הג׳וינט ולובביץ׳

00:00 Speaker 1 This is Igris. This is the year Taf Shin Lamed Gimel. It's not really the year Taf Shin Lamed Gimel, it's the year Taf Shin Peh Gimel. But because of that, we are learning Taf Shin Lamed Gimel, and this is a letter from Chofhei Tammuz. So we are in the summer months, and the Rebbe's writing in, uh, in Chofhei Tammuz to a Herman, uh, To-To-Tova, T-Tuba, Tabba, Tiba. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Says below the line his first name was Herman. Um, and actually looks like he's from Germany. Look at that Herr, which it says is Mar. So Herr Herman Tova. The Rebbe writes to him, "Shalom u'bracha." He says, uh, "The letter that I've received from you, uh, it, uh, it came recently, and I wanna thank you very much for writing to me." He said, "Certainly you know, certainly you know about the long standing, that long-standing, uh, of long-standing connection between Lubavitch and the organizations that you represent, spe-- that you write about, specifically mitn Joint, specifically with the Joint." So he says that you're writing representing a bunch of organizations, you're writing about a bunch of Jewish organizations. Surely you know that Lubavitch has a very long history with all of these organizations, but particularly with the Joint, the J-J-Joint, which is how it's spelled in Hebrew. Daled, Zion, Shin. It's a million extra letters, the Joint. That's how you make a J. Oh, I'm not gonna be able to pronounce that one. But what it means is

01:24 Speaker 1 a half a hundred. So it says it's a connection that we have had for a half a century. We've had this connection for about fifty years, and, uh, clearly, you know that Lubavitch and the Joint are closely tied together. Did you know that Lubavitch and the Joint were closely tied together? Do you know what the Joint is? I wasn't sure what the Joint is in the first place, and even once I found out what it was, I didn't know about the connections. So that's going to be the topic of the shiur today, the fact that the Rebbe says that Lubavitch has a long-standing and close connection with the Joint. Um, the rest of the letter, which we're not gonna read right now, but I'm gonna send you- What, what is the Joint? Sorry. What is it? I'll tell you. Don't worry. I'll tell you. It's the American Joint Distribution-- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, I believe. I think I wrote down somewhere the full acronym. It's an acronym that goes on forever 'cause they kept adding organizations to it. A lot of-- a lot of groups just call it the JDC right now. It's the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, I believe. Here, I can just Google it right now. American Jewish... Every time I typed it in, I got American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Spoilers. These are the spoilers. This is the American Joint-- Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which still exists. Our connection with it goes back fifty years. In the rest of this

02:27 Speaker 1 letter, which we're not gonna read right now, but you can read, I'm gonna send you the link, the Rebbe basically tells a fundraiser who's writing to him about fundraising for his organization that when you meet people through the course of your fundraising, I expect that you are having a hashgaha on them. The Rebbe, as usual, deputizing everybody and telling this fundraiser that when he meets people asking them for money, he should remind them the Yiddishkeit is not a temporary thing, it's not something just for shul, it's not just something just for when you're talking to your kids or just around the time of bar mitzvah or weddings. Says this is a time you-- this Yiddishkeit is something that we have to live with all the time, and I hope that that's what you tell people when you fundraise. I have no idea if this is advice that this individual took. What I do know, though, is that what I wanna focus is on the top of this letter where the Rebbe says that we have a close connection with the Joint Distribution Committee. Now, the-- I wasn't sure exactly what it is. I know I've heard of it. I know I've heard of fundraisers for it. But the, uh, Joint Distribution Committee has a, has a long and very interesting history, and probably the coolest part about the Joint, as the Rebbe calls it, as the Joint Distribution Committee, as it's called in a lot of its own paperwork, or the JDC, you'll find it

03:22 Speaker 1 listed as sometimes. The coolest thing about them is that they maintain an archive of all of their correspondences that they had with anybody, uh, regarding their fundraising activities at the turn of the century. Which means they have an enormous archive of letters with Reb Chaim Ozer. They have an enormous archive of letters with, uh, with, uh, with the gedolim of the time who were murdered in the Holocaust, who were involved in raising communities. And their archive is available online, and it is, it is just incredible. One of the, uh, one of the best sources for information on how American Jews talked to Jews living in Eastern Europe in the early nineteen hundreds is found in the JDC archives. So that's really what they're good for now. I mean, I'm sure they're also good for funding organizations and stuff, but that's one of the coolest things about them. They were founded in nineteen fourteen. Their original goal was to provide assistance to Jews living in Eretz Yisrael. The problem was in nineteen fourteen, who here knows their history? What happened in nineteen fourteen? The whole world flipped upside down, right? Nineteen fourteen was World War I, give or take. Right around nineteen fourteen, World War I was breaking out, and because of that, all of the funding that the Yidden were getting in Yerushalayim, specifically in the Old Yishuv. The Old Yishuv was almost entirely dependent on outside funding from European countries. World War I broke out, and it was not possible anymore to send them

04:28 Speaker 1 money, so they were just gonna starve. Um, so a bunch of Jews in America got together and said, "We need to provide for the Yidden living in Eretz Yisrael." At the time, there were fifty-nine thousand Jews living in the Old Yishuv alone under Ottoman rule, and they decided that since Eastern Europe wouldn't be able to fund them during World War I, they were going to have to take over. So they started off by somebody put an ad in a paper saying that we needed fifty thousand dollars. Back then, that was about one million dollars. By the way, I did you the great service of every time they mentioned numbers in any of this, I looked up what it's worth nowadays to give you an idea. So, uh, they asked for fifty thousand dollars. They asked for a million dollars from wealthy American Jews. At the time, there were three major Jewish organizations in America that were involved in funding things going on in Eastern Europe. There was a group of rich Reform Jews that was called the American Jewish Relief Committee. There was a group of rich Orthodox Jews that was called the Central Relief Committee. And there was a group of rich Socialist Jews, which was called the People's Relief Committee. These three committees more or less got together and formed the JDC. They didn't officially do that. What they really did was they all funded the JDC until they effectively ceased to exist, and the JDC was administering all their funds. The point

05:27 Speaker 1 is, these big organizations of rich Jews living in America from various denominations all got together to provide the fifty thousand dollars, which again is now about a million dollars, to support the Yidden in Eretz Yisrael. Uh, by nineteen twenty, the JDC and its organizations that were affiliated with it had given out twenty-two million dollars. Um, and that's not by nineteen twenty, excuse me, that's between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty. That's in one year. So in one year, they gave out twenty-two million dollars. That's three hundred million dollars today, uh, to help in the re-- to help, uh, restore Europe after World War I. So they were involved. By nineteen twenty, they'd really picked up. They started off in nineteen fourteen to, uh, to provide for Eretz Yisrael, but by the twenties, they were already giving heavily to Europe to rebuild after World War I and to help the Jewish communities there. Where they intersect Lubavitch really starts around the year nineteen twenty-three In around 1923, give or take, the Free the Kuleba founded something that unfortunately, I don't know what it's called in Hebrew or in Yiddish because I'm pulling this from the files of the JDC, and I couldn't figure out what it was. I'm sure we could find it in Zehrenes or something, not Zehrenes, in, uh, in the memoirs or something like that. But, uh, the Free the Kuleba founded a committee that they call-- let me get it. What do they call here? The, uh, the Committee of Rabbis. I don't

06:32 Speaker 1 know what that was. Maybe it was Vaad HaRabonim. That sounds right, but I don't know. It's a Committee of Rabbis. Anyway, they say that this was founded by the Free the Kuleba and that the JDC began funding it clandestinely. They secretly funded the Committee of Rabbis in the Soviet Union, which was being run by the Free the Kuleba. And this is where the Free the Kuleba got a lot of his money for the activities that we know about. We know about his activities, and we always know-- we know the Free the Kuleba was doing a lot of fundraising. When he fundraised from America, he was effectively fundraising from the JDC. Um, one of the first things the Free the Kuleba did that the JDC is very proud of and that I actually wasn't fully aware of. You get this a little bit from the, uh, from the Free the Kuleba's letters surrounding Yud Beis Tammuz, but you don't get this in full, in full version. The Free the Kuleba had a brilliant idea in 1923 that I never knew about. That apparently in 1923, the Free the Kuleba got a bunch of lawyers together in the Soviet Union and had them go to the Central Legal Consultation Office of the Soviet Bar Association. Yes, I read that off a piece of paper. Uh, that-- And got them to, uh-- And, and had them ask multiple judges at the top of the Soviet Union if it was indeed legal for-- to teach religion to groups of

07:31 Speaker 1 five or six students in a house. And indeed it was. They had not actually outlawed that. That was a loophole in the law. And they had the judges sign and notarize a piece of paper saying that it was completely legal and that no one could be arrested for teaching five or six Jewish children Jewish studies in someone's home. The Free the Kuleba then had a hundred copies made, notarized, and sent to every rav in every city in Russia so that they would have a defense document that they could hold up to the KGB or the OSOAVIAKHIM when they came and tried to arrest them to say that what we're doing is completely legal. I don't know how well that actually worked. A whole, um, whole bunch of Melamdim were put to death anyway. But this was, uh, the, the Rebbe-- the Free the Kuleba, in addition to all of the, uh, clandestine methods that he used, he also tried legal methods. And, uh, this was partially funded by the JDC, this effort to, to run a legal defense. Um, I have a note here that the k- that the JDC first began funding them in 1924. It's 1923 or 1924. Uh, as of 1927, the Committee of Rabbis that was run by the Free the Kuleba was receiving twenty-five thousand dollars, it looks like, per year. So that's about four hundred thousand dollars nowadays from the JDC. That's a good-- a g- a good chunk of what the Free the Kuleba was getting. It was

08:33 Speaker 1 earmarked for cultural work. Uh, when Felix Warburg, who was the JDC's chairman, visited the Soviet Union, he specifically met with the Free the Kuleba to discuss the funds that were being, being given out. Uh, the Committee of Rabbis, as the-- was being run by the Free the Kuleba using the money from the JDC, was mainly used to fund underground yeshivas and chadarim. The JDC keeps records, believe it or not, of how many of these existed. So, you know, we grew up hearing at farbrengens that the Free the Kuleba was running a vast underground network. What's really interesting is that from the data from the JDC, we can see the size of that underground network, and I can tell you what it was. In, uh, in 1928, the committee was supporting twelve yeshivas with a total of six hundred and twenty students. In Soviet Russia, there was nothing of that size at the time. They also were supporting chadarim in twenty-two different cities and towns with a combined enrollment of forty-two hundred children. Four thousand two hundred children the Free the Kuleba was in charge of, in addition to six hundred and twenty students in twelve major yeshivas. Between 1925 and 1929, he was also running an underground seminary for rabbonim and shochtim in Nevil. And, uh, this was putting out rabbonim and shochtim who would go around Russia taking care of Jewish life. They also were involved in repairing and constructing shuls and mikvaos, um, b- bringing money to Yidden who were unable to, uh,

09:40 Speaker 1 keep their jobs because they wouldn't work on Shabbos. Uh, Pesach, matzah, and things like that. They also made a project through the Free the Kuleba to hand out light machinery to Frum Yidden who didn't want to work on Shabbos because one of the loopholes in the Soviet law at the time was that if you were a home-based craftsman or you had a craft workshop out of your house, you didn't have to work on Shabbos, and you were c- still considered a-- you're actually considered a fairly high-ranking member of Soviet society because in that era, they thought craftsmen were more important than, uh, intellectuals of any kind. So they, they funded machines for Jews to get these so that they could get more privileges and not have to work on Shabbos. They also supported-- The Committee of Rabbis supported the only siddur published in the Soviet Union until 1950, once again with JDC money. So it was the Free the Kuleba printed the only siddur published on-- in Soviet Russia until the '50s, and, uh, also Tiferes Bafim, which, uh, at the-- was the name at the time of the major Jewish, uh, youth organization that the Free the Kuleba was running in Soviet Russia. Of course, pretty much all of this ended more or less in 1927 when the Free the Kuleba was arrested. When he was released, which is something we're gonna be celebrating soon, with incredible nisim and neflos. The Free the Kuleba went to Riga, and he was unable to directly run

10:43 Speaker 1 this committee anymore, and therefore, the JDC stopped working with him directly and began working with Shlomo Zev- Shlomo Zevin, who would continue running it until 1930. Despite the fact that the Free the Kuleba was in Riga and a little bit later in America, but we're still talking about Riga right now. He still intervened often and talked to the JDC, so we have a lot of letters between Free the Kuleba and the JDC from the 19-- uh, from the late 1920s, early 1930s. And one of the most, uh, significant correspondences they had was a completely failed mission. So when the Rebbe says, "We have a long history with the JDC," I don't know that it's a long and positive history with the JDC because on one very big issue, they told the Free the Kuleba absolutely not. So, uh, the Free the Kuleba noticed in 1928, 1929, that it looked like because there was a, there was a famine that year, it didn't look like they were gonna be able to do matzah in Russia that year, and they were going to need a lot of money sent in and probably some matzahs sent in. At the time, the, uh, Mensheviks, believe it or not, was, was involved in this effort to try to ship American matzahs to Russia. They were trying from all directions to find a way to get matzahs into Russia in 1929. Uh, at the time, in 1929, the Free the Kuleba writes to them, and, uh, they have the, they have

11:45 Speaker 1 the back and forth between them and the Free the Kuleba in their archives So the Frieda Kureva writes to them that, uh, he has reports from all across the Soviet Union, Central Russia, White Russia, Ukraine, Vilonia, the Caucasus, uh, the Bukhari, Bukhara, Georgia, Dagestan. He lists all the places that they can't find flour for matzah, and this is going to be a new era for Yidden living in Russia, a terribly bitter one, uh, and that God needs to give them mercy and that they need Timcheh dePischah, so we're going to need some help. He specifically cables a request to the JDC asking for twenty-five thousand dollars to try to get this effort off the ground, and they really don't wanna do it. So he has a-- The reason why they didn't wanna do it is he had allies and he had enemies at the JDC as of the late nineteen twenties. In the late nineteen twenties, he had a couple allies. Um, one of them wrote about him. This is Bernard Kahn. He was the one who was the representative in Berlin. He was an ally of the Frieda Kureva. He wanted to get funding in. He wrote to the JDC's director in America. This is a quote from the letter. He wrote-- This is-- So this is the, uh, this is Kahn in Berlin from the JDC writing to the American director of the JDC about the Frieda Kureva. He says there that the Frieda Kureva is the only one who knows reliable and

12:47 Speaker 1 skillful people in Riga and in Russia. He's the only one who knows people who can handle this kind of work. He's also the only one who can get all of the information from Russia through his vast network of people, and he's the only one who is in that position, even though now he's in Latvia, who can possibly be useful to us in Russia. So this is the JDC saying that even when the Frieda Kureva was in Latvia, they felt he was the only useful person they could talk to in Russia who could make sure that the money that they sent went to the places that it needed to go. To give you an idea that I love reading things like this because of course we talk at Chabad Bragans, and we talk in our own culture about how the Frieda Kureva was the, was the central driving force of all Jewish activities in Russia. But it's really refreshing to see this from the outside completely. This is the American Jewish Distribution, Distribution Committee. They write about their correspondences with other big Rabbonim at the time, but they write consistently that the Frieda Kureva was the only one who could get anything done, so that's why they were sending him all their money. However, uh, they weren't enthusiastic about the matzah campaign. First of all, the Frieda Kureva had just been arrested, so they were terrified. They thought that all of their projects might get shut down if they did anything else with him. They wanted

13:41 Speaker 1 to stop funding the commit-- the Vaad HaRabbonim in the first place, the, the Frieda Kureva's, uh, organization, because they thought it sort of had a black mark on it ever since he'd been arrested and nearly put to death. Uh, they also knew that what he was doing was illegal in the Soviet Union, and they didn't-- a bunch of them didn't wanna be involved in things that were illegal in any country, even if those le-- even if those laws were unethical. Um, and he basically-- the JDC at this point kind of splits into people who support the Frieda Kureva and people who wanna see all funding to Lubavitch stop. Also, there were a couple people on the board of the JDC who wanted the money sent only to cultural Judaism and not to religious Judaism and didn't want any money sent to keep religious Judaism alive in the first place. In any event, there is a telegram that is sent in, uh, late-- I'm sorry, in, uh, nineteen twenty-nine. Uh, I'll read it to you. The telegram is not happy. It's in English. It says, "Officers and mem-- Office..." It's a telegram, so there's no verbs. "Officers, other members, committee indicate no possibility securing new allotment requested by Schnerson for matzahs." That's the telegram. "Please so advise Schnerson, making clear Passover relief Russia available only from what Rosen can grant," which is a different organization. So they, they completely, they completely refused to send him anything. Um, and the me-- the matzah campaign, I mean, it

14:45 Speaker 1 happened. They got a couple thousand dollars, and they got some matzahs. But matzahs more or less didn't happen in Russia in nineteen twenty-nine, largely because the JDC refused. So, uh, what they were scared of, I told you a little bit. They were scared of some other things too. Uh, the committee of the Rabbonim that the Frieda Kureva had been running started to close down around the late nineteen twenties, and I think the JDC saw the writing on the wall. The Frieda Kureva, of course, was in Riga. In nineteen twenty-nine, a bunch of its secret yeshivas, including the one in Nevel, were found out, and they were closed down, and everybody who had run them was arrested, and I'm not sure that all of them survived that arrest. So, uh, first of all, a lot of the yeshivas and chadarim and sc-- and, uh, and seminaries, like rabbinical seminaries that the JDC had been running through the Frieda Kureva all got shut down in nineteen twenty-nine, so they started to feel a little bit skittish, skittish. The committee itself, which is what they had been funding through, this committee that had been run by the Frieda Kureva that JDC was funding through, was, uh, shut down completely in nineteen thirty because a major government campaign was launched against all Rabbonim everywhere. And, uh, every one of the members or almost every one of the members of the Frieda Kureva's committee were arrested and, uh, and, and shipped off to Siberia. So the committee ended up closing

15:46 Speaker 1 down also in nineteen thirty, so the JDC didn't necessarily have anybody to send to. In February of nineteen thirty, this is weirdly the final straw for the JDC, um, Menahem Gluskin of Minsk, who was one of the last leading members of the Frieda Kureva's committee over there, was arrested along with thirteen other members of the committee. It looked like they were going to kill them. In the end, they didn't kill them, but they freed them, and they said, you know, "Don't do this again or you're dead," and everybody kinda backed off. Uh, that was pretty much the end of the committee. The JDC officially said at that point they're not sending any more money through Lubavitch, and that is when Rabbi Zevin and the rest of the people who were running the committee were able to escape and left to Eretz Israel. So the JDC cut off funding, and we more or less closed shop there too around that time. This-- Around the year nineteen forty, this is when Lubavitchers were all trying to flee the area and get to America. We do have another run-in with the JDC. We, uh, a whole bunch of Lubavitcher Hasidim were all kind of camping on the border trying to get into America, and there's a lot of logistical problems. Every time they get a-- This is, this is during the era when Reb Mendel is writing passports right before he gets arrested. So a bunch of Lubavitcher Hasidim are all on their way out of Russia. They're

16:45 Speaker 1 all-- They all have gotten out of Russia itself, but they're kind of at the-- A lot of them are in Riga. A lot of them are in Latvia and various places trying to get into America. And at this point, they run into the major problem of not having the money to get to America, not having the money to settle when they get there. And, uh, they ask the Frieda Kureva for a bracha. He's waiting with them in Riga. They ask him for a bracha, and they can't get an answer from him. Um, apparently, they're, they're coming into the room each trying to nudge him, and they can't get a bracha. At some point, he finally gives a bracha, and moments later, they discover that the JDC has approved a ridiculous amount of money to ship all of the-- all of these Lubavitchers over to America and help settle them in America. So we have here a very-- When the Rebbe writes in his letter, now I think there's a little more context to this statement up here. The Rebbe says, "You're writing to me from the JDC. I know the JDC." There are, uh, there are letters in the first volume of Igris of the Rebbe writing about the JDC and to the JDC trying to help the Frieda Kureva secure the funding that he needed. So to make a, a fairly long story shorter than we already have made it, because we have covered, um, several decades of very complicated and interesting history in

17:42 Speaker 1 just a few minutes. But when the Rebbe says over here, "I know the Jew-- I know the Joint. I've worked with them before. We've been-- We've had a relationship for something like fifty years," the Rebbe's definitely talking about the fact that they were the main funders of the Frieda Kureva's efforts, one of the main funders of the Frieda Kureva's, uh, Herculean efforts in Russia to completely undermine their anti-religious attitudes and run the secret chadarim, the secret yeshivas, and the secret mikva'os, and to raise the shafton. That was their project. It was their financial aid that was being sent to the Frieda Kureva and his ca-- his project that he carried out. Uh, he's probably not necessarily talking about the negative experience they had with the matzah, although he might be. I don't know. I don't know if this is a nudge, but I doubt it. I think the-- Uh, in addition to that, they're probably also talking about the fact when the Rebbe writes this, he's probably also talking about the fact that bringing the Lubavitch Hasidim over to America was very much the project of the American Joint Distribution Committee. I do wanna say one thing before I open the floor, uh, just to head off the most obvious question that I think many of us will be thinking in the back of our heads. There is, as far as I can tell, no relationship between the Joint Distribution Committee and the Vaad Hatzalah. Um, I know that people-- If you grew up in

18:42 Speaker 1 our circles, you also have stories about the Vaad Hatzalah. Uh, the Vaad Hatzalah, as far as I can tell, is, is unrelated. But if you do have more to say about the, uh, Joint Distribution Committee or other committees that were involved in helping fund our illegal activities in Russia, I'd love to hear about it.

19:00 Speaker 2 If I'm not mistaken, a lot of the money that went to DP camps also came from the Joints. My father was in Pucking as a child, and they used to get packages of food and clothing from the Joints.

19:18 Speaker 1 Great history on the Joint. I didn't-- You know, a lot of interesting stuff there.