21 of Iyar - The village of Chabad in Israel was founded - כא אייר תש"ט התיסדות כפר חב"ד

00:00 Speaker 1 About Yemei Chabad for-- This is for the twenty-first day of the month of Iyar. This was in Tof Shin Tes. This is in, uh, 1949, uh, I guess, the night twenty-first day of in seven oh nine, uh, Hebrew date seven oh nine. Uh, that was the day that the Kfar Chabad, the Chabad village in Israel was founded-

00:24 Speaker 2 Oh.

00:24 Speaker 1 -by the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe. He founded it then in, in, uh, I guess in... Again, like I said, this is in 1949-

00:32 Speaker 2 Right.

00:32 Speaker 1 -is when he founded it. Okay. So now, um, the previous Rebbe founded the Kfar Chabad and the previous Rebbe sent a Sefer Torah for the Chabad community members that settled in the village. Uh, so, uh, he sent along a letter together with that thing, and, um, the letter is addressed to his, uh, fellow Chabad, uh, people, the students of the people that went to the Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim, who are now settling in the Holy Land, blessed are you. So the Rebbe says, "I have instructed the leadership at the Merkaz LeHoinu Cheiluch to send you a Sefer Torah. Uh, as when you're starting off, uh, your settlement in our Holy Land may be built and, and, uh, re-reestablished. So you need to," he says, "to prepare yourself well and to know and to really recognize and feel with a very inner feeling that the Divine above Providence brought you and your families, uh, may they live to the land, which God's eyes are there from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, and you are sort of in the palace of the king." That's the main place when the king... Hashem's world has different chambers, but the palace is Israel, and you are there at every time and every hour. Uh, so this, uh, receiving of this Torah that I'm sending to you, that should be to you as a sign to remember all the time in your hearts and in your minds, or your minds and your heart, so that you

02:19 Speaker 1 organize your individual lives as individuals, and also you communalize based on the Torah and on the way that it's been instructed and taught to us by our holy fathers, our teachers, the holy and blessed, um, uh, blessed, uh, who are in the Eden, Gan Eden, that you must educate your children, your sons and your daughters, uh, in the way of their teaching without any compromises, and to bestow upon them the spirit, the spirit of the Jewish tradition on, also on the rest of your brethren, the Jewish people there, those who are close and even those who are so far are distant from Yiddishkeit. Uh, that you must influence them to lead them in the direction that leads to the house of God, which is the path of studying Torah with fear of heaven and the observance of the mitzvahs in the most perfect way, in a way that brings brotherly love, real closeness, which comes from loving of the fellow Jews and, uh, characteristic traits that are, uh, in a refined way based on the teachings of the Hassidits, of the Hassidits. And each one of you, may you be a lamp that will illuminate the darkness of this exile, that you and I are still in it. You will illuminate it with the light of Hashem, till Hashem will fulfill his promise through his prophets, holy prophets, to give us the news, the good news, to notify us of the salvation, that Hashem has comforted his people, and he goes in front of us

04:08 Speaker 1 to ingather all of our exiles and to redeem us an eternal redemption. May Hashem be with your help. He'll bless you and your family members with all that you need, with children, health, sustenance in a wide way, your, your, your parnasah, nizyon urevicha, physically and spiritually, and through Mashiach Tzidkeinu should all be redeemed very quickly. And the Rebbe asks to please give over the contents of this letter to your wives, to your sons and daughters, to each one individually. And the Rebbe signs off with, "Your friend who seeks and blesses you only good physically and spiritually." And it has the Rebbe's signature. Uh, this was a time that the, um, Chabad community, uh, some of them, a, a, a sizable group, maybe about three hundred families. I mean, again, I'm just saying out a number. I think that's maybe right, but I don't know exactly the number. But a sizable family-- a sizable number of Chabad have escaped Russia, and, uh, escaped Russia because Russia didn't allow for its citizens to leave their s- their beautiful land. They wouldn't give anybody permission to leave. Uh, but at that time, the opportunity arose, this was after the war, and in which there were many Polish citizens that, uh, during the war, uh, as the... They were running from the Germans, so they ran into Russia. And unfortunately, the, um, circumstances were such that a great many did not survive. They died from sicknesses, from cold, from hunger, and various different kinds of things. And after the

05:58 Speaker 1 war, there was a, um, an agreement made between the, uh, Russian government and the Polish government to repatriate, to allow for their people to go back. And the problem was there weren't that many people to go back because there were millions of, of, of, of Poles that died- Mm. -in the time. So, but that was an opportunity-- In Russia. Well, in Russia. So, uh, what happened was that allowed for an opportunity. There were a lot of documentations and passports and various different documents from all these people that passed on. So there was a opportunity, you know, with the, some of the Jewish minds, with some of the, I guess, the mafia there, whatever, uh, the criminal, uh, they, they got together, and they made a deal to buy these passports and sneak some of the Chabad, uh, Hasidim out. Exactly, historically, you have to look it up in the books. Some people say that they turned a blind eye to it. Some people say that they bribed some of the local people. But in any event, not everybody made it out. Some were caught, some, some were caught, some were sent away for many years in, in, in, in, in- Gulag ...Gulag and, you know, different things. Wow. But, but the, the main, uh, group of about three hundred families, including my, my parents were part of that group, made it out of Russia at that time, sneaked out. And the-- My mother used to, uh, shalom, used to describe the fear with what they

07:23 Speaker 1 came out of there was, like, unbearable because they didn't speak a word Polish, and they had to present themselves. They had to remember the name, and they had to say... And then they'd ask-- They'd learn a few word of Polish so they can pass the, pass the border. And then when they came, when they finally sighed a, a sigh of relief, it wasn't really so, so pleasant because the Poles were anti-Semites, and they were-- they killed Jews as well, and you know, it was very, very dangerous. But eventually, they went through the displaced person camp, the DP camps, and, uh, in Germany, and then later on, uh, a, uh, a group of the, a large group of the Chabad Hasidim, they, uh, ended up in Paris. Uh, actually, they settled in a suburb of Paris called Brunoy now. There's a yeshiva there right now, Brunoy. There and other places. That's where my parents ended up as well. Now, at that time, this was in, like as we said, this was in nineteen forty-nine, uh, the Rebbe established the Kfar Chabad. Many of the first families of the Kfar Chabad families were people that came from Russia, and then they had to set-- This was just a temporary-- Paris wasn't the place, France wasn't the place where they wanted to settle. So the Rebbe at that time founded Kfar Chabad, and the founding families actually came from the group of Chabad that has escaped Russia, and they are the ones that's called the Kfar, uh, Kfar

08:50 Speaker 1 Safaria. It was called Safaria. They... And they built it up, and they, and they started. They became, you know, like farmers and, and they built the yeshiva there. You know, as you know today, it's one of the, uh, strongholds of all of Israel, comes the light of Torah and- Mm-hmm ...and good work and charity, and everything comes from Kfar Chabad. But at that time, this was the beginning. Now, uh, it seems like, uh, the Rebbe encouraged people to, uh, the previous Rebbe to go to Kfar Chabad. That was the seed of the people in the Kfar Chabad. And there were some Chabad from before during various different times that lived, went to Israel, but this was like a core group with a core place in Kfar Chabad. Of course, now, later on, there was many, many more areas added to the Chabad map in Israel, certainly Nachlas Har Chabad. When the Russian later on, uh, when they started, uh, after Glasnost, when they started leaving- Mm-hmm ...they founded it in Yerushalayim and in all towns and cities. You know, it's, uh, today, there's probably not a town or place where there's no Chabad little, uh, presence over there. But in any event, um, in those days, uh, the Rebbe encouraged, the previous Rebbe encouraged to, uh, go to Israel for the families. Uh, my mother's brother, my mother's brother, alav ha-shalom, alav ha-shalom, he chose to go to Israel, to Kfar Chabad. But my mother and her two sisters, uh, there was, there was four

10:12 Speaker 1 of them. So the, my mother and her two sisters, they actually ended up in the United States. It looks like the, uh, Rebbe later on, after the initial push for, uh, uh, going to Israel, as you know, in nineteen fifty, just about a year later, this was in, uh, uh, we're talking about, uh, on the, um, uh, this was, um, we said, um, the twenty-first day of Iyar, and less than a year after that, the previous Rebbe passed away. So he- Right ...was on the Yut Shevat in Taf Shin Yud, so it wasn't that much longer. So at that point, uh, and the Rebbe became Rebbe at that. So then, um, there was also a, a little bit of a shift, you know, for families to come to the United States, and they were already established over there. So it was like they split. You know, some people, they considered to go to Israel or go to... It seems like when they asked the previous Rebbe, the Rebbe would instruct them to go to Israel, the previous Rebbe. It seems like the Rebbe sometime-- I'm, I'm not sure exactly. I'm not sure. I don't wanna to... We gotta read, read up the history of it. But some reason, you know, my parents ended up in the United States, but actually, they made a small detour, just that's a personal level. Um, you know, people came out without a skill, without a job, without a training, without an education. And their whole education was a Torah

11:35 Speaker 1 education, but they didn't know how to do any other work or what to do. So, uh, at that point, there was a need, uh, for, um, for schachten and boytkim, people to slaughter, ritually slaughter the animals. And there was somebody that gifted, I guess, uh, or I'm not sure the arrangement. Israeli-- You know, the Israeli, uh, army has just recently been established over there, and they needed meat, food for it. So they would actually take the meat. The cattle came from Ireland So they needed, they needed, uh, people to shecht over there. So a whole group of, uh-- This gave, this gave work for a whole group of Hasidim, you know, maybe 30 families. I'm not sure exactly. They need a rabbi over there. They need a schachten, budkim, and the yeshiva, that already, a whole thing. So my parents at that time from Paris, my father learned schita, learned how to do schita, and they went, uh, together with some others. They did the schita in Ireland, in Dublin. Ah. They lived in Dublin. Ah. Dublin was a very nice Jewish community. It was a, uh, a yekke kind of a community. It was very- A Jewish mayor ... yeah, like- Yes Huh? Two Jewish mayors. They had a Jewish mayor. An uncle and an, and a nephew. Yeah. Uh-huh. Wasn't that, what's his name? My brother's actually born, my brother's Irish. Mm-hmm. My oldest brother is born in Ireland. Yeah. So what did I-- Your house, the, the doctor- Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's

12:58 Speaker 1 right ... this wasn't owned- I don't- ... owned the slaughterhouse, right? That's right. He said that. That's-- You remember. I forget already. Yeah, remember, yeah. Okay. He told us about it. But anyways- Yeah ... they lived there. That arrangement worked for about five years. Oh, they were there that long? Uh, they were four years and, uh, I'm not sure exactly the date that my parents went there, uh, but, you know, somewhere along those times. And after that, they had to make a decision where to go. But I think my mother's two sisters already were in the United States. Oh. So she followed to go with her sisters rather than go with her brothers there. And I guess the rebbe advised them, you know, to go to the United States and actually helped them get the visa and helped, you know, with the people, uh, to, uh, the activists to help them settle. And that's where they settled in, in, in, in Brooklyn. Many of the families that actually came could not settle. The, the-- They didn't want the people in Brooklyn. They didn't want all the New York City. That's right. They wanted them-- They went to, uh, Cleveland, they went to Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, they went to other communities, not everybody in Brooklyn. Spread them out a little bit. Then later-- Yeah, but once you're in the United States, you go wherever you want. So I mean- Yeah, yeah ... once they were here, they... But my parents, to begin with, came actually to

14:05 Speaker 1 the, uh, came to the United States. Uh, but that's the way, that's how Kvach Habad was founded, and that's how, you know, the Hasidic history started over there. Well, when Barry and your other brother