Can the Rebbe, himself recovering from a heart attack, help a young man in a medical crisis? How did a KGB agent get to know the “partisans” and “revolutionaries” at 770? The Avner Institute presents two amazing anecdotes, told by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Pevzner- a Chabad emissary to Paris — and Betzalel Schiff – a founding member of SHAMIR Association of Religious Professionals, Jerusalem branch, and long-time Russian rescue and relief activist-of the Rebbe’s influence, so unassuming yet so powerful, even in the direst situations.
In loving memory of Hadassah Lebovic A”h
“Like the Rebbe’s Son”
Rabbi Pevzner relates:
It was 1978. I was a student back then, at 770, and I remember when, after Shemeni Atzeres, the Rebbe suffered a major heart attack.
I too was having health problems. My situation, in fact, had come to the point where the doctors told me that I needed surgery. I thought of consulting the Rebbe, but hesitated, not wishing to add stress during his own medical crisis. Nevertheless, I finally wrote to the Rebbe, asking for blessing and advice.
Upon receiving the letter, the Rebbe called for his personal physician, whom he bade arrange my surgery. He even gave some medical instructions. Not quite the normal thing the Rebbe does when he gets a letter from someone in need of medical treatment, but . . . well, this was the Rebbe.
Sure enough, the physician arranged my appointment with someone he knew at Beth Israel Hospital, in Manhattan. When I arrived there I met and exchanged a few words with the surgeon.
Finally he asked me, “How are you planning to pay?”
I pulled out my Medicaid card.
He frowned. “Sorry, but I don’t take Medicaid.”
At this point I was despondent. Anxiously I glanced around the lobby, staring at the waiting patients and wondering — how on earth could I manage to drum up cash, and on such short notice?
Then a strange thing happened. The surgeon also remaining standing, lost in thought.
Suddenly he faced me again. “If the Rebbe sent you here, you must be like the Rebbe’s son. Just as I wouldn’t charge the Rebbe anything, so too I will not charge you!”
I couldn’t believe what I just heard! He performed the entire surgery in a manner fitting of the “Rebbe’s son.”
My hospital stay completed, I hurried back to 770. A mere few minutes passed before Rabbi Binyomin Klein, one of the Rebbe’s secretaries, walked in. He glanced around the room, as if searching for someone.
That someone was me!
He approached me and said, “The Rebbe wants to know how you are feeling.”
“In a Basement”
Betzalel Schiff relates:
Alexander Nikolayevich was well familiar with Chabadniks. He was, after all, KGB senior agent in charge of their persecution. I once came to him asking for records of Chabad heroes he had thrown into prison.
With Israeli chutzpah, I walked in first and handed him a gift: four large photo albums of Chabad-Lubavitcher activity around the globe.
The official leaned forward on his desk and furrowed his brow. “I was in your headquarters at Brooklyn, you know? And not just as a tourist. I had a mission. Without much difficulty I found it, even though you hid it in a basement.
“Why do you think Rabbi Schneerson has his synagogue in a basement?” he blurted, tightening his wrinkled eyes. “Rabbi Schneerson doesn’t have money?”
He continued, “I was inside that synagogue. It was very busy and crowded. But this is America, I wondered. Where are the plush chairs? Where are the fancy crystal chandeliers, the deep carpets? Nowhere! It is a basement, and it looks like a basement.
“I saw the Chassidim sitting on hard wooden benches and eating on wooden tables without even a tablecloth. And what did they eat? Tuna fish and break with vodka!
“I thought – this is what you have to eat in America? Why? Why does Rabbi Schneerson have his followers live this way?
“It was then that I confirmed my suspicion of many years. It was then that I realized that which I should have always known.”
He leaned back and grinned, full of enlightenment. “You people are not just another religious sect! You are revolutionaries. You are partisans. All revolutions begin in a basement!”
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