1305 - Elul 5 – Chabad history

00:00 May Chabad for the fifth day of Elul, which represents the first Aliyah, the first time that the Hasidim, earlier Hasidim went up to Israel. Uh, that was headed by the, uh, great rabbi, Rabbi Nachum Mendel of Vitebsk. Uh, Hayal was the date that they came to Israel. Now, we need a little bit of a background of what took place over there is the... As you know, as we've spoken, there was a, uh, basically the Jewish religious community was split into two groups, in the Hasidim and the Mitnagdim, the opponents of the Hasidim. And the opponents of the Hasidim were very vocal and also very active in their opposition. And after the passing of the Maggid of Mezritch, who was the follower of the Baal Shem Tov, and he was like the main leading force who gathered some of the greatest, uh, rabbis, and they all eventually became leaders of Hasidic groups. Uh, different groups of the Hasidim were all students of the Maggid of Mezritch. But there was, uh, so much difficulty from the other, from the opponents that they suffered a lot from them, and some of them could not stand to, uh, remain any longer. Um, Rabbi Mendel of Vitebsk, he was one of the elder Hasidim of the Maggid of Mezritch. He was sort of considered the follower after the Maggid of Mezritch, after his passing. He was sort of the undeclared leader. Matter of fact, the Alter Rebbe refers to him as my teacher, my master, the master in Is- in

01:52 Israel. Um, the-- were three actually distinguished great Hasidic masters who led that group. First of all, Rabbi Nachum Mendel of Vitebsk. Um, he's, he's, he's, uh, we'll see, he's, uh, buried in, um, he's interned in, um, in, in Tiberias, in Tiberia. And you have Rabbi Avrom from Kalisk. Um, that's another student. And then you have Rabbi Yisroel from Polotsk. These were all students of the Maggid of Mezritch. Initially, the Alter Rebbe joined, Schneur Zalman joined this group. And the students of the Alter Rebbe, who he had a great many students, and it was mainly an area called White Russia. That was the area, the section where the Alter Rebbe lived over there in, uh, in Liadi, in Lyozno, in that, they, tho-those areas. Yeah. So, um, the students heard that the Alter Rebbe was leaving and that he's gonna go to Israel. Um, they were very, very upset, and they were bitterly crying before the Alter Rebbe. He should not leave them. You know, they didn't wanna be left without the leader, without the Alter Rebbe. But the Alter Rebbe said that our sages tell us that your life comes first. In other words, if your life and your friend's life, talking about if you have one, uh, jug of water and you're in a desert, and there's only enough for one of you to survive, do you give it to your friend, or you take it yourself? So he says you take it for yourself. And, you know, because it says, " That, uh,

06:01 drowned one of the boats. Mm. Um, there were about eighty Hasidim, and the majority of them actually drowned. Uh, there's only about thirty of them that were, that were saved and, um, they got an island called Krim. You know where that is? The, you know, you know, in the islands. Mm. I kind of think they went by boat from, from, from- From Turkey ... from Turkey. Like the flotillas that are sending there. So they had to go all the way around. There, there was no Suez Canal. No, no, no, Turkey's going north. So they went from the north to, uh, you know, pass like Lebanon and- Oh, so, so they just went over- It, uh- They went the Black Sea. They went in. They went the, uh- Right ... no, it's the, uh... The Mediterranean. It's the northeastern Mediterranean. They came out, they must have came out by, um- Yeah, for sure ... Istanbul over there- Right ... and went that way. Right. Yeah. They took the boat down to, um- Yeah ... to Haifa or wherever. I'm just, am I like- Yeah. I was thinking they were more inland. I was... Okay, the Bosporus. All right. So now the, um, the other people that were on the other boats, they hadn't known about the catastrophe that took place with the other boats. They didn't know, and they continued to Eretz Yisrael. They ar- arrived at Eretz Yisrael on the fifth day of Elul. The fifth day of Elul is the day they came to

07:20 Eretz Yisrael. Uh, in the beginning, the group settled in Tzfat. That was the, uh, the city of the Kabbalists. That was the holy city of Tzfat. However, there were just too many difficulties in Tzfat. Reb Nachman left Tzfat and he settled in the city of Tabarius, in the city of Tabaria. As I mentioned, he's actually interned in the city of Tabaria. Now, the, um, the troubles of the Hasidim didn't end over there. Uh, those days in Israel, there was literally nothing for them to do to sustain themselves, and these were great rabbis, and they, uh, weren't people that were, um, uh, tradespeople or knew... And it was just in general, it was, hunger was rampant. There was a lot of, uh... Israel wasn't inhabited at, at the time. The Palestinians are claiming now for their territory. But it was just, uh- Years before ... nobody, yeah. Yeah, and it was, it was the Ottoman Empire. Yeah. They didn't care what went on. Yeah. I'm surprised they let them in. Uh, they probably didn't even care about who came or didn't come at that time. Um, but the- Wasteland ... the point, yeah, the point was that, uh, they used to raise funds for the people in Eretz Yisrael and for the people in Israel to support them. The Alter Rebbe remained back, um, in, in, in, in, in Russia, and he went out, all out for funding for the, uh, people in, in Eretz Yisrael. Mm-hmm. Now, eventually, unfortunately, this also led... You know, any

08:58 time when you start talking about money, you start dealing money, I mean, and how to distribute the money. So eventually, it led to disagreements. It led to some hard feelings, and money was raised and how are they gonna distribute it? And people claimed that it wasn't distributed fairly, and then each one started sending their own, uh, messengers to raise money for that group. And, eh, a lot of, uh, a lot of problems later on unfortunately evolved. You know, it all started together, but, uh, you know, you see wherever there's money, you know, uh, when, uh, you see it with inheritance, you know, when parents pass away, if there's more than one child- Mm-hmm ... um, if there is, uh, no money left, so everything is shash til, there's no fighting. Yeah. But if there is money, some money left over, and there are several children, and each one thinks that they're being cheated or the other one is getting more or they're not getting this, yeah, you have even close-knit families sort of breaking apart. So I guess somehow, uh, whenever, whenever the- Right, but the old... It's true. So I mean, so, so there too, I mean, there was later on there was some fallout. But the- Did the community flourish? I mean, you had three hundred people. Yeah, but it was, um, it did. It did. But again, there was a lot of people went back because- You know ... I'm not sure allowed, I'm not sure exactly the history over there, all

10:30 the details, but a lot of them couldn't make it over there. It was just impossible. There's nothing to, nothing, you know, when there's no food to eat- No work ... and there's no work, and there was no food, and there's... So it was very difficult for them. Yeah. And they, they, uh, they basically lived on, you know, welfare from the, uh, ch- charity that they sent them. And again, that was, um, the Alter Rebbe, like in all we're reading now in the Tanya, this last section is the book of Igeres HaKodesh. Those are his holy letters. You can see he keeps on hammering away that tzedakah, tzedakah for, especially tzedakah for Eretz Yisrael is the highest and the, and the most important mitzvah. Uh, actually, part of the, uh, complaint against the Alter Rebbe that when they slandered him for the government is that he's aiding the, uh, Turkish, uh, government by, um, sending large amounts of monies over there. And you know, this was part of the whole complaint and, um, and part of it was, it was nothing to do with the government. It had to do with trying to support the, uh, the Jewish people over there. And they put on a tax on the people that lived in, in, in, in Russia on their, made them, each one needed to help out and give money for the people in Israel. That was like a very, um, a very important tzedakah. The general tzedakah fund was called Kollel Chabad. Yeah. That is

11:58 what is, uh... But, uh, that was particularly they went to Chabad. Now, now you have a Kollel Poland, and you have a Kollel Bremer Berlines. They had all different kinds of, of, of, of charities because then it, it sort of, uh, split up. And, um, uh, the Alter Rebbe basically, uh, tried, you know, whatever he can do to, to support these people there. Okay.