Uniting Jews Through One Bottle of L’Chaim

Rabbi Nechemia Vogel has been serving as a Chabad emissary in Rochester, New York, since 1981. He was interviewed by JEM in October of 2020.

My father, Reb Nosson Vogel, had connected with Chabad chasidim in London in the early 60s, but it was when he traveled to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1965 that he was totally captivated by him, and became a chasid. My father subsequently founded the Lubavitch Boys’ Grammar School in London, which eventually morphed into today’s Yeshivah Gedolah.

When I was eleven, in 1966, my father took my older brother and me to New York for the holiday of Sukkot to meet the Rebbe. For my father, the yardstick to measure how much we wanted to go to the Rebbe was whether we would come up with our own money for the ticket – and we did.

During our private audience with the Rebbe, my father told the Rebbe that our trip had been scheduled during our school break so that it wouldn’t come at the expense of learning Torah, which gave the Rebbe great satisfaction. Then, when my father mentioned that we had paid for our own tickets, the Rebbe smiled broadly and opened the drawer of his desk to give us each a fifty-dollar note. “I want to participate in paying for your trip,” he told us.

My second audience was in 1971, on my own, as a sixteen-year-old yeshivah student. Beforehand, I prepared a note with some questions for the Rebbe. One thing on my mind was my younger sister Hensha (Eliane) who was nine years younger than me. She was profoundly autistic. As an older brother, I felt that there was something I ought to be doing for her, at least spiritually. “What can I do to help my sister?” I wrote to the Rebbe.

“You are a yeshivah student,” the Rebbe answered after reading my note. “Go deep into your studies of the Talmud and Chasidut. By learning Torah, and by delving deep into it, you will reach the depth of your sister.”

The Rebbe was pointing out that my sister had a depth to her, something more than meets the eye. I could connect to that depth in her, and have a meaningful effect on her, but the way for me to access this depth was through studying Torah.

The answer took me by surprise. I was hoping for something miraculous, expecting the Rebbe to suggest reciting special Psalms in her merit, or to give me some out-of-the-box instructions. In order to accomplish something unusual, surely I needed to do something unusual.

Instead, I understood that the Rebbe was really telling me: You are a yeshivah student and your purpose in life right now is to study Torah. You don’t need to go outside of your core mission in order to help your sister. To this day, I see this as a general lesson in life. Anything we need to accomplish, even in extraordinary circumstances, can be accomplished in the context of our life mission – or shlichut, in Hebrew.

At the same time, I was never to forget my responsibility to my sister. When I came back to the Rebbe a year later and didn’t mention Hensha in the note I handed to him, he immediately commented, “You didn’t write anything about your sister! How is she?”

From then on, every time I wrote to the Rebbe, I would mention my sister. Subsequently, when my parents met with the Rebbe and discussed my sister’s situation, the Rebbe praised how my siblings and I would regularly write to him about her.

Years later, in 1981, I had another shlichut. There was an activist in London named Ernie Hirsch who had started a project to support Jewish life in communist Russia. He organized trips for two volunteers at a time, posing as tourists to meet with the Jews living in Moscow, teach them Torah and bring Jewish necessities that were hard to come by in the Soviet Union.

Shortly after Passover of 1981, my brother-in-law Berel Shur, of blessed memory, and I were asked to go on one of these trips. We received the Rebbe’s blessing for the trip, and the Lubavitchers in Moscow were notified of our visit. We came with suitcases packed with kosher food and Jewish books – most of which were confiscated by the customs officers. Over eight days in Moscow, we had many private meetings with the locals, but one highlight was a chasidic gathering we had with the community. The men and women piled into a small Moscow apartment, and they drank in every word we told them about the Rebbe and his teachings.

At one point, Berel came up with the idea of sending a gift to the Rebbe, on behalf of the participants of this farbrengen. The Rebbe was deeply involved with Russian Jewry, and spoke about them publicly, often with great emotion, so we knew that he would appreciate the gesture. There was a bottle of vodka on the table, which we designated as the gift, and when I eventually returned to New York, I gave it to the Rebbe’s secretaries, along with an explanatory note.

On the very next Shabbat, the Rebbe kept the bottle on his table for the entire duration of his public farbrengen in 770. Then, at the end of the event, he began to speak about it.

“Behind the Iron Curtain, there was recently a farbrengen,” said the Rebbe, “where they engaged in Torah discussion, prayer, and charity. They did so without regard for the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves, especially in recent times. Now, some of the spirits from that farbrengen were brought here, and I have added them to my cup.”

He gave out this vodka to everyone present, “in order to unite the Jews who are behind the Iron Curtain with those who are here and around the world.” He made a prayer for the Iron Curtain to soon come down, and for all Jewish people to come out of exile.

Although it was my brother-in-law and I who spoke words of inspiration at that farbrengen in Moscow, we felt that it was really they who were inspiring us. Despite the dangers they lived with, they were only interested in hearing about the Rebbe and their fellow chasidim abroad, with whom they felt a tremendous connection; they even asked us to make a diagram of the floor plan of 770! They also couldn’t understand how there could be some people in America who did not fully observe Torah and mitzvot. They wondered: “How can you live in a free country and not take full advantage?”

I came away with a deep appreciation for being in the Rebbe’s presence, and for the freedom to fully and openly live as a Jew. Moreover, when we came back and told other Lubavitchers, they were astounded. They couldn’t believe it was possible to pass through the Iron Curtain and farbreng with the Jews there.

“Not only is it possible,” I told them, “it’s necessary.”

And so that mission to Moscow in May, 1981, became the catalyst for numerous subsequent missions of chasidim to the former Soviet Union.