Shabbos Parshas Pinchas

For Friday night, we had invited fourteen guests for Shabbos dinner. With us that made eighteen. The cooking arrangements were very simple: we ordered the complete dinner, and it was all delivered at 5: 00 p.m. We had a lovely Shabbos meal and everyone was happy. At 12:30 after midnight, we had to wake everybody up to send them home.

Shacharis on Shabbos normally starts at 10:00 but on Shabbos Mevorchim, as per the Lubavitcher custom, the whole book of Tehillim is recited from 8:30 until 10:00, therefore davening starts at 10:30 and ends at about 12:15. On certain Shabbosim, and always on Shabbos Mevorchim, the Rebbe holds a farbrengen at 1: 30. Since today, Tammuz 24 (July 8), was Shabbos Mevorchim, as soon as davening was over we dashed home to have lunch. It was eat, when and what you can. We didn't do too badly mind you. (In fact, whilst with the Rebbe in Brooklyn, you had to eat and sleep whenever you could. There was usually not enough time.)

We returned to the hall - to 770 - just a minute before the Rebbe came in at 1:30. The Rebbe made Kiddush silently, and then the procedure was very much like the first meeting we had, but on a larger scale. However, today with most regulars out of town on vacation, there were probably only about 500 people present. On other occasions, such as the Yud Beis Tammuz celebration, there would be as many as 2000 people.

Yud Beis Tammuz - the 12th of Tammuz - is the anniversary of the Previous Rebbe's release from Soviet jail in 1927, where he had been under sentence of death for deliberately and continually ignoring the Communist authorities prohibition of religious instruction to children and teenagers. [Ed. note: For a full account of this historical event, see The Heroic Struggle by Kehot Publication Society.]

At farbrengens, the Rebbe is in complete control. There are no other speakers and no chairman. In any case, we obviously only want to hear the Rebbe when he is there.

This farbrengen lasted until about 5:00 p.m. and the Rebbe delivered six sichas, about twenty minutes each, on the sedra and other timely themes. Additionally, the Rebbe said a maamar for about forty minutes. I confess that I found some of the sichas very tough.  Of the maamar I could only understand about 10%. Yet to see the Rebbe giving his maamar, with his eyes closed, in his special maamar niggun, and all the people standing perfectly still for the whole forty minutes, is a most impressive sight, and is an inspiration to everyone present.

On Motzoei Shabbos there was a melave malka in our honor. This was combined with a farewell party to seventy boys who were going out on the Rebbe's shlichus. They are traveling in pairs to Central America, Mexico and all over the United States. My son Avrohom was supposed to go to Texas, but decided to stay with us until we left for home. (He subsequently went to Alabama, Indianapolis and Chicago. He sold seforim, spoke in summer schools and even persuaded one boy to join a Yeshiva in Boston.)

At this melave malka there were about 250 people present and the press was well represented. The Rebbe does not attend these functions. It was really exciting to hear people giving first-hand reports from all over the world: Paris, Milan, Manchester, London, Sidney, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and Jerusalem, to name a few.

Finally, a gentleman with a big bushy beard spoke about progress being made. This speaker is a Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and had recently become a Lubavitcher chossid.

Many of the American newspapers carried full reports about our activities and meetings. The New York Telegram said, “Mr. Jaffe spoke in clipped English,” while the Yiddish Der Tug Morgan Journal said I spoke in “Oxford English!” No comment.