3 Days In Kislev....

די ליצני הדור have a saying that goes something like this: Chassidus was around for 3 days, from the 19th to the 21st, because on 21 Kislev איז שוין געווען נשתכחה תורת הבעש"ט..... meaning that ש"ב the Satmar Rov, zt"l came along and made that statement, and he arrived to the safety of Switzerland on that day.... The פתגם is said in jest, but it bears some investigation. Why is it that these 3 days follow each other? I'm beginning to think that לא בכדי is the sequence such. There's also the fact that wedged in between 19 and 21 Kislev is 20 Kislev, the יומא דהילולא של מרן ה"פחד יצחק" מברוקלין זצוקללה"ה. I had a shtarke rotzon to go to Coney Island Avenue last night, but time didn't allow for it to happen. Maybe I'll get the tape... Chassidim also observe the 20th of Kislev, no tachanun is said by neither shacharis nor minchah, because of the "geulah" that the AR had from the house of his adversary after being released from prison to the streets of Petersburg, and the 20th is the yahrtzeit of the Rosh Yeshivah Zt"l. אזוי ווי מיר גלייבען דאך אין השגחה פרטית איז כדאי מעיין זיין אין דערויף......



Speaking of tachanun at mincha; why don't most chassidim say tachanun then even if they daven before the shkiah? and why is there this one yungerman - gantz an eideler - that comes to the Chabad mincha minyan and refuses to klap אשמנו and say tachanun even at that minyan? Is that minhag OK with the likes of Burech? Is that not the chossid trying to be "kliger vi di gantze velt?" Is his questionable minhag, which mainly comes from the fact that he normally davens after the shkiah to be allowed to continue despite the issues of Lo Sisgodedu and Al Tifrosh min haTzibur? I guess so. We have Ahavas Yisroel. A smart man once tried to tie in the fact tachanun at minchah is omitted all year to the idea of saying selichos at the end of the year. Imagine, he says, all those days that they go 24 hours without asking for forgiveness, from one day's tachanun to the next, of course they have to make up for it at the end of the year! Mah she'ein kein those that say tachanun at mincha, and then at Krias Shma She'al HaMittah, they have less to atone for. Efsher lomar B'derech tzachus....



The pictures here are a series of three pictures seemingly taken from a newsreel where the late Satmar Rov, zt"l is seen before, during, and after the Kastner Transport train that took him and over a thousand six hundred well-connected others to safety in Switzerland. Not before a four month furlough in Bergen-Belsen, though. I have yet to see them before, and neither have some people very familiar with history seen them. The Rov looks so out of place amongst all the irreligious looking Jews there. The picture of him looking out the window shows a very concerned Rov, wondering where this will lead him, where his talmidim and chassidim will end up, and maybe some discomfort as to his surroundings too. The subject and controversy of the rescue is one that Satmarer Chassidim are well aware of, and one they take very seriously, especially with the aspect of being saved by the Zionists. A Yiddish book, written by Hershel Friedman, has recently been published, and there he tries to debunk many of what he calls myths that the Tziyonim spread about the Rov, but I could not find it in the stores here. Other claims, like where the Chassidim say that the Nazis did not see the Rebbe's beard and peyos, or they thought the kerchief he had on his face was due to a toothache, may be addressed in the book too, I don't know. Maybe one of you read the book?