The Heart of Ukraine: Life & Times of Reb Levi Yitzchak Schneerson (1878-1944)

the yeshiva.net thank you so so much my dear friend rabbi brook the ambassador of khabar to the state of montana one of the great unsung heroes of the jewish people who together with his wife has have created such an incredible jewish renaissance not only in boseman but in the entire state together with all of their colleagues the chabad rabbis and rabbitsons and i really want to welcome all of you all of you joining us from all parts of montana it's really a great privilege and thrilling thrilling opportunity to be able to be invited by rabbi and robertson brook to this amazing evening commemorating a yard site of a great figure in jewish history a great personality a person whose life story still remains powerfully inspirational and i think relevant to our lives today many decades later so first of all thank you and i'm so happy to be here with every all of you who are joining us for montana wherever you're joining us from and again thank you for this great great opportunity so today as you know is the 20th day of the hebrew month of of and it marks as rabbi brook just mentioned the 76th anniversary of the passing of a person i would call and define as the rock of ukraine and i would like to dedicate this evening and the following few minutes to sketch some of the features of this remarkable person's life because a yard site an anniversary of passing is a time to commemorate a life to pay tribute to a life and most importantly to become empowered and inspired by the examples set for us by our great teachers leaders and mentors that can inspire us and infuse us with perspective and enthusiasm at this very day even if we're living in a different country and under different circumstances nonetheless every person has their ups and downs and we have our challenges and there's much to be learned from this extraordinary figure the lobacci rebbe is quite well known certainly in montana after rabbi brooks work rabbi menachemendo schneiderson was the oldest of three boys his middle brother was murdered by the germans he was shot his younger brother his middle brother's name was beryl his younger brother his name was label and he died a very young man he was a mathematician he lived in he escaped communist russia because he liked trotsky more than stalin so he had to escape he went into exile he moved to berlin and berlin he left he moved to what was then palestine ultimately ended up in liverpool in england where he died in 1952. in his low 40s so the rebel only had two brothers and one brother yes so the laboratory only had two brothers and as i said one was killed by the germans and the other one was uh died in 1952 he left one one daughter who was who were their parents the rebbe's father was a man named levy yitzhak levi yitzhak schneiderson and his mother was khanna now levi yitzhak rabbi levitzek nairsen was an incredible incredible personality first of all he came from great lineage from the famous schneerson family he was a uh grandson great great grandson of the great grandson of the tsam sadaq the third khabad rebbe and he had a great great mind he was a scholar par excellence in fact the decade after his wedding he spent privately sitting and learning torah literally day and night he mastered much of torah literature in an incredible way he had a gigantic mind uh his son's mind love his mind didn't come from nowhere it was not created in a vacuum his father literally he mastered first of all the entire body of biblical literature talmudic literature mishnah literature babylonian and jerusalem talmud all of the halaq literature midrashic literature and what very few do he mastered all of kabbalistic literature he was an exceptional exceptional extraordinary mystic and kabbalist how he fit it all into his mind is hard to know he was ordained by some of the great rabbis of the time including some of the greatest lithuanian non-khastadic rabbis of the time rabbi khaiyam salvation brisker ordained him rebellious the rabbi of lodge poland ordained him and other great luminaries great sages of the time erson was born in the year 1878. in the year he got married he married khanna and he lived by his in-laws they lived in nicolaive ukraine his father-in-law whose name was rabbi yanovsky mayor schlema yanovsky was the rabbi of this fine and nice community in the goliath and for the first decade or so of his son-in-law's life he supported them and his son-in-law just learned and learned and learned and wrote and learnt and had three little boys the oldest was manaha mendel who would later become the famous lava chereb and as i said the middle brother was beryl who would be murdered and the younger one was label all three very gifted kids gifted children great minds in the year 1909 this is still under the tsar the city the very famous large port city in southern ukraine was known as the katrinislav it had a very big jewish community sizable and it was considered a very important city in the ukraine in terms of trade and business it was a port city and a vacancy was created because of its former rabbi died the year before in 1908 and they needed a new rabbi at that time the jewish community experienced a lot of there was a lot of fractions a lot of different groups because remember this is the early 20th century where many isms were abducting and fighting and competing for the soul of jewish youth this is already the rumblings of revolution it's still 1909 but the czar's position is tenuous czar nicholas ii is not very popular there's a lot a lot of struggles in the czarist russian empire there are volcanoes that are rumbling beneath the ground during those years and the jewish people have also been terribly terribly demoralized the anti-semitism in russia the poverty the deprivation pogroms persecution and the suffering of so many so many centuries has finally left an imprint on the jewish people together with promises of all types of new isms that the jews will be able to find utopia so hundreds of thousands millions of jewish youth were lured in to various new isms and philosophies and perspectives that were quite alien from judaism and yakutrinislav was a very powerful symbol of different fractions different philosophies different groups competing for power rabbi levitzkersen later the father of the laboratory rebel was chosen at the end he was nominated he was a chabad khasid he was very close disciple of the fifth labacher by shalom bear who encouraged them very much to take on this position understanding its pivotal importance and the power that this young budding leader sage mystic rabbi scholar can bring and contribute to the jewish community in yakitorinislav and the fascinating thing was as follows i believe was a strong personality he was also a holy man he wasn't just a brilliant genius he was a holy man he was a true servant of god he was what we call it sadiq he was really really a a righteous person i heard from rabbi yo khan who heard from his wife rebel direba's mother that when her husband was exiled in kazakhstan into some hick town and he was given this tiny mosquito infested apartment there was no water there was no food the hygiene was unbearable the circumstances were horrific the poor man suffered terribly and the whole environment was there were pigs hanging out on the porch and he had nothing he had no people he had no books he had no community he had no support he had no freedom and and there's food there was no food it was very little food it was the war years and she said but once she managed to obtain water for him to wash his hands for the mitzvah of washing hands you know as jews we wash hands in the morning right when we wake up and we wash hands before we eat bread before we do hamotzi and she said she once managed to obtain water for him to wash his hands in the morning when he woke up to remove the spiritual impurity and get ready for darwining and she told rabbi khan i heard it from it she said the joy of my husband to have some water a little water to be able to pour in his hands was more than the joy when i managed to find a few morsels of bread for him because he was really a whole he was a sacred person he was just one of these people for whom god is a reality in the most tangible sense and a real manifestation and embodiment of torah and when he became the rabbi ideologically he had a lot of enemies but nonetheless ultimately within the next few years most jews in the city came to love him they may have loathed a lot of his opinions and his perspectives as a strong torah observant jew and a husset but in terms of his personality they loved him because he was wise he was kind he was real he was authentic there were no politics there was no corruption there was no ego trip there was no insecurity he wasn't operating from a place of trauma he was not a control freak there were no agendas of money or power they realized that he's a man of god and they may have disagreed with him they felt you know he's representing an archaic religion but nobody can help but love him and cherish his wife because they were just exceptional exceptional human beings both in terms of his scholarship commitment dedication love to the people and he really became a shepherd of his city caring and trying to do whatever he can to help all jews living in that city in everything whether it was social issues financial matters community affairs of course religious affairs familial affairs education all of the various jewish social services that the city had he became like the heartbeat of the city the brain of the city the maimonides calls a jewish king the heart the heartbeat of the jewish people somebody who who has his finger on the pulse and even though on his own he was really an exceptional scholar and mystic but he applied himself to his vocation and this became his focus of course a few years later the first world war breaks out 1914 tish above the first world war breaks out and within a few days russia is now engulfed in this what was then called the great war later would be called the first world war all jews who were on the front on the eastern front of the first world war had were exiled the czar had a policy there was no tolerance for any jews living on the front they were accused of espionage it was horrible and hundreds of jewish communities who were living there for hundreds of years with an infrastructure were uprooted besides many jews who were mobilized to the war and died and killed but the exile the disruption of jewish life during the first world war was incredible and a huge flood of immigrants came to southern ukraine to yakitorinislav and it was the labaviche rebbe's parents rabbi levitzko and his wife khanna who were the chief the ones who are most involved in making sure every one of them has a place to lodge everyone has food everyone has money everybody has what to drink everybody has a place for their children and they gave them not just tests they not didn't only offer hospitality it was an incredible and i once heard myself from the bavaria he said i have never seen my mother as a kid there ever was a youngster was born 1902. just a few years after two years his parents got married i think 1900 around 1900 and the rebbe was born two years later in 1902 they named him an akamendo because of the that's his great great grandfather and he grew up in little nicolas nicolai in ukraine and he once testified he said in 1914 15 i never saw my mother so passionate and so eager she had no day and no night all day she became the chief architect of planning and implementing saving all the jews who were immigrant who immigrated there who went into exile who were refugees escaping the front lines of the first world war where they were accused of helping the enemy of helping the germans soon as we all know vladimir lenin and the red the reds stage a revolution the famous or infamous bolshevik revolution of 1917. where olivier suk and his wife lived in a very sizable nice apartment as the rabbi and the rabbitson of the city but of course after the communist revolution everything changes their apartment is cut into two and the city's name has changed because it can't be named anymore after catherine the great yeah katrina's love you know czarist history is now wiped out and deleted from russia it becomes the nepa and fascinatingly and this is one of the saddest chapters not only in russian history and in russian jewish history but in all of jewish history and i should tell you very unknown one of the groups that joins the communist party and becomes really a part of the communist party is called the ofsexia and the asexia is basically the section of the communist party that is dedicated to jewish affairs and it's run by jews lenin himself there was somewhere in his lean years there were some jews there joseph stalin was a georgian a brilliant paranoid arch evil murderer like lenin was trotsky leon trotsky's name was label a brunchtain he was a jewish kid and he became ultimately the leader of the red army which brought the whole country under the tyranny of trotsky's terror together with lenin and stalin of course in 1924 lenin would die and joseph stalin would take over the reigns of the soviet union the ussr and he would reign with a brutal and iron fist for the next 30 years until stalin's death in march 1953 around purim time 1953 stalin and trotsky of course would have to separate ways the trotskyites were not the stalinites and a major war would break out between stalin and trotsky trotsky would have to go into exile and ultimately he would be axed by stalin's agents in august 1940 the jewish trotsky would be axed to death what is unknown is the role of the sexia in the absolute destruction and disintegration of russian jury people blame stalin and he is the right person to blame because stalin was one of the most evil men who ever lived he murdered between 20 and 50 million people of his own people that a person should in 30 years murder between 20 and 50 million of his own people is unfathomable we can't even understand it he murdered more people than adolf hitler murdered and the jews were a major target because any religious person and all religions were targets plus of his own jewish hatred and anti-semitism but what stalin did was something else the efsexia was a special party among the communist party of jews and most of them had a little a jewish education as children and they rose to the top the leader of the sexual was a man named shimon dimneshte and they through their operators went to every jewish town village city and province in the entire soviet union and within 10 years they destroyed judaism in a way that it could not be destroyed over the last 200 years now over the last 200 years judaism in eastern europe was challenged very heavily by the movements known as the haskallah movements the enlightened the enlightened movement of the enlightenment which began of course in france and england and germany and then traveled east and ultimately caused many many jews to stray away from jewish heritage from jewish tradition from jewish faith but nothing came close to what the asexia did in 10 years from 1919 1920 to 1929 when stalin got rid of the of section they were not good they were not loyal enough and he felt he doesn't need them anymore it's unbelievable tragic what jews did to their own brothers and sisters not in 100 years in 10 years they managed to go from city to city and sow terror fear and dread into every jewish community they forced most rabbis teachers educators religious leaders moyles shakhtar anyone involved in public jewish life underground most of them either escaped russia or completely understood that you have to seize most activities connected to judaism most jewish life in russia within those 10 years was obliterated destroyed decimated the way they did this was sadly brilliant strategic tonight is not the night to discuss the st the tragedy and the strategies of the effects one of their greatest targets was of course was living in russia already since the days of the balatanya the founder of chabad grew up in belarus he was born in lyajna in white russia today it's the area of belarus rabbi zalman of lyadi was born in 1745. of course the baal shem tov lived in ukraine he was the founder of the hasidic movement but the first khabad rebel is almond and they were called schneider sins the rebel's father was schneiderson because they come from schneider he was born in belarus he lived there his whole life lyagna viteps napoleon declared war on russia in 1812 he ran away to the ukraine and he died in the paltava guberna and buried in hadith and passed away in a place called piana and then he was buried in hadith this is the first rebbe of chabad so they had a presence in russia already since the early 1700s and now in the early 1900s in the 1920s they have sexier targeted one of the sole big leaders and teachers to remain in the soviet union and continue to battle the communists was the previous laboratory ever abbayo savitzkr schneiderson who was born in 1880 passed away in 1950 in new york and his father died in 1920 the fifth bhava show the sixth servant took over in 1920 and he built rabbi schollenberg 11 the main librarian of labavich told me that the lobavich built 600 underground jewish schools in russia 600 some of them lasted for a few days a few weeks a few months some of them were maintained but everything had to go underground and he was maybe the only one or one of the hand few of jewish leaders who could remain there and fight until they arrested him they sentenced them to death in 1927 through major diplomatic pressure and involvement of the joint and america american political power and a great miracle the river was saved his sentence was commuted to 10 years in the gula in exile and then to three years and then to a few days and the river was liberated in 1927 and he left russia at the end of 1927. at that point the persecution became so heavy the section was so successful people were arrested tortured died the fear and dread were so powerful they managed to separate families communities if you were a child and you were informed on your father or mother or grandfather you were promoted in the communist party so what they did was they split up families there was no trust anymore the whole fabric of community a family of civilization was destroyed in the soviet union and i would say who remained the wrack of ukraine the rabbi of nepal like the schneerson tradition he remained untouchable and unbreakable his confidence his faith his resilience and his fortitude is an incredible heroic chapter in jewish history he remained a steadfast shepherd of his people and even though he knew how dangerous it is it's a fascinating thing you will not find not that i know you will not find many rabbis who survived as long as he did he remained the rabbi of the empress of until 1939. most rabbis already in the 20s had to go underground or leave russia including some of the greats the prophet said moshe feinstein a blessed members they all had to leave russia was impossible he had great people of khatsuka bramsky of zeven a lot of great rabbis and sages it was just impossible either they were arrested exiled to the gulag shot or scared to death and would remain quiet or just left but rabbi ladies okay remains a rabbi some say that he was so beloved by the jews including the communists that they just they protected him that despite all the turmoil on an individual level even though they disagreed with them and they loathe everything he stood for but they loved him as a person we saw the same thing with his son the lobster many people ideologically disagreed with him but if you met him it was very hard not to like him not to fall in love with him because these people didn't have a mean bone in his body i remember the rebbe very well he was he was very emphatic he was very idealistic it was sometimes very sharp but it was never personal ever ever there was never it was never an ego issue it was never an insecurity it was never i can't speak to you there was never an axe to grind it was pure there was something so pure about it so even if you opposed him ideologically you felt that there was no no mean bone in the body that he really cares and he'll do you any favor you need because it's completely not personal it was very fascinating the rabbit taught i think so many people had to disagree without being disagreeable and i think he learned that from his father his mother's mother was a very very warm person his father was very idealistic he was a true man of faith and god and one of the great giants of torah and his generation but he cared for people and he loved people and he was sensitive and he was understanding and they saw that he it's for real and there was such wisdom there the depth of jewish history of jewish psychology of jewish philosophy jewish scholarship of the talmud of jewish spirituality and it was synthesized in his mind this man therefore had an inspire tremendous love from the people and i think that's one of the main reasons he lasted until 1939. in fact in fact there was a story i heard myself from the lobov chair when i was a child there was a children's rally on pesach his father was born the 18th of nissan so there was once uh the children were gathered on pesach in 770 and the rebbe spoke to us and he shared a story about his father he says my father's birthday i want to share a story so i told you his father was born in 1878 and he said that one year you know his father most of the wheat comes from ukraine ukraine was an incredible resource for grain of course stalin destroyed that with the famous hunger that he managed to introduce in ukraine probably the first time in history that a leader of a country should cause more than five million people of his own people to die from hunger despite the fact that they had food that they grew their crops in their fields another horrible tragedy of of the former soviet union that's also unknown and with the help of jews it's it's just tragic beyond tragedy what happened in the soviet union so uh and and he was the rabb of denver epistrophe he was the one who gave the kosher certificate the kosher certified label for all the matzahs he came to see what's happening in the matzah bakeries and he saw that it wasn't real you know the communists everything was a lie propaganda propaganda propaganda like my father used to say my father grew up in communist russia so he knew very well what the communists were like in his own father was arrested during the purges of 1938 and also sent to the gulag so we grew i grew up in a home where uh there was no let's put it this way there was no superfluous love to the kami's okay and my mother also grew up in communist russia may she be well she grew up in georgia now stalin left the georgians a little the georgians that they're they they were they were left alone a little bit maybe because he was a georgian but they also suffered terribly but it wasn't like the jews of russia or the jews of ukraine in any case so that the matzah's propaganda and the communists were always into this idea we don't disturb anybody we're not against religion officially in the constitution of the communists a lot of practice religion and that's why they have sexia was so powerful because a lot of times i don't know if you know this the jews would sometimes make a trial between the of sexy and the leadership of the soviet union if satsuka would take away all the shoals what was the excuse the excuse was they need it for cultural events in order to raise a new generation of jews who are part of the workmen circle and the workmen's groups and they're not infected and and uh poisoned by the horrors of religion so they would take away their souls by ex with excuses and the jews would sometimes go to the leadership of the communists and say you you said we're allowed to practice religion and there were a few instances where they have sex actually lost that's another piece of history but in any case it was all lies and rebellion they wanted to force him to sign off on the matas because this would prove that the jews are getting what they need and everything is just and everything is fine and it was an important source of income as well because jews ate matzahs and rebellious in a unique act of heroic courage said no as long as it's not all under his supervision and he can monitor everything he and his people he will not sign the pressure was so fierce he went to meet the president of the soviet union president kalinin and he spoke to him as a jew and he said i cannot sign the images and i will come out and i will tell everybody that they're not kosher monsters because let's say they're bringing grain over and then there was a leak in the wagon and it all got wet it's not mats anymore it's comets all these types of things you have to monitor everything it's very serious kalinin agreed and he said that rabbi schneiderson loved schneiderson is the one who's completely in charge and he got sanctioned in those years the 1930s that to be all the matzahs under his jurisdiction it's just an amazing thing how he stood so steadfast with such dignity and they say that over the years there were a lot of summons for arrests but somehow those nights he was warned by friends of the communist party to leave the house to leave the city and until 1939 he remained the rabbi despite tremendous tremendous persecutions and problems non-stop but he did whatever ever he can together with his wife in 1929 stalin decided that he doesn't need the f-section anymore he doesn't need them mission was accomplished and that's when he demolished the of sexia and it was over but the damage was already done jewish life in the soviet union was mamish at the verge of destruction there were those few individuals that kept it alive and kept it alive underground and one of the greatest who remained there till the late thirties was raba levitzhok of course in the 19 during the purges of 1938-39 stalin decided that all of these jewish communists from the uniformity of section were not loyal enough even though they threw their fathers under the bus their mothers under the bus thousands of years of jewish history they threw under the bus and they did everything they can to obliterate the last vestige of judaism for joseph stalin their loyalty was still a matter of doubt and most of them were shot or tortured or sent to the gulag where most of them did not survive including the leader of the yoseksi who was murdered and most of the greatest jewish communist leaders were either murdered during the purges or later in the 1940s and wiped out those very individuals who dedicated their lives to the communist party and denied that they were jewish nothing jewish about them they're part of the socialist revolution to unite the whole world workers of the whole world unite with carol marx's manifesto inspired by lenin etc those who denied any connection to the jewish people were ultimately accused of being dirty filthy disloyal jews fascists zionists nationalists religious people who are undermining the communist vision and they all had to be shocked which by the way is an incredible incredible lesson in history when jews start hating themselves and loathing themselves and thinking that by not being jewish and by assimilating and by denying our history our heritage our faith our faith we're going to appease the anti-semites and they'll ultimately accept us we'll change our noses we'll do some plastic surgery we'll make believe we're completely gentile and then we're gentiles and then they'll finally accept us this is one of the great sad delusions and illusions of jew throughout history it never worked it never it's never going to work a jew is a jew as a jew and the story of soviet history is an incredible incredible testimony of it in the early twenties menachem mendel the young menace mendel met his fiancee the daughter of the lobov who was living there in leningrad and when the rebel left russia in 1927 the beginning of the end of 27 he managed to take out his future son-in-law from the soviet union they moved to latvia and the young management schneiderson shortly after moved to berlin where he began to study in various universities in berlin he would get married in warsaw and for the next decade he would live in berlin when hitler comes to power he would move to paris ultimately in after hitler invades france the young menachemental and his wife khayamushka will manage to get out from lisbon and they would take a boat and arrive in the united states in june 41. in 1950 the lobby chereb the sixth larger would pass away and rabbi mendoza would succeed him as the seventh labacher who over the next decades would transform the jewish world his father and mother remained behind and even when he got married in 1928 in warsaw they were not given permission to leave the soviet union and it was a sad day for the rebbe and his wife he couldn't be at his own wedding with his parents after all the attempts they could not make it there was an incredible telegram that lubavitcher his father wrote to him from ukraine to warsaw when i read it the first time i was a pretty young i was a teenager and i couldn't help but crying he writes you see the love that he has he says how i'm with you with every fiber of my being he tells him what to think under the hooper he tells him what to meditate about under the hooper how he blesses him and his his new bride he blesses them with family with a large family with children of course they would never have children and the rabbits in ghana derebba's mother wrote in her diary how the tablecloth on which her husband wrote this telegram it was soaked as though it was submerged in water from the tears the tears of her husband and in fact they made what people call a mock wedding but they made a wedding in their home in ukraine to celebrate the marriage of their son and they invited only a few people they thought some close people will come hundreds of people came and they danced the whole night it was one of the great moments and remember there was curfew this is communist russia 1928 these were terrible terrible times but the joy was just uninhibited and after that there's a correspondence from the bhava charab his father to the rebel from ukraine to berlin or to paris until 1939 when the dark arrest has arrived and you know what's interesting rabbi lee sakshinayan wrote his whole life he was a prolific writer a genius he had a unique style of learning which i should mention there are two parts of judaism the esoteric and exoteric the revealed and the hidden the legal concrete and the mystical transcendent metaphysical usually there are two streams of judaism not for this man for him there was a synthesis he had a bird's eye view of judaism he can discuss a chapter in any part of the talmud and analyze every word of it every story every personality is reflective of certain spiritual truths and his son inherited that style that holistic style of seeing the whole torah as integrated and every detail and every nuance is a reflection of the dna of judaism literally like the cells in the body where every single cell has its own unique and dispensable contribution and it has a copy a double copy of the genome with the blueprint of the whole organism that's how i believe it took so every little detail a name in a story the name of a city the age of the person incredible scholarship and he wrote he wrote he wrote for years then came the dark day it was a few days before passover 1939 these are the days of stalin's purges where hundreds of thousands millions were arrested shot tortured sent to the gulag devastating times and at last the rabbi of the nepa petrovsk the great hero the great teacher the great leader rabbi yitzhak schneiderson is arrested his wife doesn't know his wife doesn't know where he is he's taken away they only let him take a few things they schlep him away last year a big delegation was 75th yard site so a lot of hasidim went to kazakhstan to his gravesite to pray there to pray to hashem there and one of the people who went there was a man named mata lagarrari mata lagarawi just died right before pesa from corona during the pandemic he was i think 82 very special man he his story is unique his father was a college student mark guerrari martha who lived in the upper patrols rabbi levitz and made him a baltimore he brought him back to judaism he got married and one shot friday afternoon he went to the to the sea the black sea and he went to bathe to the mikveh before shabbos there was an undercurrent he drowned his wife was pregnant she gave birth to muthullah who was named after his father and i knew him he just died from corona and he said last year when he went to kazakhstan he said that he heard from a jew that when they took away the laboratory father to the gulak to prison he saw jews and he turned to them and he said a jew does not say goodbye without words of torah ali potter adam and he said the first letter of the whole torah is lament the last letter of the whole first letter of the altar is base veracious the last letter of the whole torah is lament together it makes up laive a heart llamad and then he spoke about the fact that the letter before base is aleph the letter after base is gimmel the letter before lamid is the letter after lamid is men so it makes up and he explained in the talmud what means means to diminish to increase and he said there are jews who spiritually are very small they're not knowledgeable they're not very involved and then there are jews who are giants they're great scholars and he says the most important thing is the heart the beginning and the end of throws about the heart he says i don't care how brilliant you are or how simple you are the most important thing is to care the heart to be a heart and those were the words he left the jews i don't want you to lose your heart don't lose your passion don't lose your commitment don't lose your emotions and indeed he was a heart a little just a little tidbit of history it's such so telling and i guess his song learned from this rosh hashanah kipper many jews they could not stay home they felt they you know by the communists if you didn't have a if you didn't show up to work you could lose your job if you didn't lose if didn't have a job you couldn't get bred it was it was it was crazy the persecutions were terrible to be a jew and live like a jew was very very difficult it was literally an act of daily self-sacrifice so jews couldn't always withstand the test and they went to work on rosh hashanah nyam what did the rabbi of the city do he would make a early pre-pre-sunrise minion rosh hashanah kippur in the morning very very early before that to go to work they should come and by sunrise they should be able to hear the chauffeur and do a fast prayer and go to work on rosh hashanah now some rabbis might say they're desecrating rosh hashanah they're going to work i should make a minion for them but he didn't think that way of course he wanted they should be there is hashem all there they shouldn't go to work but this is how a real leader of the jewish people thinks a great leader it's like a brain or a heart the heart can be concerned only with the brain or the heart the circulatory system has to reach every single cell in the body and give it the oxygen and the nutrients it needs and when there's a clot it affects the entire body the same is true with a brain jewish leaders are called the hearts and the brains a brain can't be concerned only with the kidneys or the liver or the heart or the pancreas or the lungs or other vital organs no the brain is concerned with the smallest toenail and the pinky and every strand of hair the brain is the central nervous system that is connected to every fiber of your being every cell every artery every sinew every tissue every bone every limb every organ if you're a real brain every part of the body is your responsibility how do you know who is a brain of the jewish people when you see those jewish leaders nobody is excluded there's no this person is not my type this person is too low for me that concept doesn't work for the brain if you are a brain you're part of my world if you're part of the living organism of the jewish people you're part of my world that characterizes rabbi levitz and it set an example for how his son led the chabad movement and ultimately changed the face of the jewish world with this spirit with this with this enthusiasm is taken to prison a few days before pesach his wife doesn't know where she is he's there for months he's suffering terribly she finally finds out he was taken to kiev and ukraine she sends him some packages they put him they set up a trial date you know the trials in communist russia one big farce and fake and lie and deception and they exile him he's sentenced five years in exile for his counter-revolutionary work against russian government the communist regime the communist party and he sent to kazakhstan far far away far east place called chile in kazakhstan a little city no jews no community horrible living conditions horrible they don't allow him to take too many things he was a strong man he was a respectable man he was physically strong tall handsome very good looking attractive appealing and a very colorful personality but over the next years he is broken on every level emotionally he's not broken his wife hannah does something that is incredible she decides to leave her comfortable relatively speaking her comfortable home her city she was a rabbitson and she follows him she did not have to but voluntarily she follows him she wants to be there for her husband their children at this point are not here anymore the lobavinach mendel is living in europe the other son is living in europe beryl was he was not well he was in a hospital and what happened was she follows her husband she realizes how dire it is but she can take a few books she takes a few precious books he's so happy to get these books he could learn some torah and she remains at his side he he wants to teach he was a teacher he was a brilliant teacher there's nobody to teach them there's a few pigs that hang out in his courtyard and a neighbor who is very very antagonistic you know what she does i heard this also from the rebbe himself he was very moved by what his mother did she went and she found the proper herbs and she harvested the herbs and she grinded them and she developed them into ink and she brought them to her husband and on the margins of all the books that he had he wrote every single page the margins are full and you see different colors of ink red and green and blue and black because this was literally handmade by his wife she manufactured ink over there in kazakhstan she brought it whatever she can do to help her husband she did of course there was no jews there was no minion there was no jewish community there was barely any food but he didn't stop writing he wrote and wrote and wrote she describes how simkastara they were in this little tiny mosquito infested room and he picked up a meshnias a mishna and he danced all night he was a real man of god he just danced all night with this book the mishnah and the tanya and the zohar he took the mission and he was just dancing in circles and he had this famous song that they used to sing in his show every single torah and they called it the rebel avic song because it was like his terrorist song they say that it comes from the al-tarab but they sang it in his show and in fact for many many years the laboratory at a moment of joy would start this song and whenever he wanted his father's song to be sung everybody knew this is the song and the song went like this ah [Music] and as i i when i grew up during the hakafos on some historian 770 his son the lubavitcher rebel would stand with a safety torah there were 10 000 people in the room and he would dance and he would start this song of his father that his father sang back in the ukraine in the darkest days and in exile of the darkest days but now was ten thousand people dancing with the rebbe and there was one stanza that he would make with his hand they should repeat it again and again sometimes ten times one part of that song bye bye again and again and again and again and the electricity was powerful incredibly potent and inspiring but in kazakhstan he was himself with a mishna dancing the only other person was his wife emotionally he remained powerful and strong but physically he succumbed and in 1944 in the middle of the second world war they finally granted permission for him to move to a place called alma ata where there was a jewish community there was a synagogue there was a jewish cemetery there was some jewish life he moved there in the middle of 1944 but he was already very ill extremely ill there's a picture taken from him during that chat period of his life and when they brought it to his son he wrote on it is this my father because he can't recognize him he couldn't write he can't recognize him and a few months later he passed away in august 1944 middle of the war it was uh obviously a very tragic loss not only for his wife for the community but it was really no family and he was buried in aomata where he was interred to this very day in kazakhstan it's far far far away this is remembrance far from the main city which was moscow petersburg but that's where he was buried that's where he was in exile his son one of them was already shot although the parents didn't know because they were in kazakhstan the germans didn't reach them so they were saved from the germans because then the neptra petrovsk was ukraine ukraine was wiped out much of ukraine was wiped out by the germans i assume if he would have been in in yakitorinislav deputy and his wife i'm not sure they would survive who knows but to here they were actually safe from the germans but he died from this terrible persecution and illness he was really crushed uh he was in his uh how old was he he was 66 66 years old and they buried him over there a modest modest funeral as i said the 20th of one son was already dead was murdered the rebbe was living at the time in new york he was saved from the nazis and he hasn't seen his father since he left in 1927. so lubowgra left in 27 and his father passed away in 44 he never saw his father again his mother ultimately left almata she went to visit her home but there was nothing there jews were wiped out her own mother was murdered her family was murdered whoever the jews of ukraine were murdered so most of their families were gone and ultimately she made it to moscow and then with forged passports she made it out of the soviet union like many jews did after the war in 1946 she came to paris and her son ahmed from new york to paris to welcome his mother he hasn't seen his mother in 20 years since 27. it's a very emotional reunion he remained with with her in paris for three months he brought her back to new york and she lived as a widow in new york a few blocks away from her son three years later he would become the rebber and she remained there for the next 15 years the last 15 years of his life and every single day five o'clock as busy as he was would leave everything he would leave his office everybody knew he's walking up kingston avenue he would go visit his mother sun and rain and sunshine stormy day and a calm day summer winter all every day in the afternoon the laboratory would leave go of everything and he would go visit his mother you learned what respect for a mother is of course on shabbos and anyamtif he visited her until she passed away a few days before yom kippur 1964. and she's buried already in queens and montefury actually just just a few feet away from where her son would later be interred the rebbe in 1994. a fascinating vignette that they say the rebbe is a little kid there's a beautiful picture of him as a two years old two-year-old or a three-year-old very very adorable picture very cute picture he's really dressed in this really nice outfit very impressive it's a cute picture of our brook and show it to you and they say that his mother once took her son the young menace mendel to the black sea it was a hot hot august day it was boiling and the rabbit this little kid had this big yamaka on him this big couple you know a big keeper like a real big one and he was sweating buckets it was so hot so this jew who was you know a little enlightened and cynical walks by and says jewish kid get rid of this thing from your head get get it get rid of your sweating you need some air you need some freedom so this little kid management says i'm not louder i'm not louder it's my yamaka so this jew says you know what i'm taking the sin on me it's on me it's not on you and the labacher as a little boy told him two words come in who cares if the sin is on you or the sin is on me sometimes two words boots and boots and captures the story of a person it's not about me or you so the sin will be on you that's not gonna make me feel better if it's not the right thing it's not the right thing who cares who does it in fact during the terrible terrible pogroms during the early nineteen hundreds young laboratories a fifteen-year-old organized a little jewish people don't know there's a little jewish platoon an army in their professor to protect literally to protect themselves from the pogromous at last i want to leave you with this if i would have been a fly on the wall in 1939 when they arrested such nairs and i would say to you he tried he battled but it was in vain ultimately you know you can't defeat you can't fight city hall and in that sense in that case it wasn't city hall it was hundreds of millions of people under the superpower of the soviet union he was arrested if i would be a fly on the wall in chile kazakhstan i would look at the depraved circumstances at the horrific conditions and the lack of the most basic freedoms and necessities that a human being has and my heart would go out to a rabbi who was so dedicated who believed so much in god but whose life mission ultimately failed miserably and all that came out of all of his work and sacrifice was years in a forlorn isolated cocoon far from civilization far from any semblance of normalcy dignity and any jewish life or community and if i would observe his death in august 1944 i would say it's the sad end of a life of a person who was rich and content and rich in dedication but ultimately died on the very difficult circumstances and sad circumstances like millions died in 1944 and that would have been my conclusion judaism in ukraine and the rest of the soviet union had no hope but flies on the wall don't always have the whole perspective all the writings that he wrote for years and years and years were all confiscated when they arrested him in 1939 they confiscated a lot of the writings the other writings got lost we still don't know what happened to them are they around are they not around will they be discovered who knows you know which writings we have from him those that he wrote in kazakhstan with the ink that was manufactured by his wife those are the only real writings that we have from him and the letters that he sent to europe to his son stunning in berlin in part now the mother is scared to smuggle them out because if she's caught with these writings it can be horrible and dangerous so she leaves them in russia and ultimately it's in the late 50s and the 60s that through the diplomatic relations that israel had with russia the laboratory ever managed to get those manuscripts out of the soviet union they arrived to him in the 60s and in the early 70s he published them five beautiful incredible books of his father most of the writings of his father he never got but those writings in kazakhstan somehow remained and they arrived to his son and he published them all in their study till today their incredible deep incredibly deep and powerful plus the 66 letters that he wrote to his son during the 30s that also survived because those letters arrived to europe and they were printed and this remains the legacy of his writings and something very moving happened every shabbos as the laboratory would speak to the crowd he would have the book of his father one of the books on the table i remember there was a judah show me so khadikov would bring it down and the devil would open it up or look at it and he would study with the whole audience thousands of people a piece of his father's teachings and he would explain it and apply it and elucidate on it every shabbos for decades this was such a display of respect where his father's legacy and ideas and scholarship remained immortalized after his mother's death in her memory he studied every shabbos arashi of the parish in her memory also for 25 years explaining and really developing a whole method of how to learn rashi so every shabbos we knew there was a special talk that was dedicated and tribute to his father and a special talk dedicated in tribute to his mother talk about respecting your tati and mommy but then something else happens in 1989 mr garbachov tear the wall down the berlin wall falls communism crumbles and suddenly for the first time in more than seven decades jews are given permission to start living a jewish life in the open but is there anything left the coming is the two of a good job but that was not the case for seventy years students and disciples of rebellivits in ukraine students and disciples of the laboratory all over the soviet union maintained an underground network of judaism that did not cease for one day and in 1989 it all sprung up from the subterranean chambers it all sprung up and the next few years the laboratory started to send dozens and dozens and dozens of ambassadors who began to rebuild judaism in the soviet union if you go back today to the soviet union you will observe with your eyes one of the greatest miracles of jewish history and i'm not saying this with drama and fanfare and exaggeration you go back to russia today you're looking for a miracle one of the greatest miracles and go back to the city where the laboratory is father was the rabbi yep and you'll see what my cousin rabbi shmuel and hani kamanetsky their first cousins of mine with the help of the other chabad ambassadors and the jews living there built over the last years since 1990 till today that we're talking about warwick 30 years the vibe the enthusiasm the unity i think it's one of the most beautiful beautiful centers of judaism in the whole world from a physical aesthetical point of view the menorah center and yemper petrovsk something to behold with your eyes to be able to come back today and see that is so moving because it tells you that there's another element to history if you would have been there in 39 you would have said it's all lost but you come back 70 80 years later and you see not only is it not lost but everything that the rabbi of the nepa it's timeless it's eternal it's powerful where's stalin where's lenin where's trotsky where's karol marks with kaganovich who is khrushchev brezhnov and rapov where are they where's the polar pure where's the ascetsia they're gone they're in wikipedia where is he where is torah where is mitzvahs where is he described and the answer is wherever you go to russia you'll see judaism is alive torah is vibrant the study of torah the celebration of mitzvos jewish education jewish schools even amidst the pandemic of coronavirus like omer a prayed three thousand jewish kids marching in the streets of moscow streaming hanukkah menorah lit in the kremlin a few feet from where the corpses of stalin and lenin lay i want to say i feel bad for them that they're turning over in their grave but it's not a grave it's a mausoleum i want to say i feel bad for them but i don't really feel bad for them hundreds of thousands of jewish children receiving an education summer camps social programs nursing homes homes of assistant living all types of jewish educational programs not long ago the chabad ambassador to bitter bijan where stalin wanted to exile three million soviet jews five thousand miles from moscow opened the globe kosher restaurant take your wife there on a honeymoon from bozeman go to bitter bijan and i have a cousin in western siberia is finishing our mikvah if you want to donate you can donate he's looking for his last ones finishing a mikveh women had to travel seven hours to find the mikvah western siberia so the question is who won stalin or schneiersen the 76th yard site of the great father of the laboratory rabbi levitznerson of blessed memory is a time to pick up our glasses and make a toast to this special special hero to this special man to his wife to his family to his disciples to his children to his great son there ever and really to all of the rebbe's ambassadors and hasidim the world over who took an example of this extraordinary individual whose yard sites we commemorate today who never allowed short-term obstacles and the vicissitudes and challenges and fluctuations of life and even the terrible persecutions to blur his vision to stifle his enthusiasm to crush his creativity and to dampen his faith and today we could see that everything he fought for is alive and well it's growing from day to day and if you need a living example for this go to bozy man montana or go to any other part of montana and you'll see the work of the ambassadors of the rebel who was inspired by his father and inspired of course by his rebbe to be able to create and to continue this revolution on a daily basis to know that evil is powerful it may prosper but it's never eternal and ultimately goodness kindness morality ethics the power of terror mitzvahs yiddish godliness lives forever thank you very much hi what language were you written in i'm sorry what was the question the letters that are left from cousins oh he wrote in hebrew he wrote in hebrew yeah okay he was writing it on the books that he had his wife was allowed to take a few books for him so every margin is filled it's it's it's really it's it's it's a dramatic piece of history you see a man who had nothing but every inch every centimeter on the page is filled with his writings and insights another incredible thing is you see what's called the memory in kazakhstan there was no google in 1944 realize that even in new york there was no google but here was a man without any books everything is from memory and his mastery of of the literature of judaism and of kabbalah right here my i have my my mouse on it you see how he writes this is upside down this is on the side and sometimes there's different colors here you'll have red green brown blue it's all white his wife manufactured her name was hammer and and imagine now deciphering this and putting it into a book and that's what they did in the late 60s and early 70s and today they were all published i'm watching you throughout april uh you're you're you're amazing you're really incredible and i appreciate all the good work you're doing and i understand you said a good word about my late sister's lab yesterday so i thank you for that as well and it's good seeing you when you got in the mouth of montana at some point awesome i'm game god bless i want to thank the whole community of montana and bozeman for everything you do for the rabbi and robertson for rabbi and robinson brooke rabbi rabbits and vogel robert robertson wolf all of you i know are steadfast supporters emotionally and spiritually and financially and physically and on all so many levels and living a little far living here in rockland county in new york i don't have an opportunity to speak to you every day but all of you are a tremendous source of inspiration and encouragement and empowerment and you know we always grew up and montana was just seen as this remote spiritual desert but once chabad came to montana it's starting to look more promising than a lot of other places that are very popular and it's incredible what you guys are doing and kazakh from strength to strength we love you and we send all of our blessings and and deepest wishes for success happiness abundance i don't know how many people could say that at their events they get 50 of the community 20 percent of the community 10 percent of the community here somebody does an event if they get point point point point zero percent they're happy but you bring out twenty percent thirty percent color ah montana incredible aid goes to montana with his wife they don't have their own children they adopted children including black children and they're raising an amazing family there and they brought close to yiddish guy to hundreds of jews something special a lot to learn from this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at www.theyshiva.net donate