you hang our men, our soldiers, we'll hang your men. We'll hang your British soldiers." But the British, you know, you, no one can tell them what, what to do, so they went ahead and everything. They, they hung these three young Jewish boys, you know. So the next day, the Israelis went and captured two British officers in Yerushalayim, and they hung them in a tree, on a tree in Yerushalayim, i-in an orchard in Yerushalayim. But the thing was, the next day, every newspaper in England, Scotland, and Wales, and Northern Ireland had the front page a picture of these two British soldiers b- hanging, you know, from this tree. So then it became mamish sakonis to go out because the Goy, oh, w-we'll get those Jews, you know. I remember our fathers had to take, th-the interns take us to school and bring us home from school, and take us to

32:36 Speaker 1 cheder and bring us home from cheder, and so on and so forth. And it was really, really got worse and worse. And then eventually, you know, 1948, uh, the State of Israel was established, and, uh, the British left completely, you know. So then it quietened down a bit, a little bit, but there was still, still antisemitism. I got beaten up every day on the way to school, on the way home, during school. The teachers were all antisemitic. They, they picked on the Jews. I went to a school, there was 600 boys in this school. It's a boys school, high school. And, um-

33:15 Speaker 2 So you're about 13, 14 years old?

33:16 Speaker 1 No, no, I was about 12.

33:18 Speaker 2 Oh, oh, in, in England, high school starts in seventh grade, right?

33:21 Speaker 1 Yeah, it starts from age 11 or something.

33:23 Speaker 2 All right. All right.

33:25 Speaker 1 So I, I was 13. I was 12, 13, whatever. And, um, so I'll never forget, you know, how there were, there were 600 boys in this school. And, um, 40 of, 40 of them were Jewish. There were 40 Jewish boys in this school. And every recess, we used... All the, the Jewish boys used to congregate together in one part of the playground. They called it Jews Corner because, because w-when we were all together, you know, they, they didn't do anything. But if, if one of us went to the toilet or something, they were waiting in the toilet, and they beat us up. Oh, it was terrible. It was really, really frightening. The teachers were such antisemite, and they picked on us left, right, and center. I hated it. I hated it. I couldn't learn it. I was sitting there in the class, fear and dread from the minute I got into school until the minute I, uh, came, went out of school. And then you, "Oh, cousin, come out to the front. I saw you talking." I said, "Sir, I wasn't talking." "Now you're contradicting me. Now you'll get a double punishment. Bend over." And then he used to hit you with, each one had a different weapon. Some used to use a blackboard ruler, some used to use a plimsoll, you know, rubber shoe and hit you. And those were big guys, you know, rugby players, you know, crazy, mad people who were just... And, and they were, they were, they were, they were

35:06 Speaker 1 specialists, but they, they hit everybody. There was one teacher we had, he was a Galach. He, you know, he was a Roman Catholic, uh, and he used to teach, uh, religious instruction, uh, RI. And, um, oh, what he only did to us. He, i- you know, he t- used to teach us all about Yehoshua panicked, you know. We had to know all the, all the history and all the, the New Testament and so on. And we had to write essays on what he taught us, you know. And, uh, one Jewish boy, w- there was 40 boys in my class, and there were just two, two Jewish boys. He said the Jewish boy called Cohen. And, um, we wrote, we wrote our essays. He wrote an essay all about what, what had been taught. And at the end of the essay, uh, this, uh, teacher, this, this priest, you know, he wrote, "This work is disgusting, maybe because you are a Jew." That's what he wrote in his, in his book, in his textbook. Anyway, the kid goes home, shows it to his father. His father was furious. You know, his father had been a soldier in the British Army, you know. So he went to the headmaster, Mr. Benfield, big, stark Goy. They had to be all very strong teachers because the kids, the Goy were, were really ruffians, you know. They would, you know, if they weren't-- the teacher wasn't a really strong guy, they'd take terrible advantage of him. Anyway, so he, he

36:47 Speaker 1 complained. He said, "Well, you know, I, I put my life on the line, you know, and look, this is what I got," you know. So the headmaster says, "There's nothing I can do about it, you know. There's, there's no law to s- to stop. He can write what he likes Anyway, in the end that, that he- that, that gal had a mapala because, uh, one of the boys in the class, I remember his, I remember his name, Parker. He was a big tall kid. He was a big bully, he used to beat everybody else up. And, uh, he was very cheeky, you know, very rude to, to this, uh, galach, you know. Very rude. He said something regarding like for the galach, hit him across the face with all his strength, and, and he burst his eardrum and made him deaf in one ear. So then, then the, the, the Ɣbrach Hashem, the headmaster had to send him out, you know. He, he fired him because he said, "You know, you're too, you're too dangerous. If you hit the kid, okay, but you can't, you can't..."

37:54 Speaker 2 What was your bar mitzvah like? What was your bar mitzvah like back then?

37:57 Speaker 1 Well, the bar mitzvah was... You know, we went to cheder. They taught us, uh, the brachos.

38:05 Speaker 2 What's cheder, Sunday school?

38:07 Speaker 1 No, cheder is like evening class. Yeah, yeah, it was, uh-

38:09 Speaker 2 You-

38:09 Speaker 1 No, it was, it was every night of the week.

38:11 Speaker 2 Oh, every night.

38:12 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, Monday to Thursday.

38:13 Speaker 2 Mm.

38:13 Speaker 1 And Sunday morning as well.

38:15 Speaker 2 Who ran it?

38:17 Speaker 1 Oh, there was a, you know, the Leeds Board of Jewish Education. They, they had a cheder. Yeah, we all went to cheder. They taught us how to read and they taught us Jewish history, which all, were all about Herzl and Joseph Trumpeldor and Zionism. That's what it all was really. Taught us very little about Yiddish kind itself. And then towards the bar mitzvah, they, they taught you, you know, you know, the, the brachos, how to say Ɣbrach. They taught you your little, uh, half maftir, the little last piece, and that was it. And then the next day, the Sun- that was Shabbos, and Sunday you had your seder, you know, with your, your family and friends, you know.

38:59 Speaker 2 You, you received a pair of tefillin?

39:01 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got tefillin, yeah. Um, 'cause my family were frum, you know.

39:06 Speaker 2 Your family was frum.

39:07 Speaker 1 My family was frum, yeah. Orthodox, yeah. My, my Zayde, you know, there's a picture of him over there, was, you know, was a frumer Yid, you know.

39:15 Speaker 2 Also from England, or he had-

39:17 Speaker 1 Well, no, he, my Zayde came, um-

39:19 Speaker 2 Your Zayde came to England

39:20 Speaker 1 ... from, from, from Europe, you know.

39:22 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

39:23 Speaker 1 Um, yeah, for, from my mother's father, my father's side also came from Europe, you know, to escape the pogroms, you know. And, um, so what happened was the day after my bar mitzvah, the day after the seder, on the Monday, my mother had to go into hospital, and she was dangerously ill. And she just lived for six months till every Rosh Hashanah, I was, I was... Pesach was my, Pesach time, just after Pesach was my bar mitzvah. Every Rosh Hashanah she was nifti.

40:05 Speaker 2 You found out she was ill right after your bar mitzvah?

40:07 Speaker 1 Well, no. She, she knew before, but she hung on-

40:10 Speaker 2 Okay

40:10 Speaker 1 ... 'cause she wanted to be at my bar mitzvah. But the day after the bar mitzvah, she, you know, she, she, "I've gotta go in the hospital." She couldn't, couldn't cope anymore. She had Ɣyenemaachla.

40:20 Speaker 2 Mm.

40:20 Speaker 1 It's the only reason for them. She suffered. Psh. Ah.

40:25 Speaker 2 And she, she had it throughout the war, no?

40:27 Speaker 1 No, no, no, not just up to... Afterwards, you know, a few years later on. She never got well.

40:32 Speaker 2 Right.

40:34 Speaker 1 A wonderful woman. Great, great mother. She was a good mother. I remember her very well. Coming up to the 73rd Yahrtzeit.

40:43 Speaker 2 Wow. Wow.

40:44 Speaker 1 This, uh, this, uh, Rosh Hashanah.

40:48 Speaker 2 Wow. Wow.

40:52 Speaker 1 And so I started going to shul to say Kaddish. And, uh, I met two boys who, w- w- Leeds boys who were learning in Manchester yeshiva, and it was Ben Azimani. They, it was in between terms, so they, they'd come home, and they told me all about yeshiva. Yeshiva's wonderful. You gotta go to yeshiva. It is ganayden. So I hated school, 'cause I was, you know... The antisemitism was unbelievable. The punishments was horrendous. You know, uh, my father, um, my brother was in the Royal Air Force. My sisters were i- in university. I used to come home in the evening to a big empty house. They had a massive house. They had 18 rooms, this house. My father, uh, when we, we lived in a slum. S- before-

41:47 Speaker 2 A slum, a slum with 18 rooms?

41:48 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. We moved from that slum.

41:51 Speaker 2 Okay.

41:51 Speaker 1 And my father bought this house. It-

41:53 Speaker 2 So he was, he was doing a bit better.

41:56 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, with, he, he was earning six pounds a week in those days. That's all, you know. But- ... the houses cost next to nothing anyway, you know. Cost a few hundred pound, you could buy a house.

42:06 Speaker 2 Right.

42:06 Speaker 1 Now it's a few hundred thousand pound for the same house. But, you know, uh, so he bought this big house.

42:13 Speaker 2 18 rooms.

42:14 Speaker 1 18 rooms, yeah. It was massive. It was beautiful, you know. And my mother lived there a few years. Never had health. That's where she, psh, died there. Anyway, 'cause they brought her home three days before Rosh Hashanah, and the last three days she was at home, you know. I was in the room when she was nifti. Phew. You know, it was v- it, uh, very hard, you know, to pkhu. Anyway, I'll come upon him.

42:41 Speaker 2 And it never goes away, huh?

42:42 Speaker 1 It never goes away. Never goes away. You know, she was saying when she breathed her last, you know, kh, kh, kh, and pkhu. And my father went crazy, you know. The whole family, we were all there in the room, you know.

42:54 Speaker 2 And you're, and you're just 13.

42:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, 13 and a half, yeah. Mm. Yeah. So- Anyway, these, these two yeshiva boys told me, you know, "You gotta come to yeshiva." So I said to my dad, you know, "Dad, you know, I wanna go to yeshiva." I didn't know what, I didn't really know what yeshiva was.

43:18 Speaker 2 I wanna get out of here basically.

43:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, I just wanna get out of here. I said, "I can't stand it anymore. I've got years of school ahead of me, you know? How, how am I gonna survive?" So, uh, you know, yeshiva da, da, anyway, in the end, I persuaded him, so he made an appointment to see the Rosh Yeshiva and, uh, s- for Sunday morning.

43:40 Speaker 2 This was the yeshiva in Manchester?

43:41 Speaker 1 Yeshiva in Manchester. Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal was the Rosh Yeshiva. So we made a appointment to see him Sunday morning. We took a train from Leeds to Manchester. We went to the yeshiva and, uh, go to his office, and, uh, he says to me, uh, "You wanna come and learn in yeshiva?" I said, "Yes." He says, "Uh, uh, which gemara have you been learning?" I said, "Gemara? Well, what's gemara?" Uh, he said, "Well, all right. Which Mishnahs have you been learning?" I said, "I don't know what Mishnahs is." He said, "What?" He says, "Have you learnt any Chumash?" "Oh," I said, "yeah, I've learnt some Chumash." "Oh, wow. What Chumash?" "Oh, I've been learning about Joseph and his brothers." Oh, he says, "Okay." He takes out a Chumash, uh, and he, he reads a d- he gets me to read a c- a line at, so, you know, less than a line at, and I didn't know anything, you know, could hardly translate anything. He says, "What about Rashi?" "Rashi? Look, I never heard about..." I says, "Oh," I says, "I'm very sorry," I says, "I can't, I can't." Except he gets up and he starts walking to the door and he says to my father, "Look, you know, I can't take him. He doesn't know anything. He, this is a yeshiva. It's a Talmudical college, you know? The, it's an institute of higher learning. I've got no classroom, I've got no one to teach him. What can I do with him?" And my father's

45:12 Speaker 1 begging him and saying, "Look, he's a yosem. He has no one at home," and he's this and that. And Rosh Yeshiva says, "Oh, no, I can't. I'm sorry." And he walks to the door and he opens the door of the office, and then for the first time in my life, I spoke up. You know, in those days, little children were heard, but never spoke. You know, you s- speak when you're spoken to, and don't, otherwise you don't open your mouth. But I suddenly realized as I'm standing there, a little kid, I'm going back to Leeds. Leeds means Gehenna. It's like hell to me. So for the first time in my life, I said something which I didn't really know what I'm talking about. I said, "But I want to learn." And he said, "You want to learn?" I said, "Yes." "Oh," he said, "today is Sunday. Go home. Tomorrow pack your things and come back on Tuesday." And I came back on Tuesday, and it was mamish like Gan Eden. I couldn't believe it, you know? Everybody was so nice to each other, so friendly, so helpful. There was no spitefulness and no mean, you know, everybody was mamish, obviously as well, it was gevaldig. And especially in those days, you know, there were a lot of refugees. This was 1951 and, uh, I remember the, in the yeshiva there was lots of Belzer Bochurim, Gerer Bochurim, Satmar, Bobover, Yekkes, Litvisher, English Bochurim. There was, there was like, it was like a cholent, like a

46:55 Speaker 1 smelting pot from w- a few from this, you know, a few from that, few, and they made up the yeshiva. Some big Talmidie Chachame as well there. Wow. Anyway, so there was Lubavitcher Bochurim there as well, forgot to mention.

47:12 Speaker 2 Yeah.

47:12 Speaker 1 And I was attracted to the Lubavitcher Bochurim more than the others because Thursday night we used to stay up. W- s- we're supposed to stay up and learn the whole night, 'cause Friday was only half a day, so you, you know, you stayed up Thursday night. But most of the night everybody us- used to all sit around together and each one would tell stories of what he went through during the war and through the concentration camps. Many of the boys had still numbers on their arms, you know?

47:43 Speaker 2 You told me a story about a, a certain Weiss, I think.

47:47 Speaker 1 Yaakov Yosef Weiss, yes. Yaakov Yosef Weiss was there and he, he had a, he had a letter A in front of his number, and he was one of the earliest inmates of Auschwitz. He was there for three years or something like that.

48:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

48:03 Speaker 1 Which was-

48:03 Speaker 2 Very, very few survived that long.

48:04 Speaker 1 Very few survived with an A. Uh, then it was B, you know. But anyway, Uncle Ponim, he, he told us that he was saved in a most miraculous way. He kind of, you know, they, they knew that there's the, uh, they have the gas chambers and the crematorium, and it was only a matter of time before, you know, eventually you, you, you, you was, you know, as fresh people came in, they moved the old people into the gas chambers. And, uh, he was a big tall guy, very s- strong on, but he'd managed to survive. And, um, but one day the, h- his whole barracks was emptied out. They took them all to the gas chambers and they knew by now what's gonna happen. There's no way out, you know. As they're standing there ready to march into the gas chamber, so he's standing next to a friend of his, also, you know, Chassidi- I think he was a Satmar Chassid. But he was standing next to a, a friend of his and, uh, he says, his friend says to him, you know, "Do you think Hashem could save us from this situation now? You know, you know, we're minutes away from death." So he said, "Of course, it's..." The Gemara says that, uh, Afilu cherev chadah mu'nachas al tzawarecha. Even if a sharp sword is on your neck, don't give up, like Moshe Rabbeinu was saved the last minute.

49:35 Speaker 2 Right.

49:37 Speaker 1 So this other bochur says, "No," he says, "It's too late. Finished, finished. You can start saying Shema and Vidui." But then at that second, and it never happened before and it never happened afterwards, an SS officer comes down the line and he says, "I don't know how many men, 20, 30, 40 men I need." 20, whatever, a number. And when he goes down the line, he picks out however many he needed, and, uh, he, Yaakov Yosef was chosen to, to do this, this job, And "" he went into the gas chamber. And, uh, he was in Yeshiva Yaakov Yosef. He became a shochet. I remember him sharpening the knives. He b- he became not only an oifsche shochet, he became a gasis shochet, you know, big, big knives. So, yeshiva was wonderful. I was-

50:38 Speaker 4 W- were people like that able to, like, speak also about regular life, or were they so in a different world because what they had seen that you-

50:50 Speaker 1 Well-

50:50 Speaker 4 ... you, you found them distant?

50:53 Speaker 1 The s- thing is this, you see, he, he... I don't know, he had a very strong character, and he, he, he, he seemed as if he was perfectly okay. You know, he did, he got married, he had a big family. I, I saw him not long ago, you know, in, when I was in London a couple of years ago, and I was walking in the street and, and he was walking there, you know, and I met him, you know. Um, so he, he, he was, he was okay. But-

51:22 Speaker 4 So, you're saying you could have a regular conversation about breakfast?

51:25 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could... He was... No, they don't, they, you know, they put it behind them. Except there was one bocher called Shabsi. Oh. He was a Chassidishe bocher Ɣbetachlis, but in Nevel he'd suffered so much. He was a really, uh, a weakling, you know. He'd been starved. He was a, he was like a skeleton when he came out of there, and he never properly recovered. In Nevel he died. He died in yeshiva. That was Shabsi.

51:54 Speaker 4 So you said that you were Thursday night farbrengen with the different boys, and the-

51:58 Speaker 1 Yeah

51:58 Speaker 4 ... what, what would the Lubavitchers have to offer?

52:01 Speaker 1 Well, the, the amazing thing, this is why I was attracted to Lubavitch bochurim, because many of these Chassidishe bochurim, they'd had miraculous escapes, you know, hiding in forests and what have you, and near, near-death episodes. But the Lubavitchers, theirs w- w- their, their experience was they had mesirus nefesh for Yiddishkeit. Uh, and that attracted me tremendously because when I heard stories what they went through to, to, you know, to hide themselves and hide... They were learning in, in, uh, underground, uh, chederim, you know, and, uh, learning in attics and, or in forests, and how they, you know, they used to have someone stand outside w- keep, keeping a lookout, uh, and if, if somebody, you know, suspicious would come, they'd come, they'd, they'd hide all the books and so on and so forth. And I thought, "Wow," you know, "how come they had such mesirus nefesh, you know, for Yiddishkeit?" Because to me, I felt, you know, Yiddishkeit, it's, it's wonderful, it's beautiful, but, you know, i- if you can keep it a- and it's easy to keep, fine. But if, if, if, if you gotta risk your life to keep it, you don't have to risk your life. You know, if Hashem wants us to keep his mitzvahs, you know, he should make it easy for us.

53:28 Speaker 4 As we approach the two-year mark of this podcast, Omsikv Lubavitch has become a household name in the Lubavitch community, with thousands of views each week on YouTube alone, as well as thousands more on the various podcast platforms. We have a devoted audience that listens regularly to the conversations and shares their thoughts with their families and communities. If you would like to sponsor an episode or advertise on one of our episodes, please reach out to bentzi@yuvalamedia.com. That's bentzi@yuvalamedia, Y-U-V-L-A media.com. You were telling me a story, uh, about the train leaving, uh-

54:07 Speaker 1 Oh, leaving the-

54:08 Speaker 4 ... Lubavitchers, they, on the train leaving Russia? Um-

54:12 Speaker 1 Which one was it? 'Cause they didn't want it to leave on Shabbos?

54:14 Speaker 4 Yes.

54:15 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. They, they, they, they, uh, they, they, they asked the Shiner, they, them, you know, whether they c- allowed to leave, uh, le- leave Russia on a train on Shabbos because they didn't wanna travel on a train on Shabbos. So they asked the Shiner by the Rabbonim, and the Rabbonim paskened that you can travel on Shabbos. You, you know, it's, it's because nefesh to, to get out of Russia. So they went to the station and, uh, they, they carried the money to buy a ticket in, in, in the hat of one of the kids, you know, 'cause they didn't wanna carry it themselves. And they bought tickets, and they were sitting on the train and, and, uh, all they worried was, "Let's hope the train doesn't s- move out before, before Shabbos is over." And eventually the train moved, and it was Motza'i Shabbos. Oh, they were so happy. I thought, "Well, you know, what kind of love for Yiddishkeit do these people have?" You know, where do they get this, this love for Yiddishkeit from? You see, where was... You know, in the yeshiva at Lomza, I saw when- whenever there was recess, so, you know, everyone would go out to, to, to the garden, you know, play football or soccer or cricket or something like that, you know, uh, and get a break, you know. And yet the Lubavitcher boys all stayed behind, uh, learning a sefer or a maim or something. And they, they really loved their Yiddishkeit and their

55:50 Speaker 1 learning. Whereas the rest of us, we were sort... We, we enjoyed it. We like... But we were sort of forced to do it. Like for instance, before we went to camp, we used to go to camp for two weeks in the summer, the, to a Gadlus Yisroel camp- And, uh, before we go, the rosh yeshiva used to give us a big drasha. You know, "I want you to learn eight hours every day when you're in camp", you know? And I can tell you, we didn't learn eight minutes a day. We were g- g- Oh, we were glad to have that, the freedom, you know? To... The yoke was not on our heads anymore. And, uh, yet the Lubavitcher boys are not saying to learn eight hours a day, but they certainly learned every day, and they were, they were not running around like the rest of us. Anyway, so I, I, I, I asked, uh, Rabbi Yitzchok Dubov, one of the rosh yeshivas in the Mir yeshiva who was a Lubavitcher chossid, who actually learned in the village of Lubavitch in Russia, uh, you know, if he would learn some Hasidism with me. So that's how I got interested in it when I decided I wanna go to learn in Lubavitch.

57:01 Speaker 4 Just like that?

57:03 Speaker 1 Well, you know, it was... took some doing, you know? It didn't, it didn't happen overnight, but I wrote to the Rebbe. I got my first letter from the Rebbe in 1952. Tammuz, this month, Tammuz. Tosheh Nidbase. Beautiful letter. And it's, it's, you know, ad hayom, that letter has a tremendous lesson for me because there the Rebbe says, one of the most other things he says, "In order to benefit from a mitzvah, you don't have to understand the mitzvah. The main thing is to do it." He says, "L'moshe, when you go to a doctor and the doctor prescribes medicine, you don't say, 'I'm not gonna take this medicine until I know exactly how this medicine is gonna help me.' You know the doctor knows best, and you take the medicine. It either helps you, and you can also maybe get a better understanding how the medicine helps you."

57:56 Speaker 4 What, what were you asking about? Can you share what you were asking about?

58:00 Speaker 1 No, I just wrote, just introduced myself, you know, who I am, and asked for a bracha. I'm starting learning in yeshiva now, and I'd like a bracha for success in learning and so on and so forth. And the Rebbe wrote, you know, this very full page letter, beautiful letter.

58:17 Speaker 4 So four page letter?

58:19 Speaker 1 Full, no one-

58:20 Speaker 4 Full page

58:20 Speaker 1 ... full, full page.

58:20 Speaker 4 So you weren't asking about, like, uh, struggling to do a certain mitzvah or I don't understand?

58:26 Speaker 1 Well, I d- I didn't really write much. No quest- I didn't really question.

58:31 Speaker 4 You didn't ask a question?

58:32 Speaker 1 I don't think I asked any question. I can't remember even what I wrote, to be honest with you. I just wrote basically, you know, they, they, like the bochurim, the Lubavitcher bochurim persuaded me to, to write to ask for a bracha, so I, I, you know, I don't think I asked any questions.

58:48 Speaker 4 I think I asked you this last time, you know, the, the idea that the Rebbe wrote there, it's a nice idea, but I, I don't know that... Like, what, what, what is, what is, what, what is it, what is, what is it that sits with you so many years later? Because that's an idea that I can imagine many people writing. Like, you to- you spoke earlier about the gaplos of the, of the Rebbe's Torah at Fabrinyans. Like, the moshol of, of, of Torah being like a medicine i- is, is quite common in Chazal. So what, what is it that, that's happened with you? Was it, was it the idea itself? Was it the, the, the, was it the-

59:30 Speaker 1 No, it, it was just the, you know-

59:32 Speaker 4 The fact that, the fact that this rabbi had answered you?

59:36 Speaker 1 Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, this great tzaddik took out time to write to me, to me, a little kid from nowhere, you know? Nothing. No yechidus, no, no nothing, and the Rebbe's taking time, and he signed his signature, you know? Uh, I was, I was very, very, very impressed by that. I thought it was very beautiful.

59:56 Speaker 4 What, what did you know of the Rebbe at that point?

59:59 Speaker 1 No, not very much at all. I knew about the Friediker Rebbe c- 'cause the Rebbe had only been Rebbe about a year or so.

1:00:05 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:06 Speaker 1 So, and he wasn't well known, you know? But, you know, the, the Shemtov boys and the Footefats, Berel Footefats, they were in Mir yeshiva there. They, uh, they'd already taken on the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the new Rebbe that's going there. But I, I was, I was amazed at what the Friediker Rebbe had been through, you know? How he'd stood up to the communist regime. Oh my God. You know, because they, they were, they were ruthless.

1:00:37 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:37 Speaker 1 You know, you were nothing, and yet he stood up, and he was strong, and he got his chassidim. His chassidim went on the streets in Eishishok. That really impressed me.

1:00:47 Speaker 4 So, so you, you came to Lubavitch that was still very much under the, the auspices almost of the Friediker Rebbe.

1:00:54 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:00:56 Speaker 4 Very interesting.

1:00:57 Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.

1:00:58 Speaker 4 So when you were in this yeshiva, you, you already called yourself a Lubavitcher? You-

1:01:02 Speaker 1 Yes

1:01:02 Speaker 4 ... you sit and farbreng with the boys? Like, you were already part of their group?

1:01:06 Speaker 1 I didn't farbreng with the boys, but, uh, I, I was-- I became known as a Lubavitcher, and as... Actually, what happened once, a little incident. Uh, one of the boys, they knew I was a Lubavitcher, and Lubavitch was sort of a little bit different than the rest, so, uh, he, he, he, he said something not nice about the Rebbe. I can't remember what it was, but, you know, he said, like, a not nice thing. So I said, "Oh-"

1:01:33 Speaker 4 About the new Rebbe?

1:01:34 Speaker 1 About the... Yeah, about the Rebbe, yeah. The new Rebbe, yeah. So I said to him, "Oh, y- y- you call your, y- your Rebbe the Vilna Gaon. Well, I call him the Vilder gaon. Vilder gaon" "Oh, oh," he says to me, "you daren't say that at all." I said, "Oh." He went and mossed me to the rosh yeshiva. He goes to the rosh yeshiva and he says that Aron Kusn called the Vilna Gaon the Vilder gaon. So-

1:02:08 Speaker 4 Wait a second. Oh, that's okay Go ahead, you go ahead.

1:02:21 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:02:21 Speaker 4 Yeah, go on.

1:02:22 Speaker 1 So, uh, so the, the, the Rosh Yeshiva calls me in, and he says, "I heard you, you, you said something not nice about the Vilna Gaon." So I said, "Well, yeah, because he said something not nice about the Lubavitch Rebbe." But he says to me, "You know, du shpilst mit fire, you're f- playing with fire," he says.

1:02:49 Speaker 4 This is Rabbi Segal?

1:02:51 Speaker 1 Yeah, Rabbi Segal, yeah. You see, he didn't tell him off. Y- what he said about the Rebbe, he never said anything to him. He didn't, he didn't punish him. But he says, "You," he said, "Du zolst fasten a halben tog" you should fast for half a day, and you... "Zolst araynvarfn," uh, money in the pushke. You should, uh, you should throw some money in the pushke. You fast a half a day and throw money in pushke. Anyway, so the, the next day he's, you know, he says, "That's what you've gotta do tomorrow." Well, I can tell you this, I had the biggest breakfast I'd ever had in my life, and then I, I tried to... He said, "Zolst araynvarfn," araynvarfn, you know, you should throw in money in the pushke. So I stood about 10 feet away and I, I threw a penny at the pushke, but it didn't go in. But anyway

1:03:45 Speaker 4 So, so you're a Lubavitcher at that point?

1:03:47 Speaker 1 Yeah, g- g- you know, I thought, what, what are you talking about? You know, what are, what are you picking on me? Why don't you punish him as well? Let him fast a half a day as well. No, no, him, not. So and so's.

1:03:58 Speaker 4 Uh.

1:03:59 Speaker 1 But actually Rabbi Yosef Segal was, was very close to the Rebbe, and he used to write to the Rebbe and ask the Rebbe heintses. He went in for yechidus a few times.

1:04:07 Speaker 4 Oh, is that so?

1:04:08 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:04:09 Speaker 4 He, he-

1:04:10 Speaker 1 But, yeah, in Manchester his... You know, a book was written about him called The Tzaddik from Manchester.

1:04:15 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

1:04:16 Speaker 1 A whole book written.

1:04:16 Speaker 4 What's his story? He came from, uh-

1:04:18 Speaker 1 No, he was an English-born boy.

1:04:20 Speaker 4 Oh, really?

1:04:20 Speaker 1 Yeah, but he went to learn in Mir in, in the heim.

1:04:24 Speaker 4 Before the war?

1:04:25 Speaker 1 Before the war, he... Yeah.

1:04:27 Speaker 4 Hmm. So you were telling me last time also an interesting story about, um, about, uh, Friday night, uh, you, you... When you almost got kicked out of yeshiva for growing a beard.

1:04:38 Speaker 1 Oh, right . Oh, I told you that story, yeah.

1:04:40 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:04:41 Speaker 1 Yeah, well, the, the, the, the thing was in the yeshiva every Friday, lekovet Shabbos, you know what I'm trying... Everybody had to shave. So, you know, it didn't matter who you were, you had to shave.

1:04:53 Speaker 4 Right.

1:04:54 Speaker 1 Even a Hasidish rebbe, you know, no bells and... Didn't matter, you gotta shave. So they used to take this powder, mix it in water, and shmear it on their faces, and leave it for about 20 minutes till it dries, and it used to burn off the hair. Then they'd take a piece of wood, scrape off the powder, and it would leave their faces clean like, like a-

1:05:21 Speaker 4 What's that?

1:05:22 Speaker 1 Like a baby's bottom, you know? It was, it was... Rebbe used to come into the yeshiva on Friday night, all the faces. You know, whole week no one shaved, but on, on F- F- you know, it's Friday night, F- his face. So the Rosh Yeshiva saw me. I was 18 years old then, and, uh, I'd, I'd started... My beard had started growing. But I wasn't gonna shave because I'm going to Lubavitch, and Lubavitch, shalt men nisht debod, you know? That was a known fact. He, he didn't make, he, he didn't make the Lubavitch boys shave.

1:05:54 Speaker 4 He didn't make the Lubavitch?

1:05:55 Speaker 1 No, no. He, he probably knew he, he can't do that. So he didn't let them. But-

1:06:01 Speaker 4 Hey, I-

1:06:01 Speaker 1 But me-

1:06:01 Speaker 4 I, I, I, I know those guys. They wouldn't have done it

1:06:05 Speaker 1 They wouldn't have done it anyway.

1:06:06 Speaker 4 No.

1:06:07 Speaker 1 No, no way.

1:06:08 Speaker 4 No.

1:06:08 Speaker 1 Anyway, so he, he... But me, you know, I'm not a real Lubavitcher. I'm a tsuker kumen and so then he says to me, um, "Ich zet du vakst a bord," he says, "I can see you're growing a beard." He says, um, "Take it off" Those were his words, "Take it off."

1:06:29 Speaker 4 So you think he was trying to keep you from Lubavitch? Is that it?

1:06:31 Speaker 1 Yeah, no, because I said to him that, "Well, I wanna... I'm going to learn in Lubavitch." No, he said, "Ich zet du vakst a bord" He said to me, "I see you growing a beard" But, "Farvos vakst du a bord? Why are you growing a beard?" I said, "Because I wanna go and learn in Lubavitch, and Lubavitch, shalt men nisht debod. You don't shave in Lubavitch" So he said to me, "No, you're not... Lubavitch is not for you. You, you go learn in Mir where I learned or Slabodka, one of the yeshivas in Eretz Yisrael" you know? Anyway, so... But I said, "No, I don't, I, I don't wanna" He said... But anyway, and then his last words were, "Take it off" God. Now that, that, you know, that, that, that was terrible, because he could throw me out of yeshiva for disobeying him, no, no problem, you know? Anyway, so I went to Rabbi Dubov, and I s-asked Rabbi Dubov, I said, "What should I do? The Rosh Yeshiva told me to shave. I don't wanna shave because I wanna go and learn in Lubavitch" So he said, "Zolst nit sheren" He says to me, "Don't shave" So a few days later, Rosh Yeshiva sees me and he says to me, "You know, I told you to shave. How come you're not shaved?" So I said, "Well, I asked Rabbi Dubov, and Rabbi Dubov said I shouldn't shave" See, I had no other hets and no other way out but to say that. Otherwise,

1:07:41 Speaker 1 you know, he would've made me shave or thrown me out of the yeshiva.

1:07:45 Speaker 4 Can you describe Rabbi Dubov as a... What was it like learning with him? What kind of person was he? How did he strike you as for this young, uh, English teenager?

1:07:54 Speaker 1 Wow. Well, y- he was, he was, he was an old man. He had gray beard. He, uh, he was a big, big Talmid Chaham. You know, he used to teach Gemara in the, in the yeshiva. Didn't teach Hasidis because, you know, it was a Litvish yeshiva. He didn't teach Hasidis. Privately, he would teach a few boys a bit of Hasidis on the side Um, he learned in Lubavitch and, uh, he, he didn't know English. He refused to learn English, and afterwards he had charuta because he said he could've d- achieved a lot more if I would've learned to speak English. But the, uh, when he first came to England, he came early in the 1920s. So, you know, he, he wanted to be careful, you know. He didn't wanna mix into the English crowd. Um, so, um, he w- he was, he was also the Rav of the Lubavitch shul. Besides teaching in yeshiva, he was also the Rav of the Adass Yisroel Lubavitch shul. And, uh, what can I say? He was a, a, I mean, sh-

1:09:10 Speaker 4 What made him different is my question, or what, what impressed you about him?

1:09:16 Speaker 1 Um, I don't know really why. I, I just, I, I had great respect for him, um, because stories I'd heard about him, how he was moser nefesh for the Friediker Rebbe also. Um, I forget the, the, I don't know the ex- exact details, but I know in twen- 1928 something, he did something. He, he gave up his ID to the Friediker Rebbe, something, something like that to, to help the, the Rebbe. Um, he just was a very, very sweet man. He used to invite me for Shabbos lunch and, you know, and so on and so forth, and he used to learn with me a lot.

1:09:59 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:09:59 Speaker 1 I just, there was this... He was a good man, a good man.

1:10:03 Speaker 4 So you're, you're a bachur in, in London, in Manchester. You're learning in Manchester, and you've decided that you're going to go to Lubavitch-

1:10:10 Speaker 1 Right

1:10:10 Speaker 4 ... which at this point is Brooklyn, New York.

1:10:13 Speaker 1 Right, right.

1:10:14 Speaker 4 Right?

1:10:15 Speaker 1 So, um, all the Lubavitch bachurim had left, left already. The, the two Shemtov boys, Rav Reml Shemtov-

1:10:24 Speaker 4 Mm

1:10:24 Speaker 1 ... uh, Rabbi Sh- Avrum Shemtov and his brother, Yisroel Shemtov, who is my mechutan.

1:10:30 Speaker 4 Right.

1:10:31 Speaker 1 And then there was, uh, Berel Futerfas.

1:10:33 Speaker 4 Yeah, he left with Rabbi Avrum Shemtov.

1:10:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. Then the two Gokov boys, the older brother, Shawn Ber Gokov, who is nifti, and Rav Chanina's brother, Shawn Ber, uh, Gokov. Anyway, they'd all left and all gone to learn in 717. I was there on my own, and I-

1:10:52 Speaker 4 Oh, so there was a period of time where you're the only Lubavitcher in Manchester?

1:10:55 Speaker 1 Right, right. It was tough. Yeah.

1:10:58 Speaker 4 What was worse, that or, or back in public school in, uh, in, in Leeds?

1:11:03 Speaker 1 Well, oh, oh no, no, no.

1:11:05 Speaker 4 No.

1:11:05 Speaker 1 Not, not as bad as Leeds, no, no, no.

1:11:07 Speaker 4 I'm just kidding.

1:11:08 Speaker 1 No. But, um, uh, so I, uh, I wrote to the boys, you know. I said, "Get me a Form I-20, you know, so that I can come on, you know, with a student visa, you know?" So it, it took them, it took them a while till they finally got me one. Uh, but in the end it came, probably took about six months or something. I used to watch the post, you know, the mail every day. Anyway, then I had to buy a ticket on the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth, whichever, whichever liner, ocean liner was going to New York, but it cost a sack gilt. Cost 60 pounds.

1:11:56 Speaker 4 60 whole pounds?

1:11:57 Speaker 1 60 pounds. Now, 60 pound was a, a fortune, a fortune. Well, where do I get the money from? Ugh. So I had a... Well, I've got baruch hashem, a wonderful sister. My sister Vivian lives in Netanya. She should be gezunt a stark. She, she was working. She's done, and she's, uh, she earned three pounds a week.

1:12:24 Speaker 4 Three pounds a week?

1:12:25 Speaker 1 Yeah, three pounds a week. You know, you got about a shilling an hour or something, you know. In those days it was... Well, three pound a week was, that's what it...

1:12:33 Speaker 4 Right. Uh, and the economy in England at that time was not doing very well.

1:12:37 Speaker 1 Well, it was after the war, you know-

1:12:40 Speaker 4 Right, right

1:12:41 Speaker 1 ... and just getting over it.

1:12:43 Speaker 4 Right.

1:12:44 Speaker 1 So but she'd saved up 60 pounds, you know.

1:12:48 Speaker 4 For herself?

1:12:49 Speaker 1 Yeah, for, you know, she put it away and she-

1:12:52 Speaker 4 Right, right

1:12:52 Speaker 1 ... so she, she, she gave me the 60 pounds, you know, mesirus nefesh, mamash.

1:12:58 Speaker 4 You asked her for it?

1:13:00 Speaker 1 Yeah. I, I, I said, "Look, Vivian, I've gotta go to, uh, got to go to learn to the Rebbe" and all that. So she said, "Okay, I'll give you the money" which was mesirus nefesh mamash, you know, 60 pounds, a fortune.

1:13:13 Speaker 4 Why, why do you think she was motivated to, to do that?

1:13:17 Speaker 1 Well, because she saw, you know, I was, I was a, a Frum boy, you know, yeshiva bachur, and I wanted to go and learn more, so she, you know, she felt, "I've gotta encourage him. What else am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?"

1:13:28 Speaker 4 Well, you could stay in Manchester.

1:13:30 Speaker 1 Well-

1:13:31 Speaker 4 She understood that you-

1:13:32 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, no, but I wanted, I wanted to go to, to learn with, you know, in 717.

1:13:38 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:13:38 Speaker 1 'Cause, you know, I'd already tasted Chassidis, and I had a geshmack in Chassidis, so...

1:13:44 Speaker 4 Was it, was there ever a thought that you would go to France, to Brunoy?

1:13:50 Speaker 1 Well, I di- I didn't even know about Brunoy in those days.

1:13:53 Speaker 4 Oh, interesting. So the only, the only next step really was to go to New York?

1:13:58 Speaker 1 W- was, yeah.

1:13:58 Speaker 4 And I guess all your friends had also gone to New York.

1:14:00 Speaker 1 Right, right, right.

1:14:01 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:14:02 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:14:03 Speaker 4 Yeah. Interesting. So, so you, so you get... I'm just gonna put, I'll put the microphone .

1:14:14 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:14:15 Speaker 4 So you, so you get, so you get a ticket, you get a ticket to, uh... She may, she may, if she listens to this podcast, she may, she may ask you for, uh- ... for repayment.

1:14:27 Speaker 1 Uh-huh. I'd, I'd give it to her with the greatest of pleasure.

1:14:34 Speaker 4 Yeah. Uh, so-

1:14:35 Speaker 1 One second

1:14:35 Speaker 4 ... uh, uh, so, so, um, oh. So you, you, you end up in New York, or you end up on the boat to New York. What's it like to be on the boat to New York?

1:14:47 Speaker 1 Well, it was a, a four and a half days trip across the Atlantic, you know. Uh, there was a shul on board, and there was a kosher kitchen and all that, you know. So it wasn't too bad. I think we had a minyan a few times.

1:15:05 Speaker 4 Are you, are you anxious? Are you... I mean, you're, you're going to a whole new world. You're going to a new world, it's a new country.

1:15:13 Speaker 1 Right.

1:15:14 Speaker 4 It's a new community because even if you hung around the Lubavitchers in the yeshiva, like, they, they are related to a lot of the people there and so on. It's like their community. For you, it's, it's not, not yet your community.

1:15:27 Speaker 1 Right.

1:15:28 Speaker 4 What, what are the feelings? Uh, and, and how old are you at this point? 17, 18?

1:15:32 Speaker 1 18.

1:15:33 Speaker 4 18, okay.

1:15:33 Speaker 1 18 and a half, yeah.

1:15:34 Speaker 4 Yeah, and in those days, the world was a much bigger place, right? Traveling across Atlantic was a big deal.

1:15:40 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:15:41 Speaker 4 So what, were you sad to leave your family behind? Were you scared to s- to, to find out what's on the other side of this?

1:15:47 Speaker 1 No, no, not really. It, uh, didn't occur to me. Um, first of all, my brother, who finished in the Air Force, he, he'd gone to live in Canada, i- in Montreal.

1:15:59 Speaker 4 This is Eli Laib's grandfather?

1:16:02 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Oliver Shalom. Yeah. And, uh-

1:16:05 Speaker 4 I'll just keep the light on.

1:16:06 Speaker 5 Oh, sorry.

1:16:11 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:16:12 Speaker 1 Um, so where were we, um... But you, you-

1:16:19 Speaker 4 So, uh, uh, your, your brother, your brother had gone to Montreal

1:16:22 Speaker 1 ... Yeah, my, yeah, so I was in co- in touch with my brother, you know, and he, he came to visit me occasionally, and I would go and visit him. Um, and, um, you see, I, I was totally in the yeshiva. I, I, I didn't have very much to do with the community as such. Um, you know, I slept in the dorm, I ate in the, in the yeshiva, and I learned in the yeshiva, and I was totally involved in yeshiva life. Um, there was one Balabos, um, Elihu Gross, Oliver Shalom, uh, who had been in Lubavitch a long, long time, even I think he was by the Friediker Rebbe as well. Yeah.

1:17:09 Speaker 4 So this was a, this was in Manchester?

1:17:11 Speaker 1 No, no, no. He came-

1:17:12 Speaker 4 This was already in Crown Heights

1:17:13 Speaker 1 ... I mean, in Crown Heights.

1:17:14 Speaker 4 Oh, this was already in Crown Heights.

1:17:15 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:17:16 Speaker 4 So when you came here, you weren't involved with the community. You just saw it as a yeshiva.

1:17:19 Speaker 1 Right, right. I was not involved at all. Uh, well-

1:17:23 Speaker 4 So, so, so describe, so describe then your first impressions of getting off, you know, getting off the boat. Um, you go through customs, I guess immigration.

1:17:33 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:35 Speaker 4 Whatever.

1:17:35 Speaker 1 I didn't have anything anyway.

1:17:36 Speaker 4 Yeah, no big deal.

1:17:37 Speaker 1 No big deal.

1:17:38 Speaker 4 And you take a bus?

1:17:40 Speaker 1 Well, no, the, the, uh, the Shemtov boys had come to meet me.

1:17:45 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:17:45 Speaker 1 And, uh, I don't even remember how we got to, to the yeshiva. I pr- I probably, probably took a cab or something. I don't remember.

1:17:54 Speaker 4 And what was your first stop, 770?

1:17:56 Speaker 1 Yeah. We went straight to 770.

1:17:59 Speaker 4 What was that like to see the building the first time?

1:18:02 Speaker 1 Wow. It was, uh, it was very impressive, you know?

1:18:06 Speaker 4 It was impressive.

1:18:07 Speaker 1 Yeah, it was impressive, yeah. It was, uh, a beautiful building, you know. I thought, "Wow, this is, you know, something special." And, um, uh... Yeah, I don't... It's, it's the first time you've, someone's asked me this question. I don't... I'm trying to think of what, what my impressions are. Um, I saw the Rebbe the first time at Mincha, uh, at, um, 3:15, and, um, I thought, "Wow, you know, that's a tzadik." First time I'm looking at a real tzadik, you know? Um, um, then there was, uh... Everybody was very, very nice, you know. They were very accommodating, you know, helping me out. Found me a place to sleep, found me a place, you know, where I c- had my own little talit and tefillin, you know. There was a building in, on the next block, 676.

1:19:16 Speaker 4 Right.

1:19:17 Speaker 1 That was the, the kitchen and the dining room, and also the-

1:19:21 Speaker 4 The dormitory

1:19:22 Speaker 1 ... dormitory upstairs, yeah. So I was there for quite a while. And, uh, that was the life, the life. I was there for five years. It was, uh, it was really good. I really enjoyed it.

1:19:38 Speaker 4 Who's the first person that you meet from the yeshiva? Like who... I'm just, who's the, who's your point person? Who's the... Is there someone from the yeshiva that, that welcomes you?

1:19:48 Speaker 1 Oh, uh, Dovid Raskin, actually.

1:19:49 Speaker 4 Dovid Raskin.

1:19:50 Speaker 1 He was, he was really special. Wow. You know, he must have understood, you know, I'm, you know, I'm all alone and all that, 'cause he, he really, uh, was like a father to me, honestly.

1:20:00 Speaker 4 So is, is, is it, is it the yeshiva? Is it being next to the Rebbe? What's, what's the sense of, of what you're coming to?

1:20:10 Speaker 1 Well, it, it, it's, it's... It was being in this atmosphere where, you know, Hasidism is, is so important, and it has such incredible, uh, lessons for life, you know? Um, there was, that was, you know, and, you know, bochurim were... They have oider, you know. You used to see bochurim davening for hours on end, you know. I'd never seen that before, you know? You know, they used to daven till 1:00, 2:00 in the afternoon. I'd never seen anything like that. And, oh, the Balabatim davening, you know, with bar mitzvas. It was such a, a wonderful, uh, thing to see. Wow, wow, you know. Not that I ever achieved anything as much as that, but, but that's what really impressed me, and I thought, "Wow, I-" This is what, this is what, see, this is really all about.

1:21:09 Speaker 4 If you're looking for an event that is memorable, meaningful, and affordable, let me recommend This World Is a Garden, a film and live concert production created by us here at UVLA Media, inspired by Basili Ghani, the first mimer the Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Basili Ghani is something that we think about and talk about a lot. And in this production, we use the power of cinematic filmmaking and a live concert by String Quartet to bring the beauty of Basili Ghani to your community and your audience in a way that they've never seen, heard, or experienced it before. The production has already been hosted by Chabad houses around the country and has drawn wonderful reviews. Our package comes with everything that you need to put in the production, the film's original arrangements for String Quartet, publicity materials, everything besides the String Quartet, which we recommend that you hire locally to save on travel costs. To find out more about this production, please visit thisworldisagarden.com. Again, thisworldisagarden.com. And now, back to the show. So it was, it was the whole setting. It wasn't, it was, there was the Rebbe, there was the people around the Rebbe, the whole-

1:22:18 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:22:18 Speaker 4 ... the whole setting.

1:22:19 Speaker 1 The whole setting, the whole setting.

1:22:21 Speaker 4 The whole setting. So, so the, so you said, you said you saw the Rebbe the first time by Mincha.

1:22:26 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:22:26 Speaker 4 But you didn't speak to him?

1:22:28 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no.

1:22:30 Speaker 4 So what, what, what was the plan? You had to wait a certain amount of time to go into Yechidas? Was that, was that standard that when you came to, to town you-

1:22:39 Speaker 1 Well, um, you know, I, I wanted to go in for Yechidas. I arrived at the beginning of the month of Cheshvan.

1:22:46 Speaker 4 Right.

1:22:49 Speaker 1 After the Yom Yutavim. And, um, uh, the, uh, the, the, uh, Leibel Groner arranged I should go in for Yechidas on, uh, Chav Zayin Cheshvan, 27th month of Cheshvan. And, um, so, you know, I prepared myself for that first Yechidas. And, uh, you know, I wrote down, uh, some-

1:23:23 Speaker 4 What's, what does-

1:23:23 Speaker 1 ... various questions that I wanted to ask.

1:23:26 Speaker 4 What does preparation mean?

1:23:28 Speaker 1 Well, you know, the, you know, you, you, you gotta, your first Yechidas is the most important Yechidas of your life. So, you know, these are the things like they were telling us. And, um, you know, that, that, I, I learned a few Mamorim, a few Sichas, said a lot of Tehillim, you know, the usual preparations. Uh, going in, hopefully, you know, uh, I'll, I'll get a, some kind of injection from the Rebbe that will stand me in good stead. You know? Who knows? Who knows? So what happened was, came to Chav Zayin Cheshvan, uh, one of the questions I asked the Rebbe was, uh, whether I should change my Nusach, Hatrilah. I used to have Nusach Ashkenaz, 'cause we were from a Litvisher family, and I'd always have Nusach Ashkenaz in Manchester. But I wanted to know whether I should change. I knew actually you're allowed to change from Nusach Ashkenaz to Nusach Sfarad, Sfarad to Nusach Ari. But I wanted to get the Rebbe's Haskam and his Bracha as well. So the Rebbe said to me, "Yo, zos yo baitan, yes, you should change your Nusach, aber zos vaitan bizroish chodesh Kislev." You should wait till Rosh Chodesh Kislev, which was in three days' time. Which really is a pele because yo for sure a chassidim bechalal, when it comes to doing a good thing, you don't delay, you do it the sooner the better. Al tach misu es hamatzos, es hamitzvos, es hamatzos. Anyway, um, then the Rebbe said to me, "Do host

1:25:20 Speaker 1 a siddur?" So I said, "Nein, aber ich hol kofne nein, I'll buy one." So the Rebbe says, "Nein, nein, ich hol dir geben." No, I'll give you one. Then he looked on his desk to see if he has any siddurim, but it was piled high with, with sfarim. Uh, people used to send in their sfarim to the Rebbe. Anyway, he looked for the siddur, he couldn't find one. He pressed the buzzer on his desk, and Rabbi Chadikov came running in. And, uh, he said, "Rabbi Chadikov, susef shifran fun kleyn siddurim in Americas, maybe there are some siddurim in Americas." So Rabbi Chadikov ran out. And then the Rebbe asked me a few more questions about my sister in Manchester, and who you're learning with, and what you're learning, and so on. And then he said, "I don't know why he hasn't brought the siddur, but I'll make sure you get it." So I understood that, that that's the end of the Yechidas. Yeah.

1:26:17 Speaker 4 What, what surprised you most about the Rebbe in Yechidas? What surprised you most? Stand-

1:26:21 Speaker 1 What surprised, surprised me?

1:26:23 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:26:24 Speaker 1 Hmm. Well, I'll tell you something. You know, it may sound strange, but first of all, when I came into the Rebbe's room, it was very cold. In comparison to house, I would-- The Rebbe's room was always very cold. You'd got-- The air conditioner was on. And, um, and the Rebbe never wore long sleeves. He always had short sleeves. And, you know, you could see, you know-

1:26:51 Speaker 4 He was wearing a kapote?

1:26:53 Speaker 1 He was wearing a kapote, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. He was wearing a kapote. I think he had a gartel on as well, I suppose so, but I don't know. I don't remember seeing that because he was-- Yeah, I'm sure he had a gartel, I think one. Anyway, so, uh, he- And, and, and, you know, he's kapote, like with his, he's, uh, and I thought, I thought to myself, "Wow, he's home. He must be really cold." I think, I think that's what came into my mind. See, it's cold in here. Look and he's sitting there and he's... I, I don't know why he kept his coat on. Maybe to keep him awake. Maybe, you know, I don't, I don't know, you know, 'cause when in a warm atmosphere, you start falling to dropping off to sleep, but in, in a cold atmosphere, it keeps you awake. I guess, I don't know, but the Rebbe always liked to be in, in a c- I remember that whenever I'm in a yechida, it was always very cold. Um, I suppose that's what surprised me, and nothing surprised me as such, 'cause I, you know, um, I'd already seen the Rebbe quite a few times, and, um-

1:27:56 Speaker 4 Yeah, but this is the first time he's speaking to you, right?

1:27:58 Speaker 1 Yeah, first time speaking, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think I was in a, uh, I was, um... I th- I think I was a bit overwhelmed to really, uh, take things in, to be honest with you.

1:28:24 Speaker 4 Well, was he smiling? Was he, uh-

1:28:27 Speaker 1 Well, um, I wouldn't say he was smiling.

1:28:30 Speaker 4 Was he warm? Warm?

1:28:31 Speaker 1 Yeah, he seemed to, you know, um, totally, uh, you know, ibe gegebn to me, you know, he seemed to be, um, as if he's, uh, I'm his, I'm in his thoughts all the time, you know, this, this, at this moment now. Um, but that was, that, that wouldn't say I was, I was, I was scared a bit, you know, you know, I don't know what was gonna happen, you know, what the Rebbe will say. I don't know. Anyway, but he didn't say anything out of the ordinary, to be honest with you. But he did say, "I'll make sure you get the siddur." But I went out and I started writing out yechidas in the small zal upstairs. And, um, after about 10 minutes or so, s- someone comes, uh, shouting, "Kozhin. Where is Kozhin?" Someone, who, cousin, who's called cousin. But I didn't think it was me, 'cause, you know, my name is Cousin, not Kozhin. He was saying Kozhin, some Russian bocher. Don't know who it was. Anyway, I, I didn't answer him, you know, I just carried on writing, 'cause I didn't think he meant me. Anyway, he came back a few minutes later, and he's screaming on top of his voice, "Kozhin. Where is Kozhin?" And, uh, I said, "It's Cousin. Cousin, not Kozhin. Cousin." "Oh, yeah, Kozhin, the Rebbe vill dir, you know, the Rebbe wants you." And I said, "Well, I've been in for yechidas. What does he want me for?" Anyway, I went back, and I went to the

1:30:08 Speaker 1 ganeyd in a tacht, and the Leibele Groner's standing there. And Leibele says to me, "Nu, geh erin. Go in." And, uh, so I opened the door, I walked in, and I saw someone standing there in yechidas, and I quickly backed out. I said, "There's someone in there," you know. Bad manners, you know. English gentleman can't just interrupt. He says, "Nein, geh erin." He says to me, "Go in." I thought, "Oh, crumbs, who am I?" You know, the new kid on the block. You know, I can't start arguing with him. So I went in, and then when, when I went, I went in, I saw that the Rebbe is, is holding his small pocket siddur, his red siddur in his hand. But next to him was standing Rabbi Yitzchok Gushpat, who's standing right next to him, uh, and he's standing so close to the Rebbe, he's looking up to him like that, mamish, straight up, and boy, unbelievable. And he's reading his own tekst to the Rebbe. But anyway, the Rebbe stopped and stood up a- and leaned over the desk and gave me the siddur, and he said to me, "Zolst davenen besimcha un matzliach zayn" So I think, you know, that was a very important thing to me. Always daven besimcha. Well, you know, and I can't say I always daven besimcha, but I'm, I, I've been, I've had a very happy, fortunate life, Baruch Hashem. Not without problems. Everybody's had their, you know, their trials. But on the whole, I'm forever grateful to

1:31:43 Speaker 1 the Aibishter, you know.

1:31:44 Speaker 4 It's quite a moment that, uh, that the Rebbe's speaking to this big Rav, and he interrupts it to, to give-

1:31:53 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

1:31:53 Speaker 4 ... to give a siddur to this, to this young bocher.

1:31:55 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You see, the reason why the Rebbe stood up, you know, there's... The Rabbeim said the hardest thing they, they had to do was yechidas.

1:32:06 Speaker 4 Oh, the Rebbe stood up when he gave you the siddur?

1:32:08 Speaker 1 Yeah, he stood, he stood completely up.

1:32:11 Speaker 4 Oh.

1:32:12 Speaker 1 And, and 'cause I, I heard the, the Rabbeim, the hardest thing was yechidas because of the halbasha and half shota.

1:32:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:32:19 Speaker 1 That they had to put themselves in another person's situation and then take themselves out of that situation.

1:32:25 Speaker 4 Right.

1:32:25 Speaker 1 Called halbasha, clothe yourself in-

1:32:27 Speaker 4 Right

1:32:27 Speaker 1 ... an unclothed. And that took tremendous koichos. And actually, if you notice, whenever you would go in for yechidas, the Rebbe would always raise himself a little. And when you would go out from yechidas, he would raise himself again.

1:32:41 Speaker 4 Oh, is that so?

1:32:41 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And I not- after I was told that, I noticed that every single time, without fail, it was just a little, a little lift like that. The halbasha, half shota.

1:32:50 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:32:50 Speaker 1 Halbasha, half shota. But here, it was right in the middle of yechidas, so the Rebbe stood completely up, like a complete half shota.

1:32:59 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:33:00 Speaker 1 And, and put, and then put himself into my situation, give me a siddur. Zolst davenen besimcha, matz... You know, when you think about that, the ikar ha'kudsha, you know.

1:33:09 Speaker 4 Oh, what was the Rebbe's demeanor when he, when he gave you the, when, when he, at that moment?

1:33:13 Speaker 1 Oh, it, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. You could see he really put his heart and soul into it, you know?

1:33:19 Speaker 4 He used to smile?

1:33:20 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, and he was a, a nice, like, like, like, like happy, happy expression on his face. You know, "Oh, I'm so happy to give you this."

1:33:32 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:33:33 Speaker 1 It was really great.

1:33:35 Speaker 4 That-

1:33:36 Speaker 1 Really felt, really felt beautiful. Wow. Anyway, I've got the siddur still in my office. I use it from time to time. At first I started using it all the time, but then it started to fall to pieces.

1:33:46 Speaker 4 Right.

1:33:47 Speaker 1 So now I use it on special occasions, you know?

1:33:49 Speaker 4 Right. Wow.

1:33:52 Speaker 1 Yeah, that was, uh-

1:33:53 Speaker 4 What a moment

1:33:53 Speaker 1 ... that was a great moment, yeah.

1:33:55 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:33:59 Speaker 1 So I, I stayed in 770 for, uh, five years. Uh, actually, I wasn't in 770 all the time. The rabbi sent me, in 10 Shluchim, he sent to No- New Jersey.

1:34:10 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

1:34:11 Speaker 1 And I was there for a year and a half, and then came back to 770. And, uh, you know, we started off the yeshiva, uh, and eventually that yeshiva closed down when Morristown opened up. It was like the, the forerunner of Morristown, that the bochurim all went to there. They've got that beautiful campus in, in Morristown. So but I was learning in 770, and there was, you know, not a worry in the world. I enjoyed it. I loved every minute. I could've gone on forever. I started... But the yeshiva used to give us $10 a month,

1:34:52 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:34:52 Speaker 1 tmicha, it was called. So I once, uh, I told, uh, Rabbi Mental, God of a Psalm, I said, "You know, um, I s- I made a chashuve" and I showed me, you know, once you, you, you gotta do your washing, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, you gotta send a letter home, got... I made a chashuve, $10 just doesn't cover absolute basic, uh, expenses, you know? But he said, you know,

1:35:14 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:35:14 Speaker 1 "Vos lecht on a kanich she" and I understood it, you know, chassidishe, you know? But, um, so, uh, Yochanan Gordon, alav ha-shalom, um, he, he was looking for someone to help him do odd jobs, and he was the gabbi of 770.

1:35:31 Speaker 4 Right.

1:35:32 Speaker 1 So he, he was looking for somebody to, you know, Motzei Shabbos, put away all his seforim, you know? So he said, he offered me this job for $15 a month, which was a lot of money in those days.

1:35:47 Speaker 4 Double your income.

1:35:48 Speaker 1 Yeah. And, uh, it-- but what I had to do was every Motzei Shabbos, put all the, the Tehillim and the siddurim and the Gemaras and the Shulchan Aruchs, whatever, from all from downstairs, the shalah and schlep them all upstairs, you know? And it was a good job. I didn't mind, it was good exercise. I was a strong kid in those days. And, uh, uh, you know, I, I enjoyed it. And then I used to do other job. Whatever he told me to do, I would do. For example, I'll tell you, this is an interesting story. Um, you know, the rebbetzin, rebbe's wife, used to come to 770 every day to visit her mother. She used to come-

1:36:26 Speaker 4 The upstairs?

1:36:27 Speaker 1 Yeah, her mother upstairs, you know, on the, on the, the, well, the rebbetzin, the chamudina.

1:36:32 Speaker 4 Right.

1:36:32 Speaker 1 On the middle floor.

1:36:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:36:34 Speaker 1 The Rosh Hag was on the top floor.

1:36:36 Speaker 4 Right.

1:36:37 Speaker 1 Yeah. So she used to come when the bochurim would finish davening by about 10:30, and then they would go to eat breakfast in the, on the 676, the next block, and come back, 11:00 Seder would start. So she used to always come about, you know, 20 to 11 to... She'd always just to miss the bochurim, you know?

1:37:01 Speaker 4 Right.

1:37:04 Speaker 1 So one day, you know, uh, Yochanan Gordon said to me, uh, you know, "I want you to move some big boards," he said, um, hard board or whatever it was, from one room downstairs in 770, you know, the basement, to another room. And I said, "Okay, yeah." So I said, "I'll, I'll do it, you know, quickly in my break, you know, before I go for breakfast." So I started moving these big sheets, hard board, and, um, they were about, you know, eight by fours, you know? I could just about hold them and move them, you know? And, um, so the rebbetzin came down this slope, and she used to use the elevator downstairs in the basement, go up to her mother, and then come down and go out, and she'd park the car in front of 770.

1:38:00 Speaker 4 Oh, the rebbetzin would drive herself to 770?

1:38:02 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the r- in the Cadillac, yeah.

1:38:06 Speaker 4 She would drive herself?

1:38:07 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:38:07 Speaker 4 Huh.

1:38:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. So, um, so I was carrying this big-

1:38:16 Speaker 4 How did the bochurim think about the rebbetzin? Was she just completely mys- like, mysterious, off limits?

1:38:22 Speaker 1 Right. We, we, we didn't, we didn't think anything, you know?

1:38:26 Speaker 4 Right.

1:38:27 Speaker 1 Well, we saw her very often.

1:38:31 Speaker 4 Right.

1:38:32 Speaker 1 But, uh, no, no connection or shichas, you know? Anyway, so, uh, as, as I'm carrying this big board, so the rebbetzin comes in downstairs to go to the upper. I, I'm in the way, you know, and she, I can't... And then suddenly I, I saw the rebbetzin. I said, "Oh, "I'm sorry. I got in your way, you know? Oh." I felt really bad. So she said, "Mach a tes, mach a tes" She, she was so sweet, you know? She went to the elevator and went upstairs to her mother, and I carried on moving these boards, you know? Anyway, about 15 minutes later, she comes down again, and I'm still carrying these boards, and, uh, again, I got in her way, 'cause she came out the other way, and I'm standing there with a big board, and she couldn't get out. So I said, "Oh, "I'm so sorry, I..." She said, "Mach a tes, mach a tes" She said, "We should meet twice." So she, she made me feel good at that time, you know? I felt bad afterwards, but at least, you know, how she sort of... She was so sweet by, you know, making me feel about she, bashet, sort of that way.

1:39:46 Speaker 4 Huh.

1:39:47 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:39:48 Speaker 4 So, uh, so last time you... Before we go to the next thing, you're looking back at, you're looking back at five years in 770.

1:39:58 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:39:58 Speaker 4 What memories, what memories, um, come to you? Is it, is it the, the learning? Is it the farbrengens? Is it the chiddushim? What jumps out to you?

1:40:12 Speaker 1 Ooh, wow. Wow, that is a very, very powerful question. Um,

1:40:21 Speaker 4 Well, it's my, it's my third time. I've had time to think about this.

1:40:27 Speaker 1 You've asked me this question before?

1:40:28 Speaker 4 No.

1:40:29 Speaker 1 No. Um, w- what jumps out to me when I think of my time in 770? I'll tell you what, what, what I, what I think of straight away, you know, the first picture that comes into my mind is, is the Rebbe davening at the table. You know, you had that table which Yankel, uh, what's his name, like Lipska made it.

1:40:53 Speaker 4 Right. Sure.

1:40:54 Speaker 1 Yeah. And the, and the Rebbe's davening maariv, and he says, "Krias Shema" that, that, that always comes to my mind-

1:41:01 Speaker 4 Huh.

1:41:01 Speaker 1 More than anything.

1:41:02 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:41:03 Speaker 1 I don't know why, but it just... It meant so much, you know, "Rebbe's saying davening maariv". I could... You know, I knew exactly every movement the Rebbe, you know, I... Oh.

1:41:12 Speaker 4 The simpli- the simplicity of it.

1:41:14 Speaker 1 The simplicity of it. And it just unbelievable, you know. And the Krias HaTorah, the Rebbe used to always come in for Krias HaTorah every Monday and Thursday.

1:41:23 Speaker 4 Right.

1:41:23 Speaker 1 And you could stand really close to the Bimah here, and you stand, you can, you can look at every detail of the Rebbe's face, you know. Oh.

1:41:31 Speaker 4 And he didn't come in with a talis and tefillin, right?

1:41:33 Speaker 1 No, no, no.

1:41:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:41:34 Speaker 1 Just-

1:41:35 Speaker 4 Just a yarmulka.

1:41:36 Speaker 1 Just a yarmulka. He used to come in with his siddur and his gantel, put his gantel on, and then he was, you know, then he would go get shlishi and, um, um-

1:41:49 Speaker 4 That's very interesting. That's very interesting. The, the... What does, what does Hayyei Yehuda say? That to know of a tzadik, right? There, there's so much that you learn from the words of a tzadik.

1:42:02 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:42:02 Speaker 4 But there's in a way even more that you learn from the movements, 'cause in a way the movements carry something that goes beyond words.

1:42:10 Speaker 1 Right.

1:42:11 Speaker 4 Right?

1:42:11 Speaker 1 Right, right, right. On, on Shabbos we used to... You know, the Rebbe would farbrengen downstairs in the shalash, and after the farbrengen he would come upstairs to daven Mincha in, in the zal upstairs.

1:42:26 Speaker 4 So everyone, everyone would go upstairs?

1:42:27 Speaker 1 Yeah, everyone would go upstairs. So Avraham Lipska, I don't know if you know, but he, he lives in this building now, but we were chaverim together. Um, we used to run up straight away and stand right next to the table where the Rebbe would daven Minchas, you know, because it was crowded. The whole zal was crowded with people right up to the table. So we were literally two feet, three feet away from the Rebbe, and we used to listen to the way the Rebbe davened. We used to listen to his words, "Ashrei, Yishvu b'Tzion". Anyway, the Rebbe used to always say, "Zecher, zecher Rav Tuvia b'yom"

1:43:02 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:43:03 Speaker 1 Every time he said Ashrei. And also he, when he came to "Poisei achas yodecha masbia lanichol chai rotzon", he used to go like this, "Poisei achas yodecha masbia lanichol chai rotzon" "Tzaddik Hashem bachol derechav uzechor bachol masiv. Poisei achas yodecha masbia lanichol chai rotzon" "Vetzaddik Hashem bachol derechav uzechor bachol masiv. Kol avodah Hashem kochrim, v'chasdecha yeemzu et mesib. Poisei achas yodecha masbia lanichol chai rotzon" We could never catch what those words that he was mumbling. We were listening with... My hearing was very good in those days. Could still not catch, could not catch what he was saying, the, what those words that he was mumbling. But I'll tell you another interesting story which, what may he may have been saying was... This happened in, uh, Toshach-Chof-Tes, uh, 1929 and, um, you may have heard of Yossi Galitzki who's a Rav in Tel Aviv now.

1:44:06 Speaker 4 Sure.

1:44:07 Speaker 1 Right. Okay. So Yossi Galitzki was then a bocher in 770, and it was during the summer and, uh, then in those days, the Rebbe only farbrenged Shabbos Mevarchim. He didn't farbrengen any other Shabbosim. So for the other Shabbosim everybody used to go away to the country. For Shabbos Mevarchim you used to all come in. Anyway, suddenly it was w- without, without warning or anything, the Rebbe decides he's gonna farbreng. Uh, I think it was during the three weeks. Don't remember the exact date.

1:44:46 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:44:47 Speaker 1 A sudden farbrengen, no one's there. So he said Yossi Galitzki was there. Uh, there were a few, a few... He said he doesn't think there was more than 120 people. He-- There was m- It was empty and the Rebbe's farbrenging. So he was able to... He said he was able to get a really good place because there was nobody sitting. He was standing very, very close to where the Rebbe was. Anyway, so they were singing a nigun and, uh, and the Rebbe was also singing, but then he, he heard the Rebbe's mumbling something. So, you know, he concentrated very, very hard and he's standing, "What, what is the Rebbe mum- s- s-" He heard the Rebbe say, "Baruch Shalom ben Bunya, zol hobn a refua shleima" You know? So he didn't, he didn't know who Shalom ben, ben Bunya is, but he, he heard the Rebbe say... And then singing the nigun and then saying... I don't know if he repeated it, but anyway, he certainly said it. "Shalom ben Bunya" If... Only if you were very close could you catch it, but that's what he caught. Anyway, afterwards he found, he said, "Who, who's Shalom ben Bunya, Baruch Shalom ben Bunya?" So he found out- You know Rabbi Shvei, he, he had a brother called Baruchon. Baruchon Ben Bunya was the most, was the most... See, he, this never... This, uh, Baruchon died, a young man about 36 years old. But he was a tzadik, a Talmid Chaham nifla. He was bochie in Kotshim,

1:46:26 Speaker 1 I think 770. He was, he was a mamish, a terrific guy, sweetest guy on earth. Big tall guy, must have been about 6'4", 4'0". And he got yen a machlah.

1:46:39 Speaker 4 Hmm.

1:46:39 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe, the Rebbe was saying, "Refuah shlaima. Baruchon Ben Bunya's zun un refuah shlaima." That's what he was mumbling.

1:46:48 Speaker 4 Do you think that's similar to what he was mumbling or this has-

1:46:50 Speaker 1 Uh, maybe, maybe that's what-

1:46:52 Speaker 4 Wow

1:46:52 Speaker 1 ... when Pris Hefer should

1:47:04 Speaker 4 Oh, oh, he would say the posuk again, again, and again?

1:47:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

1:47:06 Speaker 4 Oh, I thought you were saying that was each week a different thing.

1:47:08 Speaker 1 No, no, no. Uh, uh, every Ashrei, yeah, yeah.

1:47:11 Speaker 4 He'd say the posuk over again and again-

1:47:13 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:47:13 Speaker 4 ... and then, and then say something under his breath?

1:47:15 Speaker 1 Something... Yeah. And Pris Hefer's , um. He would go, like, almost to the end of Ashrei-

1:47:19 Speaker 4 Wow. Wow

1:47:19 Speaker 1 ... and then go back, then again, da, da, da, then go back, and then go back. Incredible.

1:47:24 Speaker 4 Hmm. Hmm.

1:47:25 Speaker 1 Wow.

1:47:25 Speaker 4 Maras.

1:47:25 Speaker 1 Anyway.

1:47:27 Speaker 4 So, so let, let, let's, let- let's, uh-

1:47:30 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:47:30 Speaker 4 ... I, I'm using my, my, uh, past knowledge to, to guide this conversation a little bit.

1:47:35 Speaker 1 Okay.

1:47:35 Speaker 4 Uh, let- let's, let's go to the stories with, with, uh, release time. They're very, very important-

1:47:42 Speaker 1 Oh, oh, oh

1:47:42 Speaker 4 ... important stories aren't they?

1:47:43 Speaker 1 Release time, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'm glad you remember that .

1:47:46 Speaker 4 Oh.

1:47:47 Speaker 1 Anyway.

1:47:47 Speaker 4 How could I, how could I forget? You have, you have to go soon?

1:47:49 Speaker 1 No, no, but I'm just wondering, uh, are we all right for time? I mean, are you-

1:47:52 Speaker 4 I'm okay.

1:47:53 Speaker 1 You're okay?

1:47:53 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:47:55 Speaker 1 Yeah, well, reas- release time was, uh, a very, very special time. Every Wednesday at 12 o'clock, uh, the Bais Medrash used to empty out. Everybody went to the Anti-Shmad office, which wa- what it was called in those days. Later on it was changed to the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education. But in those days it was called the Anti-Shmad office. So we used to go-

1:48:19 Speaker 4 Uh, it has a, it has a cooler ring to it.

1:48:22 Speaker 1 I don't know, it sounds a bit Anti-Shmad, I don't know. Anyway, so, uh, what happened was, um, everybody pick themselves up. You used to go and, uh, pick your prizes up and your candies and your mazanas, whatever it is you're gonna give out to the kids. Then you would travel to whichever, uh, s- public school you were assigned to all over New York, Brooklyn, New York, and so on. Uh, I used to go to Coney Island, and we used to pick up, you know, we had a big, big... We had about 200 kids in our, uh, in our particular, uh, group. We used to pick the kids up from the public school and take them to a nearby shul. And there we would, you know, talk about... You just gotta tell them a story, give them, give them... Make them say a bracha, say Shema. You know, it was gal, galt ikh azoy. We, we enjoyed it. And, uh, um, it was good. It was good. I, it was very, very successful. That's where I got my first... You know, I was, uh, first of all scared to open my mouth, uh, y- y- to, to, to talk to little kids, you know? But here I was talking to, you know, in a big loud voice, you know? I was making them all hear and telling stories and, uh, you know, that gave me confidence to, uh, to speak. Anyway, 'cause at first I never... Once, I remember when I was a bocher in Newark,

1:49:45 Speaker 1 New Jersey, so we decided we'd make a Mesibah Shabbos in one of the shuls so, um, uh, it was my job, I was gonna have to take this, uh, group, you know? So, uh, there were five kids who were gonna come, and they were about five, six years old, and it was gonna happen for an hour, right? So I had to start preparing, what am I gonna do for an hour with these kids, you know? So already, uh, days before, God, it was playing on my mind, and I was scared stiff. And I started preparing a story, and I repeated the story 100 times to make sure that I got it right, and, uh, you know, and everything. Uh, oh, it was a lot. Yamish, it was, it was agony. Agony. That was the f- first time I ever spoke to any, in public, honestly, in public to five-year-old kids. I was in a, I was in a state. But eventually, you know, I got over that and started talking to bigger groups, and then I speak to shuls, and then, then I run a school, Hadar, Boston, you know? Anyway, so, um, there was one bocher who I actually slept in the same room with this bocher, who, uh, shall be nameless 'cause he, he, he doesn't want anybody to know who he, who-

1:51:07 Speaker 4 It's o-

1:51:08 Speaker 1 The reply he got, yeah

1:51:08 Speaker 4 ... it's completely fine.

1:51:10 Speaker 1 So he, um, uh, he was a very, very big masmid. He never wasted a minute. He was a big Talmid Chaham. And he, he spent every minute learning. Uh, even, you know, going to sleep at night, he'd fall asleep with a sefer in his hand, a Shulchan Aruch or whatever. And, uh, in his spare time, he learnt all Shas, Sidra, Mishnah, and he's chutz laseida of yeshiva. So, you know, it was, it was a, a real Talmid Chaham, Sidra, Shas, bocher, chabad niklaus. And he thought that going to Wednesday hour is, is a big waste of time for him because, you know, it takes four, five, six hours depending how far you have to travel, you know? And, um, in that time, you know, he could learn so much. And it, he f- felt that he's not really achieving much. You know, the kids come, but they, they, they come for the prizes, and they come to get out of school earlier. And, uh, you know, they, they like the candies and this, that, and the other. He, he's, he, he feels that, uh- He, he, he prefer to sit and learn. Can he please have an exemption? Can he have a uh, you know, exemption from going to, uh, Wednesday hour. So he wrote into the Rebbe, he asked the Rebbe can he, can he have a, an exemption? So the Rebbe wrote him this. Rebbe wrote him and said, "I want you to know..." It was in Russian, Kurdish word today. "I want

1:52:37 Speaker 1 you to know that all Mishamas in Gan Eden and

1:52:42 Speaker 4 As, as a Bakker, is that-

1:52:55 Speaker 1 As a Bakker that, that, that, you know, it made me-- it gave me that i- i- impetus, that incentive. I said, "God, I've gotta be in Chinuch. I've gotta be in Chinuch."

1:53:47 Speaker 4 I mean, it's amazing when I think of your story, what's really, what's really interesting as a through line is here's a boy that grew up in, uh, Leeds, comes to Yeshiva, is brought in, is accepted into the Yeshiva because he makes a plea to the Rosh Yeshiva at the last moment.

1:54:09 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:54:10 Speaker 4 Right? And then comes to, comes to Lubavitch, and in a way, the welcome that the Rebbe gives you is, "Here's a siddur to, to begin your journey of davening the Sahari. Like, you're, you're, you're, you're making a new step in your life, and here I am to give you something." And, and then this, this story of, of, uh, of release time, where you hear from your roommate the, the preciousness of, of Chinuch, which then leads you into Chinuch. There's just-- there's something beautifully full circle about it, right? The, the, the power of Chinuch, right? Like the, like the story that you have the Rebbe giving you the siddur, in a way, the most impressive part of it to me is that the Rebbe's talking to this rav that he res- that he respects so much, that the rav is standing next to him as opposed to on the other side of the desk, right?

1:55:04 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:55:05 Speaker 4 And, and the Rebbe interrupts him. He could have waited till the rav was done.

1:55:09 Speaker 1 Right.

1:55:10 Speaker 4 But I suppose Rebbe got a siddur and said, "I have to give it to this, this, this young, this young boy," right? And there's, there's so- like, you know, we're talking-- there's something here very-- like the Rebbe says that, that even the Nasham Meshav, being olive ashlam is jealous of the moment of Chinuch. Yeah, but that's how he acted to you, right? And the letter that he sent to you when you were 12, and even your Rosh Yeshiva, who wasn't a Lubavitcher, but thanks to him you came into the Yeshiva.

1:55:38 Speaker 1 Right, right, right.

1:55:39 Speaker 4 Just it's a-- and then you end up in Chinuch. There's just something beautifully full circle and precious about, um, the power and the tension of, of, of, uh, you know, of, of, of the power of attention towards a young child. There, there was a story you told me as well where, where, where you had a hesitation one time about release time.

1:55:59 Speaker 1 Yes, that's right. My, when my, my Yom Miliedus, my birthday, came out on a Wednesday, and I went in for Yechidus for Yom, you know, and, and once a year in those days you could go in for your yom- for your birthday.

1:56:11 Speaker 4 Right.

1:56:11 Speaker 1 And it, and it was, my, my Yom Miliedus was before the Wednesday hour. So I asked the Rebbe perhaps I shouldn't go on Wednesday hour, but I should stay in the Yeshiva and learn an extra inyan in Niglem and an extra inyan in Chassidus, you know? So I, the question was should I go to Wednesday hour? So the Rebbe read my tefillin and looked up at me, and and he said-- and he shouted at me. He shout, you know, "A vander zost again." He s- yeah, I go- I go in a bit of a shock, and I thought, "Wow, you know, what, what have I done?" You know? 'Cause, 'cause I thought Rebbe said, you know, "Okay, yeah, go to yeshiva." Rebbe said with such a force that I realized I made a big mistake, and when it comes to-

1:56:58 Speaker 4 Oh, what, what did you say about mistakes at the beginning of our conversation? Mistakes- Mistakes are good, right?

1:57:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, you learn from mistakes. That's right. That's so absolutely important, yeah.

1:57:08 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:57:08 Speaker 1 Never... It's no, n- n- no problem making a mistake. Yeah. So, uh, wow.

1:57:15 Speaker 4 So you took-

1:57:15 Speaker 1 I, I got that message really strong. I was in incredible. Baruch Hashem for that I got.

1:57:21 Speaker 4 So you, you committed, you committed to, to going into Chinuch, and, uh, so did, did you ask the Rebbe about going to Chinuch? Did he tell you to go into Chinuch? How did that-

1:57:30 Speaker 1 Well, what, um, my final Yechidus before I got married and, and I was going back to England, and, uh, I, I was gonna ask-- I didn't, I didn't ask the Rebbe what I should do or anything, you know. I was-- I don't know why, but, um, the Rebbe himself said to me, he says, "Arbutten in Beis Lubavitch, you should go and work in Beis Lubavitch." And he said, "You, y- you don't have to decide right away what you're going to do, but what e-- all, you, you should only work in Beis Lubavitch. That's what you should do." So-

1:58:09 Speaker 4 So you hadn't even told the Rebbe that you were, that you were going on shlichas. Rebbe told you before you offered, so to speak.

1:58:14 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, the Rebbe just told me straight away, "You should."

1:58:16 Speaker 4 Wow.

1:58:17 Speaker 1 Wow. Um, and, uh- When I got there, you know, the school had just opened. They only had six boys, and th- th- they had one, one teacher, Sean, Sean Struck, so it was Sean.

1:58:31 Speaker 4 So you, you got married and stayed in England? You didn't come back-

1:58:33 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:58:34 Speaker 4 ... and then to-

1:58:34 Speaker 1 No, no, not.

1:58:35 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:58:35 Speaker 1 I mean, I came back for visits.

1:58:36 Speaker 4 No, but you didn't come back for kollel or anything?

1:58:38 Speaker 1 No, there were, there was no kollel un-

1:58:39 Speaker 4 Back in those days. So you got, you got married in England-

1:58:42 Speaker 1 Yes

1:58:42 Speaker 4 ... and then went to work in Mir Slabodka-

1:58:43 Speaker 1 Correct

1:58:44 Speaker 4 ... right after, right there a-

1:58:45 Speaker 1 Right

1:58:45 Speaker 4 ... right after?

1:58:46 Speaker 1 Right after, yeah.

1:58:47 Speaker 4 Huh.

1:58:47 Speaker 1 But what I did was, uh, I did fundraising- ... which I didn't like.

1:58:54 Speaker 4 You didn't like it? No.

1:58:55 Speaker 1 Oh, no, I hated it, but I did it, you know, and, uh, yeah. Koifin, I say, actually, you emigrate, Sonny, and you used to go out day and night, and, uh, I did so much walking, I got terrible pains in my legs, you know, and had to go to a hospital for physical therapy and this, that. But anyway, in the end, in the end, we bought an old car, Beryl Foot of Us and I. Uh, we used to go fundraising some nights together, so together we bought this old car, 1935 Austin. Anyway, it was like a tank, but, but it was... it worked, you know. Anyway, we had, we had problems with it. Never mind, we... but it was good. And we used to go out knocking on doors, you know. Go to an area, and you knock on a few doors, you s- where you see a muzuzia, you know, and then finally someone opens up and lets you in, and they're very friendly and very nice, and then you say to them, uh, you know, "We're collecting for an oh yes," and they give you something, and then you say, "Do you know anybody else you think we could go to?" And they say, "Oh, yeah, there's so-and-so. Hey, he's a nice guy. Here you go." Oh, so you got another couple from that guy, and then you go to them, and you ask them, "Do you know anybody else we could go to?" And in that way, we worked through a whole

2:00:07 Speaker 1 area and got to know all the... in, in that area, and we used to go back to them two or three times a year for donations. Then once we'd done... got all the good Yidden in that area, we'd go to another area, and again, you know, we'd start with one and then carry on two, three, until we did another area. But I got so familiar with London. London's a very big town, but I, I could have become a taxi driver. I knew my way around London, every s- yeah, all districts, you know, Kamatch, you know.

2:00:38 Speaker 4 So you started off on the fundraising department and then-

2:00:40 Speaker 1 Right

2:00:40 Speaker 4 ... and then became the headmaster?

2:00:42 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Then, then, then the school grew, but they needed a tea- so I started teaching half a day, and then they needed a whole day, so I started teaching a whole day. And then, you know, the school got bigger and bigger, and, uh, until eventually, uh, I still went fundraising every night.

2:00:59 Speaker 4 Really?

2:00:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

2:00:59 Speaker 4 While you were headmaster?

2:01:00 Speaker 1 While I was headmaster. A- a- and I'll tell you something else.

2:01:05 Speaker 4 A father's hosting here.

2:01:06 Speaker 1 While I was headmaster, listen to this, I had a big family can already. I have 14 kinder, like Ken Yubu.

2:01:13 Speaker 4 I know.

2:01:13 Speaker 1 Ken Yubu, and, and yeah, I was headmaster of the school, and I... they didn't pay me enough money to cover all my expenses, you know. Can I know how to really speak like that? So I used to get up at 4:00 in the morning. I'd go scheimering milk at 5:00 at a farm just outside London.

2:01:33 Speaker 4 Huh.

2:01:33 Speaker 1 I'd scheimer the milk from 5:00 till 6:00. I'd get back to Stamford Hill at just in time, 6:45. I'd rush to the mikveh. At 7:00, I'd go to shul. I'd daven. I'd get home back just after 8:00, help my wife get the kids s- ready for school, feed them, dress them, and all that. Get to school, open up the school, because I was the headmaster. Open up the school. I was in school the whole day till 6:00. 6:00, I'd go home and eat something. 6:45 was Mincha. After Mincha, I'd go fundraising, get home about 11:00 at night, and then I'd be up again the next morning at 4:00, do the same routine. Did it for years to Canada, but I was, I was tough. I was strong then. I never got tired. I was always full of energy. Uh, Baruch Hashem. Uh, I don't know the Abish, not bigger often, and I carried on for years and years and years doing that until eventually, you know, uh, I had enough panosa, which I... the, the Abish to, you know, arrange a little cup, you know, like Uncle Tagam Unkla says, where it says, uh, "He who are nursing your choyil, who are nursing your koich las is choyil." They wish to give you strength to make wealth, and the Tagam Yonason, Tagam Unkla says, uh, "Who yoiv lecho etzel lemikne nichsin," they wish to gives you an idea to buy, uh-

2:02:56 Speaker 4 Property

2:02:57 Speaker 1 ... property. So I started buying some property. Bought one, two, three, four houses, one after the other, and I had a tremendous hats off on Abu Mufloga, and I started getting more panosa from, from the houses than I did from the school, but I still didn't give up my work, and school was still, you know, full-time, uh, running the school. And on the side, you know, I was running these properties, and I've got, I've got good panosa from them. After I sold some of it, I, I'll give you a m- a moshel, one moshel. I sold it a lot, but I paid 2,700 pound for a property, right? A- and I had it for about 30 years or something like that, and I got rent from it all the time. I had Nissim van Niflois, uh, Nissim, you know. I sold it about 30 years later for 220,000 pound. A moshel, like just... Anyway, and so... And then I'd add another thing with this. My brother, Moshe Yitzhak, he was a very successful businessman, and he had a lot of, lot of money, you know. And so he said to me, "Look, you know, why don't we go into a partnership? You know, you've got experience in running property, you know, finding tenants and renting and all that. Yeah, I'll give you the money. You buy some property, and you look after it, and we'll go 50/50 on the profit." Right? So okay. I said, "Okay, I'll, I'm gonna look for something." So I found

2:04:35 Speaker 1 it was a whole street, a whole street, 12 houses. Beautiful, big Victorian houses. Yeah, gesundheit, starker property, you know, top of the range. Gone 5,000 pound each. 60,000 pound. So I said to my brother, you know, "Would you give the 60,000?" He says, "Yeah, I'll give you 60,000." He had plenty of money. Okay. So, but I said, "Listen," Mel, I said, I call him Mel Bush and Mel for him. I can't... I've got to ask the rabbi, you know. I can't buy just this. It's a big deal, this, you know. I've got to ask the rabbi first. I wrote the whole thing. I said, "My brother's gonna put up the money. This is 12 houses, da, da, da, and we'll be sure to fin- I'll keep, look after it. It won't take me away from my work in school because, uh, you know, I already have some property and I do it all outside school time and all that." And I got, got an answer from the rabbi like this, "Chaval sheyaschil lotses mehavodus hakodesha shel kvod kodoshos mori v'chami l'choyl." It, it would, it, it'd be a pity for you to start to go out of the avodas hakodesh of my shver to the mundane, to weak, weak data. So, so obviously the rabbi saw that I'd get so involved with the property that I would, you know, I'd, I'd give up being headmaster, you know, about making money on, you know, hand over fist. You know, those properties today, uh, probably worth, probably

2:06:20 Speaker 1 worth about 3 million each, so three 12, so, so about 30 odd million pound today, those same properties. 'Cause, you know, our property just sh- went beshug in London, you know? Anyway, so I said to my brother, "I'm sorry, man, I can't do it, you know? I can't, the rabbi, I can see the rabbi doesn't want me to do it. Sorry. Never mind." So, okay, forgot about it. But, um, a neighbor, a Satmar Chassid, uh, speaking to my son, uh, he, he said to me, "You know, uh, you know your f- your father was gonna buy those, those 12 houses for 60 rial? What happened? How come, uh, he, he didn't buy them?" So, uh, well, so my son said, "Well, he got a letter from the rabbi, and the rabbi wasn't very happy that he should, uh, should buy them." And he, this Satmar says, "Oi, a Chassid shaydah." I felt so proud of it. I felt so proud that I'm a Chassid shaydah. You know what I mean? Basay, you know, they, they, they they tell their rabbis what to do, you know? Anyway, the thing is, he, he, you know, he couldn't believe that I'd given this up, you know?

2:07:33 Speaker 6 Crazy, crazy.

2:07:34 Speaker 1 Yes.

2:07:34 Speaker 6 Absolutely crazy.

2:07:35 Speaker 1 Yeah. Anyway, no regrets. Believe me, no regrets.

2:07:39 Speaker 6 Yeah, so I, I wanna just wrap this up.

2:07:41 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

2:07:41 Speaker 6 Look, I, I have to tell you that this is our third round, and a lot of the things you, you told me I heard l- the last time and the time before.

2:07:50 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

2:07:51 Speaker 6 But, uh, it was a delight to hear that all again, and you've said a lot of new things.

2:07:54 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

2:07:55 Speaker 6 So thank you very much.

2:07:56 Speaker 1 Oh.

2:07:56 Speaker 6 I just, I, I just wanna wrap it up with a beautiful story that you told me about the competition that you had with, that you ran in your school.

2:08:04 Speaker 1 Oh, right. Yeah.

2:08:05 Speaker 6 But I actually, I, I, I wanna make sure- ... that people hear this other line that you told me, so two things. There was a, there was a line at Kos Shel Bracha where a mechanch came to the rabbi-

2:08:14 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah

2:08:14 Speaker 6 ... that we need to, we need to just cover that, and that will lead us into the story. What, what was that?

2:08:19 Speaker 1 You want me to-

2:08:20 Speaker 6 Yes, please

2:08:20 Speaker 1 ... repeat that story? Yes?

2:08:21 Speaker 6 Yes, please. Yes.

2:08:21 Speaker 1 Well, um, by Kos Shel Bracha, a younger man, a young man, uh, who just started teaching walked by the rabbi at Kos Shel Bracha, and as he passed by the rabbi, he said, "Ich bet a bracha ich molamdus." "I'm asking a bracha for teaching." So the rabbi said to him three words which are the most basic, important thing in Chinuch. The rabbi said to him, "Build self-esteem."

2:08:55 Speaker 6 In English?

2:08:56 Speaker 1 In English, "Build self-esteem." In other words, "You must build up and praise a talmid. Do not put them down." And that my experience, ac- actually why I think I was so successful at being a, a headmaster, 'cause I'd gone through that terrible experience of being in a goyish school where you never heard a word of praise. You were only put down, you were only punished, you were only told you're no good, and you never... They, they, they didn't believe in telling you you're good. I remember when I was in Magdesia Yeshiva and the Rosh Yeshiva gave me an older bocher to learn with me and, and, uh, because I had no class to go into. But to this older bocher, starts teaching me a pasuk, and he says, "Vay'daber Hashem," and Hashem spoke, "El Moshe," to Moshe, "L'mosai." And he said to me, "Repeat it." So I did, I repeated it. I said, "Vay'daber Hashem," Hashem spoke, "El Moshe," to Moshe, "L'mosai." Anybody could do that. But he said, "Wow, you're terrific. You're a genius. You're so clever." I couldn't believe it. I didn't... It was the first time in my life anyone had said a nice word to me and a- and me told me that I'm any good. I always thought I'm a useless piece of rubbish, and he did that. Build self-esteem. That is the most important klal, rule for Chinuch.

2:10:14 Speaker 6 The rabbi giving you a siddur. How about that? Well, what's, what's that?

2:10:18 Speaker 1 Well, yeah, that's, that's it, building self-esteem.

2:10:22 Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

2:10:23 Speaker 1 Wow.

2:10:24 Speaker 6 So, so that leads us to the story of the, you're running, you're running a competition in your-

2:10:30 Speaker 1 Oh, right

2:10:31 Speaker 6 ... in, in your school.

2:10:32 Speaker 1 Oh, right. Well, w- w- the whole story of, of how it-

2:10:36 Speaker 6 Uh, let's, uh, let's tell the, let's tell the story. I think, I think it's worth it.

2:10:39 Speaker 1 You mean-

2:10:41 Speaker 6 The, the competition-

2:10:41 Speaker 1 You mean-

2:10:41 Speaker 6 ... that led to, that led to the prize.

2:10:44 Speaker 1 Going to, to come to-

2:10:46 Speaker 6 Yes, yes

2:10:46 Speaker 1 ... oh, right.

2:10:47 Speaker 6 Yes.

2:10:49 Speaker 1 Well, uh, what I, I, I, in order to, uh, to increase, uh, the standard of learning and, uh, give children impetus and, uh, and give them a, you know, a, uh, incentive to want to learn, so I used to- Have a rule that, um, because every week I used to test every class in the school. I used to, you know, each class knew their days, Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Sunday, you know, and I would go in and test them. And if every boy in the class got 10 out of 10 three times in a row, three tests in a row, then the whole class would go on an outing. So there was this very, very big class of 28 boys. It was very, very difficult for 28 boys that every single boy should get 10 out of 10 because you had a r- a very, uh, wide range of ability in a class, you know? But what I used to do, I used to arrange be- before with the teacher, he would tell me, you know, wh- which possible tasks, this weaker boy and a better boy, this and that. So we worked, you know, you know, in order to build self-esteem, make them feel good. And so this class of 28 boys, Baruch Hashem, they all got... Their, their test was on a Sunday, and every single boy got 10 out of 10, and they were delighted. It was unbelievable, the, the joy. You should have seen how

2:12:19 Speaker 1 they were jumping and dancing for joy. Anyway, I said, "Okay, boys, that's it. Number one, let's hope next week you'll get a..." You know. So again, that week they all put tremendous effort into learning, and the better boys were helping the weaker boys, and they were phoning each other up at home and helping each other to, to, to know the pesukim and so on. Came the next Sunday, and again, every boy got 10 out of 10. It was, uh, you know, unbelievable. The third Sunday, the same thing happened again. Wow, every boy got 10 out of 10, and I said to them, "Boys, this is incredible. It's the first time in history that such a big class, every boy has got 10 out of... Oh, I've gotta take them on a very special outing this week." Anyway, what happened was I was very, very busy that week. I didn't have a chance to arrange an outing. It came the next Sunday. The next Sunday, believe it or not, these kids, every s- and this time there was no, no, no special outing because, you know, they'd already earned their... But still, every single kid got 10 out of 10. They really had improved tremendously. And as I said, "Boys, I've gotta take you on to an, an extra special outing. I don't know where. Where do you think we should go?" So they said, "Oh, let's go to France for the day," or, "Let's go here, and let's go..." Anyway, I said, "You know something?"

2:13:35 Speaker 1 I just said, like, for a, for a joke, I said, "You know what? I'd like to take you all to the Rebbe." "Oh, wow." They said, "Yeah, great. That's it." They started jumping and dancing. Anyway, before they all went home, it was a Sunday, and we finish at 1:00 on a Sunday. Before they all left the class, I said, "Look, boys, I'd love to take you to the Rebbe, but it's impossible. Uh, uh, you know, I can't. It, it, it'll cost 1,000 pounds." They said, "Oh, all right." But I said, "I promise you it's gonna be an extra sp- a really, a good outing." Anyway, one boy went downstairs. His father picks him up on a Sunday at 1:00, and he said, "Daddy," he said, "Uh, Rabbi Cousin wants to take the whole class to the, the Rebbe, but it'll cost 1,000 pound, and he hasn't got 1,000 pound." So the father came straight upstairs to my office. He said, "Rabbi Cousin," he said, "I heard you wanna take the boys to the Rebbe, and it'll cost 1,000 pound. I'll give you the 1,000 pounds." A lot of money in those days. And next morning, he sent in a check for 1,000 pound. So I had no prayer. I had to make it, but actually it cost a lot more than 1,000 pound, but I raised money for it. And I took these boys, 28 boys, with two other melamdim came with me, and we were here for two weeks.

2:14:44 Speaker 6 Two weeks?

2:14:44 Speaker 1 Two weeks. Some people said either I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very devoted or I'm crazy.

2:14:50 Speaker 6 Probably both.

2:14:51 Speaker 1 Probably both. I didn't realize what it meant. And I used to take groups every year after that to the Rebbe.

2:14:58 Speaker 6 Right.

2:14:59 Speaker 1 But I never took, yeah, I-- the maximum was seven days, one week. Whew.

2:15:03 Speaker 6 So what, what was it, what was it like taking those boys into Yechidas?

2:15:07 Speaker 1 Oh, that was a very, very... I felt, I felt really good because, you know-

2:15:10 Speaker 6 De- describe, describe the moment.

2:15:11 Speaker 1 Well, the moment was, you know, you come in, had 28 boys, -- -and they were not all from Lubavitch families. A few were from the Lubavitch families, but, you know, we had kids from all walks of life, and they're all coming into the Rebbe. And you know, today, m- a lot of those boys live in Crown Heights, all Lubavitcher boys. And they weren't from Lubavitch families, but they became Lubavitch boys. Anyway, that moment I came into the Rebbe, I thought, "Look, Rebbe, you know, I brought these boys to you, and they love you. They will-- They, they hold you in very high esteem. And you know, they're gonna be -because they've, they've got a, a good, good -you know?

2:15:58 Speaker 6 You're proud?

2:16:01 Speaker 1 I was. Boy, oh, boy, I felt good. I felt power. It was, you know-

2:16:06 Speaker 6 Yeah

2:16:06 Speaker 1 ... it was worth, my whole life was worth for this moment, you know me. And the Rebbe was very appreciative because he gave siddurim to each boy, gave a siddur to each boy. And then again at the Farbrengen, uh, afterwards, he gave out siddurim to every single boy at, who was at the Farbrengen, and people ran home and brought their kids, you know? Slept them out of bed. And, and, uh, the -Leibel Groner said... I said, "You know, the, the, the English boys have already got a siddur. Should they get another siddur?" So Leibel Groner asked the Rebbe, "Should the English boys get another siddur?" The Rebbe said, "Yeah, tell them to come and get another siddur." So all, all the boys, all the boys went up and got a second siddur.

2:16:45 Speaker 6 Did the Rebbe say anything to you at the Yechidas with the boys? Did the Rebbe say anything to you at the Yechidas with the boys?

2:16:50 Speaker 1 No. No, I don't think so.

2:16:52 Speaker 6 Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's such a beautiful, uh, way to tie in the story because, you know, the story begins with... Or the, towards the beginning of the story is the Rebbe giving you individually a siddur, right? And, and Lubavitch in those days was f- was obviously smaller, and there was much more individual, and, uh, you know, people would have Yechidas one at a time, and there were very, very few people.

2:17:20 Speaker 1 Right.

2:17:20 Speaker 6 And then Lubavitch grew, and I guess these boys still came at a time when there was still Yechidas, but that was also going to end at some point.

2:17:28 Speaker 1 Right.

2:17:29 Speaker 6 But despite the growth and despite the scale, and then you said there were the siddur at the Farbrengen, which is even more grandiose and bigger than the Yechidas with the boys, which is bigger-- the group Yechidas, which is bigger than the individual Yechidas. Throughout it all, there's that gesture of giving something to, to a child and believing that in this child there's, there's something enormous that, uh, even the neshamah of -is jealous of this moment. And, uh, I, you know, may, may, I can dare say that -is jealous of what you've accomplished-

2:18:11 Speaker 1 Oh, wow

2:18:11 Speaker 6 ... in, in your, in your life.

2:18:13 Speaker 1 That's very nice of you to say that.

2:18:16 Speaker 6 And, and, uh...

2:18:16 Speaker 1 I mean, I, I, I need you. I need people like you to be on my side.

2:18:23 Speaker 6 Well, and, and, and many, many, many years, God willing.

2:18:25 Speaker 1 Im yirtzeh Hashem. Yeah.

2:18:27 Speaker 6 Anyway, this has been a pleasure thrice over. Uh-

2:18:30 Speaker 1 Thank you so much

2:18:31 Speaker 6 ...

2:18:33 Speaker 1 Great pleasure to, to do this, and a great pleasure that I met you, made your acquaintance. You're a great guy. You should be -throughout your life.

2:18:42 Speaker 6 Amen. Amen. Amen.

2:18:45 Speaker 1 Bye.

2:18:45 Speaker 6 Bye. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Zorn Arada Bachar and is used with their permission.