24 of Shvat - In 5648 2/6/1888 Yahrtzeit of Rebbitzin Menucha Rochel Slonim

00:00 Speaker 1 Uh, we'll do the Yemei Chabad for the twenty-fourth day of Shevat. This is in the year taf reish mem Ches, that is six hundred and forty-eight. That's the passing- What date? February sixth, nineteen eighty-eight. Eighteen eighty-eight. In eighteen eighty-eight. Yeah, in eighteen eighty-eight. So that was the passing of the righteous Rebbetzin, Menuchah Rochel Slonim. She was the daughter, as we have learned many times, of the Mitteler Rebbe, M- one of the Mitteler Rebbe's daughters. Um, so, um, and when we know that she moved, uh, to Eretz Yisrael, she moved to Israel and, uh, together with her family, um, and that was the Slonim family, uh, Yaakov Chulid Slonim, um, in, uh, in the year taf reish he, and she settled in the city of Hebron, and basically they founded the Chabad community, uh, in the city of Hebron. And the, uh, Rebbetzin Menuchah Rochel is-- has a very close and tight connection to the renewal of the Jewish community, the settlement of the Jews back in Eretz Yisrael. And they call her, uh, lovingly, they call her the Baba Menuchah Rochel. Bab- Baba means the grandmother, the mo- grandmother Menuchah Rochel. Um, and, uh, that's the way she was called by all the, uh, residents of Hebron. And, um, they treated her as-- very respectfully as a very righteous woman, being a daughter of the Mitteler Rebbe, but they treated her as a tzadekes. And her husband was Chabad also. Yeah. But, um, I guess she had a lineage. I mean, she came- Right ...from

01:54 Speaker 1 the Rebbe and a granddaughter of the Alter Rebbe, daughter from the Mitteler Rebbe. And, uh, people would come and, uh, get blessings from her. Um, there are many, uh, stories, tales about mir- miracles that she performed, um, that the Rebbetzin Menuchah Rochel. Um, it is told that every bride on the day of the wedding would first visit in the Maaras HaMachpela, the cave where the matriarchs and patriarchs are buried, and then they would come to the Rebbetzin Menuchah Rochel and ask her blessing. And women that were sick or had a hard time giving birth, um, they would turn to the Rebbetzin Menuchah Rochel that she should pray for them. Uh, close before she passed away, she wrote a letter to the Rebbe Rashab. Now, um, the Rebbe Rashab was a, a grandson of the Tzemach Tzedek. Uh, the Tzemach Tzedek, um, was married to her sister, to the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka. Menuchah Rochel's sister was, was married to the Tzemach Tzedek, who was another daughter of the Mitteler Rebbe that was the wife of the Tzemach Tzedek. And the Rebbe Rashab was a, a grandson. The Rebbe Maharash was the Tzemach Tzedek's son, and then the Rebbe Rashab was his son. So the Rebbe Rashab was a grandson of her, um, of her brother-- of her, of her, of her sister. You know, that was her sister's grandson, that was the Rebbe Rashab. So she wrote him a letter, and she gave one of her grandchildren the letter, and she asked him to go ahead

03:45 Speaker 1 and send it in the mail, and she warned him not to open up the letter, that she should not read the, the, the-- not read the letter. But the, um... So the grandchild understood there must be something, uh, very important in the letter because she's telling him not to open it. So he went, and he brought, uh, the letter to his father, um, Reb Yehuda Leib, who was the oldest son of Menuchah Rochel. So that was-- he brought to his father, Yehuda Leib. The grandson brought it to his father, uh, the son of this Menuchah Rochel. And I don't know why, but he opened up the letter. So I'm not here to, uh, see exactly. She told him not to, and he did, but he opened up the letter. And not only he opened the letter, they're telling us some of the contents of the letter. Figure it out. But in the, uh, in the letter, the Rebbetzin writes to the Rebbe Rashab that this is the last letter she's writing to him. And, uh, that is actually what ha- what happened, that, um, short time afterwards, she passed away. Now, I'm not sure. From here, it sounds like she-- maybe she would regularly write to the Rebbe Rashab. Um, the Rebbe Rashab eventually took over the, uh, leadership of Chabad, and she was in Eretz Yisrael, maybe the representative of Chabad. The Al-- the Rebbe Rashab, we also learned, sent students to study in Hebron. Uh, they had to go back. That was before

05:22 Speaker 1 the First World War I. Uh, World War I broke out. They had to go back home. There was-- didn't last for that long, but the Rebbe Rashab sent... I'm not sure whether she was around at that time or she wasn't around. No, no, no. She wasn't. Oh, she wasn't around then. No, that was nineteen fourteen. Okay. So this was okay. So she was-- No, this was before. But apparently-- but she was in communications with the Rebbe Rashab, and she said that would be the last letter, and so it was. It is related as far as her, uh, passing that during the last moments before passing, she was-- her mind was totally clear, and, uh, at the time, next to her bed was sitting, uh- Or have Ephraim. Uh, Ephraim who was one of the, uh, great rabbis of Hebron. He was, uh, the rabbi in Hebron. And the rav, the rav felt that this was her last moments. He wanted to go outside to call a minyan that they should be there at the time of when the soul leaves. It's important to have a minyan over there. And the Rabbi Tzvi Menuchah Rockhill, um, hinted him that he should not leave because he won't have time to get a minyan. He won't-- that he's not gonna have enough time. He says, "My fathers are with me over here now," which means she was referring to her Mit-Mitler Rebbe and the Alter Rebbe. And immediately she, she passed away. Um, the soul left her with,

06:54 Speaker 1 with holiness and purity. During, uh, uh, at the, um, uh, funeral, there were participation. All the Jewish people of Hebron. It was a, a tight-knit community, but there was Ashkenazim, and there was Sephardim over there. Uh, without exception, everybody respected, respected the Rabbi Tzvi Menuchah Rockhill, the Baba Menuchah Rockhill. And all the children of the city went in front of the bed as they were having candles in their hands and, uh, singing, uh, ps-Psalms, pieces, uh, verses of Psalms. And she was buried in a cave that was, um, dug out, uh, from stone, in, in, in stone. And, uh, on top of the cave, they built a, um, a cover, an oil of stones. And, um, that was in Hebron. When you go and... Unfortunately, they had the pogrom later on in Hebron in which, um, they devastated the, the entire Ch-Ch-Jewish community in Hebron. And, uh, uh, we read about it elsewhere. Um, and that was, um, um, for a while until now, the community was almost non-existent over there. And after, um, the Six-Day War, um, they renewed the settlement and, um, it's still kind of dangerous to go where, um, where she's bur-where she's buried because the Arabs are all there, and they're all, uh, ready to kill. And they've killed, you know, many, uh... You know, they have the song Shalhevet. You know, they've killed many soldiers and many, uh, just settlers that live there. You know, they have Kiryat Arba not too far from there. That's, um... But this is

08:49 Speaker 1 right in this section, right where the, uh, Arabs are and the-

08:54 Speaker 2 So where's, where's Chabad now in Israel? I mean, all-- I mean, they must have a central area versus the whole country.

09:00 Speaker 1 Where is Chabad now today, you mean?

09:02 Speaker 2 Yeah.

09:02 Speaker 1 Where did they-- Where their main, main-

09:03 Speaker 2 Yeah

09:03 Speaker 1 ... main station? Okay. So originally after the, um, after the war, after the Second War, after Israel was founded, uh, they, they built in the-- It was a, it was, it's, it's Safaria. That was near, near Tel Aviv. The, the Ben Gurion Airport, there's a section. That, that was the main. That was known as the Kfar Chabad. That became the village of Chabad. That was the, uh, main area where the, all the immigrants, the people from Russia, the people from other places came. But that, that was only in the beginning. From there, it, it developed, um, in, in, in, in, in, in very large community. So there was a, uh... When there was the, um, time when everybody from, uh, Russia again was allowed to leave, and there was a lot of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel, the Rebbe founded then a, uh, community called Nachlas Har Chabad. That's in Kiryat Malachi. That's in south of, um, south of Israel.

10:04 Speaker 2 Okay.

10:05 Speaker 1 Or, uh, uh, as a... Then, uh, Jerusalem was always developed big. It's a fact. It developed very big and, uh, I'm just mentioning a few names, but, uh, all the other cities, you know, there is a lot in, in, in every, you know, in Holon and in, in Ramat Ga-- Every, every and every, every, every, every little-- Basically every city has-

10:25 Speaker 2 Do any of her descendants are active?

10:29 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, actually that's a very good thing. You know, they do have what they call Tzetzo'im. Those are descendants actually. The name Tzetzo'im means descendants, uh, of the Alter Rebbe's family, and a lot of them are from the Rabbi Tzvi Menuchah Rockhill. And they do have a get-together, uh, like, uh, once a year, and they have publishings, and they have... It, it, it, it's stretched out to various different Rebbes and different groups and different ways. But they have today trees of, of, of, of, of all the different ancestry and how they all come together back to the Alter Rebbe, back to the Alter Rebbe. And, yeah, they're-- a lot of them are active, and a lot of them are... There's actually Slonim today families, large families which even carry the name Slonim. But besides that, there is a, a, a, a large, uh, number of people that are part of that family, and they call themselves Tzetzo'im. They make a get-together and they publish. They-- I, I think, I'm not sure exactly, but, uh, they, they, they-- how often they publish it, but they publish, uh, all the trees of all the different, uh, families, how they fit together. But that's, that's the, uh, it's a very, um, prestigious thing to be-

11:46 Speaker 2 Kind of-

11:46 Speaker 1 ... part of that, uh, you know, part of the-

11:49 Speaker 2 Royal-

11:49 Speaker 1 ... royal... Yeah, part of the royal family, you know. And then, you know, by the end of the day, you know, somebody once said that lineage is like zeros. Now, a zero is nothing, but, uh, if you put a one in front of the zeros, then as many zeros you have, that increases the value. So they say if you're a mensch, if you're a one, if you're somebody, then all your lineage is worth, is... But if you are a zero, which means you're not a mensch, so then all these are just a bunch of zeros. It doesn't mean anything. So you need to be able to build on the special... When people come from good stock, sort of from good lineage, that obligates them. It's not something just to brag about or to, uh, you know, try to show yourself off to other people. But good lineage means that there's more expectation from you.

12:45 Speaker 2 Right.

12:45 Speaker 1 And that you have some, uh, Yiddishkeit. In Torah, we always knew that, uh, privileges comes with responsibilities. So, you know, it doesn't mean that you're just privileged, uh, and you have something, but it, it means that you gotta do a little more. You have a little-- You have more, uh, potential, and that's, that's what should be utilized. Okay