תמיכה בישיבה ספרדית

00:00 Speaker 1 Today is Tu Bishvat. I, I went looking to see if there was a Tu Bishvat letter. There are four-- There are three Tu Bishvat letters in the year Tav Shin, Tav Shin Gimmel, which is the year we're learning, and none of them talk about Tu Bishvat, which I thought was interesting. Uh, you would, you would think, right? Uh, there are three letters that the date is specifically Tu Bishvat. Um, none of them mention Tu Bishvat in the text of the letter, but all of them have the date written as Tu, as Tes Tav Bishvat with a Beis, which is not the way the other letters are written. If you look at any other letter, like the letter we have in front of us today, it's always, uh, well, here we have Zresh Kadesh, so it's a bad example, but it'll be like, um, Zion Cheshvan, it'll be, um, Tav Cheshvan or Tes Tav Cheshvan. He did Tu Bishvat because the Rebbe was clearly indicating that there is a Tu Bishvat that is a special day. And, um, two of the letters, that's it. On one of the letters, he's writing to the students of a Chabad Cheder in response to a doch that he received, and there he says, uh, Tes Tav Bishvat, Rosh Hashana Lee Lamis. But also doesn't really mention it in the, in the body of the letter at all. So we don't have anything really on Tu Bishvat to discuss besides the fact that the Rebbe seems to indicate it in

01:02 Speaker 1 his subject lines at the top. When he's talking about the date, he mentions it. Lehaier, that's what I found when I was looking in letters today. Regarding our current letter, though, our current letter has nothing to do with Tu Bishvat. You can open it up. It's on page seventeen, and it's written to a Yeshua Rabinowitz. I went to go look him up, Yeshua Rabinowitz. He was a somewhat successful Israeli politician. I say somewhat successful because he was the mayor of Tel Aviv for a short period of time, but he didn't really make it in national politics. He was on the Tel Aviv council as of nineteen fifty-nine, then he became the deputy mayor and, uh, he became mayor in nineteen sixty-nine, and he was mayor until nineteen seventy-four. So our letter is written to him in nineteen seventy-two, even though it's Lamed Gimmel 'cause it was before the, the secular year had sw-had switched. So this is in the middle of his reign as mayor. After that, he moved-- tries to move up to the Knesset. He becomes a minister of housing under Golda Meir. He becomes a minister of finance under Yitzhak Rabin. But he never actually, uh, is a member of Knesset. He just heads these ministries. And in the nineteen seventy-seven elections, uh, he gets voted in but then loses his position when his seat is taken by somebody else. So, uh, he has a small street named after him in Tel Aviv according to his Wikipedia page. No, never mind, it's

02:08 Speaker 1 a park. He has a park named after him, but, uh, he dies in nineteen seventy-nine. So I say a moderately successful Israeli politician. Why is the Rebbe writing to him? It's not in response to a letter. It's because the Rebbe won something from him. I think we should read the letter, and then after we read the letter, I'll tell you what happened next 'cause we have some-- we have the end of this story. We know this story ends. It came out in a, uh, in a-- what do they call them? In a here's my story. It came out in a here's my story newsletter a couple, a couple of months ago. Here's the letter. He's writing to Mr. Yeshua Shekhiah Rabinowitz, the Rosh Hayyas Tel Aviv Yaffa. At the time, he was the mayor of Tel Aviv Yaffa. Shalom Ubraham. It's possible that you're going to be surprised when you receive this letter because up until now, we haven't met. That you've never met me before. We haven't even had any contact between each other. So you might be surprised out of the blue, get a letter from the, from the Rebbe in New York. Uh, but but I'm writing to you about something that's The general public relies on this, and I hope that you'll respond to it in a, in a positive way. It's very important that this go well. And it's, uh, it's also very-- it's also, uh, noteworthy that you have resting on your shoulders. I trust you'll be able to

03:28 Speaker 1 make this work, uh, because first of all, your decision matters, and second of all, because you have The Rebbe is empowering a politician here and telling him that you have the merits of the, merits of the masses backing you up, so I believe you can accomplish a lot more than you think. So what's the Rebbe want from him? I think that's a neighborhood in Tel Aviv. There, there's a Yeshiva called the Yeshivas Harambam, and it's in a neighborhood in Tel Aviv. I've heard the Rebbe says there's a M-- there's a, uh, there's Mamula right across the street from it, a Migrash. There's a plot of land right across the street from it. The Yeshiva's been trying for a long time to buy this plot of land across the street from it. But, uh, there's a Shini Yud problem. Shini Yud means a, a change of domain. I assume this is some kind of a zoning problem, that they weren't able to zone it properly. But in any case, they were having problems with the politics, and they weren't able to get this plot for the Yeshiva. So the Yeshiva has this smallish building on one side of the street. Right across the street or right next to it, there's an open plot, and because of political reasons, they're unable to expand. And he says, "I hear right now they're saying that since they can't switch it over to be the Yeshiva's private property, they're thinking of making some kind of a public club on that

04:41 Speaker 1 property instead." Uh, obviously, this concerns the Rebbe. the Rebbe goes, "That's true. I, I, I don't know the details. Obviously, I don't know the details." "But I'm still inserting myself into the situation not knowing the details because the issue at hand is not really one of zoning. The issue at hand is one of whether there's going to be Torah taught in public." And specifically, the Rebbe says, "I specifically am paying attention is because it is a Sfardia, uh, Yeshiva, specifically because it's a Sfardi Yeshiva." Their young people have specific problems. They have unique problems, Sfardi kids. What he's saying in that sentence there, in that long sentence there, is that they uprooted their entire lives. They came to Israel in a weird wave of immigration. They left lands they were used to being in for hundreds of years, and, uh, because of that, because they, uh, they, they have unique problems. Because they are immigrants, they have unique problems, immigrants under rough circumstances. The Rebbe says, "Even though I would normally be defending Yeshivas, I, I expect you to pay particular attention to Yeshivas that belong to Sfardim because they have unique needs. And so I think that they warrant unique attention." I'm gonna pause in the middle of the letter just to fill in the, the history there. It's not usually what we do, but, uh, I assume we know that the Sephardim did not arrive under the best circumstances in Eretz Yisrael. When, uh, when the state was declared a state in nineteen

06:12 Speaker 1 forty-eight, the following day, the majority of the, uh, Mizrahi countries kicked their Jews out or started running pogroms against their Jews that forced them to leave. So it was a massive exodus from the, from the Muslim world right after nineteen forty-eight, and that continued through the seventies. Uh, the final, the final exodus was from Iran in nineteen seventy-nine after the Iranian revolution. But most of the exodus, uh, from the Arab countries from-- for the Mizrahi Jews happened between nineteen forty-eight and nineteen seventy, and it was almost all forced. If it wasn't them forcing them to leave, it was them killing them until they felt they needed to leave. Even in Morocco, where they weren't strictly forced to leave, they just kept on killing them till they finally fled. By, by the end, by the time they were leaving, it was not pleasant at all. About nine hundred thousand Jews left Arab countries in this period of time, and six hundred and fifty thousand of them settled in Eretz Yisrael. Uh, Agav, when people ask about the Palestinian refugee crisis and ask why there was never a Jewish refugee crisis, the only answer is because Israel absorbed the Jews and the Arab countries didn't absorb the Palestinians. So the Israeli refugee crisis lasted precisely one day. The Is-- the Jews left the Mizrahi countries, and Israel grabbed them. Anyway, that's what the Rebbe's talking about here. He's saying that they have unique challenges because they were kicked out of their countries. They're coming to Israel, they're

07:17 Speaker 1 being absorbed here, and, uh, they need help, specifi-specifically when it comes to terror. Continuing. Vare, he says, "I, I know that you're a baki bechol ha'yanamim. I know that you're an expert in all these things. You're the mayor of Tel Aviv. It would be excessive for me to go into detail about the history of the Sephardic Jews and why it's important to keep yeshivas open in your town. I'm told that they've already asked you about this and asked for your help, so I certainly don't need to fill in the details for you. You know who I'm talking about, and you know what the situation is. I come only to support their request that they get the land and to add on my own request, a double request. I want you to make sure this works, that the, that the land is transferred over to the yeshiva. I hear that it's really right next to them. And of course, there should be good conditions for it. It, uh-- obviously, you know, you'll work out the details with them, and it should be mutually agreeable, but I want them to have this land, and I'm asking you personally." The Rebbe says, "I hope to hear good news about this, I hope to hear good news about this local area and about Tel Aviv, Yaffo in general and its surrounding areas. And thank you very much in advance on the and the effort you're gonna put into this. And I apologize for all the trouble I'm putting you

08:36 Speaker 1 to," says the Rebbe, "but, uh, but this is my request." The Rebbe here in this fairly long letter is, uh, explaining why it's particularly important that a Sephardic yeshiva be supported and putting in a personal request that the Sephardic yeshiva be granted the land that they're having trouble getting. Now, I don't know how many of you read these, uh, these pamphlets, these, these, uh, pages that are put out in the shul every week of the Here's My Story. I, I read it every week. I love these. And a couple months ago, this, this story showed up in a-- this letter showed up and is an excerpt in one of those sheets. So if you look in your supplementary, I, uh, I put in the group chat a, a, uh, a PDF of it. To summarize the story, the Rosh Yeshiva of this, Yeshivas Harambam, was twenty years old at the time. He's a kid, and they make him the Rosh Yeshiva, and his name is Rabbi Chafuta. I went to watch a video to make sure I pronounced his name correctly. That's how he says it, Chafuta, even though they spell it here Chaputa. He's Chafuta, Rabbi Chafuta, Rabbi Avraham Chafuta. He was twenty years old, and it's nineteen seventy-two, and he wants to buy this land across the street, and he goes to the mayor, and he goes to everybody and asks for help, and nobody wants to give it to him, and also he doesn't have money. So he goes to America to

09:37 Speaker 1 raise some money. While he's in America raising money, he has a meeting with some Israelis who are, who are rich. The Israelis are gonna help him pay for some of the needs of the yeshiva. The rich Israelis tell him that since they're businessmen, they wanna go to the Rebbe in New York to get a bracha. He's not terribly interested. He says he's heard of the Rebbe and heard that he's special, but he's not per-- he's not terribly interested. He's mainly interested in following his donors. His donors wanna go, so he'll go too. So he figures they'll all go to meet the Rebbe. It's nineteen seventy-two. It's probably around Cheshvan. Um, he doesn't say the date, but it's gotta be given the date of the letter. Um, it could have-- I guess it could have been the summer. It could have been the summer of nineteen seventy-two also. So maybe it was before Rosh Hashanah. Anyway, he goes and he meets, uh, he, he goes into yechidus, and he s-say-- the way he says it, he's standing behind these businessmen. They're talking to the Rebbe about their problems, the Rebbe's giving brachas, and he doesn't say a word when he walks in, and he's about to leave, and he hasn't said a single word. He's the rabbi hanging out in the back. At which point, as they're about to leave, they-- they're in there for a couple minutes. They're about to leave, and the Rebbe points to him and says, "Are you Rabbi Avraham Chafuta?" He

10:31 Speaker 1 says, "I'm very surprised the Rebbe knows my name." Um, and the Rebbe says, "I'd like you to stay alone and let all the businessmen leave." He kicks out the businessmen, and he stays with Avraham Chafuta for, for like hours. Says the secretaries keep on opening the doors and asking what's going on, and the, the Rebbe keeps on, uh, either waving them away or continuing the talk. This is a long conversation. The Rebbe wants to know everything about his work. And he mentions to the Rebbe that he's trying to buy a piece of land across the street, but that he's having all sorts of troubles with the local government. The Rebbe absorbs this and says nothing. Says that along the way, the Rebbe said to him, "I'd really like you to incorporate Chassidus into what you teach at the yeshiva." And he says, "Well, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a hardcore Sephardi guy. I don't do only that. I incorporate some Ashkenazi teachings. I incorporate Mussar. I have some stuff from the Baal Shem Tov." He says it was clear to him that the Rebbe wanted him to incorporate some Chabad Hasidic teachings, so he said that he would start with Tanya, and the Rebbe seemed pleased with this. As he was leaving, the Rebbe says to him, um, "Please send all of your books to me, and any books you want from here you can take back with you." So he offers him any, any, any Sephardim that he might need from

11:25 Speaker 1 our Chassidus and wants to see all of his Sephardim. He ended up writing this. Rabbi Chafuta ended up writing like fifty Sephardim. So I'm sure he sent them all to the Rebbe. And in any case, he arrives back in Eretz Yisrael, and he gets off the plane, and the land is approved, and he doesn't know why. He does not think it's from the Rebbe. He says that at the time, what he assumed is he'd just been appointed to a rabbinical council in Tel Aviv and figured that the rabbis there had been pressuring the mayor and that he'd finally gotten it through. But he never asked, no one ever told him, and he put this story on the back burner. He got the land and built an enormous yeshiva, and, uh, he went on to found another yeshiva after that. So years go by. Says in two thousand and six- He's invited, he's invited to a Siyum HaRambam because he is a big writer on Rambam. So they invite this Sephardic Rav to help with the Si- Lubavitch invites the Sephardic Rav to a Siyum HaRambam, one of our events, and someone says to him, "Hey, are you aware of this letter? Does it have anything to do with you?" And they put the letter under his nose. He reads the letter we just read, and he realizes that as soon as he left the Rebbe's room, the Rebbe went-- sat down and wrote a letter and pushed it through, and that this happened specifically because

12:21 Speaker 1 of the Rebbe's letter. So he writes at the end of this, he says at the end of this, I'm gonna read his words. I, I, I like when peop- I like their own words. He says, this Rabbi Chalu- Chafut- Chafuta says, "I was astounded. The Rebbe was requesting that the mayor give us a plot for our yeshiva. In that meeting, he'd heard me say I needed a plot of land, and I hadn't asked him to help me. I didn't expect him to help me, but he took it upon himself to make sure we got this plot. His eyes were open and watching over so many places. He was not just a Rebbe to his Chassidim, he cared about the entire Jewish world. It was a wondrous thing. I have no doubt at all that the Rebbe's request played a pivotal role in our receiving the land. We built a very large building which accommodated hundreds of students, and a good part of that I credit to the Rebbe's intervention. He saw the whole world before him. He cared, and he acted." I think it speaks for itself. So we have here a letter where the Rebbe writes a letter, and we have here in this follow-up the, uh, the effect of that letter, that it ended up doing exactly what the Rebbe said was so important, bolstering a, uh, bolstering a large number of Sephardic Jews who had just arrived and, uh, spreading Torah throughout Tel Aviv and Yafo.

13:19 Speaker 2 Wow.

13:21 Speaker 3 By the way, the Rebbe doesn't mention, but different backhands that if you really read between the lines that the, the Sephardim were not treated very well when they came to Israel. So I think-

13:30 Speaker 1 I mean, yeah, they were not treated well.

13:33 Speaker 2 Also, but while-- if you look a lot of other letters, the Rebbe basically the, the, the government didn't take them seriously enough. They tried-- the Rebbe was pushing against the government of Israel was trying to, um, assimilate them in the way of life of Israelis. The problem was they have such different cultures, they had a hard time with that. You see a lot of early letters, the Rebbe says you have to embrace the Sephardic culture and give them things with their culture because they're trying to make them even from, in the Ashkenazi culture won't work. The Rebbe said they're big Kelim for Chassidus Chabad. The Rebbe would push a lot of Chassidus. They're, they're big Kelim for, because of Kabbalah and everything, they were open to these concepts. Um, the early Shocham to Morocco, there's a lot of letters over there that the Rebbe pushes that concept. Um, if you look in the Chelek Dalet of Igris, there's a lot-- in the early years, a lot of, uh, letters about Morocco then. Um, so yeah. So that's another thing is the assimilation aspect of it. The Rebbe was pushing that they should use their culture, not assimilate them to Ashkenazi culture.

14:27 Speaker 1 This gives really nice context to the fact that the Rebbe said to him in the meeting, in the Yechidus he said to him that he wanted him to be teaching Chassidus there. It's kind of a-

14:34 Speaker 3 Yeah

14:34 Speaker 1 ... out of left field if you don't have that context. Why is the, why is the Rebbe asking to teach Chassidus? And besides, you fight Menashe Chachuta. Um-

14:40 Speaker 3 The Rebbe felt they were Kelim for it.

14:42 Speaker 1 Yeah. Apparent they're saying is that they, uh, the Rebbe felt that they were unique Kelim for it specifically. Yeah.

14:49 Speaker 3 Interesting. Wow. It's intense.

14:52 Speaker 1 Anyone else?

14:54 Speaker 3 See, when you read the letter, you would think that somebody wrote to the Rebbe asking the Rebbe for intervention.

15:00 Speaker 1 Yeah.

15:00 Speaker 3 'Cause the Rebbe's-- it's, it's not like, you know, the, the guy from Tel Aviv reached out to him, or it's not like-- it's a letter out of the blue. You'd think someone prompted this, and it's just pretty amazing.

15:13 Speaker 1 I think so too.

15:14 Speaker 3 Shabbat.

15:15 Speaker 1 Thanks, everyone.

15:17 Speaker 3 All the best.