The Russia-Chabad Seforim Battle - An Overview

00:21 We have mentioned in the previous lecture about the two collections in this library, one that is- was collected by the Friediker Rebbe in the years of Taf Reish Behe till Taf Shin Yud, 1925 till 1950. And what about the collection of the Seforim before the year of Taf Reish Behe, before the year of 1925? The actual collection of the Seforim of before, that was the library in the city of Lubavitch for generations in the headquarters of Lubavitch by the Rebbe. There, there was Seforim that was collected by the previous Rebbes over the generations, but mainly by the Rebbe Rashab, the fifth Lubavitch Rebbe, and by his son, the Rebbe Rayatz, the sixth Lubavitch Rebbe. There was a collection of about ten, twelve thousand volumes. It was there till the break of the First World War in 1914. After the Germans got, got closer to the city of Lubavitch, the family of Beis HaRabb, the Rebbe and the whole family, was forced to flee from Lubavitch. They went to Rostov. And what about the library? They gathered all the Seforim into thirty-five large crates and they transferred it to a storage house in Moscow that was a safer place for keeping this collection. After the war ended, the Friediker Rebbe in Taf Reish Peh Beis in the year of 1922 tried to get this collection back into his new house in Rostov. He didn't succeed. The government took it away in the next year, just about one hundred years ago, and transferred it to the public

03:23 library in Moscow. It was then called Rumyantsev Library. And that's where, where they are, in Moscow, in the library till today. For one hundred years, there are tremendous efforts by the Rebbe, the Friediker Rebbe, and then by the Rebbe and his emissaries to try to get the release of these Seforim. The government of Russia should return it to the library of Chabad. We did not succeed yet. About twenty-three years ago, in Taf Reish-- Taf Shin Samech, in the year of 2000, I was invited by the library in Moscow to come help them identify the Seforim of this collection that was in- included in a larger collection. We went through the whole collection, and we succeeded to identify, uh, in the end, about five and a half thousand Seforim of the, of the Lubavitch collection. They were separated and stored as a special collection or a special library. About ten years ago, they scanned this whole collection and posted it on their site, the site of the library. Parallel to that, we posted this collection on our site, the site of this library. In order for one to see if-- to see these scans of our collection, the collection of the library in Lubavitch that is still in Moscow, someone would have to go to chabadlibrary.org/catalog. And then our library is divided into about one hundred and sixty sections. This section of the collection that was in Lubavitch is collection number one hundred thirty-one, Kuf Lamed Alef. So you would have to go to our catalog,

06:41 and then there are in the catalog several ways how to look for Seforim. One way is to look for the section, the Modir. You would have to select Modir Kuf Lamed Alef, one hundred and thirty-one, and you would get a list of these Seforim. And then if you press on the link of the Sefer, you would get the catalog card of this Sefer, and in the bottom, there would be a link to the scanned Sefer that you would be able to see the whole Sefer as it is.