12 Menachem Av - Marriage of Atler Rebbe and purchase of י"ב מנחם אב נישואי כ"ק אדה"ז ויום שקנו בנין 770

00:00 Speaker 1 The twelfth day of, of in Yom Chabad, in the days of Chabad. Uh, we're gonna talk about two things, about the wedding of the Alter Rebbe, and also about the purchasing of the building of Seven Seven Eastern Parkway. They both took place on this day. Um, so first we'll, we'll talk a little bit about the Alter Rebbe's marriage. Now, the Alter Rebbe, as you know, is the founder of the Chabad movement. Uh, he's the one that, uh, wrote the Shulchan Aruch that we study. He's the one that wrote the Tanya. Um, he was a, um, you know, a very special, uh, soul. Not only, not only was he a brilliant in th- in this world, but by tradition, he also had a, a, a, a brand-new soul, which is something very unique. Uh, it only happens in the... Um, in these days it happens very rarely. Um, you know, generally, traditionally, we have-- there's like six hundred thousand souls, and like each soul later on gets sort of broken up and fragmented into many other souls. That's why we have more than six hundred thousand people, because our souls are just merely a fragment of a fragment of some fragment of some soul. So we, we don't have a brand-new soul in and of itself. A lot of times these souls that have come down are reincarnation. This is all in the Kabbalah. They're reincarnation from souls that were in previous generations. So for a new soul to come down, like totally new, never been

01:37 Speaker 1 down, that's like a very unique experience. It doesn't really happen in nowadays much. But the Alter Rebbe was one of these people who had a brand-new, uh, soul. Now, the Alter Rebbe, at a very young age, was already an outstanding scholar. He was an outstanding, uh... With his knowledge, he was, uh, known as a genius and, uh, young scholar. And when the Alter Rebbe became time, when he was fifteen years old, in those days, people would marry at an early age, um, and at the age of fifteen, um, he was already time for him to get married. And people already knew about the Alter Rebbe that he was a, a, a genius, that he was a brilliant man. And, uh, there was one of the, uh, big balabat, meaning the, the wealthy people. His name was Reb Yehuda Leib Segal. Uh, he was one of the great-- the people of Vitebsk. Consider Vitebsk. Um, he took the-- as his, uh, chassan, uh, to engage to his daughter. I mean, most of the marriages were arranged then. You know, we'd see a, a nice, uh, yeshiva bokher, or in this case, he was an outstanding, uh, student and, uh, he was a, a, a, a wealthy man, so he, he took the Alter Rebbe. And now, originally the wedding was set, uh, for the month of Elul in the year Taf kuf yud tes. Uh, that would place this, um, some two hundred and fifty years ago, that, approximately. Uh, okay. Um, um, and, um, and--

03:22 Speaker 1 But the-- his father, Reb Baruch, which was the father of Reb Schneur Zalman, he, uh, left, uh, from his home in the beginning of the month of Elul, so they had to push off the wedding. And, you know, they were sort of trying to the, um, decide when the wedding should take place. Uh, the, the mechutan wanted to make it in-- on the, on the winter month in the next year. But anyways, it turns out that they scheduled the, uh, chassanah for the twelfth day of Menachem Av. That's the-- That's when they sched-scheduled the chassanah. Um, now, in those days, um, not so much common today, or in some communities maybe it's still common, uh, the father-in-law would give a dowry for, uh, the new son-in-law. Uh, one of the, um, one of the, uh, conditions of the-- when the marriage took place was that he, he was a wealthy man and that he was going to give five, uh, thousand, uh, golden, uh, um, I guess, uh, money, um, five thousand shekels. Five thou-- uh, five thousand shekels, golden shekels that were promised. Now, the Alter Rebbe said... You can imagine that was a large, large amount of money, a large sum of money. But the Alter Rebbe conditioned that he should be allowed to do with the money as he pleases. So there should be no restrictions on that money, that he should be able to handle it as he wants. And as soon as the Alter Rebbe got married, um, together with

05:04 Speaker 1 the consent of his wife, uh, her name was Sterner, Rebbetzin Sterner, that was the wife of the Rebbe. So together with her, uh, agreement, they gave the money, the entire money to families that wanted to settle as farmers, basically to work the land. Um, he helped them buy property, uh, land. He helped them buy, you know, the livestock that they needed, the tools for working the land. And many Jewish settlements of farmers have established through that money that the Alter Rebbe gave them. Uh, Alter Rebbe in-- This is all along the river, the Dvina, the, the, the, the Dvina River. It's near Vitebsk. Um, that crosses the city of Vitebsk. I'm not sure what they call the river today, but it's in the city of Vitebsk and- Huh? It's called River Dnieper, correct? Yeah. It's Russian, Ukrainian- Dnieper ... uh, Galise, is it? Huh? Dnieper. Dnieper, Dnieper. Yeah. Dnieper, that's what it's called today too. Dnieper River. Yeah, the Dnieper River, that crosses im- I guess in the city of Vitebsk. No. And, um, the Alter Rebbe would visit these, um, these settlements regularly, and he would have-- tell the-- to-- he encouraged them to study Torah, and he would teach them from the Torah. So these were simple folks. I mean, they were settled over there. But it helped them. Eventually, it helped them for their parnasah, you know, for their livelihood and for-- they, they needed, you know. So this was-- I mean, if you think about it, it was a amazing thing

06:45 Speaker 1 of a young man taking all that money that he got as his nafen, and he gave it away for tzedakah really to help people, uh, settle and, uh, help them in such a special way. Uh, he gave it all away, uh, to these people. Um, now his wife... Yeah, sorry. What you wanna say? No, didn't he also have to-- want people in trades at besides just farming? In that, in that ca- in tho- those years, the farming was the, the- Was the trade ... was the trade, and that was the- Okay ... I guess that was the, uh, source of parnasah for people to have their livelihood, was being farmers. That sort of guaranteed something, you know, tangible. I mean, the Jews were not welcome in a lot of different areas, you know, in those days. Were they able to buy land back then? Uh, but in that-- uh, apparently they were able to do that. I mean- Yeah ... this is talking about, you know, the tsar we're talking about then. I'm sure, yeah. Yeah, I know. Was it Alexander who won that day? Yeah. I'm not sure exactly who was then. Yeah. Alexander I. Um- I'm not sure. All right. So anyways, his wife, uh, the Sterner, she was a very special woman too, modest and, and she was, uh, very wise, a wise woman. And, uh, many times, you know, she would have sayings that they would be, uh-- people would, uh, later on, uh, listen to. Um, Alter Rebbe honored her

08:02 Speaker 1 a lot. He gave her a lot of respect, and she was very dedicated to the Rebbe. After the Alter Rebbe passed away, so she, uh, went together with her son. We mentioned the other day that they settled in the city of Lubavitch. The Alter Rebbe was in-- the two in Liadny and Liadi. But then the Mitteler Rebbe went to the city of Lubavitch. That's where they came to Lubavitch. And she would live in the apartment together with her grandson in Samach Tzedek. That was her place to live in. Um, it's, it's told that sometimes, uh, she was, uh-- had a complaint to her son. She was, uh-- the Mitteler Rebbe, he was the Rebbe. And she says, uh, "You think that you have spirituality." She says, "I can tell you about spirituality, uh, more than you because I lived with your father," she says, "for fifty years." She says. And, um, she says, "I can even accept, you know, a, a pan is when the Hasidim write to the Rebbe, uh, uh, uh, a special note which is called a pan. It's called a Pidyon HaNefesh, a redemption of the soul. It's a, a special kind of a, um, of a letter, of a note in which, you know, you write to your Rebbe for, uh, help, uh, prayer and help in your spiritual stat or even for physical things. So she says that she can do it as well. That was the, um, that was the story with the Alter Rebbe. So his wedding

09:29 Speaker 1 took place on the twelfth day of Menachem Av. Now, many turn, uh, clock ahead. Uh, this was, uh, actually in Tishrin, which is, uh, 1940. Uh, now the previous Rebbe came to this country, and, um, and the previous Rebbe, uh, basically his slogan, what he-- was that he came to s- to tell the world that America is no different. Which means, you know, people told, uh-- everybody was used to the idea that America, you know, a lot of people came from overseas. They kept Shabbos. They kept kosher. They did all the things. But they came to America, the land of opportunity. Over here you don't have to do anything. And, uh, people, um, a lot of people didn't have choices. They thought they didn't have choices. I mean, if they wanted a job, you had to work Shabbos. If they wanted to, uh, to eat. You know, it was just very, uh, very, very difficult time. And people would normally say that, "Well, it's a different story in the old country. America is different." And the Rebbe's slogan was, "America is nisht anders," meaning America is no different. In other words, the same God, the same Torah, same Yiddishkeit is in this place. So, um, and you know, it was an uphill battle. Nobody would even, uh, expect, you know, anything to really, uh, take place. Uh, it was, like, impossible. At some point, people were telling the Rebbe, friends of the Rebbe, "Rebbe, we don't want you to be disappointed. We, we, we, we

11:03 Speaker 1 really are with you. We feel for you and, you know, but we want to tell you some realities that you're not aware of." And the Rebbe later on writes in his diary how much he cried, you know, with these people coming to warn him that he will not succeed, that he's doomed for failure. This is never going to happen in this country. And the Rebbe, of course, said, "No, it is going to happen, and it's gonna happen big." So the Rebbe, initially when he came, he stayed in, in, in a, uh, hotel, actually. It was temporary. It was in a Greystone Hotel that was on Broadway and 91st Street. But that was like a temporary, um, a temporary place. And, uh, he came here in, uh, that's Adar, the ninth day of Adar. So this was already before Pesach. And it was several months, and the people put in a lot of effort, uh, and they went and they purchased, uh, the building on 770 Eastern Parkway. But it's interesting that they say that this is gonna be a building that is going to be able to hold- And serve all the needs of the community, uh, for the Rebbe, and it has enough rooms and enough place, uh, to breathe. But, uh, as you know, this didn't really suffice for very long. I mean, uh, it's been renovated and bought, and buildings around it have been bought and bought, and they enlarged it again and again and again to hold the crowd, you know,

12:37 Speaker 1 that has joined, you know, many, many times, you know, several, uh, um, several, several places. Um, but actually, at the middle of the month of, uh, Menachem Av, uh, uh, the Rebbe came to, uh, you know, see the house they purchased on the twelfth day of Av. They purchased it, and they davened over there, and he gave a special blessing that Hashem should help, that this should be a permanent house for study of Torah, for service of Hashem, and also be a, a... It should be permanent in the soul, but only temporary because hoping Mashiach will come and we'll be in Israel, so we don't have to be here, uh, permanently. Now, you know that the, the building is called seven seventy. Um, you know, if you ask anybody, they tell you seven seventy. Where is seven seventy? Seven seventy Eastern Parkway. That's the, um, the Beis Rabbeinu Shel Bavel. That's the house of our teacher in, in, in, in the Babylonia, which means outside of Eretz Yisrael. In the temporary time, it's, it's over there. It's in, it's in, uh... And there's a tradition actually that the shuls all over the diaspora, uh, will actually be-- It says that the, um, shuls will actually be flown to Israel when Mashiach comes.

14:02 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

14:03 Speaker 1 Yeah. No, they'll fly themselves. They won't need. Actually, the clouds will fly with the clouds.

14:07 Speaker 2 Oh, okay. Oh, all right.

14:08 Speaker 1 We won't need it. You know, the Talmud says, you know. So, so all these shuls, the, uh, holy places, and that's why it's so important in addition to everything else, um, not to, uh, make sure like houses of worship are not sold to other places because, uh-

14:26 Speaker 2 But it's done all over the world

14:28 Speaker 1 ... it's done. That's a, that's a big shame. The Rebbe fought-- The Rebbe, the Rebbe fought it very much against it.

14:33 Speaker 2 But it happened in New York too.

14:34 Speaker 1 Yeah, it happened. Yeah.

14:37 Speaker 2 It happened here, yeah.

14:37 Speaker 1 But it's a very big-- It's a shame.

14:39 Speaker 2 But can't... You can move the shul from one place to another, can you?

14:43 Speaker 1 Well, uh-

14:44 Speaker 2 You don't have to sell the property

14:44 Speaker 1 ... there is, there... Yeah, you're not supposed to really sell the property. There's something about the walls and the building and the mortar and the cement of that particular place where you-- which absorbed so many-

14:56 Speaker 2 Even though it wasn't-

14:56 Speaker 1 ... so many prayers and so many-

14:59 Speaker 2 Okay.

14:59 Speaker 1 E-even the physical structure. I mean, there are certain conditions, but generally speaking, uh, one should be very, very careful, and under most circumstances, one shouldn't. I mean, there are exceptional circumstances. You know, if your life is in danger, there are certain times you're allowed to sell a shul for various different things. The only reason to really, uh, do it is to sell it is to make it bigger and better. But of course, we know that when neighborhoods went bad, and there's nobody using it over there, and they wanted to change it. So you have to, uh, evaluate each situation. It's not across the board. But just to say, suffice to say that the Rebbe fought very strongly against, uh, having buildings, uh, sold, especially shuls, sold to, to non-Jews or to certainly to other religions, which, you know, takes away from the, uh, fact, the holiness that this place was used for a sanctuary, and it's called a Mikdash Me'at. But, um, the, uh, seven seventy, uh, the number seven seventy also has some significance in various different ways. But one of the things is that the motto of Chabad was Uferatzta. Uferatzta is an, is a word in the Bible, in the Torah, where it says that you shall burst out. This was the blessing that Hashem gave, that you shall burst out, uh, to the east and to the west, expand, blessing him that he's going to be successful. So one of the mottos of Chabad has also been Uferatzta to, not to

16:32 Speaker 1 stay within your corners, but to spread out all over the world and everywhere. So the numerical value of the word Uferatzta, which is, well, equals seven hundred and seventy. So that was, uh, sort of the-

16:45 Speaker 2 No coincidence.

16:46 Speaker 1 No coincidence. Yeah, the number was, uh, and that happened. And, uh, we can only imagine how much good came out of that, of that room and that building, how much holiness, how much prayers, how much help, how much salvation, how much Yiddishkeit, how much Torah all over the world came out from that small room, from the-

17:08 Speaker 2 Yes

17:08 Speaker 1 ... from the Rebbe's rooms and the previous Rebbe room. It used to be, uh, a doctor's actually before the Rebbe.

17:14 Speaker 2 Yeah, one of the great doctors.

17:14 Speaker 1 It used to be a... Yeah. You know that story?

17:17 Speaker 2 I know about that story.

17:18 Speaker 1 Okay. So but eventually-

17:20 Speaker 2 Abortion

17:20 Speaker 1 ... an abortion over there, I guess.

17:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

17:21 Speaker 1 It was an abortion clinic.

17:22 Speaker 2 Right.

17:23 Speaker 1 But-

17:23 Speaker 2 Well, yeah.

17:24 Speaker 1 So that was another mitzvah, I guess.

17:25 Speaker 2 Wasn't it the Rebbe had a problem, but he was paralyzed or something?

17:28 Speaker 1 Yes. He used the elevator.

17:29 Speaker 2 So they had to buy the building with an elevator in it.

17:31 Speaker 1 The elevator, yeah.

17:31 Speaker 2 Am I right? Yeah.

17:32 Speaker 1 He suffered. He wasn't-- I mean, he, he passed away relatively at the age of seventy, but he was already a broken man because he suffered a lot, um, uh, from the imprisonment and, and, uh, took a lot of abuse, uh, from various stages in his life and, um... But yet he was unmoved. He couldn't-- His determination and his, his holiness and his leadership and his continuous push, and it's unbelievable. Like, yeshivas like in, in Boston and Worcester, Springfield, they were all established by the previous Rebbe.

18:11 Speaker 2 Previous Rebbe.

18:11 Speaker 1 Yeah.

18:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:12 Speaker 1 Uh, he sent, he sent people. But-- And it wasn't like today Uh, that there were so many Hasidim. I mean, there was very, very few, and like I said before, people didn't relate to this old kind of thinking. You know, today there's a whole new generation. You know, you see people running around with tzitzits, with yarmulkes all over. This is already pretty normal today. But in those days, this wasn't the case. You know, you had to convince parents to send the kid from public school to send them to yeshiva. And you know, there was no-- of course there was no big monies over there involved. You couldn't charge much for tuition because if you charged tuition they wouldn't send you the kids. And so they would take them in for free and then have to find money to pay their teachers, to pay the buildings and, and this was all orchestrated by the-- started by the previous Rebbe and then later on, uh, the Rebbe expanded this, you know, so much more and on a global way, the way we're seeing today. Uh, what? Sorry, what did you say?

19:11 Speaker 2 That he was a marketing genius. You did. You did. You have to.

19:15 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah, that you're talking about the marketing genius here. But I think, I think that the truth mark-- to a certain extent markets itself, unlike the conventional ways of thinking. Well, the conventional way of thinking of marketing, I think, again, is to manipulate people's minds. And you try to tell the person that this is what you need, and then they're gonna spend the money, and then they're gonna go and buy into what you're doing. But it's-- you're not necessarily, uh, genuine. But the Torah that he was selling, he was selling them the same old. He was selling-- the goods were there from the beginning. But rather than calling it a genius of marketing, I think that it was more a leadership and of a recognition of the people ar-around him, of his great leadership and holiness and just the combination of the truth. And the-- it was-- there was no-- I've heard people say he didn't have, as you would think, a, a plan, a business plan or a-

20:24 Speaker 2 Nobody planned

20:24 Speaker 1 ... a marketing plan that he was gonna go after these people, this is what he's gonna do it. No, no, no. It didn't, it didn't work that way. It was really from the heart to the heart, but it was ingenious ideas of extending himself to people that brought the people in, that the people could relate to, that people felt comfortable with, that people can... It-- He, he, he, he sort of brought it to the people at their level versus, uh, keeping it apart. People can connect to it. You know, sometimes people are detached and not, and not connected. And it was... Where was it? Dorchester.

20:59 Speaker 2 It was not on Seaver Street. That was-

21:00 Speaker 1 Where was it? That was later on.

21:02 Speaker 2 That was the second place.

21:03 Speaker 1 Where was it?

21:03 Speaker 2 The first place was the corner of Columbia Road and Washington Street, which then they built the Stop & Shop on. You know where the Brooke High School is?

21:13 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

21:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, it was right next door. It was a big house that they stopped the shop on all the land. And I don't know if they owned the building or not, and then they moved to Seaver Street.

21:23 Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, wow.

21:24 Speaker 2 That's all.

21:24 Speaker 1 So but anyway, so that all comes, that all comes from seven seventy, uh, East Department. That purchased the building. So when we talk today and we say that the twelfth day of Av is a special day in the history of Chabad, it is a special day because at that time we didn't know, maybe the Rebbe knew, but we didn't know, we didn't realize what that building is gonna serve and how much Torah, how much holiness is gonna come from there. We know now, but that's, uh, doesn't-- okay.