Yud Shevat

On Yud She­vat, 5710 (1950), the Frierdiker Rebbe passed away. Soon af­ter, R. Zal­man wrote our Rebbe a long let­ter ac­cept­ing the Rebbe as his suc­ces­sor, though the Rebbe would not ac­cept the man­tle of lead­er­ship un­til a year later.

Sev­eral months af­ter the Frierdiker Rebbe’s pass­ing, R. Zal­man writes to the Rebbe, “ Nu… we need to up­date the hon­orific ti­tles… ” mean­ing to re­place the wishes for health with a men­tion of his right­eous mem­ory. Then R. Zal­man added, “Al­though my grand­fa­ther R. Mordechai Yoel of Homil, when he would talk about the Tzemach Tzedek – even years af­ter his pass­ing – would say ‘the Rebbe, may he be well, ’ and then he would catch his mis­take and add ‘in Gan Eden. ’”

In his re­sponse, the Rebbe ad­dresses this point, “You write that you are afraid to say ‘may he be healthy’ [about the Frierdiker Rebbe af­ter his pass­ing] since it is not cus­tom­ary to do so. What’s the fear? It is ex­plained in [Tanya] Epis­tle Twenty-Eight, that the life of a tzad­dik is faith, love, and fear. In that case [in a spir­i­tual sense] he is very healthy. ”

The Rebbe Shlita de­scribed, in the name of the chas­sidim, how the Rebbe Ray­atz was deeply shaken when his grand­mother, Reb­bet­zin Rivkah, passed away on Yud She­vat in 5674 (1914).

My brother Chaim Baruch - who was there on motzaei Shab­bos (Yud She­vat fell on erev Shab­bos that year), and saw and heard the Rebbe daven Maariv - de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion to me. The cry­ing was be­yond de­scrip­tion.

The un­der­ly­ing rea­son, it was said, was that the Rebbe had taken the re­spon­si­bil­ity upon him­self. She had re­quested that he con­tact his fa­ther (the Rebbe Rashab ), who was in Men­ton at the time, yet he was very pro­tec­tive of his fa­ther’s time and en­ergy. I heard that Lieber­man, the renowned physi­cian, was sum­moned from Vitebsk and had said there was no dan­ger. And when the re­port of Yud She­vat, 5710 (1950),³³ ar­rived I said that then we could have some idea of the Rebbe’s over­whelm­ing sense of loss in 5674. It is also worth not­ing that on the 13 th of She­vat, 5702 (1942), when the Rebbe Ray­atz’s mother Reb­bet­zin Shterna Sarah passed away in New York, the Rebbe Ray­atz was trav­el­ing, un­able to be there.

33. I.e., the Previous Rebbe’s passing. ↩

At one point dur­ing Sim­chas Torah , 5685 (1924 ), in Leningrad, the Rebbe Ray­atz ex­claimed pas­sion­ately, “What sort of chos­sid sleeps un­til nine in the morn­ing and, al­ready by ten, has fin­ished dav­en­ing, eaten break­fast, and is strolling along Nevesky Street (Leningrad’s main thor­ough­fare), di­rect­ing his eyes at the wrong places? With the no­tion that by wear­ing a kapotah and gar­tel he is a chos­sid. Or, he imag­ines, by giv­ing three rubles [to the Rebbe], he is a chos­sid. Now three rubles are three rubles — but that won’t do it.

“R. Hil­lel (Par­itcher) once said that he doesn’t like one who strayed and did teshu­vah — such a per­son went far astray, and who knows what sort of teshu­vah he did?

“For sure, strip­ping one­self naked is not the in­ten­tion; but there is a con­cept of con­fess­ing one’s mis­deeds.

“In truth — there’s a ques­tion: How can we un­der­stand the pre­cept, In the place where baalei teshu­vah stand, per­fect tzad­dikim are un­able to stand?⁵⁹ This one ate pupiks (giz­zards ) — while the other one learned Torah and dav­ened! The an­swer is: He is not the same per­son; he is some­one else.”⁶⁰

And the Rebbe turned to a young man from Kher­son liv­ing in Mos­cow: “It’s not you ... You must take upon your­self ‘di­vrei chavrus’;⁶¹ you will give a Kid­dush on Shab­bos Bereishis.

“Ev­ery­one must take upon him­self ‘di­vrei chavrus’ that he will not sleep past seven in the morn­ing (an early hour for Leningrad’s win­ters, when sun­rise is at nine). ”

59. Berachos 34b. ↩
60. He has transformed himself entirely. See also Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 2:4: "The way of teshuvah is … saying, 'I am someone else and not the same person who did those actions. " ↩
61. A term borrowed from the days of the Mishna, when there were conditions to be considered a "chaver" (a Jew of integrity who could be trusted regarding maaser [tithes] and ritual purity). ↩

The Rashag, the Rebbe’s son-in-law, came for Shab­bos from Kos­trama, and, af­ter Min­chah, near the bal­cony in the large zal, told a few of us, in the Rebbe’s name, many ques­tions the in­ter­roga­tors had asked, the Rebbe’s re­sponses and, in gen­eral, what he had un­der­gone.

When he en­tered the in­ter­ro­ga­tion room an in­ves­ti­ga­tor with a stubby nose and a stut­ter was seated there. The walls were thin, made of ply­wood. Se­nior of­fi­cials sat fur­ther back in the room.

When Lulav and Nach­man­son came in, the Rebbe told them, “His­tory will record this dis­grace: who was ap­pointed to in­ter­ro­gate the Lubav­itcher Rebbe. ” When they be­gan to ac­cuse him of es­pi­onage, he re­acted sharply, “Re­tract this at once. Do you want to make an­other Beilis Af­fair?”²⁶ And when they started talk­ing about dis­sem­i­nat­ing Torah, he said, “I am not a teacher; I salute learn­ing Torah. ”

Un­til they re­turned his tefillin he would not an­swer any ques­tions.

When the in­ter­roga­tor gave him a glass of wa­ter and he put on his hat to re­cite the bless­ing She­hakol, they said, “You think you’re so im­por­tant; you don’t think you can be shorter by a head?”

“The whole earth is filled with His glory,”²⁷ he an­swered.

26. Menachem Mendel Beilis was a Ukrainian Jew accused of ritual murder in the notorious 1913 blood-libel trial known as the “Beilis Affair. ” ↩
27. Yeshayahu 6:3. ↩