The Seforim That Belonged to the Rebbe’s Father and Mother

00:22 As part of this exhibition of the Library of the Grodno Hasidic Chabad, we have devoted this display table for seforim of the Rebbe's father, HaGaon HaChasid HaMekubal, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok. Mainly are here displayed those seforim that the Rebbetzin, the Rebbe's mother, the Rebbetzin Chana, brought to him to exile in the village of Chiiali in Kazakhstan, where he was sent, sentenced and sent for five years for his running the Jewish activity in the city that he was of, in Yekatirinoslav. He was sent to exile for five years, and the Rebbe's, the Rebbe's mother, Rebbetzin Chana, went to stay with him to give him the ability to survive. He survived there for the five years. Then, with the oiven, lemale mederateva, he was released from that village, a village that is very primitive, and there is no Jews lived there, and he wasn't allowed to leave the village any time. So he was there alone, and the Rebbetzin, the Rebbe's mother, came to stay with him till after he was released. In the spring of Tov Shin Daled, 1944, he went to the, uh, city of, the main city there, Alma-Ata, where there was Jewish activity and Jewish people and Chabad Hasidim. He was-- When he arrived there, he was very weak and sick from the five years of exile. He stayed there for another several months till his passing in Hof of Tov Shin Daled, the twentieth day of Hof in the year of 1944. When she came to him, he didn't have there anything. Not

03:07 only not, not to see any Jewish people, he didn't have even Yiddish seforim to learn. She brought to him five seforim that he, she knew he will need the most. He learned so much the Zohar, he was a Mekubal, and the Tanya, a great Hasid, and she also brought him a Tehillim, that he'd be able to say Tehillim. When he was in Yekatirinoslav, before he went, he was sent to jail and exile, he would study Hasidus and Kabbalah and wrote, write long Iyrin in Hasidus and Kabbalah and send it to his son, the Rebbe, and the Rebbe used to respond. So there was a correspondence between them in Kabbalah and Hasidus. In later years, the Rebbe in the seventies gave order to prepare it to print and printed the set of Toras Levi Yitzchok and Likutey Levi Yitzchok. But while he was in exile, he didn't have the ways and means to write the Iyrin in Hasidus and Kabbalah. It was a primitive village that they didn't even have pen and paper to write on. When the Rebbetzin came there, she brought to him a set of the Zohar, the three volumes of the Zohar, that she knew he's so much into learning it. She brought him a Tanya that she knew he's so much learn-- into learning it, and a Tehillim. He used to study the Zohar, and as usual, he would want to write the Iyrin on the Zohar. He didn't have pen and paper. The Rebbetzin, the Rebbe's mother, knew how to

05:42 prepare ink from herbs, from grass. She prepared it to him. He was able to write. He didn't have paper, so he would write very short comments and merge, uh, and merge all the pages Of the Sehar. When we see the Sehar that is displayed here, we see that the biurim that he wrote are in different colors, sometimes red, blue, green, black. But it was according to the kinds of herbs and grass that she found that she could make, prepare from it ink. The biurim are written very short language. When it was actually published, the Rebbe used to explain the biurim in the fabrigans. And he then said that he didn't have the ability to write barichas, so he wrote very short, so it needs explanation. And he then mentioned the sacrifice of his mother that went to stay with him and knew how to prepare for him the ink from herbs and grass. Here we see the three volumes of the Sehar, each one with a note, footnote on the margin in his handwriting. And then she brought him the Tehillim. In this Tehillim he used to say Tehillim every day with a lot of crying for his situation. Till from his tears the paper became wet. After his passing in Tov Shin Dalet in 1944, the Rebbetsin, Rebbetsin Chana, wrote on the front page of this Tehillim. She's writing in Hebrew, if these pages of the Tehillim would have a mouth to tell us the story, what they saw him for all the years

08:21 that he was in Chiyali. Crying out is hard on saying Tehillim, not from the fact that he didn't have enough food to eat, but from the fact that he was alone. He didn't have choose to learn with them, to speak to them, to be me'er them in Torah and mitzvahs and limud haTorah. So we have here this Tehillim with her writing on it. We have here the set of the Sehar with his writing on it. From the whole correspondence between the Rebbe and HaLevi Yitzchak and his son the Rebbe in the years prior to the jail and exile. We have one page here to just show how it was. This is what we have the ability to show from the writings of the Rebbe's father, HaGoynak HaChasid HaNakubal, HaLevi Yitzchak Schneerson, in the period of his exile in Chiyali, Kazakhstan, for five years, till he was released and went to Almaty, where he stayed till his passing in Hof Hof Tov Shin Dalet. Let his memories be a blessing.