248. The Jewish Soldiers In The Czar’s Army Who Died Al Kiddush Hashem

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinderlekh. I want to share with you a story with the Tzemach Tzedek. As you know, in the time of Tzemach Tzedek, there was a terrible gezirah against Jews with the Tsar Nikolai, yimach sh'mo, terrible rosha. Made a special gezirah that started in the time of the Mitteler Rebbe still, before the Tzemach Tzedek was Rebbe. The end of the years of the Tzemach Tzedek, Mitteler Rebbe, the Tsar made a gezirah that every Jewish family has to give up one of their children, uh, usually from the age twelve. And, um, they have to be taken to the army for thirty some years, over thirty years they have to serve in the army. They'd be set free at the age of forty-three. And at first they told the families, the Jewish families that you can-- we will let the kids be Jewish and do their mitzvahs, and we'll provide them with kosher food. But then it quickly changed, and the Tsar told the, the so-- the officers to force these children to convert to the Christian religion and to make them eat treif and, and make sure they don't keep their mitzvahs. And the Mitteler Rebbe before his hisdalkus, when it started with his gezirah, said, "I knew about it six months ago before anybody else knew that this gezirah is gonna happen, 'cause I visited my father's, the Alter Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe's, uh, tziyun, the Ohel of the Alter Rebbe. And there when I was at the Ohel, I saw that there was a

02:08 gezirah in Shamayim for young Jews. Young Jews will be taken to the army." Then he said, a little while later, there was a wedding, my daughter got married, the Mitteler Rebbe's daughter was getting married. And he says, "A lot of young people and old people came to the wedding, and it was a very big simcha." He says, "I said a lot of Chassidus, my Morim during the mar-- the wedding and the Sheva Berachos, and it was a very big simcha, and I thought that the gezirah is over. 'Cause from the simcha, I felt the simcha destroyed the gezirah in, in Shamayim. Then I saw my father." He didn't say it was in a dream. "I saw him alive, and my father told me, 'Why are you rejoicing with the young people? Don't you know there's still a gezirah? The gezirah is very serious.'" The Mitteler Rebbe passed away, was hisdalk very shortly after that, um, and the Tzemach Tzedek took over. And Tzemach Tzedek was very involved in saving many of these children by bribing the guards who would take these children, and giving them money so they would release the child, and then they would hide the children. It was a very dangerous mission. One of the things that Tzemach Tzedek was involved, he made some of his Hasidim work very hard to save those children, many of the children, is that the Tsar made a rule that every community, the Yidden of the community, the, the h-- the heads of the community, they

03:50 have to get the children from the families and send them over to the army. So let's say a certain town, they said, "Okay, you have to give us a certain number of children, and if y-you have to give us those number." Say fifty from this town, or two hundred from this town. Depending how much the Tsar or the government of Russia thought that this community has families, how many Jewish families do they have? And based on the number of families, they would say, "You have to give us a certain amount of kids." So the heads of the Jewish community, they were not Rabbanim, they were like, uh, people that were just running the, the community. And they would go and, and grab kids because the Jewish families didn't wanna let the kids be taken away. They would hide the kids. So the, the, the communities had no choice. They said, "Listen, we, we need to provide the, the government with a certain amount of Jewish children to be soldiers for the next thirty years, so we're gonna have to grab the kids." So they would go and hire people, and make them go and grab certain kids off the street. If a child was walking the street, they would grab him, and they would even take younger than twelve, even though the rule was only from twelve, they would grab... Since they wanted to make sure they have enough kids, 'cause they had to prod-- provide a certain amount of kids, so they would grab

05:05 kids that are even younger than twelve, and then send them to the army. So the Tzemach Tzedek had a whole group of Hasidim that would go and take the kids away from, from those Jews that grabbed the kids. The grabbers were called the chapers in Yiddish. Grabbers. Cha-chapers in Yiddish means grabbers. And they would then, uh, and sometimes they would, they would really, really punish those chapers in a terrible way because they were endangering the lives of those Jewish kids. Because those Jewish kids, if they go to the army and they refuse to eat treif, and they refuse to be mechallel Shabbes, then they would beat them, and they would be in ve-very big danger. Many of them grew up to be, um... They, they, they lived the entire time in the army without ever leaving Yiddishkeit behind. They would not eat treif with mesirat nefesh mamash. Even though they were not learned because they were taken away young, they didn't have time to learn, because by the time they, they, they were getting twelve years old, they were taken away already, so they couldn't learn much Torah. But when they came out of the army at the age of forty-three, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, they would join the Jewish community, and they were very, very, very ignorant. They didn't know much, but they had a great excitement of being Jewish and doing mitzvahs as much as they could. The Tzemach Tzedek in the year Tov Reish Gimel was told by-- invited by the government, the

06:44 tsar, to come to Peterburg. Not only he was invited, but many other Rabbanim were invited, Rabbanim from the Misnagdishe communities. Um, there was mainly the, the Tzemach Tzedek and the Rebbe Yitzchak of Volozhin. There were maybe a few other Rabbanim. The reason they invited him to Peterburg was because the Maskilim. The Maskilim are Jews that were not following Torah mitzvahs, and they wanted to change all the schools and the chadorim and the yeshivas, that they should teach, uh, you know, science and, and like the goyishe schools. They shouldn't learn so much Torah. And, and the tsar wanted the Rabbanim to agree to it and sign, and all the Jewish families will, will listen to them. But of course, the Tzemach Tzedek stood up against them. He was arrested twenty-two times. He was in Peterburg for quite a while, and they arrested him twenty-two times because he said officially, "I am not listening to the government. This is a terrible thing. Jews are supposed to educate their children with the holy Torah, and we're not going to change." While he was in Peterburg, out-- near Peterburg, outside the city, there was an army base. The army was in a place called Kronstadt. Kr-Kronstadt. And in that army base, there were many soldiers that were Jewish who were Kantnisten. They were taken away when they were very little from their parents, but now they were grown-ups, and they still knew they were Jewish, and they wanted very much that the Tzemach Tzedek should come and speak to

08:33 them, give them strength. So they asked their general, and the general agreed and said, "Yes, you can invite the rabbi." And the Tzemach Tzedek came to the army base and met many, many Jewish soldiers. They all came together, and they told a ma'amar to them. The ma'amar started with the words, "Vachisika av pesha'echa." Hashem says, "I will erase all your sins." Of course, he-- Tzemach Tzedek wanted to tell the soldiers that even though they have no choice, they gotta do many averot because they're forced to do it, and they have no choice, but Hashem forgives them because they're doing it because they're forced, not because they wanna do it. And they really feel very broken inside that they had to do these averot, so Hashem forgives them. And he spoke about the meaning of teshuva and how teshuva is very powerful. It can cause Hashem to erase all the averot when you do teshuva. Um, the, the soldiers felt very, very strengthened and inspired by the, by the Tzemach Tzedek. Um, before the Tzemach Tzedek left Peterburg to go back to Lubavitch, the... In the end, the Tzemach Tzedek succeeded at, um, call it making the government agree that Jews don't have to change their education. They can continue to teach Torah the way they always used to teach to the Jewish children all over, in all the schools, in the chadorim. Before he left Peterburg to go back to Lubavitch, the soldiers from Kronstadt, the base, the army base, came to visit him to

10:14 thank him for all the strength he gave them. Then he said to them before he left, "I want you to know that a Jew has to be ready to go al mesirat nefesh. He has to be willing to give up his life not to go over, chas v'Shalom, to another religion." Then he said, "Even if the tsar himself comes and asks you to convert to another religion, you're not supposed to listen to him. And if he kills you, you should let yourself be killed because avodah zarah is the worst averah. A Jew is not supposed to do averah, averah than avodah zarah, even if, chas v'Shalom, it puts him in danger." And the-- this was the soldiers remembered that. Five years later, the tsar himself came to visit the army base of Kronstadt. Kronstadt was a army base that was right next to the water. The soldiers there were all sailors and marines. They were, you know, uh, on the boat. They would, uh, you know, the, the tsar had a part of his army were, were a fleet of boats that would fight wars against enemies. So they were all soldiers that would go, right-- They would-- They were like sailors, and they would go in, in the sea and fight battles. So when the tsar came, of course, there was a big excitement in the army base. Everybody wanted to impress. They wanted to impress the tsar. So they selected some of the most s-- talented soldiers that knew how to do some

12:05 major acrobatic tricks in front of the tsar to impress the tsar. And there were a group of Jewish soldiers that were the best soldiers, the most, um, acrobatic and the most talented soldiers, and they were chosen to do some major, major amazing tricks. They would go up very high all the way to the top of the mast of the ship and then jump from a very big height into the water, and then they would come up and swim back, and all kinds of other things they would do. When they did this, the, the czar was so impressed, like he was like-- he clapped. He clapped every time one of those talented soldiers did a major acrobatic trick. He would, he would clap. Finally, when they finished the whole show, he invited the, the, the, the, the soldiers, the group of soldiers, they were all Jewish, and he asked the general that was accompanying them, he said, "So these are very impressive soldiers. I'm very proud of them. What's their names?" And the general said, "Oh, this guy's name is Yankel. This guy, his name is Shimon. This guy's name is Moshe." They had Jewish names. The, the, the soldiers that come to Nishtan, they made sure that their names were not changed because they wanted to always remember that they're Jewish. Even though they sometimes had to do aveiras and do what the goyim do because they had no choice, but they want to make sure that they never forget they're Jewish, and they kept

13:42 their Jewish names. Just like in Mitzrayim, it says that the Yidden never changed their names, even though they became slaves to the Egyptians. But they made sure that they had different names than the goyim, and they also dressed differently than the Mitzrayim. They dressed with tzitzit, not like the Mitzrayim who dressed not tzitzit. And also they spoke Hebrew. They spoke the, the Jewish language, different than the Mitzrayim. Same thing here, they come to Nishtan, they wanted to make sure they remember they're Jewish, so they kept their Jewish names. When the czar heard that his name is Yankel, this man is Shimon, this is Moshe, and this is, um, Chaim, he got very upset. He said, "What? They're Jewish? I was so impressed with them, but they're actually Jewish? You have to make sure that they, they all go get converted. We have to convert them to Christian. They have to convert. There's no such thing that Jews should be such good soldiers. We have to convert them." When the soldiers heard this, they all jumped into the water, and they never came back. They gave up their lives. Before they did that, they said to the czar, "There was a rebbe from Lubavitch that came and told us that if anybody comes and tells us to convert to another religion, and if we don't do it, he'll kill us, we have to let us be killed." And even-- and he added that even if the czar himself comes and says we must convert, we should

15:15 not listen to him. And when they finished telling him that, the czar was shocked that they told him this, and they jumped into the water, and, and they drowned. On purpose, they knew that the czar is gonna kill them. So they, they drowned al kidush Hashem. They were mesir nefesh. And, uh, the rebbe, when he told this story, he said, "We see how the words of the Tzemach Tzedek had such a deep impression on them that even though he spoke to them five years earlier, they remembered what he-- exactly what he told them, that even if the czar tells you go and become a-- go convert to another religion, you may not do this, even if he kills you. You have to give up your life for this. This is the most serious, serious, terrible thing for a Jew to do." And they remembered what the Tzemach Tzedek told them, and they gave up their lives al kidush Hashem.