20 of Sivan - The Yeshivah in Lubavitch was closed by the goverment - בשנת תרס"ב הישיבה בליובאוויטש נסגרה

00:00 Speaker 1 Uh, Yemei Chabad on the twentieth day of Sivan. This is in the year Taf Res Samech Beis, six hundred and sixty-two. That was the day that the Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim in the city of Lubavitch was closed by the, uh, order of the government at that time. What the-- was the English date of that? The twentieth of Sivan.

00:24 Speaker 2 June twenty-fifth, nineteen oh two.

00:26 Speaker 1 June twenty-fifth, nineteen oh two.

00:28 Speaker 2 That was on a Monday.

00:28 Speaker 1 So the, the yeshiva, the Tomchei Temimim, it was founded, the basis of find, uh, the, uh-- it was founded in order to, uh, combat the new winds that were blowing in the, uh, amongst the Jewish people. Um, the, um... As many people looked at it as old-fashioned, outdated, you know, just like we have similar like today, uh, you have ideas that the Torah, the Mitzvahs, Hasidus, all these things are sort of left behind. Good for the olden days, for the Middle Ages, but today we're a progressive nation, we're a progressive people, and we don't need that. But Tomchei Temimim was founded to stay strong so that the yeshiva students will be, um, anchored very strongly in the observance of Torah and Mitzvahs and the spirit of Hasidus. But because it went against all these new ideas, many times it was, uh, facing, uh, slanderous accusations and, uh, various types of, uh, Maskilim. Those are the enlightened people. They consider themselves to be enlightened, uh, people. They were always attempting to try to cut off and to try to do harm to the yeshiva, which they felt was, uh, doing old-fashioned stuff. But on the year-- on the day of tw-twentieth Sivan, Taf Res Samech Beis, their, uh, slander of these Maskilim, of these enlightened so-called people, they succeeded, and the Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim, that was the name of the yeshiva, Lubavitch Yeshiva, it was closed. But it was only for a very short while. The previous Rebbe writes in his, uh, diary. He writes, "On

02:34 Speaker 1 the twenty-first day of Sivan, Taf Res Samech Beis in Lubavitch," today is two in the afternoon, that's when is the entry coming in. He says, "Yesterday, in the middle of the, uh, third meeting at six o'clock, a, um, a courier," uh, a roth they call them, "Somebody came quickly from Lubavitch with a letter that tells us that at two afternoon, as the, uh, Rosh Yeshiva, the students took their places, and the main supervising rabbi, he was standing on the, on the bima in the large room. All of a sudden, a, uh, officer of the police, uh, came together with, uh, uh, his assistant and three policemen, and they announced that the learning must stop. And he wrote the names of all the students and all the people that were there at that time. When he finished writing down, he turned to two of those that were standing there that they should sign this, uh, order. Um, and he instructed that everybody must leave. People should, uh, disperse. Everybody must leave the room. He instructed to lock the, uh, windows of the room from the inside. And when he-- when everybody went out, he locked the door. He put a seal on the door to make sure that, um, nobody goes in. It was sealed with the authorization of the police, uh, authorities. And he instructed that they should keep these, uh, they had these, uh, wax kinda seals in which they can tell if anybody tampers with them or not, uh, not to be broken.

04:44 Speaker 1 Uh, he, the agent of the police, said that he received a, uh, instruction from the police in the city of Ursha in the name of the, uh, one in charge, the minister who was in charge over the education or, um, the Sar HaScola, to immediately close, shut down those, uh, cheders, those yeshivas that teach the Torah, the Jewish Torah that was founded by the Rabbi Schneersohn with the name Tomchei Temimim. Because these are not yeshivas which are permitted under the law because they have teachers, um, that don't-- are not qualified by the-- they don't have the proper documentation, uh, to teach because you need a, a license. You need a, um, a go through the different courses, what it's-- was required for them to get a-

05:53 Speaker 2 Certificate.

05:53 Speaker 1 To get, yeah, a certificate. You don't have no certificates, and that is prohibited by the law. You're not allowed to teach. Uh, they also have received a order to take, uh, the, uh, uh, the, um, the, the, the person, uh, uh, called him the Rebbe, by the Rebbe's name, the Rebbe by his father's name. He was-- They had a, um, very-- Their family had a very honorable, uh, be-because at the time of the Alter Rebbe still, they called him Ɣzrak Nihpad LeDerech. So that means that they were outstanding family. They got a medal, and the whole family was considered to be an honorable family. But they've gotten instruction to take him, uh, that he should not leave the city without a specific permission of the police until they're going to verify what is the rule. Uh, so the previous Rebbe, that was during the lifetime of the Rebbe Rashab. Uh, he, he passed away in Taf Richpei, eight years later or seven years later, seven, eight years later. But the previous Rebbe's, his job was he was the, uh, sort of the headmaster of the school. He was the menahil. He was the, uh, one in charge of the school, the day-to-day activities. So, um, he did not, um, um, he did not care. He said he instructed to make a new entrance to the yeshiva through the wi- through the windows, he says. And he continues to write, Rebbe, when I came to the city, apparently he-- There's somebody came to the Rebbe, he

07:48 Speaker 1 was outside of Lubavitch at the time, and this is the agent came running and telling the Rebbe about it. He says, "When I came to the city at nine thirty, and I was able to see in detail everything that was happening. So I called, uh, the builder." There was like a carpenter or builder over there. His name was Yakov. "And I told him that immediately you should make a porch from the, um, uh-- You should make a, kind of a entranceway. Build large steps, uh, so they can go through the window, and they should open the window, and they should make three steps also inside." They had three steps going up to the window and three steps going down. And at three in the morning, people were already using the, uh, new entranceway through the, through the steps. Uh, on the seal of wax that the officer placed on the entrance, I put a metal cover over it, a, uh, tin, um, made out of tin on it, so that to not break the seal. And at seven in the morning, the yeshiva schedule started as usual already, he said. Uh, when my grandmother, the Rebbetzin Rivka, that's the wife of the Rebbe Maharash, when she went to daven and she saw the new steps that I have instructed to make, she got very scared. She was in a pain because she was worried maybe I did something against the law. Uh, so the next day, there is a announcement came from the, uh, uh,

09:36 Speaker 1 a telegram from the, um, captain of the police that he gives permission to open up the yeshiva again, miraculously. So it didn't stay closed for long, uh, but not only that, you know, it, it, um, it, um, it continued to, uh, to operate, and the next day it became really legal. Now, the yeshivah, the Yeshivat Tomchei Tmimim was very renowned because it produced some outstanding, uh, great scholars and also, uh, very, um, people of, uh, holy people, people that were, um, uh, working with themselves and elevated and reached a very, very high level. And it actually came to play in those days when they needed to have a lot of determination, a lot of, uh, self-sacrifice in order to just exist as a Jew, uh, and certainly to exist as a practicing Jew. That took a lot of, uh, strength, a lot of fortitude, a lot of inner strength. And, uh, there was all these kinds of distractions over there. And, um, it was evident later on when things got even worse at that time, and there was all this persecution, so that really, essentially, those who remained intact were able to continue living a Jewish life were those that were raised and have received their education in the yeshiva, in the Lubavitch, under the Rebbe's guidance. They stayed strong. I mean, it's, it's, it's unimaginable really, um, what would be today, like if you see all the activity in Russia today and Ukraine, all the former Soviet Union, um, which was, uh, basically going

11:30 Speaker 1 to totally disappear because, uh, the average Jewish person had really no chance of, uh, maintaining any Jewish life as under the, the Bolsheviks, under the communist regime. It was, uh, impossible. And you see how many Russian Jews who just, okay, they remember the grandmother or the father or somebody, but they themselves already had not practiced this. It was impossible. And then you have the group of Hasidim who were able to revive, and today the children, the offsprings of those students, the Chabad, the Shluchim, and they're all over the world. It's like It's hard to believe what would have been in a natural way if not for, for this intervention of the Rebbe and the Hasidists and everything else. So that these steadfast things, I mean, also it's hard to imagine today that the government doesn't allow you to do these things, you know, to learn and other things like that, but it's, it's something which is definitely, um, stood by us. Yeah, what were you saying?

12:36 Speaker 2 From a historical view, totalitaristic governments never survive. They tend to fall.

12:43 Speaker 1 Okay. But they, they would have fall, but the Jewish people would have also fallen together with them because they were there.

12:48 Speaker 2 Well, what I'm saying is that-

12:49 Speaker 1 How long were the communists in, in, in, in power?

12:51 Speaker 2 Nineteen seventeen.

12:53 Speaker 1 So there was like about-

12:54 Speaker 2 Two generations

12:55 Speaker 1 ... two generations.

12:55 Speaker 2 Three generations.

12:56 Speaker 1 That would be enough to cause irreversible damage-

13:00 Speaker 2 But yeah

13:00 Speaker 1 ... if not for-

13:01 Speaker 2 What was it? Nineteen eighty-nine. Eighty-nine. When, when it fell. So it lasts, the thing lasted two hundred, three hundred years to actually wipe out culture completely.

13:14 Speaker 1 Yeah. But, but, but like, you know, I know that today they're making all the kinds of studies in which it seems like if the direction isn't changed around, like where the Jewish people are heading now-

13:26 Speaker 2 The Pew study

13:27 Speaker 1 ... yeah, the Pew study and other studies, yeah. The, you know-- So if we don't reverse direction, uh, it seems like there's gonna be no Jewish people left then. But one way or the other, I mean, this was no different in, in that time in which it was totally, um, unpredictable that this is going to take place, the change around is gonna take place.

13:50 Speaker 2 Most of us, probably over half of the revolutionaries were Jewish. Were Jewish.

13:55 Speaker 1 Yeah.

13:55 Speaker 2 Karl Marx, eighteen eighty with his manifesto was Jewish. Yeah, but that, that was the manifesto. But the point, the thing what I'm trying to bring out is they were-- they didn't believe in religion. Right. They believed in the ethnic-ethnicity of being Jewish, but not the religious aspect of it, and they believed in a society just like, uh, in Israel in the books. They believed in a socialist society, and it doesn't work. Marxist system doesn't work.

14:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. But, yeah, no-

14:23 Speaker 2 So totalitaristic, you know, all the dictators of the world, it doesn't work. Even in China with, with, with communism, it's a capitalist society with a communist government. Yeah. So i-it can't work. They all, they all fall. The only one that survives is North Korea. Oh. Okay? But yet even in Cuba today is capitalism is sprouting out. And yet, you know, the very interesting thing, you know, Cuban Jews, they always a let-- always allowed rabbis to come in there- Yeah ... in the Jewish community. They wouldn't allow the rabbi to live in Cuba, but they could visit and bring food for Pesach, and they still maintain the Jewish cemetery, you know, because we have a relative buried there. And if you go online, the communist government lists the cemetery, the lot number, and the date of burial. So different communist governments, different governments allow things in different... But they, but it was like in the seventies, they started to open up a little bit because they needed the West for the food. Yeah. So the communism let some rabbis in a little bit, and they start adjusting because they knew they couldn't survive that way.

15:27 Speaker 1 The, the point that, well, I guess from what here is that I was, uh, saying is that it was those students of the yeshiva, we can see that they were imbued with that, uh, level of commitment that helped it, helped it survive all the... And that's why you have all these fall of all these different nations and the fall of all the different cultures. And notwithstanding today too, you know, the, the, the, the religious peoples are, are perceived anyways or are really, uh, persecuted. They-- some of them perceive that even in Israel they're being persecuted, they're being singled out and, uh, and for, for, uh, various different, you know, that's not a whole different thing. But-

16:06 Speaker 2 There's no natural reason

16:07 Speaker 1 ... but the, but-

16:08 Speaker 2 Well, they have this one particular reason over there. Two particular reasons

16:11 Speaker 1 ... well, there's reasons, but I'm saying-

16:12 Speaker 2 But not all groups.

16:13 Speaker 1 Yeah. But the point that what I'm saying is that it took, uh, that perseverance of the Lubavitch yeshivas, and you see, Hashem is-- finds a way for the Torah to, uh, Torah Judaism, notwithstanding whether the-- it's outside or the inside, whether it's the Bolsheviks, whether it's the Jews, whether it's from your own, uh, brother, somehow Hashem gives us the strength to be able to continue till Mashiach will come and take us out of Galut.