Ep. 75 // "45 Years On Shlichus" w/ Rabbi Yosef Levin

00:00 Speaker 1 12 years after I came here, someone asked me, "How do you grow in your career? How do you-"

00:04 Speaker 2 Yes

00:04 Speaker 1 "... further your career?" And I looked at them and I said, "You know what? I've been here for 12 years, and I never thought of what I'm doing as a career." Wasn't here to provide for my family, and I wasn't here to raise money, and I... To make money. I had to raise money, but I wasn't here to make money, and I wasn't here to become a millionaire or to become a successful businessman. I was here to be Mecharev Yidden. And every Yid that I met, and every person that I spoke to, and every share that I gave, that was success.

00:32 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-five. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here in Palo Alto with Rabbi Yosef Levin. Shlayech for 45 years in the Silicon Valley. Were you here before it was called the Silicon Valley?

01:03 Speaker 1 Yes. It was actually, uh, not appreciated when they called it Silicon Valley, until after a while it became reality, but people here were very upset when they started calling it Silicon Valley.

01:14 Speaker 2 So you moved here before the, the, the tech, the techies came in and rode the-

01:17 Speaker 1 Techies were starting. The, um, the PC was, I think, came out. The, uh, IBM PC came out, I think four years after I got here. When I first came here, um, they were making mini computers, and then, um, Apple came out with its first little computer, and then everyone and his mother was making a little personal computer, and then the PC came out and had to be either an Apple or a PC compatible.

01:43 Speaker 2 So IBM was here too in Palo Alto?

01:45 Speaker 1 IBM was here.

01:46 Speaker 2 And Apple, of course, is famously here.

01:48 Speaker 1 Everyone was here.

01:49 Speaker 2 So you, so you're here from before Steve Jobs became sir.

01:53 Speaker 1 Um, I think so.

01:54 Speaker 2 To date you a little bit.

01:55 Speaker 1 I don't remember when Steve Jobs, uh, took over, but probably. I don't know.

02:00 Speaker 2 From, from before Apple became a thing.

02:02 Speaker 1 Before Apple became big, yeah.

02:04 Speaker 2 Huh. Yeah. So anyway, thank you very much for, for coming on and for all those listening.

02:09 Speaker 1 Rabbi Katlowski walked over to me on, uh, Eastern Parkway. He's my cousin.

02:14 Speaker 2 Yeah.

02:15 Speaker 1 Alav ha-shalom. And he said, "There's this place called Palo Alto in California. It's, uh, medium money- "... but, uh, maybe you wanna talk Dr. Landis, who lives there, is here. Maybe you wanna talk to him about possibly going there."

02:27 Speaker 2 Medium money.

02:28 Speaker 1 Medium money. No, but it's a nice place, whatever.

02:31 Speaker 2 Back in the day, that's what it was, just another suburb.

02:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, it was, it was basically a, a college town. Stanford was here.

02:37 Speaker 2 Uh, Stanford's nearby, right?

02:38 Speaker 1 Yes, Stanford's nearby. Stanford is one of the top-

02:40 Speaker 2 Do you wanna turn off the, the air con?

02:41 Speaker 1 Yeah, okay.

02:55 Speaker 2 Just pull up again. So Stanford's nearby.

03:00 Speaker 1 Stanford is nearby. Stanford is one of the top universities in the world.

03:03 Speaker 2 Right.

03:04 Speaker 1 Um, also leader, a leader in antisemitism right now. But anyway, um, and, uh, so Palo Alto was like a suburb, a suburb of San Francisco, and it had, you know, Stanford University and a lot of PhDs and master's and, and, and MDs. It was known for that. And it was like a little college. It was like not really a college town, but it was a bedroom town kind of.

03:30 Speaker 2 Hmm.

03:30 Speaker 1 In a, in a suburb of San Francisco.

03:33 Speaker 2 Amazing, amazing. S-so we'll dig in. Before we begin, just for all those listening to the podcast, please like and subscribe on all the platforms, and if you really like it, please support the podcast at hflpodcast.com/donate. So let's begin a little bit before shlichus.

03:50 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:51 Speaker 2 Where did you grow up? Did you yeshiva you are in? Let's, let's get back to background.

03:55 Speaker 1 Right. So I was born in Sunderland, which is in the north of England near Scotland.

03:59 Speaker 2 I was sensing an English accent.

04:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um-

04:03 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Refson.

04:04 Speaker 1 Most people don't get it. Rabbi Refson's father was Muscarof to Lubavitch through my father, Alav ha-shalom. And, um, my fa- we lived 12 miles away from Gateshead Yeshiva, which was the bastion of Misnagdis.

04:21 Speaker 2 Who's your father?

04:22 Speaker 1 Berel Levin.

04:23 Speaker 2 Berel Levin.

04:24 Speaker 1 So he was one of the Levins and, uh, he lived-- Uh, he, he came out of the-- He was in Pocking and he was in, uh, in Brunois, and then he went to, um, Dublin with, uh, Schachtam.

04:38 Speaker 2 Right.

04:38 Speaker 1 And then from there he went to Belfast on a shlichus. Uh, the Freidiker Rebbe sent him to Belfast, and then he was there for, uh, 10 years, and then he moved to Sunderland.

04:47 Speaker 2 Hmm.

04:47 Speaker 1 And in Sunderland, there was also kind of shlichus. He was a shochet, he was a hazzan, and he taught the kids, and he was, he was doing work there. And, um, one of the people that reached out, one of his learn Chassidus was, uh, Faivish Vogel.

05:02 Speaker 2 Right.

05:02 Speaker 1 And my father, Alav ha-shalom, would drive to near the yeshiva and pick them up, and they would go away a few blocks and, uh, learn Tanya.

05:11 Speaker 2 From Gateshead.

05:12 Speaker 1 From Gateshead. And from Gateshead, from the yeshiva in Gateshead.

05:15 Speaker 2 Right.

05:15 Speaker 1 Um, and, uh, one of the... They used to come, I remember he used to come to my house sometimes for Shabbos, these bochurim, and slowly but surely, he got all these bochurim connected. And, um, I heard from one of those bochurim that the Rosh Yeshiva in Gateshead banged on the bimah once, and he said, "Anyone who goes to the shochet in Sunderland for Shabbos will be kicked out of the yeshiva."

05:37 Speaker 2 Hmm.

05:38 Speaker 1 My father was the shochet in Sunderland. When I was eight, the chinuch was, was dismal, and in those days, you know, there was n-there was no way to deal with chinuch. There was nothing to, you know, there was n-nothing of the, of the resources that we have today. So my father asked the Rebbe about moving to London, and the Rebbe gave him permission as long as the situation was taken care of. Eventually, the Rebbe gave him permission to go to London. We moved to London. So when I was eight, we moved to London, and I grew up in London. Stamford Hill. I went to school in Stamford Hill, and then I went to school in Hampstead, which is, uh, which was then a high school. Now it's a yeshiva. Then it was a high school.

06:17 Speaker 2 Right.

06:17 Speaker 1 And then Rabbi Hertz came to teach in the high school, and I used to love learning with him. And, uh, once in a while, uh, during this recess, he would call me into his office. We'd sit and learn the Makkot Yosef together. And, um, and then I went to Lud. So when-- After my bar mitzvah, we were looking for yeshiva, and I had... My father had a sister in Kfar Chabad, her name was Sara Kevich, Sima Sara Kevich. And so I went there for a year and a half. Um, and then the, um, the first year I was learning in Yiddish, then the second year they put me in a share with Hebrew, and I didn't like it, and it was... And then my father, again, I think he asked the rabbi permission. I went to Brunois for two and a half years, and then I move-- went to Morristown with, with most of my class went to Morristown, went to Morristown for a year. Then I went on Shlichus to Kfar Chabad.

07:09 Speaker 2 What was it like in Brunois? Sorry to break the train.

07:13 Speaker 1 Brunois was very interesting. Brunois was very serious for-- about learning. Reb Nissen was there then. Reb Yosef was the m- uh, was the, uh... I went to... Was it Reb Yosef Shear? Reb Yosef Goldberg Shear?

07:23 Speaker 2 Yes. Goldberg was Rosh Yeshiva before Kalmanson.

07:24 Speaker 1 Was Rosh Yeshiva. Yeah, before Kalmanson. Kalmanson was a bachur then.

07:28 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

07:29 Speaker 1 And, um-

07:30 Speaker 2 He's a father of the Rosh Yeshiva in Magdaleneburg today, right?

07:34 Speaker 1 I-- Could be. I don't know. Anyway, so, um, his father, Reb Kusa Kalmanson, was the, uh, was the, um, manal gashmi.

07:46 Speaker 2 Right. No, I'm saying Goldberg is the father of Rosh Yeshiva in Magdaleneburg.

07:49 Speaker 1 Gold-Goldberg. Right, right, right. Right. Goldberg.

07:50 Speaker 2 He has a son, he has a son in Magdaleneburg. Yeah.

07:52 Speaker 1 Right. So Reb Yosef Goldberg, right. So he was the Rosh Yeshiva. Reb Nissen was the Mashpia. Reb Kusa Kalmanson was the, um, was the, uh, the, uh, manal gashmi.

08:04 Speaker 2 In those days, did they strike you as, like, uh, out of the ordinary, or was that-- or did it feel like an extension, a normal extension of the Lubavitch you had already-

08:12 Speaker 1 This was Lubavitch. This was Lubavitch. I mean, uh, this was the Lubavitch that I knew. I mean, I, uh, this-- I understood that this is what Lubavitch is about. Reb Nissen, uh, taught us Chassidus, and he was, uh, he was the Mashpia.

08:26 Speaker 2 Right. But today people make Reb Nissen's Reb Nissen. In those days, did you, did you see it that way, or was it just the same way today? People-

08:33 Speaker 1 Well, we all knew that. We all knew that Reb Nissen was special, and we all knew that Reb Yosef was an incredible guy. These were the giants. These were absolute giants. But at the time, this is the yeshiva we went to. This is where you went to yeshiva.

08:44 Speaker 2 Right.

08:44 Speaker 1 This is where you learned, you know. It's like-

08:46 Speaker 2 Right

08:47 Speaker 1 ... like on the inside, uh, it didn't seem that extraordinary.

08:50 Speaker 2 Right.

08:50 Speaker 1 It seemed that that was yeshiva. And, um, so-

08:56 Speaker 2 What stood out to you about Reb Nissen?

08:59 Speaker 1 First of all, he was a holy man. Um, he was "" . He, he lived and breathed Chassidus. I mean, his was Chassidus. I remember once I was speaking to him, um, in his house, and we were having a conversation, and his wife told him that the apples, she had just made some applesauce, and she'd rubbed some apples. She'd, uh, grated some apples for applesauce. And she told him that, "Reb Nissen," you know, "the, the apples are turning black." So he said, "So the apples are turning black. I have different apples." And I remember once it was, you know, there was nothing to eat in yeshiva pretty much. So one Motzei Shabbos, I went into the, uh, kitchen to make french fries. I'm making french fries and Reb Nissen walks in, and Reb Nissen says: "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm making french fries." I was a little bit of smart alec. I said, "I'm, I'm making french fries." So he said, "What do you need it for?" I said, "There's nothing to eat." So he, he was a reasonable man. He walked out. Came back a few minutes later with a piece of bread. Now, the French breads, you know, long piece of bread with about this size of piece of bread. And he gives me a whole drasha. "Don't say there's nothing to eat. There's bread." And he tells me a whole thing, and while he's holding the bread, and he says, "Go in my house, see if you have better bread.

10:11 Speaker 1 There's no better bread. If you were in a midbar, this bread would be a delicacy." And after he left, and so he told me, "Turn off the fire and leave it." And after he left, I... The bread was mamash a piece of, like a piece of wood. Like, you could use it for a baseball bat. But this was, to him, this was perfectly good bread, and he really meant it. I remember we used to-

10:32 Speaker 2 Did, did, did that strike you as crazy?

10:34 Speaker 1 Didn't strike me as crazy. It struck me as out of the world. It struck me as, uh, a Ɣ benini. You know, the rebbe once said about him, I don't remember exact lashon, something about Ɣ ze daventa benini. Something like that. I mean, we all know that this is, you know, and Reb Kusa was also a holy man. So you can imagine with, with him as the, not o- not only the Mashpia, but he was the one who ran the yeshiva.

10:54 Speaker 2 Right.

10:55 Speaker 1 And with Reb Kusa, the manal gashmi, you can imagine the gashmius was Reb Nissen used to complain to the bachurim. He said, "Bread you have to eat, and butter you have to eat. But to schmear the butter exactly on the bread just like this, you put a piece of butter on a piece of bread and you eat it." It bothered him so much when he would see the bachurim schmearing the butter exactly over the bread. It bothered-- These are the things that bothered him.

11:18 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

11:18 Speaker 1 Um, but you know, um, uh, when we had Yichvat, I remember the farbrengen Yichvat, and he talked about six words in the Maimar. Ha-im, yesh, eizeh, chochma, banahoga, kazuh. These six words will change your life. Things, I mean, you know, it was so uplifting to be around him. It was, it was incredible to be around him. And Reb Yosef was a brilliant gaon, and I remember he, uh, we had the long, long Shabbosim in Paris and France. Sh-Shabbos went out probably ten thirty. I don't know. We'd daven Mincha probably around eight thirty, nine. So he decided on Shabbos afternoon he's gonna have a three-hour shiur every Shabbos afternoon, Gemara. So we complained bitterly to him. We said, uh, "Learning Megillah on, on Shabbos afternoon?" He says, "It's better to sleep?" So someone said, "Sheena b'Shabbos tainu." I said, "Sheena b'Shabbos tainu means to sleep. Sheena chachamim b'lashon ha-mishnah means the chachamim slept in the lashon of sleeping. Sheena meit leinen." So he wouldn't hear of anything, and we had a three-hour shiur every Shabbos afternoon, uh, in Gemara. Better than sleeping. And that's, uh... I remember Rav Kuse once, uh, they used to deliver milk. So someone would go to the farm to get cholov Yisrael, and they would deliver milk in these big metal containers. So he'd probably bring it about four in the morning, and in France, in the summer, when the sun shines, and he would leave it out there. Probably it was dark when he brought it or in the shade,

12:46 Speaker 1 and then the sun would shine on it for hours. By the time we eat breakfast at ten thirty-

12:49 Speaker 2 Spoiled

12:50 Speaker 1 ... it was, it was sour. So he went to Rav Kuse and he said, "Rav Kuse, the milk is sour." He says, "How can the milk be sour? The Hebisher just created the milk right now. How could it be sour?" So he said, "Yeah, the Hebisher created it now, but he created sour milk." That's the kind of conversations we had.

13:07 Speaker 2 But, uh, w-what, what, what, what I'm thinking is a lot of times bochurim today come to yeshiva, and they feel like they fell into a different world. They, they... You know, if they grew up in a home that's not exactly like yeshiva, which most homes are not exactly, and some are even further away from that. You know, you come from a world of al bath shehom, and you end up in yeshiva where, where the food is different and the, and the sleeping arrangements is different. Did-- Was there that sense of d- uh, divide or distance back then as well where, you know, you feel like you're from the new world and these old guys, they live in a different world?

13:44 Speaker 1 Not at all. I can speak for myself. My father, alav hashalom, went through Tashkent, Samarkand, Tashkent, Pokin. They were survivors. They came out... They, they were, they were beaten up in the Soviet Union. Um, my father was a chassidish Yid. Uh, I li- grew up in London. There were chassidish Yidden there. From when I was a kid, from when I was much younger really, my father star-started preparing me. He said, "Tell him, 'Yemach Shemo. You'll be bar mitzvah. You'll go to yeshiva.'" There was no Chabad yeshiva in London then. So it was like something I was looking forward to-

14:16 Speaker 2 I see

14:17 Speaker 1 ... to go to yeshiva from when I was thirteen. And I went to yeshiva in Ker Chabad in, uh, I mean, in Lud, and it was learning there. It was serious. I would go to my aunt's house, I think, every second Shabbos or every... I don't remember how many Shabbaton. And, um, and you know, the yeshiva life was yeshiva life. This is what it was.

14:36 Speaker 2 Right.

14:37 Speaker 1 So I, I mean, I enjoyed learning, and I enjoyed, um... So this was, this was what it was.

14:46 Speaker 2 Hmm. Interesting. So you, you're finished with Brunois, and you come to-

14:51 Speaker 1 Then I came to Marstan for a year. And then, um, then-

14:55 Speaker 2 What, what was the difference between Brunois and Marstan? Was there a difference?

14:59 Speaker 1 A few, a few days after I was there, I got woken up in the middle of the night. Bochur says, "All the bochurim, everyone's going to break into the kitchen tonight, and we want everybody to come, so nobody should be punished. And, um, please come because..." I said, "Why are you breaking into the kitchen?" "Well, we don't like the food." I said, "What?" I said, "You know what? I am very sympathetic to you, but I just, after coming from Brunois, I just can't do that." The goshmious was incredible.

15:26 Speaker 2 Marstan compared to Brunois.

15:27 Speaker 1 Marstan, the goshmious was incredible. But the learning was good also. The learning was good, and most important, we went to Frierdigens.

15:33 Speaker 2 The, the Rebus Frierdigens.

15:34 Speaker 1 The Rebus Frierdigens. Yeah, we were close, so we could now go to the Rebus Frierdigens. The Rebus Frierdigens were not every week then.

15:40 Speaker 2 Right.

15:40 Speaker 1 And, but we would go to Rebus Frierdigens and to be by the Rebbe, to be in, uh, uh, nearby, you know? That was the biggest thing.

15:47 Speaker 2 So actually, let me back up then. So when you were in Brunois, had you been to Seven Seventy yet?

15:52 Speaker 1 I went to Seven Seventy when I was eleven. My father, alav hashalom, took me when I was eleven. To, to just explain why. Th-they lived so tight. He had no money.

16:04 Speaker 2 Sure.

16:05 Speaker 1 He, he told me later, he said that when he was first came to, to, uh, out of Russia, whatever, when he first came to his first place, he had a jar, and every week he would put one pound. Uh, he had-- He would make twelve pounds, which is like, I don't know, probably twenty-five dollars, whatever it was then. And he would put one-- he would have one pound he would put in a pushka, tzedaka, and one pound he would put in a, in a jar for to, to go to the Rebbe. And after he was able to collect enough money, he bought a ticket and went to the Rebbe. At that time, to travel when you were eleven was half price of when you were twelve. So he didn't-- he wouldn't be able to afford to bring me to the Rebbe right before my bar mitzvah, so he brought me while I was eleven-

16:50 Speaker 2 Mm

16:50 Speaker 1 ... so he should be able to afford the flight.

16:52 Speaker 2 As, as a minor.

16:53 Speaker 1 That's a, as a minor. That's how they lived in those days.

16:55 Speaker 2 You flew. You-

16:56 Speaker 1 We flew. We had to fly.

16:57 Speaker 2 Right. No, so they used to go by boat, and then that's-

16:59 Speaker 1 No, no, no. That was already, we were already flying.

17:01 Speaker 2 Yeah.

17:02 Speaker 1 But it was, it was, that's how tight, that's-- So I came to the Rebbe when I was eleven. I went to Yechidas together with my father.

17:08 Speaker 2 So that was your bar mitzvah Yechidas.

17:09 Speaker 1 That was my bar mitzvah Yechidas. I was there for the whole Tishri, and that was just when they had opened up the second section of the shul downstairs, and everything was dusty and-

17:17 Speaker 2 So, so I don't mean to date you, but which, w-what, what decade are we talking about here?

17:22 Speaker 1 Why can't you date me? This was nineteen sixties, uh, Tuv Shin chaf, the chafs.

17:28 Speaker 2 Chafs.

17:28 Speaker 1 The chafs. They just-

17:30 Speaker 2 So the first, the first expansion.

17:31 Speaker 1 The expansion of Seven Seventy.

17:32 Speaker 2 The first one.

17:33 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And I remember it had just-- everything was boarded up. They had just done it. There were boards everywhere. There was, there was raining, and there was mud everywhere.

17:44 Speaker 2 How did this affect you?

17:45 Speaker 1 But the Rebbe, I remember when the Rebbe walked in, and the Re- the smile on the Rebbe's face, I can still see the smile on the Rebbe's face when the first time he walked into the big shul.

17:54 Speaker 2 You're saying the smile of walking in to-

17:56 Speaker 1 Of walking in and seeing the big shul.

17:58 Speaker 2 Wow.

17:58 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe smiled. It was just, uh... And, and people told me, I didn't know it was, I didn't know it was going on. I just came. As far as I knew, this is what the shul looked like. I, I didn't understand that it had been just a major thing and a major expansion and everything. But to see the Rebbe smile. And then my father explained to me that the Rebbe was so happy to see the big shul.

18:15 Speaker 2 How does it strike you when you come there as a boy, and you see this shul with mud and boards that-

18:22 Speaker 1 I was-- I, I don't remember how I felt about the mud and the boards. I just knew this was seven seventy. It was dirty and, and, and dirty. That's what seven seventy was. Took me a while later on when I came back to realize that it's not dust everywhere, and it's not dirty everywhere. But, um, I, I was by the Rebbe. That-- It was, it was so exciting to be by the Rebbe. It was just, um, it wasn't, uh, the g- I, I, I don't know. Just, uh, okay, seven seventy is dirty. That's what it is.

18:54 Speaker 2 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening ten years ago, Yuvala Media has pushed the boundaries of artistic and thoughtful storytelling in the community with an insistence on there always being a memorable story as well as a beautiful and striking visual image that we believe is second to none. Over the years, we have worked with Chabad organizations around the country, as well as large organizations like Boniolum, Torah Mesora, and Hatalathan, guided by the belief that your story is absolutely worth telling with depth and creativity. If you are looking to tell your story with a video, please reach out to us at hello@yuvalamedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalamedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the podcast. Is it true, uh, 'cause you're talking about your father saving up the money. Is it true that there was, there was a ìîfrom the Friediker Rebbe about ìîafter the war to, to get, uh, to make... It has to do with the people that went to Scotland, I think, that they should make a living as opposed to living off the, like the, whatever charity was coming from America. Are you familiar?

20:06 Speaker 1 This-- I'm not familiar with that. What I do know is there was an open ìîfrom the Friediker Rebbe when these, these younger lights were in Brunois, and they had no panasa, they had nothing. They were just getting married at that time. They'd just come out of, uh, Pocking and out of Russia. And the Friediker Rebbe told them all to learn Shchita. Reb Zalman Shimoni, alav ha-shalom, taught them Shchita. And right after that, the mayor of Dublin was, his name was Briscoe, and he, um, and he saw an opportunity 'cause there was no kosher meat in Europe, and they had lots of animals in, in Ireland. So he decided to start a Shchita, and he was looking around for shochtim. And here he had a bunch of shochtim, brand-new shochtim, and he hired them all to come to, to Dublin. And that's the-- They all had panasa from the Shchita. And then for a year or two, and then most of them went to America. My f-- my parents went, stayed in Ireland and-

21:02 Speaker 2 In Belfast

21:02 Speaker 1 ... In Belfast, and then from there, they went to Sunderland and-

21:05 Speaker 2 So Dublin was only a two-year-

21:07 Speaker 1 I think it was two years

21:08 Speaker 2 ... trip.

21:08 Speaker 1 I don't remember exactly. I think the whole thing was a couple of years.

21:11 Speaker 2 Hmm. Very interesting. So you-

21:14 Speaker 1 I'll tell you a story that I heard from Mendel, uh-

21:16 Speaker 2 Sure, sure

21:17 Speaker 1 ... uh, Rabbi Mendel Morozov at a farbrengen. So he was there, and, and Reb Zalman-

21:23 Speaker 2 He was where?

21:24 Speaker 1 In, in Belfa-- In, in Dublin.

21:27 Speaker 2 Oh, he was also one of the shochtim.

21:28 Speaker 1 I think so. I'm pretty sure he was there, yeah. I think he was telling it from first person 'cause it-

21:33 Speaker 2 Right. The Duchans was there, right?

21:35 Speaker 1 I don't know who else was there.

21:37 Speaker 2 Yeah.

21:37 Speaker 1 But anyway, but they were, they were shochtim. So they made a seder to thank Lord Briscoe. That was his name. He was the mayor. He was a Jewish man, and he was a Yid, and he was-- Lord Briscoe was his name, and the Mayor Briscoe. And they made a seder to thank him.

21:55 Speaker 2 Scotland's come a way since then.

21:57 Speaker 1 This wasn't Scotland, this was Ireland, but, uh... Huh?

22:00 Speaker 2 Scotland has come a way, uh, not in the, not in the best way. It changed a-

22:04 Speaker 1 This is, this is Ireland.

22:05 Speaker 2 This is Ireland.

22:06 Speaker 1 Dublin is in Ireland.

22:07 Speaker 2 Yeah. All right. Ireland has also come a way since then.

22:09 Speaker 1 Ireland has come a way since then. Anyway, so, so, so they made a seder to thank him, and Reb Zalman Shimoni was there. He was the rav, and all of the younger light were there. Anyway, so they were mechabed Briscoe to bench. After the benching, he turned to Reb Zalman Shimoni, and he said, "Rebbe, I know that everyone has a place in the Torah. I found my place in the Torah." ìî. Now, these were Lubavitch younger light, and they were sitting at a farbrengen, and you can imagine they were a little bit giggling, and they had to keep a straight face. One by one, they walked out 'cause they couldn't stop laughing. And he said, "Now Reb Zalman Shimoni had to sit there by himself and keep a straight face with him." Anyway.

22:51 Speaker 2 That was

22:57 Speaker 1 I don't know if you wanna keep this story in the-

22:58 Speaker 2 No

22:58 Speaker 1 ... in the podcast, but we're not-

23:00 Speaker 2 Why not? Why not? We'll get sued maybe. Um, so you come, you come-- Y- while you're in Brunois-

23:07 Speaker 1 Yeah

23:07 Speaker 2 ... what, what was it like for Bochum then? You had s- been by the Rebbe once when you were much younger.

23:12 Speaker 1 Right.

23:13 Speaker 2 What was, what was the presence of the Rebbe like in the yeshiva? 'Cause you said later on in Marston you would go to farbrengens every month or so. But in Brunois, obviously, you were not. What was it like?

23:24 Speaker 1 I have to say-- How can I say this? The Rebbe was very much, I mean, we learned, w- we, we, we heard the Rebbe sichas in this, but it wasn't, if I can say the word, Rebbe-centric. You didn't hear all the time about the Rebbe. You learned-- The chassidus we learned was from the Tzemach Tzedek chassidus, the Friediker Rebbe chassidus, not so much the Rebbe's chassidus. Uh, there wasn't that much published in those days. It wasn't available then so much. Reb Nissen, I think, went to the Rebbe and came back and farbrenged about it. There was no-- There were already by then... No, no, no. By then there were hookups already. By then there were hookups, so we're hearing the Rebbe's farbrengens when they were on the week. There weren't a lot of them, but we heard the Rebbe's farbrengens. I remember once there was a room there. There was like a janitor, a Yiddisher guy, and he had one room, and the room was full of junk. Junk, junk, junk piled up to who knows how much. And we found out that the, the yeshiva was gonna be inspected by the health department, so we had to clean up the yeshiva. And among other things, that room had to be cleaned out. And I remember we were working day and night for two days to clean out the yeshiva. We started a fire in the back. There was a forest there. We started a fire to burn all the stuff. And finally, after two

24:48 Speaker 1 days of work, we went to sleep. We had worked mamash almost through the night, and we had gone to sleep, uh, probably about eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock. Everyone was exhausted. Two o'clock in the morning, banging on the door. "Farbrengen, farbrengen." There was a sudden farbrengen that we didn't know about.

25:02 Speaker 2 And you're ahead of New York 'cause you're in, you're in front.

25:04 Speaker 1 It was two o'clock in the morning, the farbrengen was.

25:06 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

25:07 Speaker 1 And we had to, we had to. I mean, we're excited to go to farbrengen, but everyone was trying to keep their eyes open because we had just slept for two hours after working for two days straight. I remember that, that, that, uh, banging on the door, "Farbrengen, farbrengen."

25:20 Speaker 2 What did it look like when you, you would all stand the whole time? You would sit in your chairs?

25:24 Speaker 1 I don't think we would stand. I don't remember

25:27 Speaker 2 And you would just sit listening for, for hours?

25:28 Speaker 1 We'd listen, yeah. Listen to farbrengen

25:30 Speaker 2 For hours?

25:31 Speaker 1 Yeah

25:31 Speaker 2 The whole way through?

25:32 Speaker 1 In Chabad already there were farbrengens. Um, but I mean, was it-- I remember when it was, I was in Lud. I think it was already when I was in Lud there were farbrengens. I don't remember whether it was Lud or it started in, in Brunoy, I don't remember. But, uh, yeah, we would listen. Some people would stand, some people would sit. I don't remember where Louis Davka stood. I don't remember. I remember once Yitzchok farbrengen, I, I remember that the maimar started, was a Basel Ganym maimar, it was a very long maimar. Don't remember-- That was in Chabad already. I don't remember which year that was. But, um, yeah, we would listen to the farbrengens. But, um, and of course, we wanted to go to the Rebbe when we went, went to Morristown, one of the big things was we wanna be by the Rebbe

26:20 Speaker 2 Right. So, so that did change when you, when you came to Morristown. Morristown you would say the, it was more Rebbe-centric

26:26 Speaker 1 I would say so. But mostly because, you know, it's, it's like when you have it, you have it. So it's like, uh, you know, «Halavai bakodesh khazeh sikha,» right? Um, so we-- It, it was, it was just normal. I mean, you go to the Rebbe's farbrengens. The, the Rebbe was right there. Something was happening in Crown Heights, you went. There's a Lag BaOmer, you went to the parade. Whatever was happening, you were there

26:48 Speaker 2 Right

26:49 Speaker 1 But still we were in Morristown, we were still an hour away. But any opportunity, we would go

26:56 Speaker 2 Right. No, it's just, it's, it's interesting, it's interesting to see how things, how things developed. Um, this was before the days of Alter, right? So the, the idea of s- learning in yeshiva right in 770 didn't exist. Even Morristown's an hour away, and Brunoy is even further away. Um, years later, I think, I think everyone would, would, would n- would, would agree that things did become more Rebbe-centric

27:22 Speaker 1 No question about it. Well, once you came to 770, then you davened with the Rebbe, you were there with the Rebbe, the Rebbe was c- Uh, you, you, you would-- In the morning, you would, uh, you would see the Rebbe coming, and in the evening you'd see the Rebbe going. And on Shabbos morning, the Rebbe would come in. You know, Bach- Bachram, when you were in 770, Bachram would go and walk with the Rebbe once in a while. You had this chass once in a while to follow the Rebbe when he was walking

27:45 Speaker 2 Right

27:45 Speaker 1 It was a whole different thing. Once you're in 770, it's a whole different story

27:47 Speaker 2 But that was happening in the youths also. I was just speaking to Aaron Cousin about that. That was happening right at the beginning, but it seems like the whole Lubavitch became more Rebbe-centric.

27:56 Speaker 1 I-

27:56 Speaker 2 So even wherever you were was more, like, about the Rebbe, like, uh, what's he-- what happened today, what happened yesterday

28:02 Speaker 1 That-

28:03 Speaker 2 It seems like it wasn't like that earlier on

28:04 Speaker 1 That could be. But you know, the Yomanim and everything started later years

28:08 Speaker 2 They started later

28:08 Speaker 1 Yomanim started later. The idea of a Yoman, we used to get a Yoman by fax, and we used to read it, this is what happened, Beis Hayeiim, there was Beis Hayeiim-

28:17 Speaker 2 What, what do you mean later years? You were already on shlichas?

28:18 Speaker 1 I was already on shlichas when we were getting Yomanim, yeah

28:20 Speaker 2 S- so when you were in Brunoy, and it's Tishrei, what's going on in 770 is an abstraction to you?

28:28 Speaker 1 Not an abstraction, but yeah, it wasn't, uh-

28:30 Speaker 2 You don't know what's going on

28:31 Speaker 1 You didn't know what was going on in 770, Tishrei

28:33 Speaker 2 And you, and were you trying to find out what was going on?

28:37 Speaker 1 We would hear once in a while a shmo that be a farbrengen, someone would say, "This happened, that happened," but it was not the same. It was not like every farbrengen, what the Rebbe said every farbrengen. I'm, I'm, uh, I, I don't think it was ideal, but I don't remember it being-

28:50 Speaker 2 Right

28:50 Speaker 1 So-

28:51 Speaker 2 No, it's interesting. It's interesting. I mean, really, Lubavitch was like that for forever, really. Maybe 72 a little bit different, but even then, the Rebbe's Shabbos away a lot

29:01 Speaker 1 And you know, even, even by the Rebbe, the Rebbe didn't-- The Rebbe said a few times, "Why are you looking at me? You should be looking at, uh, in the siddur or something." Or the Rebbe, the Rebbe didn't want us to watch him every minute and to follow everything he did and to... Uh, the Rebbe made it clear that that's not-- I mean, there were people who did anyway, and we all were watching the Rebbe, but it was, it was not like the thing where you watch every tzedakah of the Rebbe, and that's what the Rebbe wants from me. The Rebbe doesn't want from me to watch every tzedakah. The Rebbe wants me to daven and learn, and obviously learn from, and learn from the sikhas and the maimarim, and do what the Rebbe wants us to do. L'havdafka to watch every tzedakah

29:37 Speaker 2 Was there a bit of a culture shock when you came to America and you see people more in- interested in these things?

29:44 Speaker 1 I don't think it was a culture shock at all. Uh, no, and there were only some people interested in these things

29:49 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

29:50 Speaker 1 Most people weren't l'havdafka watching every single tzedakah. I mean, it was just, you noticed, you saw. But it wasn't like, it's, it's like if you're watching a, a video, then you're analyzing everything that you're seeing in the video

30:06 Speaker 2 Right

30:06 Speaker 1 If you're by a farbrengen or by a davening, you're there

30:10 Speaker 2 Mm.

30:11 Speaker 1 You're, you're in the-- It's, it's the rochnius. It's, it's not the gashmius, it's the rochnius. You feel you're davening with the Rebbe. You know that the Rebbe's lifting you up. You know that it's a whole different, different type of, of atmosphere by the Rebbe, but you're in it. You're in it. You're not looking at it from outside to try and see every little thing that's going on. But absolutely, by Hakafos we'd watch the Rebbe, by, by, by, at Kias we'd watch the Rebbe. But those are times to watch

30:35 Speaker 2 Uh, you're making an interesting point. You're making a point that in a way, uh, even while the Rebbe was here, when people started observing the Rebbe, like with analysis, in a way almost took them away. They were observing it from, from a distance almost. Whereas it seems like earlier on it was more being in the moment as opposed to paying attention to every little thing. Look, I totally agree with you on that point. I, I, I, I make videos for a living, and I can tell you for sure that when I interview someone It's a very diff-- Even though there's a camera and I know what I'm doing there, it's a very different thing than when I go back to my office and I edit it. 'Cause when I'm talking to the person, hopefully both of us more or less forget about all the equipment around us.

31:18 Speaker 1 Right.

31:18 Speaker 2 And there's like you say, there's this thing that's... It's not picked up by the camera or, or any of the equipment. It's a human meeting that's happening in the, in this space. And then when you come back to the office, all you have is the digital memory of it. And, you know, i-in many ways you pick up things that you didn't, you didn't notice. The air conditioner was playing-

31:37 Speaker 1 So look, if I'm listening, if I'm listening to the Rebbe saying haftara, right?

31:41 Speaker 2 Right.

31:41 Speaker 1 So I had w-- a place two second row back from the Bima.

31:45 Speaker 2 Right.

31:45 Speaker 1 Right there, right on the side of the Bima, but I'm not on the front, on the side, but I had a perfect view and a perfect place, and I could hear every word of the haftara. And, um, I'm listening to Rebbe saying haftara, and afterwards I heard that someone said that at this passage the Rebbe moved his hand. Of course, I'm listening to Rebbe saying the haftara. I'm completely into that, listening to... I'm, I'm looking at the Rebbe maybe, but hearing every word, that's what I'm focusing on.

32:13 Speaker 2 You're not dissecting.

32:14 Speaker 1 I'm not dissecting every movement of it.

32:17 Speaker 2 Right.

32:17 Speaker 1 Now, every movement of the Rebbe, I remember sometimes by Fabrang the Rebbe would take off his handkerchief and wipe his ear.

32:23 Speaker 2 During haftara?

32:24 Speaker 1 No, no, no. In the, by Fabrang.

32:25 Speaker 2 By Fabrang.

32:25 Speaker 1 And I was always thinking, "What Yichud HaMaleynut was the Rebbe doing by wiping his ear?" I was sure that this movement, this Tenua, is doing something in the Olam HaZeh HaMaleynut, and something's happening in Atzilut or I don't know where, but something's happening. Because otherwise, why at that moment pum-- because every Tenua of the Rebbe was, was, was having effect on Olam, as if no other, other Nasi of a Tzadik, right? But so, so I would think that way. But, but while I'm listening to Fabrang and I'm not focusing on the fact that the Rebbe did that, I'm trying to hear the sicha, I'm trying to hear the words the Rebbe's saying while he's doing that.

33:01 Speaker 2 Right.

33:01 Speaker 1 Anything else is a distraction.

33:03 Speaker 2 And when you went into Yechidas, the same thing?

33:06 Speaker 1 The Yechidas there was... Yeah, there was nothing-

33:07 Speaker 2 So you, you went to Yechidas as a Bachar?

33:09 Speaker 1 I went a few times to Yechidas. And, um, it was quick, it was short. But, uh, um, yeah. I went to Yechidas. The last time I went to Yechidas was with my wife, uh, before we got enga- before we got married. After we got engaged, before we got married, and that was by the end of... At that point already there wasn't much Yechidas going on. But, um, I went a couple of times to Yechidas.

33:34 Speaker 2 As a Bachar?

33:34 Speaker 1 As a Bachar, yeah. My birthday.

33:38 Speaker 2 Was it the same thing where you, you're caught up in the moment and you're not analyzing and dissecting?

33:43 Speaker 1 Completely. Completely. Uh, th-there's... You lose yourself. Um, you're talking about Betel in front of a Malach. Uh, you're just, you're just not there.

33:51 Speaker 2 Did you remember it afterwards or i-it's almost hard to remember?

33:54 Speaker 1 I remember one or two things the Rebbe said, but most of it I don't remember.

33:57 Speaker 2 I'm saying even in the moment, you come out-

33:59 Speaker 1 But the, mm, yeah. Mm, uh, I would say that, um... I think, uh, I don't remember. You know what I, I... The m- How I felt after I came out of Yechidas, I can't remember.

34:13 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

34:14 Speaker 1 I think it was very, um, it was like a whole different... The whole day was different. You fasted all day and it was a whole... The Achana, everything, and then coming out, it was just, uh, um... Yeah, you weren't yourself. It was not, it was-

34:29 Speaker 2 Out of body experience.

34:30 Speaker 1 I think so.

34:31 Speaker 2 Hmm.

34:31 Speaker 1 Yeah. And then one thing I remember is the room was cold.

34:36 Speaker 2 So you're the second person on the podcast saying this. Rabbi Cousin, you know, he's a fellow, fellow-

34:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. He was my, he was my teacher.

34:43 Speaker 2 Where?

34:43 Speaker 1 In London.

34:46 Speaker 2 Really?

34:46 Speaker 1 Rabbi Cousin. Aaron Cousin was my teacher when I was in London.

34:49 Speaker 2 He was back, he was back already before you went to Brunois?

34:51 Speaker 1 Not back already. He was living at... No, after I came... Uh, before I went to Brunois. Yeah, I was, I was a Bachar.

34:56 Speaker 2 So that-

34:56 Speaker 1 I was a kid in school. I was, I was-

34:59 Speaker 2 And I didn't realize he had already come back from New York by then.

35:01 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

35:02 Speaker 2 So this is the early Hafs, the early sixties.

35:04 Speaker 1 Uh, l- m- yeah. Mid-Hafs.

35:07 Speaker 2 Oh, Mid-Hafs. You said you had, you'd come as an eleven-year-old.

35:09 Speaker 1 Mid-Hafs. Yeah, yeah.

35:09 Speaker 2 You'd come as an eleven-year-old. Okay. So you came-

35:11 Speaker 1 About that time. About that time.

35:12 Speaker 2 And so he had just come back.

35:13 Speaker 1 He had been... I don't know when he'd come back yet.

35:16 Speaker 2 Yeah.

35:16 Speaker 1 So you remember, I came to London also later. I wasn't a kid-

35:18 Speaker 2 It was a still small school, probably.

35:19 Speaker 1 By the time I came to London, he was there already.

35:21 Speaker 2 Probably a small school of, what did you say? Started with fifty, seventy boys or something?

35:25 Speaker 1 I don't know.

35:26 Speaker 2 Yeah. So you came in, you came in those years. Oh, wow. So you're one of his first students. How about that? Just, just interviewed him a few weeks ago. Fabulous guy.

35:34 Speaker 1 He taught me how to learn, taught me Chumash.

35:38 Speaker 2 Yeah. So he also, he also noticed that the... When I asked him about the, about what, what was it like to... "Well, describe the Yechidas room to me." He said, "It was cold." It was very cold.

35:48 Speaker 1 But that I noticed only the second I walked in.

35:51 Speaker 2 Yeah.

35:51 Speaker 1 After that, it wasn't cold anymore. But just the first blast of cold air when you walk in, you know, you kind of notice the cold. But it, it's not like you stand there freezing. Uh, once-

36:02 Speaker 2 I understand

36:03 Speaker 1 ... once you walk in, that's it. There's nothing.

36:05 Speaker 2 Was it scary to walk in?

36:07 Speaker 1 It was, uh, defined scary, yes. It was, uh... I mean, there was someone who asked why someone came to the seven seventy and he's waiting for Yechidas or thing, and he asked why the Bacharim wave their, their papers up, the, the, the pan up and down. Uh, because your hand shook so much that it looked like you were waving it up and down. I mean, it was terrifying to walk into the room.

36:29 Speaker 2 W-

36:29 Speaker 1 Not terrifying, frightened, frightened. It's like Yira. Not Pachad, Yira. You know, it's, it's the awe of going into the Rebbe. I mean, the, the idea of going into Yechidas and it's, uh, it's, it's just, it's an awesome experience.

36:42 Speaker 2 But, but explain that a little bit. What, what are you terrified of? Uh, is-

36:46 Speaker 1 Again, it's not terrifying. I'm not afraid. It's like, uh, the Yira Hashem. What is Yira Hashem? Um, I have to be careful. People are watching this who don't get the, the-

36:54 Speaker 2 No, you're not scared of a Pach, I understand.

36:56 Speaker 1 N- Right. But the Yira, just, just standing in the presence of the Nasi Adar, of Yechida the, and the Yechidas is, uh, the Yechida of the, of, of the world. And you know that this is an opportunity for you. This is the time when you're gonna be one with the Rebbe. It, it's, it's, it's all-- You c- can't describe it. It's awesome. I mean, it's just incredibly awesome.

37:18 Speaker 2 But that's how you felt also, 'cause that, what you're describing to me is ideas.

37:21 Speaker 1 That's-- No, that's how it felt, of course.

37:23 Speaker 2 Okay.

37:23 Speaker 1 It felt going into the Rebbe it was, it was-

37:25 Speaker 2 Was there a difference between the Rebbe and Yechidus and Rebbe farbrengen?

37:30 Speaker 1 Yes. Um, yes.

37:33 Speaker 2 'Cause the Rebbe farbrengen people didn't have yira, did they?

37:37 Speaker 1 No, I don't think the people had yira at the Rebbe's farbrengen. Rebbe's farbrengen was more also you were going to learn, you were going to experience, it was-

37:44 Speaker 2 Right.

37:44 Speaker 1 You were there.

37:45 Speaker 2 Right.

37:46 Speaker 1 Whereas in Yechidus it's complete bittul.

37:48 Speaker 2 Oh.

37:49 Speaker 1 It's a completely different thing. And also, you're there, the Rebbe's taking-- the Rebbe's spending time with you, and it's your time with the Rebbe, and it's, it's a whole different, it's a whole different thing. Although when the Rebbe stopped having Yechidus, he said Yechidus by the farbrengen, and by farbrengens the Rebbe-- I had a few experiences of Yechidus by farbrengen.

38:08 Speaker 2 It changed from before?

38:10 Speaker 1 I had the-- I know I had a Yechidus that the Rebbe was speaking to me.

38:14 Speaker 2 During a sicha or-

38:15 Speaker 1 During a sicha that the Rebbe was talking to me, and I got answers by farbrengens of specific issues I had.

38:20 Speaker 2 Huh.

38:21 Speaker 1 And I had three such experiences. At le- I mean, I could have had more. The Rebbe said Yechidus by farbrengen, so I didn't put two and two together. If I ever have a question, I should think about it by the farbrengen. But I had some very specific and open, um, Yechidus by the farbrengen. And I'll tell you, um, there was a Yid who used to live in, uh, he used to live in London, and then he moved to, name is Pekar, and, uh, he was a chazan. And he came for Tishrei once to the Rebbe, and I knew he was a chazan in London. He had a nice big, a nice big voice, and he davened very nicely, and he used to come to my father, alav ha-shalom. My father was a chazan, he would train him actually, work with him. So he came, the whole Tishrei, he didn't daven. Now, you know any chazanim come to seven seventy, they right away get them to go daven. So I went over to him after Tishrei and I said to him, "How come you didn't daven the whole Tishrei?" He says, "I don't daven by the Rebbe anymore." I said, "Why not?" He says once he was davening by the Rebbe and he was davening qui- I think it was Shacharit, so he was davening quiet Shemoneh Esreh. And in the middle of Shemoneh Esreh, you know, he was a businessman, and he started thinking about his business. A, so a whole chain of thoughts that

39:28 Speaker 1 went through. This thought, that thought, the other thought. That Shabbos there was a farbrengen, and by the farbrengen the Rebbe talked about Aveiras Sa'at Zefirah. And he said, "Sometimes a baal isek starts thinking about his business, and he thinks about this, he thinks about that, thinks about..." The Rebbe went through every single thought that went through his mind in order, the way he thought about it in his mind. He said, "That's it. I can't daven by the Rebbe anymore." And I just wanna tell you that a few years later, several years later, two years before he passed away, I saw him in seven seventy and I said, "I remember ten years ago you told me this story. Did I get it right? Do I remember right?" He said, "A hundred percent."

40:00 Speaker 2 Huh. There was a-- They, they said-- told the story of, uh, the Chasad Pesach of Ostrovka, no? I think that, uh, I think he would, he would try to collect ten people for a minyan between HaMachshavot Zaris, and he would, he would be able to sense that, that the, that the vibes are off, the people have-

40:17 Speaker 1 But when you hear it by the farbrengen

40:19 Speaker 2 No, I'm saying it, holy people, you know, um, they, they... Wow. As we approach the two-year mark of this podcast, Omsik for 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@uvlamedia.com. That's bentzi@uvlamedia, Y-U-V-L-A, media.com. So, so before we get back to the Yechidus at farbrengen, there's a, there's a ways there. So you, you, you, you, you're a bochur in seven seventy, and then eventually-

41:08 Speaker 1 I was in Chabad for a year, actually, after, uh, whatchamacallit? After, uh, Morristown.

41:13 Speaker 2 Right.

41:13 Speaker 1 I was in Chabad for a year, and then came back, and then I, I was in Morristown for another year together with a chaver. We went together as a-- Because most of my class was still in Chabad. I, I was sick. I was very sick in Chabad. I had bronchitis. I couldn't stay.

41:28 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

41:28 Speaker 1 So I left, and then I went to, to Morristown for a year as a, as a dorm counselor, and we learned together. And, um, also I was a little bit involved with, uh, with, uh, Tiferes Bacherim. I taught a few bochurim from there. And, uh, then I came seven seventy.

41:45 Speaker 2 So when did, when did shlichus start becoming an idea? Did it start in Bnot? When-

41:50 Speaker 1 It's very-- For me?

41:51 Speaker 2 Yeah.

41:54 Speaker 1 Um, it's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. I always wanted to be a shliach. As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a shliach. My father, alav hashalom, and my mother, zal zei gezunt, always had guests in the house. When we were in Sunderland, everyone who came to the, to Sunderland who was a shtikel Chassid would come to our house. They would-- Mishlochim would come, and they would always come and stay in our house. When I went back to London for shiva for my father, alav hashalom, hundreds of people came, and I can't tell you how many of them told me the first-- when they went into shul the first time, these were baalei teshuva, the first time they walked into the shul, and this is a big shul, lots of Chassidim, the first person who came over to them as soon as they walked in, my father would go over to them and say, "Shalom aleichem," welcome them in. This was something that, uh, my father had, uh, twenty, uh, twenty young elite would come to learn with him Gemara on Shabbos afternoon. My mother, zal zei gezunt, was the, like the head of the w- of the, uh, the Chabad there, and she ran programs and she ran bazaars, and she was a social worker there. So I grew up in this kind of thing. Um, when did it become... I'll, I'll tell you when I decided that I was able to go on shlichus. I

43:06 Speaker 1 had concerns that I may not be able to do it. I wouldn't-- In those days, shlichus wasn't as big, right? You had the shluchim, you had the Shemtovs, and you had Gorelik in, uh, in Italy, and you had, uh, um, Morocco, and you had Montreal. I mean, you had the big shluchim That everybody looked up. You know, couldn't, I mean, these were older than us, and, um, there wasn't the Kiness of Shluchim. There wasn't anything like the support for Shluchim, and there was just something we wanted to do. But I didn't think I'd be able to do it. As a bachur, I used to go out on, um, with time a lot. Anyway, so, um, I had a friend, uh, have a friend, um, Kasowitz, Moishe Kasowitz, who started a Chabad house in Des Moines, Iowa, in middle of Ekfvelt. I knew him. He was older than me, and I knew him because when I was in Lud, he was in Kra Chabad, and Yamim Tovim, we would have Yamim Tov together. We would Chuts lauz diker bachur, and we would have the second day of Yamim Tov together. One Simchas Torah, we had an incredible Simchas Torah. I remember all the bachurim from America, from England, we were together, and we got to know, became good friends. So he called me up and said, "Could you come daven for me Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?" So I said, "Okay." You know, I could daven, so I said, "Okay." So I went Rosh Hashanah, but

44:19 Speaker 1 now I could go back for Yom Kippur. So I went there Rosh Hashanah, I went there back for Yom Kippur. I think I stayed maybe for Sukkos and then went back for Simchas Torah, and that was the Simchas Torah, Taf Shin Lamed, when the Rebbe had a heart attack. So I was back for Simchas Torah. I was there for Simchas Torah.

44:36 Speaker 2 You were there?

44:37 Speaker 1 Yeah. I was in the, I was in seven 70 when it happened. And, um, I saw the Rebbe turn white. I, I saw it happening. I saw it happening in front of my eyes. I saw the Rebbe from move his hands, like clapping his hands to barely being able to clap.

44:52 Speaker 2 And you understood then something was wrong?

44:54 Speaker 1 We knew something was wrong. We didn't know what. They said, "Break the windows, everyone out, everyone out," and we went out within a few moments.

44:59 Speaker 2 Who's they?

45:00 Speaker 1 Everyone in Geshrian. I don't know who. Break the fence, the gate, there is, gate, there is, Allah, there is. And we all started run- uh, we wanted to stay. I stayed for a moment to see, but then had to go out. And by the way, afterwards, we heard the Rebbe had the seven seudahs. We couldn't believe it because we knew that something was desperately wrong. And then that whole night, the Rebbe, then we started dancing. We're going off on a tangent. But what, what happened was a couple years earlier was the Yom Kippur War, and at that time, the whole world had said we should fast and then not have Simchas Torah and whatever. And the Rebbe said, "Well, hey, bro. Now the Avodah is Bsimcha, davka through Simchat." And the Rebbe said, "We have to have Bsimchat, malach is for brengen." And, and, and so we knew how we had to react on Simchas Torah, therefore dancing. So we danced on, that's when we started singing the Rebbe, the Rebbe with gezunt zayn, and then it became the Rebbe is gezunt. And all night we danced, and then there were rumors. People didn't spoke openly about a heart attack. They didn't say those words.

45:56 Speaker 2 Why not?

45:57 Speaker 1 Because they were afraid to say the words. People were afraid to even contemplate such a thing.

46:02 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

46:03 Speaker 1 And it was just, you know, and, and also we came from the Soviet Union, and you don't speak openly in the Soviet Union.

46:10 Speaker 2 Right.

46:11 Speaker 1 Which is another whole subject.

46:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

46:13 Speaker 1 Anyway, but, uh, and then we heard something happened in the morning. We didn't know exactly, but then, but we had tremendous bitachon. I mean, we were terrified, and we had bitachon at the same time. And then, uh, and then I remember when Matzoh, was it Matzoh Shabbos? Matz- Matz- Matzoh Yontif? When the Rebbe had spoke from his room.

46:33 Speaker 2 Right.

46:33 Speaker 1 It was like a lightning. It was a lightning strike. The Rebbe speaking from his room, it was unbelievable. It, it was such a, a chayas. It, it was just, everybody just came to life. It was just unbelievable. And we heard the Rebbe speaking, and it was very weak and everything, but the Rebbe spoke. It was, it was amazing that the Rebbe would speak. Anyway, so, um, so then, then he asked me to come back for Pesach. The next Pesach, uh, Kasowitz asked me to come back. So, and by the way, just a very interesting thing, that every time student-- He was a student. Chabad House, there were students there. Every time students would come, he'd stick a big ple- pla- plate of food in front of them. And he told me the Reb Hakadakav told him that every student who comes in, he should stuff them with food because every bite of kosher food is one bite less of treif of food.

47:22 Speaker 2 Huh.

47:22 Speaker 1 This is the Rebbe's derech. I mean, it's unbelievable. The guy's eating treif. He's gonna eat treif. He ate treif yesterday. He ate treif this morning. He's gonna eat treif tomorrow. Rachmana liclan. But give him a bite of, of, of kosher food because it's one bite less of treif of food. It, it struck me unbelievable. It was like an unbelievable concept, right? Anyway, so Rabbi Kasowitz and his wife would go to sleep, and I would stay up and talk to the students. I would stay up till five o'clock in the morning talking to the students every night, Yontif, Chol Hamoed. And then the night, the day before I was leaving, um, one of the students asked me to come to his, uh, apartment to say goodbye, whatever, for a drink, whatever. So I, I went. There were twenty-five students sitting there. They made a surprise party to thank me for being there. So I thought to myself, "You know, maybe I can do this." And that's when I decided I, I can do it. I can be Sh- It wasn't should I do it, it was can I do it?

48:16 Speaker 2 Oh, interesting.

48:16 Speaker 1 And at that point, I realized that maybe, maybe I can make a difference.

48:20 Speaker 2 Interesting.

48:21 Speaker 1 So I decided at that point I'm gonna be a shaliach because I was 19 years old at the time.

48:24 Speaker 2 Interesting. So you, you, you, you believed in the idea of shlichus, but y- there were so few people who had done it before that you weren't sure that you had what it took.

48:32 Speaker 1 Ex- exactly. Exactly. I mean, who can match a Ramal Shanta? Who can match Gorelik? I mean, these are, these are m- these are giants, right? Uh, and th- this is the picture we had of shluchim. These were the-

48:46 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

48:46 Speaker 1 ... shluchim.

48:47 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

48:48 Speaker 1 Who am I? A little bachur, what can I do?

48:50 Speaker 2 It's fascinating. The second generation of shluchim had to really... 'Cause you're more or less the second gen- you could-

48:55 Speaker 1 We were the second wave.

48:56 Speaker 2 You're the second wave.

48:57 Speaker 1 We were the second wave.

48:58 Speaker 2 Okay.

48:58 Speaker 1 In Taf Shin Mem, when I went on shlichus, so in our class in Morristown, there were, I think, 32 bachurim. Twenty-eight became shluchim.

49:06 Speaker 2 So that's when there was a turning point then.

49:07 Speaker 1 There was a huge turning point, and at that time, people don't talk about it a lot, people don't remember it a lot, but in 1770, there was a lot of negative talk about shluchim. There was one guy who used to walk around and say the shluchim come back when shluchim had come for Yontif. "Oh, they come, they go on shlichus just so they can come back, and everyone should give them a nice shalom aleichem." And there was so much negative talk. I remember when I would come to New York, people would ask me, "For bring me the bachurim, "Zog ze vus a shlichus." That shlichus has such a dirty, such a bad name.

49:36 Speaker 2 People told you to bring the bachurim, so to encourage them to go-

49:38 Speaker 1 To encourage them that shlichus is a good thing.

49:41 Speaker 2 What was the negativity-

49:41 Speaker 1 Because it was-

49:42 Speaker 2 ... coming from, if you had to guess?

49:45 Speaker 1 Well, there were two things. There were a couple of guys who were just making fun of shlichus.

49:49 Speaker 2 Okay, but that's not-

49:50 Speaker 1 There was a group of sh-

49:51 Speaker 2 That's, that's not enough to-

49:52 Speaker 1 And, and, and-

49:52 Speaker 2 ... sway the whole community

49:53 Speaker 1 ... and, and there was a group of Spitz Chabad who didn't go on shlichus. And instead of hanging their heads and saying, "We're not going on shlichus," they bad-mouthed shlichus a little bit. "Ah, who needs to go on shlichus? Ah." That, that was something which probably you haven't heard before and probably won't be repeated, but that's what happened.

50:09 Speaker 2 So basically, there were people-- Why didn't they go? 'Cause they didn't have the-

50:12 Speaker 1 Because they, whatever, they had reasons not to go. They had family reasons not to go, whatever the reasons were.

50:16 Speaker 2 So in- instead of, instead of admitting that some people made a different choice to their life that had its own value, they, they knocked it.

50:23 Speaker 1 They kind of knocked it a little bit.

50:24 Speaker 2 And that, that took off in the c-

50:25 Speaker 1 And also, also-

50:26 Speaker 2 And that took off in the culture.

50:28 Speaker 1 Yeah, but also, but also with shlichus, I mean, going out on shlichus, it was still not... What changed was the, the Kinus, the first Kinus Hashlachim.

50:37 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

50:37 Speaker 1 When the Rebbe spoke the Sicha on Shabbos by the Kinus Hashlachim, that changed everything.

50:41 Speaker 2 Which, which, which year is this?

50:42 Speaker 1 The first year or the, the, what was it? Mem- Dalet.

50:44 Speaker 2 After you had gone?

50:46 Speaker 1 After I had gone.

50:47 Speaker 2 You're saying when you left, the Rebbe of Slutsk-

50:48 Speaker 1 For-- When I left, shlichim still had a, a bad name.

50:50 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

50:51 Speaker 1 And then for the first few years, we had to fight this bad name, and then the Kinus Hashlachim came, and everybody was laughing at the 85 heads of sh-- heads of, heads of mosdos who were walking around with their bags. "Oh, look at them, the bags, the bags." And then the Rebbe spoke a Sicha-

51:06 Speaker 2 This is fascinating. This is so fascinating.

51:07 Speaker 1 And then the Rebbe spoke a Sicha on Shabbos, and that was it.

51:12 Speaker 2 And what the Rebbe spoke there about?

51:13 Speaker 1 About, about shlichus.

51:14 Speaker 2 This is the first time he's speaking. He's spoke about shlichus, he spoke about shlichim-

51:17 Speaker 1 Yeah

51:17 Speaker 2 ... shlichus the past few years.

51:17 Speaker 1 But this was speaking to the shluchim.

51:19 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

51:20 Speaker 1 This was the keynote-

51:20 Speaker 2 Speaking about

51:21 Speaker 1 ... speech of the shluchim and talking about the male shlichus and, and s- and welcoming us to, to come, and talking about the greatness of shlichus and the shluchim. That Sicha changed everything.

51:31 Speaker 2 And what did that do for you?

51:33 Speaker 1 F- It was very encouraging, but I mean, I was a shliach already. I was encouraged by it. What did it do for me? It, it's like, it like, what does it do when you went and ?

51:42 Speaker 2 Right.

51:43 Speaker 1 Right? It was a whole-- It was incredible. I mean, the Rebbe gave us the time, the Rebbe gave us the intention. And, um, that whole, that whole Kinus, that first Kinus, we were together with Rabbi Posner and Rabbi Shemtov, and all the-

51:56 Speaker 2 Rabbi Posner, for the in Tennessee.

51:58 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were all together, and we sat down. We were young nothings. We'd gone out on shlichus for a couple of years. But we all sat together upstairs in s-seven, '88, I guess. We were all sitting upstairs, and we were talking to each other, and there was mamash a bruderschaft between the shluchim. And the older shluchim mamash treated us like we were equals, and it was, it was a complete, it was, it was a extremely uplifting thing.

52:21 Speaker 2 Hmm. It's, it's so interesting because o-on one hand, it's, it's typical human nature. If anybody ever is in a group and then they start doing something different, their group will, will start knocking them into shape. "Who do you think you are?" And, you know, make fun of them, knock them down, whatever the case is. It's, it's, it's completely almost predictable. But-

52:41 Speaker 1 But I can tell you that it never affected me negatively. I never had any doubts.

52:45 Speaker 2 But you didn't live there either.

52:46 Speaker 1 Never had-- I didn't live there either, but when I came there for Keren, I wanted to make sure-

52:50 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

52:51 Speaker 1 ... to, to explain to people what shlichus is about.

52:54 Speaker 2 Right. No, no. I, I, I'm not suspecting that there's anything neg-negative to you. It's more that, like today, to, to think of shlichus as something that was fighting for legitimacy within Lubavitch-

53:05 Speaker 1 A hundred percent. A hundred percent

53:06 Speaker 2 ... is-

53:06 Speaker 1 Today it's unheard of. It's, it's, it's hard to imagine such a thing.

53:09 Speaker 2 It's just-

53:09 Speaker 1 But that was the reality.

53:11 Speaker 2 It's astonishing. It's astonishing.

53:12 Speaker 1 That was the reality.

53:13 Speaker 2 Yeah. Forget about the naysayers and carnites. You're, you're describing also this almost imposter syndrome, that within 20 years already, on one hand, there wasn't yet a model of mass, mass market shluchim where there's thousands of shluchim and everyone can do it. But on the other hand, because there was so few of them out there, you're comparing yourself to these people who are 20, 30 years ahead of the game, and therefore hard to compare yourself to.

53:43 Speaker 1 And we never th-- We-- Hard to compare to, and also, I mean, they were, they were like these, these, uh, they were giants and not, not necessarily approachable. I didn't feel I could go call, uh, one of these people and ask them advice, you know? I, although I did. I asked, uh, um, Rabbi Shmen Gelerek, who's a cousin of my mother's, and I asked him a piece of advice. He gave me some really good advice. When I was looking to go on shlichus, I asked him about working for someone else or working for myself. He said, "You know what? You work for yourself. It'll be tough the first few years, but eventually you'll do your own thing." And that's-- I mean, I'm working for Rabbi Kunin, but very much independently. Rabbi Kunin never told me what to do.

54:23 Speaker 2 Right.

54:23 Speaker 1 Um, so this was kind of like an independent. He-- 'Cause I was looking at a few places, and I was looking at places that were offering. In those days, I had 13 offers when I was in Kollel to go on shlichus. And, um, some of them were working for someone else, and he suggested, "No, no, no. Go, go, go, go where you can work for yourself, you know, on your own."

54:41 Speaker 2 Right.

54:42 Speaker 1 Yeah.

54:42 Speaker 2 Right. But, but-

54:44 Speaker 1 But otherwise, I couldn't just go and ask them advice about things, you know? You just had to fig-- Also, look, there was no Kinus Hashlachim. There was no Shlichim office.

54:51 Speaker 2 Right.

54:51 Speaker 1 There was no chabad.org. There was none of that stuff.

54:53 Speaker 2 Right.

54:54 Speaker 1 So there, there was not even, uh, there was no video. I mean, there was no, no such thing as, uh-

55:00 Speaker 2 There-

55:00 Speaker 1 ... watching a video live. I mean, then the satellites came out then around that time, and you were able to watch it for Bringin. But, uh, but there wasn't the live information and everything, so you had to figure it out. And not only that, that was around the time that the Rebbe started saying not to write so many letters.

55:14 Speaker 2 From shlichus?

55:15 Speaker 1 Yeah, from-- Bechalal, the Rebbe said not to write, and the Rebbe said to bring privlah. So I heard later that there were many shluchim who kept on writing anyway, and the Rebbe answered them. I asked the Rebbe a few times questions, and the Rebbe said, "Kat sas, uh, Anash al asar. Kat sas, you didn't mevinim." So I got the message. So you gotta figure it out. Go and-- The Rebbe said many times, "Go figure it out. Use your mind. You know, figure it out." So we had to pretty much figure it out.

55:39 Speaker 2 'Cause you're on the second wave. That's what's so fascinating about it. You're, you're already-- The first group of shluchim had every single thing, either out from-

55:46 Speaker 1 Exactly

55:46 Speaker 2 ... from Chabad HaKohav-

55:47 Speaker 1 Exactly

55:47 Speaker 2 ... or the Rebbe directly. And you're already, you-

55:49 Speaker 1 And also, remember, I'm working through Kunin, and Rabbi Kunin just at that time had lost the Chabad House. It just burned down.

55:55 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

55:55 Speaker 1 So a very difficult time in California. And I was in Northern California. He's in Southern California, and the distance is, is huge. And it's not like today where you just pick up the phone and call and speak. Uh, it just, it just didn't happen that way. Communication was not what it is today.

56:09 Speaker 2 So how many shluchim were up here? Rabbi Langer

56:11 Speaker 1 There was Rabbi Langer and me. That was it. Rabbi Langer was the first, I was the second.

56:14 Speaker 2 Really?

56:15 Speaker 1 Yep. There had been a couple of shluchim here before, um, Chaim Yitzchok Drizen-

56:18 Speaker 2 Right

56:18 Speaker 1 ... had just left, and, uh, and, um, uh, Citron had just left, and Rabbi Langer had taken over in Berkeley, and I was number two.

56:26 Speaker 2 And also, Rabbi Rosenfeld had been here for a little bit.

56:28 Speaker 1 He had been here l- before that, but he had left already a long time before.

56:30 Speaker 2 I mean, North California was known as a very difficult place to-

56:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, and it was.

56:34 Speaker 2 It was.

56:34 Speaker 1 It was a very difficult place.

56:36 Speaker 2 You knew that going in?

56:37 Speaker 1 Yep. Um, when I wrote to the Rebbe-- So first of all, let me just quickly go through this. So I wrote to the Rebbe, I, I had 13 offers. I rejected most of them out, out of hand.

56:49 Speaker 2 What's a shidduch offer? Head shlicha-

56:51 Speaker 1 I got a call from a head shlicha saying, "Would you come here? Would you come there? Would you do this for me?" Is that-

56:54 Speaker 2 They heard that they, they got wind-

56:56 Speaker 1 We're in Kollel then

56:56 Speaker 2 ... they got wind that-

56:57 Speaker 1 I guess they were calling people in Kollel

56:58 Speaker 2 ... that you were open to it.

56:59 Speaker 1 I guess. So there were people, you know, we-- there was a group of us in Kollel who were waiting to become shlicha.

57:03 Speaker 2 Oh, you said there was 28 of you, so you were already-

57:05 Speaker 1 Twenty-eight from Meriston who were going, who went.

57:07 Speaker 2 Right.

57:08 Speaker 1 So yeah, there were a lot of us who were open to shlichas, and there were people looking.

57:12 Speaker 2 Right.

57:13 Speaker 1 Um, I didn't get an offer directly from Merkaz. I didn't really go to Merkaz and say, um, because I was getting all the-- 'cause I was in Ko- I went to Kollel, and I figured I'll see. You know, I'm gonna go to Kollel for a year. This was clear. And then as the offers started coming in, I started dealing with them. Everything there is Kollel practice. So when I had, I narrowed it down to three offers, and of those three, I wrote to the Rebbe about two. Uh, we narrowed it down to three, and then narrowed it further to two, and I wrote to the Rebbe about these two places, and I said that they're offering to come out and look at the places. Should I go? And the Rebbe underlined Palo Alto and said, "V'chein ya'aseh," about going out to look. I came here for th- with my wife for three weeks.

57:56 Speaker 2 And you said there was a, there was a fellow here who was-

57:59 Speaker 1 Dr. Landis, who was a baal teshuva, who had, um, who had brought in the first shliach. Rabbi Berkowitz was here. Arend Berkowitz, who's now a shliach in, uh, in, uh, Huntington Beach. He started Palo Alto.

58:10 Speaker 2 I see.

58:11 Speaker 1 He was here five years before me, and he was leaving 'cause he, his main parnasah came from a, a day school. There's a day school here, and he was the principal of the day school. When that ended, he didn't wanna start running a home mosad. He wanted to be a teacher. So he moved, he, he left and moved to Southern California. At that time-

58:28 Speaker 2 I see

58:28 Speaker 1 ... the bui- the building, the Chabad House in California had just burned down.

58:32 Speaker 2 The main Chabad House?

58:33 Speaker 1 The main Chabad House. And three ba- three students and three secretariat, Rachmana Litzlan, were burned in that fire.

58:39 Speaker 2 Really?

58:40 Speaker 1 Yes. And so Rabbi Kunin was very hard to reach, and he called Rabbi Kunin every single day. This is before Rabbi Berkowitz left.

58:48 Speaker 2 This is Dr. Landis?

58:50 Speaker 1 Dr. Landis. And he said, "Rabbi Kunin, we need a, we need a rabbi. We need a rabbi" every single day. Finally-- So then when he came to town, he spoke to, to Rabbi Katlosky, and Rabbi Katlosky suggested I speak to him, and I met with him, we talked. And then I said, "It sounds good." What I heard from him sounded very good. And then I also spoke to Rabbi Berkowitz and his wife, and then, but it took a long time till I was able to get, um, connected to Rabbi Kunin because I couldn't get through to him. He was, he was just starting his telethon, and it was, it was-- he had to deal with it. Eventually, Rabbi Lisbon, who worked with Rabbi Kunin at the time, came to Crown Heights, and he met with me in the Kollel. We sat and talked, and they made me a formal offer. So I wrote to the Rebbe about that, and I wrote to the Rebbe about another place, and the Rebbe underlined Palo Alto. So we came here for three weeks. After three weeks, though, we decided we wanted to stay, so Rabbi Kunin said he'll pay me... In those days, the head shlicha used to pay at the beginning. Uh, you know, the, the-

59:53 Speaker 2 Pay what?

59:54 Speaker 1 Pay the salary for, for a certain amount of time to start.

59:57 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

59:58 Speaker 1 It was pretty much understood that the head shlicha would pay the salary. Fundraising was not what it is today. We didn't know how to fundraise. We didn't know what-- There, there was no support from-- There was no one out there ready to support shlichim, uh, that we knew of. I mean, it was, it was a whole different story.

1:00:12 Speaker 2 Right.

1:00:13 Speaker 1 So Rabbi Kunin said he would pay me for six months' salary. So when I wrote to the Rebbe, and I told the Rebbe that the Rebb- that, uh, Rabbi Kunin said, "We, we'd like to come as shlichas," we're asking the Rebbe for bracha to come as shlichas, and Rabbi Kunin said he'll pay me for six months, and Rabbi Kunin didn't know that I wrote this, and I wrote, "But I'm not sure if it's enough time." Because it became clear to me by being here that things were gonna be very difficult here. So the Rebbe underlined six months, and the Rebbe said the following answer. R- I remember Rabbi Klein showed me the answer. "Lo yirchishu hekeros kol cach sheyuchlu lesader kesef haitzois be'atzmam." They will not acquire enough hekeros, enough getting to know people, enough, uh, people, that they'll be able to take care of the money themselves. I called Rabbi Kunin. Rabbi Kunin fell off his chair . He said, "Come to my office." I was still in California at the time. I went down to Ca- I went down to LA, and he told me a whole sicha, and he said that this is only for Northern California, 'cause he was, at that time, hiring three of us, three guys. So he said, "This is only for Northern California because of the specific situation in Northern California." In the end, he said he, "I'll give you 18 months." I said, "Make it two years." He said, "Okay, I'll make it two years on

1:01:35 Speaker 1 condi-- But, but you should know I'm gonna make your life miserable. You're gonna have to write me a doch . You're gonna wanna get off my pay." In the end, after 18 months, I was pretty much independent. So, but anyway. Lepliel, he gave everybody two years. He gave me two years, he gave the others also two years.

1:01:49 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:01:50 Speaker 1 So the Rebbe negotiated my contract. When I wrote to the Rebbe that he said he'll give two years, the Rebbe said, "Bracha vehatzlacha."

1:01:56 Speaker 2 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 Uvlah Media, inspired by Basile Ghani, the first maimer the Rebbe said If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Basileghani 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 a string quartet to bring the beauty of Basileghani 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. That's fascinating. So the Rebbe didn't... The Rebbe wanted a... He wanted Shluchas to basically develop a foundation.

1:03:09 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:03:09 Speaker 2 That the second wave of Shluchim should have support from the first wave. Not like gung-ho, you're still-

1:03:17 Speaker 1 Now look, look. In those days-

1:03:19 Speaker 2 Because he could have said with the Chachil Ariber, like, just go-

1:03:23 Speaker 1 The Rebbe said you have to have various the Torah, the Kelim de Tikun.

1:03:27 Speaker 2 I'm saying that the first generation-

1:03:29 Speaker 1 The Kelim de Tikun. The first generation of Shluchim paid the Rebbe Chadakov.

1:03:32 Speaker 2 For two years?

1:03:32 Speaker 1 I don't know how much, how long, but he paid them in the beginning.

1:03:35 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:03:36 Speaker 1 So we, the local Shluchim, paid already.

1:03:39 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:39 Speaker 1 But the idea... Look, in those days, when you said Chabad today, if you Google Chabad, or you, especially on ChatGPT, an outgoing organization that's very open to people.

1:03:52 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:52 Speaker 1 In those days, the image of Chabad was-

1:03:55 Speaker 2 Old Hasidim

1:03:56 Speaker 1 ... old Hasidim sitting and learning and throwing stones in Jerusalem.

1:03:58 Speaker 2 Yeah, of course.

1:03:59 Speaker 1 Against women, against Israel, against this. This is what everyone thought of us. There was, and probably is, unfortunately, an 80 to 90% intermarriage rate in this area.

1:04:09 Speaker 2 Palo Alto.

1:04:09 Speaker 1 In Palo Alto area. At that time, I was the second Shluchim in the area. So it was Palo Alto, San Jose, San-

1:04:16 Speaker 2 San Francisco

1:04:17 Speaker 1 ... San Mateo. Not San Francisco. San Francisco was covered by Berkeley. Rabbi Langer covered San Francisco, but south of San Francisco-

1:04:23 Speaker 2 Oh, there's two Shluchim in this area?

1:04:25 Speaker 1 No, no. There was Rabbi Langer in Berkeley-

1:04:26 Speaker 2 Right

1:04:26 Speaker 1 ... and he covered San Francisco.

1:04:28 Speaker 2 Oh, right.

1:04:29 Speaker 1 At that time, there was Berkeley, Rabbi Drizen covered the whole area, and Rabbi Berkowitz worked for him.

1:04:35 Speaker 2 I see.

1:04:36 Speaker 1 When I came out, we kind of split the area, and I took this area, south of San Francisco.

1:04:41 Speaker 2 I see.

1:04:41 Speaker 1 The rest of it was Rabbi Langer. But all the rest of it, I would drive 700 miles a week from San Jose to San Mateo to Palo Alto. I had two Hebrew schools. I had two communities. I had Baruch Hashem. There was plenty to do. I had a camp and-

1:04:55 Speaker 2 And today, how many Shluchim are here in this area, in that area?

1:04:57 Speaker 1 In this area that we're at? I don't know how many offhand, about 15, 20.

1:05:01 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:05:01 Speaker 1 I don't know, something like that.

1:05:02 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:05:02 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem. I mean, it's grown up, and it's beautiful. It's, uh... And every one of them, I, you know, I, as I saw them coming in, I said, "Nachas, what the young guys are doing, it's amazing how they're turning the place over." Baruch Hashem, it's fantastic what's going on with Shluchim. And you know, at the time when I came, there was a question, is there enough room for two Shluchim? And then another Shluchim came into, uh, Marin, and, and is there enough room for another Shluchim? And there were five Shluchim, then seven Shluchim.

1:05:28 Speaker 2 Yeah, isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing?

1:05:30 Speaker 1 But so at that time-

1:05:32 Speaker 2 Well, because there were only so many of them that you could see were interested.

1:05:35 Speaker 1 You could see, and not only that, over here, Bechalal, it was so distant. People here were so distant and so far from Yiddishkeit. It was so hard. We had Baruch Hashem, we had a minyan. Rabbi Berkowitz, one thing, he started a minyan, he started a camp. So we had a couple things in place already. And we had names of people that I would call and ask. But people weren't interesting. I had a, a chairman of my board who, um, went, moved to New Jersey, and I called him one day. He called me the next day. He said, "I'm sorry I didn't call you last night. I was at a $250 a plate dinner." This was in the '80s. $250 a plate dinner for some yeshiva, I don't know. I said, "Wow, I wish I could make a $250 a plate dinner." And he says, "Rabbi Levin, people moved to Northern California so they shouldn't have to go to a $250 a person dinner." But it's true. People here, there's a book, there's a book called, um, Soul in Silicon. I'm, I'm actually quoted in that book. There's a whole chapter about me with a different name. This guy went around speaking to all the faith, uh, leaders in the area to get an idea. Everyone said the same thing. You have a wedding here, people are RSVP'd. 15% of the people don't show up at weddings. Silicon Valley people are just not interested. They're engineers, they're not interested, they don't wanna come. They're not interested

1:06:46 Speaker 1 in anything. It's very, very hard to get anyone to get interested in anything.

1:06:50 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:50 Speaker 1 So Baruch Hashem, over the years, we developed a, you know, a, a nisim v'niflaos. But at least in the beginning, we needed to have some support.

1:06:58 Speaker 2 Hmm. Hmm. What, what did you, what did you imagine Shlichas to be at that point? At that, at that point when you're, when you're going out on Shlichas and there's only a few other Shluchim, it's a, maybe a few dozen Shluchim?

1:07:15 Speaker 1 Well, first of all, the, the, the mission, the, the Shlichas is lamkarve, right? To be, to, to havatz amayanas, havatz ayadas, to do a taveh to you, to help you in whatever it is. So we came out, and whatever needs to be done is done. I, I had it a little bit easier because I already had a minyan.

1:07:34 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:35 Speaker 1 And Rabbi Berkowitz had already rented a room at the JCC. There was a JCC down the street, Jewish Community Center down the street. Uh, they've since moved to a different location completely. And we rented a room there. So we had a room. We had a, we had a, a minyan. We had a camp that he had started, and I just picked up. We had a Hebrew school. And slowly but surely, we saw, we knew that we had to see what needs to be done. I started doing a lot more work outside. Rabbi Berkowitz was busy all day in the school. I started doing a lot more outside of the shul and outside of the comm- immediate community. Uh, some people in the comm- shul actually, uh, complained that I was neglecting the shul because I was doing so much outreach, but-

1:08:15 Speaker 2 Hmm

1:08:15 Speaker 1 ... and I would visit the hospitals, visit the jails, and visit, uh, wherever. Um- And, uh, you know, go visit people in stores and people in businesses and, um, learn with people and give shiurim, whatever it take-takes. The point is to, to, to begin to develop some kind of, uh... But main thing is to reach out to people. One, to reach out to individuals, and that's what, that's what we did. And then we started a, uh, nurse- a kindergarten, and then we started a, a school, and it's a But reaching out to individuals, how is that a game plan? Was there a game plan? Like today, 'cause we're going back to what we said before, there was a time in Lubavitch where in Lubavitch itself, in seven seventy, the Shliach was at the very best, the most charitable way to put it, charitable way to put it, is misunderstood. Like it was this, like this mystery, this... Even you were describing, even though you were pro-Shliach, you wanted to be a Shliach, the Shluchim were like almost these myths, these ghosts. You didn't know what they're up to. You had no s- didn't have a story. So what, what was the vision? What w- what was the vision? I knew what I needed to do. I heard from the Rebbe again and again, "Have a Yisrael be Mekarev a Yid." I had gone out on Fridays on Mivtzoim. I already had Baruch Hashem, a Ba'al Teshuvah that had turned over Maristown. His name was Chaim

1:09:28 Speaker 1 Baron, alav ha-shalom. And I met him in a store. I would go every Friday to his store, and he started putting on tefillin, and he s- I put mezuzahs up on his door. He lived in Maristown, right near the yeshiva. His store was like twenty-five minutes away. I used to go every Friday together with, with Benyamini from Brazil. We would go together to his place, and we put on tefillin with him. And then so bis lah, I would show up on Fridays. He'd say, "I already put on tefillin." He was embarrassed when his customers would come in, and he was wearing tefillin. So he started putting on tefillin every Friday morning, so you should be able to tell me you wanna lie to me. So when I came to ask him to put on tefillin, he said, "I already put on tefillin." And then so bis lah, he started putting on tefillin. Then when I left Maristown, uh, someone else went, took over from me, and I heard a year later, he started, he, he started a community, he started a cheder. I, um, I, I grew up around Ba'al Teshuvah that my father was Mekarev. So I understood what the concept was to be Mekarev a Yid. But how-

1:10:15 Speaker 2 Yeah, but how's that, how's that a job? How is that a career, to put, to lack of a better word?

1:10:20 Speaker 1 I wanna tell you that twelve years after I came here, someone asked me: "How do you grow in your career? How do you further your career?"

1:10:26 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:10:26 Speaker 1 And I looked at them and I said, "You know what? I've been here for twelve years, and I never thought of what I'm doing as a career."

1:10:32 Speaker 2 Huh.

1:10:33 Speaker 1 It wasn't a career. There's Yidden out there. There's Yidden that need-- we need to be Mekarev them. How? I would go and I, I looked up every name Levin in the phone book, and I called every Levin. I said, "Hey, maybe we're related. Let's get together." I made it, uh, I made it, uh-

1:10:49 Speaker 2 How did that go for you?

1:10:50 Speaker 1 Uh, listen, let me tell you, I got to, to, to a couple of Levins.

1:10:54 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:10:54 Speaker 1 Uh-

1:10:54 Speaker 2 Okay

1:10:55 Speaker 1 ... one guy I came into, and he says, "This is my shiksah," and you know, I mean, it was, uh, it was a very interesting... We made-- my wife and I made a hachlata that every Jew we meet, we're gonna try and get into their house to visit them in their house. And we invited people for Shabbos, and we invited people for-- And we made a Purim soda, and we made a shvus we made. I remember once, um, we were making a shvus thing and, and, uh, uh, in those days, uh, I didn't know what to do because people-- I was sending it out, invitations to outside of the area. So I asked Rabbi Heller, "What should I do about Shabbos? The Yontif people are gonna come. People are..." He said, "Write on the brochure that anyone who wants accommodations for Yontif, it's available."

1:11:34 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:11:34 Speaker 1 That's what I did. But we had a shvus. We were the only game in town.

1:11:40 Speaker 2 Palo Alto. In the whole area.

1:11:41 Speaker 1 The whole area. We were the only Frum place that anybody could come to. There was a Misnagedish place where-- which had a Rav in San Jose, which had a Rav that you had to get permission to come to shiurim, and if you didn't come, you have to get permission not to come, and then you had to get permission to come back again. You're only allowed to li- allowed to ask questions after you'd been there for so many classes, and then you could only ask one question, then two quest-- Uh, it was, you know-

1:12:04 Speaker 2 Not welcoming.

1:12:05 Speaker 1 Right. So we were the, we were the one. There was another small community in Palo Alto that developed now into a full modern Orthodox shul. But at that time, it was just a small minyan. And, uh, so people came to us and, and I had a shiur every Tuesday night. I would have twenty-five, thirty people come to the shiur. I would teach an hour of Parsha Shiur, an hour of Tanya. And slowly but sure, my, my job was to be Mekarev people. And I would go in the supermarket, I would meet someone, and I'd get their name, and then I would invite them for Shabbos, and I would go different places, and that's-

1:12:34 Speaker 2 When, when you raise money, what do you tell people? Like, what, th-that it's just, I, I re- I need money to survive so that I can, so that I can do this? Like, there was no, there was no central funding here.

1:12:44 Speaker 1 There was no structure. There was no structure. I didn't know what I was doing fundraising. I didn't know what I was doing.

1:12:48 Speaker 2 Huh.

1:12:48 Speaker 1 But, uh, Baruch Hashem, the Rebbe sent a few people along, and then I, I would go. I'd have this route that I would go once a month, and I would go visit people, and usually they'd write a check. Sometimes they would, some... I wouldn't ask them for money. They would write a check. They knew what I was doing. Then there were people-- There was one big vir who came to ask me a question about what should he do about giving tzedakah. Should he give it now? Should he give it later? Should he invest it? And, um, I told him the story of Rav Nachum Chernobyler with a guy who came in with three hundred rubles and, and, um, uh, he fe- he came to Yefes, uh, three hundred rubles, and then other people came, and then the gabbi came to him and said he needed money. There was never money. He said, "I need money." He opened up-- Rav Nachum opened up a drawer and gave him a few pennies. He said, "But I need more than this." "That's all I have." He said, "What about the three hundred ru--" Uh, the Rebbe's meshamesh, but he said: "What about the three hundred rubles?" He couldn't control himself. He said, "Oh, the three hundred rubles." He said, "When the guy gave it to me, I put it in my drawer. It was very pre-- You know, thank Baruch Hashem, we'll be able to pay the chevra." And then the next guy who came said that he

1:13:45 Speaker 1 needed three hundred rubles to marry off his two daughters. So I thought to, "Oh, the Rebbe sent it to me. I'm gonna give it to him." And then I thought to myself, "I can buy shoes for all the poor, uh, kids in town."

1:13:54 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:55 Speaker 1 And then I thought to myself, "Why did I get that thought after I decided to give him the three hundred rubles? Why not right away? He's a siman that it's Yehie Tahara." So he gave him the money. So I told him this story, and he liked it, and he, he wrote me a check for ten thousand dollars in the early nineties, early eighties, which today is probably like a hundred thousand. And, uh-

1:14:13 Speaker 2 That's a big deal

1:14:14 Speaker 1 ... I made the mistake of telling Rabbi Kunin, and he said, "Okay, now you're on your own." This is eighteen months after I came here. And, uh, anyway, but Baruch Hashem. So we had some money, and then other people gave money. And slowly but surely, we developed a, a... In the nine- early nineties, I developed a full fundraising program that Baruch Hashem worked well. But my whole attitude towards fundraising has always been, you have to raise money, but the money has to be-- It shouldn't be limited to a particular way. It, it's part of the shlichus. It's part of-- It's a partnership. You're inviting people. Look, the Yidden who are generous, they wanna give money to tzedakah. The problem is they don't look at us as a major recipient. So I-- my job is to, to e-educate them, first of all, what tzedakah... Many of them have to be educated what tzedakah is. But also to educate them that this is their best investment, and they should become partners with us. And, uh, I could probably, if I was more militant about fundraising, I'd probably raise more money. But over the years, Baruch Hashem, you know-

1:15:14 Speaker 2 So at the risk of putting you in controversy, uh, p- in controversial waters, what, what do you think about the fact that shlichas did become institutionalized? There's no question that over the years, you're talking about the second wave of shlichas, uh, approximately. Then there was a third and fourth wave, and, and, and you come now to a Kinis and there's a, you know, a, a, a, a how-to guide of exactly how to build up the mosed and how to strategically build up a mosed and how to fundraise for it, and then there's also talk. And, and I, and I, I, I'm sure I come across a little bit, um, sarcastic here, but I, I, I'm trying not to be. Like this talk of, of shlichim having, uh, retirement funds and putting money aside so that when the day comes when they're older and it's harder to, to, to, to raise the money or, or to earn the money, they'll have money. What, what do you make of that? 'Cause it, it's, it's a complete, it's a complete different approach than what you had going in. Is there something lost?

1:16:13 Speaker 1 When Bnei Ga'av Ne'ruvan went to Eretz Israel, they had to go to the front, they had to go to war. Right?

1:16:20 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:20 Speaker 1 For seven years they fought, for seven years they hang around and help the Yidden become settled.

1:16:25 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:25 Speaker 1 Once the Yidden was settled, they didn't war, they didn't fight anymore. Now they were settled. Now they had to live in Eretz Israel and live their, their lives and develop Eretz Israel. Y- Not-- The pioneers are pioneers. Breaking ground is breaking ground, but there's no reason why there shouldn't be a structure. The one who, the one who digs up the ground to put down the foundation is happy that the guy can build up his building around it. I think it's fantastic. A lot of the things that are going on are fantastic. I think that a younger man goes out today. I mean, wh-when I, when I went on a shlichas to think of asking someone for eighteen hundred dollars, uh, how do you do that? And today, younger lighter are asking for millions of dollars. Baruch Hashem, they've learned, and this is the way it should be. And, and, and Halevi we had a shlichim office, and Halevi we had a Kinis, and Halevi we had all these structures, and there's nothing wrong with a retirement fund.

1:17:16 Speaker 2 Nothing wrong.

1:17:17 Speaker 1 Nothing wrong with a retirement fund.

1:17:18 Speaker 2 Uh, what do you say to peop-- Look, I-

1:17:19 Speaker 1 Look, I'm, I'm never retiring. There's nothing to talk about. As a matter... Look, let me tell you. Look, I've-- I'm not working the way I was before, but I'm working just as, just as much, but not the way I was working before.

1:17:30 Speaker 2 I see.

1:17:31 Speaker 1 My whole shlichas today is, is Shur Yitora working with people one-on-one, reaching out to people one-on-one, and giving Shuram. That's basically what I do, and, and I'm the rav of the shul, and I give drashas and whatever. But my thing now is with people, completely with people, 'cause my son Zalman Baruch Hashem, and his wife Dvora came in, and I have other shlichim. I have the Rosenblatts, and I have, uh, they're all doing, you know, and, and, uh, the Schustermans. And I have now the Gaysinskis, and I have the Herz. They're all doing their thing, and, and the, the Greenbergs in Stamford turning over the place. They're all turning over the place. They're all doing their things. I don't have to do that. And, and especially in Palo Alto, Rabbi Zalman and Dvora are running the, the Chabad House here. I'm spending my time, full-time, working with people. And it's-- I've always loved doing that. I've always wanted it. That was always my, my most important thing. Throughout everything, I always made sure that I have time to meet with people.

1:18:26 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:18:27 Speaker 1 And now that's what I'm doing all day. But I'm Baruch Hashem, I'm meeting new people. I'm slowly getting closer to the, some of the people in Silicon Valley that we need to be makar of them, which is extremely difficult. But, you know, slowly but surely, people are getting connected, and I have time to think about that. I have time to do that. But, but retirement, but then again, there are people who can't always continue, and there are people already who are having a hard time continuing, and they need to have some kind of-- They need to be taken care of. Why not?

1:19:01 Speaker 2 No, 'cause look, I'm first of all not one to talk. I, I'm in business, and I'm, and I'm for sure going to worry about having money for when I'm older. So I'm not, I'm not, not in any way judging, uh, a person who wants to provide. The only, the only question that I would be asking here philosophically is, shlichas was always, um, you know, so you s- you said the story of, of, Rav Nachum Chernobler. The, the Rebbe also had this attitude of you have money in the account, you have to spend it today. Uh, you know, there, there are no savings, no-

1:19:31 Speaker 1 How much more so the reason to have a retirement fund?

1:19:35 Speaker 2 I see.

1:19:35 Speaker 1 Shlichim used to be young. Today, Baruch Hashem, there are shlichim who are older. Not me, but there are shlichim who are much older, right?

1:19:41 Speaker 2 Right.

1:19:42 Speaker 1 And w-we're growing up. We're getting older. Mashiach's coming today. I once told someone, I once spoke at, at, at a dinner we had, and I s- I talked about my five-year plan. Someone comes over to me and he says, "Rabbi, why are you talking about a five-year plan? Mashiach is coming today." I said, "Mashiach is gonna wanna see the five-year plan." So we have to prepare, we have to do. And fakert, when a, when a, when a shliach is one hundred percent devoted to the Rebbe, which what we need to do, every single resource, every single thing that we do, all of it should go into, um, the shlichas. And it's okay for a shliach to put away a little bit for the future. Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel David Rajczek told me, "Medaf trachten, you have to think about the, the retirement."

1:20:28 Speaker 2 Really?

1:20:29 Speaker 1 He told me. Yeah, he told me. Not retirement. He didn't say the word retirement. "Medaf trachten wegen dem ivret alter."

1:20:34 Speaker 2 Interesting.

1:20:34 Speaker 1 Rabbi Shmuel David Rajczek told me that.

1:20:36 Speaker 2 This was not a man who thought about himself too much.

1:20:38 Speaker 1 Exactly. But he said, "Medaf trachten wegen dem." He was already at that point, I think his hands were shaking, and it was a little hard for him to get around. But-

1:20:46 Speaker 2 What was that like?

1:20:47 Speaker 1 What?

1:20:47 Speaker 2 He, he's a figure who, who like, uh, he kind of minded his own business almost.

1:20:53 Speaker 1 He used to call me on a regular basis. He was the mashpia of seven-- of, of, of, of, uh, California.

1:21:00 Speaker 2 Hi-him and Ari Kunin got along, right?

1:21:03 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:21:03 Speaker 2 Famously.

1:21:04 Speaker 1 Yes. And Rabbi Kunin gave him tremendous covert And, um, he would call me every once in a while, "Nieve was Hertman." And I would always tell him how terrible the financial situation was because it was always for the first... There was Mamash, I had no food. I mean, at Baruch Hashem, I always had food on the table. In those days, you could write a check, and it took three days to hit the bank. Every Thursday night, I'd go to the supermarket. I'd make sure it was after the banks closed already. I'd go to the supermarket, and I would write a check for a couple hundred, about a hundred dollar, a couple hundred dollars. And by Tuesday morning at eleven o'clock, I had to bring the money into the bank to cover the check. The branch manager would call me at ten o'clock and say, "By eleven, I need so much money to not to bounce the check." And, and there was terrible... Many, many stories. Push it, push it. Didn't have money to turn around.

1:21:52 Speaker 2 Right.

1:21:52 Speaker 1 But, um-

1:21:53 Speaker 2 Did that ever hurt your self-esteem?

1:21:55 Speaker 1 Self-esteem?

1:21:57 Speaker 2 Oh, 'cause it-

1:21:58 Speaker 1 I once, I once got a ca-

1:21:59 Speaker 2 Oh, oh, ca-ca- could we cut? Come on.

1:22:00 Speaker 1 No. Money, money was not... No. Self-esteem was not money. Forget. Forget. What do you mean? We're, we're pushing through. We're doing the Rebbe Zionim, and the Rebbe helped. And, and miracles happen all the time. But anyway, the point, I just wanna get back to the story.

1:22:12 Speaker 2 Yeah, sure, sure.

1:22:13 Speaker 1 So I would tell him that, and he would say, "The Eibish eitzach halfen." He would always end with the Eibish eitzach halfen. But he would call me from time to time. He was the mashpia. He, he was the sandek for one of my kids. And, um-

1:22:23 Speaker 2 He'd come up here?

1:22:24 Speaker 1 He came up for the... He came up for that. I flew him up-

1:22:27 Speaker 2 Wow

1:22:27 Speaker 1 ... to be the sandek for one of my kids, and Rabbi Mendel Futterfas was the sandek for one of my other kids. He happened to be in town raising money, and, uh-

1:22:34 Speaker 2 That must've been cute, yeah

1:22:35 Speaker 1 ... it was very nice. Anyway, but the point is that, uh, he was very much a figure. He was very much someone we looked up to. I mean, he was Shmuel David. When I was trying to build the mikvah here, this mikvah, this building we're in is an office and a mikvah. And for years-

1:22:50 Speaker 2 Oh, the shul's not here?

1:22:51 Speaker 1 Shul's next door.

1:22:52 Speaker 2 I see.

1:22:52 Speaker 1 Right next door. Uh, Mr. Schumer planning to tear it all down and start again and build it. I just built another, a house for people who come here for sick, uh-

1:23:00 Speaker 2 Stanford

1:23:01 Speaker 1 ... for Stanford for medical treatments for the kids. They call it Beit Shfaral, and I built a men's mikvah there, and that will be temporarily the mikvah when we tear this down 'cause we have to rebuild it. So anyway, so when I was building the mikvah, it took me three or four years to build it because we ran out of money, we didn't have money, and we were waiting for money. I would go to LA from time to time. He would run over to me. "Nieve, what's happening with mikvah?" He would call me once in a while, "What's happening with mikvah?" I remember once-

1:23:26 Speaker 2 This was the only mikvah in North California at the time?

1:23:28 Speaker 1 There was one in Berkeley.

1:23:29 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:23:30 Speaker 1 And that was it. I remember, um, I went down there, and he was, he was being held by two people. He couldn't walk.

1:23:38 Speaker 2 This is his last days?

1:23:39 Speaker 1 Yeah. And one on one side... No, it wasn't his last days, but he was, he was not able to walk on his own. Two people holding him up. He pointed to me. I was just walked into the shul. They brought him over to me. "Nee, mit havu tsuch she nemek vu." He got me to learn Rambam every day. This is a story that was printed in-

1:24:03 Speaker 2 That's a charm

1:24:03 Speaker 1 ... a book about him.

1:24:04 Speaker 2 That's a charm.

1:24:05 Speaker 1 He called me up on Erev Rosh Hashanah, the year when the Rebbe said to learn Rambam. I was driving seven hundred miles a week. I was sleeping five hours a day. I was barely making it. I had Baruch Hashem. I told you, I had Hebrew school here, Hebrew school in San Jose. It was... And fundraising and doing everything. It was-

1:24:20 Speaker 2 And raising kids.

1:24:21 Speaker 1 And raising kids, the whole thing. There was no time to, to sleep. So anyway, so he calls me up, and he says... So I tried learning Rambam through Perakim, but through Perakim at that time, it was like this wh-where, where? How? Anyway, so I tried. So he called me up, and he said... It was, I think it was ten forty at night on Erev Rosh Hashanah. "Nee, was Hertman, huh? Wanna wish you a kesivah v'chatismah tovah. So me, the word is Rambam." I said, "From side to side." He said, "Was heist from side to side?" I said, "I can't. I don't have time." He says, "Uh, who does the Rebbe mean if not the shluchim?" I said, "Uh, uh, uh," I, I explained to him my, my thing. He says, "What do you mean?" He wouldn't let me go until I committed to w- to learn Rambam three Perakim a day.

1:25:04 Speaker 2 How about that?

1:25:05 Speaker 1 And since then, Baruch Hashem, I learn every day.

1:25:07 Speaker 2 How about that? So I just... I wanna circle back to something you said before, and you, you, you told me it wasn't, that my ge sheitel wasn't w- wasn't even a ge sheitel, but I wanna understand why. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's normal for, especially for a man, maybe not to tie his entire self-worth or self-esteem to money. But for somebody to walk into a supermarket knowing that he can't afford to pay for groceries, it's, for most men at least, it's, it's a very... Like, you feel like you're, you're a failure, like you can't provide for your family. H- like, h- like-

1:25:43 Speaker 1 I wasn't here to provide for my family, and I wasn't here to raise money, and I... To make money. I had to raise money, but I wasn't here to make money, and I wasn't here to become a millionaire or to become a successful businessman. I was here to be Mekarev Yidden. And every Yid that I met, and every person that I spoke to, and every share that I gave, that was success. And every time I came to shul, and there was a minyan every day, morning. Uh, later we started a minyan afternoon. Every morning there was a minyan. At Shabbos there was a minyan. People came to my house Friday night, and people were Mekarev people. And, uh, there was one, when I first came, he asked me how I found people there. Uh, I went to the JCC, and I saw on the bulletin board, "Young Jewish woman looking for a roommate." So I called her up. And I said, "Listen, I don't have a roommate for you, but if you come to my class, the twenty-five, thirty people come to the class, maybe someone there will have..." So long story short, she became from several... She was, she was from a totally reformed family.

1:26:36 Speaker 2 That's hilarious.

1:26:37 Speaker 1 She became from... Meanwhile, there was a guy who came to be Megayer, who became a Gadol Tzedek, and they never met each other. And the week, the, the Shabbos after he was Megayer, they both came to my house for Shabbos.

1:26:50 Speaker 2 They met.

1:26:51 Speaker 1 And I was Mesader Kidushin, and I found her a roommate.

1:26:54 Speaker 2 Amazing.

1:26:56 Speaker 1 Um, but this, this is success. I wanna tell you, I was once... You know, in the old days, you'd pick up the black phone, and you didn't know who was calling. So once in the evening, and I picked up the phone. "Hello, I'm calling for a survey." Now, in those days, there wasn't scams. It was a survey. It was a survey.

1:27:12 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:13 Speaker 1 So I, I figured, okay, a, a survey about work. Okay. So she starts asking me questions. "How many hours a week do you work?" I said, "Fifty to sixty." Um, "How intense is your work?" "Intense." Um, "Do you feel you get paid well?" "No." Um, she asked me all these questions, and then she says, um, "How would you rate your satisfaction on a scale of... Your work satisfaction on a scale of one to five?" I said, "Five." She said, "Are you human?" And I thought about it, and I thought, "Yes. Yes." I didn't think about sleeping, I didn't think about eating, I didn't think about... People asked about food. We had to drive, once every six weeks we'd drive to LA, fill up a station wagon, you know what that was, station wagon full of food, uh, meat, and bring it back. Food, meat, milk, everything. We had to... We... Milk, we had a milk, um, a, a dairy. We would go, we had a co-op, we'd go to the dairy and watch the milking.

1:28:07 Speaker 2 No, I, look, I believe you. I grew up in Hong Kong-

1:28:09 Speaker 1 But none of the people said, "How could you do this?" I said, "Who cares?"

1:28:11 Speaker 2 I grew up in Hong Kong, so my parents had to-

1:28:14 Speaker 1 Okay. So there you are

1:28:14 Speaker 2 ... deal with certain s-similar issues with food, different, whatever, but they had their own, their own, their own gesheftin with the food. We used to schlep boxes of gefilte fish with us. You know, that was one of our check-in bags and so on. And I, and I, and I believe what you're saying. I just, I just want to-

1:28:31 Speaker 1 You know the mashal. You know the mashal about carrying a bag of rocks up a hill?

1:28:34 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:28:34 Speaker 1 And carrying, two people carrying a bag of rocks up a hill.

1:28:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:28:37 Speaker 1 And it's a hot day and they're schlepping and schlepping, and you go to one guy say, "Can I add a few of those rocks?" He look at you like you're crazy. And then the other guy, "Sure. Load them on." What's the difference? One is carrying coal and one is carrying diamonds.

1:28:48 Speaker 2 Right.

1:28:49 Speaker 1 And-

1:28:49 Speaker 2 But you felt like that on the day-to-day ba... I understand, I understand-

1:28:52 Speaker 1 They... Well, we had our challenges and we had our difficulties, but no, uh, it was, it was... I did have times, I did have times when I was really down. When I didn't have money, I didn't know where... There was one guy, Balabus, who knew me very well, and he said to me, "Reb, whatever you do..." They call me Reb. "Reb, whatever you do, don't tell people you're gonna leave. Don't say it."

1:29:14 Speaker 2 Right, right.

1:29:15 Speaker 1 And, and, and then there are times when I didn't know ‹ma ayin yevaze ri›, and the answer is ‹ma ayin yevaze ri›. So, and, but things would happen. Things would-- miracles would happen. And then I will tell you that one, uh, had one... I used to have this cycle, so everything would be fantastic, I'd be very happy, and everything was going really well, and then go down where there's no money, there's no, uh, you know, it's really hard, and da'igos were crazy. How am I gonna manage? How am I gonna get out of this? And then all of a sudden something would happen. It'd go up again. And once I was in a down. I was really, really down. Really... So it's not like every day I was la-di-da. I mean, of course I was nervous, but it wasn't about personal, it wasn't about self-esteem, it was how am I gonna manage? It was worry. So I wrote to the Rebbe, my bi- it was my birthday. I wrote a pan to the Rebbe, and I wrote about my, my challenges. And this is after Gematamos, and I took the letter and I put it in Igress, not to open in Igress. I put it in the Igress 'cause I wanted to send it to the Rebbe, and that's the way I sent it to the Rebbe.

1:30:13 Speaker 2 It was, it was in Igress for a long time though. Yeah.

1:30:15 Speaker 1 Exactly. So I put it in Igress and I closed it and I put it away. Later in the day, I had a ‹besataga› to open the Igress. So I open the Igress, there's a letter, I still have, uh, it prominently in my house. I ke- I keep a marker and a-

1:30:28 Speaker 2 This sounds like a very hesitant Igress story.

1:30:31 Speaker 1 It's a very hesitant Igress story. And I opened it up, and there was a letter that the Rebbe wrote to someone, and again, I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact ‹lashon›, but the letter was something like this: "You cer- ‹betach›, certainly you know that to be ‹mefarnis› your family and yourself is a mitzvah from the ‹ebishter›. And certainly you don't ho- you're not m- ‹mekapeach›, you don't hold back from the ‹ebishter› what it says, ‹uverach haShem elokecha bechol asher tasa› underlined. ‹Tasa›. Uh, certainly without ‹shehir›, don't get too involved in the work. W- No ‹daiga›, no worry. Do your work and ‹Hashem bimatzlach›. ‹Hashem yatzlache›." That was the letter. And I've gotta tell you, at that time, I was so shut down that I probably couldn't raise money because I needed, I think, I don't know, a hundred thousand dollars, like, in a short time, and-

1:31:25 Speaker 2 You panic

1:31:26 Speaker 1 ... and I'm asking people for a hundred, uh, people giving a hundred, hundred and eighty, how am I gonna get out of it?

1:31:30 Speaker 2 Right.

1:31:31 Speaker 1 And so I probably shut down.

1:31:32 Speaker 2 Right.

1:31:33 Speaker 1 I saw this letter, so I probably got on the phone and started calling people, and within a short time everything was okay. Well, I didn't raise a hundred thousand dollars so quickly, but ‹baruch Hashem›, we got out of it. Since then, so I still have the cycles up and down, but there's no, no ‹daiga›.

1:31:47 Speaker 2 No ‹daiga›.

1:31:47 Speaker 1 No ‹daiga›. If I, if I get worried, I remind myself of that letter. I read it again. No ‹daiga›. The ‹ebishter›'s gonna send, and the ‹ebishter› does send and al- always sends in the end.

1:31:58 Speaker 2 We started speaking earlier about the difference between Brunois and Marston. The, the world in which, you know, you're listening to the Rebbe speaking from a distance, and then the world where the beco- where the Rebbe becomes very central. How would you say ‹shlichus›? Well, ‹shlichus›, in a way, ‹shlichus›, you're ‹veiter› away from the Rebbe. You're on the other side of the country in a very different at, um, atmosphere, milieu than seven seventy. Um, did, did it go back to how it was in Brunois, where the Rebbe is heard from a distance, or is it still Rebbe-centric, if to use that terminology?

1:32:35 Speaker 1 This, this is, uh, this may sound... I'm just gonna tell you how I feel about it.

1:32:41 Speaker 2 That's all I want.

1:32:44 Speaker 1 I was always far, ‹bekashrus›, from the Rebbe, and I was always working for the Rebbe, the Rebbe's ‹shliach›. That didn't change one bit. There's no question that to be able to go to a farbrengen on ‹yud shvat›, it is ‹kislev› or, uh, uh, ‹yud beis tammuz›, I would usually go in for a farbrengen a couple times a year to see the Rebbe by the ‹kinnus›. To be by the Rebbe, uh, ‹achoshana›, ‹pesach›, I would go sometimes. There's no question that that's missing, right? But on the day-to-day shluchas, I was working for the Rebbe, I am working for the Rebbe. I'm a shliach of the Rebbe, and every-- I see the Rebbe in every single detail of what I do every single day. Uh, um, I, when I meet with someone, I'm bringing the Rebbe to them, and I'm bringing them to the Rebbe. When I'm doing something, when I, when I get a check, I see that it came from the Rebbe. I mean, I feel that way. When I get, uh... When I do something, and I see hatslacha, when I'm talking to someone, I'm trying to convey to them something the Rebbe said. It's, it's, um, that, that was one of my yechidus by the Farbrengen. The Rebbe said, "Shema d'var Hashem." It's a whole-- It's been published. It's a whole thing by the Alter Rebbe of Chabad. Where the Rebbe had said a whole sicha about Alter Rebbe of Chabad, that there's a yungerman in a valley who, uh, where the Alter

1:34:01 Speaker 1 Rebbe of Chabad is me'eid, and hatichyan Alter Rebbe, and the answer is speak to the Alter Rebbe, Shema d'var Hashem. That's what the Rebbe said to the navi. He never Alter Rebbe, Shema d'var Hashem. The Rebbe said, "There's a yungerman in a valley where that Alter Rebbe of Chabad is me'eid. There's nolach l'chachas. Not stam Alter Rebbe of Chabad. Alter Rebbe of Chabad is me'eid. There's nolach l'chachas of Yiddishkeit." So the answer is Shema d'var Hashem. Tell him a word of Hashem. So whenever I meet with anybody, whatever-

1:34:24 Speaker 2 And you knew at the moment that, that was speaking to you.

1:34:26 Speaker 1 Oh my goodness, I, I talk about that. That was, that was a complete turning point in my whole shluchas. I walked out of there, beys Yaakov Raglav, I walked out a foot above the, the Rebbe. I w- I was-- It was one of those times when I was feeling really, really tough, remember. It was really tough. It was really hard, and I didn't know how I'm gonna-- I'm trying to be in the car with people, trying to connect to them, and I didn't know how I was doing it. And M-Matzy, I went for Achron Shel Pesach, and Achron Shel Pesach, uh, by, by, um, by Kosher Bracha. The Rebbe gave me a bottle of wine, and he said very loud, he said, "Hatslacha Rabein gantsn shtot." That was already lift me out of my... But then this sicha, this was already at the end of the Farbrengen, and the Rebbe said this. I'm saying a very big kitzur, but the story at the time, it turned me around. People remember me from then. I came back a different person. I came back mamash with chayas. So I started the same people I would know, try to talk to. So everything I-- every time I meet with someone, I bring a, a, a pis-- try and say a vort from Rebbe, a vort from, from a sicha, from a maamar, from anything, from a Rashi, from just something.

1:35:24 Speaker 2 Right.

1:35:24 Speaker 1 So I live with the Rebbe every minute of my life. Now, I can't say that I'm perfect.

1:35:31 Speaker 2 No, no, no.

1:35:31 Speaker 1 And obviously, I'm not talking about-

1:35:32 Speaker 2 No, no.

1:35:32 Speaker 1 I'm not talking about tzidkus and all that stuff.

1:35:34 Speaker 2 No, no.

1:35:34 Speaker 1 I'm talking about pashut.

1:35:35 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:35:36 Speaker 1 This is who I am.

1:35:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:35:38 Speaker 1 So yes, has it changed? Of course, it's changed.

1:35:41 Speaker 2 No, I meant-- I didn't mean gemara Talmuds on it. I meant shluchas. I meant when you went on shluchas.

1:35:45 Speaker 1 Shluchas? No. So what shluchas, what, what shluchas has changed is, first of all, Baruch Hashem, I have yungerleit working with me. Baruch Hashem, there's a lot of Frum y- They're Frum guys here.

1:35:54 Speaker 2 Right.

1:35:54 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem, when there's a Yamim Tosfa, we all, the shluchim in the Bay Area get together and Farbrengen, it's a beautiful thing. Not every time do I make it, but it's a beautiful thing. And, and Baruch Hashem, we have all the support that we have, and it's a whole different story. But in terms of the day-to-day, who I am and what I'm doing, that hasn't changed a bit.

1:36:14 Speaker 2 Right. And a-another thread that you, that you spoke about that tied mamash full circle is, is that in many ways, um, for all the differences of shluchas today, vis-à-vis how it used to be for yourself and vis-à-vis before you even went on shluchas, there is a common thread as well of your father, uh, zechuso yagein and, um, you know, there, there, there are deep roots to shluchas. On, on one hand, shluchas is seen as a very novel concept, but there's also, there are roots that go back. Your father was a shliach of the Friediker Rebbe, but zechuso yagein goes back to Avraham Avinu. Like, a lot of the ideas you, you're saying also your grandparents.

1:36:51 Speaker 1 My grandmother was Mariasha, who was a woman of incredible mesirus nefesh, and miracles happened to her. There are many miracle stories they tell about her. And, uh, just talking about not daigoning. So they had a, they had a-- they were living in the shul because they were kicked out of their house, and they, they had to plant, uh, potatoes in the backyard. And, uh, the guy who planted them said, "You know, if they don't pay the fifty rubles by tomorrow at five o'clock," he's gonna tear up the whole garden. So the kids were all crying. What are they gonna do? There was, um... So my grandmother was sitting by, by the window. There was a window next-- There was steps leading up to the door and a window. She was sitting by the window saying, "Tell him." And a few minutes before five, some guy came along, and he gave his name, and, uh, he said, "This is for you." And they said, "Where are you staying?" He was a guest. He said, "I'm staying in this and this hotel." And he left. And it was fifty rubles. And then they went to the hotel to thank the guy, and there was no such person had ever been there. Our family believes to this day it was the Elimelech brought the money. I mean, this is-

1:37:52 Speaker 2 Why is your grandmother by herself? Where is your grandfather?

1:37:53 Speaker 1 Because my grandfather had been shot by Stalin. We d- we, we didn't know he was shot. We thought he was alive. He was taken by-- Because he was a counter-revolutionary, he was a mohel.

1:38:02 Speaker 2 This was-- What was his name?

1:38:04 Speaker 1 Um, his name was, uh, Yitzchok Chanan Chagalov.

1:38:08 Speaker 2 Chagalov?

1:38:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. She changed the name to Gorelik when she came out-

1:38:11 Speaker 2 Right

1:38:11 Speaker 1 ... of Russia. So it was Chagalov, and that was-

1:38:14 Speaker 2 That was her maiden name?

1:38:16 Speaker 1 Her maiden name is Gorelik.

1:38:17 Speaker 2 That's how you're related to Gershon Gorelik.

1:38:18 Speaker 1 That's how I'm related to Gershon Gorelik, right. So, so, so he was mesirus nefesh-

1:38:22 Speaker 2 I think they were close to, I think they were close to my great-grandparents. I think the Shemtovs took them in at some point.

1:38:27 Speaker 1 Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they were connected to the Shemtov. They were all... Yeah, I think so.

1:38:32 Speaker 2 I think there was, like, a whole thing because it's very hard if-- It was very scary to have anything to do with them because she-

1:38:37 Speaker 1 She, she actually, she associated-

1:38:39 Speaker 2 The Russian side-

1:38:39 Speaker 1 She went to Reb Bentzion Shemtov to ask him questions. My gr-grandmother didn't know what to do. She was alone. There was a, a neighbor who kept on asking her questions, and she was afraid of spies. You know, everyone was a spy. So she said she doesn't know what to do. You can't lie to her. So Reb Bentzion Shemtov said to her, "I'll link Tomer Zogn, the members Daf Yomi Zogn." And she had an answer. She didn't say anything after that. And there wa- there, there was a whole thing. Mesirus nefesh story. She went for some nefesh. I don't remember all the stories, but, but I grew up with the stories of mesirus nefesh, of bitachon, of... I mean, if they could stand, if they could withstand that.

1:39:12 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:39:12 Speaker 1 Right? It's, uh, and it's ingrained, the whole idea. And bechalal growing up listening to the Rebbe sichas, listening to the Rebbe say again and again, obviously, Israel is everything. And, and, uh, um, the, the, the, the, the letter from the, from the Friediker Rebbe, from the Rebbe, how he was walking with the, with the Rebbe Rashab, and the Rebbe-- They were walking in Menton, and the Rebbe Rashab was telling him all the, the maalos of thinking Chassidus in talisin film before davening. And he told him eight maalos. And then he said, "This is Basama Mensch, una ch- una, una tzadik is noch greater." And he told him all the maalos that a tzadik is even greater. And then he turned to him. They thought for a while, and he turned to him, and he said, he called him by name, and he said, "This is alls gurnisht compared to, um, hot a chush una, una gishmok Tanataye vaYiden bagash mitsvu bach kapinim achas kam kam bruchas." I grew up with that. Tanataye vaYiden, that's what it is. And by the way, you see how much there's a guy, uh, a guy, uh, I don't wanna give too many details. A guy comes to shul every Monday and Thursday. He puts on the film every day. Comes every Shabbos. Uh, he comes to our house a lot, and he's, he, he comes to, well, most of my shiurim. I met him 15 years ago. He told me he's an atheist. What happened? So slowly but surely,

1:40:30 Speaker 1 his atheism went away. But then he had a son who was in trouble, and I helped his son, and after that we became the best of friends. Uh, in, in, in, uh, Perek Lamed Beis in Tanya, That's my, that's my, uh, walking orders. That's what it is. So, um, it's, it's all about, I mean, we, we grew up hearing the Rebbe talking about it, seeing the Rebbe being mekarev people. We saw how the Rebbe attended to every single person who came to him. We saw the Ahavas Yisrael of the Rebbe. I brought people to the Rebbe. I saw the Rebbe dealt with, with, with people who are... And a tzadik who sees everything. And a tzadik is «מיוס ברא» that the Rebbe could, could be mekarev people so much with so much Ahavas Yisrael. So, uh, it's, it's natural for us to do this.

1:41:27 Speaker 3 Beautiful. Beautiful way to, beautiful way to conclude. Let's not say ending, to conclude and to go further. Thank you very much, Rabbi Levin. It's been a pleasure.

1:41:36 Speaker 1 Thank you. It's my pleasure.

1:41:37 Speaker 3 And, uh,atz Kochacha.

1:41:38 Speaker 1 Amen.

1:41:40 Speaker 3 The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bachar, and is used with their permission.