Parshas Shoftim

Her­schel Dubrovner, a.k.a. Her­schel der dav­ener, was a chos­sid of the Tzemach Tzedek. In the mid­dle of his dav­en­ing — which, my fa­ther said, was very sweet — he would cry out, “Gov­ori Pravda!” — Tell the truth! (O r, Say it with truth!)

Purim 5687 (1927) was ter­ri­fy­ing. “Who are they, the Yevsek­tzia?!”¹⁷ the Rebbe screamed. “A rabbi’s son? A butcher’s son? A vil­lager’s son? I am not fright­ened by them. ” His in­ten­sity be­came fiery. He un­but­toned his kapota; you could see his tallis katan. “I ac­cept upon my­self the four forms of ex­e­cu­tion, ” he screamed. “When you see the body aflame you should not have com­pas­sion. ”

The chos­sid R. Meir Sim­cha be­gan shout­ing, “We need the Rebbe here.”

But the Rebbe re­peated again and again, “We must sac­ri­fice our lives — but not send our chil­dren to their schools. ”

Know­ing that in­form­ers were present we were very fright­ened and called his mother, the Reb­bet­zin, to re­strain him. He stood up the mo­ment she came, but told her, “Mother, go back to your room and say some Tehillim, with tears — with no one watch­ing. That will help. ” And he re­as­sured her, “I am not do­ing any of this on my own ini­tia­tive. I asked Fa­ther. ”

The Reb­bet­zin con­tin­ued to stand and speak, un­til he fainted — and barely re­vived.

Ev­ery­one was in dread. The ar­rest came af­ter Shavuos.

17. The rabidly anti-religious “Jewish Section” of the Soviet Communist Party. ↩

My zeide re­lated:

To­ward the end of his life Reb Aizel said, “The world is fall­ing; we need the Rebbe (the Al­ter Rebbe) back again in the world. ”

And later he added, “The world is fall­ing se­ri­ously; we need an or­derly seder, that is, the Baal Shem Tov, the Mezer­itcher Mag­gid and the Al­ter Rebbe. ”