ישיבת תורה ודעת ולובביץ׳

00:00 This is Idris. We are looking at letters from exactly fifty years ago. We're back on track. It is Ches Tammuz in the letter. It's not Ches Tammuz today, but it's Ches Tammuz in the letter. Tov Shin Lamed Gimel. This letter is Yud. Tav Tav Yud Ches, um, which was written in Tammuz Tov Shin Lamed Gimel. The letter that is written to-- This is the letter that is written to, if you look down at the bottom, Moshe Wolfson. Anybody know offhand Moshe Wolfson? We have anybody who knows him? He is and was. He was then, and he still is the Mashgiach Ruchani, the Yeshivas Torat HaDaas. So Yeshivat Torat HaDaas, he's their mashgiach who handles their spiritual matters. The Rebbe writes to him, "Shalom HaBracha. " He said, "I received a letter from you, and in there you asked for a bracha, and, uh, I believe you sent a pan, and it's from Wednesday. with all of the suffixes I will, in a proper time, read this pan at the tzion of the Rebbe." The Rebbe then says, "." Mudrachav is a strange usage of the word. But anyway, the Rebbe says, "I've greatly enjoyed knowing-- getting to know many of your students, many of your lofty students, many of those who you've, uh, who you've directed in life, uh, and may they be well. That it should be God's will that from them, their friend from these, from these, uh, from these, um, outstanding students of yours, their friends should see what they're like,

01:31 and they too should become better, and everybody should be go-- oh, sh-- everybody should, uh, together go up in kedosh-- should the Rebbe's signature." So this is a very warm letter. The Rebbe writes an incredibly warm letter to someone who, at least on the surface, is not part of our camp. Not that the Rebbe doesn't write warmly to people who aren't from our camp, but this is a leader at a Litvish yeshiva, for lack of a better term. Uh, Torat HaDaas always had a bit of a Hasidish leaning, as we'll talk about in a second. But the Rebbe's writing to a leader at a Litvish yeshiva and telling him that, "I know your students. I know the people who you're having an impact on, and they impress me. I'm glad to know them, and I expect that they're going to positively influence others as well." And we also have a Litvish Rosh Yeshiva, a Litvish Mashgiach Ruchani writing to the Rebbe a pan. You're not just writing the Rebbe a letter, you're writing the Rebbe a pidyon nefesh that is supposed to be read at the tzion. We definitely have a unique relationship here that is a little bit surprising, at least to me. So we're going to spend some time looking into the relationship between the Rebbe and-- the Rebbe and, uh, Rav Wolfson and Torat HaDaas in general. A little bit of a history lesson should be fun. Well, as I told you a second ago, Rabbi Wolfson was then the Mashgiach Ruchani

02:32 at Torat HaDaas, and he still is. I can prove it. Check this out. Look, that's their faculty page. I have it on the screen, and there he is. You wanna know what his face looks like? He is still on the faculty page. He had that job in nineteen seventy-three, and he still has the same job today. Uh, Torat HaDaas is a storied institution in America. Those of us who are, are from the New York or New York area know it well. Uh, some of the most well-known Litvish geolim were at one time or another a Rosh Yeshiva there. I'm showing you on the screen now. Look at some of these names. Do you have any idea how many of the big names you've heard of were Rosh Yeshiva at, uh, at Torat HaDaas? Just, uh, random, uh, Rav Shi- uh, Rav Shaga Fa- Shaga Feivel Mendelovitch, who was the, uh, basically the founder of Frum Muncie. I mean, he's the one who created Beis Medrash Elian, right? We have Rav Reuben Grozovsky, another classic name in the Litvish circles. Rav Gedalia Schorr. You have Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky. Uh, you have, um, Rav Pam. You have Rav Belsky. I mean, these are, these are well-known names, and they all at one point or another were Rosh Yeshiva at Torat HaDaas. I do want to, uh, draw your attention, though, to one name that maybe only we're familiar with. Do you see over here in the far corner of the page on the faculty page? Look at

03:35 that. Moshe Dave Bear Rivkin. Do people know Moshe Dave Bear Rivkin? You don't have to tell me if you do or don't. I'll tell you all about him anyway. Um, he was born in eighteen ninety-one. He was an absolute genius. They say he was learning Gemara as early as age five, and he is one of ours. He learned in the original Tomchei Tmimim in Lubavitch. He learned in Lubavitch itself under the Rebbe Rashab. He was a very close chassid of the Rebbe Rashab. He followed the Rebbe Rashab to Rostov, and he's the source of all of our stories about the Rebbe Rashab's Histalkus. We don't have that written down anywhere else. He chronicled it down to the detail. Uh, he published a book of all the customs that he saw by the Rebbe Rashab. He's a-- he was an authority, is an authority, was an authority on the Rebbe Rashab's, uh, later life and on his customs. After the Histalkus, he didn't have a-- he, I guess he didn't wanna stay in Europe anymore. I don't know what he was thinking exactly, but he went to Eretz Yisrael. In Eretz Yisrael, he became the Rosh Yeshiva of Toras Emes for four years. Uh, after four years in Eretz Yisrael, he was hired by Torat HaDaas to come back to America in nineteen twenty-eight and run Torat HaDaas. He was not a short-term Rosh Yeshiva there. He was there for fifty years. Fifty years he was the Rosh Yeshiva at Torat HaDaas. Understand that that means

04:41 that for the majority, I believe, close to the majority of the existence of Torat HaDaas, its Rosh Yeshiva was the Lubavitcher Hasid, not just any Lubavitcher Hasid, a close chassid of the Rebbe Rashab, which is something I don't think most people know. While he was at Torat HaDaas, he gave smicha to hundreds of talmidim. Torat HaDaas is not just an elementary school or even just a mesivta. It also has a kollel. It has a smicha program. He gave smicha to hundreds of talmidim. So, uh, hundreds and hundreds of talmidim who went through Torat HaDaas in the year-- between the year nineteen twenty-eight and I guess nineteen seventy-six, if you got smicha there, you have a signature on your smicha from a Lubavitcher Rov. He had a close personal relationship. The-- this is, uh, again, Rav Moshe River, Moshe Dave Bear Rivkin. He had close relationships with the Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, Rav Yosef Soloveitchik. All the, all the big names, um, Litvish and otherwise in New York at the time were on close speaking terms with him because he was so involved in the yeshiva. And in his later years, he often attended farbrengens. If you, uh, take a look at his face over here on the screen, you might recognize him. He's frequently sitting directly behind the Rebbe. Uh, he one time told, uh, some... This is a problem with, uh, all of the old great Hasidim, is that, uh, is that tzimim are terrible to them. So, uh,

05:46 all of the old great Hasidim, there's at least some tzimim who wanna say, of the current generation, who like to say that they weren't real mekusharim, that they didn't really care about our Rebbe. They were always stuck in their old Rebbeim. He used to frequently say to students who would bother him about this that he was too close, too much of a mekushar to the Rebbe Rashab and not enough of a mekushar to our Rebbe. He would respond You big Hasidim who are supposedly mekusharim to the Rebbe miss farbrengens. I never miss a farbrengen, and I'm always sitting right behind the Rebbe. So who's the mekusher? So he was, uh, very proud of his yichas to the Rebbe despite the fact that people gave him a hard time about it, and, uh, and he passed away on, uh, in Cheshvan of nineteen seventy-six. So first of all, uh, the Rebbe's warmth that he has here with the Mashgiach Ruchni of Torah Vodaas is partially justified by the fact that Torah Vodaas was run at the time by a Rosh Yeshiva who was Lubavitcher. This is the year nineteen seventy-three, so Rav Rivkin would still be Rosh Yeshiva there for another, what, three or four years before he would pass. And he had been the mashgiach-- he had been the Rosh Yeshiva there for going on forty years. So we had Lubavitchers there. It was, uh, it was, it was not a Lubavitch institution, but it was run by a close chassid of the Rebbe. That

06:45 is, uh, one reason for the warmth. It's not the only reason, though. We also helped keep Torah Vodaas open. This is a story a lot of people know, but for those of you who don't, and even those of tho-those of you who do and would like to hear it again, it is a fantastic story. During the war, uh, they don't know the exact year this happened. Um, people who tell the story tell it as being nineteen forty-two, forty-three, or forty-four. Not sure exactly what year, but at some year during World War II, Torah Vodaas fell into incredible debt, and they owed the bank a lot of money, and the bank called in the loan. The bank came to Torah Vodaas and said, "You owe us the money, and, uh, and they-- and we want it all back," and Torah Vodaas couldn't pay. The bank went to court, and they got a verdict from the American court system, I guess the New York court or the-- probably the New York, probably the state court, that if they didn't pay in full by a certain period of time, that the bank could foreclose the property and could take all of their buildings away. So they were not just in debt, they were in very immediate danger of losing the entire yeshiva. So Torah Vodaas's financial officer, he freaked out, and he blamed himself completely, although that probably wasn't justified. He blamed himself completely. He put ads in all the local newspapers, all the Jew- all the Jewish

07:43 newspapers, saying that they were desperate for donations. If nobody sent in money, Torah Vodaas was going to have to close, not because it would be their choice to close. The bank would close them by force, and he got nothing. He got a penny here or there. No, no, nobody sent meaningful donations. Nobody had anything. One day, he gets a call from the Friediker Rebbe. Uh, that's the way that the story is told by Torah Vodaas. I'm not sure the Friediker Rebbe called him. I assume the mashgiach called. But in any case, he gets a call from the Friediker Rebbe asking how much money he needs. The ad in the paper said they need money. The Friediker Rebbe asks how much. Now, everybody knew the Friediker Rebbe was not only physically unwell but also struggling financially. The Friediker Rebbe is one of our great-- one of the great baalei chessed of the Lubavitcher Rebbeim. He, uh, took great pride in it. In Likutei Dibburim, he talks all the time about how, well, how much pride he takes in the fact that he's constantly, uh, that he's constantly accruing debt for the sake of Jews around the world. So everybody knew that he was not a-- You know, a lot of Rebbes-- Part, part of, part of being part of a Hasidic dynasty is that you're supposed to inherit a whole lot of money. Lubavitch has never been that way. Relatively poor. Friediker Rebbe poorer than any of them. Uh, so they knew he didn't have money,

08:40 a-and they didn't expect to hear much from him, but they did tell him the number they needed. And a few days later, a chassid of the Friediker Rebbe walked in holding an envelope that contained all of the money that they needed to not foreclose. This is a story that was recorded in, uh, in-- by Meir Platkin in one of these Here's My Stories. I just wanna show you the exact words here because the words are so powerful. Apparently, somebody told this story at a big, uh, at a big Torah Vodaas dinner, and here's how they told the story. The chassid who hands the envelope to the, to, to the financial officer of Torah Vodaas says the following. I have it on your screen, and I'm gonna read it. "The Rebbe asked that before I give you this envelope, I invite-- I advise you of some facts. When he was in Russia," when the Friediker Rebbe was in Russia, "he had to fight against the strongest country in the world so that Torah would not be extinguished. The biggest tyrant in the world was Joseph Stalin, and the Rebbe paid no attention to him. Whoever need-- whatever-- whoever needed help in order to strengthen Torah, he helped them. He didn't ask if it was Chabad or not. Whatever they needed, a mikvah, a kosher butcher," that's definitely a sheheche, "a teacher, he tried to supply it. He did whatever he could so the light of Torah would not be extinguished. His emissaries were caught, shot, and

09:42 killed, and then he had their orphans and widows to support, and he would send other people to replace the one who perished. All the while, his focus was only that Torah's light not be extinguished. And now, b'ezras Hashem, the Friediker Rebbe has been brought to the United States of America, where there's freedom of religion, and he is pained to learn that a major yeshiva with thousands of students is gonna be closed down, not because Stalin in Russia wants to get rid of Judaism, but because the Jews in America don't care. This Rebbe cannot abide. He's willing to put his own movement in danger because he also has debts to repay, but he's giving you a check now for the whole amount you need in order that Torah should not be extinguished. Please repay it as soon as possible because everything the Rebbe has built up is now in danger." The end of the story is they did actually repay him quite quickly. They were able to use that money to keep the yeshiva open, and according to them, they ended up repaying the Friediker Rebbe in full. But another reason why there's a real warmth between the Rebbe and Hanhallah Torah Vodaas, in addition to the fact that they had a Lubavitcher Rosh Yeshiva for fifty years, is that the Friediker Rebbe was personally invested in keeping Torah Vodaas open and put Lubavitch itself at risk to keep Torah Vodaas open in a time when they almost had to close. Can you post the link

10:41 to this, please? This, this, uh- Yeah, sure. I'll post the link. Absolutely. It's just an incredible story. Uh, there's other reasons in addition to that why the Rebbe-- why the Rebbeim have a particularly close relationship with Torah Vodaas. Uh, in the 1940s, uh, we know this from Rav Vincien Shankar. He also did an interview where he tells this story. He says that the Rebbe, who of course then was known as the Ramash, used to hold shiurim on Pesach and Sukkot kol hamid, geared for non-Lubavitchers. I'd never heard of this before. Apparently, in the '40s, the Rebbe would hold shiurim on Pe- on Pesach and Sukkot kol hamid. It was geared for non-Lubavitchers in the Litvish yeshivas in the New York City area. It was less Hasidus, it was more Niglah. It was usually of like a pilpul and Gemara. And he says that all of the chevra from Torah Vodaas would show up. It was, it was packed with Torah Vodaas guys. It was apparently spread by word of mouth. There weren't even flyers. It was just Litvish yeshiva guys would tell each other, "Oh, it's kol hamid. Don't, don't, don't miss hearing the son-in-law of the Lubavitcher Rebbe talk Torah because it's just incredible." It became a thing, and they would wait for it. And he says that at every kol hamid, they would, they would send messages from yeshiva to yeshiva asking if anybody heard yet which day of kol hamid the Ramash would be speaking. Rav Vincien Shankar says that he was

11:43 brought to this for the first time by his close friend. Guess who? Rav Wilson, who the Rebbe is now writing to in this letter, who later would become the mashgiach ruchani, and even then loved Chabad Hasidus. That's what he says, that even then Rav Wilson was interested in Hasidus Chabad. It's hard to imagine that all of this wasn't largely influenced by, uh, by Rav Moshe Dvir Rivkin, um, in that-- in the fact that all of his students or many of his students were so passionate about Hasidus and so interested in seeing the Rebbe despite the fact, again, that it was a classic Litvish yeshiva. We also have, uh- The-- I'll show you this in a second. We also have a my story, a testimonial from Rabbi Meir Platkin that talks about when he was in Torah Vodaas in the fifties, he ended up transferring to a Chabad yeshiva in nineteen fifty-nine, but he was in Torah Vodaas in the fifties, and he says there that he and the other boys were strongly encouraged to learn Chitas. And he doesn't say why, but again, we might suspect Rav Rivkin as being the engineer of this. But apparently in the fifties in Torah Vodaas, the boys there were told to learn Chitas. And, uh, he says that one time his roommate got a call on the dormitory payphone from Rabbi Hodakov to tell him that the Rebbe was going to mention him by name at the oil, but only if he started saying Chitas. So the Rebbe

12:47 had a personal-- the Rebbe had his secretary call the Torah Vodaas dormitory on at least one occasion to check whether the students there were saying Chitas. So again, we have a very strong connection between, between seven seventy and Torah Vodaas. Uh, if you wanna see just how close, just how warm the Rebbe's relationship is with the hanhala there, uh, not just in writing and not just in stories, but in actual video. I'm gonna do something weird this time that I don't know if it will actually show up on the recording, is I have a video clip here. There's a short video clip from nineteen eighty-eight where-- here it is, where Rav Wolfson and also, uh, one of the Rosh Kollel, I believe Rav Viliger, both visit the Rebbe by dollars, and the Rebbe speaks to them in very much similar terms to the way that he addresses them in this letter as sources of hafatsa. So, uh, we're gonna watch it. If you don't mind, you can see my screen, right? Okay, here, let's watch. I have it on times two speed. Let's get rid of that. Rav Moshe Wolfson from Torah Vodaas. So here's the Rebbe talking to Rav Moshe Wolfson, the mashgiach over at Torah Vodaas, and telling him that he knows that he's involved in hafatsa hamayanos and gives him a beracha that he should be able to continue with his hafatsa of the mayanos of Hasidis. That's, uh, that's just not the way you talk to a Litvishe Rosh Yeshiva. This

14:35 is somebody who clearly is the Rebbe's guy on the inside, and, uh, the Rebbe treats him that way. The Rebbe treats him that way in the letter that we're looking at. And the Rebbe in nineteen eighty-eight, uh, more than a decade later, is again telling him, "I'm familiar with your writings, I'm familiar with your students, I'm familiar with what you're doing over there, and, uh, and you're our guy at Torah Vodaas." And the Rebbe-- and he's saying that, uh, he's giving him a beracha, complimenting him on his hafatsa and, uh, and giving him a beracha for further hafatsa. This suggests to me when I put together all of these details, it suggests to me that the Rebbe always saw Torah Vodaas as a little bit different than all the other Litvishe yeshivas in New York. A place that Chabad had influence. We had a Rosh Yeshiva there. We had hanhala who liked us there and were willing to spread the Rebbe's teachings there. And he saw it as a place that Chabad had a foothold, and that it seems to me the Rebbe was keeping an eye, a very close eye, on the people who were having a pro-- positive impression in Torah Vodaas specifically. Okay, that's it for today