On 2 Av, 5737, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin paid a visit to the Rebbe at 770 Eastern Parkway. Prior to the visit, the Rebbe requested that a special booklet be prepared, yet what happened with those booklets remains unclear until today.
By Anash.org reporter
On 2 Av, 5737, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin paid a visit to the Rebbe at 770 Eastern Parkway. Prior to the visit, the Rebbe requested that a special booklet be prepared, yet what happened with those booklets remains unclear until today.
Rabbi Zalman Chanin, director of Vaad L’hafotzas Sichos, shared his memories of what occurred at that time:
In 1977, a few days before the well-publicized arrival of the then Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Menachem Begin, to the Rebbe for yechidus, I received a phone call from the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Groner, asking me to come to the secretariat immediately, as he wanted to consult with me on a very urgent matter.
When I arrived, he told me that he had previously been in the Rebbe’s room, and the Rebbe instructed him to print about 30-50 copies of a special edition of the Kuntres Ahavas Yisroel (which the Rebbe had printed a few months earlier, in order to distribute it to mashpi’im).
The Rebbe requested that the kuntres be printed in a special way, and gave precise instructions, but the Rebbe mentioned, among other things, some terms that were unfamiliar to him. He guessed that the Rebbe probably mentioned these concepts in Russian, and since I understand the Russian spoken between Anash, he began to read me the Rebbe’s instructions from a note he had written for himself:
“A kuntres named ‘Ahavas Yisrael’ should be printed on special, beautiful paper, with a פראדנעם טאבל געמאכט פון בארכעט – a respectable cover, made of velvet fabric. The color should be blue – dark blue or a slightly lighter blue, it does not matter – but it should be on thicker paper, to feel that it is a cover. The cover should be embossed with gold letters, like the books with hard covers (I will give you the text later), and on the spine of the kuntres, should be a קיסטיטשקע – a decorative cord with a tassel, which will enrich the external appearance.”
Rabbi Groner did not know what a “פראדנעם טאבל געמאכט פון בארכעט” was, nor what a “קיסטיטשקע” was, and after I explained to him what it was, he asked me to obtain the necessary materials. In those years I was still ‘green’ in printing matters, and I also did not know where to get the type of paper the Rebbe had asked for.
So I called R’ Raphael Gross from the Gross Brothers printing house, and asked him to direct me to a merchant who deals with such paper.
He expressed a willingness to help, and as soon as I arrived at his printing house, he drove with me to one of the great merchants in this field, and I brought some samples to Rabbi Groner. After bringing them in to the Rebbe, the Rebbe chose the type of paper for the kuntres itself as well as for the cover. The Rebbe then revealed to him that this kuntres would be printed in honor of Mr. Menachem Begin’s visit, and on the cover they should write “Special edition – the Second of Menachem Av 5737”.
In the case of a small number of copies, the large printing press is generally not used and an ordinary copier is used instead. However, since the Rebbe wanted it to have a regal appearance, I convinced R’ Raphael to print the kuntres on the quality printing presses, and indeed the kuntres was very respectable.
When I brought the kuntreisim to 770, the Rebbe was very pleased, and said: “!זייער שיין” [very nice!] and gave Rabbi Groner one kuntres to give to me, saying, “דאס איז שכר טרחה” [This is payment for the hassle of printing the kuntres].
Since I was not in the Rebbe’s room during Mr. Begin’s visit, I do not know exactly what the Rebbe did with the kuntres, and whether he eventually distributed it to Begin and his entourage or not. Recently I found the copy I had received from the Rebbe, and asked Rabbi Groner if he remembered what had happened to it, but as many years had since passed, he had forgotten.
Know any more details? Let us know in the comments.
Click here to view a full gallery of the visit.
VIDEO:
To view many photos of this event, click here: https://www.thelivingarchive.org/search/pages/1-1?commit=Search¤t_page=2&photo_size=&search%5Bdate_type%5D=&search%5Bhday%5D=2&search%5Bhmonth%5D=5&search%5Bhyear%5D=5737&search%5Bnarrow_date%5D=0&search%5Bnarrow_date%5D=1&search%5Bperson%5D=&search%5Bsort%5D=date&utf8=%E2%9C%93
That year the Rebbe also gave Kuntres aha as yisroel to those who made the tape of nichoach.
On the Friday after he met with the Rebbe, the Rebbe sent a delegation of Chassidim to visit Mr. Begin in his hotel.
the Rebbe sent them with a box of these Kuntreisim.
upon the return of the delegation to 770 they entered the Rebbe’s room to give over a report of the meeting, after which the Rebbe gave each of the Chassidim a copy of the special edition of Kuntres Ahavas Yisroel.