Ep. 84 // "When We Run Out of Answers" w/ R' Gershon Schusterman

00:00 Speaker 1 We do need answers, and we want answers, and it's important to have answers because if we don't have answers, we are not integrated. Then, then it's all rote or action, and we have bifurcated lives. We have the religious life, which you do things, and we have our other sensible life which lives in the outside world with its senses or its sensibilities. It's good to have Jewish answers to all of life's questions, but sometimes there are things that are beyond.

00:33 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-six. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here in Los Angeles with Reb Gershon Schusterman. And, um, like I told you on the phone last night, or it was yesterday, I'm losing track of time, um, Eastern time it was, it was nighttime. Um, I, I told you that the reason I had wanted to s-- I, I had wanted to s- meet you and speak to you for a long time because when I was in mesivta, yet, which was at this point more than twenty years ago, um, I had heard from the Rosh Yeshivah of the mesivta then, Rabbi Poulter, how h- the... His favorite chassidishe shuurim in his life were with you when he was back here in LA in the yeshiva. And, um, you know, that, that... And, and what made it even more intriguing is that that was the last I heard of you. Like, I... So it seemed to me like someone who left such a relationship, you know, and seemed to be content with with leaving it at just that, I thought that was very interesting. So I'm, I'm very, very glad to have the opportunity to sit down with you tonight.

02:05 Speaker 1 I'm happy to be there for you at this time.

02:10 Speaker 2 Very nice of you. Uh, anyhow, um, why don't we begin, uh, as, as... Why don't we begin from, from the beginning? Uh, maybe describe a little bit, uh, where you come from.

02:25 Speaker 1 Uh, where do I come from?

02:27 Speaker 2 Yeah.

02:28 Speaker 1 Well, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

02:31 Speaker 2 Well, not quite that beginning. But you're not from LA.

02:34 Speaker 1 I'm not from LA, no.

02:35 Speaker 2 All right. So.

02:37 Speaker 1 I was born to Lubavitcher Russian immigrant parents who came to America in nineteen forty-eight, and I was then a few months old. And-

02:50 Speaker 2 Came from where? From Russia? Directly from Russia?

02:52 Speaker 1 They... Well, they came from Russia through Samarkand, which I think is Kazakhstan, and then they were in a DP camp in Germany, and then they were in Paris. So they made their way slowly to the United States and finally got here by ship, uh, just before Pesach nineteen forty-eight. And that's how I got here, and I grew up in... It-- Our family was upwardly mobile for those who know Brooklyn. We started off in Brownsville, and then we moved up to East Flatbush.

03:31 Speaker 2 Your father was the famous balkerer of the Rebbe, right?

03:34 Speaker 1 My fam- father was the Rebbe's balkerer for thir- close to thirty-eight years. And, uh, we made it to Crown Heights in nineteen fifty-seven, and I grew up there, went through the Lubavitch yeshiva system, Bedford and Dean, went a y- one year to Montreal and then to Seven Seventy. Uh, got semikhah, got married, had a family, and the rest is history.

04:02 Speaker 2 The rest is history. What's the story behind your father becoming the Rebbe's balkerer? The what's-- How did that happen?

04:12 Speaker 1 My father became the Rebbe's balkerer because, first of all, he knew how to lein very well, very meticulously, didactically with, with the, all the bells and the whistles. The only complaint about his kriah is because he was so meticulous, it was not at the speed of m- some of the listeners, and he had a, uh, marks on his buttocks to show that. That's what, that's what it cost him when they wanted him to... Some people wanted him to speed up. They let him know that. But other than that, uh, he, he came to New York, as I said before, Pesach, uh, before Pes- Pesach forty-eight. He davened by the Friediker Rebbe, uh, on Rosh Hashanah tav sh- Had to be Rosh Hashanah, the end of forty-eight, which was Rosh Hashanah tav shin tes. Um, parenthetically, just, uh, the... He was told that when he was davening there, there was, in the Friediker Rebbe's room upstairs, I don't know how many people were there, fifteen, twenty, thirty. It wasn't a packed room. And the Rebbe would look at him, at his ta... At him during davening. He would look and-

05:35 Speaker 2 The Friediker Rebbe?

05:36 Speaker 1 The Friediker Rebbe. But in, in his, to his back or to his side, my father wasn't even aware of it. And they s- they said, uh, it wasn't that he necessarily saw a ray of light hovering over his head, but the tallis that he wore was a Russian European tallis, handwoven, rough Uh, probably with the consistency of an imperfect sack of potatoes when potatoes came in, in, in sacks of material. It... And, and that reminded... This is how people read in that the re- he was seeing the way the Russian Hasidim looked, American Tallis- Tallis- The physical was being reminded by your father ... By m- by my father's presence, by his Tallis. But, but he knew how to learn. But, uh, Reb Yechanin Gordon, uh, who was a great man and a wise man and a, a Hasid, and in many ways, I can say even the term, he was a friend of the Friediger Rebbe's, 'cause the Friediger Rebbe once wanted some friends... He wanted his friends to come to him, and he was one of those few that was chosen. So he was a friend of the Friediger Rebbe, and he learned. And when the Friediger Rebbe passed away, he was involved in the stories about his role in the Tara of the Friediger Rebbe. Um, but then Reb Yechanin, like all of us, get older, and 55, 56, uh, it was harder for him to learn, even though the learning was upstairs in the small shul, but it was getting harder.

07:18 Speaker 1 And when my father moved to Crown Heights, ah, Reb Yechanin trusted him, and he asked him. Fir- the first Shabbos my father came to 770. I've heard this story from him many times. Reb Yechanin sees him, "Mortel, canst lernen?" Mor... Uh, my father's name was Mordechai, but called Mortel. "Can you learn? Are you prepared to learn?" My father was prepared to learn all the time, anytime, any sedra. Well, just 'cause that's what he was into when he was younger? He started learning a few months before his bar mitzvah. Would you believe that? Rabbi Binyamin... Not Rabbi Binyamin, Rabbi Axelrad, the Rav in Zlotów at that time, uh, he knew my father was interested in learning. He ha- he had him learn, uh, Monday and Thursday. And the Baal Batim said, "He has another few months till his bar mitzvah." He says, "I'm the Rav here, not you." And he started learning then, and when he got bar mitzvah, he started learning on Shabbos. And, and he, and he learned from the age of 13 until the age of... In, in his mid-70s. In his sever- 70, he learned, uh, as, as it is on his matzeva. "Karev l'lamed, l'lamed tesha'a," almost 39 years. So when he was a kid... When I was a kid, somebody told me, I was eight years old, nine years old, somebody said, "You know, your father knows the whole Torah by heart." I said, "That can't be. The whole Torah? The whole Torah? Can't be." I came home, I said,

09:02 Speaker 1 "Dad, they, they said you know how to learn the whole Torah by heart. Is that true?" My father was a humble person, even with me. And he says... He shrugs his shoulders and he says, "Farher mir. Test me." So I say, "How, how should I test you?" He says, "Take a Chumash, start a posek, and see if I can finish it." I went through seven, eight, nine, 10 pesukim, just going through Breshis, Devarim, Vayikra. Whatever I started, he knew how... He answered. He finished it. So I guess he passed that test with flying colors. And, uh, so he, he kn- he knew the text, he knew the kria, he knew the dikduk. He was a... He used to teach dikduk in 770. The Rebbe asked him to teach dikduk to the bachurim, and he t- he taught dikduk for a few years motzei Shabbos to- Where did he learn it from? From that Rav back in Zlotów? No, he learned, uh, he learned it o- What, the kria? No, dikduk. He, he learned it on his own. On his own. On his own. He, he knew the sefarim, the classic dikduk sefarim. And, uh, so... But we digress. Uh, so Reb Yechanin saw him. He says, "Can you learn?" So he said, uh, "I'll, I'll do my best." He, during dav- during davening, he looked in the Chumash just to make sure he got it right, because he hadn't prepared. And the next week, he already prepared. But Reb Yechanin asked him again, "Nu, Mortel,

10:36 Speaker 1 maybe you'll learn?" Uh, so he says, "If you want me to learn, I'll learn." This went on for about a month, a month and a half. Finally, Reb Yechanin go, goes over to him one Shabbos and says, "Why are you forcing me to ask you every week? It... Here it is. You're learning. You're, you're taking over." And that's how he was appointed by Reb Yechanin. Didn't go through a committee. Reb Yechanin wanted him to learn, he learned. He had for the first, uh, while he would ask Reb Yechanin when it was Yom Tov, when it was, uh, like a chashuve event. He asked Reb Yechanin to learn, and he did. And this was while he was a bachur still? No, no, no. This was my fa... This... We're talking here 1957, 1958. Oh, he came to America already married, you said. Yeah, he got married- Oh, right. Okay, sorry ... he got married in 1940. All right. I made a... Okay. So- So he was... So, so at that point, he was... You said he was on an upward trajectory. Just a businessman. Uh, no, I'm... Well, no. I know you were joking. I, I s- I was talking about n- neighborhood-wise I know, I know you were kidding. But I'm saying, what was he doing? What was he doing? Well, yeah. As a raw immigrant in 1948, uh, he had three jobs. He was a shamash in a shul, in Rabbi J.J. Hecht's shul in East Flatbush, Yeshivas Meir Simcha Hakohen. For those... If

12:04 Speaker 1 you know that name, you are dated, and most of the people who know that name- Have moved on to a higher plane, but that was Rabbi J- J.J. Hefets shul, was a shamash over there. And, uh, he was l- he was a shochet, he knew shechita.

12:22 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

12:22 Speaker 1 He learned that along the way, so he did that. And, uh, he was learning, uh, to be a printer. Well, he was... He knew the rudiments, and he was, he was doing the linotyping in different printing houses. He was doing the typesetting. T- think of it as sitting in front of a computer typing, but it was a linotype machine, which is a different machine. And the Rebbe encouraged him at, in 1952 or '53, uh, "Why don't you open your own business? W- why are you working for other people?" Uh, so he says, "To, to open a business, you need capital to start. I have nothing, you know. I have a wife, I have three children, and I work hard to make ends meet." So the Rebbe said, "I'll be a partner with you." He said, "Yeah? In that case, uh, let's talk." And the Rebbe gave, I don't know, the value of $5,000, um, in 1953 in today's dollars, but he gave him $5,000. And they have a contract and a partnership that every year after all bills are paid and the accountant comes up with the, uh, what are the a- the profits for the year, they took, wrote a check of, I, I believe, I believe it was 33% of whatever, uh, it, it wasn't 50, and I don't think it was 25. I believe it was 33%, was wr- brought to the Rebbe's office. It wasn't the Rebbe personally, it was the, the institution.

14:15 Speaker 2 Right.

14:15 Speaker 1 Merchez or g- whichever one it was, I don't know. And that's how it stayed throughout all the years. In fact, at 10 years after my father passed away and I was involved in selling the building in Brownsville, which is now a very decrepit neighborhood, but-

14:41 Speaker 2 It's coming back.

14:42 Speaker 1 Yeah, it's coming back now, but, uh, that's gentrification. And, and it wasn't a lot of profit, but there was some pr- some profit. I brought a check to Rabbi Krinsky and with a note. "By accepting this check, you absolve Rav Mordechai Schusterman from any debts, past, present, or future," uh, 'cause he had been in heaven already for a few years. And so it, it was an investment and, but it was an investment i- in, in a printing pr- uh, an, an, i- in a printing company. Uh, and my father did a lot of printing for kahas, for Merchez, for their activity. A lot of seforim. He printed a lot of mamarim, a lot of other seforim. And, uh, they got paid back on their investment.

15:30 Speaker 2 Hmm. What a story. What a story. So amidst all the, um, amidst all that, you're growing up, and you said you had, you, you had two siblings?

15:42 Speaker 1 I, I had-

15:43 Speaker 2 By that time, yes

15:44 Speaker 1 ... when I, when I came to America, I had two older sisters, and my parents gave birth to three other girls after that. Um, which, um, uh, one, one had passed away, unfortunately young. Great, a great woman, my younger sister, Nechama Greisman. Won't elaborate on her right now, but she was a g- a great educator and mensch, and with many mushpa'im, many students, and who she mentored and made into menschen.

16:21 Speaker 2 Right.

16:22 Speaker 1 Um, and, um, I have a sister, Wolf, Peggy Wolf in Eretz Yisrael. And the youngest sister is Zisel Berkowitz, lives in Crown Heights still. And Mrs. Nemanub, who lives in Crown Heights. And my eldest sister, Leah Klein, Rabbi Klein, a"h, his wife.

16:41 Speaker 2 All right. So what was it like, um, in your memory, what was it like growing up in Crown Heights back then? W- the years where you grew up, you must have been growing up, you were a boy in the youths, I suppose?

16:57 Speaker 1 I was born in-

16:58 Speaker 2 You were a bo- a boy in the youths.

17:00 Speaker 1 I was a boy in the youths, but I lived in East Flatbush.

17:02 Speaker 2 And you were a bachur in the chutz.

17:04 Speaker 1 And I was a bachur in the chutz. In the end, uh, my bar mitzvah was chaf beis, so after chaf beis I was a bachur maybe.

17:13 Speaker 2 Right. Well, I mean-

17:13 Speaker 1 I was, I was in 770 from, from chaf daled until taf shin lamed. Those were my years.

17:21 Speaker 2 Six years you spent in 770?

17:23 Speaker 1 Chaf he, chaf vas, chaf zayin, chaf tes. One year I was in Montreal, but that was six or seven years. Yeah.

17:29 Speaker 2 So what was it like back then? How do you remember those years?

17:33 Speaker 1 I remember them as warm, wonderful, to be in a cocoon of joy and holiness, uh, fabrengens, learning. Um, it was wonderful. It was just, you know, if ever in my adolescent years or my bachurim's years, because I was still an adolescent then, um, if ever I had a thought What's going on in the outside world, and we weren't, uh, sheltered. At the age of 17, I started going out. They-- We-- They didn't have much time like they have it today.

18:22 Speaker 2 Right.

18:22 Speaker 1 But we-- I would go out, you know, when, when they were doing a program in a college. They needed some young- younger energy to help move the benches and set the tables and hang out. So I saw what was going on. I saw-

18:35 Speaker 2 This was, this was, uh, with Rabbi Baumgarten?

18:38 Speaker 1 Uh, not with Rabbi Baumgarten. No, I didn't... He was o- he was a different group, but it was later. Uh, I remember I went to Schmukler, uh, Yisroel Schmukler when he came to Milwaukee. He-- I was still a bachur, and he was a few years older than me. So, uh, on Hanukkah, we would go, uh, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, I think, if I got that geography right.

19:04 Speaker 2 Right.

19:04 Speaker 1 I remember dr- coming back. It was snowing. It was one o'clock in the morning, and, uh, they were gonna drop me off at home, and I said: "Let's just swing by seven seventy," which is not far from where I lived. They drove by seven seventy. It wasn't-- There weren't a thousand bachurim outside, but the rabbi's room was lit up. He was doing yechidas. And I said: "Here I am so proud that I went for one night to do a pobra, and the rabbi does this three times a week, uh, day-- week in, week out, month in, month out." And I would... You know, again, though as, as a, as a young man was thinking. Um, but, but get back-- getting back to the thought, if I ever thought that it, it... There's great stuff out there, I came to the conclusion this is the best place to be, and, uh, I haven't changed my mind yet.

20:03 Speaker 2 You haven't changed your mind that it was a great place to be?

20:06 Speaker 1 That this is the best place to be, the best place physically, and the best place to be, uh, situationally in the world of Chabad, in the world of Yiddishkeit.

20:19 Speaker 2 Hmm. This year marks seventy-five years since Yud Shvat and the first Basse LeGani. If you're looking for an event that is memorable, meaningful, and affordable, let me recommend This World Is a Garden, a film and live concert production created by us here at Uvlah Media, inspired by Basse LeGani, the first Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Basse LeGani is something that we think about and talk about a lot. And in this production, we use the power of cinematic filmmaking and a live concert by a string quartet to bring the beauty of Basse LeGani 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 on 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. It's interesting that, um, uh, there's a language of nostalgia or... I mean, nostalgia in general is like the-- is the k- is a way of making-- romanticizing the past, making the past seem like it was perfect. And you seem to be using that kind of language to describe a past, but not in a nostalgic way. You're, you're s- you're using it

21:59 Speaker 2 to describe it in a matter-of-fact way. Does it ever-- Do you ever wonder if it , if it... No. Or, or may-maybe just to, you know, uh, I, I may-- I don't know why I have to doubt that. I, I don't think I'm, I'm going to doubt that. I'm just, I'm pointing out that it's, uh, it's, it's interesting.

22:20 Speaker 1 Well, first of all, I'm a very ma-matter-of-factly guy.

22:24 Speaker 2 Right.

22:24 Speaker 1 I'm not-

22:25 Speaker 2 That's what, that's why it strikes me.

22:26 Speaker 1 I am not a romantic.

22:27 Speaker 2 That's what strikes me about it.

22:29 Speaker 1 Yeah. I am not a romantic, and so I, I judge everything in a practical way. I remember reading an article, oh, so many years ago from one of the, uh, the Rabbonim of Far Chabad who learned in Lubavitch, in Lubavitch, uh, Lubavitch de Lubavitch in, when was it? In the nineteen hundreds. The, the... And the title of the article was "Yemei Ohr VaKedusha." And here it was a man sixty years after that, and he was reflecting on the days of light and holiness which set him up for life. And, uh, uh, I relate to that. You know, that's a perfect term. It was enlightenment and, uh, holiness. I'm not a holy guy. I'm a down-to-earth, excuse the expression, meat and potatoes guy, but it was a holy time, and I hold on to that to the best of my ability. But, um-

23:41 Speaker 2 How do you hold on to it?

23:45 Speaker 1 Uh, that's my anchor.

23:47 Speaker 2 No, how do you hold on?

23:49 Speaker 1 By living as a Jew with a joy and enthusiasm. The joy and enthusiasm comes from that, from there.

23:58 Speaker 2 Hmm.

23:59 Speaker 1 And it's reinforced every day by doing what we do as Jews. But the spirit, the spirit, the battery absorbed the energy in those years.

24:11 Speaker 2 Hmm.

24:12 Speaker 1 And I'm drawing on that battery, and maybe, like, there's an alternator someplace that gives back to the battery so I can draw on it again tomorrow. But those are the years, and those are... And I tell it to my grandchildren at their bar mitzvahs, "You have the next ten years of your life can be and should be the best years of your life. Whatever you will accomplish from the age of thirteen till twenty-three will give you the focus and purpose of your life. Use it well."

24:43 Speaker 2 How, how does that work, though, in your mind? How does that work, though, that we... You know, they say the famous line, "Youth is wasted on the young." Um, although I think that's overly cynical, um, and, and more a statement about older people, uh, giving up than it is about, about like, you know, the young people didn't do anything wrong by being young. Um, but how do you make sense of the fact that the foundation of life, the way you're describing it, are the years where you are least wise in terms of experience, um, least wise really in any, in terms of anything. You're not mature. Your, your, your brain is still forming. You're, you're, you're occupied with things that are objectively silly, especially looking back. H-how does... How is that a foundation that isn't terribly lopsided, right? Like, if you, if you make the foundation of something narrower than the rest of the body, it's gonna tip, tip over. So how... Like, in your mind, how do you, how do you make sense of the fact that the, the most innocent, least tested, least, least, least, uh, heavy, or least, uh, le- the years with the least gravitas are also the years of foundation of a person's life? How, how's it supposed to work?

26:12 Speaker 3 Um, I would say precisely for the reasons that you question it, those are the reasons that it works that way. Uh, if you put a 30-year-old man into a yeshiva, uh, he would be questioning and challenging whatever is going on, uh, with or without cynicism, and he would take it in intellectually, emotionally, he would take it in into a finished product that he is. The 13-year-old to the 23-year-old, to the 20... Th-th-those 10 years, you are not a mensh yet. You're just being formed, and you're being formed with the, it... And ta- and absorb-- you're absorbent, and this is your joy, and this is your, what your mind is filled with, and this is what your heart is filled with, and this is what your, your f- the, the farbrengens, uh, is a joyous event. The farbrengens, the surreptitious farbrengens underground without the elders, and a little bottle of mashke. And you talk about real things. It wasn't... It, it w- it was, it w- it was growing up time. We grew up with this, and then suddenly you're 23, and they're talking about getting married, and you say, "These 10 years made me who I am," and that's who you will be for the rest of your life. Lahavdo. I'll give you two examples. Lahavdo. People go to college for four years.

27:58 Speaker 2 Right.

28:00 Speaker 3 And they are proud of that, and, and th-they don't get... They get knowledge, hopefully. I don't know what, uh-

28:07 Speaker 2 Sometimes. Sometimes.

28:09 Speaker 3 In the last decades, I don't know. But I'm assuming in the, in the six... '50s and '60s they did.

28:15 Speaker 2 Uh.

28:15 Speaker 3 But... And that gave them-

28:17 Speaker 2 You heard, you heard of the hippies?

28:19 Speaker 3 I heard of them, yeah. They, they rebelled. Uh, but that theoretically gave them the, uh, the framework for who they are. Think of n-newlyweds. The difference between people who get married, uh, uh, in their 40s and 50s, and people who get married in their early 20s as it is in, in... used to be in traditional circles, whether Jews or Gentiles. Uh, two, in terms of marriage, incomplete people, not yet finalized-

28:54 Speaker 2 Right

28:54 Speaker 3 ... and in their first and second and third years of marriage, they get, they finalize who they are with each other. That creates a bond for life. I'm using that as an example for the 10 years that's, uh, from bar mitzvah until marriage at, um, which is roughly those 10 years.

29:14 Speaker 2 No, it's a, it's a, it's a very compelling answer. The, the, the, the, the, the question that that leads me to or the thought that that leads me to, and this is, I think, directly connected to your book or the w-w, um... It's directly connected to, to, to, to what you write about in your book, is that, you know, the, the... Yes, there's a, there's an, the, there's, there's an ability to form, uh, w- an un- an unfinished object in a way that you cannot form a finished object, right? When the clay is still wet and, uh, and soft, it's malleable. Once you put it in the furnace, the only way to break it, «שברתו לצור ולטפנו» You're gonna have to break... You're gonna have to, to fa- to, to shape it, you're gonna have to break it. Um, uh, that's very compelling. But there's also just a fact that, uh, as a result of that, that our foundation is built on innocence and naiveté almost, and, and, and unfinished, untested material. How does that become the foundation of a life that is tested? Is, is, is, is, is, is, is brutalized? And by brutalized, I mean the opposite of naive. H-how, how, how does that work?

30:41 Speaker 3 Again, first of all, if you're talking about the book, you should say what w- what, what, what... I didn't write a book about brutality.

30:52 Speaker 2 No, you wrote a book about suffering.

30:53 Speaker 3 But people don't know what you're talking about.

30:56 Speaker 2 Yes. Why, why don't you describe the book?

30:59 Speaker 3 Do you have a copy of the book nearby?

31:01 Speaker 2 It's, it's... I think it's in the car.

31:03 Speaker 3 Okay. Uh- Now it, now it... Let, let me answer your question, and then we'll get to the book.

31:11 Speaker 2 Sure.

31:12 Speaker 3 The, the, as you said, when the clay is soft, that's when you can form it, and once it's formed, that's when, where it's f- it's formed, and it gets its strength. Uh, a- and it's hardened, whether it's f- forming, uh, um, wooden, uh, utensils out of soft wood, which is still pliable, or clay. Um, but once it's hardened, it's strong in that particular form. Uh, when you're young... And, and the subject of life, the subject is life. And life means how to deal with the challenges of life. Uh, for the Jew, one of the ways you deal with the challenges li- of life is with an, a de- an, an awareness that life is not random. Life isn't... When-- I'll get into the book soon, so the, what I'm saying now will make a little bit more sense. People who go through challenges, and difficult challenges and tragedies can see themselves as victims. And once you're defined as, to yourself, as a victim, um, you can easily get sidetracked in many different less than blessed directions. Uh, but if you have a framework and a relationship with God, and I'm not talking like a prophet or, you know, in a, in a highly spiritual way, but in a down-to-earth, matter-of-factly way.

33:10 Speaker 2 Right.

33:10 Speaker 3 Living as a Jew on Rosh Hashanah at Ko- uh, at the re- sounding of the Shofar and Yom Kippur at Kol Nidre and at Neilah is perhaps the highest, most spiritual time for the Jew, uh, in the year. Not to forget about Simchat Torah, when you're spiritually high s- in a spiritual sense and in the physical, spiritual sense when you say a couple of l'chaim. But those are the high points. But Tuesday afternoon on a reg- uh, in middle of November, uh, is... You're dealing with business things, with all sorts of issues. Um, but that God can be real to you in middle of the day on an ongoing basis is formed with when you have a relationship with God. And these twen- these 10 years is where you get formed as a person and as a Jew and in your relationship with God. Not, again, I'm not a romantic. Uh, I would refer to myself more as an observant Jew than a spiritual Jew. Uh, but I... In other words, there are s- spiritual people who are observant, and there are observant Jews who are spiritual. I am more on the observant side who has spirituality, but I don't consider myself a spiritual Jew, even though I've learned about the spirit. And learning Chassidus is all about the spirit, but I still am a down-to-earth person.

34:52 Speaker 2 But those, but-

34:53 Speaker 3 But it was formed during those years.

34:55 Speaker 2 So, so to give a little bit of background about your book, from what I gathered from it, is that you s- you, you wrote this book as a... It seems like you s- it's, you write at the beginning that it took you 30 years to write it.

35:09 Speaker 3 It took me 30 years to get it out, yes.

35:11 Speaker 2 To get it out. So you, you've been working on it for many, many years. And, uh, from what I can tell f- from reading it is that it's, you're, it's like almost a memoir in a way, or a, a, a recap of your processing, um-

35:30 Speaker 3 The death of my wife

35:31 Speaker 2 ... the death of your-

35:31 Speaker 3 Of my first wife

35:32 Speaker 2 ... of your first wife.

35:34 Speaker 3 And-

35:34 Speaker 2 And, and the death-

35:34 Speaker 3 I had remarried happily, Baruch Hashem. I don't want people to-- I've had people give me condolences after a lecture if I didn't say that.

35:41 Speaker 2 Okay.

35:42 Speaker 3 So thank, thank God.

35:43 Speaker 2 Right. You write about that in your book, too.

35:45 Speaker 3 Yeah.

35:46 Speaker 2 But you, you a- but it, it's not, you, right, like you write right at the beginning, it's not just about the death of your first wife. It's also about the near death or the temporary death or the shattering of your faith as well. Uh, or-

36:01 Speaker 3 The, the, the challenge and stresses to my faith, yes.

36:04 Speaker 2 I think you write a little bit sharper in the book.

36:06 Speaker 3 Yeah.

36:07 Speaker 2 Don't you?

36:07 Speaker 3 Uh, the, the, the... What did you call that? The, the writer's license.

36:13 Speaker 2 Yeah. Uh, so I mean-

36:15 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah

36:15 Speaker 2 ... you, you, you don't, you don't mince many words in the book. Um, you don't mince many words in the book, and I haven't read all of it. I, I only, I only started reading it last night, but, uh, I read a big chunk of it. And, um, and one of the things that you, you grapple with in the book is that you thought you had it all figured out, you know. You were, you, at the time, you were a rabbi, um, for a bunch of years. You had obviously gone to yeshiva for many years like we've been talking about here, and you had spent so many of those years doing what a rabbi does in moments of a congregation, a congregant's grief, uh, mourning, whatever it is that they're dealing with. You know, of course, you spend wonderful, joyous times with your community, but you also have to be there when it's tough. And you write how you, you thought you had all the answers and how when it c- when it hit you You realize that those answers were-- they weren't wrong, but I mean, you go through in the book how you process the difference, but, uh, uh, that, that you, you were, you were, you had been giving them in a more intellectual way when really it's much more complicated and, and, and, and beyond words. It's not, it's not a logical kind of thing it-- that, that needs to be addressed.

37:37 Speaker 3 My religiosity went through a stress test.

37:40 Speaker 2 Yes.

37:41 Speaker 3 Right? That, that, that's the truth.

37:43 Speaker 2 Right.

37:44 Speaker 3 And thank God, uh, it came out intact.

37:48 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem. But my question is, maybe we'll go a little bit-- we'll go soon a little bit into the details of, of the book and the details of your, of your thinking on the matter.

37:56 Speaker 3 Let me just mention the name of the book and the subtitle.

37:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

37:59 Speaker 3 Uh, as long as we're doing this, we might as well make a plug. The name of the-

38:03 Speaker 2 No, I'm also gonna put it at the bottom of the podcast. I'm not, I'm not trying to hide it.

38:06 Speaker 3 Yeah. The name of the book is Why God Why?

38:09 Speaker 2 Why God Why?

38:10 Speaker 3 The subtitle is How to Believe in Heaven When It Hurts Like Hell.

38:15 Speaker 2 Yeah.

38:16 Speaker 3 And I got hell for putting in the word hell. Some publishers didn't want to touch it. They were super religious.

38:21 Speaker 2 Who published it? I didn't know who published it.

38:23 Speaker 3 Uh, the first time it was published by Kehos. The second time it was published by Gefen, and-

38:28 Speaker 2 So they both ended up doing it?

38:30 Speaker 3 Yeah. But, uh, it, it... I can, uh, I can say publicly, Kehos had me put it under a different imprint, not because of the word hell, but because I insisted that God's be spelled G-O-D rather than G hyphen D.

38:51 Speaker 2 And why? And why was that?

38:52 Speaker 3 'Cause Kehos-- Why did I want it?

38:54 Speaker 2 Yes.

38:55 Speaker 3 Yeah. Kehos has a high standard, and it, it is certainly halakhically permissible, but, uh, Kehos has its standard, and it do- didn't want to compromise the standard. And I wanted my, m- my book with a hyphen on the cover would brand it as a book of a right-wing charedi-

39:17 Speaker 2 Uh-huh

39:17 Speaker 3 ... and it would make it off limits for the, for my target audience.

39:24 Speaker 2 I thought you were gonna say that writing God with a hyphen kind of undermines your entire thesis of your book, which is that God has to be immediate. You have, you have to grapple with God. You cannot hyphenate God. You cannot, uh... Hy- hyphenating God is already abstracting God-

39:45 Speaker 3 Yeah

39:45 Speaker 2 ... by definition. That's what I thought you were gonna say.

39:48 Speaker 3 No. One of the commentaries says that, but not me.

39:51 Speaker 2 All right. This is my future shirt. This is my gloss on the book.

39:55 Speaker 3 Okay.

39:55 Speaker 2 You could keep it for the next edition. Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening ten years ago, Yuvala Media has pushed the boundaries of artistic and thoughtful storytelling in the community with an insistence on there always being a memorable story as well as a beautiful and striking visual image that we believe is second to none. Over the years, we have worked with Chabad organizations around the country, as well as large organizations like Bonialo, Torah Mesora, and Athalathon, guided by the belief that your story is absolutely worth telling with depth and creativity. If you are looking to tell your story with a video, please reach out to us at hello@yuvalamedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalamedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the podcast. But before we go into the details of the book, 'cause I, I like how the conversation kind of led into this, is how do you, h-how do you, how do you, how do you see it in your own experience the... H-how... Yes, you, you use the, the mashal of, or, or we, we came to the mashal of, of the clay that's being formed, but the clay is, is hardened by the, by the furnace, right? The clay is hardened by the brutality of fire and brutality of heat. Um, but, you know, the soft clay that's easy to form is, is actually not, not tested at all and

41:31 Speaker 2 not hardened at all. How is that the foundation in your mind that... But let, let me take a step back to explain to you why I'm asking this question. You know, I actually had this debate once with somebody, and, and that, you know, h-his argument was yeshiva is, like, basically turning, like, boiling water till, till, till the hottest you can possibly boil, and the rest of life is basically watching that water-

41:55 Speaker 3 Cool off

41:56 Speaker 2 ... gradually cool. And the goal of education or the goal of avodah in yeshiva is to get so hot that h- that, that it basically stays at least lukewarm till the very end. And I found that, like, ridiculous. Like, and no, and I, and I mean it seriously even now. Um, I don't, I don't say that for effect. I feel like, I mean, you're saying that you get one shot at it when you're younger, and the rest of your life is just this, uh, almost paranoid state of hoping that it doesn't cool down too soon before, be- you know, bef- like, earlier than, earlier than necessary, and you're just watching with horror as, as everything just slips away. I mean, aren't you g- and aren't you getting older? It's like somebody who works out and gets into ter- terrific shape when they're younger, and the rest of his life hopes that he just doesn't decompose to, you know, beyond, beyond repair before it's too late. Like, you have all these years ahead of you. Why don't you stay healthy? Why don't you get stronger? Why don't you get more hot? Why don't you get... So I guess that's my question. You know, how, how, how do you understand the, the, the early years being a s- a, a, a worthy foundation of an entire life that has so much more that's gonna come your way, both positive and, w-without question, hardship? How do you see it?

43:18 Speaker 3 So-

43:18 Speaker 2 Is it a fair question?

43:19 Speaker 3 Very fair question. So I, I a- addressed it, uh, in, in a minor way. Uh, I'll accentuate it now, uh, when I said that, uh, you charge up when you're a bachur and in those 10 years, and after that, you live as a Jew. And I mentioned the word alternator.

43:44 Speaker 2 You did.

43:45 Speaker 3 And, and, and, and I mean that because what you're doing all the time as an adult Jew living with Judaism is you are recharging the battery, and the battery is charging you. Not-- You're not gonna becoming a bachur again. You're not going back to yeshiva again, but it is the same energy that you are touching. And yes, people work out in their teens, and those are the strong years, and some people after that become couch potatoes, and other people keep working out. I, I worked out 30 years a few times a week every morning, uh, in a gym, and I attribute my, uh, good looks , my, my, uh, my mental health and my physical health to those 30 years. I got knocked off by COVID, which for two years you couldn't go any, uh... But yes, you need... The, the jock needs to continue working out to be healthy. He's not gonna be a jock again, uh, but he's going to continue being healthy. If he drops off, he loses it. You can, you can drop out of Judaism anytime. You can drop out at 20, 30, 40, 60. You can j- But, uh, if you're keep active in it, it keeps revitalizing itself within you. And in relation to the question, um, you gave the analogy of, of, of wood or, or of, uh, clay that gets hard. But, uh, there are other materials, uh, the heart. The heart, uh, goes through a stress test. You go to the doctor, you're not feeling

45:38 Speaker 3 well. He gives you a... He hooks you up with all those wires, and you run on a treadmill, and he's testing you, and the treadmill goes up and goes down, and it tests you to see how strong your heart is. And you find out, in that case, you find out your heart either is flawed and you need to start taking medicine or have surgery, Hashem, Hashem shalom, or your heart is good and just, uh, less salt, less alcohol, and less, uh, food, and you'll be just fine. Uh, I could say, I don't know if I accentuate, accentuated it in the book, uh, I am a stronger Jew after my trials and tribulations than before in the context of my religion hadn't been tested to that level. So I can coast at a certain comfortable, uh, I'm not going to say casual, but I will use the term casual in relation to, uh, the deeper relationship that I got after I went through what I went through and remained who I was.

46:59 Speaker 2 So how, so how is it a foundation then of, of, of, of... How is the, the youth a foundation of what comes later in that, in that it allowed you to, to-

47:10 Speaker 3 It gave-

47:11 Speaker 2 ... to, to, to, to figure it out?

47:14 Speaker 3 It gave me the... Well, first of all, in, in being the kind of Jew that I am, number one, I, I had integrated my faith and relationship with God. These are emotional words. I also studied and had to the extent that a 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23-year-old American yeshiva bachur can have an intellectual understanding of God and Hasidus, Hasidus Chabad is, is a rich place to understand God. And when you h- have that understanding and you have the emotional connection, uh, y- you have a friend. You know, the, the... I don't-

48:10 Speaker 2 Oh, what, what do you mean you have a friend?

48:12 Speaker 3 God, God is your friend. And I wasn't... I felt jilted by my friend. I f- I didn't not believe in God. I never lost my relationship with God, but I, "Why God, why?" is a statement. "God, we're friends. Why did you allow this to happen to me?" Or more appropriately, "Why did you do this to me?" Um, and, and what do you do then? What do you do when you feel jilted or betrayed by a friend?

48:53 Speaker 2 Where did you... At the time, where did you, um... What was your recourse wh- when, when, when, when that happened, when, you know, you lose... You, you write in the book that your wife passed away quite suddenly on a Sunday morning. Wh- where, where, where, where does your... Like, w- I guess when the dust settles and you take care of what you ha... You know, the, the, the, there, there are things that are forced on you, what you have to deal with, wh- where, where do you, where, where do you go? Like, what's... Th- there's, there's no, there's no path. You, you, you couldn't have been planning for this. There's no path. There's no precedent for it, really. Where do you go? You, you'll, you go back to your youth? You go back to the people who taught you in your youth? Like, where, where do you go?

49:45 Speaker 3 Mm. The past, that those, those years had passed, but I, I went to myself.

49:55 Speaker 2 Immediately, that was the first place?

50:00 Speaker 3 I'm my best, I'm my own best... Modern psych- pop psychology says b- you're your, be your own best friend.

50:07 Speaker 2 Right.

50:07 Speaker 3 I went to myself. I went to the books. I spoke, I, I spoke to some seniors, discussed with them, older people. I-

50:16 Speaker 2 By that you mean o- other Hasidim?

50:18 Speaker 3 Other Hasidim. And I spoke to, uh, I, I went to some therapists. I went to a therapist. I talk about it in the book.

50:27 Speaker 2 When was this? What, what year was this? I don't think you wrote which-

50:29 Speaker 3 This was 1986.

50:34 Speaker 2 You didn't go to the Rebbe with it?

50:36 Speaker 3 I wrote letters. I wrote to the Rebbe, and I got a- answers from the Rebbe. But the, the answers from the Rebbe, candidly, uh, I, I don't know if I write it, uh, clearly in the book, uh, were not satisfactory to me where I was at that time. In retrospect, I can understand it better later, but at that time, um, uh, I poured my heart out to the Rebbe.

51:04 Speaker 2 What did you write? 'Cause it's not like you can ask for a bracha here.

51:07 Speaker 3 No, I, I just laid out, this was, my wife passed away, uh, in, 10 days before Pesach, and I had been scheduled to speak at the N she Convention the week before Shavuot, which was I guess seven weeks later. And, uh-

51:28 Speaker 2 In Crown Heights

51:29 Speaker 3 ... in Crown Heights. And I lived in Long Beach, California. I had to decide to cancel or t- or to continue, and I end up- ended up going to New York, speaking for the convention.

51:43 Speaker 2 And for people that don't reali- uh, that don't know, you had 11 children, right? Or 12 children.

51:47 Speaker 3 Uh, 11.

51:48 Speaker 2 11 children at the time.

51:49 Speaker 3 11 that I'm aware of, yeah.

51:53 Speaker 2 All right, Koshi, I'm sorry about that. El- el- 11 children that, that you... And very young.

52:00 Speaker 3 Uh-

52:00 Speaker 2 So, so for you to, my point is for you to go to New York with 11 children-

52:04 Speaker 3 And I didn't go. I went by myself.

52:06 Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying.

52:07 Speaker 3 Yeah.

52:07 Speaker 2 That, that, that, that, that, that was just another big consideration, big part of the consideration.

52:12 Speaker 3 Yeah, the, the practical considerations and the emotional considerations.

52:17 Speaker 2 Right.

52:17 Speaker 3 Um, but I, I did go, and I did speak, and I paid tribute to my wife in the talk. It, it, uh, the, the theme of the talk had to do with my wife's name, which was Rochel, and her name was Rochel Leah, Rachel Leah, and, uh, I spoke about what those names mean and how she lived that, and how it's relevant to the, the Jewish world of 1986 and '87.

52:53 Speaker 2 Right.

52:54 Speaker 3 Yes.

52:54 Speaker 2 Right.

52:55 Speaker 3 So, so I, uh, you know, instead of, instead of running away from it, I used it as a, as a s- s- springboard for a positive thing, difficult as it may have been.

53:10 Speaker 2 That was a choice you made immediately?

53:13 Speaker 3 I, it took me a week or two to decide that, to weigh, to weigh the pros and cons.

53:20 Speaker 2 A- and, and the, and the Rebbe, uh, you wrote to the Rebbe what?

53:23 Speaker 3 So then, then, I can tell you that if, as a as the hardworking director of a school and a, a father of 11 children, married to a wonderful wife, uh, I never had enough hours in the day and the night to accomplish what I needed. After my wife passed away, I needed 48 hours.

53:49 Speaker 2 Sure.

53:50 Speaker 3 I had to, uh, cram 48 hours in 24 hours. I had no, no time to, to think some, some days. I just had to keep doing things for the school, for the family. Uh, uh, I don't wanna go back there. Uh, but when I came to New York, I was there for three days. I had a chance to think, and I wrote what I had to w- uh, I wrote out what was going on. I'd written before also, but they were more crypted. Um, and the Rebbe's answer was a classic Lubavitcher Rebbe. When a person gives a person a mission, he certainly gives him all the ability that he needs to, to fulfill the mission properly, including joyously, and even if it includes doing the job, including the job of a mother. In other words, the Rebbe said, like a, like a great coach, "You can do it. You can do it all." Um, I wanted sympathy, I wanted empathy, I wanted... And I, I got marching orders, and, uh-

55:13 Speaker 2 You didn't want an explanation?

55:15 Speaker 3 No. I, I did not want an explanation. I was a rabbi for many years already.

55:26 Speaker 2 Right.

55:26 Speaker 3 And I, I knew that what passes as an answer, I knew. And, and if you read the book... And I wanna say, the book is not a memoir, even though it's structured in some ways as a memoir. It is a book about faith and trust in God and how you can hold onto it through hell and high water. Uh-

55:54 Speaker 2 I, I, I meant memoir only in the sense that y- it, it, it details your wrestling with it.

55:58 Speaker 3 Yeah.

55:59 Speaker 2 So you're, you're not writing it as a third person- ... account. It's r- there is a first-person element. That's what I meant by-

56:05 Speaker 3 Correct. Good, good. Okay. And it is, it does have elements of memoir, yeah. But, um, so the, but the Rebbe, uh, in r- in retrospect, it took me years to come to that perspective, that the Rebbe had more confidence in me than I had in myself. I reverted back in some ways to, uh, uh, I wimped for a while, and the Rebbe said, "Come on, you're not a wimp. You're a man. You can do this. You can do it all."

56:41 Speaker 2 As we approach the two-year mark of this podcast, Homesick 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. Let me ask you a question. You'll tell me if you're, if you're okay talking about this topic or not. How do you think the Rebbe processed grief?

57:23 Speaker 3 How do I think how the Rebbe processed grief? If I knew how the Rebbe processed grief, I would probably be the Rebbe. But-

57:32 Speaker 2 So what do you... Let me ask a question differently. What do you know about how the Rebbe processed grief?

57:38 Speaker 3 What I know about the Rebbe's processing grief, generally speaking, there are, uh, what I myself have read well over 100 different sources where the Rebbe speaks about grief, little grief and Holocaust grief, and private letters to people and public letters and public farbrengens. Um, and generally, a- and the most, uh, the, the hardest lesson about grief is when after the attack in 1956 in Kfar Chabad, when five students and their teachers were killed by the Fedayeen, by the, the early terrorists. Uh, Kfar Chabad was not that far from the then border of Israel, and they were killed, and the Rebbe was silent. That was 1956. Uh, the Rebbe's public persona was, the Rebbe's public persona had not yet expanded internationally, uh, but it was still the Rebbe, and he-

58:55 Speaker 2 Um-

58:55 Speaker 3 ... he was the man, and it was surprising. And later, the Rebbe explained at a later time, he didn't say much. He just said, uh, it was something like, "And Aaron, Aaron was silent." "Vayidom Aharon" when his two sons died at the inauguration of the tabernacle. Uh, I would say, I may pay a price for this, I would say that the Rebbe was human, too. And he pr- uh, I know... I'm gonna interrupt myself for a moment with a little gesture from the Rebbe, a gesture, a physical gesture. Um, Rabbi Klein, the Rebbe's secretary, was my brother-in-law. When I took my wife to the hospital, yes, it was a sunny Southern California Sunday morning, and she was... I, I'm not gonna go... The, read the book. This is gonna-- I'll leave the people on a cliffhanger, so they'll get the book. Um, so, um, and when she, when I s- needed to take her to the hospital immediately-

1:00:21 Speaker 2 And you didn't see it coming at all?

1:00:22 Speaker 3 Uh, the, the, whatever it was, and today, uh, in retrospect, we know what it was, and there was, there was nothing there to come. There was nothing, uh... Probably, if they would've, uh, monitored her and given, tested her, they wouldn't have found anything either, and they only figured things out in retrospect.

1:00:47 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:00:48 Speaker 3 Um, but, um, um, so when I took her to the hospital, and they took her into the, um, be- behind the, into the emergency room, and they kept me outside. I called my brother-in-law. I said, "Please tell the Rebbe, um, um, that something is really wrong," but I c- I couldn't say anything more other than she passed out and she's in the emergency room without any framework. And he did, and, uh, it must have been 45 minutes later that I called back to my brother-in-law. I said, "Please tell the Rebbe that she passed away." And he went into the Rebbe. The Rebbe knew her, and the Rebbe knew me, and the Rebbe knew my parents, and the Rebbe knew her parents. Uh, he was like-- I won't say he was like an uncle, but he knew us all. He knew us. Uh, he was particularly close to my wife's parents, um, the Deitsch family. Um, and, and my brother-in-law demonstrated to me the Rebbe's response. He says the Rebbe was standing. He lifted up his hands- You know, without saying the word why. He said why a second time, and he threw down his hands in, in disgust. Uh, and you can f- put in whatever words you use to express that the Rebbe, uh, uh, acted it out. That wasn't an answer. That was a frustration. Uh, we- we've heard the Rebbe after the... Mrs. Lupine was murdered in Crown Heights, and the Rebbe spoke about it publicly, and he was crying and yelling

1:02:49 Speaker 3 and screaming, and he, he was deeply sad and angry why this is happening. Could you say he was angry at God? Uh, you know, in, in, in Tehillim, uh, King David says he was angry at God. I think in Psalm six. Uh, yeah. That doesn't mean that you lose faith, but it means that your processing of that faith gets overloaded, and you don't have the, a framework with which to fit it into any neat box or any rationalization. We, we like... If, if, if... Do you believe that... Is there any intelligent person who believes that there's a good answer, a logical philosophical answer for all the suffering that the Jews have gone through for the last 3,000 years? There are rationalizations of an individual's situations after the fact, but a theology would have, would say, "Yeah, this is what's supposed to happen," you know?

1:04:14 Speaker 2 Isn't that the scariest part of-

1:04:18 Speaker 3 You're, you're, you're, you're getting closer to the ultimate thesis of my book. That's... We're, we're... All right. Yeah.

1:04:28 Speaker 2 Go ahead.

1:04:32 Speaker 3 A person has to process things in stages, emotionally, intellectually, and then there's faith. And faith means faith in a God who is not to be understood by humans.

1:04:53 Speaker 2 Right.

1:04:55 Speaker 3 That's putting it in an extremely oversimplified way. In the book, I have a chapter about it. The point is, uh-

1:05:05 Speaker 2 And, and-

1:05:06 Speaker 3 Can, can I lighten the, can I lighten the mood for a moment?

1:05:10 Speaker 2 It's your home.

1:05:11 Speaker 3 Yeah. My home. Uh, Groucho Marx said any country club that would have him as a member, he wouldn't want to join.

1:05:19 Speaker 2 Correct. Yeah.

1:05:20 Speaker 3 Any God that needed you and me, uh, to agree on how he's running the show-

1:05:27 Speaker 2 It's not worth believing

1:05:27 Speaker 3 ... is not worth believing in. Uh, I do believe God is real, and I do believe God is running the world, and I do believe that God cares about every human being, and God c- has a particular place in his, uh, spirit- in his godly heart for the Jewish people. And read the Chumash. In, in the Torah where God preordains these things and ultimately you have to come, the relationship has to transcend the human, your, your human mind, and it hurts. And you can have pain and hurt and anguish and anger and know, yes, this is from God, and I... Though I don't understand him and I can't accept any reason for this, but he knows what he's doing.

1:06:25 Speaker 2 I feel like, I feel like one of the... I feel like what lies at the heart of this is the false notion, I think it's false, that Chassidus is a theology of answers. Like, it, it g- it has, it has answers for everything because we have everything figured out. We know everything from the, you know, from the Avos, the Nesavim all the way at the top, and we, we can understand God himself, Atzmus Diane. Not maybe not understand him but, but we t-talk about Atzmus Diane all the way through, through the nitty-gritty of, of life itself. And what you're talking about, you know, that it's a... I mean, I- I'm still processing the story that you're talking about the Rebbe in the room, um, and the way that he reacted to it. You know, I don't, I don't know if Chassidus is, is a theology of answers. It s- seems to me that it, it's, it's more a theology of questions than it is of answers.

1:07:28 Speaker 3 I think, I think we... Human beings are rational people, and r- the rationale of being rational requires answers. But life is more than the mind. There's more to the, mmm, to life than what we can understand. And when you put that, and tying this all together in the- in theology, there are four words which I'm sure you're familiar with, I'm not sure all of your listeners are familiar with Tachlis hayedya shelo neda acha. The ultimate knowledge is the knowledge that we can't know you. We can know your function, we can know your Torah, we can know your guidance, we can know how to do the commandments, we can know the meaning of the commandments, we can know all the mystical understandings of the spiritual cosmos, but we can't know you. And there are some things that happens in this world come from the transcendent you. And a friend of mine who was interviewing me for a Hebrew Israeli magazine, uh, he knew English that, uh... And he skimmed through the book, and he interviewed me, wrote a nice interview. But he tells to me, "Just between me and you, why'd you write a book? Why didn't you just quote the Tanya, uh, chapter egere sakates semi yeralif? And, uh, there it says everything is from God, and God is good, and therefore everything is good, and da da." So I said two things. Number one, it would be a very small book. And two, in order to understand that, you have to read the other

1:09:40 Speaker 3 270 pages until you get to that. You can't just jump there. You have to build. To come to the understanding that God transcends understanding is either extremely s- simplistic or it is extremely profound. And if you build a structure of understanding, you can come to that, that understanding does not encompass everything. Or you can say, "Ah, God runs the world. Mm." And, uh, there are various phrases when, that people use when these things happen. I don't use those phrases, uh, but it, there's no deep understanding in that. It just happens. Um, so I'm trying to... Yeah, we, we do need answers, and we want answers, and it's important to have answers because if we don't have answers, we are not integrated. Then, then it's all rote or action, and, and we have bifurcated lives. We have the religious life, which you do things, and we have our other sensible life which lives in the outside world with its senses or its sensibilities. Uh, it's good to have Jewish answers to all of life's questions, but sometimes there are things that are beyond. Uh, they don't happen every day. Th- they don't happen to everybody, and they don't necessarily happen in every generation. Generation... E- e- every day we have little issues, little problems. Once in a while, we have a crisis. Tragedies are not that common, uh, f- for an individual. But, uh-

1:11:29 Speaker 2 So, so, so, so, so to pull it back to, to what we were talking earlier, we start off our life learning all the answers. But it's like, so that's a little bit what I'm getting at, the how, how it's almost like upside down, where we start off learning all the answers before we have any of the questions.

1:11:46 Speaker 3 We, we learn the answers to develop a relationship with God as a 13-year-old and as a 15-year-old and as a 19-year-old. Uh, that's... It, it, it gives us the answers for the structure of Judaism, for the structure of the Talmud, for the structure of studying Chumash and Tanakh. It gives us a structure, but ultimately what we're looking for, what, what ha- happens to us through that is we develop a real relationship with a living God that manifests himself through all these teachings. And some people become very spiritual, and some people become very observant. And they... As I said before, you can be observant and-

1:12:39 Speaker 2 It's not always, it's not always synonymous.

1:12:41 Speaker 3 Yeah, it's not always synonymous, but, you know, you should have a, uh, a balanced blend of the two. Uh, but that, none of that requires the transcendent relationship which when you are hit in your very core.

1:12:59 Speaker 2 But it has a seeds for it.

1:13:02 Speaker 3 But, but ultimately, if you have, um... I don't know if I mentioned this in the book, but it's like if a person has a good relationship with his father and mother, a- and I don't know which one is better for the analogy, and then something happens, uh, there's a crisis, and the parent does something to you or for you that you abhor, and you don't understand why it's happening. And you can either say, uh, I, I just-

1:13:51 Speaker 2 No, you write this in this b- you write this in the book.

1:13:53 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:13:54 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:13:55 Speaker 3 Uh, so, a- and but if you have, uh, you s-

1:13:57 Speaker 2 It's too painful, you have to... You basically have to let go. You have to decide that you're gonna let go of it and move on.

1:14:03 Speaker 3 No, y- y- you decide that you can't understand your father. I'm only six, or I'm only 10, and my father is a real person. He's taken care of me all of my life, and if he's doing something that makes no sense to me, uh, I have to trust him that he's doing the right thing.

1:14:25 Speaker 2 That's maybe something else that I read in the book.

1:14:26 Speaker 3 Yeah. Uh, and, and certainly with God, it, it is... You, you, you... To, to come to that ultimate acceptance, uh, is, is easier. Either you are pure, uh, spiritual, uh... And I think at the core, I would like to believe that at the core of every soul, there is that relationship. Uh, but it helps if you've developed that relationship over the years. And then when those things happen, you can put aside your feelings and say, "It's from God. God is not irrational. There must be some rationale, even though I have no human rationality, uh, way of processing it." Uh, it, it's pr- and I, I actually say in the book, I can't say-- I personally cannot say it's rational. I, I can accept that it's purposeful, even though I can show you chapter and verse where it has to be good. I accept that it is good, but I can't process that. I only process it is purposeful. Maybe someday, in this life or in the hereafter, I'll figure out what the purpose was and how it was even good.

1:15:56 Speaker 4 How do you reconcile the story that you've said of the Rebbe, which is still, um, I'm still processing it, um, the story of the Rebbe's response to what happened, and the answer that he gave you? They seem to be almost like, uh, they, they don't seem to match.

1:16:19 Speaker 3 I don't see why not. First of all, uh, uh, if... Again, it's hard for me to try to, uh, get into the Rebbe's head, but to the extent that we're allowing ourselves exploration, kv- the, the tragedy that happened in Kfar Chabad was the first real tragedy. Uh, n- it wasn't just a tragedy that, uh, affected, uh, was it five students and one or two of their teachers?

1:16:53 Speaker 4 I don't have the numbers, but something like that.

1:16:55 Speaker 3 Yeah. Uh, but, but it, but, but it was a, a, a... It was a challenge to the whole Chabad movement in Israel.

1:17:09 Speaker 4 Right. Especially that the Rebbe had been championing Kfar Chabad-

1:17:12 Speaker 3 He-

1:17:12 Speaker 4 And a lot... Ma-many people had wanted to leave.

1:17:14 Speaker 3 Yeah. It was hard. There were other incidents, but they were incidents, and this was a, a body blow.

1:17:22 Speaker 4 Right.

1:17:22 Speaker 3 And it was... And, and the Rebbe, as the head of Chabad, took it very personally.

1:17:29 Speaker 4 Right.

1:17:30 Speaker 3 And, um, a-and he needed to process it. I, you know, processing takes time. Uh, even, e-even a tzadik is, you know, uh, ha-has to process things, and he said, "Aaron was silent." It doesn't mean Aaron, uh, wasn't processing it. He was processing it. The Rebbe was processing it. And, and then the Rebbe came out with that, the, the punchline of his ultimate, uh, of his answer was, uh, that w-with the continuation, with the continuation of building the community, you will find comfort. Which, which is the same thing that we're saying now in, in Vanda in, in Australia and in, and in, uh, what happened in, uh, Thailand and what happened wh- in each... That is the ultimate answer. Uh, giving up or retreating is never an answer. Uh, again, if you believe that there's a purpose in what we're doing and that there's a God in charge, then while we have a question, why in the world did this happen? We don't have an answer, but we don't... We know the answer is not that we should withdraw. The answer is to fight back and fight back stronger. Uh, uh, you know, when it's a physical battle and when it's a spiritual battle, and these are physical, spiritual battles simultaneously. What the Rebbe was telling me as an individual, "I know it's a tragedy. I know it's a tragedy." And I didn't know f- what... Had the Rebbe processed m- the, the immediacy of my wife's passing with his gestures. Sometimes gestures, uh, str- uh,

1:19:27 Speaker 3 express things that cannot be put into words.

1:19:30 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

1:19:30 Speaker 3 And, and, and I, I f- I-- When I heard that from my brother-in-law, I was comforted by that.

1:19:35 Speaker 4 I was gonna ask you.

1:19:36 Speaker 3 I was com... But that gave me comfort, that the Rebbe himself did not process it and was-

1:19:48 Speaker 4 He was there with you.

1:19:49 Speaker 3 He was there with me. He was there with himself because he was-- he, he felt part of it.

1:19:55 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:19:55 Speaker 3 I, I know the Rebbe wasn't, wasn't a stranger to us and, and he processed it that way. Uh, but in terms of, um, um, um... I didn't ask what I should do. I was telling him a report. I was telling him, I poured out my heart, what's happening with this child, what's happening with that child, what's happening with the school, what's happening with my, with, with my life. Uh, and, and Rebbe was encouraging me. He said, "You can do it. You can do it." And I did do it.

1:20:29 Speaker 4 Hmm.

1:20:29 Speaker 3 I did do it for another two and a half years until I realized that I do need forty-eight hours a day, and I only had twenty-four. And the, and the nights were getting shorter, and, uh, the s- uh, I wasn't doing a good service, not to my school, not to my new wife, and not to my children by being, uh... I f- And I wrote to the Rebbe: "What should I do?" And the Rebbe gave me guidance of how the proper way of resigning. He gave me steps-

1:21:04 Speaker 4 Oh, the Rebbe, the Rebbe told you to resign?

1:21:07 Speaker 3 He, he gave me steps. If, if A and B and C can be accomplished, uh, you can move on.

1:21:14 Speaker 4 Really?

1:21:14 Speaker 3 I'm us- I'm using it in those terms, but yes, the Rebbe said h-

1:21:19 Speaker 4 Essentially, that's what he told you.

1:21:20 Speaker 3 Yeah. Essentially, that's what he told me. He gave me permission. He didn't tell me I should, but he gave me permission. And I wonder if I c- Now that I-- It's, uh... That was '46. Today, it was almost 40 years ago. From the f- 40-year older person that I am today looking back at then, uh, could I have done otherwise? Sometimes I wonder maybe I could have, but, but then I remember 40 years ago, I, I wasn't 40 years older, so I have to accept that at the age of 38 and 39 or 40, I was, it w- I couldn't do it.

1:21:59 Speaker 4 You also had 11 kids-

1:22:01 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:22:01 Speaker 4 ... to worry about.

1:22:03 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:22:04 Speaker 4 It's hard. It's-- I'm sure it's hard to remember what that's like 40 years later.

1:22:08 Speaker 3 Oh, no, no, no.

1:22:09 Speaker 4 No, it's not.

1:22:09 Speaker 3 I still have nightmares. I, I, I say as a joke, uh, uh, I ha- since my first son, child was born, I haven't had a full night's sleep.

1:22:22 Speaker 4 Oh, damn.

1:22:23 Speaker 3 Yeah. I, I... It's a joke. I- Once, once in two weeks, I have a good night's sleep.

1:22:28 Speaker 4 Right.

1:22:28 Speaker 3 Anyway.

1:22:31 Speaker 4 Yeah. I, I was gonna ask you, I was gonna ask you how you, uh, if, if, if that, if that story, how that story meant, meant something to you, or if it, if it, if it meant something to you. Uh, w- when did you hear it? Your brother-in-law told you right away?

1:22:44 Speaker 3 About a half a year later.

1:22:46 Speaker 4 Wait, he felt that was the right time to tell you? David-

1:22:49 Speaker 3 I can't, I can't... He passed away. I can't ask him, but-

1:22:51 Speaker 4 Right. But he didn't tell it to-

1:22:52 Speaker 3 I can take a-

1:22:52 Speaker 4 He didn't tell it to you right away.

1:22:53 Speaker 3 He didn't tell it to me right away. Yeah.

1:22:56 Speaker 4 All right. H- how did the, how did the, um... Did, did you find any sense of understanding from the community around you? Uh, like the Chabad community? Like when you came back for that N shei Chabad speech, how did people... Did you feel like, like this community that I grew up in is a community that understands these kind of things or?

1:23:23 Speaker 3 Well, um, the realities of life are that to lose a dear beloved, uh, people can come to you for shiva, and they can sincerely express empathy and mean it, but then after shiva is over, everybody goes back to their regular life. I'm not being cynical, I'm just being a realist, and you're left with the pekel yourself.

1:24:05 Speaker 4 Right.

1:24:05 Speaker 3 Yeah. Uh, and, uh, and for some people, it's grow up time. Even if you're 40, it's grow up time. Some people, it's collapse time. People are, are tested. And, and, you know, therapy is a, a... Therapy is a healthy support. I, I scoured books to find framework. I have to tell you, in 1986, there was s- so, such a paucity of Jewish books in English on the subject.

1:24:57 Speaker 4 2026, there still is.

1:25:00 Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, there, there's a lot more, and there's a, all these letters from the Rebbe, uh, which are now gathered together in neat-

1:25:08 Speaker 4 Yes. There, there is more today

1:25:10 Speaker 3 ... a lot more. Yeah. And, uh, but, um, life is a challenge, and death is a challenge to those living.

1:25:27 Speaker 4 I, uh, the reason I asked earlier about, about how, how you reconcile the Rebbe's private reaction, which you found out from your brother-in-law, um, and, and the Rebbe's response to you is because, um, a while back, I was talking to a, to a shliach about... Well, I, I was, I was, I was... I, I heard, I heard a story from, from a shliach talking about, you know, he's a rabbi in a community, and it's, he had to support one of his children through something very difficult. And he's talking about, you know, the, the split between how he presented himself to his children as the father and the rabbi and being there s- uh, supporting, and how to himself, he just, he, he was devastated and broken. And-

1:26:23 Speaker 3 In a, in a crisis or in a-

1:26:25 Speaker 4 Not qui-

1:26:25 Speaker 3 ... tragic-

1:26:26 Speaker 4 No, not crisis

1:26:27 Speaker 3 ... very tragic?

1:26:27 Speaker 4 Dealing, dealing with something, you know, dealing with, with some kind of issue in the, you know, that's helping his kids through a certain kind of issue. And, you know, uh, projecting strength or projecting support and faith to them while struggling with it internally. And I'm not trying to copy and paste that onto the Rebbe. I, I accept the idea that, that, uh, the Rebbe lives in a, in, on a different kind of plane. I accept that. Um, not just, not just out of lip service, but because, yes, I, you know, I, I think a tzadik is a fundamentally different, living on a d- fundamentally different wavelength. Um- And, and I think it would be intellectually dishonest to, to, to, to feel otherwise or to say otherwise. But I, I wonder if there's, you know, like, there's pain, pain is... If, if, if suffering is a real thing, and, you know, if somebody, somebody helps you out and alleviates your suffering, in a way, the suffering doesn't ne- doesn't necessarily go away. They just... It, it, it moves to them, right? The person who puts on the brave face, the person who, who says it's gonna be all right, very often what they're doing is they're transferring your suffering and taking it, right?

1:27:52 Speaker 3 Part of it. They take in a part of it for themselves.

1:27:55 Speaker 4 Like the Gemara says, I suppose it's similar to the idea of bikkur cholim, that you, that you, you, you heal the person, but you're... In a way, the idea here is that you're, that you're absorbing it. And I, I don't say this really as a question, more as an observation, which for whatever reason, um, hits me more and more almost with every passing day, is that, you know, the, the Rebbeim, and not just the Rebbeim themselves, but the model that they showed, is almost, I don't know how to use the word, almost a reckless... I don't know, the word reckless is too much. But an extreme, an extreme readiness to absorb, to, to absorb or to accept the burdens of others. Uh, you know, the, the obvious example would be, you know, the mashal that, or the story that Rebbe brings about the Miteler Rebbe in Basse LeGani, where he shows the Chassid that his skin is deteriorated because of what the Cha- Chassid is dealing with beruchnis. But even on a more literal level, I mean, the, the, um... Somebody was telling me last night that they, they used to see... I don't know if you remember this from the Chofetz. I guess you were there. But the Bachman, the Chofetz would see the Rebbe, um, davening in the morning with his, with the tzitztzitlach underneath his... Um, the letters that he would get, he would daven with the letters underneath his tallit when he would daven in the room. Someone else told me

1:29:31 Speaker 4 that he remembers, he remembers that, that when the Rebbe would come to daven Shacharit in Tosafot when he was a chiyuv, and he'd come in some of the mornings after Ichud and Bichazun, and you could hear him cry differently the mornings after Ichud, after people poured out their heart to... Like, the readiness to... It's, suffering doesn't go a- it doesn't go away. It just, it just moves to s- someone else. Um, so, you know, that, that, that story of it, like, you know, the Rebbe, um, telling you that you have the strength, and I, and I, and I'm basically going to tell you that, but I'm going to grieve for you inside, you know, it just seems to be in line with that.

1:30:27 Speaker 3 The, the classic definition of a Jewish leader in the Tanakh is that they led their troops in battle. They didn't s- sit in the back in, in, in the White House and watch on a screen the soldiers that were battling, obviously. But they led the troops in battle and risked their lives, and they were the example of courage by that's how they led.

1:31:04 Speaker 4 Right. Dovid HaMelech.

1:31:06 Speaker 3 Dovid HaMelech. Uh, the Rebbe was the leader, and he led the battle, and he suffered with everyone's tragedy, and he had to have been superhuman to absorb all that and remain empathetic to little children, and to seniors, and to business people every- from every walk of life with sincere em- emotional connection. And I guess his Torah or something was his alternator, where he recharged. Where did he recharge?

1:31:55 Speaker 4 I think God suffers too.

1:31:57 Speaker 3 God suffers too. God cries, "Mishtarem tifket nafshi." God cries in, in hiding places where nobody can see him. It says in the, in the Psalms, God cries too.

1:32:11 Speaker 4 Yeah. Hmm. I mean, just on, on some level, it seems to me, you know, uh, 'cause what I, what I, what I... The point I don't wanna make is that, you know, to, to take yet another topic and just kinda shift it to the Rebbeim, which I think in a way is very convenient. You know, there's a... I, I think the Rebbeim were trying to teach us something, a way that, uh, some, you know, a way to... A, a, a way for us to look at life, not just to say they were heroes and amazing and, you know, that's all she wrote. I, I don't... I mean, I, I don't, I don't resonate with that kind of thinking. But I think what they... I think what, I think what they're teaching is that, is that, is, is, is the... Th- there really is, you know, the, the, the, the kinda statement of Chassidus, the way you're describing here about the making God real, you know, the unhyphenated God- And real enough that when it gets tested, there's what, not what to fall back on in terms of answers, but there's a reason to, to want to ask a question, a reason to maybe even give up on answers, but to still care to ask a question.

1:33:34 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:33:35 Speaker 4 That, that i- you know, the statement of Chassidus is that all of this is real. It's so real that we don't have to, uh, ignore suffering or underplay it or, or, or kind of escape it. It's real enough for that as well. The, the bond between one person and another person, one Chassid and another Chassid, Chassid-Rebbe, uh, and to Eden, how... And between those people and the Aibishter, it's, it's real enough that it c- it can endure the most painful, unanswerable questions.

1:34:12 Speaker 3 Precisely. There's the Hebrew phrase, uh, "Im kol zeh ani maamin." Notwithstanding all this, I still believe. There's even an Eli Wiesel story when he was in his early years, in his, not his early years of his childhood, but in his early years after the Holocaust and after he saw, if e- even after he came through the hell, and he wrote a lot, a few books in the early years that weren't, that were angry and faithless until he f- found his balance. But somewhere, uh, there's a story that he said, um, "Tonight is going to be my father's yahrtzeit, and I'm not going to go to shul and say Kaddish because he shouldn't have died. He was a good person. He didn't deserve it," and et cetera, et cetera. A whole essay why he's not going to go to s- to say Kaddish. Except in the last paragraph says, "You know, on the other hand, I'm not gonna let God get away from it. I'm not gonna run. I'm gonna go to shul and say Kaddish and confront him." "Iz gavr li, iz gavr li, Rebbe. Show it to me. Where are you?" In other words, he didn't, he didn't wimp out. He confronted God, and eventually he turned the corner and rebuilt a relationship with God.

1:35:53 Speaker 4 Right. Yeah, I... Go ahead.

1:36:24 Speaker 3 Y- yes, Simon. The Rebbe is our hero, but he's also, but he's also our role model. Ultimately, a hero, there are some heroes that are heroes, uh, you know. For, for the kids who sports figures are heroes, it's, it's a, it's, it's something, it's a little fantasy.

1:36:47 Speaker 4 It's an escape, yeah.

1:36:48 Speaker 3 That's it. But the Jewish heroes are role models, uh, some, some in what, certain areas, some in other areas. To us, our Rebbes are role models in almost all areas, in, in Torah, mitzvahs, faith in God, uh, creative outreach, and so on. There's so many areas that the Rebbe was a dynamic leader, and we are little, little, um, uh, we try to emulate hi- his role model, hi- his, what he modeled for us.

1:37:26 Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I've said it a few times on this, on this podcast, um, but, but I, but I think about it all the time, and it's, it's, it becomes more and more real for me that, um, if, if I have to think of what makes the Rebbe real to me, I, I was, I... The Rebbe's real to me in terms of how I think of him, not, I, I, I don't remember him, right? So, um, I mean, I know he existed, but in terms of, it's not like I have a history. Um, and it, he's real to me in this, in, in the, in, in this, in the, in this... What makes it real, what makes the whole story real, and not just a belief, but real, is the, the fact that so many people went to the Rebbe with their deepest, most, uh, unspeakable or unspeakable to anybody else burdens and, and, and, and, and poured out their hearts to him. And it's not even important to me, not that it's unimpressive or not that it's unimportant, but I don't need, it's unnecessary to me to know if the Rebbe solved the problem with a bracha or it, the fact that he was ready to hear it and to be open, like you said, to be open and have empat- be empathetic and not jaded to both the s- the deepest sorrows of life and the deepest joys of life, to be open to, to life in its entirety, that to me

1:39:25 Speaker 4 is, is, is, is, is a, is the most real thing. Yes, I, I, I, I'm aware that he was a tremendous talmid chacham. I, I'm, you know, in ways that I'm not aware, um, I, I'm aware of stories of miracles and all kinds of things. But what makes it real to me i, is that because... I don't, I don't know if I know the because. I, I, I think the, well, I think the reason it makes it real to me is because I don't think, I don't know anything that's more real than that in general.

1:39:58 Speaker 3 Well said. It's more re- that's the realest part of life. Uh, one is the head and one is the this, and one... But this is where the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the tire hits the, the rubber or whatever

1:40:15 Speaker 4 Rubber hits the road

1:40:15 Speaker 3 ... rubber hits it. This, this is, this is where it's at. Yes, and the Rebbe was there constantly again and again and again for everyone from so many different kind of people. Yeah.

1:40:28 Speaker 4 All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. This is a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a more solemn kind of conversation perhaps, but I think it's good to have these kind of conversations as well.

1:40:41 Speaker 3 Okay.

1:40:42 Speaker 4 No need to sugarcoat it on the way out.

1:40:44 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:40:44 Speaker 4 We can leave it hanging like this. Thank you very much for your time. It's a pleasure meeting with you and for being with you. And, uh, we should hear and share only good news together.

1:40:54 Speaker 3 Amen.