10 of Sivan - Match between the grandchildren of Tzemach Tzedek - י סיון תרכ"ה שידוך בין נכדי הצ"צ

00:00 Speaker 1 To the, uh, for . We have two entries, one in the year . That is six hundred and twenty-five. The tenth day of Sivan, six twenty-five. Can we get that in the English date?

00:12 Speaker 2 Oh, wonderful.

00:13 Speaker 1 Six-- The tenth of Sivan, ten-

00:14 Speaker 2 Minus thirty-six, July 1st.

00:16 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah? Okay. So this, this was, um, on that day, uh, there was a, uh, a match that, uh, the, um, that was actually suggested by the Tzemach Tzedek between, uh, the grandchildren. As we learned throughout the history of Chabad, that they intermarried within the families. Uh, very close relatives, uh, always, uh, married each other. They kept it in the, uh, sort of in the family, yeah?

00:49 Speaker 2 What's the date?

00:49 Speaker 1 What? The tenth day of Sivan on the year six twenty-five. Okay? So on this day, they didn't have the marriage, but they actually wrote... Which day was that?

01:05 Speaker 2 June the fourth, eighteen sixty-five.

01:07 Speaker 1 June fourth, eighteen sixty-five. Okay. So they wrote the, um, agreement, um, to get to make, to make the marriage. Now, of course, the boy and the girl were very, very young at the time, only about five years old.

01:21 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

01:22 Speaker 1 Um, the boy was five years old. Uh, it was a shidduch between the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab became eventually the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe. Um, and his father, the fourth Rebbe, the Rebbe Maharash, um, was the one that, uh, wrote the agreement. Um, his brother, which was Reb Yosef Yitzchak of Orohov, um, between them for the Rebbe Maharash's son, for Reb Yosef Yitzchak's daughter. So that's a cousin, a first cousin. So they made. And who resided over this? It was the Tzemach Tzedek. It was their father, the Rebbe, the third Lubavitch Rebbe, who presided over this. Um, the Rebbe Rashab at that point was merely five, le- less than five years old. The Rebbe Rashab was born on the twentieth day of Cheshvan. So... And this is-- He was four and a half years old at the time. This was in twenty-five. In, in-- This was, uh, less than five years, uh, later. The grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek... And by the way, um, she is actually in the cemetery. We see her in the cemetery, in the old Montefiore Cemetery, the Rebbetzin Schneur Sora, who became-- After the shidduch, they got married. She became the w- the wife of the Rebbe Rashab, of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe. And, uh, like I said, she's interned in the, next to the Ohel over there at the, uh, old Montefiore Cemetery. So-

03:05 Speaker 2 What was her age, Rabbi, when they made the shidduch?

03:07 Speaker 1 Okay. Um, not sure about that. Let's see if it does say here. But I'm sure we can see that on the-- If you look on the tombstone, you can see maybe what date, when she was born and what year she was born. But anyways, this was a suggestion that came from the grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek, for two of his grandchildren, his son's son and his son's daughter, for them to get married. And when, uh, the son, Reb Yosef Yitzchak, asked his father, he says, "Maybe when the chassan becomes older, maybe he's not going to be a fitting shidduch for her. Maybe he's not, he's not gonna go..." And the Tzemach Tzedek answered to him, he says, , that this cotton is going to be, um, uh... It doesn't say when she was born. It says when she passed away on the tombstone over here.

04:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

04:07 Speaker 1 Okay. So it says-- So he said, "This one is gonna be greater than you." So he says, "You're worried about if he's going to, uh, be fitting for your daughter." He says, "He's gonna surpass you yourself, so not to worry about it." And it's interesting when they wrote the, the, uh, commitments for the shidduch with, between the, the brothers, that Tzemach Tzedek added with his handwriting that he obligates himself to give a gift to his grand-- dear grandchildren every year, fifty rubles, uh, whatever, and, uh, uh, for a total of five hundred rubles. That's what it is. That's the gift that the Tzemach Tzedek undertook. Very interesting. Then we have in, uh, years later, um, this was in the year the tenth of Sivan in six hundred and ninety-two. Uh, that was the wedding date of the Rebbetzin Shayna. As we learned, the previous Rebbe had three daughters, and the youngest of his daughters, her name was Shayna, and she married Rebbe Nachman Mendel Horenstein, who was a grandson of the Rebbe Maharash.

05:26 Speaker 2 It's around eighteen thirty-four, uh, nineteen thirty-four.

05:29 Speaker 1 Nineteen thirty-four. And unfortunately, as we learned already, that the Rebbetzin Shayna, she perished in the Holocaust together in the, um, together with the whole family over there. Uh, Rebbe Nachman Mendel Horenstein, uh, was the, uh, was the son of the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, who was the daughter of the Rebbe Maharash. We've learned about this several times. And, uh, the daughter, the youngest daughter of the m- of the previous Rebbe- That was the sister-in-law of the Rebbe. Um, the-- She married, uh, Rabbi Nachman Lahayyan. He was a Lahayyan also, Arnstein. Uh, the wedding took place in the city of Landvarov in Poland. Uh, the reason why that place was chosen, the previous Rebbe writes, because there were a lot of limitations-

06:24 Speaker 3 Oh.

06:24 Speaker 1 Because this was already before the war was, uh, was getting, uh, you know, underway at that time, and there was different, uh-

06:34 Speaker 3 Poland was alright. It was Russia that was-

06:36 Speaker 1 But there were... Well, there were problems with getting the documents, problems with the, the borders. So he says they decided that the chasna should be-- This was, like, on the main road over there, on the stop which is Landvarov in the Poland, in the-- in Poland. That's why it was there. Um, and, uh, the Rebbe wrote an invitation, uh, that, uh, to inviting all the people for that, for that wedding. And, um, and like I said, unfortunately, you know, the, um, the family perished during the Holocaust. And, uh, and I mentioned also that sometimes people would tell the Rebbe, you know, uh, "How could you believe in God after the Holocaust? Such a terrible thing." And the Rebbe would sometimes tell the people that his own family, he lost a-- many of his closest and dearest people to the family, so he's no stranger to the Holocaust. He's not like-- He's speaking from personal experience, and he had suffered just like many of the other Jewish people had suffered at the time. And yet, that is separate, and one's belief in Hashem should still be, uh, steadfast and to, uh, continue to do and to rebuild. And, and many times, you know, the Rebbe spoke about the idea that, um, we have to see to fill the void, because if there was a void created from the Holocaust that so many dear, brilliant, holy, great people passed away, we can only imagine, uh, what kind of benefit the world would have had had they been

08:19 Speaker 1 allowed to continue to live and to thrive and to, uh, produce and be productive for all the societies around them, and how many more prize winners, Nobel Prize winners, and other people making a difference in the world we would have had had they just been left alone and let them to-- allowed to live their lives. But they were taken away from us so brutally, and they were, uh, so horrifically, uh, killed. But what is our responsibility? Our responsibility is, to the extent we can, is to fill that gap, you know, to fill those holes, to try to do what we can. And unfortunately, a lot of times our own actions and the freedoms we are sort of creating, you know, a spiritual Holocaust by not holding on to our Jewish people. And if they're marrying out of the faith, and then they're raising their children not Jewish. So what happens is, we are losing them not from outside forces, but unfortunately, we're losing them from the inside forces. And if you look at the studies that they have, uh, they talked about the studies that they've done, how much the Jewish people are declining and the forecasts for not too far down the road, like twenty years down the road, it's a very, very bleak, uh, forecast that besides the, uh, sort of ultra-Orthodox communities, everybody else is declining and everybody else numbers are becoming less and less. If we don't do something about it, um, then it's, it's, it's, it's unfortunately looks like it's

09:58 Speaker 1 going in the wrong direction. But of course, you know, things have looked bad for the Jewish people a lot of times, and somehow or the other, we-- God intervenes, uh, to help us out, and but we have to do what we have to do. You know, like they say the story about, um, about that a certain individual was, uh, going on the, uh, on the beach, and he saw that there was waves that have put all these starfish, beached them onto the beach, and they were slowly drying out, and they were all dying. So a man felt bad about these, uh, creatures. They're all dying. So he was taking them and, uh, throwing them back into the, into the water. When another man saw what he's doing, he says, "What are you doing?" He says, "I feel bad. I'm trying to get them back to the life." So the other guy says to him, he says, "But, you know, uh, you can stay here from today to tomorrow. There's millions of these starfish over here on the beach. You're not-- What difference are you gonna make already if you're gonna throw in these few that you're gonna get?" He says, "Look." He says, "I may not make a difference to the whole picture, but to that starfish that gets back into the water, I made a difference." He says, "You know, we can't always make a difference in the whole picture, but it doesn't take away from us our responsibility to do what we can."

11:21 Speaker 1 Everybody can do a little bit, can do something to help out. You know, the little bit, a little bit adds to a lot. But the, the bottom line is we all have a responsibility, especially, you know, as the next generation after that, uh, we still have our-- a lot of our parents, slowly but surely they're dying out, that still experienced the Holocaust. They were there at the Holocaust. And, uh, so we have a responsibility to try to do the best that we can to hold on to, to our people. And I think, you know, people that witness it or when you live at that time and you've seen or you live with people that have seen all this cruelty and all this inhumane treatment, I think it- Gives you, besides more responsibility, but it gives you more, I guess, f- feeling that you wanna do something about it because, you know, you're so close to, to, to what happened that you wanna sort of somehow rectify or do what you can to fix it up, you know, to try to fix it. And, uh, unfortunately, sometimes people went the other direction. They said, "We don't want our children to ever experience anything like that, so we don't gonna have... We're not gonna have anything to do with, uh, with, with, with Judaism so that our children don't have to face that." But that's, you know, that's like trying to, um, you know, keep quiet the anti-Semites by saying there'll be no Jews, so there will

12:50 Speaker 1 be no anti-Semites over there because there will be nobody to hate. Yeah, well you-

12:53 Speaker 3 What you're saying is the, the, the assimilation in America is no different today than the assimilation was in Germany. Germany had hu- The assimilation was greater than it is in America today before the war.

13:05 Speaker 1 Okay.

13:06 Speaker 3 Because the intermarriage was at an extremely high rate.

13:09 Speaker 1 And, and w-

13:09 Speaker 3 And they didn't even pr- Those that were Jewish there that didn't, their parents were not religious, and they didn't even really practice that much because there was a big transformation going on at that time. But it wasn't just in Germany, it was in Austria, too. The, the, the religious ones that I think that, that survived, and it wasn't so much the German, it was the Polish and the Russian that, that transported it to America to become religious. Because, because I think a lot of it's because the, the, the educational background they had, they felt that they were discriminated only because of the, the, the title of being a Jew, and it wasn't from the religious aspect.

13:52 Speaker 1 But the unfortunate thing is that we, that those Jewish people that thought that they can escape because they're denying their Judaism or their practice, it didn't help them.

14:02 Speaker 3 It didn't help them.

14:03 Speaker 1 It was unfortunate that it didn't help them.

14:05 Speaker 3 No, it didn't.

14:05 Speaker 1 So it wasn't something... And they went and they searched back, you know, uh-

14:09 Speaker 3 They went back

14:09 Speaker 1 ... any, even any of your ancestors were Jewish.

14:12 Speaker 3 I think it was 25-

14:13 Speaker 1 Yeah

14:13 Speaker 3 ... maybe le- less than 25%.

14:15 Speaker 1 So they, they, uh, they... So I mean, that's-

14:18 Speaker 3 Yeah

14:18 Speaker 1 ... that's very unfortunate. But it's, it's still a sort of a cruel reminder that, uh, trying to assimilate or trying to run away from who you are isn't necessarily gonna get you any relief or anything.

14:31 Speaker 3 It didn't.

14:31 Speaker 1 That's it. It didn't get them any relief.

14:32 Speaker 2 During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, people who thought by converting they could hide from the Inquisitor were still-

14:41 Speaker 1 And so-

14:41 Speaker 2 ... considered not real Christians.

14:44 Speaker 1 And they, and they actually, they, they tortured them, and they-

14:47 Speaker 2 Yeah

14:47 Speaker 1 ... caused them the, the, the-

14:49 Speaker 2 Somewhat. And, and some-

14:51 Speaker 3 And what about that

14:51 Speaker 2 ... converted

14:52 Speaker 1 Well, then, then they chased out every single Jew from Spain, and they eventually, they, they, they-

14:57 Speaker 3 Well, then they went-

14:57 Speaker 2 Portugal.

14:57 Speaker 1 Or Portugal.

14:58 Speaker 3 Or Portugal.

14:58 Speaker 1 They, they, they, uh, they don't.

15:00 Speaker 2 But they-

15:00 Speaker 1 So I mean, our history is, um, been unfortunate, uh, very unfortunate tragedies. A lot of times for us in the modern times today, it's almost hard to, uh, believe that this can go on until you look at the news of what's going on in the Muslim countries against the Jews. So then you start thinking-

15:20 Speaker 3 Yeah

15:20 Speaker 1 ... "Hey, you know, we're still, we're still not these people's mind," and if they, God forbid, ever got the opportunity to have the power to do what they really want to do in their hearts... And by the way, they say that the biggest anti-Semitism is, is actually in the Palestinian, uh, camps over there. They teach-

15:40 Speaker 3 They teach.

15:41 Speaker 1 They teach the, the, the worst, the worst of the worst.

15:44 Speaker 3 Right.

15:44 Speaker 1 And I'm not even sure how you can say worse. They're so bad elsewhere. How could it be any worse? But it seems like the, the worst of it, they, they did a study, is actually in the, um-

15:54 Speaker 3 It's in the textbooks

15:55 Speaker 1 ... it's in the textbooks.

15:56 Speaker 2 Yeah.

15:56 Speaker 1 And those are the people that we're expected to sort of make peace with when, and it's, uh, and then, uh, uh-

16:02 Speaker 2 Yeah, due to the Oslo Peace Conference, those textbooks were supposed to have been rewritten, and they never were.

16:09 Speaker 1 Well, uh, you know, they're, uh, uh... Being honest has never been one of the hallmarks of the-

16:17 Speaker 2 Right

16:17 Speaker 1 ... of these peoples. You know what I mean? That's not been ever the only thing else.