Ep. 86 // "Australian Balebos" w/ R' Don Wolf

00:00 Speaker 1 In those days, you had a ksav from the yeshiva you came from saying you've learnt a certain thing, and you could now stay and learn in seven seventy. So I finished with my title. I had a ksav and thing. I was k- I was now planning to sit and learn seven seventy. So the rabbi tells me in that yechidas, "The summer is coming in Melbourne, and you should discuss with Han Halachas yeshiva and your father, uh, a propitious time to go into business with your father." Boom. You know, just like a, I don't know what you call it, a shot through the air.

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 Bentzi Yafetz, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty, we are here in Crown Heights with Mr. Rabbi-

00:53 Speaker 1 Mr. is good.

00:55 Speaker 2 Mr. Don-

00:55 Speaker 1 Just, just, just Don Wolf.

00:57 Speaker 2 Just Don Wolf. Don Wolf. How you doing, mate?

01:00 Speaker 1 Very fresh, yeah.

01:00 Speaker 2 That's how you g- that's how you gotta talk. I can't wait to just have a conversation with an Australian accent. It's been a while. It's been a long time. And, uh-

01:07 Speaker 1 I'll put it on thick.

01:08 Speaker 2 You'll put it on thick. I lo- I lo-- it brings me, it brings me back in a way that's very hard to describe. Um, yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to tell you, but I wanted to keep it for the recording, that just this week it so happened that I was, um, everything's Hashgacha Protis, but it so happened that I was filming for a podcast in Springfield, Massachusetts, which if you've never heard of it if you're from Australia, unless you're mechutan with someone there.

01:36 Speaker 1 I've heard of Springfield, Massachusetts.

01:37 Speaker 2 Oh, you have heard it. So, uh, so m- so, uh, I'm saying it's a small town. It's, it's a relatively small town, but it's famous in Lubavitch, I suppose, because of Rabbi Adelman.

01:45 Speaker 1 Correct.

01:46 Speaker 2 Okay. So that's-- I guess Lubavitchers do know about Springfield, Massachusetts. But my point is, it's a very small town today, and I happened to be there to interview Shlomo Yaffe, Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe, who's a rav in one of the shuls there. The next morning, I ended up, it wasn't planned, I ended up in the Chabad minyan in the morning. And lo and behold, there's a bar mitzvah taking place of a bachur there, of, of a boy that, that lives there, and his name is none other than Nachum Zalman Gorevich.

02:17 Speaker 1 Okay.

02:18 Speaker 2 A great-great-grandson-

02:20 Speaker 1 Of Nachum Zalman

02:21 Speaker 2 ... of Nachum Zalman, who we're gonna get to your relationship with him soon. And I went over to him afterwards, and I said, "I think I know why I was meant to be here this morning 'cause I can share with you my memories when I was younger than this boy." I was probably, what, uh, eight, nine years old, coming to Australia. You know, I was a Lubavitcher. I grew up on shlichus, but this was the first time I saw a Hasid standing in front of our Aron Kodesh on Sh- on, on Shabbos, davening for hours, saying Tehillim, crying, just completely in his own world.

02:51 Speaker 1 Totally immersed.

02:52 Speaker 2 Totally immersed. And, you know, looking back at it, it was, you know, I remember in a way, you know, for you, it was just, that's just how it is. That's just, just how it is, and I guess I just went along with it. I was a little boy. Um, but it was, it was a, it was a really beautiful, uh, moment to share with, with this, with this great-grandson of his, um, and great-great-great-grandson. And then I find out that you're in town, and your minyan was where, was where I, where, was where I had this memory.

03:21 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:21 Speaker 2 And we're gonna get to that soon.

03:22 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:23 Speaker 2 So it's lovely to, to make this full circle moment here with you in Crown Heights.

03:27 Speaker 1 Thank you.

03:28 Speaker 2 And, uh-

03:28 Speaker 1 So my wife was, uh, Rav Nachum Zalman's oldest grandchild.

03:32 Speaker 2 Yeah. So we're, we're gonna get to it.

03:33 Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

03:33 Speaker 2 We're gonna get to it, but I wanna just, uh-

03:34 Speaker 1 Okay

03:34 Speaker 2 ... I wanted to just share the, the-

03:36 Speaker 1 That's 100 on

03:36 Speaker 2 ... the, the, the beautiful, the beautiful, uh, the timing of it all.

03:41 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:41 Speaker 2 At least for me personally. It's been a, it's been a very interesting, uh, series of events-

03:47 Speaker 1 Right

03:47 Speaker 2 ... let's say. So before we begin with your story, when, uh, I, I, I'm told by, by those close to you, uh, thank you, Shaul, your son, Shaul, for putting this together, that there's quite a story to, to be heard. Uh, I just wanted to play some Um-

04:51 Speaker 1 Which, which team did you barrack for growing up?

04:53 Speaker 2 Collingwood. Only Collingwood.

04:55 Speaker 1 Co- only Collingwood.

04:56 Speaker 2 The whole family's Collingwood.

04:57 Speaker 1 The whole family, as far as I know.

04:58 Speaker 2 You've had a f- you've, you've had a good few years, haven't you?

05:01 Speaker 1 A few years. A few years.

05:02 Speaker 2 Well, it's better than all the Carlton fans.

05:05 Speaker 1 Um-

05:06 Speaker 2 Carlton fans, sorry.

05:07 Speaker 1 So my parents came to Australia in 1949. They were both, uh, war refugees. They lived through the Holocaust, and my-- they married right after the war. They met each other after the war, introduced, and got married. And, uh, they came to Australia 'cause I think Australia was the furthest place possible on Earth. They could have gone to the States or Canada, and they chose Melbourne, Australia.

05:29 Speaker 2 Oh, they chose Australia?

05:30 Speaker 1 They chose Australia. Really 'cause I think it was just the furthest place to get away from everything they'd experienced.

05:35 Speaker 2 Mm. A lot of the people there were there only 'cause that, that was the only choice they had, right?

05:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. But my parents, my father made money right after the war on the black market and stuff, and he had options.

05:46 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

05:46 Speaker 1 Um, but he chose, they chose Australia. Some-- He had a couple of cousins left. He lost brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, everybody. He had a couple of first cousins that survived, and they went to Canada and Israel. Uh-

05:59 Speaker 2 And where was he from originally?

06:00 Speaker 1 He was from- Krakow

06:03 Speaker 2 Poland

06:04 Speaker 1 Poland. He was the youngest child of a well-to-do family. Uh, he was a Radomsk Hasid. He learned in Kesat Israel Yeshivas before the war. And my mother was from Lemberg, Lviv, which was the east of Poland.

06:16 Speaker 2 Sure

06:17 Speaker 1 Uh, which is now is, I don't know, Ukraine or Russia or whichever one it is these days.

06:21 Speaker 2 Right

06:21 Speaker 1 Um, and they were introduced interestingly by one of the Krazianski mishpocha, who was a shadchan, who knew th- both families in different places, and he brought my mother's family to Krakow, and he took my mother to a park somewhere

06:38 Speaker 2 This is after the war?

06:39 Speaker 1 After the war, and he arranged for her father to be at this place in this park, and he-- That... My mother was-- She lived through the war in an attic of a farmhouse, knew nothing. She was a totally, um, innocent girl who'd spent three and a half years in, you know, her childhood in a, in a nowhere, in an attic. And, uh, suddenly this guy disappears, and my mother's left with, with this guy , didn't know what... Anyway, Baruch Hashem, they met a few times, and they got married quickly, and, uh, they stayed in Poland, and they took in a lot of refugees. My father had money at that stage. They took a lot of refugees in their house, et cetera. Um, my father tells me that his mother-in-law, who also survived, used to tell him, "Make sure that you're getting married, make sure you have one room for yourself." There were people sleeping everywhere in this place they had. "Make sure you and your wife will have a room to sleep in by yourselves." Um, s- and they stayed in Poland still for a while, then they went to Paris. Uh, my father remembers when all the Lubavitchers came to Krakow. Uh-

07:41 Speaker 2 The Lubavitchers came to Krakow

07:42 Speaker 1 ... the Lubavitchers went to Krakow, and they m-made, I think, a big shel ha shabas for them, the new arrivals. And then he met the Lubavitchers again in Paris.

07:49 Speaker 2 Mm.

07:50 Speaker 1 He actually met Rav Zalman Sorotzkin then.

07:52 Speaker 2 Oh.

07:52 Speaker 1 And I think Rav Isser. Um, and then after being in Paris for a year or so, they came to Australia.

07:59 Speaker 2 Right

07:59 Speaker 1 That's in '49.

08:01 Speaker 2 Uh, so, so just to back up a little bit to the Radomsk-

08:04 Speaker 1 Yeah

08:04 Speaker 2 ... the Radomsk Hasidim, did they survive as a group after the war?

08:08 Speaker 1 No. There was no... Not really. There are some Radomsk moistes. There are in Eretz Yisrael, some yeshivas. There is a quasi Radomsk Hasidish rebbe. Um, there is a Beit Midrash in Borough Park, but there's no real Radomsk as such.

08:24 Speaker 2 So the Radomsk rebbe was killed in the war?

08:26 Speaker 1 Yes, the last rebbe was killed in the war.

08:28 Speaker 2 Hmm. So how did that affect... I mean, I'm sure that wasn't the only concern for your father, but how did that affect, uh, his Yiddishkeit coming to Australia?

08:36 Speaker 1 I think that, it's hard to generalize. I think for a significant majority of survivors, the Yiddishkeit was schwach for an, a while. For some people, it's weeks or months, and others, for years. So my father, as a child, that we were very traditional home, but my father at that stage wasn't, uh, shall I term it, was a hundred percent. He, uh... They did things that were convenient for them.

09:05 Speaker 2 Right

09:05 Speaker 1 And it wasn't till later on when he maybe s- got onto his own two feet, et cetera, and he felt more comfortable with life, uh, that he was able to resume, you know, total commitment to Yiddishkeit. But it took a while. And they were, they were very, uh, broken, and, uh, sometimes my mother wouldn't get up in the morning. And I asked my father, "Where's Mom?" "Oh, she'd been having nightmares at night and screaming. She saw the Germans coming, blah, blah, blah."

09:28 Speaker 2 Even though she-

09:28 Speaker 1 "Now she's sleeping."

09:29 Speaker 2 Even though she was on the farm?

09:31 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. 'Cause they lived on, on this, they lived in an... My zayde was very clever, sold everything he had before the war, my mother's father, and he bought jewels and, uh, precious coins, and he paid. They were in camps, and he paid his way out of the camps. They were in work camp. My mother was darning socks for the Germans. They lost one sister who was taken at some stage. So they were unique in that they survived as a family unit. He was able to bribe the people in the camp, and one by one, he got them out. He got them to a safe house.

10:02 Speaker 2 Wow.

10:03 Speaker 1 So my-

10:05 Speaker 2 In an actual, in an actual labor camp, a German labor camp?

10:07 Speaker 1 In German labor camp, bribed them out.

10:09 Speaker 2 How many, how many people got out? Very few.

10:10 Speaker 1 She, she put her star on-

10:11 Speaker 2 No, I'm saying how many people in general got out?

10:13 Speaker 1 She walked in, in a row. They were meant to say five in a row. In the middle of the night, she walked as a sixth. And they, they had plans. They, they looked out.

10:20 Speaker 2 I've never heard such a story.

10:21 Speaker 1 Yeah.

10:21 Speaker 2 These stories are very rare.

10:22 Speaker 1 Very rare to survive also as a family unit.

10:25 Speaker 2 Right

10:25 Speaker 1 So two parents and two children survived. And that was after the war, to see a family unit, it was unheard of.

10:31 Speaker 2 Right.

10:31 Speaker 1 There were, there were individuals who survived.

10:33 Speaker 2 How old is, how old was your mom at, at the time?

10:36 Speaker 1 Sixteen.

10:37 Speaker 2 Oh, so she was a teenager.

10:38 Speaker 1 Yeah, a teenager. She s-

10:39 Speaker 2 So she had vivid memories of this, of this time?

10:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. She was a teenager. They were in an attic in a barn, and they l- couldn't even walk, couldn't even get up. They were just lying flat for three years.

10:48 Speaker 2 Wow.

10:48 Speaker 1 And paying off this old, uh, Polish couple. And there was like a, a poker game going on, 'cause the Polish couple said, "Oh, we're gonna tell the Germans you're here." And my zayde said, "Fine, you tell them. But you'll be killed first, 'cause you were harboring Jews." And it was a poker game to get a little bit of watery soup or something and, uh-

11:04 Speaker 2 For three years

11:04 Speaker 1 ... to keep... For three odd years, yeah. Summer and winter.

11:07 Speaker 2 Wow.

11:07 Speaker 1 So that was how they survived. My father was in a camp.

11:11 Speaker 2 So where did your grandparents end up? I know we're going a little bit off topic here.

11:14 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah. Fine. So about a year after the war, my m-grandmother, uh, got very sick, and she had leukemia.

11:24 Speaker 2 Huh.

11:25 Speaker 1 My father was bringing medicines from America, et cetera, but it was to no avail. So she died about a year after the war.

11:30 Speaker 2 After-

11:30 Speaker 1 Which is tragic

11:31 Speaker 2 ... after all that

11:31 Speaker 1 Survived the war-

11:32 Speaker 2 Huh

11:32 Speaker 1 ... and she died about a year after. My parents came to-- After coming to Australia, they arranged papers for my grandfather, who followed about a year or so later. So I remember, my zayde was niftah when I was about seven or eight. So I remember him as a little kid.

11:46 Speaker 2 So he lived with you?

11:47 Speaker 1 He lived with us for a while in where we lived in Brunswick. Then he remarried a Polish lady in Melbourne, but also a survivor. They lived separately. But when I was already about seven or eight, he was niftah. And there was an old man who was about sixty-nine years old, a very old man, and he had cancer and, uh, nothing to do. And, uh, but I have good memories of him.

12:07 Speaker 2 Wow Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuval Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening 10 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 Boniolom, Torah Umesorah, and Hatalathon, 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. I, I was having this conversation, uh, with, with, with, with Rabbi Yaffi this week, and it's, you know... Y- y- on one hand, we say, you know, these people, they, they weren't religious, or they, they fell off a little bit religiously and so on. But on the other hand, h- what they lived with and the, the, the fact that they had any connection at all after everything they went through, and just their, their simple persistence of, of Judaism, of Yiddishkeit is, is mind-boggling. You know, it's... Yeah, I, I get, I guess that I maybe keep more Halakha or, you know, you keep more Halakha than they do on a literal level. But in

13:39 Speaker 2 terms of holding onto Yiddishkeit, I mean, these people, these people are giants.

13:43 Speaker 1 Absolutely amazing. My father sometimes used to say that as big a miracle as surviving was and is, the bigger miracle was that they ma- able to marry and establish a home and live as, inverted commas, normal human beings.

13:57 Speaker 2 Right.

13:57 Speaker 1 That he said was the biggest miracle.

13:59 Speaker 2 Right. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's... I mean, I know, and I know this is more, uh, we're, we're going to the more the Holocaust topic-

14:05 Speaker 1 Mm

14:05 Speaker 2 ... but I see it's all connected really when you talk about what forms our, what forms a person's identity. Um, but y- y- the, the, the optimism and hope that was necessary for these people to, to see such a broken world, I mean, the horrors is impossible to, to comprehend and to just say, "You know what? We're gonna build despite all this."

14:32 Speaker 1 Yeah.

14:32 Speaker 2 It's just, it's just, it's just, it, it, it... You know, you have to, you have to wonder where it comes from. A- and, and, and Yidden, I think we know where it comes from, but it, it's, it's just, it... We, we take it sometimes for granted with all these stories that we know and so many of the people that we know are grandkids of these people. But then you, you know, you get older. I, I'm getting older, and now I see a little bit what it's like to be a father and raise a family under much kinder-

14:55 Speaker 1 Mm

14:55 Speaker 2 ... circumstances, right? And that leap of faith that it takes to, to, to jump into it and to raise children and to, and to do that against such a backdrop, it's just amazing. It is a miracle.

15:07 Speaker 1 So clearly they were very affected, but they managed to, I don't know if they got over it, but they managed to put it aside and work things out and, uh, built a new life. They came to a country with no language, no money, no anything, most of them, and they all, Baruch Hashem, you know, they thrived.

15:24 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

15:26 Speaker 1 So, um, yeah.

15:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:28 Speaker 1 I'll tell you a brief story-

15:30 Speaker 2 Of course

15:30 Speaker 1 ... 'cause it needs to be recorded. About my father, um, he was, again, a c- a clever young man at the war and he's been yeshivas the whole time. Um, when he was taken into camp... Now, when they lived in Kraków, there was a Shabbos goya who used to come, and with the cholent, they used to have a s- like communal kitchen where they kept everything hot in a brick oven, and she brought the cholents on Shabbos to every household. Um, she had a son who was about my father's age, and, uh, about 16, 17, and my father knew him. They played soccer a bit together with the local boys, et cetera. And, uh, so they knew each other. When my father was taken into the camps, this goyish boy had a right of entry into the camp because he was a trainee priest. So he had somehow, he administered to people, he could go in and out of the ghetto, et cetera. One day, this guy comes in, and he'd smuggled in a number of small handguns, and he gave them to his Jewish friends who he s- used to go into their homes with his mother, one of them being my father. My father never told me details, but clearly they used the guns. They broke out, a group of I think seven or eight guys. They broke out-

16:49 Speaker 2 Of the ghetto

16:50 Speaker 1 ... of the ghetto, and they spent the next three, three and a half years in the forests as a self-styled group of partisans.

16:58 Speaker 2 Wow.

16:59 Speaker 1 And they tried their hardest to stay away from other groups. They didn't have political aspirations. They weren't pro or against.

17:06 Speaker 2 Just surviving.

17:06 Speaker 1 They were survivors. We have to stick this out. And, uh-

17:10 Speaker 2 In the forests of Poland

17:11 Speaker 1 ... in the forests of Poland, summer and winter, no clothes, no food, no anything. Occasionally robbed a farmhouse and got some eggs or some chicken, it is, whatever it is. And, uh, they stayed alive for three and a half years with rags, and in the summer lying in the grasses to evade the Nazis and the winter and the snow. A- absolutely amazing.

17:29 Speaker 2 And your father carried this kind of... You felt that he carried these scars or he-

17:33 Speaker 1 He definitely carried the scars, but he got on with life, and he built a business, and he became a Rosh Kol in a shul, and he, he didn't sit there moping around.

17:41 Speaker 2 Wait, wait. Rosh Kol in a shul is after he be- became more-

17:44 Speaker 1 No, in Melbourne. In Melbourne already

17:45 Speaker 2 ... after he became more Frum again, or this was even last-

17:46 Speaker 1 This wasn't a Baal Batish shul. It was a half-half.

17:49 Speaker 2 Oh, so he wasn't really, uh, upset about Yiddishkeit?

17:52 Speaker 1 He wasn't upset about Yiddishkeit, and I don't remember, he always was miniach, tefillin, et cetera. I remember he's telling them he'll always davened at home, davened, put on tefillin and davened every day. No, no doubts. But other things with Shabbos, they were a bit lax in those days. It was very, uh-

18:04 Speaker 2 Oh, it's very tough to be a Frum Jew

18:05 Speaker 1 ... very tough.

18:06 Speaker 2 It's tough to be a Frum Jew.

18:06 Speaker 1 It was tough in a new country. Didn't have any to make a parnassa. It was all, life was difficult.

18:11 Speaker 2 Right.

18:12 Speaker 1 Um, but later on, I think that, uh, Baruch Hashem, his, uh, his kids were growing up, and he, uh, he decided it's time to, you know, get back to everything.

18:20 Speaker 2 So, so, so now, so n- now we have a little bit of an understanding of-

18:23 Speaker 1 Yeah

18:24 Speaker 2 ... where you were growing up. What was it like-

18:26 Speaker 1 Wha-- Sorry, I have to interrupt you one thing.

18:28 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:28 Speaker 1 This, this Polish boy.

18:30 Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

18:30 Speaker 1 Fast-forward 40 years, my father's sitting in front of a TV watching the news. They had just, what the word is, coronated who's the new pope. My father looks and screams to my mother, "Run here. Come here. Look, Vladek, Vladek." This Polish boy, his friend, was the pope, became the Polish pope, Pope John Paul.

18:52 Speaker 2 John Paul. So his friend was there on the screen? No, oh, no, no, the friend himself was the pope.

18:56 Speaker 1 The friend himself, 40 years forward, whatever it is, this is Pope John Paul.

19:00 Speaker 2 No kidding.

19:00 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

19:02 Speaker 2 John-

19:02 Speaker 1 It was actually quite-- If you look at his thing, it was pretty good for J- for the relationship with the Jewish people.

19:06 Speaker 2 Very much so.

19:07 Speaker 1 But he, mamish, saved Jewish lives.

19:09 Speaker 2 Very much so. He was, I think, the first one to, to basically, uh, apologize for-

19:14 Speaker 1 Yeah

19:14 Speaker 2 ... for, for some of the stuff that went on.

19:15 Speaker 1 Yeah.

19:15 Speaker 2 Right?

19:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. So I just had to get the, get that story out.

19:19 Speaker 2 So, so Pope John Paul was, was your grandf- was your, was your father's friend?

19:24 Speaker 1 My father's s-sort of friend. Acquaintance, let's say.

19:26 Speaker 2 A neighbor.

19:27 Speaker 1 And he gave him a gun to use.

19:29 Speaker 2 Wow. Wow. Talk, talk about a small world. All right. I didn't have that on my bingo card. All right. And so, you know, you're, you're this boy growing up in Australia with, uh, survivor parents, um, clearly, clearly traditional-

19:44 Speaker 1 Yeah

19:44 Speaker 2 ... if your father's involved in a shul that way-

19:46 Speaker 1 Yeah

19:46 Speaker 2 ... and, and so on. But, uh, which school did you go to?

19:49 Speaker 1 Metscopus College.

19:50 Speaker 2 Metscopus. Was it, was it the same as it is today?

19:52 Speaker 1 No. I had, in my class-

19:54 Speaker 2 Today, it's considered Reform or something.

19:56 Speaker 1 No, no.

19:56 Speaker 2 Is that it?

19:56 Speaker 1 Today, it's officially an Orthodox school, and it has Jew-

19:59 Speaker 2 Oh, is it?

19:59 Speaker 1 And it has Jewish studies. It would have ninety-five percent non-frum kids.

20:04 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

20:04 Speaker 1 In my time, I would say you'd had about a third frum kids.

20:08 Speaker 2 I see.

20:08 Speaker 1 In my class alone, my year level, we had bo- uh, more than a million of boys who went to davening sh- in school every day. We had a minyan of sorts.

20:15 Speaker 2 I see. So Metscopus was basically the first school? No, there's Bialik, right?

20:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, Bialik much later. Metscopus was formed first.

20:22 Speaker 2 First.

20:22 Speaker 1 Yeah.

20:22 Speaker 2 So Bia- So Metscopus before Yavne, uh-

20:24 Speaker 1 And the, the principal-

20:24 Speaker 2 Before Yavne

20:25 Speaker 1 ... the founding principal was one of the Faglen family. Avram Faglen-

20:28 Speaker 2 Oh

20:28 Speaker 1 ... and Ike Faglen.

20:29 Speaker 2 Okay.

20:29 Speaker 1 So he was one of the founding, he was the founding principal who was there for thirty, forty years.

20:33 Speaker 2 So it was the community school at the time?

20:34 Speaker 1 It was a community school. It was officially Orthodox school.

20:37 Speaker 2 I see.

20:38 Speaker 1 So he wore a yarmulke, and the teachers wore yarmulkes. Uh, I'd say maybe a quarter of the boys wore yarmulkes all the time. Yeah, I think, I think in classes they had rules. You had to wear a yarmulke. I don't remember all the rules now, but there were-

20:48 Speaker 2 Right

20:48 Speaker 1 ... it was a different feel 'cause the, the kids were the children of Holocaust survivors in the main.

20:54 Speaker 2 Right.

20:54 Speaker 1 So it was more Hamish, uh, sort of, uh, atmosphere.

20:57 Speaker 2 Right. Right. So, so that wa-- But that was the community school.

21:01 Speaker 1 Yes.

21:01 Speaker 2 It wasn't like you went there as opposed to another school.

21:03 Speaker 1 No.

21:03 Speaker 2 That was the Jewish school.

21:04 Speaker 1 It was, Yeshivah hadn't, uh, or maybe just started with a few kids. Yeshivah w- beca- came a little bit later.

21:09 Speaker 2 Right. And Yavne and all these-

21:10 Speaker 1 And Yavne much later.

21:11 Speaker 2 Much later, yeah.

21:11 Speaker 1 And Bialik much la- much later.

21:13 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember, I remember my, my only memory of Scopus was that we beat them in the soccer competition five to- ... I think it was Scopus that we beat five to one.

21:23 Speaker 1 There were times in later years where they allowed shluchim in on, on Erev Shabbos, et cetera.

21:28 Speaker 2 Uh.

21:28 Speaker 1 As a boy, as a, I think when I was really in Yeshivat Gedola, I went to speak there once on, on the, at the Scopus, uh, two things-

21:34 Speaker 2 In Yeshivat Gedola?

21:35 Speaker 1 When I was in Yeshivat Gedola, I went to Scopus. I was invited to come and speak to kids.

21:38 Speaker 2 Okay. So before we jump there-

21:39 Speaker 1 Okay

21:39 Speaker 2 ... so, so, so you're go- you're growing up in Scopus, and you mentioned that Lubavitch starts opening up. Um, you know, just for those who don't know yet, I don't want them to, to wait all the way to the end to, to, to, to find this out. You became very, very involved later on with, with, with the Chabad Yeshiva schools. Besides being a Lubavitcher yourself-

21:57 Speaker 1 Yeah

21:57 Speaker 2 ... as everyone can see, you became very involved with Rabbi Groner for many years. I, I forget what your position was.

22:03 Speaker 1 I was on the board for many years.

22:03 Speaker 2 You were on the board for many, many years.

22:05 Speaker 1 And then I chaired the board for the last ten years.

22:06 Speaker 2 Right. Right, for many, many years. So, so we'll get to that, but you, you ended up being very involved. But here you're a boy in Scopus, around Scopus school, and you mentioned that the Lubavitchers opened up a school. Take me back to when you were a boy. What, what did you first... Did, did, did it register, like, that there's Lubavitchers here? Did it mean anything to you? Was it like a... Did you f- When you first saw them, was it, was it strange?

22:32 Speaker 1 I didn't come into contact with Lubavitchers till I was maybe seventeen years old.

22:37 Speaker 2 Okay.

22:37 Speaker 1 So we lived another side of town.

22:39 Speaker 2 Right.

22:40 Speaker 1 Uh-

22:40 Speaker 2 So you didn't live in East St. Kilda?

22:41 Speaker 1 Didn't live in East St. Kilda. We lived as, uh, the Jews originally lived in Carlton and Brunswick and Northcote, those sort of northern suburb areas. I was there for ten years. Then we moved to Kew, which was another side of town, for another ten years, and then we moved to East St. Kilda.

22:57 Speaker 2 Right.

22:58 Speaker 1 So, uh, I didn't get in contact with L- I didn't see any Lubavitchers, know anything about them till I was about sixteen, seventeen years old.

23:04 Speaker 2 Hmm. Hmm.

23:08 Speaker 1 My father had met occasionally Reb Zalman and Reb Nachum Zalman, et cetera. I think my first time I came, my father took me to a Yutras Kisleh for Brengan, I remember. I was maybe sixteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, and he introduced me to Reb Zalman and, uh, built a little bit of a relationship from then.

23:24 Speaker 2 Well, what attracted your father to... They came to him to fundraise? Uh-

23:27 Speaker 1 I don't know they came to fundraise, but I think he occasionally liked to come around or again, he had met Reb Zalman, I'm sure, in, uh, Paris, and, uh, he liked them. He had a general liking and, uh, Rabbi Groner was makarov him as, uh, he was most probably five more years older than Rabbi Groner, but they, they had a sprach.

23:47 Speaker 2 They had a sprach.

23:48 Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember the one thing Rabbi Groner knew all the Polish rebbes and knew all the Polish, uh, Hasidims. He davened in Rayim Ahavim shtiebel in, in Brownsville, and he knew, he knew everybody.

23:56 Speaker 2 Right.

23:56 Speaker 1 So, uh-

23:57 Speaker 2 Well, he himself comes, I think, from a Gerrar fa- Gerrar family or from a-

24:00 Speaker 1 He wasn't Gerrar family, but, uh-

24:01 Speaker 2 The Baumgartens were a Gerrar family, I think.

24:03 Speaker 1 Yeah.

24:03 Speaker 2 But the Baum-

24:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, but he knew all the Polish rebbes, so there's a-

24:05 Speaker 2 They came from a Polish family originally, no?

24:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So they had a good, you know, sprach about all the, uh, Polish stuff, et cetera. And, uh, Reb Zalman also had a wider, wider than Lubavitch, uh, understanding and, um, uh, knowledge of various rebbes and tzadikim, et cetera.

24:22 Speaker 2 Right. Right. So, so how did that lead you into getting a... You said you were in Yeshivat Gedola.

24:28 Speaker 1 So when I finished, when I finished school, so I was about seventeen years old, I was going to go to yeshiva. The question was where.

24:34 Speaker 2 Oh, so you were going to go to yeshiva?

24:35 Speaker 1 I was going to go to yeshiva. We were quite frum by then.

24:38 Speaker 2 I see.

24:39 Speaker 1 And, uh, I was thinking of going to Eretz Yisrael. Some of my friends were going to Eretz Yisrael. And I don't know if my father or someone suggested, "Why don't you look into Melbourne?" So I discussed it with Reb Zalman, and, uh, and the decision was to try in Melbourne, see if I'm happy there. And if I'm not happy, then I'll go later on to Eretz Yisrael.

24:57 Speaker 2 What was your impression of the Yutras Kisleh for Brengan that you first went to? Like, did, was it pulling you or you-

25:01 Speaker 1 It was, it was an eye-opener. I remember it was a for Brengan. It was like a, it was like a Bal Batisha sort of for Brengan style. Later on, there were dancing. I remember dancing with other guys, et cetera. So it was a whole new ball game for me. It opened my eyes to a different sort of Yiddishkeit that I hadn't been exposed to.

25:16 Speaker 2 But it, it, it didn't, it didn't pull you in a way where you're for sure going to the Lubavitch yeshiva?

25:20 Speaker 1 No, no.

25:21 Speaker 2 It wa-

25:21 Speaker 1 Not, not at that stage

25:22 Speaker 2 ... another, another, another, another kind of experience.

25:26 Speaker 1 Another experience, yeah, of a different type of religion.

25:29 Speaker 2 Right. Uh, you, you felt it was that extremely different?

25:33 Speaker 1 I felt it was different, yeah.

25:35 Speaker 2 Right.

25:36 Speaker 1 To what I was used to as a, a menor- normative, let's say, modern Orthodox shul.

25:40 Speaker 2 Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So you, you go to this yeshiva, and, and you're basically doing it as a trial?

25:47 Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I was putting my effort in, et cetera, and, uh, Baruch Hashem, we had, uh... I came at a time where the Rebbe's second set of shluchim bochurim to Yeshivat Gedola were in yeshiva. That's the, uh, Leibel Oltains, Zalman Grifkins, the Hershel Grinbergs of the world, et cetera.

26:04 Speaker 2 Hershel Grinberg, who's in Buffalo now?

26:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

26:07 Speaker 2 He was-

26:07 Speaker 1 And the Leibel Oltain, you'd be aware here-

26:09 Speaker 2 Leibel Oltain, sure. Sure

26:10 Speaker 1 ... in Boro Park and, uh -

26:12 Speaker 2 Sure

26:12 Speaker 1 ... Zalman Grifkin, New Orleans. There were a whole little six shluchim of those. There's only six.

26:16 Speaker 2 Right.

26:16 Speaker 1 They were handpicked. These were the best guys Lubavitch had.

26:19 Speaker 2 Right. But they get a little bit of short shrift because everyone knows about the first set. But you say, but for you, the second set was-

26:25 Speaker 1 I didn't-

26:25 Speaker 2 ... was all that matters

26:26 Speaker 1 ... yeah, yeah. I didn't know the first set at the time.

26:28 Speaker 2 Right.

26:28 Speaker 1 I came just when the second set came. So, uh, they were wonderful, and they were -- they helped me a lot, uh, integrate.

26:34 Speaker 2 How, how did it strike you as an Australian boy? How did you, how did you see them?

26:39 Speaker 1 Um, I saw them as somehow different and superior in a sense, but there's a whole lot of boys who came in with me. I wasn't a yachid. A lot of boys came, um, either from yeshiva high school and from non-Jewish schools. So I had friends like, uh, Yossel Losher alav hashalom was a shliach there in Sa-Santa Barbara.

26:58 Speaker 2 Schreiber Noah's kids.

26:59 Speaker 1 Uh, Yossel Gutnick, Shlomo Bendet, uh, some-

27:02 Speaker 2 Oh, Yossel Gutnick is Yerush?

27:03 Speaker 1 Yeah.

27:03 Speaker 2 Shlomo Bendet I met like a month ago or so.

27:05 Speaker 1 Yeah, and some of the Fagan boys in Australia. We all came in in the same group intake, so you know.

27:10 Speaker 2 And they were -- And some of them were from Scopus and some weren't.

27:12 Speaker 1 No, they weren't from Scopus. They were either from yeshiva or from other schools. There were nobody else from Scopus, but from other goyische schools as well.

27:18 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

27:18 Speaker 1 In those days, it was a melting pot. So, um, Yossel Losher came from a goyische school. Ephraim Schmidt, another one, came from a goyische school.

27:26 Speaker 2 Right.

27:26 Speaker 1 But there were guys who were interested in Yiddishkeit or already been learning a bit, so they felt motivated. Take at least a year to learn, um, in Yeshivat Gedola.

27:35 Speaker 2 And-

27:35 Speaker 1 And then some of them went on to university after that.

27:38 Speaker 2 Right.

27:38 Speaker 1 That was a popular sort of derech.

27:39 Speaker 2 Uni.

27:41 Speaker 1 Uni.

27:41 Speaker 2 Uni.

27:42 Speaker 1 There was a farbrengen once, um, Rabbi Mendel Futerfas came to Australia a few times, I think twice that I recall, 'cause he had a sister. Reb Zalman's wife was his sister.

27:51 Speaker 2 Sure. They're my m- my k- they're my aunts and uncles.

27:54 Speaker 1 Okay. So he came a couple times, and I remember vividly a farbrengen in the old Yeshivat Gedola. It may have been at the crossover of the second and third shluchim, both sets were there. We're farbrengen in the old yeshiva, and the whole topic of the farbrengen, Rabbi Mendel that night, was the Yeshivat Gedola is a semitch, meaning a sandwich. He was told by Reb Zalman it's a sandwich between school and university. So the whole topic was a semitch.

28:21 Speaker 2 Oh, but it, it's, it's the spread in between the sandwich, isn't it?

28:24 Speaker 1 It's the real spread. It's the jelly in between.

28:26 Speaker 2 It's the jelly in between. Uh.

28:28 Speaker 1 So I recall the farbrengen went a whole night, and at some stage, he wasn't gonna take mashke. So he would ask Rabbi Groiner, "Hashem says the Rav to possibly could take mashke."

28:37 Speaker 2 Why wasn't he allowed to take mashke?

28:38 Speaker 1 I don't know. He was ill. He was not well, whatever.

28:39 Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

28:40 Speaker 1 It was Rabbi Mendel. And at some stage, Rabbi Groiner went home 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. So Rabbi Mendel would go... There was a payphone. Nobody had ph- It was before the days of phones.

28:49 Speaker 2 Sure.

28:49 Speaker 1 I'm not sure if you understand that.

28:50 Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm old enough, yes.

28:51 Speaker 1 So he went to a payphone in the lobby. He would take a broche to ring Rabbi Groiner's home and get back mishloach from the Rav- ... to zogen l'chaim. So at some stage, Rabbi Groiner pulled out the plug. There were no more 3:00, 4:00 AM phone calls.

29:05 Speaker 2 Yeah. That's funny. This year marks seventy-five years since Yud Shvat and the first Basse Leigani. 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 Leigani, the first Rebbe, the Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Basse Leigani 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 Leigani 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. H-how did, how did, how did these people like, uh, you know, Mendel Futerfas, of course, a lot, a lot better known in the general Lubavitch public, but Zalman Serebranski, you know, uh, I was saying they're, they're my uncles. My grandfather, uh, Rav Shimtov, um, you know, they were his actual uncles.

30:32 Speaker 1 Yes. Yes, yes.

30:33 Speaker 2 Or my great-great-uncles. And he t- My, my grandfather told me a number of times that he was super close with, with his uncle Zalman Serebranski. He said that when Zalman left, uh, France to go to Australia, he, he remembers crying as, as a boy. He was very, very close to him. And so, now for, for most of us, we haven't heard that much about him-

30:53 Speaker 1 Mm

30:53 Speaker 2 ... 'cause he kind of fell off the map. Uh, how did, how do you remember this, this Reb Zalman Serebranski?

31:00 Speaker 1 Reb Zalman was the wisest of people And, uh, I think he had a little bit of a political bent. There was stuff that I didn't know as a bocher between him and Rabbi Groner, and the Rebbe sort of had to demarcate, uh, areas for both 'cause there was a bit of a, a Rebbe-nish going on over there. But, um, Reb Zalman was, uh, an educator par excellence. He was so wise and clever, and he would just cock his head to a side and think about it, and wouldn't answer straight away, and come out with a few wise words, et cetera.

31:32 Speaker 2 He spoke English?

31:33 Speaker 1 He spoke-- He had a very good vocabulary, strong accent. When he came, he was running the school originally, and I heard it said he read every book in the library at that stage, maybe to improve his English, but more importantly, to make sure what was kosher and what should be thrown out.

31:50 Speaker 2 Huh.

31:51 Speaker 1 So he read-- See, his vocabulary was excellent. You'd be amazed at the words he could use. Uh, but you had to listen, you had to get used to his accent. Um, and he had people from all over town coming in. He had people from the Hasidische Adass, uh, community coming for shiurim to learn with him, some Hasidims on the sly that nobody should know about it, and he had a huge impact on my generation.

32:13 Speaker 2 Was he a w- like, a worldly man? Was he, like, a Hasid that, like, uh, like, did he... You know, Mendel has this kind of, uh, uh, mythology around him, like th-that kind of story-

32:25 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah

32:25 Speaker 2 ... of waking up the Rav to say Lechaim at 3:00 in the morning. That c- that sounds like a Rav Mendel story.

32:30 Speaker 1 Yeah.

32:30 Speaker 2 Was Reb Zalman like that, or was he more of, like, a Balabatishe person who you-

32:34 Speaker 1 He, he appeared more Balabatishe, and he dressed, he had a-- His daughter-in-law, Nechama Werdeger-

32:42 Speaker 2 Sure

32:42 Speaker 1 ... made sure he had proper suits, and he looked respectful. In those years, he still wore-

32:47 Speaker 2 That's his daughter?

32:48 Speaker 1 His, his daughter. Sorry, his daughter.

32:50 Speaker 2 Right, right, right.

32:51 Speaker 1 His daughter, you're correct. So in those days, he still wore a sh- uh, didn't wear a lange regel.

32:55 Speaker 2 Mm.

32:56 Speaker 1 He wore a s-s-suit, a long jacket. But, and, um, he always looked neat. Um, if he took some mashke, he can get a bit wilder.

33:05 Speaker 2 He would take mashke?

33:06 Speaker 1 He would take mashke, yeah, and he could get a bit wilder and upbeat. But otherwise, he was very just wise and, uh, a s-sage-like.

33:14 Speaker 2 Mm.

33:14 Speaker 1 Um, and he wished to learn a ma-- When his Hasidims wished to learn with him, and we finish a Maimon, and we thought we're going to something, he goes, "Mm. Okay, let's learn it again. Let's learn it a third time." He was, uh, had an amkus, uh, a depth that we, we learned to appreciate.

33:30 Speaker 2 And he taught in the yeshiva?

33:31 Speaker 1 He taught in the yeshiva, and then he taught, then he took over Yeshivat Gedola. So the Rebbe later on said, "Okay, you go, you go into Yeshivat Gedola. Rabbi Groner will run the yeshiva, and you'll be in charge of Yeshivat Gedola."

33:42 Speaker 2 He ran the Yeshivat Gedola?

33:43 Speaker 1 He ran totally. for many years.

33:46 Speaker 2 Wow. Hmm.

33:49 Speaker 1 He collected money at nighttime, and he was in there the whole day. He'd pick up, you know, he'd make you feel terrible 'cause he'd walk around and pick up a paper, uh, uh, rubbish from the floor, and everybody cringed. Reb Zalman has to go and pick up papers from the floor. He just, he didn't, he would do anything and everything.

34:03 Speaker 2 You know, 'cause what strikes me about the Hasidim in Australia, I know you, you, you me- you mentioned in passing your father meeting Reb Isser, uh, Kloovkant in, in France, who, uh, you know, um, his, his grandson, uh, Rabbi Moshe Nu spoke about him on the podcast, um, one of the earlier episodes. Very fascinating story as well. You know, these Hasidim were, in many ways, I mean, it wasn't the war anymore. They could, they could technically travel to New York, but in those days, to travel to New York was a, was a very, very big ordeal.

34:32 Speaker 1 Right.

34:33 Speaker 2 And, and so in many ways, they were kind of on their own in this, in this faraway country, very little communication, um, very little con- you know, very little going and coming between, between the, the main centers of, of surviving from Yiddishkeit. They were off on this different continent. And so to me, what's striking is, like, how did these Hasidim operate in this kind of self, in a way, almost self-sufficient way? Like, you know, you're, you're seeing this fellow, Reb Zalman or Reb Bransky or Reb Isser Kloovkant, and they're living, a lot of them, their kids didn't marry Lubavitchers. I think, I think that's, I think that's-

35:09 Speaker 1 'Cause there wasn't anyone to marry.

35:10 Speaker 2 Right. Right. If their kids were gonna stay there, they were happy if they married a, a Frum Yid.

35:16 Speaker 1 So just today, I think, is levaya in Melbourne, Thursday, of Reb Mendel New-

35:21 Speaker 2 Right

35:21 Speaker 1 ... who was a son-in-law of Reb Isser Kloovkant.

35:24 Speaker 2 Right. No, other, Moshe, Moshe, Moshe, Moshe Nu spoke about it.

35:27 Speaker 1 Moshe, that's right.

35:28 Speaker 2 Okay. And he spoke about how, you know, he grew up and, uh, you know, they did, in the beginning, they give chavrei sral and his grand- how his grandfather dealt with it. It was a very, it was a very fascinating conversation. So that's why, that's why I'm thinking about it now. You talk about a fellow like Reb Zalman, you know, living in this, in this essentially continent separated by an ocean. You know, um, what was, what was that, what was that like? Was-

35:50 Speaker 1 I think Reb Zalman in particular, as the manal of Moises, had a very rich, um, letter-writing, uh, experience with the Rebbe.

36:00 Speaker 2 Mm.

36:01 Speaker 1 So what some would say, some would say, like, have tens if not hundreds of letters that Reb Zalman sought, uh, to get advice from the Rebbe on many things he was facing, et cetera. Um, and some of those are published. Many of those are published, but not all. Um, so I think those days the communication was, uh, ero- via aerogram. If you remember, even I got letters from the Rebbe that were folded up pieces of-

36:26 Speaker 2 No, I don't remember

36:27 Speaker 1 ... paper.

36:27 Speaker 2 That, that, that, that does, that does make me feel young, but

36:30 Speaker 1 To, to cheapen sort of the postage, et cetera, and very thin paper. Um, so it was via aerogram, or the Rebbe used to send telegrams for Yom Tovim, for Yud Tes Kislev, Yud Tet. A telegram to Anasha, one line, two lines.

36:43 Speaker 2 But how, but, but how did you make sense of him? I guess I'm in a way I'm asking-

36:46 Speaker 1 Yeah

36:46 Speaker 2 ... a question of how did you make sense of the Rebbe? Like, this, this fellow is a Hasid. A Hasid of whom? He's, he's, he's on a different continent. He's, he's, he's, he's thousands of miles away. What does it mean for you as a Australian boy meeting this man with a big beard? What does he, what does he app- what does he represent to you? What is he a part of?

37:04 Speaker 1 I think that, uh, you Saw straight away the total bittle that the Hasidim had to the Rebbe, number one. Whether it's Rav Zalman or Rabbi Groner, et cetera, uh, you knew when you felt and you heard that there was a total subservience to whatever the Rebbe's ha-role or the ratzon of the Rebbe was. So that's something we grew up with. I think that was something remarkable about Melbourne, that we had these ultra-Hasidim, uh, who'd gone through the Russian times with the Friediker Rebbe, et cetera, and they'd sworn allegiance to the Friediker Rebbe and the Rebbe. And, uh, the fact that you couldn't just get on a plane and go to the Rebbe, I think most people tried to go every one or two years. Um, and it could be like half a year's salary or something in those days to fly, and it took a long time. The first time I went, you had to go through Hawaii into LA and through Pan Am, and it was just, you know, took forever. Uh, and you wait seven hours in LA so you can get your next boarding flight, et cetera, so it took forever. Uh, and it was ex-expensive. Um, but you felt that, uh, these Hasidim were the real McCoy. They were the real thing.

38:10 Speaker 2 Right.

38:10 Speaker 1 Uh, and so, uh, yeah, they had such a strong connection to the Rebbe and, uh, what they had heard from the Rebbe on the way. They understood what their role was, what their shlichus is. Uh, they were strong, and they managed to stick it out despite many, many hardships. And you read again some of the letters from Rav Zalman or even from Rav Ariel, his son, and the Rebbe Groner I was involved with a lot in my more mature years and saw the, uh, some of the correspondence and the setletter and the answers for difficult situations that he got from the Rebbe. Um, the, they were absolutely bottled to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe stood strongly for them.

38:54 Speaker 2 Right.

38:54 Speaker 1 Sometimes when Rebbe Groner got into trouble or whatever it is, and the Rebbe was on the line there for him, the Rebbe was, uh... When Sydney opened a yeshiva, and Rabbi Feldman opened a yeshiva at some stage, and I'm talking about probably about the, I'm guessing mid-late '70s, I think, or maybe even '80s. So in those days, Sydney's boys used to come to Melbourne Yeshivat Gedola. That was the normal. The people, they would learn in school in Sydney, and they at Yeshivat Gedola age, they used to come to YG in Melbourne.

39:26 Speaker 2 Hmm.

39:26 Speaker 1 And we had many, many Sydney boys through the yeshiva. At some stage, they wanted to open their own yeshiva. So I, so I heard the story that the Rebbe told Label, Label Groner, ringed up Yitzhak and asked him what he thinks. So Label told-

39:41 Speaker 2 Yitzhak Groner.

39:42 Speaker 1 Yitzhak Groner.

39:43 Speaker 2 His brother.

39:44 Speaker 1 So the Label answers, "The Rebbe is talking midnight." The Rebbe says, "So, so what?"

39:51 Speaker 2 Yeah.

39:51 Speaker 1 So, uh, Rebbe Groner gets the call in the middle of the night. He answers, and half asleep, he understands that the Rebbe is asking him for his resources, of course. Yes, yes. You know. So even though what I wanna say was the Rebbe was mechashav. He knew this will affect Melbourne negatively. The Sydney boys won't come. They'll stay in Sydney. But the Rebbe, you know, had a, a way of dealing with his people as much as he backed them, and yet he sort of protected them in a sense.

40:18 Speaker 2 Hmm. That's very interesting, the way you're, the way you're describing the, the cl- the closeness that you can only see from distance. Like there's, there's a certain impression that's left precisely by the fact that they were not close, uh, i-i-physically. Like, uh, that they were in this faraway country, and you still sense that they have a connection to something, to someone who lives on the other side of the world in a way that leaves a, a deeper impression or, or a different kind of impression than someone who basically, you know, jets off to the Rebbe or drives to the Rebbe every, every week or so. Very interesting.

40:54 Speaker 1 Yeah. It becomes a more meaningful experience in a sense.

40:57 Speaker 2 Right. So then how does that compare or contrast for you when you see these bochurim that come fresh out of the oven of seven seventy? Was there, was something jarring about that? You know, you go from-- 'Cause I'm thinking like a Hasid who lives on a different continent, yes, he's writing letters, but in many ways, the Rebbe becomes the Rebbe that he remembers, right? Like he, he didn't see the Rebbe yesterday or last week.

41:22 Speaker 1 Right.

41:22 Speaker 2 And so there's a, the Rebbe of his mind, there's a Rebbe that he conceptualizes, and he's staying in touch with via letters. And we have this with people that we know as well, friends that we communicate with, but we don't see each other. We kind of base them on how we remember them, and then we meet them, and we're like, we have to update, you know, we have to update it a little bit.

41:40 Speaker 1 But in a way, if you have like a, I won't say lahaval, but in normal relationships, you have a best friend, and you haven't seen that best friend for ten years, and when you meet them again, you sort of click in, and you straight away go off as if you've n- seen them all the time. 'Cause if they're a best friend, you're so close.

41:57 Speaker 2 Right.

41:57 Speaker 1 You just click back into your relationship.

42:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

42:00 Speaker 1 So I think that, um, in those days, you may not have seen the Rebbe so often. Um, we occasionally got tapes from Lubavitch. So you had to wait till the tape on the reels was sent over and it got to Australia, and you stay up all night listening to the reels, et cetera.

42:16 Speaker 2 They, they would stay up all night in yeshiva listening?

42:18 Speaker 1 Some, some yeshiva, yeah, the bochurim was looking. Yeah, yeah.

42:20 Speaker 2 If you waited all, all this time, why not wait till the morning?

42:22 Speaker 1 Nah, come on. It just came now. You gotta, gotta listen to it now. It's fresh.

42:26 Speaker 2 All right. Fair enough.

42:27 Speaker 1 So, um, there was a certain depth and closeness that maybe might not have been there under other circumstances.

42:33 Speaker 2 But, but would Rav Zalman come and listen to the tapes as well?

42:36 Speaker 1 No. No, I don't think so. But the bochurim.

42:37 Speaker 2 So that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That to me is a contrast.

42:40 Speaker 1 Right.

42:40 Speaker 2 That like Rav Zalman, the Rebbe's in my, in my heart. You know, like, uh, like I don't have to run to the tape. The bochurim, they're coming from a world where you have to be up to date. You know, the, the Rebbe-

42:51 Speaker 1 Right

42:51 Speaker 2 ... is like this constant kind of presence. So, uh, that's, that's what I'm asking, if, if, if, if the t- did the day, did the day like-- Was it jarring in any way? Not in a negative way, but more it was like, "Wait a second. It's not just like this. There are people who are also like this."

43:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. I think you clearly see there are Different ways of slicing the cake, and people have different relationships, uh, depending on their age and where they're up to in life. Uh, that's good. That's good for a person's kind of... We don't wanna be, we don't wanna be monotone, and it takes many things, and different people appreciate different approaches. So there's no one, uh, approach for everybody. So some people are like this, some people like something else. So, uh, I think it was good for one's upbringing to see these d-divergences.

43:38 Speaker 2 Right. Did the-

43:39 Speaker 1 And there were times where the Bochurim might have not appreciated the Rabbi Zalman outlook and fuck it, you know what I mean? Uh

43:44 Speaker 2 I was about to ask. Do you remember instances of that?

43:48 Speaker 1 I remember in my time still in Yeshivat Gedola, the government had a program where they delivered to all the schools milk. S-Cholov Stam. So Yeshiva College also used to get these crates and crates of small bottles of milk. And that was just taken for granted. There wasn't Cholov, we didn't have Cholov Yisrael.

44:10 Speaker 2 Right.

44:11 Speaker 1 There were some people who were some Lubavitchers that went to a farm, they got some Cholov Yisrael, it wasn't pasteurized. But in the school etcetera, it was al- it was just normal milk.

44:18 Speaker 2 Right.

44:19 Speaker 1 There was a Chassidishe Farbrengen, if I'm not mistaken-

44:22 Speaker 2 Wait, so the Yeshiva would serve the milk to the boys-

44:24 Speaker 1 It would, yeah

44:25 Speaker 2 ... who, who, who ate Cholov Yisrael when they're-

44:26 Speaker 1 Yeah. And nearly everybody did.

44:28 Speaker 2 Right.

44:28 Speaker 1 It was a rarity not to. Um, so there was a Farbrengen, I think it was a Shabbos, Shabbos Vorchim. And I remember Aharon Leizer Zaitlin, alav hashalom.

44:39 Speaker 2 He was part of the second group?

44:40 Speaker 1 He was part of the third group, I'm thinking.

44:43 Speaker 2 Right.

44:43 Speaker 1 And he got shicker, and he was screaming. He was crying, and he was a gebrent a fire against Rabbi Zalman, Rabbi Groin of the works. He took on the world. And he won.

44:55 Speaker 2 He won.

44:56 Speaker 1 He won. So, uh, it was a Chassidishe Farbrengen „kan of ton, kamal ven chone shlof ton." So from this point on, it, we didn't take the government milk anymore.

45:05 Speaker 2 The boys decided they didn't want it or the school?

45:07 Speaker 1 The... No, the school. Rabbi Zalman and Rabbi Groin decided, "That's it. Okay, no more, no more Cholov Yisrael. We're going Cholov Yisrael only."

45:14 Speaker 2 Just one second. You have this Lubavitch Yeshiva with these shluchim from a-- I never heard this side of it. You have these shlu- you have these shluchim, these like, if I brent the seven, seventy Bochurim for a number of years in the Yeshiva with these Lubavitch-ish boys, some at different levels, and the cafeteria is serving Cholov, Cholov Yisrael.

45:31 Speaker 1 Yeah.

45:32 Speaker 2 It's, it's a, it's a bit of an interesting setup.

45:34 Speaker 1 Um-

45:35 Speaker 2 With a Bochurim who were e-

45:36 Speaker 1 It, it's interesting when you look at it now retrospectively.

45:38 Speaker 2 Of course.

45:39 Speaker 1 But then it was just a normative condition.

45:41 Speaker 2 Right. But for a Lubavitch Yeshiva, it's interesting. Were you guys wearing hats and jackets? You weren't wearing hats and jackets.

45:46 Speaker 1 Yeah.

45:47 Speaker 2 You were-

45:47 Speaker 1 The, the, the, the, the, sorry. I was in Yeshivat Gedola, and we learned within by day in the premises of Yeshiva College.

45:54 Speaker 2 I see. So that's where the milk was coming to.

45:56 Speaker 1 We were on the premises.

45:56 Speaker 2 The milk was not coming to the Yeshivat Gedola?

45:58 Speaker 1 No.

45:59 Speaker 2 Okay. So it was Yeshiva, it was Yeshivat Ketana.

46:01 Speaker 1 Yeshivat Ketana.

46:02 Speaker 2 To these kids, and, and Yeshivat Ketana famously had many children who weren't even Frum.

46:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

46:06 Speaker 2 Weren't even religious, Frum.

46:07 Speaker 1 Yes.

46:08 Speaker 2 Even in my days-

46:09 Speaker 1 Correct

46:09 Speaker 2 ... when I learned there. So, oh, so that's, so that's what was going on. The, the Bochurim in the Yeshivat Gedola though was-

46:14 Speaker 1 No. There, there was no Cholov Yisrael in Yeshivat Gedola.

46:15 Speaker 2 There was no Cholov Yisrael.

46:16 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no.

46:17 Speaker 2 And, and there was, and there was, was there, was there, s- Were all of you guys who just came in from, like you said, the different schools, you all came in, you had to wear a hat and jacket? It was like-

46:26 Speaker 1 There was nobody forced anything upon anybody.

46:28 Speaker 2 But were you, you all like-

46:30 Speaker 1 Yeah

46:30 Speaker 2 ... hooked apart ri-right away?

46:31 Speaker 1 We mo- In various phases, yeah, with a f-different color yarmulka or different hats or, yeah. Yes.

46:37 Speaker 2 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

46:38 Speaker 1 Some people maybe didn't wear a hat straight away, it took time. I don't remember if I wore a hat from day one or not, I don't recall. But you know, in, in, over a period of time, one acculturates.

46:47 Speaker 2 Right. Those, so the boys that were in the Yeshiva were, were, were c-consider themselves like full on Lubavitchers or, or that was up to you?

46:56 Speaker 1 It's up to you.

46:57 Speaker 2 Up to you.

46:57 Speaker 1 Most of them became full on Lubavitch, but not all. Some people wanted to keep their individuality. So I remember one night, Rabbi Zalman Farbrengen about a Bochur who was gonna go to a Yeshiva ner Yisrael. I think it was Kol Torah. So that night's Farbrengen was the mile of Limraut Torah, and wherever you go, you should stay in Torah, et cetera. The next night was Rosh Chodesh. So Zalman Farbrenged again in Yeshivat Gedola, right? And the whole topic of this Farbrengen was "Hashem zachach chu chainu, a Lubavitcher, nushkem pelesh chaser," uh, et cetera, et cetera. You know, fuck, the whole Farbrengen, the opposite of what he Farbrenged the night before.

47:33 Speaker 2 So, yeah, so it's an interesting time. It's an interesting time.

47:38 Speaker 1 Hmm.

47:41 Speaker 2 So what, what, what are you, what are you making out of all this? You, you had come to the Yeshiva for, for, you said for a year to try it out.

47:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

47:49 Speaker 2 To... What are you-- What, what's going on in your mind as you're spending this year?

47:52 Speaker 1 Um, maybe took me half a year to get into the proper swing of things, to appreciate what's happening. Uh, I was very happy with what I'm doing. Uh, my parents were very insistent that they wanted me to go to university, which I wasn't really so mindful of and didn't wanna do so much, but I decided to, to go to university. And then Baruch Hashem, I became a university dropout.

48:21 Speaker 2 Oh, did you?

48:21 Speaker 1 After, within half a year. And I really wasn't happy there. It had nothing, it was for me.

48:27 Speaker 2 Because of, because of you wanted to be in Yeshiva or because you didn't like university?

48:30 Speaker 1 Bit of both.

48:31 Speaker 2 Bit of both.

48:31 Speaker 1 Must be a bit of both. So, um, I dropped out of uni, and I cleared it up with my parents, and I went back to Yeshivat Gedola for another year and a half or so. But then I came, then I came to, uh, I came Elul and Toshuin Lamed Aleph to the Rabbi for the first time.

48:52 Speaker 2 For the first time?

48:53 Speaker 1 Yeah.

48:54 Speaker 2 What was that, what was that like for you?

48:56 Speaker 1 Uh, out of this world. Fantastic. But, uh, it was going to be a little bit more than I bargained for because at my first Yechidas in Tishrei, um, at those days, you had a ksav from the Yeshiva you came from saying you've learnt a certain thing, and you could now stay and learn seven seventy. So I managed with my title. I had a ksav and thing. I was k- I was now planning to sit and learn seven seventy. So the Rabbi tells me in that Yechidas, um, I'll s- I'll paraphrase, but the Rabbi said that, uh, "The summer is coming in Melbourne, and you should discuss with Hanhalas Yeshiva and your father, uh, a propitious time to go into business with your father."

49:40 Speaker 2 Really?

49:40 Speaker 1 Boom. You know, just like a, I don't know what you'd call it, a shot through the air. Um, so I was rather mavul, I was very, um, didn't know where I was. And, uh, like Rabbi said a few of the other things, and I came out of Yechidas, and Rabbi Avrohom Sorotzkin was there, and I was close with Rabbi Avrohom. I was talking to Rabbi Avrohom. "Oh, Gili, Gili Mamaila, dus gemeng, da, da, da."

50:02 Speaker 2 I reme- I remember Rabbi Avrohom.

50:04 Speaker 1 Rabbi Avrohom, yeah. He was prone to his pilos.

50:06 Speaker 2 Yes.

50:06 Speaker 1 Um, "Gili, da, Asalian." So, um, I went back to Melbourne after Tish-- spent the rest of Tishrei, went back to Melbourne after Tishrei, and that was must three months before the summer. I spoke with Rav Zalman, I spoke with my father. So, and at the summer break, after the summer break, I went, uh, I started working.

50:22 Speaker 2 Wait, so you had planned to come for more than Tishrei? Or-

50:24 Speaker 1 I, yeah, I planned to stay and learn.

50:26 Speaker 2 Okay.

50:26 Speaker 1 That was the plan you had except for the Melbourne yeshiva, you could come and-

50:30 Speaker 2 And that was your plan to stay-

50:31 Speaker 1 That was the plan

50:31 Speaker 2 ... for at least a year.

50:31 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

50:32 Speaker 2 And you understood from the rebbe to basically go home and work with your dad.

50:34 Speaker 1 In, in no uncertain terms. And about a year and a half later, when I was at Chason, I came back, yeah, about a year and a half. Um, it was Yom Beis Tammuz time, and, uh, you can't ask a question once the rebbe's told you something. But I put in my settle that, you know, Rebbe Gurne has made an-- given me a few offers to work in the moistes and do various things in the moistes, and I'm very interested in it, and I don't see the sense of what I'm doing at the moment in working. And the rebbe was absolutely shola, absolutely negated, uh, that idea, and said I have to be in business, and that, uh, I'll say in Yiddish first, "Dos vos du kanst ton in ein shor, kan a underne shton funf un zwanzig shor." This that you can achieve in one hour, another person can't do it in twenty-four hours. I took that to mean my involvement in the moistes, et cetera. Um, and the rebbe spoke to me about kivshi zum Torah, that it has to be a kivshi fun efesh, and I have to learn every day. But the rebbe was very, um, um, determined that I should remain in business and work in the moistes sort of, uh, out of hours.

51:46 Speaker 2 How do you make sense of that all these years later? Did you, did you ever, did you ever get a further explanation from the rebbe of why he was... I mean, I-

51:54 Speaker 1 No, I, I don't get, didn't get any further explanation. I, I understand, uh, because I did sort of, um, work and with Rebbe Gurne for thirty-odd years together in the moistes, and in those days, our board looked after all the moistes in Melbourne, apart from Yeshivat Gedola, which was separate, which was Zalman territory. So we had everything under our jurisdiction, and, uh, for ten years then I sort of chaired the board, and we really ran the place. So I took that, that was the rebbe's, uh, bracha, that was the rebbe's intent, that I, uh, sometimes I guess if you can't, what do they say? You can't see the forest because of the trees. Maybe had I been involved in the moistes, I wouldn't have seen a bigger picture, et cetera, I don't know. And I had the, um, time and the possibilities and the, uh, ability to administrate and run moistes and, uh, Baruch Hashem, we built many buildings. We took thousands of kids. We're-- Melbourne Chabad is a big place. It's sort of a normative Judaism in Melbourne.

52:53 Speaker 2 No, it's amazing. I- I'm sure it's much, much bigger though than I remember it. I haven't been there now for twenty-five years or so.

52:59 Speaker 1 Correct.

53:00 Speaker 2 But even when I was there, it was one building going up after another.

53:04 Speaker 1 Right.

53:04 Speaker 2 It was the new elementary school building. There was the new, uh, hall.

53:07 Speaker 1 Yeah. So we've got more, more buildings and more kids.

53:10 Speaker 2 And I'm sure there's more. I'm sure there's more.

53:11 Speaker 1 And then more, the, the community's grown. So on the Yeshiva Melbourne campus, there's three major minyanim-

53:18 Speaker 2 Right

53:18 Speaker 1 ... on Shabbos. There's the main shul still, and there is Young Yeshiva, which has like a hundred kapotos, and there is Dominion.

53:25 Speaker 2 Right. That's your son-in-law's.

53:26 Speaker 1 Uh, my son-in-law, Shikan, he has maybe a, you know, at least a hundred, hundred and fifty people on a Shabbos and big kiddush, et cetera, attracting maybe slightly different element of people, Lubavitchers and non-Lubavitchers.

53:36 Speaker 2 Right.

53:37 Speaker 1 So, uh, yeah, it's a lot happening there.

53:40 Speaker 2 That's so interesting.

53:40 Speaker 1 And there are other Chabad houses and there's a lot of other things.

53:43 Speaker 2 Right. It's so interesting, this story. I never heard that kind of story where a bachur, a bachur comes, and you were, you, it wasn't like you were older or something, that you, you worked another year and a half before you got married.

53:53 Speaker 1 Yeah.

53:53 Speaker 2 And the, the rebbe basically tells you, "This isn't, this isn't the place for you right now in yeshiva. Go, go and work for your father." Very interesting. Was it hard for you at the time?

54:08 Speaker 1 It was hard to accept for a little while. I think I just, it wasn't on my-

54:12 Speaker 2 That you're missing out on the whole year of Fabregins and, and Seven Seventy-

54:16 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah

54:16 Speaker 2 ... that whole life.

54:17 Speaker 1 So I don't know if I missed, I don't know if that was so hard because I hadn't really experienced it as yet.

54:21 Speaker 2 Well, I'm sure you heard about it from-

54:22 Speaker 1 Sure, I heard about it. I was there, and I've been to Tishrei. It was fantastic. So yeah, but I think it was just more the, the surprise of the horror to go do something very different to what you had in mind. So of course you accept it, but it was, uh, difficult to, uh, fully integrate-

54:40 Speaker 2 Right. Right

54:41 Speaker 1 ... at the time.

54:42 Speaker 2 Right. You know, it's funny 'cause sometimes people say, like, the hard thing would be, you know, the rebbe tells me that I have to learn and give up my business, and here it's other, other way around. Like, it's hard for me to go make money.

54:51 Speaker 1 Well, the beauty of our times was, I was Baruch Hashem very lucky to have a clear horror.

54:56 Speaker 2 Right.

54:57 Speaker 1 So, you know, it isn't as if you have to think about what is it, and, uh, and I'm not knocking, opening the ingress or anything else, Chas v'Shalom. But here, you're in the rebbe's room. The rebbe's telling you black on white, "This is what you're going to do." So there's no shailah about it. There's no, you know, rebbe told me, "Jump into China." I'm jumping to China.

55:14 Speaker 2 Yeah, but that's, that's a point. It, it puts a lot of, you know, people say that they would. Right? People say that they would, and a lot of people did follow what the rebbe told them, but it's, you know, it's not necessarily so easy to do that. You could talk about it all day, but here, you know, the rebbe's telling you it's, there's no wiggle room around it. It's very obvious what he's telling you, but it doesn't necessarily make it easier, right? It doesn't, I mean, the fact that you went along with it shows that even though you hadn't grown up in Crown Heights, this is the first time, it's also the first time you're meeting the rebbe, right?

55:44 Speaker 1 First time. Yeah.

55:44 Speaker 2 You're meeting him in a yechidut. And yeah, it's just, you know, it's basically if you're coming to the rebbe because if, if you're looking at the rebbe from, from a, from how you want it to be, this is a-actual absolute disappointment 'cause right, you wanna be around, you wanna stick around. But if, but- But if you're looking at it that you're there because you appreciate the way the Rebbe sees it, it's a different story.

56:13 Speaker 1 That's right. So you, you're having both feelings at once. There is an element disappointment 'cause it wasn't what I was thinking I'm gonna be doing tomorrow.

56:21 Speaker 2 Right.

56:21 Speaker 1 At the same time, it's an element of clarity, which you, again, you appreciate more later maybe. At the time maybe you don't have that clarity, but you appreciate as the years go on.

56:31 Speaker 2 Do you think your father had sent in a letter asking the Rebbe?

56:34 Speaker 1 Um, um, um, most probably, I assume so. I didn't know for a fact, uh, but my parents did have a few yechidim with the Rebbe, and they, I know my-

56:44 Speaker 2 Oh, they had come in themselves?

56:45 Speaker 1 Yeah. My pa- parents had been by the Rebbe a couple of times.

56:47 Speaker 2 They had come to America to see the Rebbe?

56:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. My-

56:49 Speaker 2 That's why they came here?

56:50 Speaker 1 Not, not to see the Rebbe, but once they were in America they, they had, again, my father had some first cousins in Toronto he'd gone to visit. My brother for a while was working. He's an older brother. He was working as a Hillel director, um, in Madison, Wisconsin, and then in Hofstra College.

57:07 Speaker 2 Was this your brother Leibel?

57:07 Speaker 1 Long Island. Leibel, yeah. Before he worked for Chabad, he worked for Hillel.

57:11 Speaker 2 Hmm.

57:12 Speaker 1 Uh, so maybe in around that time, and, um, my parents had once had yechidim, they were talking I think about university, about going to university and learning, et cetera, university. And the Rebbe said, quoted some statistic to them that, I forget the percentage, but only a small percentage of people finish the course they started, and they change their minds, they do other things, et cetera. So the Rebbe was sort of saying, you know, "People have in mind to study this, study that. They change their minds. People do other things."

57:40 Speaker 2 Right.

57:40 Speaker 1 My parents walked into yechidus. My father comes from a Hasidisha background, my mother not. And so he had told my mum, "This is how you act. You don't talk, stand up," et cetera, et cetera. So they walk in, and the Rebbe asked the mother to sit down. Mum didn't sit. Second time, "Sit down." Mum didn't sit. So the Rebbe tells her in Yiddish, "Either you're going to sit or I'll have to stand." So my father told her to sit down.

58:10 Speaker 2 And he stayed standing?

58:11 Speaker 1 He stayed standing but my mother, mother sat down.

58:13 Speaker 2 Huh, fascinating. Fascinating.

58:16 Speaker 1 The Rebbe knew his clientele. He understood and saw through how and what the person is and their background and everything else.

58:23 Speaker 2 Right.

58:24 Speaker 1 You couldn't, uh, you walked into yechidus, there was no fooling the Rebbe about anything.

58:29 Speaker 2 How, how-

58:29 Speaker 1 There was clarity

58:30 Speaker 2 ... how would you describe if, if, if I ask you to remember in, in your, the, in the eye of your mind, how would you describe the walking in, the room, just what you, your impressions?

58:44 Speaker 1 You waited many hours before you walked in, and the Bochur would go in about three o'clock or four o'clock. It wasn't, you were there from, I don't know what, from ten o'clock already. You'd been to the mikvah, and you hadn't eaten the whole day, and you're up until the next morning, and you're waiting around, and you're saying Tehillim. And you knew the moment you walk in, the Rebbe's gotta see through you. So whatever is within you or going on in your mind and your heart at that point in time, the Rebbe's gotta know about it. So, you tried your very best to be sort of the, uh, pure in thought and in deed and in mind and to, uh, be on a sort of a kedi that the Rebbe should, uh, um, see you in a, in a good, um, in a good light.

59:24 Speaker 2 And what surprised you-

59:24 Speaker 1 By share Hashem.

59:25 Speaker 2 And what surprised you most once you walk in through the door? 'Cause this is all, this is all your anticipation.

59:30 Speaker 1 Yeah.

59:30 Speaker 2 What surprised you?

59:30 Speaker 1 Simplicity. Simplicity of the Rebbe and his room and his desk, et cetera. Although I once had a yechidus. Now, I, I started publishing as a bocher a little bit of a, um, to call it a magazine sounds, is much too, um, optimistic. Um, it was like a little journal, paperback, very cheaply produced. This is back in '70s.

59:55 Speaker 2 They're called, they're, they're back now. They're called zines.

59:58 Speaker 1 Okay.

59:58 Speaker 2 Zines.

59:59 Speaker 1 So I called this thing Hamayan, and it was aimed to sort of a college or high school youth.

1:00:04 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:00:04 Speaker 1 Interesting articles we wrote locally. We borrowed stuff from Yiddish Shime or whatever was available in those days. And I sent a copy in of each one to the Rebbe. So this-

1:00:15 Speaker 2 This is while you're in Australia?

1:00:17 Speaker 1 From Australia. So I did this myself, and we put out a number of, um, you know, issues every four months or six months, whatever it is, with articles, and I wrote some articles, et cetera. So one of my yechidus, I walked in. I think I was already a choson then. I walked into the Rebbe's room, and the Rebbe has a copy of this Hamayan on the desk 'cause they were all bright colors. We definitely did a, it was very simply produced, but we did it on a colored cardboard. So I think it was a bright green, but it's sitting there on the desk. So the Rebbe starts talking about Hamayan, and he says, "It's fact, it's a really good thing," et cetera. "Now you should think about doing it in other languages."

1:00:52 Speaker 2 What language was it in?

1:00:53 Speaker 1 Pardon? It was English.

1:00:54 Speaker 2 English.

1:00:55 Speaker 1 "And you should think about changing the name 'cause there's another Yarche Hanan Is- in Israel which uses the name Hamayan. So maybe think about changing the name, and maybe think about doing it into different languages." And I was just, you know, and it's sitting there on the Rebbe's desk when I walk into yechidus. So, uh, you see how everything was bashort laprotis and organized, et cetera, and simplicity. Uh, and the Rebbe, you know, reading my title. Now I, I write very small. Unfortunately, I don't write, I'm left-handed, it's my excuse. So I don't write nicely, and I tended to write very small. And that night in yechidus, the Rebbe wore glasses, and he takes a magnifying glass.

1:01:33 Speaker 2 Really?

1:01:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, and he's reading my, 'cause then I wrote a title in it, et cetera, and he's reading it and t- talking to me. Um, so I was a bit, um, abashed that the Rebbe has to take a magnifying glass as well as using his glasses. But it's, um-

1:01:49 Speaker 2 The, the first yechidus you had, the first-

1:01:50 Speaker 1 I don't know if it was the first or the second. I don't know.

1:01:52 Speaker 2 Uh, one of the times he's-

1:01:53 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Sure

1:01:53 Speaker 2 ... he's reading the letter with a magnifying glass.

1:01:56 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Okay.

1:01:56 Speaker 2 But you were surprised by the simplicity.

1:01:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:02:00 Speaker 2 It, it hadn't matched what you expected.

1:02:03 Speaker 1 It was just different. Different, different than I... Rebbe's eyes are piercing, et cetera, and he's reading and he's just talking and he's telling you A, B, C, D, E. And, uh, not long yechidus, I mean, two or three minutes.

1:02:15 Speaker 2 Two, three minutes.

1:02:16 Speaker 1 Plenty. It's plenty. And the Rebbe tell me what to do, how to do. Especially on my second yuchid when I was a chassan and I had an office from Rebbe Groen and I thought that I could sway the Rebbe with this sort of argument, and the Rebbe just wiped, wiped the floor of it.

1:02:32 Speaker 2 He wiped the, he wiped the floor w-with you, with you, with you, uh, of-

1:02:36 Speaker 1 Of any suggestion of me working for the Moisters.

1:02:38 Speaker 2 Which is what you wanted.

1:02:39 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:02:42 Speaker 2 Hmm. And, and, and he w- he w- he was emphatic in the yuchid? He was-

1:02:46 Speaker 1 Absolutely emphatic.

1:02:49 Speaker 2 Emphatic.

1:02:50 Speaker 1 Hmm.

1:02:50 Speaker 2 How, how was it said? Was it said like with like a, like a, like a, a h- like a harsh-- Did it sound-

1:02:57 Speaker 1 No, no

1:02:57 Speaker 2 ... feel harsh to you?

1:02:58 Speaker 1 He just said that, uh, as I said to you before, that this is your role.

1:03:03 Speaker 2 Right.

1:03:03 Speaker 1 But you can achieve as much more than somebody who's gotta work at this twenty-four hours a day, and you have to have kisdin latara, and, uh, just, you know, on a different wavelength in a sense, in a sense. A diff- but a positive harah on a different wavelength. It didn't attack negatively what I'd wanted to do. Just showed me there was another path, and that's the path you should take.

1:03:24 Speaker 2 Right. Hmm. Hmm. So le-let's talk a little, let's talk a little bit about, uh, you, you're s- you're talking about being a chassan and getting married. Your, your, your wife is a granddaughter of Nachum Zalman.

1:03:36 Speaker 1 Yeah. F-oldest granddaughter.

1:03:38 Speaker 2 What, what, what was that, what was that like to, to get into that world? Did you, did you, did you have anything to do with him beforehand?

1:03:44 Speaker 1 Yeah, because, um, in Yeshiva, I mean, you know, he was a part of the furniture of, uh, being in Yeshiva.

1:03:51 Speaker 2 Was he a fundraiser? What was his role?

1:03:53 Speaker 1 He was a-- Yeah. So he was originally, he started some knitting business and he was doing a little bit of collecting on the side. In the end, he became the big- the biggest fundraiser for Yeshiva.

1:04:01 Speaker 2 Yeshiva Ketana?

1:04:02 Speaker 1 Yeshiva-

1:04:02 Speaker 2 Yeshiva College?

1:04:03 Speaker 1 Yeshiva College.

1:04:03 Speaker 2 Yeshiva College.

1:04:04 Speaker 1 Yeshiva Ketana. Uh, and Yeshiva Moishes, uh, for the whole, for everything.

1:04:08 Speaker 2 Rabbi Groen.

1:04:08 Speaker 1 For the, for the schools. He, he collected more than Rabbi Groen. And they went up, they, they, they'd get together. It was a love-hate relationship. This was the Russian old guard, and this was the American, and they used to argue and scream, but they loved each other. My, my z-zayde really loved Rabbi Groen, but he didn't see the same way. They could argue and et cetera. And they used to split up the Gvirim, and he was a real, had a lot of chain. Um, I heard from Mulik, his son, that they were leaving Paris, so we s-

1:04:38 Speaker 2 And Mulik is your father-in-law or your uncle?

1:04:39 Speaker 1 No, Mulik is, um, Rab Nachum's son. Mulik Gurevitch.

1:04:43 Speaker 2 Your wi- your wife's uncle.

1:04:43 Speaker 1 He's my wife's uncle. He's still alive. He's just turning ninety this year, im yirtzeh Hashem. Um, when they were leaving Paris, so Rabbi Yisroel Noyach gave Rab Nachum a broche that he should be motze chain in everybody's eyes. He should find favor, and that's what he was. He just, he had a way with people, and very heartsick and very emotional. And he would run to every levaya in town, and he would visit every yam manah and sick person in the hospital. And he'd say, "Tell my schwiegerm, make me chicken soup. Give me a challah. I have to go visit this person or that person." And he was loved around town. He would, um, ring up the big Gvirim in town, and he knew all the... There's little, only a little office in Yeshiva school that he worked from. There was no big offices in those days. And, uh, he would ring up the sec- the, the Gvir, but of course, he had to go through the secretary. So you heard him on the phone, "Darling, I must see him. It's very important. It's very urgent. Darling, give me appointment today," you know. He sweet talked and brought presents for all the secretaries. That was the way to get into the office, et cetera. So he was, uh, yeah, he was a real character. And he'd sit tilim the whole day, and he ma- had many car accidents, and, uh, this was, uh-

1:05:53 Speaker 2 He had many car accidents.

1:05:54 Speaker 1 Many car accidents till he was-

1:05:56 Speaker 2 We have the, we have the-

1:05:56 Speaker 1 Car was taken away.

1:05:56 Speaker 2 We have the, we have the sirens here. Full Hollywood production. Uh, yeah, so I, so first of all, I, I, I have to thank you for f- you know, in retrospect, for all those minyanim that I spent, uh, on Shabbats.

1:06:11 Speaker 1 Right. So I've had a boys' minyan for thirty-odd years.

1:06:13 Speaker 2 How did that start?

1:06:16 Speaker 1 I didn't start the minyan. The, I definitely didn't s- didn't begin it, but I took it over at some stage, and, uh, grew it, I guess, and we were always, uh, I don't know, where, in which, where we davened in your time. We were sort of moved from premises to premises to premises, from this kindergarten to that kindergarten.

1:06:31 Speaker 2 But there was a time that there was a mesivta that was taking shape.

1:06:35 Speaker 1 In the flats or something?

1:06:36 Speaker 2 No, it was like underneath. It was, I don't know, maybe that's, maybe you call it the flats. The, the, where you go underneath the building towards the girls' school on the right-hand side.

1:06:44 Speaker 1 Okay. Oh, that was very modern times. That was very mesivta. Okay.

1:06:47 Speaker 2 And then before that, there was like a few houses, weren't there?

1:06:50 Speaker 1 Yeah, there were some houses, some flats.

1:06:51 Speaker 2 Some houses on the other side of the-

1:06:52 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah

1:06:52 Speaker 2 ... on the other side of the-

1:06:54 Speaker 1 And we were in various kindergartens-

1:06:55 Speaker 2 ... other side of the fields, right?

1:06:55 Speaker 1 And they're always, uh, mechalkels, and it wasn't left the way it was should have been, and always problems.

1:07:00 Speaker 2 Oh, so the flats, you mean the houses on the other side-

1:07:02 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:07:03 Speaker 2 ... of the, of the-

1:07:03 Speaker 1 But we had, um, apart from boys that you mentioned, Rab Nachum Zalman used to daven in there quite often. I remember-

1:07:08 Speaker 2 Why did he come there?

1:07:10 Speaker 1 Just to-

1:07:11 Speaker 2 To a chazzak?

1:07:12 Speaker 1 No, I think just for his own peace of mind, or he felt he was, could do what he wants there sort of thing-

1:07:16 Speaker 2 Right

1:07:16 Speaker 1 ... and sit and daven and, and, uh, Rabbi Sal Vilshansky for a few years davened with us, was a ultra-Chassid. He was a Talmud of Lubavitch, and he would learn for us sometimes. It was-

1:07:27 Speaker 2 What was his name?

1:07:28 Speaker 1 Vilshansky, Rabbi.

1:07:29 Speaker 2 The-

1:07:29 Speaker 1 That is-

1:07:30 Speaker 2 The father of the Vilshansky brothers?

1:07:32 Speaker 1 The Zayde.

1:07:32 Speaker 2 The Zayde.

1:07:33 Speaker 1 The Zayde.

1:07:33 Speaker 2 He lives in Australia?

1:07:34 Speaker 1 He lived in Australia. He lived, he was in Melbourne, and then he went to Sydney for many years. Then he came back in his older age to, back to Melbourne.

1:07:42 Speaker 2 Hmm. Yeah. Uh, so Rabbi Gurevitch, he lived till to, to, Rab Nachum Zalman lived till, what, uh, twenty-five years ago?

1:07:51 Speaker 1 Something like that.

1:07:53 Speaker 2 No, no, I was here twenty-five years ago. It, it must have been less than.

1:07:57 Speaker 1 The oldest Nachum, my nephew, is most probably in his late twenties. Maybe about twenty-eight years ago or so.

1:08:02 Speaker 2 No, no, can't be. I'm thirty-

1:08:04 Speaker 1 He was-

1:08:04 Speaker 2 I'm thirty-eight, and I remember him. Okay. So something like that.

1:08:13 Speaker 1 So he-

1:08:13 Speaker 2 He was one of the la- He was one of the, he was one of the old-

1:08:15 Speaker 1 One-

1:08:15 Speaker 2 He was one of the last ones

1:08:15 Speaker 1 ... one of the original families.

1:08:17 Speaker 2 But he was one of the last-

1:08:17 Speaker 1 Uh, one of the last

1:08:18 Speaker 2 ... older Sydney-

1:08:19 Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't remember quite the order, yeah. There were the Althauses and the, uh, Zabranskis, Gureviches. Klovkant

1:08:28 Speaker 2 Did they get along? Is it this Russian clique that you're describing?

1:08:31 Speaker 1 I think so, more or less.

1:08:32 Speaker 2 Did they get along?

1:08:33 Speaker 1 Yeah. They might have not seen eye to eye on everything. They, they got along. They were a clique among, amongst themselves.

1:08:37 Speaker 2 Right. And how did, how did Rabbi Groner fit into all of this? 'Cause you've brought that up a few times, and you had a special relationship with him.

1:08:43 Speaker 1 I think it was difficult, especially in the earlier years.

1:08:46 Speaker 2 He came after them, right?

1:08:47 Speaker 1 He came after them, and they understood on the one hand they needed somebody more polished and more language to sort of run the place.

1:08:56 Speaker 2 And younger.

1:08:57 Speaker 1 And younger, and yeah, and vibrant, et cetera. And Rabbi Groner had all those, um, pluses plus more. At the same time, a different mentality.

1:09:05 Speaker 2 Right.

1:09:06 Speaker 1 They were Russian. They were brought up in, uh, Moscow. They weren't peasants. They were brought up in Moscow. When they came to Australia and they went to Feiglin Farm in Shepparton, they didn't know what hit them. They didn't last that long on, on the Feiglin Farm. Feiglin, Moshe Zalman Feiglin had visions of building community in Shepparton, and they all had to nail boxes and pick fruits and all sorts of things 'cause building a whole community there, this was, uh, this wasn't a life for them. They-

1:09:30 Speaker 2 They were urban. They were-

1:09:31 Speaker 1 They were urban people.

1:09:32 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:09:32 Speaker 1 So I don't know. It took months, et cetera, or maybe up to a year, and they moved to Melbourne. They couldn't stay in Shepparton.

1:09:37 Speaker 2 Moshe Zalman was a Lubavitch Hasid?

1:09:39 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:09:40 Speaker 2 He had come before all of them.

1:09:41 Speaker 1 He had come in, I think, from Matula, from Eretz Yisrael in the maybe turn of the century or something, a long time before.

1:09:49 Speaker 2 So he was excited that they're coming after the war.

1:09:51 Speaker 1 Very excited. He, he-

1:09:52 Speaker 2 He had a whole idea

1:09:53 Speaker 1 ... he had a correspondence with the Rebbe Rashab and the Friediker Rebbe. There was published letters, and he wanted to bring these people over.

1:10:00 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:10:00 Speaker 1 So the Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe acceded to it, but, uh, I think, I-I don't think never the plan was to be housed in Shepparton.

1:10:08 Speaker 2 So he, he was trying to build like a kind of Kfar Chabad in Australia.

1:10:12 Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

1:10:12 Speaker 2 And, and the Russians, they-

1:10:13 Speaker 1 The Russians-

1:10:13 Speaker 2 They wanted no part of it

1:10:14 Speaker 1 ... no, no, no, no, no. Well, it didn't last for that long.

1:10:17 Speaker 2 That's funny. S-so as Rabbi Groner comes, how, how does he, how does he fit into all this?

1:10:23 Speaker 1 So, I mean, I wasn't around. You know, I was a little boy. I don't, I don't exactly know how it started. Um, but in my times, there was, uh, a working relationship between them all, and they were all on the one side. But along the way, there were many hiccups, and many differences of opinion, and many arguments, and many, uh, you know, uh, wild frabrangens, et cetera, uh, because it was difficult. They just were on different wavelengths many of the times. But they, the Russians could see where Rabbi Groner was achieving what he could achieve they, they couldn't do.

1:10:56 Speaker 2 Right.

1:10:56 Speaker 1 Um, so you know, they all, every-- In the end, the Re- with the Rebbe's assistance in carving paths out for people, um, it all worked.

1:11:05 Speaker 2 Right. I remember Rabbi Groner very well. He was, he was a very unique man.

1:11:09 Speaker 1 He was larger than life.

1:11:11 Speaker 2 Larger than life. You felt, you felt that even though you-

1:11:13 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:11:13 Speaker 2 ... you knew him.

1:11:14 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. He, he could do anything and everything. He was just really, he was a kol yofel.

1:11:19 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:20 Speaker 1 He was a very talented person, a big lamdan. I'm sure had he not been a, a head shliach, he could have been a big Rosh Yeshiva or something, giving shiurim.

1:11:27 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:28 Speaker 1 Huge, you know, uh, knowledge and very quick mind, agile mind.

1:11:31 Speaker 2 A chazan.

1:11:32 Speaker 1 A chazan, an orator, um, anything you like.

1:11:37 Speaker 2 Right. A, a prescriber of mashke at night. That story is amazing. That story is amazing. So what, you know, as, as... If we're, if we're following along your story, you're now, you're, you're, you're married to Nachum Zalman's granddaughter. Um, you know, it, from what you're describing to me, it doesn't sound like it would've been that shocking to have him in your life. You, you had these different-

1:11:59 Speaker 1 No

1:11:59 Speaker 2 ... figures around in your life. It wasn't like you came-

1:12:01 Speaker 1 As a bocher, and I was working. So I had a shiur, um, in the morning in the back of shul with a friend of mine, alav hashalom, Zvi Ainsworth, who died in-

1:12:11 Speaker 2 Bal Harbour

1:12:11 Speaker 1 ... Surfside, Bal Harbour, yeah. So we still in the morning, Chassidis. We bo- we were both working as bochurim already.

1:12:17 Speaker 2 And he was also from Melbourne?

1:12:18 Speaker 1 He was from Sydney.

1:12:18 Speaker 2 Sydney.

1:12:19 Speaker 1 But he lived in Melbourne. Um, so we're learning in the back of shul. So such is the nature of Rav Nachum Zalman, he sees us for a few weeks learning. He says, "Okay, I'm here. I'm part of the shiur. That's it. Here I am." So, so that's, that's whenever mitzvah was going, Rav Nachum was there. If you're learning a shiur, Rav Nachum's there. If there's a daf yomi going on, Rav Nachum will go there. If whatever, a, a mace mitzvah, Rav Nachum for sure is there. He's part of every... Kol davar shebKedushah, Rav Nachum is involved in it, and he's part of the story. Or if you bought an illah, a psichah of an illah or something for, in those days, maybe ten thousand dollars something, Rav Nachum's there. He'll be, he'll be a shotef, you know? He was involved in anything and everything.

1:12:59 Speaker 2 Ah. So, so you had already gotten to know him a little bit.

1:13:01 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

1:13:02 Speaker 2 Yeah. So it doesn't sound like it was much of a shock to you. It was like this, you know, Hasid being your wife's grandfather. Um, you know, the, it seems like you were pretty involved at that point. But you, you, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're firmly now inside the Lubavitch community-

1:13:18 Speaker 1 Right

1:13:18 Speaker 2 ... from, from, from multiple angles. You're working with your dad. How do you start getting involved with the Yeshiva College?

1:13:25 Speaker 1 Um, I think some years down the track, they were having some building problems on a particular project, a school building, and I was approached by the then president, Dovid Feiglin, alav hashalom. They said, "We're having problems. We're a bit out of our depth as to how to deal with it. Will you, can you have a look and advise us?" So I was involved in that and, uh, helped solve the problem with the architects and the builder and everybody else 'cause I was in the building industry.

1:13:52 Speaker 2 Oh, your, your father was real estate?

1:13:54 Speaker 1 Yeah, real estate and building. So, uh, and from that, uh, at some later point, I was invited in to, to sit on their, on the board of the yeshiva.

1:14:02 Speaker 2 Did you realize then? Was that like the moment that you realized, "Okay, this is why the Rebbe sent me"?

1:14:06 Speaker 1 No, I don't, don't think I realized at that point in time, no. But, uh, took, took some years for that realization to kick in.

1:14:15 Speaker 2 Right. A-and what, what, what did you learn about, what did you learn about, uh, Rabbi Groner and, and, and, and Lubavitch as a mosad as you get more involved and get more inside?

1:14:28 Speaker 1 I think you have to learn and develop a sense of, um, getting along with people. So you sit on-- You run your own business, as I do, I can decide, here I am in America for a month. I'm taking off four weeks, and I'll work on my phone as I need. When you're working on a committee with other people, you have to have a lot of give and take, and you have to, uh, ein od se on Shabbos. Everybody thinks differently, everybody has different backgrounds. So to be successful, you have to be able to listen to other people, understand where they're coming from, and, uh, try in a sense to compromise and find middle paths that you get, uh, most people on board with. So it's easy to, you know, it's no sense in arguing about e-every little thing. You've got to somehow, uh, get along with people, find, uh, what's important, what do we want to achieve out of this, and sway others to, uh, head in the right direction.

1:15:22 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, that, that's ultimately the, the definition of, of, uh, you know, the work of the Klal, is that you-

1:15:29 Speaker 1 That's right

1:15:30 Speaker 2 ... you, you lose, you lose that independence that you have otherwise. Uh, but in a more Le-- on a-- from a more Lubavitch, uh, vantage point, you know, you-- there's, there's always or there can be sometimes this innocence that someone has from the outside. You know, the Shluchim, they, they're doing amazing things. Everything, everything is beautiful because Sh-Shluchim or people running this Moises will put up a very brave r-a br-very brave front, right? The v- you know, they-- And every organization has to do this to some extent. There's a PR, what people see about it, and then there's the actual reality of it.

1:16:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:16:06 Speaker 2 What was it like for you? And, and I think sometimes when people traverse, you know, go the outside to the inside, and they find out how the hotdog is made, they're like, "Wait a second, you know, this doesn't seem as, as, as holy as, as I thought it was or as, you know, as, as, as perfect as I thought it was." What was it like for you to go from being a Bachur in Yeshiva, work-- you know, working with your father, learning in the back of the Shul, kind of doing your own thing and enjoying the Chabad presence from the outside, and now you're on the inside and like you said, there's a lot of-

1:16:42 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:16:42 Speaker 2 ... negotiations.

1:16:45 Speaker 1 I mean, you learn about people's characters. Um, but we had a role. We were sort of sitting on top of a whole lot of Moises, and it was about, um, sharing assets, um, monies coming in, where are they going to go. Everybody's screaming for an extra hundred thousand dollars for this or that and the other, and making sense of it all and, uh, having priorities with Rabbi Groner, uh, as to, uh, what our priorities were at that point in time and how we could help out all the Moises to achieve what we thought was reasonable to achieve. So it's a matter of balancing a lot. Uh, so you're dealing with the individual and the Mena'alim, the staff, et cetera, who wanna be paid more and, uh, more holiday pay, et cetera. But you've got to, uh, sort of... That's gotta be mitigated by the realities of life.

1:17:35 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:17:36 Speaker 1 And if there's no money , I'm sorry. We get-- we ain't got it.

1:17:39 Speaker 2 Right. That, that, that's basically my question. My question is not to get into the politics.

1:17:43 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

1:17:43 Speaker 2 The po- the politics and, and that stuff is, is not unique to one or the other organization, and it's just life, and I, I don't find it particularly compelling. Yeah, people are people, and if you look hard enough, you'll, you'll find, you'll find something ugly if, if that's what you're looking for. My, my question more in the Lubavitch f- in the Lubavitch world is Lubavitch Moises, Australia even, uh, really any, really any Moises, but Lub- Australia is a very good example of it, is there's a, there's a utopian or I don't know the word utopian, but it's very idealistic. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna transform a community. We're not just gonna run a school with a balanced budget, which is how every other school in the city is operating. You know, we're gonna run a school, a tight ship. We're gonna have a balanced budget. Everything's gonna be beautiful. Lubavitch is always thinking about we need to have more kids, we need to have another Moises, we need to do this, we need to do that. If we're... You know, I'm sure he's getting-- Rabbi Groner's getting phone calls from seven seventy, "You have to do this. You have to do that." And so there's this utopian or whatever you wanna call it, uh, very, very idealistic, uh, way of approaching things. But like you said, at the end of the day, it has to be paid for. And there's like, a-at some point, especially when you have more buy-in from people in the

1:18:53 Speaker 2 community, and it's not just a rabbi or an independent Shliach making decisions, and it has to be accounted for by other people, that's where I feel like sometimes... And I'm not just talking specifically about Australia. I think in general, a lot of Lubavitchers struggle with how do I hold on to idealism when-- and also be responsible about it?

1:19:15 Speaker 1 With, with difficulty . I think that, uh, Rabbi Groner was, um, a strong and a leader and looking to expand as much as possible. Um, sometimes it was his board, myself included, had to hold him back a little bit to say, "Just not gonna work for whatever reason." At the end of the day, we understood Rabbi Groner was the Shliach. We were there to assist. So if he felt very strongly about something and he said, "It's got to happen", we agreed it's got to happen, whether we had the money or didn't have the money. Most of the time, we worked very-- we integrated, worked very well together. As he got older, he left more and more for us to do as he sort of cut back on what he was able to do. Uh, but we had a very strong and close working relationship, and we, we saw eye to eye ninety-nine percent of the time. Um, and in our, my times, it was a matter of how we carving up the pie as to resources and as to monies and, uh, growth. And, uh, Beis Shifach was angry 'cause Yeshivas getting this and we didn't get that, and two years later, you have to make it up to the other ones. It was, it was balancing priorities a lot. Um, but we had excellent Mena'alim who were also dedicated Shluchim. But I think at the end of the day, everybody sort of, um, was bottled to the cause, even though y-y-characters and id-- personalities

1:20:37 Speaker 1 get in the way sometimes. But I think most people, uh, were able to bury that to an extent in order for the greater good.

1:20:45 Speaker 2 Right. I, what I'm thinking about as you're talking is I, I, I've also, uh, not, not to compare, I haven't been involved in the, in the scale of this kind of organization, not even close, but I was, you know, working-- I grew up on Shlichus. I, I spent a few years after I was married on Shlichus. There's, there's a, there's a way that- That world looks at money. Money is, it's, it's all about, you know, is there enough money to do X, right?

1:21:13 Speaker 1 Mm.

1:21:13 Speaker 2 The, the idea comes first and money comes second. Whereas in business, yeah, of course you need to have a vision and ideas, but ultimately money has a much more, has much more of a say, it ha-has, has a bigger seat at the table. Uh, would you agree with that, with that assessment?

1:21:28 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:21:29 Speaker 2 You know, so what, what, what, what was that like for you to go from, you know, the Rebbe told you to be in business, you grew up with a businessman father, which also shapes how you look at money and the, the importance of money and, and how it, the hier- where it fits into the hierarchy of things. How, how does, how did you make that... How did you, how did you see the Lubavitch way of looking at money? What did you find it to be cynical or like, uh, frivolous?

1:21:59 Speaker 1 No, I think clearly the ideas and the principles and the aims took priority. And yes, we have the ideas, now how are we gonna do it? And then the money is secondary.

1:22:09 Speaker 2 Right.

1:22:09 Speaker 1 Um, and I remember sifas from the Rebbe speaking about how moises should never have money in the bank. You've gotta owe the bank. You, you-

1:22:16 Speaker 2 Right

1:22:16 Speaker 1 ... you never have money, idle money sitting around.

1:22:18 Speaker 2 Yes. Uh-

1:22:18 Speaker 1 'Cause that means you're not utilizing what you could be doing.

1:22:21 Speaker 2 So the Rebbe did say that, right?

1:22:22 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:22:22 Speaker 2 It's not my imagination.

1:22:23 Speaker 1 No, no. Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

1:22:25 Speaker 2 And did Rabbi Groner operate that way?

1:22:26 Speaker 1 Yes.

1:22:27 Speaker 2 Money-

1:22:27 Speaker 1 So I mean, he, he had these chaivas on him, so I mean, every fortnight was payday for hundred staff, and he was short of money. So he has to go ringing around Melbourne, "I need ten thousand, twenty thousand. I nee-need to pay these teachers." Yeshiva always paid m-in my, my time, most of us in Melbourne always paid the staff. We were big schools and big staff, and you had to pay on payday. There was no, I don't know, I don't wanna use this badly, but there's no New York mentality of the staff can wait three months and be three months behind in their-

1:22:59 Speaker 2 Right

1:22:59 Speaker 1 ... in their pay, uh, as some moises do. Um, so yeah, everybody had to be paid on time, et cetera. There were times maybe we couldn't afford. There used to be a holiday pay loading in those days, I think of seventeen and a half percent. You had to pay extra for the times, for the holiday summer. So we didn't always have money in the bank for that.

1:23:17 Speaker 2 Wait, wait, one second. What does that mean? You had to pay in the summer?

1:23:20 Speaker 1 You have to pay with a seventeen and a half percent loading. I don't think it exists anymore. So-

1:23:25 Speaker 2 What does that mean?

1:23:26 Speaker 1 Extra. You have to pay extra.

1:23:27 Speaker 2 For like, like overtime?

1:23:29 Speaker 1 Yeah. Not for overtime. First for, it was part of their package that you had to pay extra-

1:23:33 Speaker 2 Oh, is that a legal thing?

1:23:34 Speaker 1 ... funds. Yeah, a legal thing.

1:23:35 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:23:35 Speaker 1 So we didn't have always money for that for the summer. The summer's very hard. People are out of town. No one's there. You have to ring up to somebody to get money. So sometimes we owed that loading for a few months, but-

1:23:46 Speaker 2 But was it hard for you as a businessman to go from running a business where everything is about you need to make sure there's money-

1:23:52 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:23:52 Speaker 2 ... in the bank and money is like a real thing to go, and then you go to a meeting at a moises a-and they're talking about, about empty bank accounts? Was it, was it at all-

1:24:02 Speaker 1 No, it was just like a different business . You know? You have v-various business experiences, and this business ran on different lines a little bit.

1:24:09 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:24:09 Speaker 1 Um, no, that wasn't, it wasn't hard as such. But, uh, you have to sort of again, um, you have to bridge expectations and dreams to the realities of life. It's-

1:24:20 Speaker 2 That, so you thought that was your role?

1:24:21 Speaker 1 I think that was part of my role, and I think I had a good relationship with the menalium moises, and they understood I valued them, and I think they, uh, respected me, um, being also the Lubavitch Hasid, that I wasn't just for an outsider coming in and telling them this is not the way to do things. So I think we worked very well together. And, um, we had to have the dreams and the aims, but we also had to make sure in some sense that we could, we could pay our way. And there were times when we got into trouble. We had a very big crisis around the 1990s, et cetera, and the bank was taking everything away from us, and we-

1:24:55 Speaker 2 Really?

1:24:56 Speaker 1 Yeah. Uh, and it was, there was a, a, um, recession time in Australia.

1:25:02 Speaker 2 Right.

1:25:02 Speaker 1 And the bank-

1:25:03 Speaker 2 Are you talking about the late '90s?

1:25:04 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:25:04 Speaker 2 The, the Asian crisis?

1:25:05 Speaker 1 Early, early '90s.

1:25:06 Speaker 2 Before the Asian crisis?

1:25:07 Speaker 1 Yes, early '90s. And the bank was taking us, gonna sell us up and get rid of us, et cetera, et cetera, which they possibly wouldn't have done, but who knows? So anyway, we, we cut a deal with the bank, and we had to pay, we had to raise, I don't know what it was, two and a half or five million dollars within a few days.

1:25:22 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:25:23 Speaker 1 And, uh, we did it. Rabbi Gran- Rabbi Graner was at the helm, but we, you know, g-got the money on the table and, uh, got rid of a lot of debt and, uh, cut a deal with the bank and, uh, but it was a hard time, difficult times.

1:25:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:25:38 Speaker 1 So you go through your ups and downs. There are times where everything's beautiful and wonderful, and there's times where you can't sleep and you're pulling your hair out 'cause you can't pay teachers tomorrow.

1:25:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:25:48 Speaker 1 So we all felt it was a very real responsibility.

1:25:51 Speaker 2 It seems like you need both. It seems like you need both, right? Especially when you're talking about moises. Because I, I suppose the, the, the other difference between businesses and moises is that a business can only survive and will only survive if the money, if, if the money works out, if the money makes sense. There isn't really, besides some very few instances, there isn't really a reason to maintain a business if it's, if it's losing money or if there's no promise of-

1:26:15 Speaker 1 Right

1:26:15 Speaker 2 ... making money at some point, right? You know, if you have investors and venture capital, the g- idea is eventually it's gonna make money. Otherwise, what's the point of this business? Whereas with a moises, it is because of the idea. There's a belief that something that's not quantified by money, like the education of a child, the importance of bringing this child into school, even though his parents don't necessarily care to pay for it or are able to pay for it, that exists regardless if, if you can pay for it or not. And so even in a world that's more practical and more pragmatic, uh, if you don't have those dreams and those ideas, you're going to miss out on things, right? You cannot... I-if Rabbi Groner was to take a, a, a, a approach to these moises like a businessman would, I don't think y- I don't think the moises would look the way they do today.

1:27:02 Speaker 1 Agreed. So part of your role is to sell your dream and your vision to other people.

1:27:06 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:06 Speaker 1 You need buy-in Uh, from people.

1:27:09 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:09 Speaker 1 They should understand the importance of whatever, whatever you're doing in your programs and your chinuch and et cetera. Uh, they understand the long-term importance of it and, uh, open up the checkbook.

1:27:20 Speaker 2 Right. No, my point is only that you need to have, you need to have the dreamers.

1:27:23 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

1:27:23 Speaker 2 You need to have, you need to have those people, and those people sometimes because of who they are and the way they, they think, they are going to, on their own, go to, go off the deep end. And there needs to be a give and take, especially if something's to last and succeed. But, you know, in, in a, in a-- for people that get very practical and, and go into business and everything has to make sense, it's not, not... You can't, you can't boil everything down to-- You can't fit everything into that box.

1:27:54 Speaker 1 It's always a question of balance. So I remember hearing a story, I don't vouch for its accuracy, but I assume it's correct, that Rav Shlomo Carlebach, uh, once got into b- very big trouble, and he came to the Rebbe, and he told the Rebbe, "The Rebbe had said you have to do A, B, and C, go beyond and et cetera." And the Rebbe answered, "Abba fort mit a cheshbon."

1:28:13 Speaker 2 Fort mit a cheshbon.

1:28:13 Speaker 1 Notwithstanding that I said you have to do that, but it still has to be a balance, a cheshbon, uh, has to make sense.

1:28:19 Speaker 2 Right.