Inauguration
Most people cannot grasp this, but the seemingly impossible reality is: The Rebbe never wasted any moment.
Rabbi Binyamin Klein
This Shabbos marks Yud (10) Shevat, the 71st yahrzeit of the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, and, exactly one year later, his son-in-law’s inauguration. The Avner Institute presents an interview with the Rebbe’s long-time secretary Rabbi Binyamin Klein, of blessed memory, who described handling the thousands of letters, from Jews of every stripe, that arrived on the Rebbe’s desk throughout his Chabad leadership, and the Rebbe’s 24/7 attention to every Jew and every employee, on every matter, the moment he stepped into office. “The Rebbe invested enormous energy and exertion,” Rabbi Klein recalled. “Physical exertion.”
“To read and understand the Rebbe’s answers”
An Hour with Rabbi Binyamin Klein, the Rebbe’s Secretary
Manis Lavie relates:
To interview Rabbi Binyamin Klein is no easy task. Everyone who recognizes Rabbi Klein is well aware of one of his extraordinary attributes: absolute discretion. It is reasonable to surmise that this quality, among others, earned him the Rebbe’s confidence for over 30 years in a wide-ranging spectrum of vital tasks, including top-secret liaison with the defense establishments in both Israel and the U.S. and critical physical and spiritual rescue missions for threatened Jewish communities around the world.
How did the Secretariat deal with correspondence?
The Rebbe took home many letters every evening, and he returned in the morning with responses arranged in categories. One category was bar mitzvah or wedding letters with requests for berachos [blessings]; another group was letters requiring other formats. The latter we needed to prepare and bring to the Rebbe to review and sign. In other cases the Rebbe dictated individual replies.
He frequently reviewed bar mitzvah or wedding twice or more. For example, when a postscript was added (in answer to questions concerning bar mitzvahs or other issues) the Rebbe would review the letter an additional time. The first time, when the secretaries prepared a regular response, the Rebbe indicated what to write in the P.S. Afterwards the Rebbe would examine the addition, and only then would he sign. He never signed a letter before it was complete and ready for posting.
How did the secretaries balance this workload?
Generally Rabbis Nissan Mindel and Shalom Mendel Simpson handled the correspondence. Earlier it was the task of Rabbi Moshe Leib Rodstein, a member of the Secretariat until his last day. He came to the Rebbe’s office nightly after the Rebbe returned at about 6:00 p.m. from dinner at home. The Rebbe dictated answers and he typed them.
By the way, he once told me this story: As is known, the Rebbe sent annually a prolific volume – literally thousands – of letters with Rosh HaShanah and Pesach berachos. Now it would seem reasonable that the Rebbe should simply be asked for a mailing list, but the Rebbe wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, after all the letters were prepared, he pored over each one individually, in many cases adding something – whether in the title, the form of greetings, or a special message in a postscript Rabbi Rodstein once mentioned to the Rebbe that in place of signing all the letters personally, perhaps it would be preferable to use a rubber stamp. The Rebbe’s reply: “Someone requests a berachah, and I give him rubber?!”
Regarding the same subject, Rabbi Hodakov once told me that he frequently had to give the Rebbe a letter with numerous carbon copies, which were to be sent to a number of people. When the letters were presented for signing, the Rebbe would reach each one individually, saying, “When I sign something, I can’t say that I signed it simply because I assumed it was surely the same as another letter.”
All said – besides the contents of the correspondence, which goes without saying it – the Rebbe invested enormous energy and exertion: physical exertion.
Who opened those thousands of letters?
The letters went to the Rebbe precisely as received. He opened each one himself by hand. When Rabbi Rodstein suggested the purchase of an automatic letter opener, the Rebbe declined: “That’s not for me.” As I mentioned, the Rebbe himself sorted the letters.
I already mentioned that Rabbi Rodstein wrote the replies from the Rebbe’s dictation. This was later done by Rabbi Mindel, who for many years came to the Rebbe every Monday and Thursday. (The Rebbe would give advance notice if particular days were unsuitable.) Now all of this regarded mailed responses. Frequently – due to urgency or other reasons – the Rebbe would write “telephone” on letters.
And what was the arrangement with answers given verbally?
When the Rebbe wrote his answer on a letter that had been submitted, the secretaries repeated the written text verbatim. His verbal comments were generally transmitted through Rabbi Hodakov, the director of the Secretariat, and the one who routed tasks among staff members. Shortly after I began work in the Secretariat, Rabbi Hodakov assigned me the responsibility of verbal responses. The Rebbe spoke to him; he passed the information to me; I informed the recipient.
This arrangement was consistent all these years?
Until 5738 [i.e. Shemini Atzeres 1977, when the Rebbe underwent a heart attack] all verbal communications passed through Rabbi Hodakov. Generally, there were clear distinctions between Rabbi Hodakov and the other Secretariat members. Essentially, everything first came to Rabbi Hodakov, and he designated our assignments. He once commented on this: “One doesn’t go to the general before seeing the captain.” The events of 1977 resulted in a much greater intimacy between the Rebbe and the other staff members as well. Being with the Rebbe literally non-stop in those days brought us very close. From that time on, I also received many verbal answers.
Since we’re already discussing 1977, I’d like to emphasize an important point: In those first days after the event of Shemini Atzeres – that is to say, mere days after his heart attack – the Rebbe focused his attention on recently-received urgent requests relating to health matters. It was a truly astonishing expression of ahavas Yisrael [love for a fellow Jew]: the Rebbe was lying down, connected to a monitor; highly-stressed doctors surrounded him. But what was important to the Rebbe? How is the little girl doing, the one across the ocean they asked a berachah for?
Some of us great accustomed to viewing the secretaries as commentators-interpreters of the Rebbe’s answers, when we felt unequal to the task.
Always, through all the years, when people asked me for a pshat [simple form] of an answer from the Rebbe, I told them: You wrote a letter to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe answered you. All your thoughts and feelings in the matter are in your words to the Rebbe; everything the Rebbe sought to convey to you with his answer is in his words. How can a bystander like me have anything to contribute?
At most, I could say how I might react in similar circumstances, had I received an answer like this. Under no condition would I second-guess the Rebbe’s intentions.
At the same time, it’s appropriate to say that yes: we must know how to read and understand the Rebbe’s answers. For example, I know of cases in which someone would write a particular question to the Rebbe in hope of receiving a particular answer. After getting a reply different from that which he had anticipated, he said to himself: the Rebbe answered a specific way because I asked in a specific way. I’ll ask again in a different way; then I’ll get the response I want. In 99% of these second attempts – after the Rebbe had already written clearly, but the questioner attempted to “outsmart” him – the Rebbe would answer that he should follow the advice of a rav, or of close friends. It’s as though the Rebbe were saying: “Look, I’ve already answered you! You still want an O.K. to do that? Look for it from a rav or a friend.”
I remember once when the Rebbe said something like this at a farbrengen, on motzei Shabbos Parshas Mishpatim in 1979. He said that the bacherim [yeshiva students] shouldn’t travel internationally to simchas [lifecycle celebrations]: “Why should I take on the responsibility? Someone wants to travel? Let them ask a rav, and let the rav tell him what’s proper . . . .” In other words, there aren’t any chochmas (“you don’t play games”) with the Rebbe.
On many occasions Chassidim related to the answers as mere “friendly advice.” An ordinary Jew once came for yechidus [private audience] and, upon coming out, told me that he asked the Rebbe some question and the Rebbe told him to seek counsel from friends. He summed up his impression: “I came to the Rebbe to get addresses?!” If we had only heeded the Rebbe without chochmos, without mixing in our own seichel [logic]! When birthday yechidus ended in 1975, the Rebbe said in a sicha [discourse]: “Some people come for yechidus, and the next year, when [I] ask if they fulfilled what was discussed the previous year, it’s clear that they hadn’t . . . .”
They say you’re a man of unusual secrecy.
Secrecy is a central principle in the Secretariat’s work. On many occasions the Rebbe instructed me to transfer confidential information, and in order to be certain that no one would hear, he told me to call from his room, or to call when no one else was in the office or at home. This was the case regarding the Rebbe’s personal and family matters, as well as political and defense issues. Many times the Rebbe requested certain arrangements, to transfer or receive particular information. When special discretion was required, often so in saving Jewish lives, key figures in Israel or elsewhere were contacted. The Rebbe always said that secrecy is the most highly effective path.
Since we’re already discussing the Rebbe’s communications, something else should be noted: It sometimes happened that the Rebbe would dictate to me a message to be given in his name, and after I had written it, he would ask me to read and explain. He wanted to see how I understood it – to verify that I would give the message precisely as intended.
Another example of how the Secretariat’s work demands secrecy: There were instances when the Rebbe wanted someone to travel for a shlichus [mission] to a particularly unfriendly location. At the same time there was a condition: the decision to travel should come from the individual’s choice, and not because of the Rebbe’s orders. I would meet with that person and bring us incidentally, as it were, that there was a vacant position, and was he interested in the shlichus? If he first refused, and only later – after learning that the offer originated from the Rebbe – agreed, it was already too late . . . .
The Rebbe also utilized his automobile trips for confidential conversation, and transfer of written materials.
I recall once when the Rebbe spoke with me for a half-hour in the car on President Street, on the way home from the mikvah. He spoke heatedly, intensively, and I stopped the car to concentrate on his words. At times like this, the Rebbe talked in the style he employed in his sichos kodesh [holy discouses]: first, the essential topic; then the explanations and proofs.
We’re approaching Gimmel Tammuz [the Rebbe’s yahrzeit]. What can you say about the Rebbe’s visits to the Ohel [father-in-law’s resting place]?
One of the things that stand out is the preparation for the trip. The Rebbe prepared for each visit to the Ohel in the same way we get ready in Elul for Rosh HaShanah. The tension of getting ready was already palpable in his room the evening before the visit. And we’re talking now about every trip, without exception, 1992 or decades earlier. The secretaries knew the day before the trip that operations would run differently, because “tomorrow is Ohel day.” Everything was different; for example, answers from the Rebbe were given more rapidly. If I would receive a letter close to the time of the Rebbe’s trip to the Ohel, and I knew that the matter could be postponed, I would delay its delivery a day or two. The whole atmosphere was changed. If it’s permissible to give an example, I would say that the Rebbe prepared for the visit to the Ohel the way a Chassid readies himself to go to the Rebbe, for yechidus.
You could see this during the trip?
During the trips the Rebbe was busy. From the time the Rambam study cycle began, the Rebbe studied Rambam while traveling. Before then he was involved in other matters. Most people cannot grasp this, but the seemingly impossible reality is: The Rebbe never wasted any moment. Beyond that, the Rebbe frequently labored on two different matters at once. When, for example, the secretaries would enter to give him something, or when the Rebbe was talking to us, he was simultaneously at work on something else. This was usually the case when we reported on current affairs. Only when something out of the ordinary was in progress did the Rebbe put aside everything and devote his full attention.
But to return to the trips to the Ohel. This is not the place to discuss the Rebbe’s ruach hakodesh [Divine inspiration], but it was during the car trips – to the Ohel, the mikvah, or his home – that I saw it so vividly. I remember that before I traveled to the Rebbe the first time, I went to receive farewell berachos from the mashpia [advisor] in Jerusalem to whom I had become deeply attached, Rabbi Shmaryahu Sosonkin, of blessed memory. His words were: “Now look, Binyamin, in the daled amos [immediate surroundings] of the Rebbe you must be careful with your thought, speech, and action.”
I didn’t dream then that I would merit being so close to the Rebbe. The truth is that I couldn’t begin to absorb the significance of it until I began working in the Secretariat. In a way, the full reality was experienced much more intensely in the car. So often did I see ruach hakodesh, mamash [actually]! I’d get into the car unsure whether or not to raise an issue with the Rebbe, and while I was considering, the Rebbe already began discussing it and providing clear answers.
To receive letters and inspiring stories about the Rebbe, email [email protected].
