When I Stopped Reading the National News

Shortly after arriving on shlichus, war broke out between Argentina and the UK, causing widespread financial concern. Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt dialed 770, and Rabbi Chodakov relayed the Rebbe’s response: “We didn’t send you and the other shluchim to deliberate on the country’s economic policy.”

Here’s My Story

Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt is the director of Chabad in Argentina, which today includes approximately sixty institutions across the country. He was interviewed in October of 2016 and November of 2024.

I had come to New York from Argentina six years earlier to study in the Chabad yeshivah in 770. By 1976, I was twenty-two years old, which made me one of the older students. I was concentrating fully on studying Torah, but on Thursday nights I would travel to other Torah institutions in the New York area – from nearby Boro Park, to upstate, in South Fallsburg – to give classes on chasidic teachings.

Every year, I would have a private audience with the Rebbe before my birthday, but that year, as I was preparing to see the Rebbe, I was feeling bad about myself. I felt as though I wasn’t succeeding in my studies or the other activities I was involved in. Despite my efforts, there were some things that I just could not accomplish.

I included all this in the note I wrote to the Rebbe before the meeting, along with some other questions.

“In regards to what you have written,” the Rebbe answered me, “complaining that you are not successful in this or that: Our Sages have said that ‘one who puts in effort will surely succeed.’ This was said to me,” – here the Rebbe referred directly to himself – “and to you, and to every other Jew. And so what you are describing cannot be. Since you are putting in effort, it cannot be that you’re not successful.”

He went on to say that any thought that brings a person to melancholy or depression “has to be thrown away,” since “sadness leads to despair and to a lack of enthusiasm; it wastes time, and decreases one’s trust in G-d.”

A Jew is supposed to serve G-d with joy, he explained, and that doesn’t apply only when one is studying Torah or praying. We are instructed to “Know G-d in all your ways” – everything we do is part of serving G-d, and that means that a Jew must be happy all the time!

“You write that you give classes,” the Rebbe continued, “that you helped out a fellow student, that what you have learned has an effect on other people. So you are succeeding. You are doing the work of our Rebbes and acting as their emissary. Therefore, when such thoughts arise, you should think that since you are an emissary of the Rebbes, there is no place for sadness!” The Rebbe concluded that he hoped to hear good news from me about doing my work joyfully.

Although I had been feeling very down before the audience, the Rebbe’s words lifted me up. They gave me a way forward, and a fresh perspective. I walked out feeling like a different person.

In particular, I was totally taken aback by how the Rebbe referred to me as an emissary – his “shliach,” because I knew that the Rebbe didn’t take words like that lightly. I was just a student who taught a weekly class, yet the Rebbe was empowering me.

I would soon become a shliach in the more typical sense of the word. In that same audience, I had also asked the Rebbe whether I should go back to Argentina in the summer, as part of Chabad’s rabbinic visitation program. The yeshivah had already given their approval, and now the Rebbe added his blessing that I go there “with joy.”

I did so, and after we married, my wife and I moved to Argentina to serve permanently as shluchim. During our first few years, there was a lot of instability in the country. First there was a major economic crisis, and then, in 1982, the Falklands War broke out between Argentina and the United Kingdom. We were already in debt, and this made it even harder to raise the funds we needed for our activities.

At one point, we had 500 copies of Thought of the Week, a weekly Torah publication we would distribute, that needed to be picked up from the printer – but I didn’t even have enough money for the bus to take me there.

“I can’t give you anything now,” said one donor. “There’s a war going on!” He had survived the war in Europe, and was worried about the future. Close to despair myself, I picked up the phone again.

At that time, you couldn’t dial New York directly; instead, you’d call the telephone company’s international operator and they would schedule a time to call you back to make the connection. This could be two days later, and they never called back on time. Then, you’d have to hope you would get through to 770, where the phones were always busy. Getting Rabbi Mordechai Hodakov, the Rebbe’s chief secretary, on the phone was another odyssey in its own right.

Still, I called. Right away, I got through to the servicio internacional. Right away, they connected me with America. Right away, the phone in 770 started ringing. Right away, one of the other secretaries picked up, and then right away I was speaking with Rabbi Hodakov. I felt as if all the gates of heaven were opening!

I explained that people are scared about what is going on in the country and don’t want to support our work. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“I’ll get back to you,” Rabbi Hodakov said.

Five minutes later, the phone rang; it was another miracle that he got through to me so quickly.

“The Rebbe decided that he will give you a loan,” Rabbi Hodakov informed me. I had asked for financial help a couple of months earlier, but hadn’t even brought it up on this call. The Rebbe had originally earmarked $2,000, but then changed it to $3,000. “Repay it when you can,” Rabbi Hodakov added. He did eventually get the full sum back, but at the time, that $3,000 solved many problems.

Then Rabbi Hodakov gave me the Rebbe’s answer to my question:

“We didn’t send you and the other shluchim to deliberate on the country’s economic policy. Your mission is to spread Judaism while trusting in G-d.”

“Of course,” he continued, “people will ask what you think about the future. You should answer that you are not a prophet, and that your mission is to spread Judaism while trusting in G-d.”

Two days after that, a friend set up a meeting for me with the president of a bank here in Argentina. We had never met before, but he knew who I was.

“What do you need?” he asked.

I told him we needed $25,000 in order to pay off all our debts.

“Come back tomorrow,” he replied. “We’ll give it to you.” That was the first we had ever received a single donation of that size – and it came at a most unlikely time, in the middle of the war.

The Rebbe’s instructions became my golden rule: I trust in G-d instead of making calculations. If I would attempt to predict the future, with all of Argentina’s constant crises and economic changes, I would go crazy!

After the big economic crisis of 2002, I just stopped reading the paper. I didn’t want to know anything about it. In 2020, during the worst of the pandemic, we started building a new school. Instead of delaying the project, we went ahead with putting up six and a half thousand square meters of construction. Today, the students who come to learn in that building are sitting in one of the nicest Jewish schools in the world.