Ep. 77 // "The Ability To Adapt" w/ Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie

00:00 Speaker 1 The American experience is totally different than the European experience, and the European experience is different than the Russian communist experience, and the Russian communist experience is different than the Czarist experience. In every single case, the Friediker Rebbe, okay, is-- it meets that challenge and creates a new kind of modality of leadership to meet the challenge. That ability to adapt and to change your leadership, and the Rebbe speaks about the three different periods of leadership of the Friediker Rebbe as he was Rebbe, I think is one of the most remarkable qualities of all.

00:33 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 Bentzi Yafetz, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here in Philadelphia, this time hosting Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Dovid Eliezer or David Eliezer. How do you go by?

01:02 Speaker 1 Dovid, usually.

01:03 Speaker 2 Dovid Eliezer. I see on the book it says Dovid. David.

01:05 Speaker 1 It says David. What can I tell you?

01:06 Speaker 2 Yeah.

01:07 Speaker 1 That's what-- It, it was one of the great inner conflicts.

01:09 Speaker 2 Inner conflicts.

01:10 Speaker 1 Yeah.

01:10 Speaker 2 So Rabbi Dovid Eliezer, shliach in Yorba Linda, California, which is in Orange County, I believe-

01:15 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

01:15 Speaker 2 ... south of Los Angeles.

01:17 Speaker 1 S-sedate suburbia.

01:18 Speaker 2 Sedate suburbia. Yeah. The not LA is what, is what they say. It's not LA, right?

01:24 Speaker 1 No. The police come within sixty seconds in our community.

01:26 Speaker 2 Yeah. Not LA is, is how they call it. Um, and you're here in the East Coast on the way to the JLI retreat, and you made the stop. Thank you very much, and thank you for, thank you for coming.

01:39 Speaker 1 I've been a longtime fan, listened to many interesting conversations with many interesting people, discovered some remarkable personalities in Chabad that I never knew about.

01:48 Speaker 2 Yes. That, that, that has been, in many ways, the biggest, um, the biggest, uh, what's the word? Not grateful, but, uh, the biggest gratification of the project has been, um, you know, bringing to the fore names and stories that, uh, weren't looking to be in the front. They, they were-- That's, in many ways, what's so beautiful about them. The people were not clamoring, "Oh, when is someone gonna recognize me?" They just kind of were doing their own thing, and you speak to them, and you realize that these stories are, are truly s- you know, unique and important and, and-

02:26 Speaker 1 That's what makes them more remarkable.

02:27 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, and they, they, they're informative, and they, they, they, they, they, they teach so much and, um, being able to elevate these stories and in that sense change the conversation because of the new, the new stories that are now in our, uh, sh- and that are now swimming in our, in our imagination has been, um, truly gratifying. So, uh, so thank you for that, and thank you again for coming. Before we proceed, for those listening who, uh, who enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe on the various platforms. It does help us out. And for those who really like the podcast, please, please donate to the podcast at hflpodcast.com/donate. Anyway, welcome, and, uh, let's begin, let's begin from the beginning. Uh, l-l-let's, uh, we're, we're here... Oh, one second. We, we're here mainly to talk about your new book, Uh, "Undaunted".

03:24 Speaker 1 You're, you're the first person out of the family to see the preview edition.

03:28 Speaker 2 The preview edition. Uh, "Undaunted." I'm just read- I'm just reading it. I'll give a picture. "How the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, saved Russian Jewry, reimagined American Judaism, and ignited a global Jewish renaissance." And, um, I was, I was very lucky to receive a preview manuscript of the book, uh, several weeks ago in a big binder, and, um, I've, I've had the time so far to read probably a little over half of it. Um, it's truly, truly, um, remarkable, uh, work and research that you did. Um, everything is, um, highly, uh, detailed and, and, uh, what's the word? With sourced, highly sourced.

04:14 Speaker 1 Highly sourced.

04:15 Speaker 2 Highly sourced. You look back at the, at the, at the background. It isn't just sourcing from one, one source and, "Okay, now I have the story." There, there's, there's many sources, many things that are brought. Not that I'm some kind of pedant- pedant like that or that I, uh, that I, that... But it, it, you, it shows in the work. It's not-- Like, I'm not a historian looking to verify if it's true or not, but it shows itself in the way it's written that there's a lot of work that went into it, and, uh, big ashukeach for that.

04:42 Speaker 1 I wasn't interested in doing another hagiography. I wanted the real historical work.

04:46 Speaker 2 Yeah, but even a hagiography could be done in a lazy way. Right? Like I'm, I'm, I'm just talking, right, we'll get to in a moment how you approached it, but at the very least, what's very obvious is that a tremendous amount of work went into this, and a lot of research went into this, and, and, and so many times w- work is defined ultimately by, by the first thing, which is how much are you ready to do for it.

05:12 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

05:12 Speaker 2 Right? Everything else is, is, uh, is, is, is, is ar- is artistic flourishes on the top, but the main thing is are you ready to put in the time? So, uh, it definitely, definitely showed. It, it, it's in that sense it was, it was remarkable to read and, and there also even though as a Lubavitcher I'm very familiar with, with the Friediker Rebbe or I thought I was very familiar with the Friediker Rebbe, um, you know, it's, it's, it's while I was familiar with many of the general ideas or stories brought in the book, the there were so many surprises that I had either never heard before or never paid attention to, and we're ne- we're not gonna have a chance to get to it, and hopefully when people listen to this podcast, they will have the ability to go buy it and read it for themselves. But a big ashukeach, and I'm, I'm sure we'll get to some of the details, but that's the, that's, that's what we're here talking about. And so I wanted to get take a step back and ask you How, how did we end up with a Shliach writing about the Friediker Rebbe? So I think we start from the beginning of your story.

06:17 Speaker 1 M- I think, I've been thinking about it for a bit. I think it's a combination of maybe the first experience I had with the Rebbe, and a piece of divine providence that happened five years ago. And the first experience is that my family moved when I was about fourteen years old to Montreal from Los Angeles, where I went to a modern Orthodox day school, and they ended up renting a house on Westbury between Carleton and Kent, which was literally one block from the yeshiva. So I needed to go to a Jewish school, and the Lubavitch yeshiva was down the block. The population in those days in the, in the, in-- was somewhat diverse. And I went to Lubavitch yeshiva, and I got close with the bochurim, and they told me they're making a trip to New York for Yud Shvat. They rented this crackly old school bus, which was an experience into itself. And my first trip to New York, I was either fourteen or fifteen, I don't remember exactly, was on Yud Shvat.

07:17 Speaker 2 Hmm.

07:17 Speaker 1 And, uh, the principal of the school, Rabbi Feigushock, had taken a sense of endearment to me. I stayed, stayed in his parent, his in-law's house, and, um, that was the first time I came. I was young. I didn't exactly understand what was going on. On Shabbos afternoon, I left the fabrengen together with a friend of mine, Yerina Fratkin, who's a schliach in San Diego. We walked over to Bedford-Din, got chased by this very tall guy who got taller as the years went on. But we spent the w- we also had a yechidus, a private meeting, with the Rebbe. And on the last night that I was in New York, I had, uh, a-- which I didn't understand then as being a remarkable encounter, but as people who are seven seventy watchers who've been around for a long time said it never happened before and didn't happen after, which like connected me in a more kind of intimate way with the Rebbe. And so I felt that that connection happened on Yud Shvat.

08:12 Speaker 2 Hmm. So you're saying that's a connection to the Friediker Rebbe.

08:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. Uh, and-

08:17 Speaker 2 But one second. Let's take a step back. You, you, you said you grew up, you went to modern Orthodox school.

08:22 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

08:23 Speaker 2 Um, and you came to Montreal, and they enrolled you in the Chabad school?

08:26 Speaker 1 Right.

08:26 Speaker 2 Why?

08:27 Speaker 1 My father had a connection bef- earlier with Chabad many years before, but it was the school, the yeshiva down the block. And if you went into the high s- you went into the school, there wasn't just Lubavitch kids in those days. There were all kinds of kids.

08:38 Speaker 2 Right.

08:38 Speaker 1 It wasn't that unusual. So there was a sense of affinity. It was a block away, whatever it was. And, um, and it w- it was just a logical choice in Montreal in like nineteen sixty-six or sixty-seven.

08:49 Speaker 2 But your family was modern Orthodox.

08:51 Speaker 1 Yeah. They were like Orthodox observant family. I had gone to a school called Hillel Hebrew Academy in Los Angeles, and they taught us Ivrit b'Ivrit, and I detested it. You know, vayeida ber Moshe, ve'Moshe amar, and you don't understand what's going on. Then, then I went out to yeshiva. There was a lot more Yiddish. It changed. It was an interesting cultural transformation. But I really got connected right away that I needed a little help to lift up to the level, so I started learning with one of the bochurim in the zal. And I connected to the bochurim in a very profound way, and, and that led me to go to seven seventy and all of the rest.

09:22 Speaker 2 So from the school, you ended up in the Beit Midrash and then in seven seventy?

09:26 Speaker 1 No, I ended up, I ended up going after school to learn in the Beit Midrash every day with the bochurim, and bec- and I got close to the bochurim. What do bochurim do? They see a teenage kid come with us for Yud Shvat to New York.

09:37 Speaker 2 Right. But then what, what about-- forget about the fabrengen in seven seventy.

09:40 Speaker 1 Yes.

09:40 Speaker 2 What happened in your life?

09:40 Speaker 1 What happened in seven seventy was the last night I was there, and I wrote about this story actually in my first book. The last night I was there, I wanted to see the Rebbe again. The bus was going back in the morning. And I came to seven seventy, and it was... In those days, they were just davening upstairs in the small shul. And I came, it was before Maariv, and I tried to get in. The Rebbe hadn't come out yet, and I couldn't get-- I tried to go in the, this first entrance. The place was packed. I tried to go around the back. The place was packed. So I decided I'll stand by the elevator, and I'll see the Rebbe as he crosses the hall. He comes out of his gan ein ha'tachton, out of his office, out of study, and as he, as he crosses the, and goes into the shul. So the Rebbe comes out. He starts walking across the hall, and there's this, there was a, a setting many people probably not even alive remember, that Rabbi Chadakav, the Rebbe's chief of staff and secretary, would stand by the door. The Rebbe would walk into the shul, go to his place right away to the left, and Chadakav would, Rabbi Chadakav would close the door, and then they'd begin davening Maariv. So as the Rebbe's crossing the hall and I see the door's open, I figured, "Listen, the door's open. I'll follow him inside." What did I know? I'm a kid. I

10:44 Speaker 1 didn't look like a Lubavitcher kid. I had a, I didn't have a black hat. I had a whatever color hat it was. I, you know, I didn't dress in the kind of Hasidic style. I was a little bit diff- you know, more, still, that modern look was still there. And as I begin coming into the door, the bochurim who are in the zal are a little bit like, "What's, what do you got?" They give me this sign to go out, and he begins closing the door on me. Here I am like a deer caught by the headlights on a highway in the middle of the night, and I'm half in, I'm half out. I'm a bit of an assertive guy, even though I'm like fourteen, fifteen years old, so I start to push forward, and there's a tumult, and the Rebbe turns around and sees me. And when he sees me, and I had been in yechidus there a couple days before with this group of the high school kids in Montreal. The tradition was on Yud Shvat there was yechidus, and well, yechidus was ten kids. It wasn't like fifty kids. It was ten, twelve kids. So the Rebbe looks at me, and he motions with his hand that I should stand next to him, and he tells Chadakav with the hand to open the door. And I come, and he's davening Maariv, and I'm standing on the table right next to him. Didn't say a word to me. And at Maariv ends, he

11:51 Speaker 1 walks out. But what I felt was he saw a kid that didn't fit in, who was breaking all the rules, and he wanted him to stand next to him. And I guess that became, so to speak, the turning point in my life.

12:05 Speaker 2 That's how you felt at the moment?

12:07 Speaker 1 I felt at the moment. Or maybe in retrospect. And then there was something that happened the next day, which the bus went back to Montreal, and of course, because it was an old rundown school bus, it broke down in Saratoga Springs because what do you think, for a yeshiva bochurim who don't know how to charter nice buses? And we ended up parked in a conservative shul And one of the older bachur, Moishe Savangel, who I still see on a regular basis, he lives not far from me in Long Beach, by the time 4:00 rolled around, he's giving speeches to the kids in the Hebrew school. And so I see this kind of empowerment of the Rebbe of young people to be transformational. So one moment, I see this intimate connection on the night before, and the next afternoon I see somebody seizing an opportunity in life to do something which is transformational. And those two subliminal messages, I think they were the ones that prompted me to get more connected to Lubavitch and ended up where my rest of my life went.

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14:17 Speaker 1 I would not. I, I wa- I didn't yet plan, and eventually my family moved to Israel in 1968, and I thought the Yeshivat Kfar Chabad had a what was called the Yeshivat Chechunit, a high school program, and I had gone myself back to Yechidas before the family moved to Israel, and the Rebbe told me that I and my sister, who also went to Beis Rivkah, should go to Kfar Chabad. And when I arrived in Kfar Chabad, I found out there was no secular high school program, and it was the middle of the year. So it was suggested, "Why don't you just come to the yeshiva anyway? You'll see how it works." So I came, and I stayed.

14:48 Speaker 2 So that's how it happened.

14:49 Speaker 1 That's how it happened.

14:51 Speaker 2 Hmm.

14:52 Speaker 1 We all have our moments in life that we make a decision that are transformational.

14:56 Speaker 2 All right. So it's interesting because the first thing is, is a story where everything fits, everything, um, or there's a very nice narrative structure to it, with the, the Rebbe said this to you or did that, and, um, it fits the Lubavitch narrative. The, the, the next one is just, uh, more like a, a, a happenstance or... I, I know, I know we don't believe in happenstance-

15:22 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah

15:22 Speaker 2 ... but it doesn't have, it doesn't have the ring to it of meaning-

15:25 Speaker 1 Well, everything is divine providence. I had come to the office of a, a Ephraim Wolf in Lod-

15:29 Speaker 2 Right

15:30 Speaker 1 ... and, and, and, and, and I, here was an American kid, 16 and a half, 17 years old. I was 16 and a half, and, and I, and I thought there was a yeshiva. And the Rebbe had told me in Yechidas I should go to Kfar Chabad, so I was like in pa- I wanted to go there. My father was not so enthralled that I wasn't gonna finish high school, which I never did. Uh, I still write English I think pretty much okay. But, uh, and, and I said, "Let me try it out to the end of the school year." It was like February, March. There wasn't much left to the school year. So a- and when I, once I went to the yeshiva, they had started a program for Americans, which I, I sat in for like two or three months and then went right away mainstreamed into the rest of the program. So it was that, that suggestion, that divine providence, that "Why don't you try it out," is the reason I went to Kfar Chabad. Plus, I'd had-- the Rebbe had encouraged me before, so I guess I had this, like, inner sense that I should do it, so I did it.

16:21 Speaker 2 Right, right. No, no, I, I understand. But-

16:23 Speaker 1 Listen, not everything in life is big miracles that have, like, flashing lights and everything like that.

16:26 Speaker 2 That, that, that, that's my, that's my point. Uh, did you write about that, the, the Kfar Chabad episode in your first book?

16:32 Speaker 1 I wrote about-- No, I don't rem- No, I-

16:34 Speaker 2 I'm so-

16:34 Speaker 1 I wrote about the first story because the first story was-

16:36 Speaker 2 That's my point. That's my point

16:36 Speaker 1 ... Yeah, you're right. But the first story was a, a more of it, sa- this kind of intimace kind of connection with the Rebbe, and as I've been told by people that they never heard it happened another time.

16:47 Speaker 2 No, no, I, I'm, I'm not discounting the story. I'm not saying it's not true, God forbid. I'm not saying it's not important.

16:52 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

16:53 Speaker 2 I'm not dis- I'm not discounting it. I just, you know, as someone that spends a lot of time thinking and, and working in the world of narrative, um, you know, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it, it, it's important to point out that there are some narratives that, that, that fit the, you know, the kind of pre- preordained narratives-

17:16 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

17:16 Speaker 2 ... almost. The story that we expect to tell, the story that we expect to hear. Uh, here comes the bachur, here comes Sanhedrin 70, there was Mekubalim, and the, you know, and off to the races.

17:26 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

17:27 Speaker 2 And the story that, that I like, maybe, maybe for silly reasons, I don't think so. The story that, the story that gets me thinking usually is a story where, where-

17:38 Speaker 1 A struggle and-

17:39 Speaker 2 Oh, not even a struggle. It could have gone either way. It could have gone either way.

17:42 Speaker 1 In my case, it could have gone either way.

17:44 Speaker 2 Yeah, you ended up in Kfar Chabad, and there's a, and there's a, and it just happens to be that there's a miscommunication and the batlanus.

17:52 Speaker 1 Well, later on I found out the truth.

17:53 Speaker 2 Now what?

17:54 Speaker 1 Because that Rabbi Feigelstock told me 45 years later that he knew there was no secular high school there.

17:59 Speaker 2 Oh, okay. So, so, but, so but in your mind it's batlanus and you have no choice-

18:03 Speaker 1 Yeah

18:03 Speaker 2 ... and whatever, you may as well, you may as well, so like you may as well go. And, and in... What, why, why do I... I don't prefer that story, but why do I, why do I gravitate to that story?

18:13 Speaker 1 I don't think it was batlanus. I had spent so much time at the Beit Midrash with the bachurim in Montreal. I had become very close to them. And for instance, when Lebel Kaplan was-

18:20 Speaker 2 But it seemed to you as batlanus back then.

18:22 Speaker 1 Maybe, but-

18:23 Speaker 2 The way you-

18:23 Speaker 1 ... Lebel Kaplan w- went off to Shlichus in Australia, the first group, and I was his pen pal. So I would get very connected to the bachurim and the yeshiva, the atmosphere. It's like I wanted to be there. So when it was said to me, "Why don't you go anyway?" I went.

18:35 Speaker 2 Because the, the, the option that you expected wasn't there.

18:38 Speaker 1 Right.

18:38 Speaker 2 Okay. So it's like a, yes, it, there, it's just- To me, it's telling that, that in life, a lot of times the big moments happen in that way.

18:48 Speaker 1 Hundred percent.

18:49 Speaker 2 Uh, uh, uh, by the way, everybody in business will tell you this the same way, right? Like, they, they came, they, they were in business, they hit a dead end, they, they, they pivoted, and suddenly they found success. They thought that they were getting to something that was a waste of time, and ended up being their-

19:03 Speaker 1 I think it really comes down, that's exactly the Frieda Grabow pivoted time again, and found success in a totally new dy- dynamic, a totally d- uh, different environment, which is... That's, that's, life is messy.

19:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, to jump into your book, there was one of the lines that really struck me, which I hadn't heard before, I don't remember where you sourced it from, was if either Grabow told someone that, or had told someone that when he was in Poland, he had wanted to be a rabbi that f- uh, that, that focused on his Hasidim.

19:32 Speaker 1 Right.

19:33 Speaker 2 After, after, after whatever had happened in the Soviet Union, and the fact that they were at the brink of survival, he wanted to focus on his, on Hasidim and not to be a global leader, not to be involved in Hasidim.

19:45 Speaker 1 No, that was in 1939.

19:46 Speaker 2 Right.

19:47 Speaker 1 What happened was, it's a very intriguing story, and we see hints of it before because-

19:51 Speaker 2 When did he say it? He said it when he came to America? Or-

19:54 Speaker 1 No, no, no. In, in Sep- in n- f- the war breaks out on September first, 1939. That's a Friday morning. The Matzah Shabbos, the Saturday night before, Rabbi Yisroel Jacobson, who was really the, the, the, the powerhouse that, that got Chabad started in America, had brought six bachurim, six students from, who had learned mostly in, in, in Torat HaDaas, which was the mother yeshiva in America, and he brought them to Otwock. And if you, uh... And he br- brings the bachurim, he's there for a week or so, and then the Rebbe does not at this point anticipate the war. And Matzah Shabbos, Jacobson goes into yechidus for a private meeting with the Friediger Rebbe, and the Rebbe tells him like this, "I've been thinking about coming to America for a long time." It was a consideration before when he came back after his big trip in America in 1929, 1930. He was, he was, uh, he waited for a while to go back to America or not. Eventually, he decided it wasn't the time yet, and he had too many responsibilities in Europe. He writes about this in his own letters. And so the Friediger Rebbe turns to Yisroel Jacobson and says, "I've made it." I've, I says, "I've been thinking for a long time about coming to America." But he says, "I see the American bachurim that have come here." There was a group that came earlier, and now the second group came, and he says, "I see that atifsdo medivoso aravtan. There's, there's

21:08 Speaker 1 choire here to, to make a yeshiva." And he wrote a letter to the elder Hasid, Rabbi Shmuel David, who had been sent by the previous Rebbe to America. He tells this to Jacobson that, um, "I asked him if he thinks I can make a good y- a yeshiva in America that'll be successful, and he assures me is yes." So he turns to Jacobson, he says, "Listen, it'll take me about six more months. I'm gonna make the move. We need to make the preparations, but I wanna come in a different way." He says, "That when I was there ten years earlier, I got involved with all different kinds of community issues, and they were very successful." And the story of his one-year trip that he spends, uh, you know, traveling abroad, first to Eretz Yisrael, and afterwards the United States, where he spends about ten months. It's a remarkable story, and he got involved in every community he visited in not just trying. He needed to raise money for Jews in Russia, and he needed to connect with Hasidim, but he got involved in every community he could, do whatever he could do to strengthen Yiddishkeit. That was like a central theme of what he was doing. He says, "I was involved in these things ten years ago, and we had a degree of success. I don't wanna do that now." He says, "Now I wanna basically focus inward on my own community." And he said to them, he says a line to him, "Ich vils

22:13 Speaker 1 zayn a Rebbe far Hasidim un nisht a Rebbe far di gantse velt." Now we have to understand. He says, "I'm going into sh-" He tells Jacobson, "I'm going into my shnas shabbos," and he's going to-

22:22 Speaker 2 Oh, yeah

22:22 Speaker 1 ... this, and this is going, and he wants to change his focus.

22:25 Speaker 2 Uh, shnas means he's going to seve-

22:25 Speaker 1 He's going sabbati- he's gonna be the seventh decade of his life, which is like a sabbatical period.

22:30 Speaker 2 The twilight.

22:31 Speaker 1 And he, listen, he was, at this point, he's seriously handicapped. He can o- he's mobile through a wheelchair. He's got serious illness. He's, he's been through tremendous challenges. And by the way, there is other indications of the same thing where he said this at earlier periods. This is what he yearns for, the sense of being in an environment of Torah and spirituality and avoda and Hasidism, and not getting overwhelmed with everything else. And that's what he tells Jacobson. And we know this because Jacobson himself attests this in a series of sources, which you can find in the footnotes of the book. But the point is then he, when he come, when he sees what happens to European Jewry, he realizes he has a new mission, and that's what he does. It's a remarkable, interesting transformation.

23:16 Speaker 2 So Jacobson and his boys got ba- got out in time.

23:19 Speaker 1 Yisroel Jacobson went straight. He left that next morning. The Rebbe told him to leave right away. The war didn't break out on Friday morning. The war breaks out, and the six bachurim from Otwock, uh, the six American bachurim are able to get to, uh, to Riga. From Riga, they get to America, and they all s- they all get out successfully.

23:37 Speaker 2 Oh, they, oh, they had planned to stay.

23:38 Speaker 1 They had planned to stay, but because they were American citizens-

23:41 Speaker 2 They could get out

23:41 Speaker 1 ... they were neuters and they were able to travel.

23:43 Speaker 2 Wow.

23:43 Speaker 1 And they came to America. There was Avraham Hecht. I, I remember all the names of all of them. A lot of this account we have from Avraham Hecht, and I actually, before he passed away, interviewed him. He told me the whole story in great detail. But, um, the piece about the Rebbe ha- ch- you know, wanting to change his focus is Rabbi Jacobson retold in the ser-- it's printed in, in a series of locations that he wrote it.

24:04 Speaker 2 Yeah, so it's, it's a fascinating thing, this idea that the, the Rebbe's hand is forced by circumstance. Um, it, that's how, that's how he got to it.

24:13 Speaker 1 Well, he speaks about it later on because before he leaves Riga, he meets with elter Hasidim, with older Hasidim. He says one of them even knew his, his great-grandfather, the third Rebbe, Rabbe-- the Tzemach Tzedek. He, he talks about this in a very kind of poetic, his beautiful way that he speaks poetically. And he says to them, "I was compelled to go from Riga to, from, from, from, uh, from, from Rostov to Leningrad. From Leningrad, I had to g- uh," every-- he talks about that he's been compelled, pushed by divine providence to go one place to another, "and now I'm being compelled to go to America, and I have a mission there." And he's gonna do that mission. But he definitely changed his decision, and there's some earlier historical sources where he has indicated this sense of inner yearning for a sense of, of to be in a veera of, of near yeshiva bachurim. He always, I think, felt that the most sacred task that he had from his father was Tamchui Tumim.

25:05 Speaker 2 That's interesting. In your book, you also write about how Tamchui Tumim was his idea. He asked the Fi-- he asked his father as a present to make this yeshiva.

25:13 Speaker 1 I, I, I think that what happened was is that the, the Rebbe Rashab was pondering it, and we don't know if this happened on the day of the wedding or a day before the wedding, but the story is we have, you know, this is from the-- he basically goes to his father, and he says to him, "I, you should open the yeshiva." And this, the Rebbe Rashab's first reaction to him is, "Das ist mis stange shicht." It's like coming, it's not my cup of tea. It's something for, for the, for the mis stange them. And but there, at that moment, becomes this conversation between father and son. And so the Rebbe Rashab says, "Okay, I'm gonna go to the oil." He's gonna go daven in Lubavitch at the, at the, at the graves of the myth-- of the, of the Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Rebbe, and the Samoch Tzedek. He comes back a few hours later. He tells his son, "Okay, we're gonna make a yeshiva, but know what you're getting into. It's not so simple." He agrees to do it. And then we have this fascinating story that happened. The chuppah of the Rebbe, Friediker Rebbe, was on a Friday. Strangely enough, I searched and searched. I couldn't find one historical account that describes to us exactly what happened at the wedding. But we do know what happened on Sunday afternoon because he calls a meeting of the, of the Ziknei Hasidim, the senior Hasidim, and Rabbanim, and some of the philanthropists. He makes

26:22 Speaker 1 a meeting with them on Sunday.

26:24 Speaker 2 This is the Rebbe Rashab.

26:25 Speaker 1 The Rebbe Rashab calls this meeting. It's Sunday afternoon. So the chuppah was on Friday, which was a, a tradition that many did in Europe in those days. And the p- the p- the, this, the, the, the, the celebration's gonna be on Sunday night. Two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, he calls a meeting, and he lays them out this vision of making yeshiva, and the reaction is all in the negative. It's unrealistic. Everybody's becoming secular. We're not gonna find quality students. Many of the great yeshivas, like Bialik, went off to yeshiva because of that, became a... Who goes to the yeshivas in those days? The best and the brightest. You're gonna bring the best and the brightest. It's gonna become an incubator for the Haskalah. They're all against it. And the Rebbe Rashab, the, i-i-- don't forget, this is also the Rebbe Rashab at this point is still, you know, young. He's only thirty-seven years old. He's beginning his period of leadership. But there's a total rejection of this concept, and a few people say, "Let's give it a trial."

27:18 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 UVLA Media, inspired by Basse le Ganey, the first mimer, the Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Basse le Ganey is something that we think about and talk about a lot. And in this production, we use the power of cinematic filmmaking and a live concert by String Quartet to bring the beauty of Basse le Ganey 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. There's another subtext here. Um, I'm sure you came across it while you were researching. Um, people listening to the podcast know that I, I, I have a, I, I have a, an affinity to the Akdama, to Kuntras HaMaayan.

28:33 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

28:33 Speaker 2 There's where, there's a Shima from the Fiddich Rebbe over there, and he's, that the, the few years where they under tremendous pressure to close Tenchu Tmimim.

28:42 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

28:42 Speaker 2 Right? And, and he, and he describes in great detail the, the Askanas that he does on behalf of his father and the shuttling between, um, Lubavitch and the to- and the cities and the Hasidim in the cities and the, you know, the people with money, essentially. The Hasidim with money and stature in the cities and everybody else in the villages who had nothing. And you can tell that the, the Rebbe is given, even the Rebbe Rashab, the Rebbe Rashab comes, the Rebbe Rashab goes to visit these Kvirim and, and meet them. Doesn't call them to him. He goes to them. And you can see that they treat him with some respect, but also quite dismissively. Like when push comes to shove, they don't take orders from him. It's, it's a, it's, you can see that the world is changing in the sense that the, that are, most Jews are being left behind in the Pale of Settlement and in poverty and, and, and, and the old way. And, and Lubavitch deliberately wanted to be left in that kind of space. They didn't want to train, say, uh, train the face-

29:42 Speaker 1 They didn't want a train station. They wanted to be an oasis of sanctity.

29:45 Speaker 2 They, they, they wanted to be away from the moder-modern Russia. Um, and there were some Hasidim who got into the cities and were becoming sophisticated and becoming modern, becoming wealthier, and they didn't take orders from Lubavitch. They, they listened to Lubavitch, and sometimes some of them got involved. I would say there's a subtext there of, of, of, of, of the Rebbe-

30:04 Speaker 1 Listen, in, in-

30:04 Speaker 2 The Rebbe being this kind of all-powerful, um, person who just decides and Lubavitch moves doesn't exist.

30:13 Speaker 1 I think we see that in the early years of the Rebbe's nasius. He wanted people to go on shlichus, and many resisted it.

30:18 Speaker 2 Yeah, but a lot of times that's presented as some kind of chidush. That's not a chidush. That's what I'm saying.

30:22 Speaker 1 No, it's historical fact that we, we've, so to speak, passed over. But there's a, there is a, um-

30:27 Speaker 2 No, I'm saying people say it's a chidush that it was the Rebbe that it happened to. I think, I think it's been happening in Lubavitch for a long time.

30:33 Speaker 1 What, what I find very intriguing, though, is that this sense of loyalty that the f- that the Friediker Rebbe had from Hasidim, they're really, they're really, at least some of them were willing to put their lives on the line, was really remarkable.

30:47 Speaker 2 You're talking about after communism.

30:49 Speaker 1 After communism.

30:49 Speaker 2 I think there's the, I think there's a difference there. I think after communism, and we can talk about it, I think after communism, two things happened. I think first of all, in general, in crisis, people band together The people that band together really band together because they're under crisis. There's, there's no, there's no time anymore for, for, for the ga- for gamesmanship of like, "Eh, it's important, it's not important, whatever. Like, we'll push it off." It's-- Everything's very, very real and very, very serious. Uh, you see that, you see it, you know, God forbid, when there's a natural disaster, people band together in a way that is unthinkable. I think also, um, the Soviet, the, the communism basically selected for the most devout Hasidim, and everybody else basically disappeared.

31:34 Speaker 1 They fell away from the wayside.

31:35 Speaker 2 Yeah.

31:36 Speaker 1 Well, a lot of time maybe their children fell away from the wayside, but they still re- re- remained loyal and strong.

31:41 Speaker 2 Right. But, but it's the same thing, right? So I, I, I wonder if you noticed that-

31:45 Speaker 1 But there was something else also which comes out from the, the, the, the c- the reports about that meeting, which were published, actually written by a guy called Rosenblum and became the historian of Tomchei Tmimim.

31:56 Speaker 2 So you, you-- we're going back now to the meeting of Tomchei Tmimim.

31:58 Speaker 1 Yeah. It, um, it is that there is a sense of, there f- there's a sense of, of Russia, of like almost despair it seems. Number one, we have tremendous oppression from the czarist rule from Nicholas II. We're living in the, in the Pale of Settlement, et cetera, et cetera. Number two, traditional Judaism in-

32:17 Speaker 2 Can you, can you describe a little bit the, the, the craziness of the czars from all-

32:21 Speaker 1 Well, the la-- It depends on the czar, but the-

32:23 Speaker 2 Almost all of them. Almost all of them

32:23 Speaker 1 ... I'm not an expert in Russian history. But imagine if suddenly every Jew in America is told he's gotta move to Kansas, and you could only live in an area, let's say goes, that's gonna go from Kansas to, to Indianapolis. You could only become a farmer, and you can't go to Washington, DC, and New York unless you get permission to go. You can't attend college and university. You, you are forced economically to be re-- There's pogroms in cities which are ex-- which are in- ignited to a degree and supported by the government. It's a tremendous environment of anti-Semitism, and just maybe thirty, forty years old, earlier, the cantonic system had been dispir- ended, which would put children in the army for twenty-five years. You have no political power. You really have no agency to do anything about it. Jew- Jews are living, and so, uh, many people are trying to leave, and at the same time, you have other forces of transformation. You have the Jews who want... They say, "Listen, if we become good Russians and socialists, et cetera, et cetera, w- with the, the, is the force of the haskala. Let's get-- We go through a process of enlightenment." Even the word itself, enlightenment, is we're gonna become better and stronger and more intellectual. That's gonna be the key for our survival. Then comes the Zionists who say, "No, we have to have sovereignty in the, in Eretz Israel." Then comes the, the c- everybody has a different kind of solution. The situation

33:37 Speaker 1 is desperate, so those traditional Jews are under siege. And part of the dilemma of the time was, which I think the Rabbi Rashab started Tomchei Tmimim, was a crisis of leadership. Because the Rabbonim themselves, they're doing their best, but he wanted to cre- to create a different kind of leader who was emboldened. That the, that, that because the value, i- because the value system at the time was there was the great yeshivas, and there was phenomenal scholarship in those yeshivas. We can't ignore them. I mean, starting with Volozhin, which o- was closed, but many of the other great yeshivas in Europe, they were... And the Rabbi Rashab said at that meeting that they, there are great yeshivas in Europe. That's not our point. He wants to create a different kind of person that is a product of a veida and pimiyus where they have to internalize values, which becomes transformational. And so Tomchei Tmimim is not only a place to produce Hasidim, it's to produce another generation of leadership for Russian Jewry. And that's really the point of the famous sicha of Simchas Torah three years after the establishment of Tomchei Tmimim, where the Fri- uh, Rabbi Rashab articulates this idea about creating a, a new generation of leaders. So you have a very im- demoralized population, which no civil rights, economic challenge. They can't really advance. A lot of them, some of them ran away to America. The more traditional, the more observant are scared to go to America because they're afraid they're gonna

34:55 Speaker 1 lose their kids. They're gonna become less observant. All of these factors together, and when the Rabbi Rashab proposes to the group, "Let's make a yeshiva. It'll be transformational," they're defeatist because they don't have that much hope.

35:06 Speaker 2 Right. They're defeatist. But the yeshiva ends up being, like you just described, ends up being the incubator for the future leaders of, of, um, of Yid- or Judaism in Russia, and, and a lot of the Hasidim who, who were d-- who were ready to go, and many of them did go all the w- to the very end for the, for the work of the Friediker Rebbe, were products of this yeshiva.

35:30 Speaker 1 They are not, and they become the symbols and role models for everybody else because... And I would argue more that that yeshiva and the, the, and the concept of that yeshiva is also what molded, even till today, the Jewish leadership of the world. Chabad today is, you know, we're past that stage when I, when a, when a shlichas, they looked at us like we dropped out of a UFO or we're like cute, quaint Fiddler on the Roof. "Okay, you, we watched the mov- we watched an, a show on Broadway, so now we're gonna bring the real life Hasid to your local conservative temple to take a look at it." Now, down the block from a conservative temple is a much bigger Chabad center or the same size, and half the people from the conservative temple go there part-time, and, and Chabad is booming in America. I don't know if they would-- You saw the study that just came out last week from the Jewish Federations in North America that the, the greatest element of people who are re-engaging in, in, in, in Judaism in this country is through Chabad. It's just a, a, an astonishing survey. So, so what's happened is it didn't just create a gener-- And this is one of the big arguments of the book. What the Rabbi Rashab did and what the Friediker, uh, did with the establishment of Tomchei Tmimim, and what the Friediker Rebbe did with standing up to communism was not just transformational for, for what, for Jewry

36:42 Speaker 1 in Russia, but it sets the stage for what happens in the rest of world Jewry in the ne- ne- and the rest of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century.

36:50 Speaker 2 Yeah. So I, I wanna, I wanna take a step back for a moment, something that we just mentioned earlier, and I think it'll tie back to, to, to, to both, um, to both the book and also the writing of the book, how you went about it. The, the idea of leadership, um, in a vulnerable, in a vulnerable time and a vulnerable place. You know, we, we've discussed, we've discussed the, the Friediker Rebbe's health at the time, um, when he was in Poland, and his desire to, to retreat, in a sense, back to his own community. Uh, we just discussed the, the pressures of even within their own community, even the Rebbe Rashab, um, who very often is seen as having, in a sense, more stature or more grandeur than the Friediker Rebbe because of his position, um, even-

37:40 Speaker 1 I think that stature grew with time.

37:42 Speaker 2 Yes, possibly. But he's, to the very end, uh, th-this-- even years later, which is when the Reshimah and, and, and, uh, and, um, and, and Kochos Hameini is printed. Okay, it's only about five years later. You still see the resistance. Possibly at the end, it, it recedes. Uh, it may be-

37:59 Speaker 1 Well, the Friedi- the Rebbe Rashab is fighting battles against the Haskalah, the Enlightenment-

38:02 Speaker 2 Right. But it's-

38:03 Speaker 1 Against many other forces of the time

38:04 Speaker 2 But his own community as well. That, that's, that's the point. It-

38:07 Speaker 1 Well, his community's being drawn by the same forces.

38:09 Speaker 2 Precisely.

38:10 Speaker 1 Anti-Semitism, uh, the lack of economic stability, the lack of opportunity to advance in society.

38:15 Speaker 2 Hundred-

38:16 Speaker 1 The, the, the draw of s- of s... All of these factors are very real factors.

38:20 Speaker 2 Hundred percent, but that-- if we, if we, if we take out the Rebbe Chasid, um, model for a moment, and we see it more as like a, a leader of a organization or a company, a leader who is, who's having a hard time convincing the people that work for him to go along with a bold idea-

38:38 Speaker 1 Yeah, but the interesting thing is that what we s- what-- according to historical accounts, that skepticism to Tomchei Temimim evaporated a year later. Because what the Rebbe Rashab does, he selects the Bachurim, he sends them off to a town 150 miles away, Zibín, I think it's called.

38:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

38:55 Speaker 1 And they're isolated. And the following Tishrei, for the next high holiday season, they turn up at Chaba- in, in Lubavitch. And when the Chasidim, who had been there the year before for the wed- for the wed-- you know, they'd been there the year before. They come, and they see the transformation, the whole skepticism is gone.

39:11 Speaker 2 Okay, but then five years later, five years later, there's-

39:13 Speaker 1 Those are outside forces.

39:15 Speaker 2 No, no, five years later, Lubavitch are skeptical about helping the Rebbe Rashab fight on behalf of the poor Jews who are, who, who they see as, as, as, as, as Schlemazels. My, my point is, my, my-- maybe I'm, maybe I'm pointing too negative a picture, but just from the, just from the, the story that we're talking about here, the Rebbe comes with an idea. Imagine it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to the modern Lubavitch mind.

39:38 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

39:38 Speaker 2 The Rebbe calls a meeting in the Sheva Brachos of his, of his, of his son. This is a time when whatever the Rebbe says, you, you wanna, you wanna do it.

39:46 Speaker 1 And there's skepticism.

39:47 Speaker 2 And, and there's skepticism. The fact that they get won over a year later when they see results, that doesn't take a Chasid, even if it's-

39:52 Speaker 1 Uh, I, I understand that.

39:53 Speaker 2 Uh, so, so my point is that the, the Rebbe Rashab and the Friediker Rebbe are dealing with tremendous vulnerability. And, and the Friediker Rebbe also, if you just look at his writings, because he's the most written Rebbe, he's, he writes the most, and he's the most expressive, it's, it's tremendously vulnerable, the things that-

40:14 Speaker 1 Well, well, the most interesting thing about the Friediker Rebbe is he is Megaleh Tafach. He really reveals through his writings and through his diaries and Reshimahs, and we don't have all of them by a long shot.

40:26 Speaker 2 Where are they?

40:27 Speaker 1 What?

40:27 Speaker 2 Where are they?

40:28 Speaker 1 I, I think s- I think some of them have been lost to history. Um-

40:32 Speaker 2 And the others?

40:33 Speaker 1 Others, I think, uh, like for instance-

40:35 Speaker 2 Bureaucracy

40:35 Speaker 1 ... the, the r- I think, I know the Russian National Library has a lot of letters that the Friediker Rebbe wrote that have not been published. There's just an interesting article that just came out recently from, uh, the curator of the Russian National Library who's been working on these. But with what we have is a tremendous sense of, not to everybody, but the, the Friediker Rebbe reveals to us his inner thoughts, his inner lives, his inner feelings, and he's very open with Chasidim. Like, he writes about how he felt when he, when he discovered that Rebbe Rashab had left a, a, a, a document saying he should fol-- you know, succeed him. You know, he says, uh, he went through a period of sense of anguish. That-- this is what he writes. It's printed in Igros Kodesh. It's there. You don't gotta go far, far to find it. The problem is a lot of Lubavitchers have read a letter here, a letter there, and one Shabbos afternoon, they f- they read a third letter that was very interesting, but they fell asleep in the middle, and they forgot about the whole piece. But, but what I attempted to do was to take all of these different sources and sew it together in a narrative, which-- and we see this sense of inner-- the, the, the Rebbe, the, the Friediker Rebbe and the Rebbe are dramatically different. The-- we have no sense of the Rebbe's... He doesn't ever really, he's-- he never really tells you his

41:47 Speaker 1 inner feelings about these things. We-- very rarely do we see anything. And the Friediker Rebbe, it's the opposite. He's always sharing t- with us what he feels, and he shares it with his Chasidim.

41:57 Speaker 2 The Friediker Rebbe and the Rebbe Rashab, the Friediker Rebbe a lot of times writes about the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab, um, you know, whe-when, when the, when the, when his older brother, the Razah, um, both, uh, you know, decided he's not gonna become a Re- not be a Rebbe, and also took the Yerusha, the money, and spent it in a way that was not according to the Tzava of their Maharan. The Friediker Rebbe writes about seeing his father crying.

42:21 Speaker 1 Yes, he does. He does write-

42:22 Speaker 2 And, and, and the, you know, the Rashab couldn't even-

42:24 Speaker 1 But that's all part of him always sharing what's going on in his life.

42:28 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes. Yes. No, a hundred percent. And the Rashab, but it's, he's talking about his father, the Rashab, who can't even influence his brother, his own brother-

42:37 Speaker 1 Yeah

42:37 Speaker 2 ... in the way that he wants. And, and he's heartbroken by it. The reason I'm try-- I'm not trying to, to, to prove this point. W-what, to me, to, what I'm trying to set up is, is how, how do you, how do you then construct a narrative about leadership? How do you see leadership in, in people, and especially leadership of a Rebbe? Because that's where things start getting complicated. Very often, you talk about hagiographies. Very often, the hagiography about Rebbe starts not only from the place of the s- the person, the author not being able to see past a certain line. It's fundamentally even in according to the concept of a Rebbe is not supposed to tolerate any vulnerability.

43:18 Speaker 1 I think that leadership is when you transcend those challenges. And I think what the Friediker Rebbe does so remarkably in his life is that, and this is, uh, to me, of all the things I learned in this whole experience of spending the last four years or so immersed every single day, two, three hours into trying to understand the Friediker Rebbe to the best of my ability. I prob-- I'm sure I've failed in some areas. When the book comes out, there's gonna be some, and criticism and, and much of it may be correct, is-

43:46 Speaker 2 Halivai. Hal- halivai

43:49 Speaker 1 I joked around with a friend of mine who's a prominent rav last week. If you could put out a cherem, that's really gonna help sales. But-

43:53 Speaker 2 It'll be a very good thing if people debate you.

43:56 Speaker 1 It, it's good. It's healthy.

43:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

43:57 Speaker 1 Because be-- and, and, um, but the point is that you see him in one tot- in one situation after another which is totally different, where the ne- what- what's needed for leadership is very different. And each time, because the American experience is totally different than the European experience, and the European experience is different than the Russian communist experience, and the Russian communist experience is different than the Tsarist experience. So each one of these different periods of time demands a whole different quality of leadership. And much, many of us go through life, and when we, we, y- you're suddenly plopped from one place to another. You take a Jew from Europe, and you put him into America, and you have many other g- great rabbinical scholars who came to America, let's say, in the post-war, post-World War era, and they just recreated a little bit of what they had in Europe, but they never really learned to adapt to America.

44:49 Speaker 2 Right.

44:49 Speaker 1 Or, and so here in every single case, the Friediker Rebbe, okay, is-- meets that challenge and creates a new kind of modality of leadership to meet the challenge. What's going on in Western Europe, he's gotta, he comes to Western Europe. He has very few Hasidim. The problems, it's not that they're worrying about repression. They're worried about freedom and opportunity. In nine-- before World War I, seventy-five percent of Jews in Poland were Shomer Shabbos. By the time World War II rolls around, it's only fifty percent. There's a tremendous, with the opportunity-

45:18 Speaker 2 Assimilation, yeah

45:19 Speaker 1 ... assimilation is beginning its process. When he comes to America, you know, orthodoxy's on the defense. There's a few people holding on for dear life. Uh, I quote a very interesting speech from Moshe Soloveitchik in 1940 to the graduating students of Yeshiva University. He tells them, "Hold on to whatever you got. Let's hold on to the last people we have."

45:38 Speaker 2 No.

45:38 Speaker 1 And the Friediker Rebbe comes in an offensive mode. He, he, he has a whole different agenda. That ability to adapt and to change your leadership, and the Rebbe speaks about the three different periods of leadership of the Friediker Rebbe as he was Rebbe, I think is one of the most remarkable qualities of all.

45:54 Speaker 2 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuval Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening ten years ago, Yuval 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 Bonial, Torah Umesorah, and Atzlathan, 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@yuvalmedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalmedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the podcast. Right. Yes. Yes. But, but the, w- what, how do, how... What does that, what does that mean, uh, for the-- what does that mean in terms of being a Rebbe?

46:58 Speaker 1 I think what it means is that-

46:59 Speaker 2 Isn't, isn't a Rebbe the way the Lubavitcher sees it, all-knowing, um, above it all, above the fray, unchanging? Like, the con- the one constant-

47:09 Speaker 1 I think, I think, I think the values are all-knowing. I think the values are unchanging. But you have to meet the challenges which are, which are different. And also, for instance, we compare it constantly to the Rebbe's period of leadership. He's in the United States. He's in a stable economic situation, a stable political situation. He, he's not, he doesn't have to move anywhere. And one of the most interesting things to me was I always felt til kimlt almos was this, I could turn up at seven seventy any Tuesday at three thirty, and there was Mincha, and I could see the Rebbe. There was this constantness. The Rebbe didn't travel anywhere.

47:40 Speaker 2 Right.

47:40 Speaker 1 He didn't go anywhere. He was always there.

47:42 Speaker 2 Which is unprecedented, I think, in Lubavitch history.

47:45 Speaker 1 It was unprecedented in Lubavitch history. I, I can't speak to what happened in the times of the Tzemach Tzedek, the Marash, et cetera, et cetera, who weren't around.

47:51 Speaker 2 I think they, they all traveled.

47:53 Speaker 1 To a degree.

47:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:55 Speaker 1 The Re- the Re- the Rebbe Rashab had tremendous health challenges also for many years. But here, this is this con-- there was this constantness that I knew that on a Monday or a Tu- or on a Thursday morning, you know, I would turn up to the minyan, and if Meir Harlich looked at me the right way, I'm a Levi, I might get an aliyah. Uh, this is before they started having all the bar mitzvahs every week. But especially if you go back, like, into the lameds, into the seventies and eighties, it would, it was, the, you could, you turned up on a Monday morning, if you're lucky, you can get an aliyah. Why? Because the Rebbe's coming out. From, for Krisis Heiterem, very rarely he wouldn't come out. So we had a constantness of leadership, but it also was a very different political environment and a very different economic environment. And in, and, and the Rebbe was, didn't ha-- he had a whole different world to deal with. He had to heal a generation that came out of the Holocaust. He had to re-envision, he had to, you know, str- transformate, transform Judaism. He had to build up Hasidim to have the courage and conviction to become a shluchim, to change the Jewish world. He had a whole, he had a different things to, he had different things. But that constantness is, was something which I felt all the time because I knew I could always come for a Shabbos HaGadol, and there's Farbrengen. And

49:02 Speaker 1 in later years, there was always dollars on Sundays.

49:03 Speaker 2 But that's precisely what I'm going at over here. Um, that's precisely what I'm trying to drill at because that we have, because we grew up, the people listening to this and people with even, um, even yourself, I'm even younger than you, so I'm for sure deeper into the narrative of Dershvi. But even you, that's the Rebbe that you grew up with.

49:23 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

49:23 Speaker 2 You didn't grow up with the Friediker Rebbe, right? And the narrative of the Rebbe is all-conquering, right? The Rebbe's always, like you said, just a master of, of time. Like, like, he's always on time, he's always there, n- unchanging, uh, just, just, just, just, just, just can't, just, just-

49:41 Speaker 1 But each Rebbe was a leader in his generation for his challenges and time.

49:45 Speaker 2 No, but, but I don't believe that that narrative's correct is my point. I don't believe that narrative's correct in the sense that, I'm not saying that what you said is inaccurate. It's very accurate. It's, it's indisputable. But the idea that the Rebbe, the, the, the Rebbe, you s- the Rebbe didn't reveal himself like the Friediker Rebbe, that's, that's, that's, that's of course. No, no Rebbe revealed himself the way the Friediker Rebbe did. And that itself is, is something worth account, you know, investigation, why the Friediker Rebbe was so open. Um, but the f-- and, and maybe we get to that in a moment, what you think about that. But the Rebbe spoke at Farbrengens and would cry very often. The first Bas Sheli Gani, the Rebbe was, was, was, was crying in a way that's uncomfortable to listen to.

50:22 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

50:23 Speaker 2 You know, th- there were moments where the Rebbe did open up or was forced to open. I don't know what was going on there. I don't know he was trying to make a point. It was just, it just came out. The-- my point is that the Rebbehim, and especially you see with the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe Rashab, because another very unique thing of the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe Rashab was they were the, I think, the only Rebbehim in Lubavitch where the next Rebbe was basically being, uh, trained directly specifically. The other Rebbehim had multiple sons. It was always, there was more an open question who the next Rebbe was gonna be. Whereas the Rebbe Rashab, the heir was, there was an heir apparent, and that was a Frierdiker Rebbe, and so there's a lot of, and the Frierdiker spoke about it and wrote about it, and so you see a lot about the inner-

51:05 Speaker 1 Well, he left, he left a, he left a, a document when he wrote his savah.

51:10 Speaker 2 Right.

51:12 Speaker 1 I, I, uh, and I think this is all leads into one of the most remarkable stories in the whole book, which is to me, uh, it's just an astonishing story about the hastalkas of the Rebbe Rashab and what leads up to it the two, three weeks before. But he, he wrote a, he wrote a document which he put on top of it savah. He put in, in a drawer-

51:29 Speaker 2 Right

51:29 Speaker 1 ... saying he wants his son to accept that leadership. And he, you know, he goes from good health in a period of two, three weeks. He goes from good health to, to, to passing away, and in that period of time, I don't know, i- it's a very intriguing story because there's three pieces to it. There's, there's what the f-- there's there is a absolute Nevuah, a sense of prophecy that the Frierdiker, the Rebbe Rashab charges his son. He gives him a sense of mission, which happens a few days before Purim in 1920. There's what happens on Purim in 1920. There's what's happening the week afterwards, and if you look at these events, they're just a remarkable series of events which lead up to the hastalkas of the, of the, of the passing of the Rebbe Rashab in Beit Nissan in 1920, uh, you know, just two weeks before Pesach. So this, this period of time, this two, three-week period I think is really very, very remarkable, and what he does is the week after Purim, he locks himself in his room. And again, we have accounts of this. What, what, what are the... We have no other accounts historically of, uh, of, of the intimacy, what happened around the hastalkas of a Rebbe except the Rebbe Rashab in that sense. We have accounts. We have a shchut of the Rebbe. We have from Z- from, from Zalman Hablund. They were all there. They were in Beit HaRab. They were intimate in the, in, in, in

52:50 Speaker 1 the Rebbe's household. They saw exactly what's going on. He closes himself into a room for a week, and he brings in seforim, and every time the previous Rebbe, the Frierdiker Rebbe comes in to see his father, he covers over the papers, and only later discussed that he rewrote his will, and he also left a document appointing his son. And then he gets typhus, and a week later is the hastalkas. So he's like, Zalman Hablund writes afterwards, he says, "I couldn't believe that, that, that he prepared ev-everything." He says, "We prepared it." And the Frierdiker Rebbe says afterwards-

53:18 Speaker 2 But he was training him his whole life.

53:19 Speaker 1 He was training him, but there, this, there's no question there was a mentoring process and a training process is known. And I think the same thing happened between the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe. If you look at the '30s, who's spending the time every time the Frierdiker Rebbe is away for medical care, who's taking care of him is the Rebbe. If you, we do- we document that he spent about out of, out of nine years, about twenty-two, twenty-four, about twenty-two months in medical care. Who's with him all that time is the Rebbe. And there's a process of mentoring. When you read the letters between the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe, there are letters, there's a deep communication going on, and then you read the Rashimas, the, the, the Rebbe's accounts that were published of his, of all, of what he hears from, from in that period of the '30s in particular. You see this process of mentorship. So the Rebbe Rashab does it with his, with his son. The Frierdiker Rebbe does it with the Rebbe. But, but this, but this, um, this, there, there's this remarkable story that it's tes-- uh, just a week, couple days before Purim, the Rebbe Rashab calls in his son, and he c- he describes this moment. He writes about it in his diary, and he says whenever he gets to a moment where he's fighting the communists, and he doesn't, and he gets, he realizes a moment of hardship, he sa- he, he ponders this event that happened

54:33 Speaker 1 with him. And he calls him in, and he tells him a series of things. He says, "Number one," he says, "dark clouds are covering over Russia right now. We're going into a very dark period." Communism has finally basically become, in 1920, it finally sol- it came all powerful. In other words, they got rid of the, there was a revolution between the Reds and the Whites and this and that, but they had secured their control of the country.

54:54 Speaker 2 The, the Bolsheviks-

54:54 Speaker 1 The Bolsheviks now are in control of the country.

54:57 Speaker 2 Right.

54:57 Speaker 1 He says it's a period of dark clouds. He says, tells him like this, that eventually the Soviet Union will disintegrate. It'll take at least twenty-two years. He doesn't tell him how long it will take, but at least twenty-two years. But the country will disintegrate, and he tells him that we see that with the Czar, that he, he, he was, he fought Torah, and because he fought Torah, fought Yiddishkeit, the country had to disintegrate, and now this is gonna happen to the communists. It's gonna take at least twenty-two years. Then he tells him that the Yevsektsia, the Jewish communists that are leading the oppression of religious Jews, will eventually be c- shut down, and we see in 1930, Stalin shuts it down, and their people will be punished, and we see that Semen Dimanshtein, who's the leader of the Yevsektsia, a, a woman called Esther Frumkin, all of the, the top tier of leaders are either killed, exiled, et cetera, et cetera. That all happens in the '30s. That's the second thing he tells him. Then he tells him the fate of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. He tells him Lenin Ɣa hobn a meshune, a meshunedik mis. He's gonna die a strange death. This is 1920. 1922, Lenin comes down with strokes and heart attacks. If you see a picture of Lenin in his last days, it's definitely what we would call in Yiddish a meshunedik mis, a strange death. Then he tells him that Trotsky, that the vertreibung und verpaterin, they're going to exile him

56:18 Speaker 1 and they're going to kill him. What happens to Trotsky? He's exiled nineteen twenty-seven. He's tried ex officio. You know, he's not in the country in nineteen thirty-seven. He's by then, he goes to Mexico. It's a whole story. And Stalin sends an agent, has him killed. Then he tells him Stalin is basically going to navigate power. He's going to retain control. And he tells him this line at the end, that the Anton epauletin, he's going to dress himself in military epaulets. Now, Sebag, who's the biographer of Stalin, says that at the end of, you know, the war in World War II, he started dressing himself as a marshal of the Soviet Union. When he comes to meet Roosevelt at the end of the war, and he comes to see Truman after the war, he comes as a field marshal of the Soviet army. He wants to show authority and power. So he tells him what's going to happen to Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. And then he, uh, uh, and then he turns to him and he says to him, "Yes, if Yitzhak, du wirst afshaben, you're going to have to put your life on the line." At this point, the Friediker Rebbe is like shocked. The whole experience is he talks about he walks in the room, the candles are burning, his father is learning a book of Kabbalah. It's a whole eerie experience, and he didn't expect it. He didn't know this was going to be this transformational moment in his life. And he tells

57:34 Speaker 1 him, "You're going to have to put your life on the line to keep Yiddishkind alive in this situation." This, this, darf mir haben, mesires nefesh poil. And then, then comes Purim, famous prabregen. Then comes he spends a week in his room writing his will. Then he gets typhus. And now the Friediker Rebbe is being pushed into the whole situation. It's, it's, it's a s- He tells him exactly what's going to happen to Lenin, Trotsky, and, and Stalin. It's an amazing story.

57:59 Speaker 2 Right. But that's a more typical Abarbich story.

58:01 Speaker 1 That is a typical Abarbich story, but many Abarbich-

58:03 Speaker 2 A ruach, a ruach hakodesh.

58:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. It's a ruach hakodesh story. And interestingly enough is that twenty-two years later, we see a change in the a- in the policy of the Soviet government vis-à-vis religion. Because in nineteen forty-two, it allowed the Russian Orthodox Church to begin to function again. We also see the opening of the Yeshiva in Samarkand, which opened up in a little bit more open way. There's a relaxation of the oppression of religion after twenty-two years. The country doesn't fall apart exactly. And he doesn't tell them it's going to be twenty-two years. He, he says it could be longer. Right. It is a typical Abarbich story.

58:36 Speaker 2 But how do you reconcile, how do you reconcile ruach hakodesh with vulnerability? That's, that's what I'm trying to get at. How do you reconcile the, the Rebbe that stands above and has access to above w-with, with the Rebbe that, that, that, that needs to, uh, basically beg government for, for, for, for intervention?

58:56 Speaker 1 I don't, I don't. Listen-

58:57 Speaker 2 And no, because this is, this is important. I'm not asking for even specifically for theological questions, but when you write a book, how do you navigate that?

59:04 Speaker 1 It, it's, it's, it's a tough question. I don't know the answer. I do know there's a very interesting statement from the Rebbe, Rebbe Rashab's brother, the Razah, where he tells a relative of his from Eretz Yisrael. I think his, his name was Chaim Schneerson. He's talking, he says, "I can get..." He's talking about why he didn't want to become Rebbe. And he says, other than the fact that he says, "My father, my brother's a ruchniusdiker person," and et cetera, et cetera. He says, "I can give good advice, and I might be right, but my brother has ruach hakodesh like his father, like our father did, and I don't have that ruach hakodesh." It's a very interesting piece of historical caveat. So the Razah is saying the reason he's g- he has to be Rebbe is because he has ruach hakodesh, I don't.

59:52 Speaker 2 The Rashag said a similar thing about the, about the Ramash at the time, right?

59:55 Speaker 1 Yeah.

59:55 Speaker 2 That they, that, that, that if the Rebbe c- if the Rebbe can speak to the Friediker Rebbe at the oil, then I can't do that.

1:00:00 Speaker 1 Right. So there's certain th- So, but I don't know. I'm not an expert on ruach hakodesh, and I don't know if ruach hakodesh is for everything and every time, every moment. But at the same time, um, I c- I don't know the answer to that question. My job was to, to document the story as I found it with truthfulness and honesty to the best of my ability, and to take all these different pieces we have and try to understand, because I think if you want to understand Judaism today in the world, in Lubavitch in particular, but also what j- what's happening in world Jewry, because the whole Jewish world is looking at us. And, um, and they're, they're all wondering for themselves, "Why have we come out?" Suddenly, they do a study, and, and thirty-eight percent of American Jews, at least occasionally, are involved with Chabad, who in the Reform movement, and sixteen percent of American Jews are involved on a regular basis, and the Reform movement only has membership of fourteen percent of American Jews. In other words, we're larger than they are today. I'm not saying that these people are car- you know, putting on tefillin every day and learning Chitas, but their, their connection with Yiddishkeit is coming through us, and we're pushing them toward tradition and pushing them toward Yiddishkeit. So what brought us to this point? And I think that if we understand the story of the Friediker Rebbe, and we understand his mesires nefesh in Russia, and what he

1:01:26 Speaker 1 did in Europe, and what he did here in America, we also understand who we are as Chassidim today, and we also understand how the fabric of j- how Jewish life has changed in the world, because I compare it like this. The Friediker Rebbe, when you come to build a building, first you have to build a foundation, then you build a frame. The Friediker Rebbe built a foundation, and the Rebbe built a frame. So together, one building on top of another, and, and then in taking, in, in a certain way, you know, trusting his Chassidim to take, carry on that responsibility, the Rebbe, which is one of the most remarkable things of all, that sense of trust he has in his own people, and the sense that Chassidim today, their ultimate question is, they ask themselves a question every day if they're honest, "What does the Rebbe want me to do?" Now, sometimes people are saying that because they want to tell you what they want you to do, and they want to tell you the Rebbe wants you to do what they want to do. But in many, when somebody's honest Is asking that question, and, and, and, and their lives are defined by that. And what I find more interesting is this next generation. Okay, I had interactions with the Rebbe. I had Yechidas with the Rebbe. I had times with the Rebbe, uh, told me to do certain things that changed my life. There was times the Rebbe was upset with me for

1:02:38 Speaker 1 certain things I did. You know, I had a s- whole series of interactions through my life on a personal level with the Rebbe, so that, so to speak, that's seared into my consciousness. I look at my grandchildren, Lubavitch kids being brought up, some of them on shlichus, some of them not on shlichus, and they have that sense of passion to be a Hasid, and they never met the Rebbe. And that to me is one of the most astonishing things of all.

1:03:02 Speaker 2 Yeah. But, uh, I-

1:03:05 Speaker 1 I can't reconcile the dilemma.

1:03:07 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. No, you know-

1:03:10 Speaker 1 That's gonna take a lot of mashka and a very late night

1:03:12 Speaker 2 ... no, no, but I'll t- look, I'll, I'll t- I'll tell you what why, why, why it's important to me. Because the Lubavitch narrative today, which you just spelled out, that today is, you know, the, the, the, the the sense of certainty that Lubavitchers feel is the, the bedrock of their identity, that they have the answers. They know m- the... meaning the, you said you had, they have to be honest and they have to, they have to make sure that they're doing the right thing, but that fundamentally they have all the answers, and they have it all figured out. To me, what's strange about it is that you look at the Friediker Rebbe, for example, and I believe even the Rebbe, but you look at the Friediker Rebbe for sure, and he doesn't speak that way.

1:03:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, but the Rebbe had battles he fought that he didn't win. He didn't win the battle over Mia Hud in Israel.

1:04:01 Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying. I'm saying even the Rebbe didn't have this, but the Friediker Rebbe for sure is open about the, the idea of conviction, where you go ahead with something even when you're not sure about things, and the, the i- the, the identity, the iden- the identity that's forged in sacrifice for an ideal where you don't know what the end is going to be, that is a very different kind of identity than the modern Lubavitch identity. And, and, and that's why, that's why I'm pushing on it.

1:04:29 Speaker 1 I think, I think in many ways what the Friediker Rebbe saw himself is carrying on the mission entrusted him by his father.

1:04:35 Speaker 2 Yeah, but who, who carried on his father's mission?

1:04:37 Speaker 1 Right.

1:04:37 Speaker 2 I was, I was saying earlier-

1:04:38 Speaker 1 And, and you know, there's an old saying that the, the, the, by Hasidim that the Rebbe had one, the Friediker Rebbe had one Hasid, it was the Rebbe. And in many ways, I think that's what the Rebbe did. He, if you look at the motif of the Rebbe, he did the first mayim achas u'gani, it's all based on a mayim of the Friediker Rebbe.

1:04:52 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:04:52 Speaker 1 And all through the years, you know, if somebody would come to him, uh, even something like if a guy was an a- an administrator in a school, a sta- that he was appointed by the Friediker Rebbe, the Rebbe said, "I have no right to take that g- I can't take that guy out." Why? Because the Friediker, that's a place I don't touch. I'm not gonna go any f- I'm not gonna, the, the f- my father-in-law's authority, I'm not going to challenge in any way, shape, or form. So it, it's, uh, I think also it's an interesting question.

1:05:20 Speaker 2 But all the-

1:05:21 Speaker 1 I think that the Friediker Rebbe had the core of what we're, what we're seeing is he is revealing to us the struggle that he had to get to his goals. Mashakein, his goals and foundation were never changed.

1:05:35 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:05:35 Speaker 1 And if we go with that same hanhaga, going to the same sense of goals and purposes, then we have that s- that's still, that's solid baseline. But he reveals to us that his, his challenges that he had which were, which were m- much different than the Rebbe's, very, very different, and again, in different kinds of political environments and the economic environments and, and the societal environments, and so he had to change to each one of them. But still, he's pursuing that goal.

1:06:04 Speaker 2 As we approach the two-year mark of this podcast, Homsik 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@yuvlamedia.com. That's bentzi@yuvlamedia, Y-U-V-L-A media.com. Did it at all surprise you when you're reading or researching the book, the, the level of, of, um, openness or uncertainty or just self-doubt?

1:06:52 Speaker 1 I didn't feel-

1:06:52 Speaker 2 If you even say, if you even say self-doubt-

1:06:54 Speaker 1 I didn't feel, I didn't feel the self-doubt. What I felt was this, the revelation of the struggle to get to his goals.

1:07:00 Speaker 2 Wait, you, you didn't perceive any self-doubt?

1:07:02 Speaker 1 I, I-

1:07:02 Speaker 2 That he d- that he wasn't living up to, to, to the mandate that he had been given?

1:07:07 Speaker 1 I think he felt that he's doing his best to live up to that mandate. We all have a sense that we need to achieve more, and the Rebbe would always push this idea of Mishnas Omai, what's an assignment, for someone who has 100, wants 200. I think he was always on the focus of the mission that was entrusted to him, and what we- we're seeing is the struggles that he had with that mission, which were very different. Some of them were health struggles also, which the Rebbe never really had. He had s- you know, some issues along the way, a heart attack, et cetera, but he didn't have, he wasn't with a disease that he, that was incurable and, and, and limited him into a wheelchair, at least later on.

1:07:44 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:07:44 Speaker 1 And, and also inhibited his speech, which is his ability to communicate.

1:07:48 Speaker 2 Right.

1:07:48 Speaker 1 I mean, during the 1940s when Hasidim would go into Yechidas, um, they would, one of the secretaries, except for maybe a few people that knew and understood the Friediker Rebbe well, they would go in, Rabbi Simpson, this one, that one, they would go in with to understand. Now we have one audio tape of the Friediker Rebbe. I've listened to it many times. I can discern the words. I can understand what he's saying. But unless you're really attuned to it, you have a struggle understanding it.

1:08:10 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:11 Speaker 1 But that's the whole thing. Even though he had a struggle in articulating the words because of the dis- because of the sicknesses, he's still moving a- he's still articulating those same ideas.

1:08:22 Speaker 2 Do you think that's why the Hasidim were so close to him?

1:08:26 Speaker 1 I don't know. I, it's, it's one of the things... See, one of the things that was missing in this book was I was unable-- The only people I interviewed who met the Friediker Rebbe were people who had juvenile experiences. So, you know, like, you speak to somebody who was a, uh, uh, 18-year-old kid or a 12-year-old kid or 14-year-old.

1:08:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:08:45 Speaker 1 It wasn't to somebody who was a mature adult, you know. It, it would've been wonderful to go back in time-

1:08:52 Speaker 2 Uh, sure

1:08:52 Speaker 1 ... and to sit down with Chassidim who, you know, were adults, and they had many interactions with the Friediker Rebbe a- ask them what drove that relationship. I can't speak to that because I didn't have it. There was also other people in the book I've liked. I discovered what happened to Nachman Zisel Lulov, which was interesting to itself.

1:09:11 Speaker 2 I know, but I'm asking you as, as someone who's researched it, what do you, what do you, what's your, what's your theory?

1:09:16 Speaker 1 I d- I, I am a little... I don't know for sure. There was the sense of loyalty, especially among the, the people who came out of Tomchei Tmimim is just unbelievable. First, I think that z- a lot of these people who were young men in Tomchei Tmimim and become Chassidim after the passing of the Ribnizher Rebbe in 1920, they knew the Friediker Rebbe very well, and their loyalty is phenomenal to him. It's just unreal.

1:09:42 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:09:42 Speaker 1 Um, what is driving it? I don't ma- They knew him from Lubavitch already, and they, and some of them were his contemporaries in age. But there's a phenomenal sense of passion. I don't know exactly. There's a sense of Rebbe-Chasid relationship which is very deep, but I never had a time to talk to any of them.

1:10:04 Speaker 2 Did it shift at all, as you're, as you're working on this book, did it shift at all how you understand what a Rebbe-Chasid relationship is? Like, what's different in your mind? What's funda- Is there something different, and what is different between the Rebbe-Chasid relationship before Derech Chafri and then after?

1:10:23 Speaker 1 I think in Derech Chafri it was forged in fire to a degree.

1:10:27 Speaker 2 Yeah, but also before that. Was there-

1:10:28 Speaker 1 Before.

1:10:29 Speaker 2 Was there a, was there a fundamental difference?

1:10:30 Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know. I, it's hard to analyze it. Um, you see, I was brought up, one of the li- a lot that formed my own personality as a kid in yeshiva was exposed to Chassidim who had been powerful Chassidim of the Friediker Rebbe, people like Reb Mendel Futerfas, people like Rav Sholom Chaim Kesselman, and many others. And that sense of conviction that they had and that passion that they had, I really feel, I feel all it, it, which is a product of the Russian experience, at least molded my personality to a very large degree. And I, and I would argue that that Mesirus Nefesh that came out of Russia as those Chassidim came out became the role models for the next generation that came afterwards. It's hard to know what the, it's, but the problem was they were older. I was very young, and we never had that kind of intimate conversation. I just looked at them, and I saw that Rebbe-Chasid passion, and that to me became a role model for what I wanted to be.

1:11:41 Speaker 2 Right. So, so you, you feel that there was a continuity between the two?

1:11:46 Speaker 1 I believe there's a tremendous continuity, and I believe that, that this whole concept of this mesi… When, you know, when I went to… I had a lot of hard years in shluchus. Baruch Hashem, we have a beautiful, successful center today, and I have my, my son-in-law and daughter can run the day-to-day stuff, so I can write books and do other things. But I f- always felt that their Mesirus Nefesh became the role model for my generation. And I remember an incident that happened at the first Kinus Hashluchim. We came there. There were just forty-five of us. And Motzei Shabbos, we went upstairs in the library next to where, where they used to produce the sichas, and Shalom Posner gets up to speak. He was a man in his mid-eighties or late eighties at the time, and here's a man who learned in Lubavitch, would walk the pathways of Lubavitch, would been by the Ribnizher Rebbe and the Friediker Rebbe, and we were a bunch of young American kids, you know. This is thirty-five years ago. We were trying to get ourselves established in the United States, I don't know, thirty-six, thirty-seven years ago. And he looks at us, and he says, "Wer zaynen zey?" Who are these guys? And we all stood up and introduced ourselves. But I felt that there was this encounter between the generations, between an old Chasid who learned in Lubavitch and these young Americans, and these people, the Shalom Posners and the Mendel Futerfases and the Sholom Achaims and the

1:13:10 Speaker 1 Rav Nissims and the Benzi Sheftes, 'cause I remember him when he came to Eretz Yisrael the last period of his life. They symbolize to us what it means to put your life on your di- on the line for Yiddishkeit. They did it in the worst situation, in the most difficult moments. And who are we to have struggled to raise a few dollars to build a building in California? Are, is anybody, is there a police car outside gonna arrest us because we made a minyan? Is somebody gonna haul us off to Siberia? Are we gonna lose our freedom? Are we gonna lose our lives? So to me, that Mesirus Nefesh of them became the embodiment of what we needed to aspire to do and became our role models.

1:13:55 Speaker 2 Yeah. There's, uh, there, there's, there's certainly a lot of continuity there, a hundred percent. I, I just-

1:14:01 Speaker 1 And I think there's one other reason there's a continuity. Until 1946, 1947, when we had the escape of the thousand Chassidim from Russia, the Friediker Rebbe had really no manpower. He had a few yeshiva bachurim. He didn't have anybody really to work with. Two things that happened. Number one is the, the, the escape of the Chassidim from Russia, which I call in the book The Great Escape, and we have the, the yeshiva bachurim that come from refugee camps or primarily from Shanghai. The Polisher, the Rusisher, they're always competing between each other who are the more important, Polish or the Russians. But what happened is, is that we s- that generation comes out full of self-sacrifice. They had been thir- uh, from 1920 till 1945, thirty-five years under communism, and they came out «יערים ושלמים,» they came out as «שכשיים,» and they had, so many of them had suffered. You know, there's an old joke, you know. "You were in Siberia two years. That's nothing. I was there ten," you know, so what. But then they come. Now, Friediker Rebbe tries to get them, you know, "You go to Australia and establish Yiddishkeit there. You stay in Paris. You go to Eretz Yisrael. You go there. You go there." He wants to, and I argue in the book in the last chapter, he wants to make a global transformation using these people who are a bunch of refugees to do it. They just want a little quiet in their lives, a lot of them, and that

1:15:21 Speaker 1 was part of the struggle of the Rebbe in the '50s to get Hasidim to have their children become shluchim because not everybody wants to be a shliach because I went through Shevet Mador Gehenom, I went through hell. I, my, I, I was in Siberia. My father was killed. My mother was killed. I finally got a little freedom in America. You want me to send my kid to Timbuktu? He's not so enthralled. But till they, that self-sacrifice they had produced this concept of leadership and self-sacrifice Mesires Nefesh that exists today, and the Am Ha'aretz. So I believe there's a direct connection between the Russian experience, what the Friediker Rebbe did in Russia in the 1920s laid the foundation for transformation of world Jewry later on because it cr- it created this model of self-sacrifice, and you're willing to put your lives on the line for a principle that never, that, that just became the, the basic foundation of Chabad.

1:16:13 Speaker 3 So what surprised you most in writing the book?

1:16:17 Speaker 1 I s-

1:16:17 Speaker 3 What, what did you learn about-

1:16:19 Speaker 1 I think the thing what I mentioned earlier. I think his ability to change to each different situation, that's one of the things that really... Because, you know, I found that i- because when you dig, for instance, he comes to Riga. He says a Ma'amar on Shabbos, and Chacham Fagin, who was the Friediker Rebbe's secretary, writes a letter to his good friend, Yisroel Jacobson, in America, "There's nobody who appreciates the Rebbe. There's no yeshiva here. He's not happy. The situation is, is, is really not too wonderful in Riga." He's, he felt that he had left Russia. There's a guy who comes to see him. He says, "Why aren't you hap- You were-- I met you in Leningrad. I saw you in Russia, and you were basimcha. Here, like..." He says, "They forced me out." So here he's in a whole new situation. He does such interesting things. He starts taking Chassidus and translating it to other languages. He starts teaching Mam- Hasbamorum down in Y-in Yiddish and in other languages 'cause he wants to popularize Chassidus to a broader public. He says people have no sense of identity, so he starts publishing Likutei Dibburim, which is really to give people a story. Who are you? Well, there's this old Chassid. Let me tell you about him. He's the kind of person you need to be. He creates a new Chassidic historiography. It's all about building identity. He takes women who have really never learned Chassidus, and he says, he starts pushing women to learn Chassidus. It

1:17:36 Speaker 1 empowers women to become, which is a radical new idea. In Russia, his father is fighting the haskala tooth and nail, so in, in, in, in, he's not, he doesn't think it's the first choice, but he wants there to be schools where there's a, even Limudei Kodesh, Limudei Cho because that's what we have to do in Western Europe. And then he has got to create another generation of Chassidim, so he realizes the only way to do that is to create a whole network of yeshivas. So he redoes Tomchei Tmimim. He starts in 1930, and, you know, 1920 and '30, he's got maybe a hundred students. By the time the war is, he's got 11 yeshivas and almost 1,500 students. He's creating a whole new door of, of, of Chassidim. So here in Western Europe, where there is the beginnings of assimilation, where there is a certain amount of political repression, even though... And then the other thing is he doesn't fit into the leadership structure because the Gerrer Rebbe, the Radomsker, the other G- Gedalei Yisroel, great scholars, even though he has a very good relationship, I think, with, not with everyone, but for sure with Rimoiser and the Chatzheim and the others, they have a, they have Aguda or they have Mizrachi, which he's not gonna be a part of so much. But he doesn't join the political party. He doesn't become-- He's not in, he's not going along with the flow.

1:18:51 Speaker 3 Right.

1:18:51 Speaker 1 He's independent.

1:18:53 Speaker 3 Right.

1:18:53 Speaker 1 I'm not gonna be engaged with politics. You all think it's important, but I'm not gonna do it, and that invokes a certain amount of resentment. And then when the Bachurim begin to flow from these other Chassidish groups and start joining Chachmeim, they're not too happy. So all of this is just one example of one of the times where he has to adapt to a whole new situation, and he does a series of creative things. He's lucky, for a sense, because he's in Riga for a while, he's able to do things in Riga that he c- that in, in Warsaw he'd have a lot more opposition to because in Warsaw there's a more structured community. In Riga, he's the first tremendous Jewish leader, world-class Jewish leader in terms of Riga. Riga's Rabbonim and like this, but they don't-- The Rogatchover is not too far away, but the Rogatchover's not in Riga. And, um, and but the point is that he experiments with new ideas and how he's going to recreate Chabad in a Western society.

1:19:44 Speaker 3 Yeah, the experimenting is very interesting. Um, even, even on, on the, on the Chassidus level, and I noticed that the book, you don't, you don't go there so much. Maybe you could explain why. Um, I'm sure you had a reason. But, you know, you look at the Maamarim of, of, of those years, like the Kontresim-

1:20:03 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:20:03 Speaker 3 ... when he was traveling or even in prison. I was, in preparation for this, uh, interview, I was over Shabbos looking at some of the Maamarim that he said or that he wrote or said in Kostroma, like while he was in exile.

1:20:16 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:20:17 Speaker 3 And he's explaining, there's one famous one where he's, where the Maamar is essentially, uh, an exhortation to the Chassidim to, to, to believe that, you know, that they didn't-- "Only our bodies are on galus, not our neshamas," the famous one.

1:20:30 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:20:30 Speaker 3 But there's one after that where it almost feels like a confessional. He's explaining what it means to deal with struggle, and he, he's basically referring to Dovid HaMelech of, of Vayehi B'Yisroel and, and, and what w- how does one, how does one grapple with the need to go through struggle in-instead of just, um, you know, floating right over it, which is part of what we're discussing here, the transcendence versus vulnerability-

1:20:57 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:20:58 Speaker 3 ... where the, you know, where the, the Friediker Rebbe explains that, that- For all, for all the, for, for all the, f-I forget exactly what, what the, the specifics, but the, for all the milas of overcoming from above, what God wants from us is Ɣazara, the multitude of, of, of, of, of berurim that happen in this world that a person ha- uh, can only accumulate by dealing with the abs- with the actual struggle. And he's dealing with his, with, with his own situation as well as, like you're talking about, the simulation in Riga, the famous ma'amarim, I think was, was it Riga? The, the ma'amarim of Nas and Aliyaskir where, where he was talking about basics. You can see the ma'amarim starts talking about ta'as mishpacha and keeping Shabbos. He's talking to an audience that's very, very, very, very-

1:21:48 Speaker 1 So, so to answer your first question is that I didn't feel that I could do justice to do an analysis of the ma'amarim.

1:21:55 Speaker 3 Right.

1:21:56 Speaker 1 In the co- I thought for a while of doing it. I even thought of maybe bringing in a series of scholars to help me do it. But one of the things about writing a biography is you have to realize... You see, when I went in to write this book, I looked at two biographies. This will probably surprise you, 'cause I was trying to figure out how I'm gonna write it.

1:22:13 Speaker 3 Right.

1:22:13 Speaker 1 'Cause I had-- The first book I wrote, "The Secret of Chabad," took me a period of years. I was unsure of my role as a writer at those times also, and, um, two people encouraged me very much to write, Rabbi Manis Friedman and Rabbi Y- and Yudel- Rabbi Yudel Krinsky. Both of them were like the people who always pushed me, I should-

1:22:29 Speaker 3 The old book.

1:22:30 Speaker 1 The first book and the second book also.

1:22:32 Speaker 3 Okay.

1:22:32 Speaker 1 They were my, uh, so to speak, always like, gave me positive inspiration and encouragement. So I had this dilemma about how to deal with the ma'amarim. So I re- I, before I wrote, I read two books. I read Martin, I looked in Martin Gilbert's book on Churchill, which is a very, it's like four or five volumes, and you find out what time he had tea and crumpets on at four o'clock on an afternoon, every little detail. And this will surprise you, I read Tom Segev's biography of, of Ben-Gurion, which is an, he's a lefty, but he's an excellent historian, which, uh, "State at Any Cost," which really grasps the life in one volume. And I realized that if I try to write everything about the Friediker Rebbe's life, it's gonna be five volumes. I'll be done in fifteen years, and it, three people are gonna read it.

1:23:15 Speaker 3 Yeah. I agree with that.

1:23:16 Speaker 1 So I need to write one book, which is gonna go through the main points, and if I'm gonna do an analysis of his ma'amarim, the book, I'm, we're gonna lose the biography. And I write in the note to reader that this book is not doing that, and that deserves another attention of scholarship.

1:23:32 Speaker 3 No, so I didn't, I didn't say it as a critique. I actually understood that. I understood that, and I wanted to hear what the, the original-

1:23:37 Speaker 1 So I took certain ideas, especially more from the Igrus Kodesh and from the Sikhas, et cetera, and also from some of the ma'amarim-

1:23:42 Speaker 3 Right

1:23:42 Speaker 1 ... which become reflective within the, the theme of the book, but I didn't, I feel that there needs to be, you know, if somebody would do, you know, let's take somebody like Eli Rubin, who's a wonderful scholar and-

1:23:54 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:23:54 Speaker 1 ... and chassidish, and he would take and, and do a, an, he's done this great book already.

1:23:58 Speaker 3 I think, I think he's working on something like that. Yeah.

1:24:00 Speaker 1 Which I think he'll make a phenomenal contribution to that. That wasn't my role.

1:24:04 Speaker 3 No, no, I understand.

1:24:04 Speaker 1 I was coming from a historical point of view. Let's tell the story of his life.

1:24:08 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:24:08 Speaker 1 What can we learn from this?

1:24:09 Speaker 3 Hundred percent.

1:24:09 Speaker 1 And what are the implications and impact of that? Because I felt something also very important, that within Lubavitch, people really don't understand the Friediker Rebbe. We understand slices and pieces.

1:24:21 Speaker 3 Right.

1:24:22 Speaker 1 And other historians on the outside, most of the histories of Russian Jewry, except for Gershoni, who was a bit of a Lubavitcher, wrote in Hebrew, and you can't find his books. They're almost impossible to find. Even though I did find his great-granddaughter, who's a shlucha today in Wellington, New Zealand, when I was there recently in January. Um, that most historians who wrote about this period of time, academics, et cetera, they, they wrote in the seventies and eighties, maybe in the nineties. There was not the published material we have today. Lubavitcher in Russia was still surreptitious and, and, and done very secretly. There was no public conversation about it. We didn't have the seminal phenomenal scholarship of Bere Levin, the series of books which become, they're more technical, but they become a guidepost of, of the major events and the tremendous material in the Igrus Kodesh that was published, et cetera, et cetera. So that gives you a foundation. I was also very lucky. Uh, Jem gave me fourteen hundred pages of transcript of people who had interactions with the Friediker Rebbe. Now, some of it is people, you have people meeting the Rebbe once, and there's not-- And some of it's got some, there's some great gems there. There's some gems in Jem's, and there was other people also. Sh-Sholom Ber Shapiro gave me his archive after a little bit of effort, but he gave me that. Plus, I had researchers that went all around the world.

1:25:34 Speaker 3 No, I, I, I, I understood reading it-

1:25:37 Speaker 1 So I don't think that we can, though I think the ma'amarim need to be addressed in a separate volume.

1:25:41 Speaker 3 No, I understood reading it. The ma'amarim al- alt- are, are, the ma'amarim are going to force you into a space of conjecture.

1:25:49 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:25:49 Speaker 3 And, you know, this is how I understand it.

1:25:52 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:25:52 Speaker 3 And it's very hard in a book of history to go between what, you know, you wanna present as facts to how you understand things, and it, it would get messy very quickly. So I, I didn't mean it as a critique.

1:26:05 Speaker 1 Right. But uh, uh, there's something else also important here, which I decided, uh, from the, from the get-go. Except in two or three rare cases where I say, "Yesh leomar bederech esha," you might possibly suggest, I've stayed away from telling the reader why I think the Rebbe did something. I want the Rebbe to speak for himself. And because there's so much material where he speaks for himself why he's doing certain things or the things, I'm painting the background picture from other-

1:26:31 Speaker 3 Right

1:26:31 Speaker 1 ... historical sources.

1:26:32 Speaker 3 Right.

1:26:33 Speaker 1 But his reasons, like for instance, in the, when he comes to America in '29, '30, he has a, he has a very big challenge with the Joint, the Joint Distribution Committee, who have become, whose, the head of Joint, Felix Warburg, has become enamored with, he thinks communism is gonna help all the Jews in Russia, and he's a se- very secular assimilated Jew. He's the son-in-law of Jacob Schiff, is one of the richest Jews in America, who had a sense of connection to Judaism. But Warburg turns up once a year to Temple Emanuel for a half hour, and that's it. His religious convictions don't transcend that, and he looks upon the Rebbe in a very negative way. He'd been in Russia. He met with the Rebbe in Russia. And so you have this conflict with the Joint, which causes the previous Rebbe a tremendous amount of anguish, and that's one of the reasons he came to America, trying to get them The Joint Distribution Committee is, is still today a very important charity, and we, and Baruch Hashem, they're- they've been helpful to Chabad in many parts around the world. Um, but they're-- At this point, they disconnect, they, they stop funding his work in Russia, and they become partners with the communists. So he's very-- he's struggling with this issue, but we have material that he writes about how he feels about the struggles he has with The Joint. So I'm not gonna analyze it. I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let him speak for himself.

1:27:42 Speaker 1 And, um-

1:27:44 Speaker 3 And no, I, again, I, I understand, I understand the reasoning. Um, and, uh, any book that attempts to do everything is gonna end up doing nothing.

1:27:53 Speaker 1 Right.

1:27:53 Speaker 3 I, I- And, and, and, and it's, it's, it's fair game to say, "I'm going to speak about this," and someone else can speak about that. The reason I brought it up is because I feel like you, you brought up the idea of experimenting, and I think you see the experimenting go all the way into the Chassidus itself.

1:28:11 Speaker 1 Well, that's what I talk about in the book. By translating... Interesting, he has-

1:28:14 Speaker 3 Right

1:28:14 Speaker 1 ... a woman translating his Ma'amarim into Yiddish.

1:28:16 Speaker 3 Right, but it's not just the translation, it's the content itself.

1:28:19 Speaker 1 Of course.

1:28:20 Speaker 3 Which I-- No, which I think-- Yeah, right.

1:28:22 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:28:22 Speaker 3 Which I, which I think is very-- I, I think that really gets to the nub of it, is that one really begins to comprehend when reading the book or learning about the Friediker Rebbe that Lubavitch, Lubavitch is, is a, is a, is a movement that under-- that, that in the, in the times of Friediker, but also I think in other times in its history, went through serious transformation, fundamental transformation. Now, you could say that at the core, at the core, at the core, the values are the same, the Eibishter is the same, the Chassidus is the same. But it's a little bit too easy to say that therefore it's all the same because it's... No, no, th- there are some s- there are some fundamental transformations. You talked about Eli Rubin. Eli Rubin in his book, the other book which we're not here to discuss, but his idea is that the Chassidus itself is dynamic. The Chassidus itself develops and changes. Ideas change over the course of time. In, in, in, in, in reference to your book, you look at the Friediker Rebbe, and his Ma'amarim change. His Ma'amarim change as he's talking to different audiences, as he's talking to different times of the world, as he's talking to his own imprisonment.

1:29:37 Speaker 1 And that's all about-- That's what's, again, him always adapting to the situations that he faces.

1:29:42 Speaker 3 But all the way even to the Torah.

1:29:45 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:29:45 Speaker 3 I think that is, that, that, that is, that is an important point. It's not just that the Torah stays the same and, and his methods change. The Torah changes as well, as much as Torah can ch-

1:29:56 Speaker 1 Not the core ideas, but how they're articulated.

1:29:58 Speaker 3 So I, so I think, uh, okay, so perhaps, like you said, that that's, that's for a different book to, to, to, to, to analyze, and I, and I, I don't wanna force it into the conversation. But I, I think, I think it's, I think it's important at least to sug- suggest, and maybe I'll take the responsibility for suggesting it. I'll leave, I'll leave it off your shoulders, and I won't put you on, on the spot. But I think that the changes the Friediker-- that you're talking about the Friediker Rebbe go much, much deeper than, than people-- than, than, than is comfortable to accept at the get-go. Meaning, if you are comfortable with these changes, that means you haven't read enough.

1:30:34 Speaker 1 Well, if you look at the-

1:30:35 Speaker 3 You haven't, you haven't thought enough

1:30:36 Speaker 1 ... Friediker Rebbe from the 1940s, you see him talking to American Jews about their problems, which is very different than what he was talking about in, in ear- in earlier years.

1:30:43 Speaker 3 Right. Right.

1:30:44 Speaker 1 The conversations I'm sure he had with Bochurim in Tomchei Twimim in the early part of the 20th century when he made a Fabrengen were dramatically different than he's speaking to a bunch of American Jews who are running away from Jewd- you know, he's trying to hold on, you know, giving them a whole different focus.

1:30:58 Speaker 3 Yeah, talking about Taharas Hamishpacha, talking about women going to mikvah.

1:31:02 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:31:02 Speaker 3 So I di-- I'm sure you came across the, the famous Yoman. I think it's, uh, I think it's Rabbi, Rabbi Feigen. He wrote a Yoman of the Friediker Rebbe in one of his visits in Lita where, where he said the .

1:31:15 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:31:15 Speaker 3 And he talks about the modern crowd, like, uh, they're a little bit... They're the Lithuanian Chassidim that were a little bit, you know, modern, uh, but the women w- there wa- there, there was a, there was a big, um, push then to include the women in the, in the, in the Yechidim because women felt-

1:31:31 Speaker 1 Yeah, he, and he meets with the women.

1:31:33 Speaker 3 Right, right, right. Yeah. So there's a famous Yoman there of a few days where the, where the Friediker Rebbe spends time with them.

1:31:38 Speaker 1 I found the most interesting thing with women was something else. Be-- He had pushed in the '30s the idea of women learning Chassidus, and, and he had created these organizations or supported the creation of these organizations, Achos Twimim. And in each case, which was called literally the Sisters of the Twimim, he had appointed in both in America and both in Europe the most distinguished and respected Chassidim to be the Mashpiyim, the spiritual advisors to these women. He didn't take this third-tier rabbi and say, "Take care of the ladies." He took the top tier. So he comes to Riga after escaping from Warsaw, and there's a very ac-- he's a very active group. This is before he goes to America, so he's there for about, uh, maybe 12 weeks, whatever, two, three months in the interlude. He had fallen and broken his arm, and he was in a sanatorium for a while, and his mother had to go through an operation, and they're arranging him to come to the United States, and he's in Riga. And he doesn't meet with a lot of people because he had, he had also had some medical problems. But he meets with a group of young women, and these young women come to the Rebbe, and they take a Ma'amar, and they chazer the Ma'amar in front of the Rebbe. Now, we know that there was Chozeh rim. Those are oral scribes who re- you know, repeat the Rebbe's Ma'amar. With the Friediker Rebbe, somebody might come in. Uh, there

1:32:51 Speaker 1 was times where the Chozeh rim came in and repeated the Ma'amar in front of the Rebbe, and he wanted to see if they got it right. This time, the women are being Chozeh the Ma'amar. They're repeating the Ma'amar in front of the Rebbe in Riga. Now, think about it. You're an 18, 19-year-old girl, and you're going to repeat the Ma'amar in front of the Rebbe. This is a phenomenal moment because it's also putting the idea of Chs- women learning Chassidus on a whole new plateau. It's not just study it with one of the rabbis. You're gonna come to the Rebbe, and you're gonna repeat the Ma'amar in front of him. It's like- Unheard of historically

1:33:22 Speaker 3 But there's the other direction is what I'm, is what I'm also talking about.

1:33:25 Speaker 1 I understand that.

1:33:25 Speaker 3 The, talking about Tarbus Mishpacha to women-

1:33:27 Speaker 1 Yeah, right

1:33:27 Speaker 3 ... in a, in a minor way.

1:33:28 Speaker 1 So he, but he's, again, he's talking about Tarbus Mishpacha because he's dealing with people, those, those issues.

1:33:32 Speaker 3 Who are struggling with going to mikveh.

1:33:33 Speaker 1 Struggling going to the mikveh, and he's, he's talking, he's meeting with women. It's the first time ever. When did the, the, the Rebbe Rashab, the Tzemach Tzedek, or whatever, never met, had a meeting where they spoke only to women.

1:33:43 Speaker 3 Oh.

1:33:43 Speaker 1 It was just never happened historically, that he's meeting with... He begins to meet with women's groups, and there's actually a very cute thing. Uh, when he went in 19- When he was here in 1930, he goes to St. Louis, and he walks into the shul in St. Louis, and he hears a noise banging on the, the second level. It's a big shul, big packed crowd, and it's a bunch of women, and they're complaining that the mikveh in town is a disaster.

1:34:06 Speaker 3 Mm.

1:34:07 Speaker 1 So the Rebbe agrees to meet with them. He meets with the women, and he says, "Okay. We're gonna get to work on the mikveh right away." He gets going in St. Louis. They make within a week. Uh, he's in St. Louis for a c- for a period of two, three weeks. They make a big fundraiser for the mikveh. He gets connection with them. But when he meets with the women, he says, "Listen, you have to know, when you go to the mikveh, you have to know, you have to take off your nail polish before you go in. But you need to put your nail polish on when you got, when you go, when you come out of the mikveh, after you come out of the mikveh because Jewish women have to be beautiful." He's speaking to women in America in 1930. He says-

1:34:38 Speaker 3 Wow, why didn't that message ever get to Bais Rivkah?

1:34:44 Speaker 1 I can't speak for that.

1:34:46 Speaker 3 Uh, so I wanted to I wa- I wanted, I wanted to give you a chance to read a, read something, um, really you're quoting here, so maybe it's not fair. But I, the fact that you brought it up in the book is already a testament to what the book's about. Um, it's, it's one, the meeting, one of the meetings with, with, um, with, with a group of boys in America. Was that on the first trip or the second trip?

1:35:13 Speaker 1 Oh, I know where to find it.

1:35:14 Speaker 3 The first trip or the second trip?

1:35:15 Speaker 1 It's the first trip. I know where to find it. Yeah.

1:35:17 Speaker 3 Oh, I wanna show you that I read it.

1:35:19 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

1:35:19 Speaker 3 I wanna show you that I read it.

1:35:20 Speaker 1 It's a very interesting story.

1:35:23 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:35:26 Speaker 1 It's in the chapter, The Boys.

1:35:27 Speaker 3 Yeah. Okay. Here. I got it. So they sat down.

1:35:31 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, we have to set the tone for the story. It's a beautiful-

1:35:33 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:35:33 Speaker 1 First thing that happened-

1:35:34 Speaker 3 So, so why, so why don't you set the tone and then read the, read the excerpt?

1:35:36 Speaker 1 I'll read this. Uh, wait, wait. Yeah, it's a beautiful story. What happened was, is there was a bu- young group of young men, and the Rebbe comes to Philadelphia. Now we, how... This is your town, Philadelphia.

1:35:45 Speaker 3 We're in Philadelphia right now.

1:35:46 Speaker 1 You are in Philadelphia right now. Interestingly enough, which people don't understand, is that the Rebbe's visit here, he came with great fanfare. To give you an example, according to the Chic- Chicago Sun-Times, this was not put out by Chabad news organizations. There were 15,000 people at the train station when he came to Chicago. There were 10,000 when he came to Detroit. There were 3,000 in St. Louis. He's gets this kind of royal welcome. He is a, at this point because he had stood up to Russian Jewry and everything. So there was this group of young men. They're reading these articles. This Rebbe's in town in Philadelphia. He'd also gone to the, uh, I think that's where they have the chair of George Washington in Independence Hall.

1:36:21 Speaker 3 Yeah, he sat down in it.

1:36:22 Speaker 1 Uh, he sat down in it, and there was a guy called Louis Boxer was 25, who was 25 years old, and he got together with a bunch of his friends. And I had to track down this story to make sure it was true because there's nothing in the book that I didn't... If you told me a grandmother's bubbe mei said, I, I have to have historical sources for this. And I was able to discover that, uh, Mrs. Lipsker was the Rebbe's shlicha in South Africa. She knew the family and the fact that they would continue. He owned a t- toy company. He always brought toys over to their house. So these young men are standing in a shul. The top-

1:36:53 Speaker 3 So this excerpt, uh, this excerpt came from where?

1:36:56 Speaker 1 No, this excerpt came from a source, but I double-checked the sources. So, but-

1:36:59 Speaker 3 So it's an oral testimony.

1:37:00 Speaker 1 It's, uh, no, he wrote it down. He wrote an article about it eventually. But I wanted to dig a little deeper to find more background. So these young men are standing and they come to the gabbai in some shul, you know, somebody in a shul here in, in Philadelphia, and they say, "We read these articles about this rabbi, and it sounds like he's God. Like, who is this guy? You know, let, come on, let's get real." So he-

1:37:18 Speaker 3 Uh, you, you, you said something sharper in the book. That they, that does this man want to supplant the Almighty or something?

1:37:23 Speaker 1 He does this... That's what it says. This man want to supplant the Almighty. They're, they're, they're young skeptical men. It's in their early 20s. They know what a shul is. They have a little connection to tradition, but this, you know, this is like, "Who is he?" They, he's like, uh, like, he's almighty, he's all this. So the guy says, "Why don't you go see him?" So they, he was in a house somewhere in Philadelphia, and he was having a yechidus. He was meeting with people privately on Saturday night, on Motzaei Shabbos, and they come to the house. And they see the hou- downstairs is full of people who are waiting to go up to see the Rebbe, and the guy who was taking care of the arrangements, the appointments, he says, "What do you want to do with this?" So they sa- come to him, and they said, um, he says to them like this. He said, "We like to... We have a question we want to ask the Rebbe."

1:38:06 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:38:06 Speaker 1 "We'd like to know how he expect us to keep an old-fashioned religion in a modern country. That's what we want to know." So they, they says, "Okay. You're gonna have to wait a while." They figure they're gonna have to wait. They see the crowd. There's a lot of people, you know, et cetera. Five minutes later, they, they bring them, uh, he, the, the guy goes outside. The gabbai who's taking care of the appointments, he says, "Listen, the Rebbe wants to see you right now." He brings them up to the second floor. And as he comes up to the second floor, the Rebbe, he greets them, and he puts... The Rebbe is setting out the chairs, and they all sit down together. And the Rebbe turns to them, and this is what he said, according to the account that they, was written by one of the participants. "The Rebbe sat down." Uh, they sat down facing the Rebbe, who took a long look at each one of them and said, This is what the Rebbe said, "You look-"

1:38:50 Speaker 3 Whoa, one second. Before that, there's a, there's a gevaltige pshtikel, that the physical-

1:38:55 Speaker 1 Oh, that just-

1:38:55 Speaker 3 ... was arranging the chairs

1:38:56 Speaker 1 ... yeah, he set out the chairs, and he says to them-

1:38:59 Speaker 3 The physical was setting out the chairs for them

1:39:00 Speaker 1 ... himself, and he says, "This is the..." The Rebbe tells them, "This is the happiest moment I've had in Philadelphia," and started to arrange the chairs for them around the desk. The young group wanted to help him, but he insisted on doing the task himself.

1:39:11 Speaker 3 Insane. Insane.

1:39:12 Speaker 1 It's just unbelievable.

1:39:14 Speaker 3 Insane.

1:39:15 Speaker 1 And then they sat down, and this is what the Rebbe said to them.

1:39:17 Speaker 3 Mm.

1:39:17 Speaker 1 "You look like very intelligent young men, and therefore I must speak to you on your level. You are wondering about those people downstairs who were here before you. Well, here are some of the problems for which they are asking for help. One man's daughter is seriously ill. 'What can I do?' Nothing more than he can do, provided he approaches God. He should be able to ask for a complete recovery. Another has a lawsuit and wants me to pray that he will win, and I don't know who's right, but he, but he can pray that God will give justice. There's a man who wants to buy a business and wants me to intercede to make sure it succeeds. If I could do that, I'd be a rich businessman, but if I could not answer your question, I have no right to be a rabbi." He says, "First, I must admit a great secret, which you will most likely keep. There are 613 mitzvahs. While the Lubavitcher Rebbe tries to keep them all, he finds it impossible to keep them all. So what does he do? Discard the 613 mitzvahs? No, he keeps as many of them as humanly possible." And they write that these words, like, touched their souls, so they, they start talkingto him about doing mitzvahs, and then the, the Rebbe says to... They want to, some of them want to take out money to give the Rebbe, said, "I don't want your money, I want your mitzvahs." And they start, "Okay, we'll

1:40:24 Speaker 1 start putting on tefillin," and they said this. One of them becomes Shabbos observant. But it's a very interesting... This is so, so much the way the Friediker Rebbe is. He's sharing his inner sense of feeling, and there's something else beyond this. People are all coming. They want the bracha for this. They want a blessing for this, and, uh, and when you do an analysis of the letters, it's also, you see the different kinds of questions people are asking. You know, there was one point later on in, in the 1940s where the Friediker Rebbe comments to Rebbe Simpson, his c- his, his secretary, his masgiach. He says, "You know, at the time, the whole idea of yechidas for private meetings with the Rebbe was to deal with spiritual things, and everybody's asking me about material things." And at that point, there's a sense of anxiety, so they-

1:41:06 Speaker 4 The Alter Rebbe already that mentions that

1:41:07 Speaker 1 Yeah, the Alter Rebbe, that's what he quotes from the Alter. So they organize these yeshiva bachurim, start asking about spiritual things. But here the Rebbe feels that he can have an impact on some young people, and those 10, 15 minutes they spent together were transformational moments in their lives. This, he felt, was the most important thing, and I think it goes to his own sense of priorities. He feel his jo- he feels that as a Rebbe, his job is to influence other people. He wants to help the person who wants a bracha. He'll give him a bracha. He'll daven for him, et cetera, et cetera. But, and it tells over here that one became more observant, one became shomer Shabbos, one did this, that.

1:41:40 Speaker 4 Yeah, but no, but the expression that, uh, that I can't do all the mitzvahs, obviously, they're, what he's referring to is that a lot of the mitzvahs are tulyim haaretz and ve'aseh mikdas, but I'm gonna do as much-

1:41:51 Speaker 1 As I can

1:41:51 Speaker 4 ... as hu- as humanly possible. I'm gonna try my best.

1:41:53 Speaker 1 'Cause he wants to connect to them. He wants to connect to them in a way.

1:41:55 Speaker 4 Or maybe that's how he felt.

1:41:57 Speaker 1 Could be. This is his words.

1:41:59 Speaker 4 That's what I'm saying.

1:41:59 Speaker 1 It's not my job to tell you why he felt.

1:42:01 Speaker 4 I'm assuming that's how he felt if that's what he said it.

1:42:03 Speaker 1 I, I understand. I think he really wanted to connect to them in a profound way, and it left a lasting impression on them for the rest of their lives, and it's a very, very touching story. And, um, and he, you know, he, he, he was, the, the Friediker Rebbe was a person of remarkable capacity, remarkable leadership, and the ability to, you know, really, y- you know, the, there's an article that I, I, I, that I got from the Mindell Archives written by Gershon Krantzler, who was close with... He saw what was going on in the Beis Rabb around the Friediker Rebbe in the 1940s, and he writes there how he sees so many people go into yechidas. This is an unpublished article. It's a, it's a, it, it's one of those things you discover in an archive if you're lucky. He writes how people come in with problems and difficulties and all different kinds of hardships and anxieties, and he says, what he sees universally is when they come out of that meeting, they come out different. There was a sense of, and o- other people write about the interactions they had with the Rebbe. They said you felt like you were in front of kedusha, total holiness. The same sense that we had when we went into yechidas by the Friedi- by the Rebbe. Friends of mine once said to me, Conservative rabbi, he said to me, "Dovid, I regret one thing. I never went to the Rebbe." And I blurted out to him,

1:43:21 Speaker 1 I said, "You never met spiritual honesty, and you never met k- you never encountered holiness, and you never encountered emotional honesty." 'Cause everybody has some kind of agenda, and you went into yechidas. You felt a tremendous sense of emotional honesty, and you felt that you were in the presence of ho- of holiness, of sanctity. And I think the same thing, that's what Krantzler writes about people going into the previous Rebbe, that they come in with pain and anxiety and struggles, and in some way he's able to uplift them, each one according to who they were and what they were.

1:43:55 Speaker 4 Beautiful. What a wonderful way to end this conversation. Thank you again for, for, for coming here, and, uh, when this, when this episode comes out, hopefully the book will be available.

1:44:05 Speaker 1 The book is available already.

1:44:07 Speaker 4 Oh, okay. The book-

1:44:07 Speaker 1 You can buy it on Amazon. It's already available for pre-purchase on Amazon.

1:44:10 Speaker 4 For, for ordering, not for-

1:44:11 Speaker 1 For ordering

1:44:11 Speaker 4 ... not for, not for receiving.

1:44:12 Speaker 1 Not for receiving, but the b- the publication date is November 4th.

1:44:16 Speaker 4 Im yirtze Hashem.

1:44:16 Speaker 1 And Im yirtze Hashem, I'll be doing a very extensive international book tour which will begin the week after the Kinus Hashluchim and end Yom B'Shabbos, hopefully to end in Australia for the week of Yom B'Shabbos, and, um, hopefully visiting many communities all over the country and around the world to share the story of the Friediker Rebbe. Uh, this is the first time I had a, a real conversation about it, and I thank you very much for your time and the interesting questions.

1:44:38 Speaker 4 You're very welcome. Thank you. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bahar, and is used with their permission.