I WANT YOU TO WORK FOR ME

Originally from a Chassidic family in Bratislava, the young boy found himself in a Lithuanian yeshiva in England, and from there he went to the Chabad yeshiva in Montreal. * The directives and instructions he received from the Rebbe in his work of editing the Shulchan Aruch and translating the Siddur, and the open miracles during the process of translating the Machzor for Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. The Rebbe told his mother how special her son is, even more than she knows… * Part 2 of 2.

By Rabbi Sholom Yaakov Chazan and Avrohom Rainitz

Rabbi Nissan Mangel at his wedding, surrounded by T’mimim | Photos by Shmuel AmitTO WORK FOR THE REBBE

Even before you married, you worked for the Rebbe in preparing sources and notes on the Shulchan Aruch HaRav. Over the years, you published sources for several parts of Shulchan Aruch. How did this begin?

While still a bachur in Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim in Montreal, every year I would get a “shana tova” letter from the Rebbe. Before the signature the Rebbe would add some personal words. In 5718 or 5719, the Rebbe wrote me that the time had come to look into shidduchim.

Until then I hadn’t thought of shidduchim, as I wanted to get smicha first, but when I asked the Rebbe whether to start learning for smicha, the Rebbe said: First you need to know 300 dafim of Gemara by heart.

After the Rebbe told me, in a letter, to look into shidduchim, it happened that within a short period of time I had seven good suggestions and I didn’t know what to do. My father was not alive and my mother lived in Eretz Yisroel, so I had no one to handle my shidduchim and to make inquiries. I wrote down all the suggestions and when I had yechidus I submitted them to the Rebbe. I asked which name to consider first.

The Rebbe took his pencil and made an X next to all seven suggestions, one after the other. “This is not for you,” he said.

Then the Rebbe said, “Nissan, I have a suggestion for you.”

I was sure he meant a shidduch idea but then the Rebbe said, “I want you to work for me. There is a lot of work that needs to be done at Merkos and I want you to choose, either Shulchan Aruch or Likkutei Torah. In the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch there are many errors and it needs to be edited well, and mainly, many sources are missing. I suggest that you edit the Shulchan Aruch and add the sources. Similar work is needed for Likkutei Torah, there are many errors and many sources are missing.”

I remembered that a few years earlier the Rebbe told me to learn the weekly Likkutei Torah in depth, not the way women read Tzena Urena or T’hillim, but in depth. The Rebbe said just one thing wasn’t necessary – when it said ayein b’Zohar and the like, I did not have to open the source, but the rest needed to be understood well. The Rebbe added: You need to learn it five times every week and this is in addition to the yeshiva schedule.

It wasn’t easy. Every night I would sit and learn Likkutei Torah from 10 at night until 4 in the morning. I remember that the week of Parshas VaEschanan I had yechidus. That week the Likkutei Torah is especially long, about twenty pages. The Rebbe asked me: Nu, how is it going? I said it was very, very hard. The Rebbe smiled but did not give me a pass…

While learning intensively, I discovered that there are many difficult issues in Tanya that are explained in maamarim in Likkutei Torah. I wrote these down and when R’ Greenglass discovered my writing, he sent it to the Rebbe.

In any case, when the Rebbe presented me with the choice, whether to work on Likkutei Torah or Shulchan Aruch, I told the Rebbe that I had already learned Likkutei Torah a bit, but I had not yet had the opportunity to learn Shulchan Aruch in depth, so I preferred to work on the Shulchan Aruch so I can learn it in depth.

The Rebbe accepted my decision and told me to send him what I worked on every week.

When you say that the Rebbe asked you to work for him, you say it with a special emphasis …

Indeed. It was an extraordinary privilege, first, that the Rebbe himself chose me directly, and second, that the Rebbe emphasized that I am working for him.

Aside from the first time that the Rebbe asked me to work for him, there were another two times that the Rebbe emphasized this; once, before I got married, and several years later when I asked the Rebbe what I should do and the Rebbe said, work for me!

After our first son, Eliezer, was born, I wanted to go and visit my mother. The Rebbe gave his bracha for the trip. Shortly before the trip, urban flight became a major issue and within a few weeks, about 15 Jewish families left the building we lived in (corner of Kingston and Carroll). One morning, when I left the building, I was shocked to see that the new tenants had removed the mezuza from the front door of the building. It became scary to live in the building.

We were going to travel at the beginning of the week and I asked R’ Chadakov to let me in for yechidus before the trip. He asked the Rebbe and unusually, the Rebbe agreed to see me on Friday afternoon, about an hour before Mincha. Before going to yechidus, my wife, who was very nervous that during our absence for six weeks the new neighbors would break into our apartment, asked me to ask the Rebbe for a bracha.

Toward the end of the yechidus, I told the Rebbe about the situation in our building and my wife’s fears. The Rebbe’s face turned very serious and he even closed his eyes. Then he said: Nissan, what do you have in the house – s’farim and your writings (referring to the pages on which I had written the edits on Shulchan Aruch). The writings will be protection for your home.

GUIDANCE FROM ABOVE

Did you receive instructions from the Rebbe relating to providing the sources?

There were quite a few instructions and one of them was that the Rebbe instructed me to use the Alter Rebbe’s approach when it came to sources. When the Alter Rebbe found a source in a latter-day posek, he did not refer to earlier sources. So too, when I referenced the Shulchan Aruch or the Shach or the Taz, I did not reference sources in the Rosh or Rambam. When the last source appeared in the Rishonim, I did not reference the source in the Gemara.

Over the years, I heard the Rebbe say amazing things about the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch. One was when the Rebbe defined the difference between the Shulchan Aruch of the Mechaber and the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, saying it was like the difference between a small luminary and a big luminary!

The Rebbe once said that really, the work in completing all the sources could be finished in a year. I thought, only the Rebbe who sees all the halachic sources in front of his eyes, and all the textual nuances are open and clear to him, only he could finish this work in a year.

I began editing part one of Orach Chaim. Then I continued with Yoreh Deia and finally worked on Choshen Mishpat. In this segment there were entire sections deleted by the censor and I had to compare between what appeared in the first edition and what was printed later with deletions. I was helped in this tremendously by my wife. She would look into the first edition of the Shulchan Aruch which I got from the Rebbe’s library, and I would read aloud from the printed edition. Whenever she saw that something was left out, she alerted me and I wrote down the censored part and added it in the right place.

Working for the Rebbe earned me a great privilege in that sometimes, when the Rebbe received a halachic question, he gave it over to me and asked me to respond. After giving the Rebbe the answer and the Rebbe looked it over, it was sent to the questioner.

One time, in yechidus, the Rebbe asked me whether I had already answered the halachic question in a letter he had given me. I said that I had not received any letter lately.

The Rebbe was quite surprised and he called the secretary and told him to immediately give me the letter so I could respond.

What other s’farim did the Rebbe tell you to edit?

One day, R’ Chadakov said they got inquiries from baalei teshuva all over the world who wanted to daven using a Chabad siddur, but there was no English translation. The Rebbe told him to tell me in the Rebbe’s name that I should begin translating the siddur.

The work in translating the siddur took a very long time. While working on the siddur I got other jobs from the Rebbe so I was unable to work exclusively on the siddur. It took me two years to complete.

I submitted the completed work to the Rebbe so he could review it and approve the translation and the introduction I wrote. To my delight, the Rebbe approved the entire translation except for one thing. At the beginning of the siddur, before Modeh Ani, there is a page with brachos for children. On the top of the page it said, “When a little child can speak, his father teaches him …” Since it did not say what the father teaches him, I thought it meant what was written on the rest of the page, which is why in my translation I added in parentheses (as follows), meaning, the child should be taught these t’fillos.

The Rebbe asked: When a child starts to speak, can he be taught to say the entire Shma Yisroel?

R’ Chadakov told me that when they were going to print the T’hillas Hashem siddur, all the pages were taken from other siddurim, aside from this page for little children that was not taken from another siddur. The Rebbe himself prepared it.

It would seem that the Rebbe meant that when a child begins to speak, you need to start teaching him. What do you teach him? It depends on the age and level of understanding.

What general instructions did you receive for translating the siddur?

First, in all translations, it is accepted practice to translate Hashem’s name as G-d. But since we do not verbalize Hashem’s name as it is written, but say Ad-nai (and only think Havaya, as brought in Shulchan Aruch), I translated it as Lord, which means adnus – being a master. I made this decision after consulting with R’ Zalman Shimon Dworkin.

Once it was published, some people criticized this. I wondered whether I had done the right thing. I went to R’ Chadakov and told him about it and he called the Rebbe’s room and said to the Rebbe, “Nissan Mangel is here and he doesn’t know whether he translated properly.” Then I heard the Rebbe say to him, “Tell Nissan Mangel to go back to his work and not confound himself.”

When word got out that I was working on a translation of the siddur, someone from Australia suggested that the translation be done line by line and not page by page, because this makes it clearer. Since I was familiar with the Rebbe’s view I told him I did not even want to ask. But he urged me and asked me to ask in his name. The Rebbe negated it outright.

So too when they suggested that the siddur in lashon ha’kodesh be retyped so it would be more clear, the Rebbe did not agree. The Rebbe’s view was that when you retype something, you fix old errors and introduce new ones.

The Rebbe was very particular that everything appear in its original format, without changes. I asked the Rebbe about the customs written before certain paragraphs, which sometimes include rulings from the Alter Rebbe’s Siddur. Where we do differently, there is an asterisk on the bottom of the page which says what Chabad practice is. I thought that when I translate the instructions into English, I should just write what Chabad does. When I proposed this to the Rebbe, he said no, and said: What the Alter Rebbe wrote in the siddur cannot be changed. If there is a change, it should be noted on the bottom of page.

Regarding the bedtime Shma, I saw a letter in which the Rebbe wrote to someone that on a day that Tachanun is not said, the Ribbono shel olam is not said. And yet, the HaYom Yom quotes the Rebbe Rayatz as saying that the Ribbono shel olam and LaM’natzeiach are not said on Shabbos and holidays, but they should be said on other days when Tachanun is not said.

I submitted copies of the two letters and asked what I should write in the English siddur. The Rebbe said to do as the Rebbe Rayatz said which is printed in the HaYom Yom.

I treated the translation work as holy work and if there was a day that I could not immerse in a mikva, I did not work on the translation that day. From the feedback I got, I saw the extent of the appreciation with which my work was received. I once met a professor of languages who told me that for many years it was very hard for him to daven because the English translations were archaic and he felt he was reading a foreign text and not as standing before G-d and praying. When he got the translated T’hillas Hashem siddur, he felt for the first time that he was speaking to G-d, as he put it.

When we first printed the translated siddur, I had a few copies bound in leather and sent one of them as a gift to the Rebbetzin. At the time, I got no feedback, but after her passing, on the last day of Shiva, the Rebbe came downstairs with the siddur that I had given her and davened from it before the amud. Then R’ Sholom Ber Gansbourg, the personal aide, told me that this siddur was on the dresser in the Rebbetzin’s room and she davened from it.

One of the most complicated endeavors was translating the Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur Machzorim. And it was done with astonishing speed. This is what happened:

I got an invitation to lecture at Oxford University outside of London. Since I never traveled without the Rebbe’s bracha, I wrote to the Rebbe about the invitation and only after receiving his bracha did I confirm my attendance.

The day before the flight, R’ Yudel Krinsky told me that the Rebbe wanted me to prioritize a certain project and it had to be done quickly. I told him: the Rebbe knows that I am flying tomorrow. So if it is something that can be completed in a day, I can do it, but if it is more complicated, I won’t be able to do it before the flight. Therefore, I’d rather you bring it to me on my return so it does not disturb me during my trip for which the Rebbe gave me his bracha. He told me it was a big project and we arranged to meet in two weeks.

When I returned and saw the Rebbe’s instructions, I was floored. The Rebbe said I should translate the Machzorim for Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur and asked that the machzor for Rosh HaShana be printed and bound before Rosh HaShana, and the machzor for Yom Kippur be ready for Yom Kippur. This was in Tammuz, which meant I had less than three months to work on a project that generally would take more than a year! I wrote to the Rebbe that this was impossible, but the Rebbe responded: now, nothing is impossible.

With the Rebbe’s ko’ach I began working on it constantly, and it would not be a cliché if I said that I worked on it day and night. Even the translation of simple texts take time; all the more so when they are texts of piyutim that you first need to learn in order to understand what the words mean. At a later point, one of the Rebbe’s baalei tefilla for many years told me that until he read my translation, there were many piyutim whose meaning he did not know.

To keep pace with the looming deadline, I got my wife involved in the work. I would translate and she would type it. I did not have time to review the work. As soon as she finished typing, I gave the pages to Empire Press (belonging to R’ Hirschel Gansbourg and R’ Mordechai Chein) who had three shifts of workers, 24 hours, in order to keep up the pace the Rebbe wanted.

Needless to say, the Rebbe got what he wanted. A few days before Rosh HaShana the Machzorim for Rosh HaShana came from the printer, bound and ready, and a few days later, the Yom Kippur Machzorim were ready.

I have no doubt that the success of the project was not thanks to my kochos, but the ko’ach of the Rebbe. A shocking fact, which has no natural explanation, is that despite the speed with which we produced the Machzorim, and although I did not have the time to edit the translation even once, all the translations were accurate with no mistakes. There was one exception, in which a certain letter was mistakenly transposed alongside one of the words, which caused a serious distortion in the meaning of the word. This mistake was discovered immediately, and was obviously corrected in the later editions. Aside from that, the translation was perfect, as if it had been worked on for an entire year and had gone through multiple reviews and edits.

SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

We met with R’ Mangel a number of times in conducting this fascinating interview. One of the times was on a Motzaei Shabbos, and R’ Mangel wished to conclude with a message connected to melave malka, the meal of Dovid Malka Meshicha, and to the resurrection of the dead in the ultimate redemption:

On Motzaei Shabbos, there is an obligation to eat melave malka. This meal is associated with the days of Moshiach, as it is brought in s’farim that there is a certain bone in the body, which does not derive benefit from any other meals except this one. This bone is known as the luz, from which Hashem will resurrect the dead in the future time.

It is brought in Midrash, that Adarianus the bone grinder asked Rebbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, “From where will HaKadosh Baruch Hu sprout the person in the coming future?” The question being, if Hashem would just create new people then they would not be the same ones that died, while the term “resurrection of the dead” would seem to imply that the dead themselves come to life. If so, how is that possible, if nothing remains of the original person?

Rebbi Yehoshua ben Chananya answered him, “From the luz bone in the spine.” This is a small bone in the spine that always remains in existence, which is a part of the body of the deceased, and from that Hashem will resurrect the body in T’chiyas HaMeisim.

When the man asked how he knew this, R’ Yehoshua responded that he should bring one and he would show him. He ground it with millstones but it would not grind, he burned it with fire but it would not burn, he put it in water but it did not dissolve, he put it on an anvil and began to pound on it with a hammer. The anvil split and the hammer cracked, but the luz was not diminished.

I was in the extermination camps, in Auschwitz and others, in which they burned millions of Jews r”l. There was a huge blast furnace there that was terrifying. There were days in which they burned twenty thousand Jews! Even that awesome fire was no match for the luz bone. I spoke after the war with one of the sonderkommando (Jewish prisoners forced by the Nazis to work with the corpses and the furnaces), and he told me that in the ashes of every body there was always a tiny bone that did not burn!

At the time, when he told me this, I did not appreciate the significance of what he said. But after a number of years, when I learned this Midrash, I understood that this was the luz bone, from which the millions of holy martyrs will be resurrected!

Physical resurrection will only take place in the future, but the spiritual resurrection of the Jewish people was begun by the Rebbe from the day that he assumed leadership, and he continues with this until his complete revelation, immediately now!

BEGINNING THE CUSTOM OF READING THE REBBE’S LETTER UNDER THE CHUPPA

In 5721, three years after I began working for the Rebbe, I became engaged to my wife Raizel, daughter of R’ Leib Harlig. In honor of the wedding, the Rebbe granted my mother permission to come to the United States. Interestingly, even though my mother had managed to escape from behind the Iron Curtain in 1952 and to immigrate to Eretz Yisroel, the Rebbe did not permit me to travel to visit her in Eretz Yisroel, and did not even allow for her to come to the United States to visit me. Only one time, the Rebbe said that if I want to meet her, I could travel to London, and she should travel to London as well, and we would meet there. I have no idea what the reason was.

As mentioned, my mother came for the wedding, and we prepared to go in for yechidus before the wedding. During that year, the Rebbe had stopped officiating at weddings, and a number of bachurim had gotten married before me without having the special merit accorded to those who got married in the 50’s.

When my mother told me that she planned on asking the Rebbe to officiate, I said to her that I was sure that the Rebbe would refuse, and why cause the Rebbe any unpleasantness? But being the good Jewish mother that she was, she insisted that I was a special bachur and surely the Rebbe would agree. Since I did not wish to cause the Rebbe any unpleasantness, I told my mother that I would not go in with her to yechidus until she promised me that she would not ask this of the Rebbe. Having no choice in the matter, she promised.

We entered for a joint yechidus, together with the kalla, and the Rebbe spoke to my mother at length and showered many blessings on us. At the end of the yechidus, when the Rebbe inclined his head as a sign that the yechidus had ended, we all walked backwards toward the door, facing the Rebbe, as is the custom. And then, at the last moment, when we were all outside the door and the yechidus was concluded, my mother walked back into the Rebbe’s room.

A mother is still a mother, and as she had promised not to ask the Rebbe during the joint yechidus, she kept her promise. But now, when the joint yechidus had concluded, she entered once again to the Rebbe, as if entering for a new yechidus, and she asked the Rebbe that he officiate at our wedding.

The Rebbe said to her, “I also want to very much, but how can I make distinctions between the bachurim?”

And my mother, like a good Jewish mother who is sure that her son is the most special, dug in her heels and said to the Rebbe, “But such a special bachur…”

The Rebbe responded, “I know, I know more than you know, but how can I differentiate between the bachurim?”

Then the Rebbe added, “Despite the fact that I will not be there in body, in spirit and soul I will be at the chuppa!”

Upon hearing this, my mother was very satisfied, and she left the yechidus room.

In the days when the Rebbe still officiated, the order was that when everybody was ready they would inform R’ Chadakov, and he would go in and inform the Rebbe, and only then would the Rebbe come out. Since the Rebbe said that he would attend with his spirit and soul, I decided to give that tangible expression. I approached R’ Dovid Raskin, who throughout the period of preparation for the wedding was like a father to me and handled everything that was needed, and I asked him:

1) That when everybody is ready, he should inform R’ Chadakov that the chuppa was about to begin and, 2) I wanted that the letter of the Rebbe should be read under the chuppa. Until that point, there was no such custom, and as far as I know, ever since my chuppa it became established custom to read the Rebbe’s letter under the chuppa.