האוהל של ר׳ לוי״ק

00:01 This is Yigris, and this letter would really be best on Chaf Av, but it's not gonna be Chaf Av for a long time, and I have a feeling I'm gonna recirculate it then and put it back up to the top of the podcast. But it is the letter that we're up to today. It is the letter for Tes Vav Teves, which is almost exactly fifty years ago. The letter is labeled Yud Alef Lamed Vav. It's from our year, Tav Shin Lamed Daled, and the letter is in Russian. Of course, we don't read Russian, so fortunately we have a free translation below the letter. The letter is in Russian, and it's important who the letter is to. The letter is to a Mr. Gavril Shikhya Akhanov, I guess. Akhanov. I don't know how to say his last name, but a Mr. Gavril Akhanov and the Rebbe writes, "Shalom u-bracha." And we'll read the letter, and then we're gonna have a lot of background. Let me pull this over here. Good. The Rebbe writes, "Me'asher hinni kabbalas mechtavim m'chaf ches kislev," the Rebbe says, "Because whereas I have received your letter from Chaf Ches Kislev, ve'retzeh nishuv la'avias tedasi." The Rebbe says, "I would like to once again express my thanks." "Ha'levavis, atedasi ha'levavis," my heartfelt thanks. "Al ishtatfusei be'kituv hamatzever shel avi zecher tzadik livracha." So the Rebbe writes, "I would like to once again express my heartfelt thanks that you participated in the writing on the stone, on the headstone of my father of blessed

01:15 righteous memory." "Yitene Hashem yesbarach sh'shatat b'harbe mitzvos." The Rebbe says that "Hashem should give you a bracha, that you should get bracha from Hashem, that you should be able to participate in many mitzvos," not just writing a matzeva, but many other mitzvos too. "V'yuchan mitzvos asur as l'chaim v'yados," specifically mitzvos that are connected to life and Yiddishkeit. I think that's probably a contrast to the fact that the Rebbe's way that he-- the way the Rebbe knows this person is as someone who is involved in mitzvos that have to do with the opposite of life. So the Rebbe says, "Giving you a bracha that you should be involved in many mitzvos, specifically those that are attached to life and to Yiddishkeit." "Teyre-om mitzvos," and that is teyre-om mitzvos. Yeah. "U'maad l'sheilaseha," in response to your question, "Harada kidaila hagar me'eretz hakdesh." He'd asked the Rebbe if he should leave Eretz Yisrael. The Rebbe said, "In response to your question, no, I don't think you should emigrate from Eretz Yisrael." "Va'amaretz ve'am tzoyim et ruach lamtach mutav lenatzon listadros be'eretz hakdesh." All the effort you plan on investing in that would be better used in the Holy Land. So the Rebbe gives some advice about moving, and the Rebbe thanks him for being involved in the writing of his father's matzeva. When exactly was this individual involved in the Rebbe's matzeva? Who is this individual, Mar Gavrio, Mr. Gavril? Um, why is he in Eretz Yisrael if he was involved in writing the Rebbe's stone, which you

02:25 would assume would be something that would be happening in Russia? We need some history. So this, uh, I put this together, uh, on my own and then discovered that in Toldos Levi Yitzchak there is a, uh, there's a whole s-- like several chapters that would've done the work for me. So if you'd like to know more about this, check out Toldos Levi Yitzchak. I'm gonna quote sources every now and then, but we're gonna have basically a historical discussion today about the Rebbe's father's stone. And, uh, that comes with a note that I might have missed things. I went through and got-- found everything I could. As far as I can tell, there were three stones made for the, made for the Rebbe's father. Three times a stone was made for the Rebbe's father. I'm gonna take you through all of them. If there was a fourth or a fifth or a twelfth and I don't know about it, please send me a message and let me know. The first stone was definitely made in nineteen forty-four, and that was in the first Chaf Av. That's when the Rebbe's father passed. When the Rebbe's father was nesalek, as I'm sure all of us know, but it's worthwhile to quickly rehash, he was in Alma Alta, he was in exile, and he died in exile, uh, in, uh, the former Soviet Union. And at the time, there was a lot of heat on Reb Levi. There was a lot of heat on anybody who was involved in

03:23 taking care of Jewish life. So when he died and they wanted to take care of him, they wanted to make sure there was a minyan for Kaddish and things like that, this was basically impossible. They had a minyan running in his house for like three weeks, and then it was shut down. Um, somebody who was involved in the funeral got called in for questioning. "Why'd you make such a big deal about the funeral?" It was very, very dangerous to be involved in anything having to do with Reb Levi, especially after, m- I guess maybe not especially, but also after he died, also after he was nesalek. And there's a Der Her article from Chaf Av of fifty-seven seven three that says that three weeks after the hishtalukus, they put together this sort of ramshackle enclosure made out of iron and cement, and, uh, there was a shortage of iron and cement, but they found a way to make an iron and cement enclosure around the place that they'd buried Reb Levi. And they also bought up a bunch of the plots that were immediately around him to make sure they wouldn't bury non-Jews directly next to him. But they were, uh, in a non-Jewish cemetery. So this big non-Jewish cemetery, they bought a se-- a s-- uh, several plots in this area, put Reb Levi in the middle, and bought all of the plots around it and enclosed it with a fence, even though they didn't really have the materials. They then went looking for

04:22 marble so that they could put up a stone, but they did not have any luck. It was, uh, it was wartime, it was a time of shortage, and it was very, very difficult to find any kind of marble. But later on, they heard that a government factory had received a marble shipment, and the accountant of that factory happened to have been a Jew who had very fond memories of his grandfather, who was a big Talmid Chacham, and that accountant arranged that they could have a slab of the marble, but they still had to sneak it out of the building. So the wife of this accountant actually snuck it out of the building. The Hasidim bribed the guards to look the other way. The wife snuck it out of the building and then handed it off to the Hasidim, and the Hasidim brought this slab to the cemetery. At the same time, they couldn't put much on the slab. You can't put much on this headstone. They'd already gotten called into questioning for making a big funeral. If you put on it, "This was the holiest person who ever lived, big tzadik, Mekubal," uh, you can't put that on a stone in the Soviet Union, so they kept it very simple. They wrote that this is where Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, the son of Rabbi Boruch Schneer, is buried. Uh, they wrote the date that he passed away, that it was the twentieth day of Menachem Av in the year five seven oh four after the creation

05:17 of the world, and then the abbreviation that means that his soul should be bound up in everlasting life. And I do have a picture of it here. It's on your screen. I believe this is a picture of the first stone. Uh, the reason why I say I believe is because we're gonna see in a second they refurbished this stone, and it looks exactly the same. But you can see the cracks around it, and according to the Der Her article, this is the picture of the first stone. Very simple, uh, surrounded by a very simple iron gate, and that's the way it was in nineteen forty-four. Now, despite its simplicity, people used it. Uh, people would go to that place whenever they could. Despite the great dangers of visiting, uh, visiting a holy site like this, people would visit all the time. I mean, people who lived in the immediate area, they would visit. People in the Soviet Union and, uh, they would daven there. They would see incredible Yeshuas. People report that whenever they needed help, they would go there, they would daven, and Hashem would save them. So it was a well-used, a well-used siena, well-used ohel, but certainly not a very, uh, certainly not a very pretty ohel. In 1971, Elazar Gorelik, who is a shliach in Australia, uh, tells a story from 1971. So Elazar Gorelik, he's now a shliach in Australia. He was born in 1946 in Lviv, in, uh, in, uh, I guess now it's Ukraine. The family eventually moved

06:21 to Tashkent, which is more or less the same thing as Samarkand. That is, Samarkand, Tashkent are always said in one breath. They aren't really next to each other, but very similar culture. Both, uh, both clandestine Chabad communities within the larger Bukharian communities. So they lived there. There was a, there was a reason why people moved there in the '70s and around that time. There was much less heat in that area. Although Jews were still in terrible danger, the Russian government didn't care that much about what, what, about what went on in Samarkand and Tashkent, so you could get away with more. So a lot of the Hasidim moved to that area to escape persecution. In any event, this is modern-day, uh, modern-day Uzbekistan, so it's right around the area of where, where Reb Leivick would've been buried in Alma-Ata. So his brother, Shalom Ber, received an exit visa. He went to America in 1971, and he brought the Rebbe some things, and one of the things he brought the Rebbe was a picture that-- it was a picture we just saw, a picture just like this. This could even be the same picture, the picture of the basic ohel they put together for the Rebbe's father. The Rebbe thanked him very much for the picture, but then he stared at it for a very long time, and he had a million questions. The Rebbe wanted to know who's buried there? Is it a Jewish cemetery? Awkward questions. And then the Rebbe said, "The headstone just

07:19 doesn't look very good. It's crumbling. It's breaking apart. You can hardly read the words." So maybe this picture was a little bit earlier because by the time the Rebbe saw it, you could hardly read the words on the stone anymore. The Rebbe said, uh, "You told me you still have the-- you still have some family over in the Soviet Union. Could you ask if they could repair the headstone?" So Shalom Ber Gorelik, he sent a letter to his family back in Tashkent saying, "Can you guys fix up the headstone?" Elazar Gorelik had just like a week before received his exit visa, and here he's being told, "Would you be interested in repairing the stone of a famous, uh, rev-- of a famous revolutionary?" So he wasn't thrilled about it, but as he says, uh, he was willing to give up his freedom to fulfill what the-- to fulfill what the Rebbe wanted. That's what he said in one of these My Story interviews. He was happy to do it. He was worried, but he was happy to do it. He and his father raised money and bought a much nicer marble slab, and they wrote to the Rebbe asking who should be involved in writing the new stone and what they should do with the old stone. The problem with about who should be writing the new stone is that this is a specialized skill, being able to carve a gravestone, and they found a lot of professionals, but none of them were Yirei Shamayim.

08:16 They were either not Jewish, or they were Jews who weren't frum, and they had a feeling that maybe a frum person should be carving the stone. At the same time, the only frum people who were able to carve stones either weren't there or were very, very bad at it. They needed somebody who was good and also frum, and they couldn't find that combination. So they wrote to the Rebbe, "What should we do? We can't find anybody to carve it who befits the re-- the honor of your father, and also, we don't know what to do with the old stone." They never got a response. Uh, we'll find out later why they never got a response, but at the time, they never got a response. Uh, at last, they kept on looking. They tried harder and harder, and eventually they found in Tashkent itself a Yirei Shamayim, a Bukharian named Gavril. Now, nobody says his last name in these accounts, but late- I, I went looking. This is definitely the same Gavril. I can prove it in a second. This is the same Gavril. They found a Gavril Bukharian Jew whose father had been a s-- a gravestone carver, and he taught the trade to his son, and he was a Yirei Shamayim. This was a frum Yid. So they told him that, uh, that they were interested in having him carve the stone. He said it would take a while. He was not-- he was gonna be nice and slow, but that he could do

09:11 it, and he could do it well. They also made a rule that he would have to go to mikvah every day before he started working. He said, "That's great, but we don't have mikvahs." So they would pick him up in a taxi and bring them to their house, where they dug a secret mikvah in their kitchen behind the cupboard. So they would bring this, this poor Bukharian, they'd throw him in a taxi, bring him to their house. He'd go in a mikvah that was hidden in their kitchen under the cu- be- uh, behind a cupboard and go to mikvah every day before he would start working on the, on the matzeva. This is our Gavril the letter's being written to. After he'd gone to the mikvah, he'd start his work. When he was done, they took the old headstone out, and they put in the new headstone. They still didn't know what to do with the old one. They'd asked the Rebbe what to do, and he hadn't said what to do with the old one. Somebody had an idea that seemed to come out of nowhere, sort of a flash of ins- inspiration. They said, "Let's make a small cement enclosure around the immediate resting place. In addition to the gate, there would now be a cement enclosure, and we'll break up the old headstone and use its pieces to make a cement enclosure around the grave." So the headstone we have here was ultimately broken up and used as a cement enclosure around

10:05 the new headstone. Now remember, the new headstone's gonna have the exact same words on it. They haven't changed the lashon, but they have changed the quality. It's now been refurbished. After that, they took a picture, and they made their way home. When they came to New York in the 1970s, li- little bit later, they had a, they had a yechidus with the Rebbe. The Rebbe gave them three matzahs because it was close to Pesach, and he said, "Thank you very much for the effort you put in to preserve my father's resting place. Uh, although I don't wanna take away the merit that you received, I wanna reimburse you." So he did pay for it. They went to Rabbi Hadakov, and Rabbi Hada- Hadakov reimbursed them. And Rabbi Gorelik says he was careful even to make sure the ruble-dollar exchange rate was done properly. So they were reimbursed fully for their expenses. And, uh, then he goes to, uh, he goes to his cousin, who had been in charge of relaying his letters to the Rebbe, and he asked his cousin, um, "Whatever happened to that letter I sent to the Rebbe? Did you ever receive it? I sent a letter asking what to do about the old stone and what to do when we couldn't find somebody to carve it." And he said, "Oh yeah, we got a response. We sent it to you. Apparently, the censors picked it up and never gave it to them." But he told him what the Rebbe had said.

10:58 The Rebbe's response had been, "If you keep on looking, you'll eventually find someone." There's Gavril. "And it would be a good idea to grind up the old stone and turn it into a cement enclosure around my father's resting place." So exactly what the Rebbe told them to do was what they ended up doing because you don't really need to send or receive a letter to send or receive a letter from the Rebbe. In any event, this is our Gavril. Um, I think I have there. That's a picture of the newer refurbished one. This is what it looked like in 1988 before the next refurbishment that we'll talk about in a moment. So you can see this one's a little nicer. You can really tell the difference. Um, but it still is printed the same way. This is the, um, this is the, the, uh, the newer of the stones. Just a fun fact, uh, Reb Gavril, who's the subject of our letter-- Now we go back to our letters. It's worth reading it again. The Rebbe now writes, "B'tes shuv la b'es tedasya levavis." The Rebbe says, "Once again, I wanna really thank you from the depths of my heart." Uh, he doesn't say that. He says, "A heartfelt thanks for participating in writing the matzeva of my father." Now, he didn't just participate. He was going to mikvah every day in a kitchen. He was being taxied back and forth. They gave him ridiculous rules he had to work under, and he did it.

11:57 So the Rebbe thanks him very much. And we know that he lives in Eretz Yisrael. Just a fun side point is I found this. This is a picture from, uh- Chabad.info. Apparently a couple years ago, they came across his grandson and put tefillin on him at a tefillin stand. This guy came by the tefillin stand, said he didn't want to put on tefillin, but mentioned his grandfather was the Gavriel who was involved in, uh, in, in putting together the Rebbe's mateva. And the shliach said, "Well, come on, if your father was that, if your father was the Gavriel Akhanov, then you must put on tefillin." And he ended up putting it on in the merits of his grandfather. So, uh, his son-- his, his children, his descendants still live in Eretz Yisrael, and one of them was recently, relatively recently by a tefillin stand. I want to just tell you the end of this story, which is that nineteen eighty-nine they made a third stone, and the third stone is the one that is more prominent now, although both stones exist. There was a very fiery sicha from the Rebbe in Mem Tes, where he talked-- maybe it was Mem Ches. I think it was Mem Tes, where he talked at length about the Mesires Nefesh of his father on Chaf Av. And, uh, two Hasidim, uh, Rabbi Dovid Nachsun, Rabbi Avi Taub, they both got very involved in secret missions to Russia. They were both somewhat in the gemstone business or in some sort

13:01 of business. I believe Avi Taub was in gemstones. I don't remember if, uh, Nachsun-- Rabbi Nachsun was too. But in any event, they were involved in some sort of business dealings that allowed them to go in and out of Russia, uh, even though this was right after the fall or right before the fall of the Iron Curtain. I think it was actually right before the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain officially fell in nineteen eighty-nine, but I think this was that same year before it fell. So they, like, were one of the last secret missions into Russia. So they were sneaking in and out, and while they were sneaking in and out, taking care of things the Rebbe needed done, they decided they were also going to do this for the Rebbe. They were going to make a nicer ohel and a nicer stone for the Rebbe's father. Uh, they decided that what they wanted to do, and they got permission for this, but their decision was to make the lu-- was to make a new stone completely, much nicer one, and to use all the same words on that stone that are used for any Rebbe of Lubavitch, with the exception of the word Admor, the Adenener, Menener, Vebener. That's reserved for Rebbes alone. But everything else, they wanted the same lotion for the Rebbe's father. They, uh-- There's-- I don't want to go into the whole story right now, nor do I have time. There's a very lengthy story of their

13:55 back and forth and their bribery and all the things they had to do to get that stone up. But this is what the final one looks like. I have it on your screen right here. You'll notice it's very similar to the lotion used for the other-- used for all of the Rebbeim, and it looks very different. You'll also notice that on the other side of the screen, you can still see the old stone. This was their compromise. Instead of breaking up the old stone, remember that's the new old stone. This is-- Instead of breaking up stone two, they decided to keep both stones there because of a significant effort from the Mesires Nefesh went into that stone. It was also the original way that it had been engraved because of fear of the Russian government. I think they wanted the historic value, the sentimental value. So both stones are there to this day. You can see the small stone and the big stone. Uh, the small stone being the refurbished one that was done by the Gorelik brothers, and the big stone that was accomplished by Avi Taub and his crew. So both are now available in Alma Ata, and they built a nicer ohel. That was something else they were involved in. They were involved in building a nicer ohel. When they did that-- Let me get my notes back. When they did that, they went to the Rebbe. Well, they had a yechidus, and, uh, they brought the Rebbe the key to the

14:50 newly built ohel that was for his father. And, uh, Rabbi Nachsun, Rabbi Taub both went in, they gave the Rebbe the key, and they say the Rebbe looked upwards and he said, "This is the key to my father's ohel." I think maybe before they announced that it was the key, he knew what it was. He then gave them many, many brachos. They recall, there's a quote here from one of the stories that I read that, uh, that they, they say this is exactly what the Rebbe told them, although obviously it was in some other language. The quote I have is in English, but the quote I have of the Rebbe saying to them is, "Fortunate is your portion, much is your reward, great is your merit. You have inspired Russian Jewry, you have accomplished with them, and you have involved yourselves with the ohelim of the Rebbeim, righteous and holy. May we not need it for-- May we not need it, for we will merit the fulfillment of the verse, 'And those who dwell in the dust shall rise and sing.'" Basically, you've done incredible work. You've helped make the ohelim of the Rebbeim, but we shouldn't need it because the Rebbeim should-- all the tzadikim those who are resting in the ground should rise up with the coming of Mashiach. Since then, we have seen some renovations, uh, several times over. One major one was actually in twenty sixteen, so that's pretty recent. Uh, the ohel has gotten a lot prettier since then. There

15:48 are trips going every year, and they're constantly doing act-- doing things that are-- doing cert-- things involving refurbishing. There's all sorts of refurbishments that are always happening. There were efforts in the nineties as well that we're sort of grazing over. One final point that I do want to say that I think is kind of a, a nice end to the entire story is that just a couple years ago-- When was this? This was in-- This was this, this was this year. This was in, uh-- This was, uh-- I, I don't know if this was actually this year. Was it this year? I don't think it was this year. It was in twenty twenty. They just changed the date at the top. Three years ago, the Kazakh government officially recognized Reb Levik's, uh, ohel as a national heritage landmark. So the government that had been so oppressive that it killed him, and then later on so oppressive that they had to make a tiny stone in the corner of a non-Jewish cemetery so that they would be able to snik-- sneak under the, uh, under the influence of those who wanted to, uh, silence Reb Levik forever, and the same government that we had to sneak into and out of in order to build the stone and make it bigger and make it nicer and build the ohel. Now, uh, many years later, seventy-six years later, they like the ohel and they like Reb Levik. They're very proud of it, and they've designated as a national

16:52 heritage landmark. And there's actually a tweet from the US government that is on your screen right now congratulating the president of Kazakhstan in helping to commemorate Rebbe, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson. So, uh, after, after a life where he really lived where the, the entire n-secular world wanted, uh, wanted nothing more than to kill him and to make his memory erased, we kept it alive, sometimes by hook and sometimes by crook. And ultimately, now seventy some years later, uh, they're proud to have it. They're proud to have him, and they're proud, they're proud to have him as a, as a former citizen, as it were, albeit against his will, and they're proud to have his gravesite there. That is the beginning and the end of this story. Again, we missed a lot of things in between, but going back to our letter, I think it sheds a lot of light on what's going on in this letter here, where the Rebbe is writing with, uh, saying that he has a tedeshe alabovis, the Rebbe's a heartfelt thank you to this Reb Gavriel, this Mr. Gavriel. We know a little bit more, a little bit more about Gavriel and about the efforts that Gavriel was involved in to make sure that there was a fitting resting place for the Rebbe's father. Thank you very much.