Ep. 90 // "A Bochur in the 60s" w/ Rabbi Yosef Minkowitz

00:00 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe asked him, "You guys have afikomen?" He said, "No." So the Rebbe took from his afikomen between, the Rebbe used to keep it between two pillows, and he broke off a piece from that, and he took more matzah on the table. There's always matzah, extra matzah there. Each one he gave out from his afikomen, and the Rebbe said, "You sh- you should sit down by the table." There's no room by the table, so Rebbe said, "Bring chairs." So I asked the Rebbe, "What's this thing with, uh, giving afikomen to bochurim?" Uh, so the Rebbe answered, it says, the Alter Rebbe writes, "Veyichalkem lifnei bayis." Those are meine bnei bayis.

00:39 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2026. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here for another interview in Montreal, Baruch Hashem, with Rabbi Yosef Minkowitz. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Uh, first I should introduce who you are. You're the, the dean of Yeshivat Kiruv schools for how many years now?

00:48 Speaker 1 Over 50.

00:48 Speaker 2 Over 50 years, Kein Hara. And thank you very much, uh, Naftali, uh, Naftali, your son, Naftali Minkowitz, a, a classmate from all the terror for arranging and introducing and making this happen. And thank you, Rabbi Minkowitz, for agreeing.

00:48 Speaker 1 Pleasure being here.

00:48 Speaker 2 I hope, I hope your son doesn't get you into too much trouble over here.

00:48 Speaker 1 Hashem shalom.

00:48 Speaker 2 Yeah.

00:48 Speaker 1 He's a good shliach.

00:48 Speaker 2 Yeah, he's a good guy. And before we begin, for all those who like the podcast, please like and subscribe on the various platforms. And for those who really like the podcast, please contribute to the podcast at hmlpodcast.com/donate. Rabbi Yosef, Shalom Aleichem.

00:48 Speaker 1 Aleichem Shalom.

00:48 Speaker 2 So-

00:48 Speaker 1 Zru ba boyim.

00:48 Speaker 2 Right. So we already got to talking before, Baruch Hashem, as is my habit to do. And, um, the story's going in all different directions already. So I wanna, I wanna, I wanna focus it to get going. Um, but before we start with your story that began, from what I understand, in Paris, I want to first go to the anecdote that you shared, 'cause it's a, it's a powerful anecdote, uh, about the Friedrich Rebbe's memoir that he wrote in prison. So you're talking about how your, your father and your zeide, if you could just tell us this story.

00:48 Speaker 1 So it's like this. My father's father is, uh, Reb Yankeh Minkowitz. He learned in Lubavitch of Lubavitch with the Rebbe Rashab. He's also known as Yechiel Leibus, one of the famous Chassidim in Nevel.

00:48 Speaker 2 His father was Leibus?

00:48 Speaker 1 His father was Leibus, exactly. Yechiel Leibus, and was famous Chassid in Nevel, and farbrachtert with the Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2026. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here for another interview in Montreal, Baruch Hashem, with Rabbi Yosef Minkowitz. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Uh, first I should introduce who you are. You're the, the dean of Yeshivat Kiruv schools for how many years now? Over 50.

01:16 Speaker 2 Over 50 years, Kein Hara. And thank you very much, uh, Naftali, uh, Naftali, your son, Naftali Minkowitz, a, a classmate from all the terror for arranging and introducing and making this happen. And thank you, Rabbi Minkowitz, for agreeing.

01:32 Speaker 1 Pleasure being here.

01:33 Speaker 2 I hope, I hope your son doesn't get you into too much trouble over here.

01:36 Speaker 1 Hashem shalom.

01:37 Speaker 2 Yeah.

01:37 Speaker 1 He's a good shliach.

01:38 Speaker 2 Yeah, he's a good guy. And before we begin, for all those who like the podcast, please like and subscribe on the various platforms. And for those who really like the podcast, please contribute to the podcast at hmlpodcast.com/donate. Rabbi Yosef, Shalom Aleichem.

01:54 Speaker 1 Aleichem Shalom.

01:56 Speaker 2 So-

01:56 Speaker 1 Zru ba boyim

01:56 Speaker 2 ... right. So we already got to talking before, Baruch Hashem, as is my habit to do. And, um, the story's going in all different directions already. So I wanna, I wanna, I wanna focus it to get going. Um, but before we start with your story that began, from what I understand, in Paris, I want to first go to the anecdote that you shared, 'cause it's a, it's a powerful anecdote, uh, about the Friedrich Rebbe's memoir that he wrote in prison. So you're talking about how your, your father and your zeide, if you could just tell us this story.

02:33 Speaker 1 So it's like this. My father's father is, uh, Reb Yankeh Minkowitz. He learned in Lubavitch of Lubavitch with the Rebbe Rashab. He's also known as Yechiel Leibus, one of the famous Chassidim in Nevel.

02:46 Speaker 2 His father was Leibus?

02:47 Speaker 1 His father was Leibus, exactly. Yechiel Leibus, and was famous Chassid in Nevel, and farbrachtert with the Zalman Meish, with the Simcha Chein, my, my great-grandfather, was a Chassidishe shtot Nevel. So, uh, he also, he lived in Peterburg, in Leningrad. It, it changed its names. It was a city that people were not allowed to live in, only with special permits. He had a permit to live there. And, uh, he was very close in the Friedrich Rebbe's house. As a matter of fact, in 1927, in Peisach, before the Friedrich Rebbe was arrested on tes Vov Shevat, he himself was arrested and ended up in Shpalerka prison. And-

03:29 Speaker 2 Shpalerka was in Peterburg?

03:30 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. He was very close to the Friedrich Rebbe, and he used to come into the house there quite often.

03:40 Speaker 2 Right.

03:41 Speaker 1 And, uh, the Friedrich Rebbe, as we know, was arrested on tes Vov Shevat, and after two weeks, he was told that he's free to go, but not completely free. He has to go to Kostroma. And that was Thursday. Rebbe told the whole story in Tanya chapter Bet, the whole, uh, what happened, how they told him. But l'peal, at the end, he asked, "So when will he arrive in Kostroma?" So he said, "You'll arrive in Kostroma on Shabbos." So he says on Shabbos he's not traveling b'shum efeshes. The Rebbe spoke once a whole long sicha that really al pi halacha, he could have gone, he should have gone b'koach nefesh. But by the Friedrich Rebbe, was out of the question. If it's Shabbos, out of the question. Says, "Okay, if that's the case, you're going back, back to prison. We're not letting you out. You're not, uh, you, you have to go to Kostroma. We can let you go home for a few hours, but then you have to go to Kostroma." So they delayed it till Sunday. It was Sunday, and that was Gimmel Tammuz. That Sunday was Gimmel Tammuz, and they said, "We'll let you go home to see your family for a few hours, and after that you have to go to Kostroma, and you have to, every day you have to register with the, with this, with the police and et cetera, et cetera, in Kostroma." So when, uh, the Friedrich Rebbe came to his house, my grandfather, Reb Yechiel Leibus, and

05:00 Speaker 1 his brother-in-law, Zalman Duchman. Zalman Duchman married Yechiel Leibus' sister, Grunian. All the Grunians in Lubavitch is basically named after her, as far as I know. So that's, uh, they were b- in the house. So when the Friedrich Rebbe walked in, he asked them, "What were you doing, uh, while I was i- in jail?" So they said, "We were saying Tehillim." So he said, "On yichab b'shirim Chassidis." I was writing Chassidis. And he gave my grandfather, he gave him a whole bunch of papers that had the memoir written on it. I heard from my father, I heard from his father, where'd he get paper from? In jail, they used to give out cigarettes.

05:42 Speaker 2 Right.

05:43 Speaker 1 But it was no cigarettes like you have Marlboro today, all rolled up. With tobacco, they gave you pieces of paper like this, paper squares with, and yeah, ta-ta- uh, t-tobacco, tabac. And they used to roll it up, and they used to have a special thing to put in your mouth. You shouldn't have the thing, and the cigarette went in that. It was made out of a, a certain material which was being reused, and the cigarette fitted in there. But the paper That's how they made the cigarettes. So he saves a whole bunch of these papers, and on that he wrote, he wrote the memorium. And the, the memorium that he wrote is so ... So there's two memorium, and he gave it to my grandfather to write it over, and even he, there was some things that he couldn't decipher or something. He said, "No, this is a mistake," whatever. He, he gave it to rewrite, to rewrite. At present, to present day, it's not known where these memorium are. The Frid- the, the Rebbe has it in the Mm-hmm ... ... of memorium that the Reb, Friedrich Rebbe said in, uh, Tofes Bezayan, and as, as he did for all the years. But Mm-hmm ... In other words, till now we don't have it. We have the name of them, the, the Mm-hmm ... Debra Masl, and it says, "And at Nikta be Masr." That's what, that, that's what he gave him. All right. So that's the, the, the... And the, my grandfather was

06:53 Speaker 1 also, at the time, he was also the gabai there in Yechidas, to let people into Yechidas. He was very close- For, for those few, for those few hours, or are you saying- No, no, no. Be-before that. Before the Meiser. Before the Meiser. Before the Meiser. Not only that, the, the, the, um that was Gimmel Tammuz. Then he went, the Friedrich Rebbe went to Kostroma, and he took along his, uh, his daughter, Rebbe Zechariah Mushka. And, uh, later, when Yud Beis Tammuz was announced in Kostroma, but he was told, so, uh, she sent a telegram, she sent a telegram to the, the Friedrich Rebbe's house. They should know that he's, he's, he's being released, because he was released in, in Gimmel Tammuz. Notification was on Yud Beis Tammuz. He's being released. So, uh, she didn't sign her name. She signed two... You have to put a signature. The signature was two words, "Bligh Pirsum." Without publicity. Without publicity. And the Rebbe once spoke by Fab regen. The Rebbe said the, the Fab regen was c- That Fab regen that they had, because of that, they, they, they, they were dancing in, in Leningrad. They were dancing. They heard this news, and, uh, heard that they took off, they took off their shoes. So they lived in an apartment building, so they didn't wanna have people on the bottom should see what's the dancing all of a sudden. They took off their shoes. They were dancing in their socks. In Bligh Pirsum. That was the Fab regen

08:18 Speaker 1 Bligh Pirsum. And, uh, there was hardly any people there, just a few. My grandfather was there- In Leningrad? In Leningrad, by this, when they were notified, by this, uh, Bligh Pirsum Fab regen. There's a letter the Rebbe wrote to him in Tofshin Ches. Tofshin Ches print in Nigras Gadus. That once he was already in Paris at that time. Friedrich Rebbe was, uh, in, in New York. He wrote a letter, "But Vad Ezech, for sure you remember the Fab regen Bligh Pirsum, his Vad of Bligh Pirsum that we had in Machavaya 22." That's the address of, of the Friedrich Rebbe's house. And the, the Dibur, Nege Por Aduma, and the Tinus that he had, and, uh, th-that's, that's what it says. And, um, uh, th-then the Mm-hmm ... Mm-hmm ... I never saw this letter. They gave out the, the book, Early Years, so they must have found from the archives a letter that my grandfather wrote to the Rebbe in response to that letter. He writes that, that, uh, you, you wrote that I, for I remember. How could I forget such a thing? This is about my whole life. Is this the whole union? It's, it's, it's not the Gedes Chire, but is it that what you write about? Por Aduma, that part I don't remember. So it's not too hard for you, please you can let, let me know. That's before the Rebbe became Rebbe, so he asked him, he asked him that. And also he was in charge, when he came to

09:28 Speaker 1 Paris, he was in charge of Maimed, collecting Maimed. Merzede. Merzede. Uh, to, to collect Maimed for the, uh, for the people, for, for, for this, to go, to go to the Rebbe and the Rebbe's family, et cetera. And, uh, Yud Beis Tammuz Tofshin Yud, the Rebbe, before, before that, the Rebbe wrote to Merzede that he wants, that he should send him the Reshima of the people giving Maimed. They should be able to read it by the, by the Sigin, by the Elan. There was an Elan built yet, uh, on Yud Beis Tammuz. So he st-set up, he sat up a whole night, Thursday night, and he, he wrote the Reshima. He wrote it once and again. And Friday, Friday, he ran to the post office. He himself wanted to deliver it. They asked him, "Why do you have to run? We'll go for you." "No, no, no." He has to make sure that it goes. So he came, the post office closed at six o'clock. He came, he came, it was a quarter to 6:00, and the guy slammed the door right in his face. He's, "It's closed, it's locked up, already finished." And he had a heart attack on the spot because of that, and he passed away on Ches Tammuz. Ches Tammuz is his yurt site, and, uh, he's buried be-right next to the Rebbe's brother. He was there before Tofshin Yud. Ches Tammuz, the Rebbe's brother is Tofshin Yud Beis. His mom is under all, in the, in the, in the, in,

10:44 Speaker 1 in with the h- the, the, with the results. Simply the results- It's fast. It's fast ... buried old man. It's fast, it's fast, right next to the Rebbe's brother. Rebbe's brother came a little bit later, that, like three, three spaces. There were Yes, a small, small, little So is it, is it moved to Tfass from Paris? No, no, no, no. No, he p- he's passed away in Paris. No, he, he passed away in Paris. They brought him. Right. That's what I thought. Yeah. He was buried. He was buried in- Why, why Tfass? Because, because in, in R- in, in France, they don't allow, uh, cemeteries lei lan vod, lei lan vod. Because they have a right to dig it up and- But why, why, why Tfass and not, and not Yerushalayim This I don't know. This I, this I can't tell you. Tofshin Yud is maybe. Yerushalayim is Tammuz. I, I don't know. But, but see, it's that, that's- So he was brought to be buried there ... brought to Tfass. Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, till they arrange the papers, they buried him temporarily for a, for a week, uh, in, in, in France- In France ... in Paris. And Mm-hmm ... but now they, they'll take him out, and they, they, they brought him later to Tfass, a week, a week, a week and a half later. So he, so he w- So he had a heart attack from the, from the person telling him that

11:47 Speaker 1 he can't send it. Exactly. But he must, he must, he must get it to, he had to get Yud Beis Tammuz to the Rebbe, and it, it, but he couldn't get it. Huh. Hmm. All right. So, so this leads us to the Parsha of Paris. You say you remem- you said you remember Paris a little bit. Paris is like this. Uh, uh, uh, uh, when the- Chassidim came out of Russia in Tof Shin Vat, Tof Shin Zayin, the famous bri- bricha, you know, the escape that was arranged. It's a story for itself. People know about it. So, uh, they were in Pöcking. From there, they ended up in Pöcking, in Germany, from the US, uh, divi- US part, 'cause Germany was divided into four sections. In the US section, the, that's where the Chassidim came. They were-- They even had a yeshiva there. They were there many, many, many months, some were even there years. And from there, many mishpochos, most mishpochos went to France, to Paris, 'cause Paris said they'll accept families as DPs, displaced persons. They didn't give them the status of a French citizen, but at least they had a place to stay. Rabbi Yommer Gorodetsky was ba'al keichah, a representative of the Friediker Rebbe. He was in charge of organizing these pleitim, the refugees, so he rented, uh, hotels, old hotels, uh, below one star. N- not... Below one star, and, uh, that's where mishpochos lived. So we, we ended up in a place called Hotel Modern, but it wasn't so

13:10 Speaker 1 modern. It wasn't so modern. It was called Modern. I remember forty-nine, uh, Bichat Street, and, uh, had a few floors, and was a hotel. So hotel is one room, but hey, at-- we put a whole family into one room. So my father, my mother, my older brother, my older sister. Later, another sister was born. We had literally one room and no bathroom in that room itself. There was only a bathroom, two bathrooms in the hallway. One was always blocked, whatever. So, uh, it was-

13:38 Speaker 2 You-

13:38 Speaker 1 It was fair luck

13:38 Speaker 2 ... you mean stuffed?

13:39 Speaker 1 Stuffed, yeah. Whatever it was. It, it, it was in plain English. Whatever. And e- and a kitchen was only one of those primitive kitchen downstairs. It was a hotel. They cooked over there. So they thought for Shabbos, the ladies wanted to cook something for Shabbos, a soup, a shashke of chicken, but there was only one, one oven. So they had a chart. Mrs. So-and-So is seven o'clock in the morning. Mrs. So-and-So is eight o'clock in the morn- is in eight o'clock. And then each one took a, took a turn, like it says in the Tachach. It says, "Ofre da es noshim be sanurecha."

14:10 Speaker 2 Sanurecha.

14:10 Speaker 1 Sanurecha. That's what it, that's what it looked like. And I had the zechus at least over there that, uh, I was the age of, uh, learning, uh, aleph beis, learning kria, kria, uh, ivrit. So we had, uh, a very, very special Chassid, Rabboni Yosef. He was a son of Reb Sholom Yaakov Golod, Belanitsky. So he w- he's also ended up over there. So it was the whole class was Leibl Shapiro and me. That was the whole class together. We, we were chaverim from all the way from back then to many years later in yeshiva and in kollel together. So he taught us. He taught us us two, uh-

14:48 Speaker 2 Just the two of you.

14:49 Speaker 1 The two of you. Remember what the Futua said about him? He said, "If there's one Chassid in the world, it's Sanei Yosef." So we had the zechus of learning by him. Remember Meir Rivkin used to, uh, fabreng, fabreng. He used to tell us stories every Motzei Shabbos, a story from Al Shem Tov. We looked forward to it. That's what... They had a shul on the, on the, on the, on the top floor. There was a shul.

15:06 Speaker 2 It seems like the men had a better time than the women over there.

15:09 Speaker 1 The wo- eh, fa- th-th- yeah, a hundred percent. The rabotezheite of running a... Li- mom was li- literally living in one room is, is, is-

15:16 Speaker 2 The, the men were back in yeshiva-

15:18 Speaker 1 You can't believe

15:18 Speaker 2 ... and the women were-

15:19 Speaker 1 You can't, you can't

15:19 Speaker 2 ... were also back in yeshiva

15:20 Speaker 1 You can't, you can't understand this. You can't even envision such things. You can just can't even imagine. But that, that's how, that's how we lived. That's how we lived.

15:28 Speaker 2 Right.

15:28 Speaker 1 And it was called, it was called a hotel, so say it's a hotel. But a hotel is meant for one person or two people, not a mishpacha.

15:34 Speaker 2 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company that I have run for close to ten years. Today, Yuvala Media works with organizations all around the country, bringing their stories to life in a way that is both meaningful and memorable. Whether it's a video for a milestone dinner, an online fundraiser, or a building campaign, we begin each project with the same question: What does your audience need to know about you to feel more connected to your cause? Once we answer that question, we tailor-make a video that best addresses this need. Over the years, we have built a reputation for top-of-the-line visuals while also being responsive and reliable. As one of our clients put it, "A combination of technical excellence and real heart." If you are looking to make a video for an upcoming dinner, fundraiser, or building campaign, please reach out to us to schedule a 15-minute phone call to see if we can make something beautiful together. Email us at hello@yuvalamedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalamedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the show. In general, back in-- it seems like in those days, you know, the bochurim of Ten Chatmimim or whatever, they, you know, they were more, a little bit more mushpach from things and then-

16:43 Speaker 1 Yeah, the boch- the bochurim were there. The bochur was-- Brundrov was already established so-

16:46 Speaker 2 No, but I mean the, the yungerleit

16:48 Speaker 1 Ah, the yungerleit that lived there?

16:49 Speaker 2 Yeah.

16:49 Speaker 1 Listen-

16:49 Speaker 2 The, the men that you're talking about were once bochurim.

16:51 Speaker 1 Ah.

16:51 Speaker 2 They grew up in a very different milieu than their wives

16:54 Speaker 1 They came, they came out of, uh, they came out of, so to speak, the Holocaust. It wasn't even though they didn't feel it so strongly.

16:59 Speaker 2 But so, but so did the wives.

17:00 Speaker 1 Yeah, and the wives-

17:01 Speaker 2 But the wives, the wives were fighting over an oven.

17:03 Speaker 1 Yeah.

17:03 Speaker 2 The men were busy doing their-

17:04 Speaker 1 Well, fighting was an organized chart.

17:06 Speaker 2 Yeah.

17:07 Speaker 1 Say the Masuda.

17:08 Speaker 2 I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure.

17:13 Speaker 1 No, so, so that, that's where we lived, uh, I mean, I was a little bit over, just over five years old. And then, uh, they had to get papers. Uh, first of all, Charles, where to go? Chabad ChHilla was asked for to go to Eretz Israel. The Friediker Rebbe started, uh, sending people. A group went to Australia, like, uh, Nachum Zalman Gorodetsky, Rabbi Isaac Hlufgand, Reb Sholom Ber Tzalel. Uh, a whole group went to, to Australia. So a group went to Eretz Israel, Reb Sholom Achaim. They ended up-- And others went to Eretz Israel. Some stayed, Reb Nisan, in Paris with the yeshiva. And then, uh, the groups, either some of-- Friediker Rebbe sent to Eretz Israel, and some were still waiting for, uh, for, for, to get the official where to go. And then, uh, it ended up being Tof Shin Yud Gimel. There was-- And the, the Rebbe said, "You should come to America." That come to-

17:59 Speaker 2 Your family.

18:00 Speaker 1 Yeah. Tof-- So we ca- we arrived, uh, right before Yoshvat Tof Shin Yud Gimel, and I immediately enrolled in, I enrolled up as I started, uh, yeshiva in Timchat Mimim, the be- famous Bedford-Stuyvesant, and I had-- My melamed was, uh- The Peretz Hecht, a Valdiche, Melamed, Mamish, Herem-

18:17 Speaker 2 Oh, one of the brothers?

18:18 Speaker 1 Well, yeah, one of the Yankel-

18:19 Speaker 2 He was an old-timer in yeshiva

18:21 Speaker 1 ... yeah, yeah. The, the Friediker Rebbe heard said about him that him Chaf Mimim in America was worth for Peretz Hecht.

18:26 Speaker 2 I heard that too, yeah.

18:27 Speaker 1 For Peretz Hecht. And Baruch Hashem, I had the zchus. I came, it was on Yut Zvat time. I had him for the rest of the year, then I had him again in, uh, in yeshiva.

18:34 Speaker 2 This was which yeshiva? The Babshi yeshiva or-

18:35 Speaker 1 Babshi yeshiva, Bedford Endyn. Bedford Endyn

18:37 Speaker 2 ... it was ca- Bedford Endyn. The famous Bedford Endyn.

18:38 Speaker 1 Fam- Bedford Endyn, yeah. So that's, tha- that's, that, that's where, that's where I learned all the years till, uh, till we finished. And in those days there was no, uh, there was no, uh, Cheider Teide, um, uh, this year, Mesifta Alef Beis didn't exist. You finished, you finished Bedford Endyn, you can go straight to Seven seventy. Basically 16 years old, straight to Seven seventy. And the bachurim there was, uh, uh, up till 25, I feel it. 'Cause b- guys got married a little bit later. The kil wasn't even just, just started, wasn't established. So in the, in the, in the Seven seventy, uh, zal, with, with the Cheider Sheni, there was just a, of each age, of each age level, there was maybe six, seven, eight, nine, 10. That's it. Plus, if you think about the zal, when I went to, when I went, I'll tell you in a second, uh, when I went, but when I went, it was, uh, just to figure out ho- In the, in the zal, in the front room, the big room, today it's called the zal akatan. Then that was, that was the zal. The zal was downstairs. They just, they just fi- fixed up with the shalashas. It was hardly anybody learned downstairs because it was basically a shul. There was no room to learn there. So, uh, this-

19:46 Speaker 2 The shul was, the shul was permanently in the shalash? By the time you went in

19:49 Speaker 1 No, no. I'll, I'll speak, I'll tell you in a second. So th- th- there's four tables, there's six tables, six tables upstairs and two sa- in the big room, and two tab- two tables in the, in the Cheider Sheni. So together you have eight tables. Maximum you can sit by a table is, is 10. Chassidim used to sit eight. 10 is very squashed. One guy slap his leg on one side of the, the, the shteken, the other on the other side. So, so if you take, you have to, if you take, uh, 10, 10, uh, 10 people at a table, at eight tables, 80 bachurim. That was the gan Seven seventy. Could you imagine? Gan Seven seventy was achtzig bachurim. Gan zeh spiel. And the bachurim were, like I said, from 16 years old, 16,the Rebbe was like... Because it was small, the Rebbe would tell, uh, he, he called the guy by a name. You bought a house. And he said, you just had a, a girl born to you. And even the little kids like me and the other guys, before a mitzvah-- After a mitzvah, you're able to go into yechidus. That's once a year, every bocher is allowed to go into yechidus and even before the immo ledus. The little kids didn't go into yechidus. So the little kids, by the farbrengen, they would, from the back, they would come up with a cup, a little bit wine, and push his way through all the way up to the Rebbe,

25:53 Speaker 1 and standing right next to the Rebbe and say, "My immo ledus is, my immo ledus is ." That was-- They would give a broche, That was, that was-- That, that stopped later. That, that didn't go on. They'd have a whole , you'd have a hundred kids with immo ledus. But at that time, that's how it was the seder. You walked up to the Rebbe in the middle of a farbrengen and said . Not only that, by the end of the farbrengen, by the end of the farbrengen, we were close to the door to go onto the zal, 'cause we were in the back close to the door. So when the farbrengen was over and the, the, the Rebbe said , so we knew the farbrengen is over and they sang . So we ran right away to the Rebbe-- near the Rebbe's room, We formed like a semi-circle around the Rebbe's door. And when the Rebbe would come, he would walk down the hallway, and, uh, he couldn't get through the whole crowd. He went through the cheder sheni, walked down the hallway, and then, and then come to his room. And we were always standing there. So the Rebbe used to go-- It was like had a little mini farbrengen. He didn't go just once like this. Sometimes he stood like this. Uh, we had our own little farbrengen. It could be a minute, two minutes, half a minute, whatever it was. And how many kids were there? That was, that was the Bobov

27:06 Speaker 1 who lived-

27:06 Speaker 3 Right

27:06 Speaker 1 ... who lived there. And, and when I say lived, lived basically in, in, in that area. Uh, first in the beginning, everybody lived in Brownsville. Well, but even-

27:15 Speaker 3 Why, why, why? It was cheaper.

27:17 Speaker 1 It was cheaper, yeah. It was ex- Rents compared to-

27:20 Speaker 3 Rents was too expensive

27:21 Speaker 1 ... like, like, and, and, uh, well, we lived in Brownsville. First, we lived on in almost East New York, two thirty-two Dumont Avenue, then seventeen thirty-six, uh, Sterling Place. So I remember the, the rent then was thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents a month, okay? Even the-

27:37 Speaker 3 What, what did your, what did your father do when you-

27:39 Speaker 1 My father had a grocery store.

27:40 Speaker 3 Had a grocery store.

27:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. And later on, in-

27:42 Speaker 3 In Crown Heights or Brownsville?

27:43 Speaker 1 What?

27:43 Speaker 3 In Crown Heights or Brownsville?

27:44 Speaker 1 Both. Brown- Brown- Brownsville, and then he moved to Crown Heights on Troy Avenue. So when we moved to Crown Heights, the rent, I think, was about a hundred and thirty dollars.

27:52 Speaker 3 So four times.

27:53 Speaker 1 It was like, "Come on, how are you gonna, uh, how are you gonna make it?"

27:55 Speaker 3 Three times, four times.

27:56 Speaker 1 Even inflation, it was a, was a di- a different, a different price. Okay, so that's-- It was was small. And I have to add also, if you wanna just know what's going on, basically, you can say at that time, in the whole North America and South America, put everything into one basket, there was hardly any mishpochs, any mishpochs, the Bobov mishpochs that had kids. A few schluchim the Friediker Rebbe sent, that was, uh, based, scattered all in a few places. And in Canada, well, Montreal, was had a yeshiva Temim Chabad. That was basically the only place besides that's Yisroel in Brunoy that had a yeshiva. But everything else was hardly... So the, the few kids that existed at that time, that was basically, or the few young adults and the few bochurim, that's what the Bobov Today we see what, what happened.

28:47 Speaker 3 Hmm. Hmm. And it's interesting because a lot of times people compare the, the farbrengens of-- Not, not that most people were there, uh, but we're told that the farbrengens of the Rebbe Rashab, for example, the Rebbe Rashab would talk to the Hasidim, and the Hasidim would talk back. It was like a more a conversation. And the Rebbe's farbrengens are much more like, uh, But what you're saying is that in many ways, that's just because it got too big.

29:15 Speaker 1 A hundred-

29:15 Speaker 3 When it was smaller, it was a different avira.

29:17 Speaker 1 It was different, yeah. But the Friediker Rebbe, let's say, in the same building, one flight up, the farbrengens there took place by a table. I mean, we were there. We used to go-- come in there for Pesach or the seder. We saw exactly what it looks like. It was basically one table. Friediker Rebbe sat at the head table. There was room for maybe-

29:32 Speaker 3 But you came after Friediker Rebbe passed away.

29:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:35 Speaker 3 But you could see one of-

29:35 Speaker 1 We came Yud Gimmel. We came Yud Gimmel, but we used-

29:37 Speaker 3 You could, you could have seen one-

29:38 Speaker 1 For Pesach, you're allowed to go up there to, to watch the Rebbe's seder.

29:41 Speaker 3 Right.

29:41 Speaker 1 It's a special thing to-

29:42 Speaker 3 As a child, you went?

29:43 Speaker 1 You can go at any... We went, yeah. Uh, a bar mitzvah, before bar mitzvah.

29:46 Speaker 3 You went with your father? What, what-

29:47 Speaker 1 No, you go yourself. You made the seder quick. At least I left the middle of the seder. I used to waste time, yeah.

29:51 Speaker 3 In Brownsville?

29:53 Speaker 1 No, no, after Brownsville. Brownsville, I was, mamish, a little kid.

29:55 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

29:56 Speaker 1 When we moved to Crown Heights, it was still before my bar mitzvah. We moved to Crown Heights

30:00 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

30:00 Speaker 1 But before bar mitzvah.

30:01 Speaker 3 So you'd make seder quickly and run to see-

30:02 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. No, no, it was exactly. Some guys, some bochurim made the seder, as they say, "Chick Chak," and they were there one, two, three. It was a special-

30:10 Speaker 3 The seder, the seder doesn't have to take so long if you rush it.

30:11 Speaker 1 It is-- Yeah, yeah, exactly, if you're on time.

30:14 Speaker 3 Yeah.

30:15 Speaker 1 And, uh, uh, uh, the Rebbe's seder started a little bit late also. The Rebbe used to go see the bochurim, how they make the seder, so the Rebbe came. It took a little while, but so, uh... You know, so I'm gonna go back to the farbrengens.

30:26 Speaker 3 You know, you know that I heard but just to cut you off for a second. I heard from Rabbi Golitsky in Tel Aviv.

30:32 Speaker 1 Yossi?

30:33 Speaker 3 Yeah, that Rabbi Mentlick didn't go up.

30:36 Speaker 1 Emes.

30:36 Speaker 3 It's true? He didn't go up to the-

30:37 Speaker 1 Absolutely true

30:38 Speaker 3 ... he said I, he said, "I, I don't-- If the Rebbe's not at the head of the table, I don't go up."

30:41 Speaker 1 Emes. He was never there. He was never there.

30:44 Speaker 3 Yeah.

30:44 Speaker 1 He's a Chosid through and through. Through and through.

30:45 Speaker 3 He's not going to a room where the-

30:46 Speaker 1 He cannot go... 'Cause the Rebbe sat on the side the way it was in the Friediker Rebbe's days.

30:50 Speaker 3 Right, the left-

30:50 Speaker 1 Friediker Rebbe sat at the front.

30:51 Speaker 3 And they left that empty.

30:52 Speaker 1 And the Rashab was on the right side, and the, the, the Rebbe sat on the left side. And by the way-

30:57 Speaker 3 There are pictures of it. I don't know if you-

30:58 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, from, uh, Motzaei Yom Kippur.

30:59 Speaker 3 Right.

30:59 Speaker 1 Usually a month before the... It was farbrengen. Uh, put him-- They used to go up there. The Rebbe used to go up there for-

31:04 Speaker 3 There's pictures of it

31:05 Speaker 1 ... for ha- for half an hour Okay. And by the way, the Rebbe sat, the Rebbe sat not the way he sat by farbrengen in Yechidas.

31:11 Speaker 3 Not comfortably. It was not comfortable.

31:13 Speaker 1 He didn't say a word bechlal. He only answered. The Rebbe never spoke. He spoke a lot. It was 'cause people asked, so he answered.

31:18 Speaker 3 Minhagim, right? The, uh-

31:19 Speaker 1 Whatever, whatever people asked. They asked all kinds of shailas, you know. They, they got Rashag to ask shailas 'cause Bochurim want to know certain things and-

31:26 Speaker 3 About, about the Seder.

31:27 Speaker 1 Any- No, about anything. Anything under the sun you want verified-

31:30 Speaker 3 Yeah

31:30 Speaker 1 ... so you ask Rashag, and then Rashag asks the Rebbe, and that's it. I also asked some q- questions, uh, various questions. Once the Rebbe spoke befarbrengen about what I asked.

31:38 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

31:38 Speaker 1 A whole thing about the, about the Seder, the Seder of the, uh, the Dalet Minim, the way it's in Shulchan Aruch is not the Seder, the way it's a Chumash.

31:45 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

31:45 Speaker 1 Now, they're asking that. So for the... See, the Rebbe answered something bikitzur. Later is whole farbrengen. A lot of things Rebbe spoke, uh-

31:51 Speaker 3 Right, right

31:51 Speaker 1 ... befarbrengen later, later on from those things. But the Rebbe sat mamish, you can see mamish. Com- completely, he even sat differently. Sat on a different position. Didn't say a word. Not-

32:01 Speaker 3 But not, but not because he wasn't at the head of the table.

32:04 Speaker 1 No.

32:04 Speaker 3 Because he, because he declared this-

32:05 Speaker 1 Because he was referring to have his presence. By him, I, I don't know. I'm, I'm not the Rebbe. I can't answer the reason, but it was obvious. Everybody, anyone who was there can tell right away, this is the Rebbe upstairs, and this is the Rebbe befarbrengen or even in Yechidas. Completely different.

32:19 Speaker 3 Right. So you were saying that upstairs it was around the table, and then-

32:22 Speaker 1 Around the table. Oh, so around, back to the farbrengen. We started talking about the farbrengen. So around the table you can see in the Sicha, "Shol Harashal, Rashal or Sholovidon."

32:29 Speaker 3 Right.

32:29 Speaker 1 Ask this question. This one ask that question. And that's why the Friidiker Rebe Sichas, many of them, are just small pieces 'cause but this one he said something for a minute, this one a minute.

32:38 Speaker 3 Also hard for him to talk at that time.

32:39 Speaker 1 No, yeah, but it's still written down. And some he wrote himself. A lot of things that he never said by the, by the farbrengen-

32:44 Speaker 3 Right

32:44 Speaker 1 ... is written down as the farbrengen. It was completely different. Rebbe Rashab was also the same way. Rebbe Rashab hardly, hardly fabrach. He was many, many years not even Lubavitch.

32:52 Speaker 3 Right.

32:52 Speaker 1 He said, "My Morim farbrengens," if you look into Yeru Shalom, there was ba-ba-

32:56 Speaker 3 Handful

32:56 Speaker 1 ... handful of this. Purim's farbrengens, Simchas Torah, that was farbrengens. The Rebbe-

32:59 Speaker 3 And they were long

33:00 Speaker 1 ... the Rebbe fab- fabrached, uh, all the Mim Tevim and, uh, Fabrach Shabbos. And Rebbe, Rebbe one said that he instituted that at the end of every Yom Tov, we should wash, we should wash, and, uh, continue the farbrengen into the Chayil. The Shoshanes, Simchas Torah, every Yom Tov. And Rebbe said, "It's my inyan. I'm not ready to be mevatel it." In other words, it's my, my invention, in other words.

33:22 Speaker 3 Now what?

33:23 Speaker 1 That to make the farbrengen at the end, at the closure of every Yom Tov.

33:28 Speaker 3 And to be mesh-

33:28 Speaker 1 Al pi ha-oh, the Rebbe al pi halakha. How do you do al pi halakha? You have to wash.

33:32 Speaker 3 Right.

33:32 Speaker 1 If you wash, Rebbe said if you s- if you s- if you bench way after you can ba- the next day even, if you keep on eating-

33:37 Speaker 3 You say Alehu v'yovehu

33:38 Speaker 1 ... you have to say Alehu v'yovehu and everything else, and let's say whatever it may be, uh, uh, applying to that Yom Tov. So the, the Rebbe's inyan was to take from the kodesh and bring it to the chol. That was the whole, the whole inyan of the Rebbe was that, to bring kodesh into chol. The gantz a velt a veren kodesh.

33:52 Speaker 3 Why do you think the Rebbe's farbrengens were so different than previous Rebbeim?

33:57 Speaker 1 The-- In what way, in what way?

33:59 Speaker 3 Longer, m- uh, more, more, uh, more frequent.

34:03 Speaker 1 I mean, the Rebbe, uh, uh, just so now, just got the Der Her delivered to my house. So they have, they, they, they write up a whole thing about the Rebbe's years, and the early years before they knew the Rebbe and the, the tzadikis, and the, the, uh, uh, tzadik. The Friidiker Rebbe was then in America, was then in America. He went to visit at the end of Petach tzadik. He was in, uh, he went to Eretz Yisrael, went to America. So the Chaim Altuys, the people that was still le- left over there in, uh, in, in Akevotsk. So they were, uh, or in Warsaw, wherever they were at that time. What's gonna be? The Rebbe is not here, im talo zachen. And, uh, and they asked the f- they asked the Rebbe that he should blow shofars, and shum meifil, which is not doing anything that the Rebbe, Friidiker Rebbe did. Says, "I'm not doing." He didn't do anything. But it came to farbreng, so it's, uh, it was, uh, sukkot in Chabad Sicha Eiva. They, they never, they never knew the... They knew this is the Rebbe's son-in-law, and they, they respect him as the Rebbe's son-in-law. They knew nothing about the Rebbe's knowledge and the godliness. He sat down. He said, "A whole night without notes, just mentioning everything from Gemara, from Midrashim, from Rambam, from Chassidus, from Kabbalah, and everything is tied together." He, and he, and he wrote a report to the, uh, to the Friidiker Rebbe what he was

35:19 Speaker 1 astounded what he saw of, of the Rebbe. So, so the Rebbe, that was his later on life. The Rebbe was in Paris later. He went to p- to get his mother in Taf Shim Zion. Also, he's, he's fabrached on the pletzl. He, he, he, he, he s- he asked all the people their names, and he, he told, "You're sitting here. Al tsashkach apratis. You're sitting next to this." And he explained each one. People are going out of their minds. So if you get... That by the Rebbe, everything was, uh, on a different, on a different day.

35:44 Speaker 3 I think he would do that in '77 also with the Bochurim, right? Especially Bochur farbrengens, very often ask them their names and be mevater their names.

35:51 Speaker 1 Could be, you mean before the Nasis?

35:52 Speaker 3 Yeah.

35:53 Speaker 1 That's, uh, based on the Al-

35:54 Speaker 3 Uh, uh, this idea of asking for their names-

35:55 Speaker 1 Roosh, roosh or, uh, could be

35:57 Speaker 3 ... asking for names and being mevater.

35:58 Speaker 1 Could be. Could... That we know. In Paris for sure it was done, uh, in a few people. I think some seem recorded. No, so I'm saying that... Listen, Ili ada'iti va'yasiv. You know, you ask questions, why David said this, why the Rebbe said this.

36:09 Speaker 3 No, ask what you think. I, I'm asking you for-

36:11 Speaker 1 No, the, the, as I'm saying, there's definitely the style of the Rebbe l'chatchila before he became Rebbe, was parkhov, parkhov b'gdeilah.

36:19 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

36:19 Speaker 1 As a matter of fact, there are certain things, certain things that people wrote to, to the Friidiker Rebbe, and he gave it over to the Rebbe to answer. There's a famous, uh-

36:27 Speaker 3 Right

36:27 Speaker 1 ... by the Magen David. You know, so Magen David is a professor. He wrote to Friidiker Rebbe to understand the, the significance of the Magen David, et cetera, al pi, al pi Nigla, al pi Kabbalah. So he said he's gonna give it over, I think he said, to my buildings minister, edu- education minister. Him and the Rebbe, and, uh, the Rebbe wrote, "Unfortunately, we don't have it." It was a very long thing explaining it with this null of nullazai. M- many other things also. He wrote a whole thing about a beard, so that, that we have Baruch Hashem. And he didn't even have seforim. He had a lot of things he had to do from memory. There was a time he didn't have access to seforim. S- when he was in Berlin, take, uh, he specially got, got papers that he should be able to go into the library in the Berlin to be able to have access to seforim. That does, uh, a partial way-

37:10 Speaker 3 No, in the Yushimus, you see a lot of times that there's a- See, there's a, there's a that's not filled up

37:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:20 Speaker 3 Yeah. So you were, you were, so you were, you, you're, you're a bocher growing up in Bedford-Indy, a ch- a boch- a boy in Bedford-Indy and a bocher in 770. Uh, so this is the, this is a chufs, right, that you come to 770?

37:33 Speaker 1 I, yeah, I, I finished, finished, uh, chav gimel, chav gimel in, uh, Bedford-Indy, and, uh, a few bochurim did go to Morristown. Morristown. Morristown then wasn't the big Morristown that we have today. Rabbi Harrison's, uh, basics, main shlichas then, the whole New Jersey, basically, there was no shluchim there besides Rabbi Harrison. And, um, Schomberg Gordon was, uh, he was, he was a rav in a shul, not a chaplain in a hospital, but shluchim, as far as I remember, there was no, uh-

38:01 Speaker 3 Right

38:01 Speaker 1 ... the shluchim there. So what was this whole thing? The yeshiva stem chatmimim in Newark.

38:07 Speaker 3 In Newark.

38:07 Speaker 1 In Newark.

38:07 Speaker 3 He was mashpia there for a while, no?

38:09 Speaker 1 Before, but later on, he became the sh- the shliach. There's no thing of head shluchim. These names didn't exist in those days.

38:14 Speaker 3 Right, right.

38:15 Speaker 1 He was a shliach in, in, in Newark. Well, what was Newark? The yeshiva. The yeshiva was a hakl, was a building, like, a what you call today a, a, a three-family house building. That's the whole size of it. It was on a nice, had a nice, uh, sized yard around it.

38:28 Speaker 3 Yeah, I've seen a picture of it.

38:29 Speaker 1 Yeah, th- that was it. So it's, it could hold ma- maximum maybe 25, uh, bochurim that, that learned there. So m- myself and others also from Bedford-Indy, before we went 770, for whatever reason, everybody had different reasons. You, Yisroel Friedman was then, was then the, uh-

38:45 Speaker 3 The rosh yeshiva

38:45 Speaker 1 ... rosh yeshiva before he went to Lyttelton. Okay, so it was, it was a good, it was a good year, Baruch Hashem. It was a good year.

38:50 Speaker 3 So you were there for a year?

38:51 Speaker 1 I was there for a year. And then, and then that was chav daled. Chav hei, chav hei was a soffix. Some guys gone to 770, and some guys to Montreal. There was only two yeshivas in the gantz, uh, gantz velt, as I said before, beside Brunoy, which was considered like a third-world place.

39:11 Speaker 3 It was considered a third-world place?

39:12 Speaker 1 Yeah, for yeshiva.

39:13 Speaker 3 Why? Because of Smidt or 'cause of Reb Nissan?

39:15 Speaker 1 Whatever. It was Agudas. Nah, it was, uh... It, it built itself up, Baruch Hashem. My, my k- my chaver, Y- Y- Yitchok Nemonov, uh, s- Reb Nissan's son, he, he built it up very nicely. But otherwise, whatever. It's okay. Uh, as a palto travel overseas, a gantz meise. So there's two options, 770 or Montreal. So some guys take it, went to Montreal, some guys went 770. With some bochurim, uh, uh, a group went 770 even the year before. And then Tishrei, 12th of chav hei, you have to make up my mind. So above Tishrei, Rabbi Zachana passed away. I said, "Rabbi Zachana passed away. The rabbi's gonna daven every single day. That, that does it. I'm not going, I'm not going to Montreal and miss all the davening. Out of the question." So I decided I'm staying, I'm staying in, uh, in New York.

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41:09 Speaker 1 And, uh, and then we got an extra special bonus that the Rebbe, uh, fabracht, may fabrengen every single Shabbos. Rabbi Weinberg wrote into the Rebbe, uh, after, after Tishrei. He wrote in that, uh, he wants... He used to give, uh, 15 minutes on WEVD, on the radio station. He used to give, uh, over Tanya. The mele- the, the Shiurim of Sefer HaTanya comes from there. The Rebbe used to check every single word. So he wrote to the Rebbe that he'd like, uh, lilah nishmas of the Rebbe Zachana to give 15 minutes and give over a sicha from the Rebbe. Either f- for bringing that Shabbos, he'll do from that Shabbos bekitzur. If not, he'll take from Kotze Sichas, other sichas to give it over. So the Rebbe wrote back to him that this is mechazeik, strengthens my machshava, my thought of fabrengen every single Shabbos.

42:00 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

42:00 Speaker 1 And he wrote that in. The Rebbe wrote back to him. Nobody even knew about this. To, to, to fabrengen every sing, every single Shabbos. But Rabbi Weinberg wrote also, you know, but said, "Nimol, he doesn't have the, the money for it." So the Rebbe, I think, wrote, "Mechtze alai, 50% I'm, I'm paying for."

42:16 Speaker 3 Hmm.

42:16 Speaker 1 And that's, and that's what he did, okay? And, uh, and the f- the end result was to fabrengen every single Shabbos. That was a bonus on top of the davening three times a day. Three times a day davening to fabrengen every single Shabbos. And not only that, there was magiya. Magiya, the whole fabrengen came out mugen. Then it's, it's was Noach, Lech Lecha, Vayeira, Chaye Sarah, Toldot, Vayesei, Vayishlach I think came out half, and then it stopped, you know, whatever reason. It was printed in the back of Halik, uh, Halik Hei, Likutei Sichos. So you had, you had that. The Rebbe put a lot of hagah. And it was... And, and main thing is of the fabrengens itself, there's a new, new light. The Rashis, it was mamash phenomenal.

43:00 Speaker 3 How did the Olam understand the Rashi Sichas?

43:02 Speaker 1 The Ra-

43:02 Speaker 3 Where did they come from? Like, how did you, like, uh, did you realize it was a new thing?

43:07 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. The first fabrengen, it was Parshas Noach. It was Rosh Chodesh, I think. So the Rebbe just spoke about it. Okay, he took a Rashi to explain. But then it, it was the first Rashi and the last Rashi So we knew, that year we knew. Later on the Rebbe had to notify, if he wanted to notify which Rashi he'll be speaking about. But once it started, we knew it was always the first Rashi and the last Rashi. So I remember like all the bochurim seven 70 with Gehareved. Once we picked up the Rebbe's style of kashas, what Rashi says resembling the the klalim also came-- the Rebbe revealed the klalim as it went along. So what is that? The Rashi's said, "Pashata Rashi, it's of three words. What, what, what could you even ask over here? There's nothing to ask. Uh, how-- what could a Rebbe even find over here?" Uh, all the, the, the alter Rebbe bochurim were all Gehareved. Give what, what, what's this Rashi? We found this, that, and, and a lot of the kashas were, were no good kashas because it wasn't . It had to be from Chumash HaMikra. Rebbe said it has to be papashtus. Don't tell me you found a Gemara, but Chumash doesn't know the Gemara. So that kasha wasn't a, wasn't a good, a good shailah with Gehareved. And then the farbrengen, farbrengen was usually after the ma'amar. You start the Rashis, and ex-- you had a Chumash on the table, start asking the... So

44:23 Speaker 1 wow, how, how come we didn't see this kasha? It's like in your face. Rebbe didn't ask for a plenta the kasha with the Rambam, with the Aksas. Those kashas don't come up on the Rashi, can't come up. It has to be . How does, how does it... No one saw it. And the klal, the Rebbe never answered. The, the, the que- the questions were never answered in the Rashi, in the same sicha. Maybe have one answer twice, but even could be a sicha later, two sichas later when the that was later. So b- in between the sicha, it was singing the nigunim. So they had a bochur next to him. It was all the, all the guys stood with the whole chevre together next to each other. So, uh, wow, these kashas, how, how can you answer it now? This-- now we can answer it. Once the Rebbe said, "How, how-- this kasha unbelievable." Then the Rebbe bePashutus answers. Wow, how did we see the answer? It was like a whole new thing of a lightning came in. Man, it's something completely new, completely new. And when the Rebbe spoke, some of it you can hear the Rebbe speaking on the chess unfortunately. Then the Rebbe used to farbrengen matzo Shabbos, so he said the Rashis then also. Because when it-- when they made it mugger, it had to be made structure like a sefer. A lot of the idioms in manic speech that was, uh, Rebbe spoke and how he said it, the kasha.

45:39 Speaker 1 Like the-- like one day the Rebbe said even to count the shailas, how many shailas. He says, "Al mi yafe." He does Ɣa har cheshaya hald medatni." He says eighteen. Rebbe said it was nineteen. I think it was twenty-two questions on that Rashi. After shvus. He used to come for shvus. It was like a whole new development, whole new development. And Rebbe used to ask questions and, uh-

45:58 Speaker 3 Rebbe used to ask questions when?

46:00 Speaker 1 Well, on every farbrengen, every farbrengen.

46:02 Speaker 3 Rebbe used to ask the Rebbe questions after-

46:04 Speaker 1 Oh, every farbrengen. I remember Rebbe Groiner. I used to-- I remember Rebbe Shapiro. Rebbe Shapiro, we learned, I told you, Raban Yosef in, uh, in Paris-

46:11 Speaker 3 Right

46:12 Speaker 1 ... as learning all of this. And then we learned together also. We learned to, we learned to seven seventy together in Gemara, learned in Kollel with him. So many times, Rebbe Groiner, Sunday morning, he used to come in. The two of us were sitting and learning. He says he needs some shailas on the, on the farbrengen. "What's the emergency?" He said, "If I walk in, the Rebbe asks right away what are the shailas on the farbrengen." If there's no shailas, he asked Rebbe Groiner.

46:38 Speaker 3 Rebbe Groiner.

46:39 Speaker 1 And those, "Did you hear any shailas? Why should there be shailas with farbrengen? Be-- this is farbrengen, gishmak." "No, but the Rebbe, that means that nobody cares." Rebbe took it, "Man, mish la- la-- People should be involved with the farbrengen."

46:52 Speaker 3 What do you think the Rebbe wanted with the Rashi sicha? Say, you're gonna-

46:55 Speaker 1 This I have no idea

46:56 Speaker 3 ... you're gonna tell me you

46:57 Speaker 1 This I have no idea. I have no idea. This mamish. I tried many times to figure it. It was definitely started something had to do with the Rebbe Sacchanah, but what's the connection? I have no idea. No idea. But it was mamish a gilyar. So you-

47:10 Speaker 3 Nobody, nobody was asking this question?

47:12 Speaker 1 Maybe, I don't know. I never heard a teretz. I've-- I had that shailah myself my, uh, all the, all the years till now. But the, the, the, you have it. It's a, it's a treasure. So he used to come in. When, when it was a farbrengen, the Rebbe used to say himself, "Kenet nishka ad shailah, now nobody cares." I remember the Chof Hey. How-

47:29 Speaker 3 Was, uh, the Rebbe connected to learning Chitas?

47:32 Speaker 1 No.

47:33 Speaker 3 Because Rebbe talked a lot on Chitas.

47:34 Speaker 1 Not that I reme- Chitas, yeah. Every big farbrengen was Chitas for sure.

47:37 Speaker 3 That's what I'm saying, but it's-

47:38 Speaker 1 No, but Ra- learning Ra... Not I remember. Okay. Learning Rashi in such a way, if you learn Chitas like that, it'll, it'll take you six hours.

47:44 Speaker 3 No. But no, but I'm saying a way to be, to, to, to add to the Koch and learning Chitas.

47:48 Speaker 1 I, I, I ne- I never heard that, no. I never heard it. It was a thing for itself. The Rebbe did mention it, uh, many, many times.

47:55 Speaker 3 The Rebbe said it was Ɣilui nishmas his mother.

47:57 Speaker 1 No, no, no. No, but when it came out, when the sichas came out mugger on the back, like it was written, Ɣilui nishmas Rebbe Sacchanah. And I think the first to quote the sicha also, and they made out all the additions.

48:08 Speaker 3 Because it's interesting, like if you ask-- there are a lot of people who if you ask them, like, what was... Yeah, the Rebbe has a lot of chidushim in every s- in every, in so many sugias of Torah and different parts of Torah and so on. But if you want to look for like a trademark, uh, innovation, so to speak, like where's our Ɣadu derech halim where the Rebbe was mamzi. A lot of people will tell you the Rashi sichas.

48:34 Speaker 1 That's for sure, as a, as a full scope. It's a revolutionary thing.

48:37 Speaker 3 The klalim and the whole thing.

48:39 Speaker 1 Revolutionary thing completely.

48:40 Speaker 3 It's so interesting that the-

48:41 Speaker 1 Completely revolutionary

48:43 Speaker 3 ... that it would be the Rashi s- that it would be Rashis.

48:45 Speaker 1 Complete revolutionary. But the Rebbe demanded Ɣdesh mizrach kochon zecher l'memshia, ask shailas. The Rebbe demanded shailas. The Rebbe wanted. I remember it, it was, uh, um, that was Shnas before Shnas HaShivim. Shnas HaShivim, Toshan, uh, Toshan Lamed Beis. Toshan Lamed Alef, Lamed Beis. They started, uh, making the Ha'aros Hatmimim.

49:06 Speaker 3 Right.

49:07 Speaker 1 It came out first on a stencil.

49:08 Speaker 3 Right.

49:09 Speaker 1 So there was a whole discussion by bochurim. "You're gonna ask shailas on the Rebbe's sichas? You crazy? Rebbe's meshuga. What are you, out of your mind? You don't understand. Go, uh, say Lema-- say Lema, Gel Eden."

49:21 Speaker 3 Right.

49:21 Speaker 1 "Say Gel Eden. What's he say?" Says-- but the pellet went and the Rebbe started answering. Uh, the, the, the, the-- when it came that from all those things they gave out later, uh, a kavitz of that year, some things I wrote. Oh, a lot of guys wrote it. So they collected a whole bunch. They gave out a kuntres, maybe a hundred pages, a hundred and twenty pages. And they wrote a hagdah, and, and, uh, and, and they, uh, wrote that anybody who wants can ask questions. So the Rebbe added words. You don't know it's from the Rebbe. I think he said the word, "Ei diaisa mevashim." Not they could to write ha'aros. Mevashim. Many times the Rebbe used-- in the later years, the Rebbe used to answer. They, they wrote in the ha'aros. They wrote in the ha'aros about this and this, so they answer, and the Rebbe, uh, it is a kasha, not a kasha. The Rebbe wanted very, very strongly. By, by farbrengen he spoke. Nobody cares, nobody... There's a-- I remember the Chof Hey. Chof Hey, uh, Bav Tishrei it was. Bav Tishrei, this-

50:14 Speaker 3 I-- could, could it be, could it be that-

50:15 Speaker 1 Well, let, let me just get...

50:17 Speaker 3 Yeah.

50:17 Speaker 1 12 Tishrei, 12 Tishrei, that's a thing for itself. The Rebbe-

50:20 Speaker 3 Chaf Heh?

50:21 Speaker 1 Chaf Heh. The Rebbe-- when the, the day the Rebbe's mother passed away, and he knew the Mazef-

50:24 Speaker 3 He was farbrengen, right?

50:25 Speaker 1 He was at farbrengen. At farbrengen, the Rebbe spoke in all his Achim. So over there, that farbrengen was a-

50:30 Speaker 3 It was a Shabbos, right?

50:31 Speaker 1 Shabbos, Shabbos, Shabbos Shuva, 12 Tishrei.

50:33 Speaker 3 Right, right.

50:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, it was Shabbos. So, um, the Rebbe mentioned that it says in Gemara, it says in Gemara that, uh, "El Elohim Yehi Or," after the Yemi Yemi Mekareves Es Mel Decha. That first has to come Yemi Mekareves Es Mel Decha, and he explained-

50:48 Speaker 3 Right

50:48 Speaker 1 ... the whole Halachas about it. And, uh, later, many weeks later, many weeks later, the Rebbe said, "This Ma'amar that I mentioned on Shabbos is brought down twice in Shas." It says, "Not say like that." It says Leil-- is, "Es Mel Decha Yemi Mekareves." The exact opposite order. And the Rebbe made a whole thing, Yemi Mekareves Es Mel Decha, and no one, uh, does... Nobody, nobody cares what's Meireth and nobody cares about that. He gave a whole Sich, and it, a lot of times it's not even printed, the-

51:18 Speaker 3 Yemi Mekareves said, "I'm Yemi Mekareves-"

51:20 Speaker 1 First have Yemi Mekareves and-- first Mekareves, not Es Mel Decha. But the Gemara said... So, so, so the Rebbe explained the whole Halachas why it still has to be Yemi Mekareves. The Rebbe explained why it says in Gemara that way. Now in Likutey Sichos it's printed a whole Halacha about this, but, but the Rebbe was so upset that no one, no one asked a Shayla. No one said, "Shayla." And many times, that wasn't, wasn't once. Many, many times the Rebbe said something and no one asked, no one asked a Shayla. In the later years when I-

51:48 Speaker 3 Well, wait. Why would they ask a Shayla about this, uh, P-P- this Ma'amar Chazal?

51:51 Speaker 1 Because he said a thing, the Rebbe said a thing, the Gemara that doesn't say.

51:55 Speaker 3 Oh, he said it.

51:56 Speaker 1 The Rebbe said it farbrengen.

51:57 Speaker 3 He was testing, I think-

51:58 Speaker 1 Not testing. Wait. One-- I'll say it in a second. He, he said it and it's not just he said that. Like he said it, uh, it's not negate the order, but-

52:05 Speaker 3 He-

52:05 Speaker 1 ... the Rebbe spoke about the order. That the order is Yemi Mekareves and Es Mel Decha. But the Gemara says the opposite. It says Mel Decha Yemi Mekareves.

52:13 Speaker 3 So he said, "Why didn't anybody ask?"

52:14 Speaker 1 Ask why that... He explained the thing, and the Gemara, the Gemara says differently.

52:18 Speaker 3 All right. And so he explained that I-- there was a reason why I said it that way.

52:22 Speaker 1 N-No, 'cause he explained, he explained because the Gemara itself means that Yemi Mekareves. He explained the Halachas, not to-

52:26 Speaker 3 Uh-huh

52:27 Speaker 1 ... not to go into it now.

52:27 Speaker 3 But the, but the point was-

52:28 Speaker 1 Likutey Sichos

52:29 Speaker 3 ... the point was why people didn't ask it.

52:29 Speaker 1 That people didn't ask. He was very upset. As I says, two times in Shas. Nobody cares farbrengen, the, the Rebbe. Once the Rebbe even said you can take the, take the, the, the Makeh Ha'noch, everything else, you can find it on both, uh, on both sides. Does make a difference. Bind over here, bind over here.

52:44 Speaker 3 Well, it's okay. One second. What's the point that... Well, but, uh, let's, let's try to analyze it for a second. What's the point of the Rebbe voicing his frustration? What, what, the, like-

52:53 Speaker 1 If he wants to be Me'eyner... Once the Rebbe himself-- I'll go even further. Once the Rebbe even said that it says in Gemara, in, in Shulchan Aruch, Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah, Halachas, Halachas L'Ma'aseh. It says that a Rav, he wants to make sure that his, the Talmidim are listening. He can say things a little bit different to see if, if they're up to it. And the Rebbe came out, the Rebbe was saying it about himself. About himself. This was, this we were then in Australia, this Ha'zonda thing. So, uh, the, I think it was Daf Chaf Ches. So the Rebbe explained in Pirkei Avos, it says, uh, uh, uh, "Chamishah Talmidim Hayu L'Rebbe Achim BeZaqai." And then it says, "Heim Omer L'Shlosha Dvarim." So one of them is R' Shimon. It says R' Shimon Eimar. Rebbe explained R' Shimon, R' Shimon Ben Yochai, Taros Umnos, the whole thing. And the Rebbe said, "I waited weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. People should ask a Shayla." It says R' Shimon Ben Yochai, Talmidai Rebbe Achim BeZaqai says, the, till the same it is printed on two pages. Rebbe didn't say that, but I'm say... Who are the Talmidim? R' Shimon Ben Nesanel.

53:54 Speaker 3 Right.

53:54 Speaker 1 It wasn't Shimon Ben Yochai. The Rebbe could hold on R' Shimon Ben Yochai, Taros Umnos. He said, "Nobody asked a Shayla. Nobody asked a question." R' Shimon here is not R' Shimon. Some R' Shimon could be R' Shimon Ben Yochai, but not in this Mishnah. In this piece, it, it tells you clearly. So the Rebbe gave a whole Hesbud why he said it that way and what it means and because... He didn't, he didn't say that I made it-- Was Chassidim mistake. The Rebbe said it's, it's 100% correct. I mean, there's many D'oraytas we can say. I can give you on, on other D'oraytas. Uh, in the, uh, I used to make the Hanochas also of the Rebbe's farbrengens, the weekly Hanochas. I used to make, uh, Daf Yomi Lamed, Lamed Alef, Lamed Beis. It was a big job, a big job to, uh, you know, to, to get it transcribed, and you had to make the Loshon with Madlikim. It's a whole Halachas. So this is 12 Tishrei, Daf Yomi Lamed Alef. Uh, Lamed Alef. And the Rebbe said from the, the Pasuk it says, uh, "Mimegas Shomayim MiOl Mitam Riv'tos Tochas." Mimegas Shomayim MiOl, that's from the, the, the fruits that come f-from the heavens, MiOl, above. Mitam Riv'tos Tochas. The Rebbe explained that if it says Shomayim, we, we know that it's already... It's above. What is the reason to say MiOl? And Tem says to him, what is it? Tochas that is below. We, we know that. And so the Rebbe

55:04 Speaker 1 gave a whole, a whole Bier. Good, everybody went to sleep. I'll go say that. The next morning, the Rebbe came in the morning with a little settle, little settle, and it says like this, if I remember correctly, "Mimegas Shomayim, Mimegas Shomayim MiOl Mitoch." The problem is it doesn't say MiOl in the Pasuk. It says Mitoch, with a Tes. Shomayim Mitoch, Toch. So, so the Rebbe wrote Mimegas Shomayim, and in brackets he wrote, "V'Tirgem Onkelos Mishmayah D'L'Elah." The Targum adds the words L'Elah. Says the, the, the question basically on the Targum, you understand? But we said nobody thought of it. Then the Rebbe didn't give any, any, any, any, any, any Chalukim for this, but I'm s- The Rebbe was with that the whole time. So right away, the next morning, nobody thought of this. It's a Pasuk in Chumash. S-And it's, and it's-

55:53 Speaker 3 Well, but what do you think... Well, like, it's more like, you know, s-sometimes, like if you keep on expressing your frustration, it's like, okay-

55:59 Speaker 1 Yeah, well, no-

56:00 Speaker 3 The-

56:00 Speaker 1 Yes. I'm, I'm just saying it now. This was in the context of, of, uh- Tens of thousands-

56:05 Speaker 3 Yeah, but it-

56:06 Speaker 1 Of hours of minutes

56:07 Speaker 3 But it didn't change in between.

56:08 Speaker 1 No, no, no. It did change.

56:10 Speaker 3 It did change.

56:10 Speaker 1 It changed. It made that people want, uh, they had, they had to ca- That's when the, that came out the hardest at Mimim. People have started adding-

56:17 Speaker 3 Yeah

56:17 Speaker 1 ... a big koch in the, the Rebbe's fabringes. It wasn't just for pastors. 'Cause it was at Noah, but some guys, if the Rebbe said, "What, what's..." So we don't understand, but you can ask the Rebbe a shaylah hiner her, but the Rebbe said, "No, you have to..." Which it means you don't, you're not koch zachrim. If you koch zachrim them, y- y- you have to know it thoroughly. You have to know what's going on.

56:34 Speaker 3 Right.

56:34 Speaker 1 You have to... And the shaylah comes up, other Rebbe asked, 'cause Rebbe wanted. I told Liba Grunid wouldn't go in a Sunday morning. He said, "I can't go in until I have a few shailas." So he told him right at this shaylah. It could be we, we were digging up shailas, at least that people reviewed-

56:48 Speaker 3 Right

56:48 Speaker 1 ... so to speak, the fabringen. It has something to say about it. A shaylah here, a shaylah there, whatever it may be.

56:53 Speaker 3 I'm wondering if it's, you know, the, w- we always talk about the, the, the mashal of the Rav and Talmud is a mashal about a mashal, that the Rav gives a, a mashal to the Talmud to explain something. And the whole idea is that basically the Rav has to find, uh, a way or a, or a-

57:12 Speaker 1 A hook?

57:13 Speaker 3 A h- not, not even a hook, like a, a, a keli essentially that, or this is a mashal of Davar Zarah almost. Like a simple separate thing that can contain a, a great wisdom because this way the Talmud can begin with something and then work its way to something bigger. You know, I'm wondering if that's what the, the Rashi sichas were. That the R-

57:34 Speaker 1 Yeah

57:34 Speaker 3 ... the Rav is talking about something that on one hand is very, I know it's not, I kn- I know we're not, uh, uh-

57:38 Speaker 1 The there's, I, I can't, I can't, I-

57:41 Speaker 3 Yeah, but when people talk about all kinds of things, they, what was-

57:43 Speaker 1 They can talk

57:43 Speaker 3 ... what was the idea behind it? I'm not asking you to, to tell-

57:45 Speaker 1 And let me tell you something. There's a famous saying, "Those that know don't talk. Those that talk don't know." How much should I tell you? I, I-

57:51 Speaker 3 I don't know. I'm telling you what I think. I'm not asking you to-

57:53 Speaker 1 No co-

57:53 Speaker 3 I'm asking you to come-

57:54 Speaker 1 No comment. No co- no comment. I can't.

57:55 Speaker 3 No comment.

57:55 Speaker 1 No, I, I can't know. I'm not with that-

57:57 Speaker 3 No, because from everything you're telling me, from everything you're telling me, I'm not trying to know for sure. But it's, uh, you can have theories about things. W- people have theories about all kinds of things. The theory, you, you said that even you were wondering why the Rebbe gave Rashi sichas.

58:10 Speaker 1 100%.

58:10 Speaker 3 Okay, so awesome.

58:11 Speaker 1 Would I, would I ask the Rebbe, would I look for a tennis?

58:13 Speaker 3 So give me that. Go ahead. I'm giving you.

58:15 Speaker 1 Oh, good. That good. They can have 1,000 truths. I agree. That is-

58:21 Speaker 3 So I'm, I'm suggesting- I'm suggesting that it's, it's, it's... You're telling me that the Rebbe spoke about a, a nosi that for many, for forever was seen as like a, a-

58:32 Speaker 1 The kids

58:32 Speaker 3 Even if a kid know, there are a lot of meforshim on Rashi-

58:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah

58:35 Speaker 3 ... but it's, uh, it's, uh-

58:36 Speaker 1 Not p'rak every single word

58:37 Speaker 3 It is, it's for dr- it's for drashes. It's for-

58:39 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah

58:40 Speaker 3 ... it's, it's, it's, it's vertlach almost. It's vertlach. And, and, and, and, and, and the Rebbe's talking about it, and he wants people to engage in it. The whole point of a mashal of a Rav to Talmud is that the Talmud has access to begin working on something.

58:52 Speaker 1 I say

58:53 Speaker 3 All right, you don't wanna go there. All right. That's it.

58:55 Speaker 1 No, if, if I do wanna go, I have no idea.

58:57 Speaker 3 I, I also don't have an idea.

58:58 Speaker 1 I have no idea.

59:00 Speaker 3 But you said yourself that the Rebbe-

59:01 Speaker 1 No idea

59:01 Speaker 3 ... you said yourself the Rebbe wanted people to understand or-

59:04 Speaker 1 In what he's saying, yeah.

59:05 Speaker 3 Okay, so why come understand this?

59:06 Speaker 1 Gesundheit. I don't think anybody asked the Rebbe why just that. Maybe somebody did. I don't know. I never saw. Why'd you start learning, teaching Rashi and

59:14 Speaker 3 But, but according to what you're saying, you don't think the Rebbe would want someone to ask that question?

59:18 Speaker 1 No. That's not something that he said. That's if you're asking the Rebbe's, uh, had hannogeh. Why'd you do this? Why'd you do that? We had a tremendous chutz that the Rebbe allowed us to be there to see what's going on. M- miracles were happening by fabringes, call them in the sachen. On, on the shir sachen. The Rebbe, but if Friediker Rebbe was bochurim there in the, in the shins, 1940s, to learn by fabringen, not once. Not once. They weren't allowed to come in. If they were allowed to go just pass by and say, and say l'chaim to, to the Rebbe, just move on, that was a big oof.

59:51 Speaker 3 By, by the Friediker Rebbe?

59:52 Speaker 1 Friediker Rebbe.

59:52 Speaker 3 Bochurim were not allowed to go.

59:53 Speaker 1 No, they're not, no fabringen. They didn't, didn't get in. They couldn't get in.

59:56 Speaker 3 This is in America or back in Russia?

59:57 Speaker 1 In America, in America. No, of, of them, some was in, of ours, some of them were. Even them, some was restricted. It wasn't so pushy, but the Rebbe is open, open for everybody. So we, so we're very happy we're able to see. So to explain fab what's it, say I can give you over what I was zecher to see and to hear. Now that you know it, your head is as good as my head. Gesundheit. Try to figure out. I understand like a I have known nothing.

1:00:20 Speaker 3 I'm remembering, I think it was someone on this podcast said it. It's one that's like a few years ago already, I think. I'm forgetting now where, where. I'm pretty sure it was on the podcast. Where something to do with a gartel, and somebody asked the Rebbe about a certain hannogeh that he had, and there was a sharfeh, there was a sharfeh mind to that, to, to that, to that incident.

1:00:40 Speaker 1 I don't know.

1:00:41 Speaker 3 To the, yeah, the, the, like somebody wanted to f- to tie choice and, and the Rebbe said this is a, a Rebbeshe inyen, like it's private.

1:00:48 Speaker 1 That, that's a stay, you stay away from it. That's a stay away.

1:00:50 Speaker 3 It's private. I, but to me it's different than something that the Rebbe was saying publicly to people. You would think that he wants us... Okay, I hear you, I hear you. I mean, the, the Rashi sichas are public.

1:01:00 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:01:01 Speaker 3 It wasn't like, uh, kiching in the Rebbe's private business.

1:01:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, but that's, there's two... Ask a th- thing the Rebbe said about the Rashi that the Rebbe wanted. Ask him, "Why did you start learning Rashi, and why'd you pick this Rashi and not the other Rashi?"

1:01:13 Speaker 3 Okay, I hear. Um, so you, you said, you said in passing before that, um, be- before I go to the sichas in Australia, you, you, you were bochur in 770. You're bochur in 770. Was there, was there a sense... 'Cause, you know, uh, there's always, in general in life or history, there's always Amal this, Amal that. Uh, you know, after Gemara Talmud, before Gemara Talmud, uh, in the Gemaras there's a lamdes and so on and so forth. When you, you were bochur in the chof, was there a thing of in the yuds there was this, and now it's not that anymore?

1:01:47 Speaker 1 No, no. If I, if I-

1:01:48 Speaker 3 Was there a sense of a-

1:01:49 Speaker 1 If, if anything, it was exact opposite.

1:01:51 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

1:01:51 Speaker 1 Because, because, uh, r- in the earlier years, and even in the beginning of the chof, for example, the Rebbe used to fabring basically Shabbos Mevarchim, and that he did, he already started from the Friediker Rebbe's times. He told him to fabring. Friediker Rebbe told the Rebbe to fabring Shabbos Mevarchim. So he used to fabring this, this, even some rec- uh, not recorded, uh, transcribed sichas that the Rebbe spoke at that time after davening. He used to sit down for a little while in 770, and he used to say, uh, "Fabring." So, uh, uh, let's say in the yuds. The yuds, the fabringens Were only basically once a month, Shabbos , unless it's, uh, I don't know, it's . And then it was short. They were much shorter, much shorter. We used to finish, uh, at 3:00. It wasn't always at 1:30, but let's say later on it became 1:30, uh, 3:00. Later on when the Rebbe started the Rashi Sichas, that itself added 45 minutes just to ask the questions and to answer and then Biurim, and they sta- started a whole new... Also, the Rebbe spoke about, about the importance of the day and the s- the connection with the day. The Rebbe spoke a lot of things that were at Sisroel. Later it was Miyehudi, Tosh Lamed started putting, um, Lamed started Miyehudi was every farbrengen. Lamed, Lamed Alef, Lamed Beis. It wasn't one farbrengen. The Rebbe didn't speak about Miyehudi, but Barichas. The Sichas there took an hour. Terrible. And, and then

1:03:10 Speaker 1 the Matan at Sisroel that they're giving up, uh, a- after the, after the Six-Day War, they wanted right after that. The Rebbe said they're giving away to Shturem. And whatever we see now, all the tzoros happening now, the Rebbe spoke clearly. And the lady, as he said, Buffet is there's gonna be a war. The Rebbe was, was very careful not to mention that. The-- It was getting so bad. The Rebbe said be a war and a much worse Mazel than now. And the Chasom Kirbonis. The Rebbe was very careful not-- There's few farbrengens Rebbe said that, but it was warnings. give back one inch. So th-that took up a lot of time also. In though those years, there was a lot of ti-time was spent with that. Farbrengens, farbrengens went much longer, went till 4:00 or 5:00 o'clock. There's lastly Chanukah. Chanukah was the middle of the winter. Farbrengens, we daven Mincha, didn't go home. Ma-many Shabbosim I never-- 'Cause I n- I never went home to eat after davening, uh, uh, before the farbrengen. Come on. The ganzem tachon come to the farbrengen. So, yeah, we, we-- They just made the Kiddush, like Bapar hard kiklach, you know, they're called the Aya Kiklach, those hard, the crumbs, you know what they, they look like, and that's it. So as eh, the farbrengen finished, 4:00, 4:30, we-- It was time. We ran home, and then we came back right away for Maariv. Davening Mincha was always the, was, was, uh, was after the farbrengen, sometimes

1:04:25 Speaker 1 even upstairs, later downstairs. And, uh, but sometimes it was Mincha and Maariv one after the other. It was a-- Mincha was, uh, uh, after the Shki already, so to speak. Okay. So daven Mincha and then there's sometimes even Chanukah. I remember the-- we ran home and sent Chanukah licht. Where is-- Where they sent Chanukah licht there by the Rebbe, you know, this. After Maariv, Chanukah, then you went home. There was a, a ganzem tog, and it was let's say Shabbos . You came there for Tehillim, then you davened, then a farbrengen. Didn't eat a thing, okay?

1:04:53 Speaker 3 All right. So you didn't feel like you had missed out on anything?

1:04:56 Speaker 1 Nah, from before, nah, I can't say that, not at all. Not at all. If anything, it intensified. Take it from Chof Hey, that's when it really started intensifying, really intensifying.

1:05:06 Speaker 3 Right.

1:05:08 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:05:12 Speaker 3 So, so, uh, talk a little bit about the shlichus in Australia. How did that happen?

1:05:17 Speaker 1 How that happened was like this. It was Thursday night, the night of, uh, Zayin Adar, Risin. The night of the Risin. I was sitting, like, uh, behaving myself. Say the Kesir, this was around, uh, at least 8:45, 8:40. Byman Klein, I was sitting facing the wall. A tap on my back. Byman Klein walks over to me. He said, um, "Nachum Seidel, Rebbe Chadakov wants to see you." I got scared. "Cause Rebbe Chadakov is not under the whole of the yeshiva. If he's asking, that means the Rebbe, I did something wrong. I said, you know, it's like it starts flashing to what did I do wrong in the last, uh, week, month, year? What, what happened? I said, I just asked, I said, "Is it only me or is, uh, oth-" He said, "There's others also." Says, "The others," like they said, There's others also. We'll, we'll, we'll survive. Yeah, we'll survive. Finish. We knew nothing what it's about. Zero. Zero. N- 9:30, Seder finishes. We lined up, uh, Rebbe Chadakov's room. His-- And if you ever saw his room, the room is, is the-- Most people have closets in the house, uh, bigger than his room. There's no place, no-- He sat by a desk, and there's no chair on the other side because-

1:06:35 Speaker 3 It's in the, in the first room of the library now, no?

1:06:38 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, no. You know what LCC is?

1:06:42 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:06:42 Speaker 1 Chaim Bocher's room.

1:06:43 Speaker 3 Right.

1:06:44 Speaker 1 On the right side is another door.

1:06:46 Speaker 3 In between that and the library.

1:06:47 Speaker 1 Yeah, the library called the Yechid room now.

1:06:49 Speaker 3 So straight in the hallway.

1:06:50 Speaker 1 Straight, go till the end. That's, that was his room.

1:06:52 Speaker 3 Who's there now? What's there now?

1:06:53 Speaker 1 I don't know what now. I don't know.

1:06:55 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

1:06:58 Speaker 1 Had, that had the office also. F-freg the, freg dein zeiden. Ask him.

1:07:03 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

1:07:03 Speaker 1 Yeah. He didn't have office. Rebbe Chadakov used to sit in America. Everybody was there. They were grown. Everybody sat in the same room. But that was his office later. All the later years, that was his office. And there was a, a group of bochurim went in. There was pushit. Forget about chairs. There was no room to, to maneuver. So he said, you know, "There's a yeshiva, Yeshivat Dela opening up in, in, in Australia, and they wanna send, uh, the bochurim to go." And then he was talking, and then he said, "But there's three conditions. Three conditions. Condition number one, . Not being forced to go. And it has to be of the parents. The parents have to agree. And the third thing, you have to ask of a doctor, of a refa, that your health is okay." Somebody asked, "Is, uh, is, uh, is this, like, from the Rebbe?" It was like, it was like a thunderbolt, you know. It seems that Rebbe, Rebbe Gutnick, li-- I read later that he was already inquiring. He went to Montreal to look for bochurim. He spoke to the Rebbe in, in seventy-seventy. I knew nothing about it. Maybe other guys did know. Australia was like, it's like I go, maybe wanna go to the moon. They're settling the moon.

1:08:16 Speaker 3 Right.

1:08:16 Speaker 1 We know if kangaroos are jumping on the s- on the streets there, bachlal. We had no idea. It was-- We didn't know what, what Australia is. Like Erevelt.

1:08:23 Speaker 3 Right.

1:08:23 Speaker 1 Like Erevelt. So somebody asked, "Is, is, is from the Rebbe?" It's just a So the he never answered a question straight. He was a diplomat, uh, the best one in the world. So he said, "We just said it should be ." So if I say it from this, from this, he feel to go. He, he was hinting a lot, say it's from the Rebbe, but I can't say it's from the Rebbe, then he'll be forced to go. I'm now being forced to go. Finish. And, uh, oh, oh-

1:08:52 Speaker 3 That guy, that guy ended up going?

1:08:54 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I- And then another, another guy asked a question like, "When is this, uh, for?" It, it was like MS. So it was, it was, um, a month before Pesach, uh, Purim, and two months before Pesach. Well, maybe make plans in the in the summer He said, "Mit zey dayin you can go tomorrow." Tomorrow is Friday, which go tomorrow, but, you know, you have to make papers or get a ticket. Whatever time it takes, that's it. Okay, . That's, that's what it was.

1:09:24 Speaker 3 Wait, and the people that were called in were like a specific number that, or he was letting the bochurim know that they could apply?

1:09:29 Speaker 1 No, no, no. Specific number. At the end it was eight bochurim, two bochurim for, uh, whatever reason.

1:09:33 Speaker 3 So actually he called in a minyan.

1:09:35 Speaker 1 No, it wasn't a minyan. It was eight.

1:09:36 Speaker 3 He called in eight.

1:09:37 Speaker 1 Eight, and of the eight, six went.

1:09:39 Speaker 3 Oh, th-

1:09:39 Speaker 1 'Cause I'll tell you what, what happened after that. And, uh, and he said that, he, he said, "Give a, if, but these are the conditions. You have to give an answer." Whatever it is, finished. So, uh-

1:09:48 Speaker 3 In your mind when that happened, you, you already say, "I'm gonna go"?

1:09:51 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:09:51 Speaker 3 Or you want to find out from your friends if they were going?

1:09:54 Speaker 1 No, no, no, no. The Ra- We, we, we realized that the Rebbe it never happened before. Such a thing never. It's the first time in history.

1:10:01 Speaker 3 In his office you were all standing with hats and jackets? Like a whole serious thing or it was-

1:10:05 Speaker 1 We stand, yeah

1:10:05 Speaker 3 ... it was like a-

1:10:05 Speaker 1 No, we, bochur we wear a hat and jacket. A lot of guys by, even by say they took off their jacket, but you . First you lose your jacket. You leave it in 770, it might get lost.

1:10:13 Speaker 3 There's 20 people there you said. There wasn't that many people.

1:10:15 Speaker 1 No, there's more. This hall was full. There-

1:10:18 Speaker 3 You lose your jacket if you leave it for five minutes

1:10:20 Speaker 1 No, no. As, as far as I remember that-

1:10:20 Speaker 3 But I understand it would be like, like, like a serious moment or-

1:10:23 Speaker 1 No. If, if you're going, whatever. I remember that detail one guy did, we didn't know.

1:10:28 Speaker 3 I'm, no, I'm trying to understand, was it like a-

1:10:30 Speaker 1 No, we didn't know what it is.

1:10:31 Speaker 3 That's what I'm saying.

1:10:31 Speaker 1 We had no idea. All I knew that I'm not-

1:10:33 Speaker 3 Do you think he gave a schmooze?

1:10:34 Speaker 1 ... that I'm not in trouble myself. That I knew.

1:10:36 Speaker 3 You thought you was being a schmoozer or you thought it was-

1:10:37 Speaker 1 I have no idea. It never happened before. You-

1:10:39 Speaker 3 Right

1:10:39 Speaker 1 ... there's no precedent. We had no precedent.

1:10:41 Speaker 3 Right.

1:10:41 Speaker 1 We had no thing. "Oh, maybe it's like that." No precedent. So, uh, l'pail, for me the first thing okay, that's taken care of. I went to my parents. I said, "It, uh, listen, it's, it's hard to be away for two years, but, you know, it's, an important thing." And then I had to get from the doctor. Who's the doctor?

1:10:59 Speaker 3 One second, one second. You're just talking about how 770 was, it was in the height of fabringens and, and zachen and the Rebbe's coming out all the time, and it's you're, you're, every day there's another thing that you're seeing, and just like this you're like, "I'm leaving for two years"?

1:11:15 Speaker 1 It, that's Listen, that was, uh, not even a question. Not even a question. So, so that was taken care of. The first tutnoyim, we have to get from a doctor. Who do you get a doctor? Dr. Zelikson. Dr. Zelikson-

1:11:28 Speaker 3 Right

1:11:28 Speaker 1 ... at that time he was, uh, he was, uh, still a doctor. He took appointments, but he used to davened barich.

1:11:34 Speaker 3 He went by his own schedule.

1:11:35 Speaker 1 His own schedule. He set up with the minyan take care of and this and that. He, I remember he used to go maybe all the times, most of the time, and then he would go in the corner. The corner, where now they have the sink over there. Then there was no sink there in those days, and, uh, he used to daven there. So Friday morning-

1:11:52 Speaker 3 Wait, that door was open all the time?

1:11:54 Speaker 1 All the time. was always open.

1:11:56 Speaker 3 You could walk right by the Rebbe's office?

1:11:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, it was always open. That, they never closed it.

1:11:59 Speaker 3 So it was just a door between that hallway and the Rebbe's room?

1:12:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. The Rebbe's door. That's it. You, there, you could o- Guys didn't hang around there. It's not, it's not a hanging around place, but it was always open there.

1:12:09 Speaker 3 So the, that first door was not closed?

1:12:10 Speaker 1 No. Never, never, never. It was maybe closed, but it was, was never locked. Never locked.

1:12:15 Speaker 3 And it wasn't considered that you're intruding if you-

1:12:17 Speaker 1 No, no, no. Not at that time, no

1:12:18 Speaker 3 ... people would go there f- to wash their hands and-

1:12:20 Speaker 1 No, there was no sink there.

1:12:21 Speaker 3 There wasn't a sink there.

1:12:22 Speaker 1 No, no, no. The sink-

1:12:23 Speaker 3 So what, so what was it? What, what, what-

1:12:25 Speaker 1 There was a room. There, there's just a, th- that, b- that's. Whatever's there now-

1:12:29 Speaker 3 So-

1:12:29 Speaker 1 ... just a little bit further

1:12:29 Speaker 3 ... what would, no, but what would you see? There was a, there's a staircase there.

1:12:33 Speaker 1 The staircase was there. That's-

1:12:34 Speaker 3 So what, so what would people do there?

1:12:37 Speaker 1 No, n-

1:12:37 Speaker 3 People-

1:12:37 Speaker 1 People didn't hang around there. They-

1:12:38 Speaker 3 People would wait for Yechidus there, right?

1:12:40 Speaker 1 That, yeah. That was packed.

1:12:41 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:12:42 Speaker 1 Packed. There's benches there, packed. That's it.

1:12:43 Speaker 3 But during the, during the day-

1:12:45 Speaker 1 No, people wouldn't go-

1:12:45 Speaker 3 You, you would go in there, but otherwise it was empty

1:12:47 Speaker 1 ... nobody went in there. But, uh, I told Dr. Zelikson davened over there.

1:12:51 Speaker 3 Yeah. The-

1:12:51 Speaker 1 Himself. There-

1:12:52 Speaker 3 Right

1:12:53 Speaker 1 ... but it was accessible, that's what I wanna say.

1:12:54 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

1:12:54 Speaker 1 So I went over to him. I told him that we're told that, uh, the, the shluchus and, uh, one of the conditions is that we have to get, uh, from a doctor. So, uh, he asked me, "Did you ever have any m- major sickness, illness?" I said, "not." He says, "Take off your glasses." I took off the glasses. He went like this, like this. "Kenes fon."

1:13:15 Speaker 3 He likes to look at people's eyes.

1:13:16 Speaker 1 The, the, the whole thing, it took between 22 seconds and 24 seconds, the whole examination was over. He said, "Kenes fon." So right away I wrote into the Rebbe. Wrote into the, not to the Chabad HaKov, but Rebbe, to the Chabad HaKov that, uh, we meet all, I meet the conditions and I'm, I'm, I'm ready. And other guys also. I didn't, we didn't do it, each one did separately. And, uh, other guys also wrote in and, um, and then it was one or two maybe didn't get a chance maybe to, to get a d- whatever, didn't have the answer right on Friday. So someone over to Chabad HaKov, uh, Rabbi Chabad HaKov, he went over on Shabbos itself. So Rabbi Chabad HaKov, uh, when the Rebbe went upstairs, before he went into his room, Rabbi Chabad HaKov told him that, uh, now there's, uh, I think six, there's a total of six bochurim that was there was a, a It wasn't a scheduled farbrengen. It was, it was, it was It's not a

1:15:11 Speaker 3 That Shabbos you're saying?

1:15:12 Speaker 1 Yeah. that was, that was the six guys. It was Vabringen, and the Rebbe said, the Rebbe said we should all say lcha- No, the Rebbe called us up. He gave, he gave us mashgiach. It was a, it was a, uh, extra special Vabringen. You had decided before this epis- thing that you were gonna go on shlichus later on in your life? Had you... It was already clear to you that you were gonna go on shlichus? I'll, I'll tell you the truth. At that time, shlichus just started. Right. Let me explain to you what, what I mean. In the first 10 years of the Rebbe's nasius, from Tov Shin Yud to Tov Shin Chaf, I don't even know if there was 10 shluchim of the Rebbe. Very few. I don't even know if 10. Right. And some of that went back- I'm not talking the Friediker Rebbe shluchim. Right. There was... Even that was less than 10. And some of the 10 went, came back. No, whatever. Even if they come, we're not going to 10 or 11 or nine. I'm not going into that, you understand? Right. There was shluchim, Rav Mechol Lipskier- Right ... Saadia Lieberov. That's the Friediker Rebbe? No. No. The Lipskier, the Friediker, the Rebbe saying he was the first shliach, Mechol Lipskier. After Yitzvat. After Yitzvat, 'cause the Rebbe's told him that before the hishtals, the Friediker Rebbe told the Rebbe a- about, uh, uh- Uh-huh ... about Morocco. Uh-huh. So right after the shiva, right away it started there.

1:16:19 Speaker 1 Uh-huh. And Matusof. That, they all, that's, that's- They were sent by the Rebbe. I thought they were sent by the Rebbe. They were sent by the Rebbe. No, no, no, no. I thought they were sent by the Friediker Rebbe. Okay. As a continuation, then you had Yisroel Groner, based of that, uh- Yeah, yeah ... uh, here and there. I'm not gonna enumerate it, you know. Uh, even Chaf and Chaf Hey was the handful there. No, the late dudes you had, the late, the late dudes you had, uh- Yesh A Mendel, uh- Berel Shemtov ... Yisroel Groner, Berel Shemtov. Abraham Shemtov went after Tov. After. He got married Chaf Alef. Right. Okay? So, uh, how was that? Yeah, that, that, he got married at that time. Shlomo Kunin probably also around- What? Shlomo Kunin didn't go yet? No, no, no, no, no. Shlomo Kunin got married, I think Chaf Hey he got married. Uh-huh. It was theys. So it's really very- I thought you were talking about Shlomo Kunin, about the So it's very few. Very few. That's what I'm saying, so Chaf Hey- And Rabbi Mekorf. And Rabbi Mekorf also, yeah. Uh, Rabbi Mekorf that, when the Rebbe s- the Rebbe stopped, the Rebbe stopped being Mesadi Kadushin, that was, uh, Tov Shin Chaf. Right after Meyzeders was the last one. Was that- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No? Tov Shin, is that a guy that got, uh, it was Chaf, Chaf Alef. Yitzvat, before Yitzvat Tov Shin Chaf, the

1:17:20 Speaker 1 Rebbe said there's no Mesadi Kadushin. Right. It's a Mol, the Rebbe used to go even to the halls. Right. Used to go mabesht. Right. Travel to the halls and, and on Willoughby Avenue- Right ... Goldman or other halls, and the Rebbe used to be the Kabbalas Panim and say a sicha, and then Mesadi Kadushin. That was still Tov Shin Yud Alef then. The Rebbe said he's not doing it anymore. So David Raskin, he said, uh, "It's gonna happen." He's getting married, the first one. So he said he's r- he'll make, he'll make the, uh- Chupen 770 ... make the chupen, the chupen, the chupen 770. So the Rebbe told him, the Rebbe told him that, uh, "Okay, he'll come out," and, uh, so th- that's when it started. It was maybe about 50 years since Kadushin, that was in the Shalash. Okay? But, and then they, they established Shalash anyway then Tov Shin Chaf, but you, before Yitz- the Rebbe stopped it. But then the Rebbe, the, even before, the condition was he had to, uh, have a beard and the wife has to wear a sheitel. That was- Right ... and then the Rebbe stopped it, then it was a condition if you go on shlichus. Right. So, so who was this? The Abraham Malkov, he had, he met that condition on Bogov, W- England. Right. And then Abra, Abra, Abraham Shemtov. I think it was the last one besides- He was the... No, no, no, no ... besides Shmolu. The, the, there was

1:18:30 Speaker 1 five, no, no, there's five. There was five? Oh, five. There was five altogether that, that, after the Rebbe stopped. He stopped Tov Shin Chaf. Uh-huh. So there's five. The only fi... In those days, Bachlal, if you look in the Kadison Israel- So there's two more after you saying ... it just shows you, it just shows you the, the, the, the scope and the size of the Lubavitch. Right. Today you can have in one week, you can have, uh, six, seven chassanas. There, if you had six, seven in a year, look in Kadison Israel. Every, every single- Right ... chupah is, even one of the bo- b- don't have any pictures, they're all there. There was 6 a year, seven, eight, nine. That was big already. Right. Treys. Yeah, that's- So, so that's what I'm saying. So that, so, so that stopped. So, so, um, no, so then, uh, Rabbi Ariel Korf, and then, then there was, uh, Abraham Sasanken. Uh-huh. Tov Shin Chaf Beis. So it's also a sudden thing. I, I, I'm, I w- I was by the, I was there by the, uh, by Ariel Korf's... I'm even in the Kadison Israel. I was there, a little kid there. You can see me with, when there's a, a casket hats over there- Uh-huh ... before bar mitzvah. And then Avram Sasanken, that, that chupah was on the side where the sukkah is now. Uh-huh. It was the only, only chupah there. Uh-huh. 'Cause people ask me, "Oh, we have to make it in

1:19:34 Speaker 1 front of 770 'cause that's where Rebbe started Kadushin," Avram Moshiach Shemtov and Shmolu. I said, "No, there was a, there's a chupah." "Oh, really? We didn't know." That's where my chupah was. Yes. And oh, good, so now people have, Rebbe started Kadushin there, finished. There's even pictures of it. So that was that, and then a, it was a year later, Tov Shin Chaf Gimel, it was 10th of Tammuz, um, that, uh, that, that chupah also. So, um, that was Shmolu, and that was the last one. Right. And the Rebbe told him, the Rebbe told him a favor, he shouldn't... F- First of all, uh, he asked him when, he asked, uh, Zalmi Yafah when, what, what time it is. He told him. He said, "So late." And then he go said, "Why, why so late? Why so late? Why he's making, making it earlier?" And then, and then, uh, so the Rebbe told him, "You should make it early. Make it early." And then it came out, the Rebbe told him that he's gonna be Mesadi Kadushin. Mesadi Kadushin, Zalmi Yafah was asking him. Um, so, uh, oh, I think, I think the Rebbe told him, "Why so late? You have to fast." So Zalmi Yafah tells the Rebbe, "He'll fast even two weeks with the Rebbe Mesadi Kadushin." He wanted it, it was, it seems it was already under discussion. It was on the table. So the Rebbe told him to make it 5:00, and he said he wants to see the invitation. It

1:20:45 Speaker 1 should not mention that anywhere that the Rebbe's Mesadi Kadushin. He shouldn't send it out before he'd be Tammuz. Chason says, "12 Tammuz," three days apart. And, and, and the, the invitation, the Rebbe got the invitation. He underlined bediuk three times. Three times he underlined. Beshalach Hamish is the one All right. 5:00 is the chuppah. All right. Bediuk, finish. And then, uh, so and then people got word of it. That's why I was there. It wasn't a very big deal, and you can see the pictures, but, uh... And, uh, and that day, 10th of Tammuz, the Rebbe went, the Rebbe went, uh, went to the Ohel. In those days, he didn't go every 10th of Tammuz. Later, he started going 10th of Tammuz, but then he only went erev Shabbos Kodesh. But he went, he went to the Ohel, and it was already a quarter to 5:00, and, um, the Rebbe's not back from the Ohel. So he asked Reb Chadakov, "What's gonna-- It's 10 to 5:00, what's gonna be?" And there was no cellphones in those days, no communication. So Reb Chadakov said, "So it'll be a little later, the chuppah." Zamir says, "No, the Rebbe wrote Bediuk. To me, Bediuk. No, not a question." It was late. The Rebbe came five to 5:00. Oh, no, and, and Reb Chadakov said also that when the Rebbe comes back from the Ohel, he always davens Mincha, davens Mincha before he does anything else. So he said, "In any case, it's Mincha. It'll be after 5:00." So

1:22:01 Speaker 1 l'peel, the Rebbe came back from the Ohel five to 5:00, and he went to his room, came right out at Bediuk, 5:00, the chuppah took place, and that was the last one. Hmm. Shalom. So you were saying that there were, there were very few shluchim back then, so you were not thinking as a bachur- No, no. Uh, uh, we are b- young, young, young So this is a week after you, you- Two weeks, two weeks. Like we left, we left l'peel, but the papers were already ready before. But let's say l- at the end of, uh, let's say, let's see, Chof, Chof. It says Chof . Less than, less than two weeks after you were called in. Yeah, less than two weeks. Less two weeks. And then there was Shabbos in the middle also, and all of that. So it was ready, but they had to wait until the person said the date come with us. They had to wait a little bit. So l'peel, everything was ready to go, and, uh, and then, uh, we were told it was a night of Yechidus. It was Sunday night. Sunday night's always Yechidus. So we were told, mamish on moment's notice basically, that the Rebbe wants to see us all in Yechidus altogether. In Yechidus in the room. So we went in. You ran to mikvah first as I said? Yeah, yeah. We had mamish, it was mamish minutes. So you ran to mikvah. Ran to the mikvah, uh, eis v'dreh. Uh, didn't give us too

1:24:53 Speaker 1 much notice. Went into Yechidus, and the Rebbe spoke, the Rebbe spoke, uh, twenty-five minutes, twenty-four minutes maybe. Mamish- Like a sicha almost. Mamish like a sicha. Like a sicha. It's still ringing in my ears. I still hear it. Mamish? Mamish. The Rebbe said, the Rebbe repeated maybe five times, "The He didn't use the word apots mayones. No, no, I don't think so. And he said we should even contact the Tzemach Dovid Chabad that's there, and then the Shey Chabad, not directly with the woman. But he said it'll have, it'll have, it'll have an impact, it'll have an impact on, on, on, on everything that's done, behulo behulo. So, uh, and then the Rebbe gave us, the Rebbe gave us, uh, mashke. The Rebbe gave us mashke, and, uh, he said, "This, this bottle of mashke," he said, "You should go to the chasune of, uh, Rav, uh, Gutnick and Rav Feldman." This is Pinny- Pinny- When Yossel was- No, no, not Yossel. No, no. Pin-Pinhas Feldman. Pinny Feldman. Right. He's a Ben Yochid. He married a Gutnick, right? He married a Gutnick. Right, right, right. So, and the chasener, Rabbi Simpson, went to the chasan also, so- Who, who went? Rabbi Simpson. Rabbi Simpson. Yeah. The, the, the mashke, he came with you, no? No, no, not directly. I'll, I'll tell you in a second. He came with us. I didn't-- I'll tell you in a second. So, um- So, um, he said we give it out of the "" I said, "The only wedding

1:27:17 Speaker 1 I was ever invited by the Rebbe." The Rebbe personally invited us. We had no invitation to the wedding. It was a big, big wedding, maybe 800 people. It was a big hall. Yeah, gonna cause a big crowd there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the Rebbe said we should give this out. Then he gave us a bottle from Mesiras Nefesh. It came from Russia. It came from Russia, that you should give out, give out, uh... I mean, Mesiras, Mesiras Seouds, and you should do the The Rebbe wanted you to give a bottle from- One bottle. One bottle was for the Chassan, and one bottle was for us ... from the, from the Russian Yidden From the Russian Yidden, Mesiras Nefesh. But, but us was Mesiras Seouds. That was for you. Yeah, for, yeah, for the- For you to fabring with ... fabring and for, yeah. Wow. Wow. And then the Rebbe gave us, the Rebbe gave us, uh, the Maamer. The Rebbe said a Maamer, "Susum Mizbach Mikhtaktelis," Parshat the Save. So it was a Maamer based on a Maamer of the Semach Zedek that wasn't printed yet. So I bring it, the Rebbe said, "Susum Sam Zachis Albdrukim." So we got what's called galleys. I know what galleys are. Yeah, yeah. But, but before they print it, it's on long, long, uh, brown sheets to s- to correct them, so any mistakes. Right. So Rebbe gave each one of us. Each one of us got a, got the, got the Maamer. And th- that was, uh,

1:28:24 Speaker 1 it was about 25 minutes. It's a nest. In those days there was no, uh, recordings of guys having the p- packets and smartphones. And like I said before, there was the reel-to-reel. Even cassettes were just, uh, came out that year. There was one bocher that had like, used by the CIA, you know, for spying. So they had, they had the kind of recording machine. It's, it's pretty big. It's, uh, a little bigger than a big, uh, as big as a Siddur, pretty big. But it wasn't, it wasn't a reel-to-reel, and it recorded not even on the tape, on a wire, a thin wire, and it got recorded on the wire. The wire moved So we had that. They gave it to us. One bocher was holding it as a hidden, and this- Oh, so you have a recording of the Sichos? Yeah, a recording, yeah. You listen to it from time to time? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I know it by heart. Okay? From then or from hearing it again? No, no, I hardly ever hear it again. As a matter of fact, I was the only one that had it, 'cause, uh, I was the one that arranged with this bocher to get it. Uh-huh. So we, we transferred it onto a, a reel-to-reel, a, a proper one. As I set up with Rabbi Kaplan, we sat a whole night typing it up, gave it in to the Rebbe the next morning. And, um, so we have, we have, we have the Anoche.

1:29:29 Speaker 1 But no one, no one had it. My daughter, my daughter got married, Rabbi Zalman Kaplan, uh, from Sfard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was, she was Shlichim. So that was my chure. It wasn't a printed chure. It was that- A recording ... a recording. Other recordings that I had from Andezach, and it was, uh, unique recordings. Now it's available. All the chures, chure.com I think has everything. Ah. So it's the recordings that... And now it's available all over. Now it's, uh, became, uh, runs with all the tapes. And then the next day, we were about to leave. We're leaving, uh, uh, the plane was I think five o'clock. So the Rebbe said that Mincha in 770 is quarter after 3:00, regular. So the Rebbe said he wants that we should have a Mincha 770. So he, the Rebbe said we'll have a Mincha 2:00. Could you imagine? Every day Mincha earlier. And then the Rebbe said, we didn't know. Right after Mincha, he wants to see us . And then the Rebbe said a few things. The Rebbe said that we spoke yesterday about Australia, to conquer the whole Australia. He said the , not to publicize those words. But the , they're not a few young guys coming over, and we're gonna conquer the whole Melbourne, the whole Australia. What's going on over here? So the Rebbe, we, we never mentioned it, never, while we were there. Later, when it became already big, and it's, uh, basically conquered already, uh, or whatever you wanna call

1:30:45 Speaker 1 it, so then, uh, we, we spread. Even bochum didn't know about it. It was just, uh- Hmm. And then the Rebbe gave us each one a Tanya, gave us a Tanya. And then the Rebbe told us, as far as Rabbi, uh, uh, Simpson, and, uh, from the Ash- from the Ashet Mimim and Timchet Mimim, he said, "If you have any specific questions about this, you can, you should speak to him." So he left a day early. He left on Sunday, 'cause it was too hard for him to- He went straight to Australia? Straight, yeah. No, but that wasn't like today. The, the- No, I know, but it wasn't, uh, straight to Australia. No, no, no. Later on. It's only, it's only goes if you go after Pesach, not across the Kabat Aidach. Ah. Not across the date line. But we went, it was, we went Chadal and Oderison. So he went a day earlier. So then we stopped off in Hana- Honolulu. Right. Hawaii, Fiji Islands, just for refueling. Right. Then in Sydney, 'cause, uh, uh, uh, Melbourne had a small airport. They couldn't take- Right ... jets. And then we went, and then we went to, uh, then we went by a propeller. It's a famous picture. We're standing by a propeller plane with Rabbi Simpson there. That's where a propeller... That plane went from Sydney, Sydney to, uh, to Melbourne. Yeah. But still Sydney. So, uh, we come to the airport. I remember, there's a huge terminal there. There was not too many

1:31:55 Speaker 1 flights. There was nobody there. We see far away from the back, looks like a Hasid Shavit. The language, "What's going on over here? Who's this?" We came closer. Rabbi Simpson is walking with a stick. He's walking around, 'cause he, he... So w- then we joined on, on that flight. In Sydney? No, no. This was in Hawaii. In Hawaii. Honolulu. Honolulu, we j- he joined us on that flight. You come to Australia, what happens in Australia? By, by the way, I, I, I learned in Australia for a few years when I was a kid. Oh, YG? No, no, no. YC. When I was at- Oh, w- when the Yeshiva College on Harlem Street. Yeah, when I was a boy, my, uh, my family went to Australia- Oh ... for a few months a year. Okay. But I used to go from Mishmar to YG, and I, I remember- Ah ... when you went, it was the same property? The- No, no. We were- It wasn't, right? No, no. When we came, we were an old broken down house on Kalimna Grove off Inkerman Street. That was in the way. So near the, near where the yeshiva is, Inkerman. Yeah, yeah. Not, it's, yeah, not too far to walk. A broken down house became this, uh, uh, f- rooms were unpainted. There was a few bochum just started there. Motel Gutnick was one of them. Motel Gutnick was one of the, was one of the- Motel Gutnick was one of the guys ... this is the first

1:33:00 Speaker 1 group of bochum. Yeah. Of, yeah, that started that. Uh, anybody who wanted Yeshiva, they had to go, go overseas. That's just right- Right ... in the other. So they wanted to make something there, and we're losing certain guys. They finished high school. Yeah. Uh, they would be there. Maybe they'll stay. Right. But they're not traveling Right. So there are a few bochum there, a few guys Shayewitz and M-M-Michi Belford. Shayewitz? Yeah. His, his son was in my class. Could be. Could be. The redhead guy. Okay. I don't know his father. Yeah, Michy, Michy Belford. A Por Chevre. Belford, I remember the name. Yeah. So, um, so we came there. It's a yeshiva. There's no Shas, there's no Sefarim. There's a Gemara Brachos, you know- ... they have-- M- they're put in the Shas. When you t-fold the page, it cracks, and that was all those Gemaras. Yeah, the ones that are very old. Very old. That's what we had. So we took out the Shas, a Brachos. There was no Gemara Shabbos. Let's see, they had an editor, and they're saying, "Absokhim." It wasn't a joke. And that's, that's, and that's- 'Cause they had no Sefarim or s-to take- They, they were just Shas. There was no Sefarim. There was nothing there. They just, uh, they got, uh, uh, haphazardly they put together. Ad hoc. They put- Who's in charge? Uh, Samson Rabansky. Samson Rabansky and the, and then, and Chaim Gutnick. And the, and, and the- They didn't have a Shas in their house.

1:34:14 Speaker 1 In the house? Yeah. They bring the Shas to the yeshiva. That's the Shas. It says. It was Shas. And Shalom Gutnick. That, the two Gutnick brothers and Samson Rabansky. That's what, that was, that's the message. We, we came like... That's how we came there. Okay. So, and the, and then even a place to sleep, just, uh, some guys slept in one room to sleep, so they rented upsa- what they call a flat. A flat to sleep on, on Latham Street, near Adas, uh, Adas Israel, Adas Yisroel. That's a nice walk. It's a nice walk, so we had to walk there every single day from the, the... Uh, and, and then we had to go to the mikveh. There was no mikveh in, in Lubavitch. Just like now on Seven-Seventy, there's no mikveh. It's like there's, there's no mikveh in Lubavitch. So, uh, now they built one over there on Latham Street. So we had to go to Adas. Right. And, uh, and then, uh... Oh, it's important to mention also, I wanna mention, I mentioned back then, you know, the Rebbe mentioned in Gan Eden Hatachton, the Rebbe said about, about, um, "Not mefarsim, ve'alabadim, ve'ara kelim" for that. That's one part. And then he spoke Rabbi Simpson to ask him a schedule. S-so from that, we picked up the Rebbe sending us a message. So we discussed amongst ourselves, you know, the Rebbe said about ve'alabadim to make an impression. So, uh, Seder Nigleh, we want this just like Seven-Seventy. Seven-Seventy starts, uh, Seder

1:35:32 Speaker 1 Nigleh starts eleven o'clock. Seven-thirty is Chutz until nine. Nine to eleven is davening and- Breakfast ... achron and breakfast. Eleven o'clock, businessmen already half the day is gone by then. But, uh, he's starting yeshiva eleven o'clock. Sure, he came all the way from America to start a yeshiva eleven o'clock. So we have to start at ten-thirty. It's still, uh, it's still the ten to ten-thirty. But then the killing of the, the Seder Chutz is, uh, some places getting cut out. So he said, "We have no choice. We'll start Seder Chutz at seven o'clock." Right. Seven o'clock. So then the hours, the hours add up. I came a few years later, then a number of years- That's why Australia starts at seven o'clock. Oh, no. Argentina also starts at seven o'clock. And a, a number of years later, I was, I was, I was there. I went for a chassan. It was a... So, uh, so I forgot, and I told him the story. So the guys in the- You're f- "You guys, you made that seven o'clock. It's a killer." But the bottom line is we, we... I'm just- By the way, I was in Argentina. We had the same thing. I liked it better. Could be. Could be. No, because you start, well, you start Nigleh at eleven o'clock, the day is already half gone. I know. Oh, that's, that was our cheshbon. Yeah. Oh, and, and we asked Rabbi Simpson, because the Rebbe said, uh, "Yes, so go ahead with Seforim." Go ahead

1:36:35 Speaker 1 with Seforim. So that's, so that, that became, that became the schedule. But we, um, so for myself, the other guys also, it's still ringing in my ears, "Hasmod ve'hashkid al limud hatefilah ve'nigleh ve'chutz." That, that can't be touched. That's your whole Seforim. So, so, so explain to me- Well, let, let, just, uh- Yeah ... s-so we never miss Seder. Uh-huh. You're talking, we were there twenty-five months. It was April, you're in the middle also. There was A- We... So twenty-five months, there was no summer vacation, nothing. Summer, we got o- not got off. There was camp Gan Yisroel there. It's over there. The summer is during Chanukah. The camp is only ten days. So ten days, uh, one was a head counselor, I was a learning director, whatever it was, and ten days, and after that, before that, just sit and learn the whole time. Taggun nach from seven o'clock in the morning till nine-thirty. Okay? And you had to go to the mikveh before. So it means you had to be up every day at six o'clock because the mikveh, the mikveh, uh- Was a nice walk ... it was a walk, so we had to... We stayed in that flat over there. It was... And then we had to g- driven. Then we moved to Meadow Street, eleven Meadow Street. I know where Meadow Street is. Yeah, sure. Okay. So still, uh, s-still, still, so guys with the mikveh, we had Z-Zechair Rabansky. Um, so he, he gave his car. So Motola Gutnick

1:37:48 Speaker 1 is the driver, and I had... And it was a car that only had one seat in the front, and the back was because he was, he was dealing with, uh, uh, wholesale food, whatever. So you had to pack into the back, okay? And if you missed that, you had to walk straight to L.A. It's a ganz aveida. About six o'clock, you had to be up, and seven o'clock on the button, we were there for Seder Chutz. To that extent, the Rebbe used to send us l- a letter that every Klal Yisroel that came out, the Rebbe, we used to get, uh, in one envelope, but each one separate name. Haavrech, that's Haavrech, Yosef, Shichia. He called you Haavrech? Yeah. Yeah, I think Haavrech, yeah. Haavrech. Why not a bocher? Basically. Haavrech is usually a married man. Yeah, I think he said Haav-- Yeah, said Haavrech. And then if you ask the question, it was... And there was many times, Saviat Kodesh, but each one separately. There's six letters in there, six letters in there, but one envelope. And the letter we used to pick up on Latham Street in Yeshiva College. That's where we used to learn. We weren't allowed to learn on Meadow Street because we didn't get a permit, only for sleeping, whatever. So we used to rush- How was Rabbi Groner and Rabbi Soransky mesuchach to you? Oh, we got, uh, all the, the, the grass covered. So we used to run, we used to run to the yeshiva, used to run

1:38:53 Speaker 1 to the yeshiva to get there on time. So there was laying our mail that came, came to that address. So we saw a letter from the Rebbe. So first of all, the guy who had it, he took it, and he gets the envelope too. He says, that's it, keeps the envelope. It's, it stands for the Rebbe. And it was, there was no, uh, it was, th-they wrote the Rebbe's name on it. Uh, the Rebbe's name, the return address was Rabbi Schneerson. It was written there clearly. And, uh, but we got it. We, uh, Seder started, we di- we wouldn't even open the envelope. You can zogn if it's a yeah meshuga, nisht meshuga. You have to sit and learn. Seder, after Seder was over, we opened it, and we read it. It was matter became mesh with all the zachron. We skipped lunch, whatever it may be. And the, uh, any kuntres that came out then, at least it got in a bigger envelope. So there was... Always we used to get all these things. You, you, so, but you're, you're telling me a story where the Rebbe's giving you this yechid is talking about Shkid and Hasmod and so on. And then you take this long flight, and then you end up... It, it, it is, you're, you're, you're p- you're flying on cloud nine probably. You're in himmel, you know. And then you land in Australia in a broken down house with a, with a, with a, with a, with a ripped, with

1:39:58 Speaker 1 a tzibunes, a set of Shas. Uh, does it, at some point, like, the, the, the, the, the clouds crash apart, and it's like- Nothing crashes. I was thinking if a guy goes to Siberia and, uh, we should have shlichas, and I got a tzidik Rebbe, but we, we wouldn't think of it. Eh, that's what it is. That's what it is. That's what it is. As a matter of fact, the first day we came, we came on a Wednesday. On a Wednesday 'cause we lost Tuesday. We came on a Wednesday, so they made, they made a fabricanten in, uh... Oh, first of all, Rabbi Groner, there's buses that went down. I got a ride with Rabbi Groner. He took a taxi with myself and Yisroel Mejaski. So Groner says, "You know, meanwhile, the flat that I expect before is not set up yet, so tonight, uh, tonight we're gonna put you up in the, in various houses. So you're gonna go to Rabbi Zalman Sobransky." I said, "Uh, Rabbi Yitzchok, you have a shul here. In the shul, you have, there's benches there?" He says, "Yeah, I'm sleeping on a bench. I didn't come here to sleep bei ba'alabatim." I said, "Ooh." Could you imagine? That's what I told him. Why? Well, that's, uh, ba'alabatim. I came as a bochur, say, from [770]. Don't put me a bei ba'alabatim here, ba'alabatim there. I can sleep in the shul on a bench . Uh, he didn't wanna hear of it. So then he said there's, uh,

1:41:13 Speaker 1 the famous Chassid, Shlomo Zal Lautiz, one that sings the niggunim. He had like a hot- called a guest house out, like in the, in the countryside. Uh, Chedva was called. Chedva Guest House. So he said, "We'll, we'll, we'll set it up." So that, yeah, that's not, uh, so we s- we, we, we, uh, went, went over there after, after the first day. Uh, af- all the done. We went to, we slept over there, and the Seder Chassidis, that means Thursday morning, started in his guest house, and he said, "That's chassid you'll never give up." That Thursday, it started by him and his, his building and his guest house. And we got there proper food, and he had good food there. All kinds of imported cheese from Eretz Yisrael, which we never saw later. But that's what, that, that was very good. So Wednesday, Chaim Gutnick, and Chaim Gutnick made a Kabbalas Panim in his house, in his, uh, dining room. Boom, that day when we came, the same time, mamish the same time, Rabbi Mendel Futerfas arrived from England. He came out of- Australia. He c- To Australia 'cause Zalman Sobransky's wife is his sister. Right, yeah. She came and saying- The meh- the meh- Yeah, exactly, and he came to collect money. Whatever, but he came. And, and as a matter of fact, on the, on the, on the headline of the newspaper, it said, uh, "With thanks to, uh..." Who's the prime minister? Wilson? I forgot who was the prime minister there in

1:42:29 Speaker 1 England, 'cause he was the one that was involved in getting him out of Russia. Mm-hmm. It was they. So, uh, so he-- And there's a big picture of him, a mandler, mamish a whole. And our picture was on, also on the front page. On the bottom, that's s- s- s- six rabbinical students came in. The bottom line is he came in. He, he, we arrived, and then we had the Kabbalas Panim in Chaim Gutnick's house. And the fabrach, I remember the fabrach, the . So he said, "doesn't say what the baal tells the isha to do. She has to know-" Who said this? Rabbi Mendel? Rabbi Mendel. Man, I remember, I remember the fabrakens. Goes back many years. Okay. "You have to know the . Not what the Rebbe tells you. Don't tell, Rebbe tells you, you have to do what you have to do. You have to constantly live around the Rebbe. the Rebbe. The Rebbe say, 'Do this, and not do that.' What does Rebbe, the Rebbe." He took a lot of mashke, and then, uh, he, he had to rest up. mashke and he traveled . See, so, uh, Chaim Gutnick said, "Okay, go lay down." See, he put him in his bedroom over there. He lay down on, on Rebetzin Gutnick's bed. There's a nice bedroom with carpets. And he, uh, on the floor. And on the bed, everything like, uh, s- s- s... I told Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, I said, I said, "Rabbi Chaim, like Rabbi Mendel, he

1:43:52 Speaker 1 have over here in your bedroom some ." I gave him a brocha. He was in his- His bedroom ... in his actual bedroom or Chaim- His bedroom, his bedroom. His bed- Chaim told Mendel to sleep in his bed? I- in his wife's bed. No way. Yeah, and, uh, he, he let it out on the quilt and on the carpet. Because we, uh, and the children. Yeah. I, I remember Rabbi Chaim. I was- So that, and then, and then, and then we just fabrach the to the Mendel a bit and, uh. So basically, I'll just tell you, our Seder was 7 o'clock in the morning till 9:30 at night. No breaks, no nothing, no nothing. The, the, the six of you were in, in [770], you were also such mashpiyim? We weren't mashpiyim. We kept Seder. In [770]? Yeah, we kept Seder. So it wasn't new for you to keep Seder? No, not to that extent, you know, like, wow. It was like no breaks, no nothing, no, no summer, no winter. See, it, uh, this was way beyond. 'Cause every second, hey, the Rebbe, the Rebbe says, "Isha," you have to keep Seder. Not only that, it was, um, yeah, Rab- Rabbi Pliskin, he was a friend of Mendel Futerfas. I don't know if you heard of him, Rabbi Pliskin. Sure, I've heard of him, yeah. So he was in Australia, and then he left. When we were there, so he left after a month or two or three later. He had, uh,

1:45:09 Speaker 1 his kids in, in, in Crown Heights. So he left, and he used to have a shiur there almost every, once a week at night, chass, 8:30 at night, whatever. So Rabbi Zalman Sobransky, I think, wrote in to the Rebbe that since he left, there's a shiur with baalabatim, so we'll take one of the bochurim or two of the bochurim to tell, to, to give the shiur. So the Rebbe wrote back to him. He said, "" He can take some of the Avirate Loshen and the other bochurim that are there. "" That was, I remember the words correctly. "" Could you imagine? It's even a q- question. How do you even answer such a question? So we, we, we read that. Whoa, that was... We're, we're not going to play ball. We're going to learn Torah, and the Rebbe spoke about learning Torah. But Alpus wanted to give a shiur To teach Torah. Teach Torah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. But, but that, even that was out of the question. That's what I'm saying. It wasn't to go far bring because I feel like to learn Torah, Even that was out of the question. The Rebbe asked even that, "Why, why not these bochurim? The other bochurim are just beginners, some of them. They don't even know People talk about, people talk about your group, the Australians do. How did you see the Australian boys? V- I'll give you something. It... Don-- We had Don Wolf on the, on the podcast, and he

1:52:27 Speaker 1 was talking about, he was talking about a few years after you, I think, when Laser Taitlin was there. Was it the next group or the third group? Next group, something, yeah. And how, uh, they were fighting- They're still brothers ... they were fight, they were fighting with the-- they were arguing with Zalman Serebransky and Rabbi Groner about, about the whole of, about the whole of stam milk that was being served in the Yeshivah College, right? You're coming from Crown Heights from a world like that, and you come to Australia, and you see a very different kind of community. What did you see? What did you see in this c- in this- So I'll tell you, up to six bochurim, we didn't divide it up, but somehow it became where Shlomo Majeski was taking w- got involved with the elementary kids. Elementary kids. This famous, uh, Ta-Taai Rechasidim, Melechi- Right ... was, uh, uh, uh, the Melechi that you have now, the, the zingit. Right. It's, it's his, uh- His father ... his father and, and his brothers there. The whole bunch of... So he was involved with that. They weren't, th-they weren't mishpochas, Yiddishe mishpochas, but they weren't completely going in that, that direction of what... Like I said before in Bedford-Indy, the Yeshivah College was a good school, uh, all those after, but they were not. They went Lubavitch. Lubavitch was very small. They were als- altogether. And they gave whatever they gave, and then, and then, and then the Mudik Hall was the

1:53:36 Speaker 1 most important thing there. Right. They had the metrics and what they used to print in the papers. They had the me- uh, Don't ask them about universities. Mount Hashmai not got university. So that was the icher. So he got involved with that. I ended up taking, uh, involved with a group tech, uh, is, uh, Yosl Gutnick was in that group. Uh, and also Meshum was a little bit, a little bit, a little bit younger. I'm involved with, with them also. There's, uh, Reuben Blecher. I'm not sure I don't know all this mishpochas. Sure, sure, sure. Taai Rechever, the Feiglin- I know their kids ... Feiglin, Feiglin, Mottel Feiglin, Ishak Feiglin. Very good guys. And to them, they, they-- 'cause I told you we couldn't learn on Meadow Street, so we had to go every single day to the Yeshivah, Yeshivah College. So we e- we learned to-- we learned over there next to the lunchroom is another room. That became our place where we, we, we learned. And the boys were mamish, uh, in the same courtyard over there. So they had recess fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, a kid wants a rest, he wants... To them, the biggest chuz was that they can come into a world learning and we used to learn with them a bit of shas. That was, uh, mamish learn, mamish in the Yeshivah. That was the biggest chuz we had. And Shabbes, Shabbes, Shabbes we had, uh, uh, t- more time because to say there was... afternoon say there wasn't,

1:54:44 Speaker 1 uh, was not a hundred percent. We used to learn Chassidus in the morning, but then in the longer days, we had a shir in the, uh, l- learn in the afternoon also. So, um, like I learned, I had a shir. I gave-- We learned Sefer HaChinuch, Sefer HaChinuch, and we learned some Mishnah Nuch and some other things. And, uh, there was another boy that came in and, uh, I remember, with blonde hair, about fifteen, sixteen years old. Not from the... Didn't learn in Lubavitch and didn't learn in the Yeshivah. Someone went to public school. And he's also, he's sitting, he's sitting over there with, with, with all the zachrim. And after a year or two later, he started going to Yeshivah, and today, Baruch Hashem, is, uh, his kids are shluchim with all the, all the good zachrim. But did you, did you see it at the time? We, we saw, we saw that every neshamah, that, that we knew. We came with the Rebbe. We didn't see. But, but these guys were mamish, the guys in Yeshivah were mamish thirsty, Parshah thirsty. See, that you saw. That we saw right away. Mamish, mamish, uh, thirsty, mamish. Hmm. So it wasn't like, uh, you don't understand what you're doing here. There's a guy, Kafka. He's in, he's a shliach now on the, on the, on the West Coast. Seattle. He should- Right. Seattle, I think. Seattle, yeah. Abraham Kafka, Ben Yochid. His father was a, I think, uh, a farmer or something else. Baruch Hashem,

1:55:59 Speaker 1 he was... And he was one of the boys that learned tech in the, in the, in the Yeshivah Gedolah. The mob- Uh-huh ... when we came, he was one of the guys. So that's the Baruch... And then Ben Yochid, and he got married, and he's, he m- he m- he moved, he moved to, uh, shlichus with all the zachrim. This a mamish, uh, is a mamish, uh- So you realized what you're doing there. We realized if the Rebbe-- It was hard, I have to tell you. We didn't see right away. Today, it's the whole Yisroel. Then also was, I mean, there was a beautiful Yeshivah, the elementary and the high school- Right ... that Binyan, which, uh- Right ... which, uh, Bedford and Lubavitch didn't have it in Crown Heights even. And a girls school, Tziltum Shfaris, also they didn't have it those years in Crown Heights. They had nothing. Okay? This is a-- That, that, the infrastructure was balding. The hardest thing was the distance, how far it is away with all the zachrim. I was gonna ask you, how did you keep in touch with seven seventy in those years? No, uh, uh, it was, it was like, it was like, you know, like when they send a spaceship to the other side of the moon, Ad Amazer, they can't contact it because it's, it's on the other side of the moon. That's what we felt like. To know what went on by fabrengen, we knew nothing. We, we used to get Hanochis.

1:56:57 Speaker 1 Laser Taitlebaum was one of the guys that s- sent it to us. Abraham Galitsky made the Hanochis. If you got it seven or eight days later, it was wow, we got it on time. Okay? And if fabrengen, there's no hookups then. Hookahs started off Shalamit. So, uh, we used to get a reel-to-reel. It costed maybe thirty dollars just to send it on by airmail. We used to get also a week later, and then even then, we didn't have enough time to even to listen to it. To listen to fabrengen the, uh, we... Because after, say, the nine thirty, we, we st- stopped on learning, but guys wanted to learn this, wanna learn that. Right. By the time I went to sleep, and you had to get up at six o'clock, it was, it was tough. Very, very tough. That was the toughest thing. With the parents, I was there, I was there for over two years, yeah. Never spoke home. It's like today, which, uh, two hundred dollars a call in today's money. Right. It was like crazy. It's tw- twenty, thirty dollars a phone call. So you wrote letters home? Letters. We wrote letters. We used to- But you didn't speak to-- You didn't s- you didn't hear your fa- No, no, no, nothing ... you didn't hear your parents' voice for two years. Nothing, nothing. One time, my Zayde came in from Russia. It was, uh, Tosh HaChafetz around Hanukkah time. So they, they called me that should... Three minutes and, uh, yeah,

1:58:02 Speaker 1 this, I spoke to my parents, I spoke to my Zayde, which I never met. I, I met him later on, on the way out of, uh, Australia. Went through Australia tech and the Rebbe gave me- Which, which Zayde is this? His name is Peretz Chaim. Your mother's father. Mother's father, yeah. He's a son of Meir Simcha Chaim. Wow. He's named after the first, uh, Peretz. So, um- So we never spoke. They say we never spoke. Everything was by mail, everything else. But Baruch Hashem- So what was it like to get back-- What was it like to get back to Crown Heights? So let's, let's wrap it up with- We got back to Crown- Let's wrap it up with this new service. Okay. The Baruch Hashem. So in Crown Heights, we, we came back, you know. First, I went to Eretz Israel, I got permission, but we all came back at Alef Nissan. It was on a Sunday, Alef, it basically before Pesach. And then, uh, the Rebbe used to give out matzah Erev Pesach. So, uh- And the Nuchuvetz had already left? The Nuchuvetz had left, yeah. I didn't meet him 'cause I left a few days earlier. But you basically overlapped the last day. Overlapped a few days, a few days. The other guys met him. I didn't meet him because I thought I had to leave to Eretz Israel. Oh, right. Right. So I left a few days... 'Cause he had to ask the Rebbe. The Rebbe was our principal. He was asked,

1:59:01 Speaker 1 nobody- Everything was request from the Rebbe. Sure. You couldn't stam dreimei achshav gone, um Was all, all the Rebbe. So the bottom line is that, that, um, we c- we lined up like everybody else, hundreds of people waiting to get matzah from the Rebbe. So, um- What did it feel like to be in seven 70 again? Well, well, uh, so- No, but before you get to the Rebbe. Well, well, one que- one question at a time. We weren't in 770 yet. This was just maamush. We just arrived, and then 770 was... So- No, I'm talking about the building in 770. Building, yeah. We didn't forget the building for sheysach. We were waiting for that building the whole time. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. So, so lining up for the matzah, and the, it happened, Avram Oltean, he was, uh, he reached the Rebbe, the first one. So the Rebbe asked, "Wo zein di andere? Where's the other shluchim?" He says he doesn't know. It's the... So what was it? "Shluchim of Australia, Australia." So look, you heard it down like the whole line, the, the... I was on line. Other guys, "Quick, quick." So we all came, came together. None of-- Some of-- Almost everybody was there, and the Rebbe gave each one of us a whole matzah. That's not a whole matzah. A piece, two pieces. Rebbe said break off two pieces. Nobody got a whole matzah. It was maamush Hoshea and Yidden- Right ... Shmuel, uh, Bernard Gaudetsky, Gershon Jacobs and the

2:00:11 Speaker 1 rest of- Right. Very few people got a whole matzah. And there was matzahs baked that day. It wouldn't even be enough if it was matzah. There's not so much matzah. They must give two pieces, two pieces, a whole matzah. And by the way, when we're in Australia, the, the, the-- A few weeks after we came, a big box arrived, and there were several matzahs in there. Six- Six, six for each one. Six and one, and one came broken, so we used that for the second Seder. And there's a letter from the Rebbe, had a kov, a gantze, whole thing that, that we got. And then, and then, uh, uh, uh, at night is the Seder. At night is the Seder. The Rebbe said anything to you when he gave you these matzahs? I don't remember... I don't remember. Something similar. I can't... I remember there's something sp- I don't think he mentioned about the shlichas. I don't think he said. But he did ask specifically. The night was a Seder, so we-- Like I told you before, we, we now used to run to the Seder to, to, uh, to see, see the Rebbe by the Seder. So, uh, when it came to afikoman, so the Rebbe turned around. I was a little bit on the side. Leibil, Leibil Kaplan was closer behind the Rebbe. The Rebbe turned to him. So the Rebbe said, uh, "Shen gesnen afikoman? Yeid afikoman?" So he said, "Yeah." He can't lie to the Rebbe in his face. He said,

2:01:23 Speaker 1 "Yeah." "Finis." That's it. The Rebbe didn't, uh, didn't, didn't, uh, say anything else. So the next day, we decided, you know, the Rebbe asked, "I don't know what it's all about." For the second night, afikoman later after So we took along the afikoman in the pocket, the pocket. It, uh, we took it along, and, uh, we came 770. Mine fell Two other cases, you know, not, not, uh, no, no problem. So again, the same thing happened again. We're standing in the same place, and the Rebbe asked him, "You gesnen afikoman?" He said, "No. No." So the Rebbe took from his afikoman between... The Rebbe used to keep it between two pillows, like, the Rebbe sat over here, let's say. There's a chair standing this way with two pillows, and the afikoman was between the two pillows. He took it out, and he broke off a piece from that, and he took more matzah on the table. There's always matzah, extra matzah there. And he gave each one of us, each one of us, there's five today. One was, was, was there. I think Avram Oltean was there. Each one, he gave us from his afikoman, gave afikoman, and the Rebbe said, "We sh- we should sit down by the table." There's no room by the table, so they bring chairs. So they, they made like an extension. Rebbe said not to push, not to push them. They should sit, sit by the table. And, uh, and, and we had, and we had the afikoman. The

2:02:38 Speaker 1 afikoman, then they gave us the, the, the, the... You have to bench. We didn't bench. We took it. All right. All right. We didn't bench. We took along, and, and we got the cases, and then So you sat down for the cases also? Y- yeah, we-- You had to sit. The Rebbe also sit. You couldn't stand up. That- For the whole Seder or just for the- Yeah, you sit. You can't fall- You sat from afikoman to the end of the Seder? Yeah, yeah. Just follow... Maybe you push down, maybe you stood up. There's a lot of people there. So this is, this the only time the Bochurim sat ne-next to the Rebbe probably. Yeah. Was, was maamush beside the other- No, but with the Rebbe in the room. Yeah, uh, further down. On the same line. Yeah, but in the Rebbe's room to- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... it's the only time. Yeah. Huh. Further down. And the next-- It was all Nice about getting in also because they broke the table the night before, so they didn't let anybody in to the second Seder. Let anybody in. Only the Chutz and the Soldi Bochurim they let in. And I've come to the door. There's a guy standing there. He says, "Only Soldi, not Soldi. They can't get in." So I told one of Soldi Bochurim, I told him, "If you ask the Shach, to ask the Rebbe if the Bochurim from Australia can come in." So the Shach, he says, "What's the shailah?" And it

2:03:35 Speaker 1 wasn't-- But there wasn't even a Sofek. So the Shach asked the Rebbe. He asked the Rebbe. The Rebbe answered, uh, "Sure." So right away, they called us. They let us in. And that, and then happened the hemseh what I told you then- Wow ... when we got in over there. And the next day, by the day, the second day by the day, the Suda by the day. So, so, so, uh, the Shach asked the Rebbe, "What's this thing with, uh, giving afikoman to Bochurim?" Uh, so the Rebbe answered, it says, the Rebbe writes, "Yechalkim livnei Bais." Those are my They worked very hard. That's, that's what he told him. Wow. What a story. And that's that. Did you feel, did you feel, when you got back, did you feel just happy? Did you already miss what you, the years in Australia? Was it you put it back behind you and it's done. We're back- No, no, no, no. The Rebbe said we should have a Kesher. We kept the contact. But I'm saying in your mind. Was it- No, no. Chassidim, we have a Kesher. We have Kesher. This- Were you... My question is, were you relieved to be back, or was it more complicated than that? Why the question relieved? We, we... Listen, we had a Shlichas, and, uh, and the Rebbe, we-- Before we left, the Rebbe said about the alt- the Mitler Rebbe, when he sent Shluchim to Eretz Yisrael, he said, the Rebbe even said there's Ayin of seeing, uh, "Way

2:04:49 Speaker 1 Yoneach Oreis Asmalacha." And the Rebbe says on Maimon, "You have to look at, see the Rebbe, and they'll be missing all that." The Rebbe said about himself. The Mitler Rebbe said that? The Rebbe said that the Mitler Rebbe said that? Yeah, but, but he was talking about himself. He's sending- Right ... sending away. They're gonna- Right. So first of all, you're coming back in two years. And second of all, the Rebbe said, "We're gonna send you, uh, send you, uh, memoriam." He said, "Send Tachsik." He sends all those things. The Rebbe about himself, "Way Yoneach Oreis Asmalacha" was made up by the Rebbe saying that Sicha. Uh, so what, what, what, what, what brought you into Chinuch in Montreal? Okay, so I was married, I was two years in Kollel, and then came up a number of things came up, and, uh, shlichus was obviously something that I wanted to do, without question. And, uh, there's various things that came up, this and that. It wasn't like shlichus like I mentioned before, it wasn't the scope that it has today. This is one of the things that came up, and the Rebbe sent us, and Baruch Hashem, we're here over fifty years. And, uh, I, I wanna mention also, when-- the school at that time was, uh, about a hundred and seventy-five kids altogether. Today, Baruch Hashem, we have about five hundred k-k-k-kinder and bener. And, uh, one thing that I brought in is that, um, the talmidim should go to the Rebbe. At that

2:06:01 Speaker 1 time, it wasn't so common even for the mishpachas to go to the Rebbe, take along kids. It wasn't in Crown Heights. It was a ganz in a city before they even built the, the major highway there, the eighty-seven. It wasn't built even yet. They had to go with, uh, old roads; it took a lot longer, mechula. It wasn't so common that, uh, younger kids went with the Rebbe. Some girls, they, they never even saw the Rebbe. Lubavitcher girls. So we have to-- so we-- they used to have a bus going, uh, that cost, like, thirty-five dollars round trip in those days. I said, uh, the guy told me, uh, Abramowitz, uh, Lenny Abramowitz, he was in charge of the buses. So if you get more than, uh, four or five kids, I'll charge you thirty-three dollars out of thirty-five. Good. So I got five girls. The whole high school then, ze chaukyl, had, uh, maybe thirty girls. So I, I convinced them to go, and it-- mechula, mechula. So l'peel, we went. It was a group. And then, uh, they had a good time. They enjoyed it. So the next year, word got around. They wanted more. So, uh, and not only that, I, I had a program. I had a program of Amalek. Then I spoke to the Yeshivot in New York. "If we're already coming, why don't we merge together? You have Yeshivot, and this is Yeshivot. Let's make it, uh, together. Make it ." Said, "Good. It's a good idea." So then

2:07:04 Speaker 1 we started a program. After that, started for many, many years. Started like a-- they called it a, a, like a, a kindus of all the Lubavitch girl schools all over the world. But that was the nucleus. That's how it started. And, uh, after, after a while, I already had, I already had a, I had a bus, a full bus that went. Meshugas man, a few years later, we had two buses, and, uh, we had, um, amish a ganz a, a ganz a bus. And, um, so I remember one year, the, the, the girls said they see the Rebbe from the vibe shul. It's-- you can't even see anything in the back. They wanna see the Rebbe, mamish, up front. Said, "There's only one way. The Rebbe comes seven in the morning. We know the time. So we'll all line up on one side on, on the sidewalk. When the Rebbe comes in, you'll see the Rebbe." Good. So, uh, that's kakhabe. The Rebbe comes out of the car, and they wrote unto the Rebbe the whole crew is coming, mechula. The Rebbe knew about it. He gave me berachos. He was very encouraging. It wasn't a common thing in those days, coming to the Rebbe with a group. It was just a דבר חדש. So, uh, the Rebbe comes out of the car, and he sees them. He went like this to the girls, went like this. Good. And the girls started dispersing. A minute later, Libel Gran is running out of seven seventy, coming

2:08:14 Speaker 1 to me. He says, "The Rebbe wants the girls to go into be-- into seven seventy." I, I said, "What? Girls never went into seven seventy. Seven seventy was the zal, was bochurim. Girls-- nobody went in. The only time was by yechidas, so they went straight into the waiting room, in and out, and finished. Now girls should go in seven seventy? Unheard of." I said, "Labels, this is, uh... What's it for?" He said, "Chveshes, the Rebbe gezogt." I said, "Okay." I said, "Girl, quick, quick, quick. We're going seven seventy." We come in over there where the Rebbe used to give out dollars before dollar days. And the Rebbe came out of his room with a bag, and he gave every single girl, he gave a coin. It was mamish a דבר חדש. The Rebbe mamish was so happy that they came. A few years later, a few years later, it was תשמ"ח. So we decided we're gonna make something, uh... Yeshivot were about to bring in a whole klitzah, um, a lot of people, hundreds of people wanna bring in. So, uh, the Yeshivot get two-- three buses, and we took the high school, some class elementary school, the yeshiva, I think a bus or two. So for Hebra-- for juniors, the public school kids, and some, um, from sh-various shuls, baalabatim. We got ten buses together. It was eight tables תשמ"ח. Eight tables. And we, and we changed the time. We used to come for yechiat, but yechiat, this is a-- it came out pung

2:09:25 Speaker 1 with the chagis. So the chagis people have off, so they can come, and the public school kids have off. So we came in for then ten bus, and we wrote into the Rebbe. And the Rebbe, when the Rebbe came, uh, Friday morning, the Rebbe got out of the car. He-- like he was getting out of the car to go seven seventy, and he turns around. We lined up the buses from Kingston to Brooklyn on the Parkway. Not on the, uh, uh, service road, on the Parkway. And the Rebbe looks as he turned around, he looks the whole block, ten buses. Mamish took up a whole block. But if I bring in, the Rebbe said that-- spoke about it, and he said, "Everybody should say l'chaim." And he told the girls in the, in the Bible school to say l'chaim. There was a, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of kiruv. The one thing that I wanna mention, which is, is very interesting, and, um, תשנ"א, תשנ"א, the Rebbe spoke a lot about, uh, the Sefer Hashluchim. The year before also, the Rebbe said make a Sefer Hashluchim of the guys, the shluchim who were by the kindus of תש"נ, of תש"נ. תש"נ, only the, only the guys who attended the kindus. In alef, the Rebbe spoke he wants a Sefer of all the shluchim. So I decided I'll make an album. I'll make an albums. We, we take pictures of school, you know, of every class. We take pictures. So, uh, I took,

2:10:34 Speaker 1 you know, those cheap albums. You know, you pick up the plastic, you slip it in. I put an alb-- a picture here. Every, every class from the babies mamish. Uh, we, we, we have eighteen months to eighteen years. We have a mamish granddaughter all the way through. Now we started even, I told you, from birth if you-- they can come straight. So, so, uh, a, a picture here, and on the left side, I typed up on a typewriter, old-fashioned typewriter. Most people don't know what it is even. So the g-- every girl's name and the mother's name in the order that they appear based on On standing, sitting, the teacher's name. If it g- wasn't, uh, wasn't in the picture, I put in her name. Any- everybody was there. And I gave it an album to the Rebbe. It was Yit- uh, Yitvat Havshin Onalev, was, I think it was Yud Bet Shvat was, uh, was, was, uh, was on a Sunday then. So I give it, and we came late, Gan Zamaisa, bus broke down. We, we just, we just made it. We came with Mamish the end of dollars. And, uh, and, and all the girls-- So I went first, and I give the Rebbe the album. The Rebbe looks at it. I would just open up to the front page. It says, we, uh, when we then called it specifically Campus Chimushke, because see outside, it was right after the, after the Rebbeson passed away, so we added Campus Chimushke. So I

2:11:42 Speaker 1 show that to the Rebbe. The Rebbe looks at it. The Rebbe asked me, "Does it for me?" Says, "After if machen geld." Said, "For me, or you need this to make money?" You know how the schnorers come around. You know, they come around, they show you what they're, what they're collecting for. I was, I was caught off guard completely. If they're present, they have no idea what it means. So he says, "The nisht have machen geld, it's for the Rebbe." It's a video, I have a video of it. So the Rebbe said, "So you should have machen geld." I s- Then he asked me again, "You should have machen geld, Rebbe." So I said, "It's for the Rebbe." So the Rebbe interjects, "Of geld machen." Like that. "Of geld machen." Like half a question. I says, "I need the geld." I says, "It's for the Rebbe." Asked three times, it went back and forth. I said, "Ari, I don't know what, what's going on over there." Okay? No, so, so I, when I said, "It's for the Rebbe," so the Rebbe said, "No, aber ze bit is, aber ze bit to zaim by mir." And the Rebbe gave me a, a, a dollar. He said, "For the students." I started walking away, finished, Rebbe. Then Mamish Mamish just, uh, calls me back, and the Rebbe said, "But there are ze machen geld durch dem was to zaim by mir." You know, make money regardless, or you make money through it being by me, and he

2:12:55 Speaker 1 gave me an extra dollar. I never heard such a thing in my life. Huh. Giving an album to the Rebbe, the Rebbe himself said it. Maybe the Rebbe wanted that I should say it, uh, it's for me to machen geld. I should, I should have said, you know, "As zaim by Rebbe, a zaim geld." That, that much chutzpah I don't have. Shays says, "Bredkeit." I'd rather have bredkeit. But, but that's what the Rebbe asked me. Three times. Three times he asked me, and three times I had to answer, "So you nisht have geld, it's for the Rebbe." It was able to zaim by mir. I was like, "There ze machen geld durch dem was to zaim by mir." So this is something- Baruch Hashem, and together we built, we built another floor. Where we're sitting right now is, is, is also a hemshech of that. That was built later. And we still need money. So geld, geld, uh- I have- Geld, uh, geld, uh, from home. Okay, but Baruch Hashem, the Rebbe-- And also every year, every year we got, we got a letter from the Rebbe for the graduation. They wrote Montreal and have a signature. Some schools got copies of what the Rebbe sent to us, okay? And we had a dinner those years, a special letter addressed to the dinner with a- But the, the Rebbe- A lot of our print Likud Hasidism ... the Rebbe was very much king in Montreal. It's no secret Very, very much. And by the way,

2:13:58 Speaker 1 speaking of that, it's in the few meizers in the entire world that has tachas Nasi's of the Rebbe. A lot of people don't know. The Rebbe- To the end ... tachas Nasi is not. Achtofshin lamed gimel, lamed daled. The Rebbe said, "You do mafusim." That he's not accepting anything. That's what I'm saying, so it stayed all the way. T- ta- Yeah. Ne- never, he never took, but he didn't accept any new ones. Right So now- nowadays, nowadays that have tachas Nasi of the Rebbe, I don't know the exact number. It's definitely a very, very small number. And we, Baruch Hashem, have tachas Nasis of the Rebbe, et cetera, et cetera. And one place had, they put it on, the Rebbe said to take it off the stationary. It's one of the sluch- They didn't, uh, they didn't, uh, didn't realize. How about that? Yes. Baruch Hashem, we have tachas Nasi's, we have the Rebbe's broches, and we have it now every single day. We feel, we feel the Rebbe, we feel the Rebbe here. Beautiful. No, the same Basrocha Rabim of Logo, okay? Rabbi Minkowitz, thank you very much for your time. Yeah. Yeah, Amen ... with a lot of Hatzlacha- Amen ... continued growth, and thank you again. I know. We should see the Rebbe de olam ha-ta take away that Mamish, take us out of Golis. And we will be sifki, I tell the girls, we already have a lot in Yerushalayim. The Rebbe said the building's moving over with the Talmidas, so

2:15:01 Speaker 1 it's all done. All right, beautiful. We call it Mamish Mamish now. Amen. Amen. Amen. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bachar and is used with their permission.