Rebbe's Parisian Friend Sheds Light on Scientific Experience

The Chabad-Lubavitch yeshiva in Miami Beach, Fla., received a routine call in the days before Purim in 1993. An elderly man phoned that he couldn't go to synagogue to hear the reading of the Scroll of Esther (megillah) and requested someone to come to his residence to read the scroll for him.

Chaim Schapiro, a student at the school, was sent.

"I remember it vividly," says Schapiro, "it was a condominium on Collins Avenue and 23^rd Street, right past the Avis car rental office."

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Following his instructions, Schapiro looked for one David Bezborodko, an elderly wheelchair-bound man with a flowing white beard. Schapiro dutifully read the megillah, and as he was getting ready to leave, Bezborodko asked the student if was a Chabad-Lubavitch chasid.

Thinking nothing of the question, Schapiro nodded in affirmation. The elderly man relayed that he knew the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, from his time in France.

Schapiro stayed, and listened to details about that time that he had never heard before. But after he left, he forgot about the entire incident. Exactly one year later, Bezborodko phoned the school once more, and Schapiro volunteered to read the megillah for him.

Schapiro had since moved to study in New York, when Bezborodko surfaced once more in the weeks following the Rebbe's 1994 passing.

"I had long forgotten about the events," he relates. "After the Rebbe passed away, some of us started digging up information about his life. One day, I came across a letter the Rebbe had written to Mr. Bezborodko in the early 1950s. I then remembered the entire story and decided that I had to find him again to document the events that he had related to me."

Putting it on Tape

David Bezborodko (Photo: Courtesy Kurinsky Family)

Schapiro tracked down the man, and spoke with him about his friendship with the Rebbe. It quickly became clear that Bezborodko's story was unique in that it came from someone who had actually attended scientific lectures with the Rebbe.

Born in 1901, by his mid-30s, Bezborodko was a prominent inventor of advanced glass-making procedures. Hailing from Russia, his family controlled a series of glass factories throughout Eastern Europe, while he acted as a salesman and travelled far and wide for the family business.

A self-described mitnaged, or opponent of Chasidism, he met the Rebbe in 1937. Though normally measured with his words, he spoke of the Rebbe's genius, religious adherence and refinement in superlative terms. Shortly after giving his account to rabbinical student Eliezer Zaklikovsky and a film crew in 1998, he passed away.

The taped interview concentrates on Bezborodko's experiences as a friend of the Rebbe, who at the time was living in Paris, studying advanced mathematics and mechanical engineering at the École Spéciale des Travaux Publics and the Sorbonne, all while immersed in Torah study. He also worked for his father-in-law, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, travelling between Riga and a Warsaw suburb, and handling financial affairs for the underground network of Jewish institutions in Russia.

As members of a local scientific club, the Rebbe and Bezborodko consulted on a variety of issues.

When World War II began, Bezborodko and his wife fled with the Rebbe and Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson to Vichy and then Nice.

"I was working on procedures for polishing glass," says Bezborodko in a heavy French accent. "After 20 years of working, I reduced a job of four hours to 15 minutes. I had finished writing up my work shortly before the war broke out."

The glass specialist, who in 1942 invented an automatic mirror making machine and later founded the Mechanical Mirror Works in New York, told the Rebbe about his paper. The Rebbe requested a copy of his multi-volume work.

"I gave him the copy, and the next day we met," relates Bezborodko. "He gave me two remarks. One was an issue that I was thinking much about and could not find an answer for."

The Rebbe solved the problem, allowing Bezborodko to put his theory into practice.

Says Bezborodko: "I saw that the man had a special type of brain."

Once before, Bezborodko went to Switzerland on a business trip and, at the request of the Rebbetzin, brought back 21 special hand-baked shmura matzahs from the Schmerling family.

The Rebbetzin told the man, "veil di matzos vos m'bakt [the matzahs that they bake] back in Nice, he will not eat."

At that moment, Bezborodko appreciated that the Rebbe's strictures in observing Jewish practice, even in unusual circumstances, went way beyond the letter of the law. During the winter he had seen the Rebbe peeling nuts for use over Passover.

"He's preparing for Pesach," the Rebbetzin told Bezborodko, pointing to the nuts. "This, he will eat."

Bezborodko also brought back a large piece of Swiss cheese and candy.

"The candy, he didn't want to touch," remembers Bezborodko.

The Rebbe wanted Bezborodko to keep the candy and give it to his children. He also wanted him to keep the cheese, which Bezborodko would not do. They finally compromised on splitting it in half.

Also in the interview, Bezborodko speaks about how the Rebbetzin went out of her way to practice the laws significantly beyond their basic requirements.

But it was another of Bezborodko's scientific encounters that remained ingrained in his memory.

"[There is] one episode that I can never forget," he says. "We were members in Club du Faubourg, a club for scientists. And [the Rebbe] wrote a paper with the date [in French and with] the Hebrew year, 5698 de la creation du monde," which translates to "from the birth of the world."

Members of the club sent a letter to the Rebbe, asking him, "How can a scientist from the 20th century say that the world exists for only 5,000 years?" relates Bezborodko. The members demanded that the Rebbe explain his position in writing or at the next meeting.

At the next meeting, the Rebbe showed up wearing a beret.

"The Rebbe's lecture went on for two hours," says Bezberodko. "I remember [that] at the end, everybody applauded him."

To view a clip of David Bezborodko's interview, posted on TheRebbe.org, click here.