Sage & Prophet
The Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Born in Ukraine, successor to a Chassidic dynasty that was brutally uprooted and replanted on American soil, the Rebbe took over the reins of leadership from his saintly father-in-law and, from his headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, transformed Chabad into the powerful worldwide movement of today. The Avner Institute presents an article, reprinted from Kfar Chabad, where Zvi Caspi, Israeli Consulate to New York in the 1960s and 70s, describes the Rebbe’s forceful encounters with Israeli leaders Zalman Shazar and Yigdal Allon and his guiding hand through Israel’s affairs.
in loving memory of Hadassah Bas Schneur Zalman.
“Chabad is Truly Everywhere”
Telegram from Allon
About sixteen months after the Six-Day War, Zvi Caspi was appointed by the Israeli government as Consul for Jewish Affairs (a position which has since been abolished) in New York.
About a month later Zvi received a telegram from the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon. Although he no longer possesses a copy of the original telegram, he still remembers its dramatic wording clearly. It read:
Contact the Lubavitcher Rebbe on behalf of the Israeli government and ask him for the following:
To instruct Chabad Chassidim to settle in Hebron.
To call upon his Chassidim to settle the land.
Zvi Caspi is quick to emphasize that Allon did not write that the Chassidim should immigrate to Israel but was speaking more in terms of building settlements.
“The Deputy Prime Minister approached me on this issue instead of the Israeli Consul General, Rechavan Amir, because Amir was hardly involved with the American-Jewish community. During my first term of service in New York, I had built up substantial connections with American Jewry and one of my contacts was an influential personality named Shraga Cohen. Shraga Cohen now helped me to arrange an official meeting with the Rebbe on behalf of the Israeli government,” Zvi recalls.
The meeting took place at midnight, which was a fairly early hour for yechidus in those days. After reading Allon’s telegram, the Rebbe remarked, “Although Chabad owns a number of properties in Hebron, I don’t think you are actually asking us to settle there. You want to do the same in Hebrew as you did in Natzeret [Nazareth]. The local Arabs have been allowed to remain in Natzeret, while the nearby suburb of Natzeret Illit has been built for the Jews.”
Zvi notes: “It is important to remember that at this point no one had even thought of constructing Kiryat Arba. Yet here the Rebbe spoke about the creation of this new town openly and, if I’m not mistaken, he even referred to it by name. The Rebbe stated that building a Jewish township next to Hebron would be a major mistake.
Mentioning the construction of Natzeret Illit once more, he declared, ‘You are making a terrible decision. These murderers already waved the white flag of surrender, yet you allowed them to stay! Why are you so afraid? The [Arabs] were terrified of you during the war. Why didn’t you let them flee? Were you worried about the condemnation from the rest of the world? The whole world is already full of refugees . . . . This is a terrible mistake which we will end up paying for dearly. You don’t really want us to live in Hebron itself but to live close by, in the same manner as Natzreret.
“‘You also err when you arrest terrorists and imprison them. These terrorists seek only to kill, and [as the Sages teach] if someone comes to kill you, you are obliged to kill him first. You will pay a high price for putting him in prison because they can be used as bargaining counters in future release and exchange deals.’”
Zvi comments: “It did not take long before the Rebbe’s prophetic words were fulfilled in their entirety . . . .”
As far as he recalls, the Rebbe did not respond to the second part of Allon’s telegram.
Although Zvi Caspi could not directly record this yechidus at the time, he started to write down the Rebbe’s words as soon as he got into the car which drove him home. Once he was arrived, he stayed up until three that morning transcribing everything that he had just heard. Eventually he sent a full report to Yaakov Herzog, who served as Ben Gurion’s adviser and ran the American desk at the Israeli Foreign Office. Zvi received a positive response from Herzog: “Well done. This is a truly historic report.”
According to Zvi, the report did have a certain effect. He points out that recently Israeli former right-wing MK Geulah Cohen wrote the following: “In a speech delivered before the Knesset on March 25, 1970, Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon stated:
We must not accept it as a fact that because of a murderous pogrom in 1929, we should willingly continue to make Hebron a city clear of Jews. There is no connection between [Jewish] settlement and the chances of a comprehensive peace. Even if we accept the viewpoint that we should not draw maps, I strongly caution ourselves against any errors [such as keeping Hebron Judenrein] which in effect also draw maps.
“When I read what Geulah Cohen had written,” Zvi Caspi comments, “I wanted to tell her about my conversation with the Rebbe. I realized that Yigal agreed with the Rebbe’s opinion but that Rebbe knew that the government would never follow his suggestions. That is why the Rebbe did not respond to instruct the Chassidim to build settlements.”
The Missing Kitzur
Before Zvi Caspi had received this telegram, he knew very little about Lubavitch. However, as time went on, his connections with the Rebbe and with the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Binyamin Klein, became very strong. One moving episode resulting from his relationship with the Rebbe concerns a present that he had received as a child growing up in Germany.
Zvi came from a religious family, most of whom perished. He studied in a cheder run by Rabbi David Feldman in Leipzig. Dr. Yosef Burg, who later served as a minister in a number of Israeli governments, was also one of his teachers. For a bar mitzvah present, Rabbi Feldman gave Zvi a copy of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch [Code of Jewish Law] which had been translated into German.
“It was one of my most prized possessions,” remembers Zvi. “It accompanied me throughout my wanderings over the next few years. Eventually, I settled in pre-independence Israel, where I joined the Mossad.
“Although I was very young I had already mastered several languages. I was fluent in German, Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and French, and I later studied Arabic as well. In 1944, the Mossad sent me to Egypt where I helped to organize Aliyah Bet, which smuggled young religious Egyptian Jews into Israel. It goes without saying that I brought my precious Kitzur with me.
“I travelled to Egypt on a false Palestinian passport, posing under an assumed name as a secretary of the Maccabi Sports Organization. As an added precaution I deleted my real name, Zvi Hirsch Zilberman, from the flyleaf of the Kitzur.
“There is no need to detail my activities in Egypt. However, following the assassination of Lord Mayor later that year, I was abruptly forced to leave the country. I did not have a chance to pack anything and I left most of my possessions behind. Everything was confiscated, including my beloved Kitzur. Although the Mossad retrieved a number of my possessions many years later, the Kitzur was never returned.
“During my first visit to the Rebbe, I told Rabbi Klein about this and mentioned how much I missed that particular German translation of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch.
“‘Don’t worry,’ said Rabbi Klein. ‘I’ll get you another one.’”
Sometime later I received an exact copy of the edition of the Kitzur that I had lost in Egypt. It had come all the way from Melbourne, Australia. I was very moved. From here I could see that Chabad is truly everywhere . . . .”
Leaving Germany
When the Nazis came to power in Germany, Zvi’s oldest brother, who had been living in Poland, managed to flee before the Nazi invasion began. Other members of the family also left Poland in time, thus escaping the Holocaust.
However, Zvi’s father was not so fortunate. Originally, he had settled in Germany after defecting from the Polish army. For various reasons he stayed in Germany and eventually perished there. Zvi’s grandfather, with his six aunts and two uncles, still lived in Poland when the war broke out, and they met a similar fate.
Zvi relates: “At the time I was unaware of the terrible danger that we were all in. I was my grandfather’s oldest grandson and as such I had a very close relationship with hi. When I reached the age of thirteen, I asked my father if I could travel to Poland to visit him as a bar mitzvah present. My grandfather wrote that as my father was wanted in Poland for desertion from the army, he could not accompany me and that I should not travel such a great distance alone.
“Eventually I decided to immigrate to Israel but I never gave up the idea of visiting my grandfather. When I was fifteen I was granted an immigration visa to pre-independence Israel, along with a Polish passport. I asked my father whether I could travel to Israel via Poland in order to visit my grandfather. My father wrote to my grandfather informing him of this plan. I still remember my grandfather’s reply to this very day: ‘When one travels to Israel,’ he said in Yiddish, ‘one should travel directly without making any stops on the way.’
“My grandfather’s answer saved my life. The members of my family who remained in Germany and Poland were deported to the concentration camps, and if I had delayed, my immigration to Israel to visit Poland, that is where I also would have ended up.”
Israeli Diplomat
After Israel achieved independence in 1948, Zvi Caspi worked in the public service. In 1957 he joined the Foreign Office and was transferred to New York, where he raised funds for the new state. In 1966 he was sent by the Israeli government to the port of Marseilles.
“In those days, North African emigrants from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria mainly traveled to Israel via Marseilles,” he explained.
Zvi and his family spent two years there. During this time, he worked directly on behalf of Golda Meir, who was the Israeli foreign minister.
“In the end I left Marseilles for the sake of my children’s Jewish education,” Zvi recalls. “Marseilles was very different in those days. Although today the city has a thriving Jewish educational system, then there was not even one Jewish school. I was forced to enroll my children at a local French school, which meant that they were home for three days out of every week. Thursdays were entirely devoted to religious education classes which were provided by the local church, and as Jewish pupils were exempt, my children stayed at home. Naturally they did not attend school on the weekends, which meant that they had a lot of spare time on their hands. In the end, I described this unacceptable situation to Golda and she transferred me to New York in August 1968.
“Life in New York was very different from Marseilles. Even during the late 1960s French Jewry was still reeling from the terrible trauma of the Holocaust. In Marseilles, Jews hid their differences as much as they could. Anyone going to shul would conceal his tallis in a bag. Jewish books were hidden away. I tried very hard to remain proud of my Jewishness and even built a sukkah in the grounds of the Consulate, an act which was unheard of in those days.
“When I arrived in New York, I found an active and open community. Eventually I built up solid connections with New York Jewry and coordinated a variety of productive activities.
“One of the most interesting has to be the transfer of fifty sifrei Torah from Cuba to Israel. The Israeli ambassador to Cuba used to contact Israel via the Consulate in New York, and we used to provide the Jewish community with everything it needed. A Jew from New York went to Cuba to work as a mohel and a shochet, leaving his family behind. When I once asked him how he could be so far away from his children, he replied, ‘While there is even a single Jew left in Cuba who wishes to circumcise his son and eat kosher, I will not desert this community.’
“One of the consular officials, Mr. Shapira of Holon, also used to do whatever he could to assist Cuban Jewry, such as providing them with the arbah minim [Four Species] during Succoth. He once told me that in Cuba there was a magnificent shul that was standing completely empty but was full of sifrei Torah. At this time there was a severe lack of sifrei Torah in Israel, so we decided that it was worthwhile transferring these unused scrolls.
“Mr. Shapira managed to fit them into diplomatic baggage and smuggled out about fifty sifrei Torah in this manner. I then sent them on to the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs.
“Originally I took one of these scrolls for myself, but I then decided that this was not right and I sent it via the Minister of Religious Affairs, Dr. Zerach Wahrhaftig, to the first religious settlement on the Golan Heights, Ramat HaMagshimim. I sent another sefer Torah, which had been written about 300 years ago, to Zalman Shazar, who placed it in the shul at the presidential residence.”
Constant Connection
During the three years that Zvi spent in New York, he became very close to the Rebbe. He compiled a special album of mementos from his meetings with the Rebbe, including letters that accompanied gifts such as shemurah matzos and specific replies to questions.
“We were the ones who instituted the actual visit to the Rebbe by members of the Israeli consulate on the second night of Simchas Torah,” Zvi declares proudly. “As many Israelis only keep one day of yom tov, we would drive over to 770, where everyone was still celebrating Simchas Torah. The Rebbe knew beforehand that we were coming and he would always greet us very warmly. Each time the Rebbe asked us to stand next to him and afterwards the Chassidim would ask us what the Rebbe had said.
“Every year I participated in his special visit. Meetings of the UN General Assembly took place around this time of the year, and Yosef Tekoa, who was Israel’s ambassador to the UN, would be staying in New York. He and the rest of his delegation would celebrate these hakkafos with us. Usually the Rebbe would honor us with a hakkafah, and Yosef and I would each carry a sefer Torah.
“One year, a particularly moving incident took place. During my earlier time in New York, I generally used to daven at the Degel Shul, which had been established by survivors of the infamous Hebron massacre of 1929. There I learned a special melody – vechol karnei reshaim – which used to be sung by the Jews of Hebron. That Simchas Torah I sang this melody as I carried the sefer Torah during the hakkafos shniyos in 770.
“Suddenly, everyone fell silent and the Rebbe began to sing the melody, but in a slightly different form. I continued to sing it according to the way I had learned from the Degel Shul while the Rebbe sang his version as everyone stood by, listening. It was a unique moment.
“Apart from these visits, I also received a number of letters from the Rebbe, and each of my five children was given siddurim.”
During Zvi’s period of service in New York, the Israeli president of the time, Zalman Shazar (who was a descendant of the Alter Rebbe and always had a warm connection with Lubavitch), visited the Rebbe on Erev Purim 1970. Shazar had been invited to attend an American-wide convention of Israel Bonds, which took place in Miami. He asked the organizers to first of all arrange a meeting for him with the Rebbe.
Zvi still remembers the efforts of a number of senior officials to dissuade the President from visiting the Rebbe: “They told him that his position as president of a sovereign state precluded him from going to see the Rebbe and that according to protocol the Rebbe should come to him. I was present when Shazar simply replied that he would not be visiting the Rebbe as president of a sovereign state but as a Chassid!”
Zvi Caspi recalls every detail of this momentous visit and also has a number of photographs that were taken at the time. During their yechidus, Shazar presented the Rebbe with a rare manuscript. The Rebbe gave Shazar a megillah.
The Rebbe invited Shazar to hear a reading of the megillah in the beis midrash. Shazar later gave Zvi a photograph of himself with the Rebbe. Also in the picture are Zvi and Rechavam Amir, the Israeli Consul General. The armchair that Shazar sat in was provided especially for the President so that he would have a comfortable place to sit during the megillah reading. Afterwards Shazar was granted a special private yechidus with the Rebbe.
Zvi was present when Shazar took his leave of the Rebbe before returning to Israel.
“When will I have the tremendous privilege of greeting the Rebbe in Jerusalem?” asked Shazar.
Zvi still remembers the Rebbe’s earnest answer to this frequently-asked question: “It would be well and good if I went to Jerusalem, but once I was there who would allow me to leave? . . .”
Zvi adds: “On the way back to the hotel, Shazar hardly spoke. He was still very moved from his meeting with the Rebbe. I think he was also sad, like any Chassid who has just had to say goodbye to his Rebbe.”
Throughout the three years that Zvi Caspi worked in New York for the Israeli consulate, he had a number of private audiences with the Rebbe, and before he left he made sure to have one final yechidus.
Since then, he has served Israel in Miami, Canada, and Brazil. In each of these places he has translated his warm connection with the Rebbe into fruitful contact with the Rebbe’s local shluchim.
Visitors for Tisha B’Av
“One Tisha B’Av I was at the Consulate when the guard at the gate paged me on the intercom. He told me that two young men with a suitcase had turned up and were claiming that they had been sent by the Rebbe.
“I replied that he should ask them exactly what they wanted and that he should inspect the contents of the suitcase. It emerged that the young men had indeed come from 770 and that the Rebbe had instructed them to put on tefillin with other Jews, especially on Tisha B’Av.
“I told the guard to send them to me. Although I always put on tefillin at home, I used to keep a spare pair at the Consulate. I made sure to do so ever since a senior official arrived here from Israel early one morning only to discover that he had brought the wrong suitcase.
“I now explained to the two young shluchim that of course I put on tefillin on Tisha B’Av, only at Minchah [instead of morning service, when it is usually donned].”
“‘That’s all right,’ replied the shluchim. ‘We understand your situation, but we would like you to call in any members of your staff who would not normally put on tefillin at all.’ Accordingly, I invited the security staff and they all thankfully fulfilled the mitzvah.
“The shluchim also asked if the Consul General would put on tefillin. I called him and told him that the Lubavitcher Rebbe had sent shluchim especially to put on tefillin with him. The Consul was only too happy to oblige.”
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