Meaningful Interviews: Rabbi Meir Plotkin #1

welcome everyone to meaningful interviews i'm here today with rabbi mayor plotkin who i met over the phone i must say not in person until today and the mayor is known in the lobovich world in the chabad world uh for his for himself and his work and his uh connection to the rebel siddhim as well through his father-in-law rabbi hendell oliver shalom who was the chief rabbi of montreal and the tremendous talmud many of my rabbi and my teachers in the shiver at my bucket um we're part of robbie handel's group and friends so i know about him and uh robert garlitsky i interviewed when it was probably about 90 and told me also so rabbi flatkin is a son-in-law of uh rabbi handel and today we're going to talk a little bit about his uh background his family and his youth years growing up and we'll go from there so the mayor i'd like to ask you to begin with your background your your parents grandparents do they come from galicia from hungary from russia from poland and uh then tell us how you grew up and where you grew up and the culture the environment in which you grew up please okay i was born in montreal canada and my parents both of them came from russia they were born there and of course they left russia like everybody left russia in those years my father came to montreal in 1904 which is uh how much 118 years ago he was two years old and my mother became she was already a teenager when she came from russia then ukraine and russia was all one thing not like today and the reason why they came because they gave it there was programs the jews were getting killed literally and the government was doing nothing not only that they were instigated they were happy with it and there's a lot of in khabad there's a lot of stories that's printed from the rabbits how the representation those times going back 100 years 150 years how much they worked for a cloud for the community to stop all these murderous things that would come into kazak would come into a title and literally to burn down any the houses were all from wood because of russia there's a lot of wood and it's free so they were making houses and they burnt it down and they stole whatever they wanted or people didn't they didn't like somebody they just killed them and there was nothing to go through the police state the police were happy the government was also happy it was an anti-semitic government so just got tired of it because sooner or later what's used to raising a family when god forbid one other side that's nothing's going to happen so that's the reason why during the during the 20th century in the 1900s starting in the late 1800s too jews started coming to north america to all different kind of places and one of them was to montreal to canada the main reason was that they can be able to live like jews in in in safety yeah that's the reason why they came to montreal now were they were they were they from a hasidic background [ __ ] background your your parents okay am i the background they will not see them uh and my father says he doesn't remember from russia he doesn't remember anything but it happens to be that he came from a staple that uh dalton made a famous wedding in a straightforward called zlobin and that remained uh seriously state goal for oh for for hundreds of years so the schneider was no my my isaiah was not what as far as i know i hardly i hadn't even met him uh that i don't think he was a chosen uh became if he lived in his lobby so surely he knew what how bad is but there was nothing there was nothing in our family about khabar same thing my mother my mother remembers she wasn't young she came from a state or that was called you shall i am after ukraine which is kimber choke and she remembers the love she's bishop i don't know if she knew her personally she was a girl actually you know she remembers who was a very famous lebanese and then i built a shop i think it was by the mirage too uh was the love from kim mcshook and then there was the famous uh with the probably one of the richest most powerful families in the whole russia the garage family they had the largest tobacco factory the whole russia and they were very powerful and they were big the whole family would be sitting for the shop she remembers that they existed if she had a contact with them no basically my family do not have any direct contact with shabbat now a step further and here is something that if you read the his uh autophagy what he spoke and what he wrote and it's printed how life was he came to america 1940. how it wasn't that time especially if it was 20 years before it didn't get better but that's how it was in a nutshell the vast vast majority of all the jews who came from russia most of them came from russia ukraine there was some from poland too because poland was also always a roman catholic uh country and they were also very very very strongly anti-semitic it because they hated the jews nothing to do with religion they just hated jews so the problem was that coming to the united states coming to north america there was a sixth day working in other words there wasn't like today a weekend which is shabbos and sunday it was the sixth day the day off was on sunday and you had to work on sunday now an immigrant coming from europe who literally but english was not his language they all spoke year dish because nothing to do with religion they spoke yiddish because all the jews spoke yiddish and of course they had to speak around the language of the country to speak to to the non-jews either polish or russian and but english was not the language and it was called totally strange for them and they needed the jobs literally for livelihood and in the wilderness dreams they couldn't think of working on shabbos it was unheard of they never worked on childbirth sharpest habit in the nation shamans you don't work and you heard there's a famous story these stories are true they had they worked and then when it came in the winter time the short days the shabbos montreal shabbos begins lift pension at four o'clock and there's about two fish up awesome that it's about five ten to four it's already lift pension so when it came two o'clock in the afternoon they had to work till six o'clock from nine to six and he went to the bus and said i'm sorry i have to leave now at two o'clock because two o'clock you shot this and the and the boss was a jew who the shabbos was something in europe not in not north america so he gave him a p slip paid him what he owed him and told him not to come back next week it's a famous story it's not a famous not a it's not a fairy tale that's how the jews lived and he kept on fighting and fighting not to work on shabbos until eventually they have to work on shabbos this is the way i look at it suddenly has a different interpretation consumed to hate and uh and i know i know for a fact i remember when i was a kid that there were many on them for shop this seven o'clock in the morning they finished at night they made kiddish in the show i knew what show did it then it was a minion for nine o'clock for somebody for those so that was what their shot was and then they went to work i know people i heard about people who had to keep let's say they had to anyway they kept the store open and they wouldn't answer the phone and it was marvelous in the store and he didn't do normal office but it was his story and it belonged to him and they were all working he didn't want to work so he sat in the office i don't know what which is of course i'm not going to look at that's the whole basic doesn't have anything the point that i'm bringing out is that the shabbos you know when when the shoguna comes along and it says that somebody is the jews cannot accept that to work on shabbos they didn't want to work in shoppers they still kept our kosher kitchen they wouldn't buy a tray for freight many of them even made kosher to meet themselves because that's when he always did it certain things they kept but eventually they went away from yiddish right and that's the whole united states now if you look if you're looking in the united states you're looking at 1900 1910 and 1920 you won't find one ishiba in the whole north america from wherever you go zero not one then you'll find out that the famous she shivered which was forgettable he also eventually was a talmud there third of it opened up in the 1920s don't there wasn't like a [ __ ] with what way it was in the 1950s and the 1960s but uh there was no hidden for the children there was no favor why why are you saying all this because i want to say to the topic why are you saying this what excuse me why are you telling me about the shabbos and all this what was your point let's get back to the my point was that once they had to work on champions then yiddish guys went away right but what does it have to do with your parents and your grandparents well then so then to a certain degree when they got used to it that led them not they were so proud about it because they remember chubby this is the first generation but once they got work into working on champis so yiddish guys to a certain degree was to a certain degree but to a big degree was eliminated are you saying this happened to your family it happened to everybody they had to work in shoppers there was no shop as businesses opened there ah maybe one or two how the fact was a six day week and when you hire something according to love the government is a six day week that's dinner okay so so how did that impact you as a child in the chest oh how did it check me other child no i wasn't i'm not so old you know but in my times let's say in the 1950s it was a small kid yeah i montreal is not a small town i don't know how many jews that were dead but everybody know monkey always always had approximately a jewish population but a hundred thousand jews okay and then it to take it that's what it was it was ten thousand more ten thousand that doesn't change the picture right i know every religious but religious not uh not traditional every what let's call it shabbos family montreal i knew every single boy and girl you know why because there were so many people in the whole city right let me tell you exactly exactly what i mean this is going back before me there was a chief rabbi in montreal i i don't i think i saw him once with a long white beard i don't even remember him before my time and he was like he was without love i repeated the ropes his son the caller shot his professor delivered oil and no trucks econ it was the same thing that was the sun in my times there was a different one she named names are not important there was another okay he passed away didn't get made another one chief rabbi he had a son i remember him he was a professor in college macaulay shabbos but for us here i think that answers your question okay so being travis attackers are not to do a champions with very few in the whole city okay but what what happened with the children i understand okay my question is but how but you you were a young boy in the 1940s right so you did you were you shine a shabbos completely uh my house i i told it to it to extend go to my family so let's talk about my family okay uh my father my father worked for himself he had a successful business a big business it was a one-man show there's nobody working for him he used to sell new steel in other words there's a factory that makes i don't know what let's make hot water tanks or you need steel for if you still steal something that you need and builders factories who are building things over there we know they're still we're talking about you still we're not talking about junk junkies junkers junk scraps tuck him a new skill and he had a tailor and make it short and had a trailer not a closed trailer trip called tray wasn't good for him and he had these lift up machines and he would take tons and tons of steel it was a one-man show he had maybe wanted to go and work with him and he would they would put onto this trailer and he would deliver it to this factory wherever it was okay this 100 percent a hundred percent that's been again to his business sharpness it doesn't doesn't matter when if you want to hear stories i think i'll tell you one story my father was a white person never spoke about himself it wasn't a tourist scholar because there was nowhere to be a torah scholar to go with the teacher okay but uh i'll tell you one story and there was a i was learning in yeshiva in the barbie in montreal i was in the a late teenager let's say i was 18 19 i don't know something like that and uh maybe you're younger being older i was literally ready to bring spanish in the south of montreal i was the youngest one but soon gets it out eventually and uh there was then alabama went into business and he needed to buy i think his office supplies and a business was going with what closed up or went bankrupt and it was being auctioned off so he needed someone to go with him to the auction cell and he wanted to buy office supplies so he figured he didn't know who to ask he think the last might i should ask my father so i told my father about it i told him when the auction is he says impossible he doesn't have a minute free that day he can't go anyway i pressured him you have to realize that he's uh he's minor haber from the alabama church i mean much older than me got married he's opening up a business anyway because i told him you have to do it you have to put him on his feet so i but the saying is i hit him below the belt he says okay i'll go so he went there and he knew the auctioneer i didn't know about anything he went over to him probably he told me later and he told him listen to me i'm gonna bid for it it's not for me it's just someone else there's uh you have to help with this jewish guy he's going to business he has no money and when i make a bid we make one two three sold sam that was his distinguished name his jewish name his english name was sam anyway somebody asked yourself i didn't know about anything he also didn't know so somebody somebody wanted a bid for something they're gonna sell something which even at fifty dollars it's a snail cost hundreds of dollars nobody's spitting at it so minus my phone is censored i don't know five dollars ten dollars so this auctioneer says ten dollars over there for ten dollars you buy maybe one of the doors over there this is not a ten dollar item ten dollars it's quiet ten dollars one two they sold the sam this went on one for it once or twice or three times anyway a jewish guy later found that he was jewish alveston and a lot of non-jews there mostly non-jews he got up over there and he opened the mouth you're going ahead and you're selling stuff and you don't give time for anybody to buy what's so special about about sam just because he came in here with a skullcraft and and his sons we thought the other one was also a son are with beards in their black hats and we don't know if we wore black cuts then anyway and there and there so what but i'm also a jew i'm not the rest of jude and he is he's a jew and i'm a jew why are you so and auctioneer was also a jew why is so special for him my father didn't say a word he didn't move it didn't affect him altogether i looked at his jew as if the guy is nuts you know it was quiet all of a sudden under the clip was guy a french canadian stands up and he says you're the biggest hypocrite in two feet the non-jew was telling the jew you can't answer an unsure a jew boy he would answer but none and not you you're a hypocrite what do you mean you're a jew i don't work on sunday because our religion tells them that sunday is our savage and your sadness is saturday how do you keep your survivors yeah you're open for business kentucky he knew this guy yeah he opened for business by you saturday and monday it's tuesday the same thing well let me tell you a story about sam okay you have to realize this is it let's say 1960 somewhere around there he says remember there was a snowstorm in a certain day was on a friday yeah anyway all of a sudden it gets what early afternoon and sam comes to my place yeah what else but uh a trailer loaded up with steel yeah which is still is worth tens and tens of thousands of dollars you have to realize i tell i tell my kids they should know what a dollar was in those ears i was a bunch of new shiva so what did i know but i know that when you used to go in to the kosher bakery for 10 cents we got three cinnamon buns for 10 cents that means each one was three cents for 10 cents you got three collar rolls which it costs about i don't know 50 or 75 cents and dave you got it for three cents and here we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars when people worked up a whole week for about twenty thirty dollars you're talking probably today i don't know hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars open on a trailer left over by a french canadian he says i'm leaving the whole thing over because i'm not gonna get to my place and then get home and everything there was a snow in montreal then we had snow nothing you have in new york we had snow i'm never gonna make it i have to be home before four o'clock that day i'm leaving it by you and he left it by me i want to see you do that you worked on the sabbath and he was ready to to go ahead and to trust a non-jew and i'm a roman catholic and i'm proud of my religion you're a fake through and through it was so quiet there i don't know i was so quiet over there and later i asked my father who is this jewel up there will open the mouth of you nice this time we're going to shoot nothing my team is a big millionaire big stamina condition over there if you ask my question about how it was our house was to an extent i'll give you an example i'll give an example you should understand nothing to do with the barbecue nothing to do with khabar in the late in the late 40s somewhere around 1950 around there arabic came to montreal he didn't have a minion he didn't have two cents to himself he was a very special jew he died with us and he shivered every day sharpness because he didn't have us all millions he became famous as the torsion rabbit the torso and other sister-in-law lived we were neighbors we lived upstairs and they lived downstairs they just came they were important i remember she was very sick i was a kid i was a kid i was a small kid i remember but i wasn't a baby and i remember my mother used to give me says and yeah this [ __ ] we spoke in the house here there she said take this for soup it was a hot bowl of soup and bring it downstairs and i remember one day i brought up so i went i brought it down that really i would make you a flashy i would make you a meat soup which is much more smack more tasteful than this but it has to do with meat and i don't want to ensure that i'm trying to do something like like or something else yeah a week or two later my i remember i was a kid maybe i don't know 10 years old 8 years old a small kid yeah and and and she put i mentioned the house and the tasha she says i wanted to know that i spoke to my brother-in-law that i should have been so i should have said my mrs plumpkin there's some flesh by us in the house the worst cinematic stuff we did i never even saw such a thing to go ahead to buy a chicken for shabbos without okay they took away off the feathers we didn't take off the feathers yeah my mother she was busy the whole thursday i think she started her wednesday pranked for shabbos she had to open up the chicken and she taken all the kishkis over there and then and then my grandmother lived in the house and she was at sedacus that's a nice number of the whole city she wouldn't she never took a t she wouldn't put on a straight line she never took the tickle off her head never and she never put on a hat you don't like it lump it over there so she's i should when she had to open up the chicken chocolate i remember i was a small kid 10 years old eight years old and she was saying mama give a gig she would look at it she just looked at it so she said three things so garnish it's nothing she says it's strafe you have to go to the roof it's just kosher you have to go to a road so my mother would take this piece put it into her i don't there was no plastic bags i think she wrapped around the newspaper i don't remember and she told me i had to schlep it to the room that love happened to be a very kosher very often the biggest biggest rebounder for lubavitch his name is i'm not going to go with him i just tell you there was a special special special person over there and and i have to walk and i can't feel it it was cold it was windy with big snow anyway i wasn't so crazy but but i had to do it roast there won't be no chicken for shabbos okay and uh i would shrug it to him and i would tell them it was ready to say medicare what's the public deserves what did your bubble say so i would tell them what the father said you took a look she was always right she was always right she couldn't read everything she couldn't read from the center and she knew the senorena the whole santa randa by heart because i know they used to come at that house shop this in the afternoon i was a smart kid maybe six seven years old i remember them saying center around which most of the readers don't even know what it is i'll leave it throughout my dolphins to go in with senator and there is over there and my bubble would sit and listen and she used to correct them and yesterday and she would correct it and she couldn't read but this it was a different it was a different thing over there so i was raised in the house right i got it now now so you're raised in this very from house with everything you said what yeshiva did you go to from the age of six to twelve the baby yeshiva the montreal of babaji and then there was a shiva from the literature and i learned there and i'm going to say that was the only place 14 i left town i left montreal and but let me tell you something let me tell you something the achievements had no impact at me at all zero this shivers didn't have any impact on my complaint i think before we go into the shiva who are my friends who did i play with i didn't have i didn't have friends i couldn't have friends next door to me where we live i was unless i always get five years old i didn't even go to school i was a kid since i was raised i don't know five years old seriously six years old my mother told me assume i feel so so steep i wasn't allowed i played with them a whole day i mean when i wasn't in school you know why i had yeah yeah they weren't poor my father was my father was a businessman but hashem money was not black and nothing was spurred not that we live right we live like everybody else right but if i wanted well i had a bicycle not a verdict and i'm a bicycle some people even have food in their house but the point the point you're making is that your friends homes were not kosher from homes that's the point you're making right right one point further i have three friends okay three not three close friends and another two three not so close and then all these houses were 100 room exactly like my house wait stop stop were you part were you part of the let's say the lebavitch community they all got married no why not but i knew everyone i knew the boys i knew the families anywhere first of all the barbecue community was tiny who was the barbecue community here at that time there was a handful of them should be incredibly stated don't forget the russians came from the 50s later they didn't come in the 50 and the russians got how many russians came i'll tell you even more so in the 60s in the 60s i was already in 57 i was out of town already i left montreal i never came back i know that's where i came back a little barbecue but that goes later yeah but how big was the whole montreal family third i don't remember i once i was once with more than once by khabra we once said that one to everyone including those who were the barbershop king of barbecue those who came from vienna we'll go there were made we'll get right with a little bit more than 30 families when i was a kid there were six laboratory families okay but but one second but there were other from families in the neighborhood yeah yeah and i knew everyone to take it easy it wasn't a large take it easy it went a lot i'm talking about families that the kids were from right you don't have to repeat that i got that my point my question is like this so why do you say that you um you had you weren't impacted influenced by your yeshiva upbringing in montreal if you went to a from shiva as a boy yeah so the only thing that i got there the only thing i got there uh was there was no hadron they didn't have experience in being milanda and they didn't make us we should dive in better we should become better kids or i don't know it or influence us with anything and yes i learned i don't say no i learned from mission then i've done bashing and missionaries and then and all that things don't and started living the mother yeah i started learning these things okay but but but i didn't become a tomahawker i had a good head i wanted i had a good head uh i didn't become a tom mccorkam i now i look into it i didn't know about anything better so that that was it but to say that they put me on my feet no okay okay now stop now at what point did your did your father have a contact with with the uh shanghai talmudian that came to montreal uh a direct back contact and not really he knew them he knew them they the captain himself right okay okay so if you're talking about the baggage i i think we should leave over the the little ship because the living fisher at the beginning didn't even have didn't even have a proper school oh they didn't even have a poppy shipper and they started only later to starting at the lower grades they took college students in the afternoon the literature in the beginning was stop nothing it's a whole story about but it doesn't thought could i to go into it right my father your mother uh they came to him and probably probably came for some money which he gave them uh he was willing to help them and everything his childhood the hidden then had a childless in in other words there was a show my father was a russian my father comes from white russia and we mentioned before his lobby so right around the corner from us so he died the nursery show a few hundred feet away when there was polisher publisher younger light who came from citizen backgrounds in poland and they took up the building players on the boat coming and they called themselves the das that we're for the youngsters we're not from the old diesels of montreal we are going to remain through and when the night came to montreal that's before my time before i was even born in 1941 these took montreal-born boys and gave them over to to who came from at first fire ship with the whole city garb who couldn't speak a half the word of the english and that was didn't exist at all in montreal they never even saw such a thing in poland yeah but not in montreal and they gave it over but they started to shiver with a handful when i mean a handful i mean a handful of children and they built it up and later it was even even later so they took in kids from the into the sugar uh in which i'm talking about and they didn't they didn't press them for limit for tuition and if the kids were totally not religious from a non-religious family we mentioned before and the families didn't have extra money and the tuition was free they could have gone to a different place than tomato but they had to pay tuition okay so stop stop stop stop for a second please rather platform you may have one second now okay i i got an answer to the question i have another question so so um your father knew the the baptists they asked them for funds he helped them um he divined in russia uh the the but that didn't really uh have anything to do with you had nothing to do with you so your exposure answer my question yes or no your exposure to the bavitch and chabad was not a 12 and not a 13 and not a 14. is that correct right i didn't have okay so now now you your father sends you i guess to turn overdose in new york and that was when in 1957 1957 the end of 56 57 let's say 57 yes okay if you want to go okay now one second one second what's that one sec what i'm gonna do now is what i'm gonna do now is i'm going to end the first segment of the interview and then we're going to go into the second segment so i want to thank you for uh so far providing for us for our viewers uh meaningful interviews a background to that mayor plutkin it was very informative to understand your your your childhood your parents where they came from so we have now a perspective so we will now end the first part and continue in a moment