After the family finally united, R. Berke began to think about the possibility of submitting a request to emigrate. In those years, hardly anyone dared to submit such a request because of the fear that hung heavily in the air. The few who did gather the courage to ask for permission to leave knew that it was almost certain that a year would pass before they would receive an answer, and the answer would most likely be negative; that was the answer that everyone received.

Submitting papers to OVIR (an agency under the KGB) with the request to leave the country was out of the question for R. Berke, because he had been arrested for the very crime of trying to leave the country, but he thought his wife should submit the request in order to reunite with her parents who had left Russia a few years earlier. Perhaps he would also be granted permission to leave after that.

R. Berke sent a letter to his father-in-law written with hints, in which he asked them to convey the question to the Rebbe. His father-in-law passed the question on to his grandson, R. Berke’s son Mordechai, who was –was a student at the central Chabad yeshivah in Brooklyn at the time, and asked him to pass the question on to the Rebbe. The question he asked was whether his mother should ask for permission to emigrate. The Rebbe’s answer was clear and surprising, “Your father should submit a request to leave for the entire family and G‑d will help them.”

Mordechai was shocked. Nobody had considered this possibility, for R. Berke was an outlaw in the Soviet Union. When he expressed his reservations to the Rebbe, the Rebbe smiled warmly and dismissed his fears with a motion of his hand, saying, “They won’t catch on [as to who he is].”

Indeed, R. Berke received an invitation from his father-in-law in his name and was granted permission to emigrate only half a year after he submitted his request. Another half a year later, in Elul 5720 (1960), they received their travel passports. R. Berke did not want to spend one extra minute in the Soviet Union. On chol ha’moed Sukkos they packed their bags and left for Moscow and from there they left for Eretz Yisrael, via Vienna, on Hoshanah Rabba. Our joy for the Chein family was boundless.