How I Escaped From Prison

Yasher koach to everyone for coming. Klein family, birshut ha-rabbanim (with the permission of the rabbis). Baruch Hashem, I have the zechut (merit) to share with you a lesson in emunah u-vitachon (faith and trust), bitachon (trust) in dem Eibershtn, and alef beit gimmel (the letters alef, bet, gimel): if the emunah u-vitachon takeh kumt es a geulah (redemption). The best way to tell the story, instead of giving speeches about the limudim (lessons), is to recount some of the things that happened to me. They are based on what we learned in Sha'ar HaBitachon and in sefarim (religious books). But first, a hakdamah (introduction).

First of all, I personally think that Reb Mendy Klein, zichrono livracha, is the reason I am here. Right before he passed away, I was supposed to meet him, but he told me, “It’s too early in the morning. You rest up; you just came out of prison. There’ll be a time.” I wasn’t zocheh to see him. Now I’m sitting in his son’s house, and I want to mention him because he was a great ba'al tzedakah (charitable person). He was very involved with what he did for me, as were many Yidn (Jews), and he did a lot for me and my family. I want to say, takeh, az der Eibershter zol helfn the mishpachah (family) should have hatzlachah rabbah (great success), le-ma'lah min ha-mesho'ar (beyond what is expected), un m'ken gebn tzedakah (charity) noch a sakh mer vi eyder di cheshbon, which is bay Yitzchak, va-yigdal ha-ish me'od me'od (The man grew exceedingly great). May this be the best berachah (blessing) you can have. That is what he was about: helping Yidn.

My father started a beit ha-shechitah (slaughterhouse) in 19—lomir zogn, somewhere around 1987 or 1988. I was then in Atlanta, Georgia, doing shelichut (missionary service). Al kol panim (in any case), by 1990 I had come to help my father with the beit ha-shechitah. It’s not too far from here; it’s in Postville, Iowa, a few states over. There was no Yiddishe kehillah (Jewish community) there in those days, and I had five children, Baruch Hashem, so we moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. I drove down every day or every two days, three hours by car.

Here’s what’s important to the story. It was Yom Kippur, I think my second Yom Kippur there. Everybody had left, and as a ba'al ha-bayit (householder) who really cared about kashrut (kosher observance), I wanted to make sure everything was put away properly. By the time I looked at the clock, it was about 12:00 or 12:30 in the afternoon. A three-hour drive would get me home around 3:30 or 4:00, and Yom Tov (festival day) was coming. I wanted to get home earlier for Yom Kippur, so I asked one of the goyim (non-Jews), “How can I get there faster?”

He gave me an eitzah (piece of advice). Next door to the plant was a farmer; the plant was in the middle of a bunch of farm fields. I chuckled, looking at Reb Jacobs, because he remembers. He has a farm and a little single-engine plane. The farmer agreed to fly me. He called him, and the farmer said he’d fly me. Mechayeh (what a relief)! I knocked on his door. He opened it, took me to his garage, and pulled out this plane with a little string. I was supposed to get into this little thing. Hob ich nisht keyn breyrah—I had no choice. Now there was no turning back: kumt men nisht on.

Talk about religious fervor: he was a trained pilot, so before he turned on the engine, he had to shout, “Clear!” There was nobody there, but der ma'aseh (the story goes), he shouted, “Clear!” I got a shray oys, er hot gezogt, and the engine started with a roar. His grass front lawn was the runway, and before I knew it, I was in the air. Baruch Hashem, I figured the flight would take fifteen minutes or an hour, so I’d get home at 2:30 or 3:00 and have a shtikl Erev Yom Kippur. But it was the first time in my life I was sitting in a cockpit.

Baruch Hashem, be-teva, I like to learn from everything I see. I didn’t want to waste time, so I thought, tracht ich, ich kuk s'on, and started figuring out how pilots fly planes. What’s this dial? What’s that dial? The man was very patient and explained things to me. The Eibershter was preparing me for my life. One of the dials had a bubble with a little model plane against a backdrop showing the horizon, sky, and earth. I noticed that as the plane went up, the little plane moved up, and as the plane went down, it moved down.

So I asked him, “Kid, vos iz dos?” He told me, “Oh, that’s a very important thing. This can really save your life sometimes.” I thought, “Oh, we finally hit something very important. Vos iz dos?” He said, “This dial tells me if I’m flying up or down.” I started laughing. He got a little fartschepet, as if I were making fun of him. He asked, “Why are you laughing?” I said, “No, don’t you know? If you want to know whether you’re flying up or down, you have to look at the dial? Look out the window! That tells you if you’re flying up or down!” Aza davar iz dos?

Just a small funny story: after I got out, Baruch Hashem, the first Shavuot I was at my brother’s house. I went out the front door to go to the mikveh, and it started raining. I ran back into the house and told everybody it was raining outside and they should get an umbrella. One of the guests pulled out an iPhone, one of these little computer phones, and checked it. “It’s raining? It wasn’t supposed to rain.” He started looking on the iPhone to see if it was supposed to rain. What are you looking at your iPhone for? Look outside the window! It’s raining! S'iz a bechinah, aza ma'aseh? It was funny to me.

He said, “Don’t laugh.” In all seriousness, this man who was training me to be a pilot told me, “Now you’re flying in good weather, and you can see what’s up and what’s down. But when you’re flying through a cloud—a dark storm cloud—not only can’t you see what’s up and down, noch erger, your senses will lie to you. What you think is up is really down. You think you’re giving gas to fly up out of the cloud, out of your problem, but you’re actually speeding to your death. You hit the ground.” Mimeila, what do you have to do? He told me, “You have to ignore all your senses. They’ll lie to you, screaming, ‘Where are you going? Dos iz nisht der veg.’ You have to follow this gauge; you’ll fly to safety. If not, it’s over.”

I came home on time, Baruch Hashem, and had a nice Yom Kippur. But I think this lesson incorporates what we mean when we talk about emunah u-vitachon. The Eibershter gave us a Torah haKedoshah. In the Torah, He tells us what’s up and what’s down. Pashut. Everybody thinks they can figure it out themselves. They look around and see what works and what doesn’t: dos aruf, dos arap. But the emet is—and maybe if it’s not a dark cloud, maybe who knows exactly, but it’s still no good—certainly when a person goes through a dark cloud, a hard nisayon, a time of darkness. We talked about Ma'ariv and erev. You don’t know what’s up and what’s down anymore. Your senses will ממש lie to you about what you think is the right way.

The most important decision I made—the Eibershter… Baruch Hashem, I was flying in, but there was never clear weather. There were always bumpy rides, up and down. Ober, mit amol, for twenty years we were building a business, and Baruch Hashem it was going well. We were doing good kashrut, and kosher meat was becoming more and more available across the country. Mit amol, boom, I had another dark cloud, and I found myself in a place called prison. This is like a whole different planet, a whole different world. How do you deal with it? Right away, there are a lot of eitzah geber, and people give you eitzot (advice) about what to do. I decided that the eitzah I had to take was from the Torah. How did I get here, and how do I get out? Emunah: the Eibershter is with me all the time, and He is doing all this. Bitachon: the Eibershter will help me out.

I want to expound on this, but maybe I should speed up and go about twenty years ahead. At the end of eight and a half long years in prison—in different prisons—I was transferred to county jail, and then finally brought to upstate New York, where I spent most of the time. In total, I spent maybe more than eight and a half years in a very tough security prison with people I don’t want to talk down about. But I bet if you saw them on one side of the street, you’d walk to the other side. Let me put it that way: you’d give them some space. Over there, you couldn’t give anybody space because there was no space to give. It was like a hundred, 120 guys packed into one little barrack. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, you were with them. Every day, half the day, you were locked in with one eino Yehudi in a little cell, about six feet wide and eight feet long.

Alef Tevet, Tav-Shin-Ayin-Chet, eight and a half years later: I’m davening. How do you daven? It’s Chanukah, the seventh day of Chanukah, Rosh Chodesh Tevet. There was no minyan (prayer quorum) that day, so I had to daven in the cell. The Torah tells you that a person isn’t defined by where he physically is. He is actually where his mind wants to be, where his neshamah (soul) is. Mimeila, a Yid can be in a place called prison, but if he wants to be in shul (synagogue), he can be in shul.

I imagined that I was in shul. I looked around for a minyan and found one. Nobody wanted to be chazan (prayer leader), so I was the chazan; hob ich gechazant. I started saying Hallel, and I want to tell you: s'arbet, it works! You pick yourself up: Mekimi me'afar dal, me'ashpot yarim evyon (He raises the poor from the dust). All the words come. I got to the part, the keta, of Min hametzar karati K-h (From the narrow place I called to God). It was the perfect pasuk. Suddenly I heard a guard calling me. One of the counselors or guards was calling my name, which meant I had to show up; he had something to tell me. I was in the middle of davening, so I finished Hallel, took off my tallit u'tefillin (prayer shawl and phylacteries), and went to find out what he wanted.

He handed me a letter from the United States Appeals Court. I could see from the return address that it was legal mail. I had been davening that they would hear my final possible motion—just listen to me. What happened? I have it here. He’s bringing lechaim. You want a good speech? Bring us a lechaim; it’s a metziah (a find). Baruch atah Hashem Elokeinu melech ha'olam shehakol nihyah bidvaro.

Al kol panim, I’m not getting into the legal ma'aseh. I just want to say where things stood. After going through a whole system of court proceedings, you get to a point where there’s a lawyer, zachor letov, a Yid living on the western side of America. Reb Pesach Lipschitz—mistama everybody knows him here. Not Reb Pesach Lipschitz; sorry, he’s in Lakewood. The lawyer was Gary Apfel, Chaim Yosef Apfel. He devoted four years to trying to help the case. The Eibershter was matzliach him. He found documentation showing that the whole ta'anah they used to claim they wanted to keep me for twenty-seven years was built on one person’s testimony. He proved that the woman was lying, and not only was she lying, but the government had withheld evidence. There was a Brady violation, a Pu violation, and a violation and a half.

When you learn Sha'ar HaBitachon, you know that you believe in the Eibershter not only when things are going badly, but also when things are going well. I never gave importance to whether they found something or didn’t find something. The Eibershter was going to free me. It was nice to see them finding things, but the peleh was that they denied it once, denied it twice, and she refused; she even tried to block it from going to the Appeals Court. They didn’t want to hear it. Finally, the last time we went to them, this was the answer to the final request that they hear it. I opened the letter, hoping to see, “Okay, let’s hear what you have to say.” The letter was big enough for a blind person to see. They made sure, chas veshalom, that I wouldn’t miss the point. In big letters: DENIED.

I knew what denied meant. It meant I was staying in jail for another eighteen years. And not only was it denied, and I couldn’t make the next motion or write again; this was sof pasuk, according to them. After this there was nothing else I could do in the legal world. They were telling me, in their language, “It’s over.” Who was telling me this? This was not mikveh news. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and the most powerful institution in this great country is the court system. The highest part of the court system is the Appeals Court. They were telling me it was denied and there was nothing to talk about, with the signatures of three justices. Ge'endikt.

I saw how goyim take such information. Of course, a lot of people there go through this. They fall apart. The last shred of hope they had is gone; it means it’s over. They’re stuck in jail for decades to come. Even their dream of winning a lottery ticket is gone. Ober, I’m a Yid, and a Yid has a neshamah and emunah. A Yid knows that in every situation, the Eibershter is balebos, not them. These are not just fancy words.

I want to share one of the things I learned in yeshivah. I’ll actually do something with it. I don’t have a chance to give all the stories right at the beginning, but maybe we can talk about them through the night. First I have only thirty or forty minutes, so I’ll chap arein what I can. The pasuk in Tehillim says, “Hashlech al Hashem yehavcha vehu yechalkelecha,” perek, the kapitl nun-heh from Tehillim. It means: throw to the Eibershter your yehavcha, your pekel—your package of problems. Throw it on the Eibershter with emunah and bitachon that He will help you. Vehи yechalkelecha: He will sustain you.

Here’s the question: not every problem is sustenance. Sustenance is food. The answer that food is a general concept is obviously missing something. The Eibershter could have written vehu yoshiecha. There’s a food problem, a medical problem, Rachmana litzlan, and a legal problem, Rachmana litzlan. Why does the Eibershter choose the words vehu yechalkelecha, “He will sustain you”? There has to be something deeper than saying food or sustenance is a general term for everything.

The remez (hint) is in the word yechalkelecha: it contains the otiyot keli (letters of keli)—keli, yud chaf lamed, yechalkelecha. What does keli mean? Read the pasuk this way: “Hashlech al Hashem yehavcha”—throw your problem onto the Eibershter—“vehu yechalkelecha”: He’ll make the keli for you. What does that mean?

Understanding what the Eibershter wants from us when we go to work: it’s not that the work we do makes us wealthy. Every Yid knows that. That’s why he gives ma'aser (tithe), and that’s why he doesn’t work on Shabbat: he knows that it’s birchat Hashem hi ta'ashir (The blessing of Hashem brings wealth), that the berachah from the Eibershter gives him his money. So why do I have to go to work? Why not stay home and get the money? Because the Eibershter wants us to do something. In Sha'ar HaBitachon, he doesn’t use the word hishtadlut (human effort); he uses the words esek besibot (engaging in practical means).

He says a Yid is obligated, if he has something to do, to go do it. That means going to work. If he needs a refuah (healing), he is obligated to go to a doctor. You go to a doctor not because the doctor can heal you, but because the Eibershter says verapo yerape (He shall surely heal): you have to go to a doctor. You’re not going because you think the doctor can help you; you go because the Eibershter wants you to. If you have a legal problem, you go to a lawyer because the Eibershter wants you to.

Every phone call with Chaim Yosef began with six kapitlach Tehillim (chapters of Psalms). I chazer'd him a devar Torah (Torah teaching), and he chazer'd me a devar Torah. There were times I was mamash itching to know what he had to tell me because something new was cooking, or he was itching to tell me. We held off and started with Tehillim because we both knew we were setting the tone for how we were approaching the legal matter. It wasn’t our koach (strength); it was from the Eibershter. We’d start with a kapitl Tehillim together and learn a devar Torah together, and then we’d talk. The Eibershter made it work that way, Baruch Hashem. When you do what the Eibershter wants, the Eibershter helps, too.

But what happens when a person is in a matzav (situation) where he has nothing to do? He doesn’t have a job to go to, or his job doesn’t give him enough money. Or he goes to a doctor, and the doctor tells him something he shouldn’t say: for example, chas veshalom, that there’s no medical way for someone to be healed; or he goes for a child and the doctor decides he can’t have children. Imagine if Rivkah Imenu had decided she couldn’t have children. She kept davening for a child until she got one.

Here the Torah says, “Hashlech al Hashem yehavcha.” When you can’t do something, throw it on the Eibershter; “vehu yechalkelecha”—He’ll make the keli for you, too. If a Yid finds himself in a matzav where he can do something, he’s obligated to do it. If he finds himself in a matzav where he can’t do something, it doesn’t mean he can’t get help. It means the Eibershter is telling him, “In this matzav, I don’t want you to do anything. I want you, takeh farkert, to strengthen your emunah and bitachon baHashem: He is the only power; nobody can hurt you, nobody can help you besides the Eibershter. Stay that strong, and vehu yechalkelecha—He’ll make the keli happen, too.”

I live with this. I’m not going to tell that story now. I had a previous experience in prison where I used this, and I saw how the Eibershter worked it out for me in the best way. It gave me chizuk (encouragement) to keep going.

I took the piece of paper and threw it into the locker. I continued davening. That night we lit the Chanukah menorah, and I didn’t tell anybody what had happened—that I got the paper. I danced with the chevrah, al nisecha (for Your miracles). I made the berachot and said, “she'asah nissim la'avoteinu bayamim hahem bazeman hazeh” (Who performed miracles for our ancestors then, at this time), with di zelbe starke kavanah that the Eibershter was going to help me. We danced.

The next morning I got up early, as I used to every morning, and said the whole Tehillim. Part of bitachon means getting close to Hashem and davening to Him. There were a lot of interruptions in the middle of the day, so I got up around 4:30 in the morning to say Tehillim. One of the nissim was that the goy in the room didn’t bother me while he was trying to sleep, as I said, “Ashrei yoshvei veitecha od yehalelucha selah.” That was one of the nissim: I was able to say Tehillim.

The next morning, the yetzer hara (evil inclination) was right there: “What are you getting up for? You got a letter yesterday, and the letter said s'iz ge'endigt.” I said, “You stay in bed. I’m getting up, because by the Eibershter nothing is ge'endigt. The Eibershter will help me.” I got up and said the whole Tehillim.

That was Bet Tevet. At 3:30 or 3:40, they locked everybody into the cell. I had no idea this was going to be the day the Eibershter would free me, because it was Zot Chanukah. But I did know it was Zot Chanukah, so I wanted to make a se'udah (festive meal). There was no great food there, nothing close to what the clients here prepared tonight. You had a little matzah (unleavened bread) and tuna fish. I made a six-course meal out of it: first matzah and tuna fish, then tuna fish and matzah, and then I made a whole tuna fish. I wasn’t hungry. I gechapt Tehillim, alles besimchah. I said, “Eibershter, heint iz Zot Chanukah, a time of nissim. She'asah nissim la'avoteinu bayamim hahem bazeman hazeh. I need a nes. Get me home. I’ve got to go home.”

At 4:25, I was looking for the sheki'ah (sunset) and checked my watch. The door swung open, and the guard was standing in the doorway. They don’t usually walk inside when you’re there. He said, “Hey, Rubashkin,” to get my attention. “Get out.” Get out? I was mekayem getting out. It was so sudden. Where was I going? I asked him, “Am I going home?” I had been davening to go home, and now the man said, “Get out.” So he was a wise guy. He said, “You’re going to change your location.” That was emet. I wasn’t sure what “change location” meant. My location had been changed seven times; it wasn’t home.

This guy used to greet me with “Good Shabbat.” His work week was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Shabbat. Whenever he saw me, instead of saying “Good afternoon,” he’d say, “Gut Shabbos.” Wednesday was gut Shabbos, Thursday was gut Shabbos, and Friday was “Super Shabbos is coming.” He mentioned Shabbat all week. One time he heard me calling out “Gut Shabbos, gut Shabbos” to other Yidden in different buildings. He called me over, very seriously, and said, “What are you screaming secret words to other prisoners? Are you planning a breakout tonight?” He was serious! That’s the kind of place it was—the chashadot (suspicions). I started laughing. I said, “Breakout? First of all, I’m not breaking out. I’m going out the front door, im yirtzeh Hashem, God willing. Number two, Shabbos is Saturday. I’m greeting other Jews. God created the world in six days, and He rested on the seventh.” I gave him a 101 on Shabbos. Since then, he always greeted me with “Gut Shabbos.”

What’s important about this in the story? Of all the guards the Eibershter could use to get me out, it was this gut Shabbos guy. Keeping Shabbos in prison wasn’t a matter of doing it one way or another. You could use heiterim (halachic dispensations) to try to make things more physically convenient, or you could do it the right way and keep the halachot (Jewish laws) properly without resorting to heiterim. Baruch Hashem, I did that. To me, it was as if the Eibershter was saying, “Hey, you kept Shabbos. Mr. Shabbos is getting you out of there.”

I was taken to a different building. They brought me into an office building, and I didn’t understand what was going on. I wanted to hear it from them. They brought me into a room, and the warden and assistant warden walked in. They stared at me with stunned looks on their faces. I wanted to break the silence and say, “Listen, my mother told me it’s not nice to stare at people like that.” They were staring at me as if to say—try to picture it: you’re standing by the Yam Suf, the Mitzriyim behind you, the water in front of you, and mit amol the water opens up, keriyat Yam Suf. What would your face look like? They had never seen something like this in their years of service. The warden had already been there twenty or twenty-five years.

They were waiting for the official piece of paper. It came in, and she told me, “Congratulations, Mr. Rubashkin. The President of the United States just signed your clemency petition, and you’re a free man. You can go home.” First of all, I’ll say lechaim for our President, Donald Trump. May he have a yeshuah and a nitzachon over all his enemies, protection, and the ability to continue showing his friendship to the Jewish nation, as he always did in the past and will continue to do. Lechaim.

Obviously, I had been waiting for this moment for eight and a half years, under the threat of twenty-seven years. I was mamash… Every morning I got up. How do you get up in the morning? What’s the difference between emunah and bitachon, takeh? I know it’s explained in different ways. Listen to the way it’s explained in many, many sefarim. Emunah means that when something happens, you say, “Gam zu letovah.” You’re holding an expensive watch, you drop it and break it, and you lose a lot of money. You say, “Gam zu letovah; it’s for good.” But you just lost your priceless watch! Ela mai? You know everything comes from the Eibershter, and since the Eibershter is takeh s'iz tov, if this is what happened, it’s letovah, gam zu letovah.

Emunah means whatever the Eibershter does is good. Even if we don’t see that it’s good, we know it is, because it comes from the Eibershter. What does bitachon mean? In the first perek of Sha'ar HaBitachon, it says: “Ach mahut habitachon, the essence of bitachon, is the menuchat hanefesh habotei'ach, veyehi libo samuch, his heart relying al mi shebatach alav, sheya'aseh hatov hanachon lo ba'inyan asher yivtach alav.” He relies on the one he trusts to do what he is trusting Him to do. So according to Sha'ar HaBitachon, bitachon means that whatever you’re trusting, you have bitachon in the Eibershter for a certain need, which happens to be a hitchayavut: you’re trusting the Eibershter to do it for you. In other words, that it will be something you can also see is good, not only something the Eibershter knows is good.

Since emunah and bitachon are both yesodot in our emunah, how do you put them together? Emunah means what the Eibershter knows is something we don’t know; bitachon means we want to see it, too. Very simply: once something has happened, a Yid understands be'emunah peshutah that it is gam zu letovah. Today and going forward, the Eibershter gives me chayut and life when I wake up in the morning, and I can daven to Him with bitachon that He will give me what I need. I need parnasah or a yeshuah; the Eibershter will give it to me. That’s what bitachon means going forward.

I woke up every day in a place called prison and thanked the Eibershter for yesterday, because if I was in prison yesterday, obviously it was the best thing that could have happened to me. But today the Eibershter wants me—bitachon means the Eibershter wants me to trust Him to bring me home, un noch mehr. In Sha'ar HaBitachon, perek gimmel, it says that a botei'ach is somebody who will always be mishtadel: he will always work hard to do what the Eibershter wants him to do and stay away from what the Eibershter wants him to stay away from. The same way the botei'ach wants Hashem to do what he wants Him to do, he does what the Eibershter wants him to do. That’s a kelal in Sha'ar HaBitachon. It’s a middah keneged middah. A botei'ach is somebody who does what the Eibershter wants, who learns better, davens better, and gets closer to the Eibershter. That’s somebody for whom the Eibershter does what he wants, and veiter geforn.

Along with that, we understand that we are sach hakol nivra'im; we’re all creations, and we don’t understand everything. If something happens, we accept with emunah peshutah that it is gam zu letovah. Aber today, vi, how does the Eibershter want me to go through today? With bitachon that the Eibershter will help me. That’s how I made it through every day. Eighteen and a half years later, the Eibershter gave me this present. My heart and mind were full of shevach vehoda'ah leKadosh Baruch Hu. I got it. But the thought that overwhelmed me was this: yesterday, I got a letter from the most powerful court in the world, and they told me it was denied, it was over, and I was stuck in prison for another eighteen years. There was nothing I could do in the court system to change it.

Talk about teva. Try to describe something immovable, something you can’t change. A doctor shows you on the screen, “This is the way it is.” The court told me it was denied, it was over, and I’d be stuck in prison another eighteen years. The next day the Eibershter showed who the real balebos is. He’s the balebos, and He got me out. The way the Eibershter made the nes is alef beit gimmel. I live with alef beit gimmel because this was the second time it happened: alef, I got the letter; beit, I got freed.

The people there were still staring at me. I told them, “You know, you may think this is a political thing. You should know…” I knew there were other Yidden there, so I wanted them to know that Yidden are very special. I said, “Jews—God loves Jewish people. Today is Chanukah. Chanukah, God did miracles for Jewish people because God loves the Jewish people. I’m Jewish, so God loves me. I’m going home, you see?”

Then it hit me: I forgot to make a berachah acharonah. I forgot to bentsch. I was in the middle of eating my matzah and tuna fish when the guard came to get me. The halachah is that you’re supposed to go back and make a berachah where you ate. Azoi shteit, right? On chochmes. So I asked the warden, “One second, time out. Before I leave, I have to go back for a few minutes.” He said, “Why would you go back? Get out of here.” I said, “No, you don’t understand. I ate tuna fish and matzah; I have to bentsch, I have to make an after-blessing.” He said, “Listen, the President said you have to get him out of here as fast as I can. You’re out of here. You want to bentsch, you bentsch right here.” I had no choice, so I bentsht where I was sitting. I asked for my mayim acharonim, and they brought it to me.

You should know, I never said to myself, “Because I’m in a matzav that could call for something different, I’ll act differently.” Farkert. Maybe that’s why I’m there. In every matzav, a Yid has to do the Torah u'mitzvot the way he’s supposed to. What are you using your matzav for—as a way to make it easier? What does the word heter mean? Everybody thinks heter means permission, right? Mitzvah means tzavta vechibur, a connection. A mitzvah connects you with the Eibershter. Soon, im yirtzeh Hashem, you’re going to write a check for Yad L'Achim. You can do a mitzvah and connect with the Eibershter; your hand becomes a vehicle to give money to Yad L'Achim.

If tzavta means connection with the Eibershter, what does heter mean? Heter means to untie. When a person looks for his own heiterim, he could very well be untying himself from the Eibershter. It’s actually schizophrenic: on one side he wants to connect with Hashem, and at the same time he’s looking for a way out. If the Eibershter writes a heter in the Torah, achilah beShabbat or whatever, that’s one thing. But looking for heiterim to make things easy for yourself is something else. Al kol panim, I never looked for heiterim.

I’ll share more stories later. I have maybe five minutes left, so I’ll pretend I have eight or ten and tell you one more story. Then we’ll get on with the show, and later we’ll farbreng more. I kept every mitzvah because bitachon means doing what the Eibershter wants. When you do what He wants, you trust that the Eibershter will also do what you want. That’s what it says in Sha'ar HaBitachon. If you want to know where it is, it’s hakdamah revi'it in perek gimmel; you can look it up.

Then I got out, Baruch Hashem. There was great simchah, more than I had imagined, and the achdut was amazing. It kept going. Everybody thought it would be another week, and another, but the geulah was still alive among people, among Yidden, and here we are tonight.

I want to share a story about getting freed on Zot Chanukah. The first mitzvah I had to fight for in the land of golden plenty—Baruch Hashem, we grew up in America. My parents grew up in Russia, which was a whole different story. There you had to fight for every mitzvah; it was underground, with ma'asim. In America, the fight was with yourself. If you wanted to wear a yarmulke and tzitzit, you wore them. I always walked around, even in the toughest prisons, with my yarmulke and tzitzit visible, and they respected me more for that. If anybody tried to take them away, it wasn’t the inmates; it was the guards.

The first time I had to fight for a mitzvah was Chanukah. I had to fight for the first night of Chanukah, and the Eibershter made a nes on the last day of Chanukah, almost completing a circle, many years later, when He freed me. I want to share the power of a mitzvah; I think that’s the message you can take away. Emunah and bitachon can sound theoretical, luftike ma'asiyot, but they’re very real. If you have emunah in the Eibershter, you do a mitzvah with more geshmak. You want to connect with Him, be with Him, and fulfill your purpose. Emunah doesn’t mean the Eibershter is somewhere else. He’s with you. He created you, and He wants something from you.

The first time they threw me into jail was when they gave me an indictment. There’s an indictment going on now, too. They said that because I was a dual citizen, bail was only given to someone who was a United States citizen. It’s a constitutional right; you can get bail. If you’re not an American citizen, you can’t get bail. If you’re dual—an American citizen and another citizen—you’re not entitled to bail, a ma'aseh. I was born in Boro Park. The last time I checked, Boro Park was part of the United States.

I was shocked when the prosecutor got up and told the judge, “Your Honor, he should be denied bail.” He had other ta'anot, but among the things he said was, “Bichlal, he’s not entitled, even bichlal, because he is a dual citizen.” I thought, “How do you figure dual? I didn’t cross a border. I was born in the United States.” But chachamim heima lehara: because I’m Jewish, I could go to Israel and get citizenship there under the Law of Return. He had the Law of Return printed from the internet and handed it to the judge. “Because he could get Israeli citizenship…” They denied me bail.

Everybody hears the story and reacts like that. Obviously, you weren’t reading the papers when it was happening. This was a shock. It wasn’t a ta'anah against me because my name is Rubashkin; it was a ta'anah against every Jew. The government said in the papers that I was a de facto dual citizen. Shtusim vehavalim—de facto. The judge agreed with him and threw me in jail.

I wound up in a jail in Dubuque, Iowa, for seventy-some days, until the Eibershter helped and it was overturned. It was a big tumel. The ADL wrote a very strong letter against this. A lot of rabbanim came to meet me; they had a press conference. Agudat Yisrael and five different groups came to visit me in jail and made a big tumel: how could they take a Jew and deny him bail because he was a Jew? Some shekatzim is this. Bepo'al, the Eibershter made a nes: alef, Bet Shevat, I had a hearing; beit, I was told I was getting bail; and gimel, I got out. That’s when I said to my wife, “Alef beit gimmel—let’s be mechazek ourselves in emunah u-vitachon; we’ll get the geulah.”

Chanukah came during those seventy-some days. In that jail, the warden called me and asked, “What do you need to be Jewish?” I said I needed a yarmulke and tzitzit, to daven, my tefillin, kosher food, and water for negel vasser. I told him everything I needed, and he gave me everything. When it came to Chanukah and fire, he answered my request: “Oh, fire? The fire marshal doesn’t allow it. It’s a fire hazard. It can burn the place down.” What was going to burn down? Everything was cement and steel. A fire hazard! Shein. It was Chanukah, and I wasn’t allowed to light the Chanukah menorah.

My family got in touch with an organization the Klein family knows very well, Aleph. The Aleph organization helps Yidden in all kinds of matzavim and problems in prison. I happen to work for Aleph now. They help people keep Yiddishkeit: they get them tefillin and kasher food, and even give them money for basic needs like soap. Pashut, it’s a lifeline. I saw with my own eyes people who wouldn’t live without it. There are Yidden with no family or money for food, snacks, or soap. Sometimes they need medical attention and are ignored.

I asked them to get involved. I asked Aleph to seek permission for me not only to light candles in jail, but to light specifically with olive oil. Dafka, olive oil. They submitted the request, it was rejected, and they fought back and forth. Then one day, the Eibershter helped: I was told the warden had found a fireproof room where he would let me light the menorah. A fireproof room? I was already in a fireproof room right there.

Chanukah came. That year, the 25th was the first night of Chanukah, I think—or maybe it was like this year; I don’t remember exactly. Two guards came to take me to light the menorah. One held my menorah, and the other held a tray of olive oil. I was wearing Purim'dike clothes, orange, and we were going to light the Chanukah menorah. They walked through the maze of the old jail and opened an old black door. It was picture-perfect: a huge fireproof room, lefi erech, with benches around it for about fifty people, no windows, like a bomb shelter. In the corner was an L-shaped mechitzah.

The guard who looked like a serious officer seemed to be the leader. He put down the menorah, and the other guard put down the oil. “Go do your thing,” he told me. They moved to the side. I guess they wanted to make sure I made the berachah properly. I wanted them to leave, but they stayed. I was mamash ecstatic, floating. I had fought for a mitzvah. Every mitzvah brings out its hamshachah; mitzvat Chanukah, she'asah nissim la'avoteinu bayamim hahem bazeman hazeh, brings light and warmth. This mitzvah had everything I was missing, and I hoped that by making the berachah properly, I would draw that down onto myself.

I took out an oil cup, put it in the menorah, and took the shamash. I was about to light it when a thought came into my head: “One second, there’s a wall here, a partition. What’s on the other side?” I looked and got sick. What do you think was on the other side of the partition? A bathroom. A toilet. The partition was screening off a toilet. How could I make a berachah next to a toilet? I’m not asking a she'elah, a halachic question; it just didn’t make sense to me.

I turned to the guard and said, “Listen, I can’t light it here.” He asked, “Why not?” I said, “There’s a toilet here. I didn’t realize; this wall overlooks a toilet.” He said, “And so what?” He hadn’t gone to yeshivah, you know. What do you mean, “So what?” I said, “I’m about to make a berachah and say God’s holy name.” I spelled it out for him in English. “Do you think it’s right to say God’s holy name next to a toilet? Even for a goy, I feel that…”

He looked at me. He didn’t say, “Listen, mister, you’re in jail; you do what you’re told.” I realized he understood me. I continued: “What do you think I’m doing? I’m lighting a candle. The candle is supposed to proclaim the miracle God did for us in those days and in our days. It’s a holy light. Do you want my holy light shining on a toilet?” I saw he understood because, instead of telling me, “I hear you, but this is how it works,” he asked, “So what should I do? There’s no other place to light it.”

Jews are very good at giving eitzot. I told him, “There’s a room where I eat my kasher food. They don’t want me eating next to the goyim because the food is different and they don’t like anything different. They took me out of the cell and brought me to a small separate room. It isn’t officially fireproof, but I’m not going to burn myself. It’s just a little flame. I’m not suicidal. If it falls down, I’ll put it out. What’s the problem?” He said, “No, I can’t. There’s nobody to call for permission. It’s a holiday; nobody’s in the office. I need clearance.” Clearance-shmearance. I needed a way to light it. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but after a minute or two of arguing, he finally said, “Okay, I’ll do it for you.” Pelei pela'ot, the first miracle of Chanukah. He agreed, picked up the menorah, and made eye contact with his friend. They agreed to do it. The Eibershter had softened their hearts.

I followed them, excited. Now I would do the mitzvah, and not next to a toilet; zol zein nor besser. I knew that if I could get one more thing out of these guys, I’d be able to do the mitzvah just as I did at home. So I told the officer, “Listen, I have another problem.” He asked, “What’s your problem now?” I said, “The law is that Jewish people have to light this candle for half an hour. I’m not telling you anything different, but our community’s custom is to let it burn for fifty minutes. Would you mind if I sit there for fifty minutes?”

He stopped walking and looked at me with a look you can’t describe. He was completely confused. First the toilet was no good; now thirty minutes wasn’t enough, and now I wanted fifty. “Hey, Rubashkin, how did you do this in your house?” he asked. I started telling him everything. Postville was a very distant place, and we had to make everything ourselves. The children couldn’t go into the streets and see Chanukah. Even in Cleveland, you can go to shul, see Chanukah on the streets, or go to a friend’s house. There was nothing going on there then.

At home we made Chanukah a shtikl ma'amad. As long as the Chanukah menorah was lit, we would sit around it, eat latkes, sing, play dreidel, sing Al Hanissim, learn a ma'amar or a story, and do something to take in as much as we could. I told him that at home we always tried to sit around the candles until they burned out, about two and a half hours. Thirty minutes, fifty minutes, two and a half hours. He got very quiet, and I thought maybe I had pushed too hard, chas veshalom. Suddenly he told me something I’ll never forget. He said, “Okay, you’ll do it here the same way you did it at home. You’ll be a Yid here the same way you are at home.”

He took me to the little room. For eight days, he never bothered me. As long as the light was burning, he let me sit there. It was mamash oxygen for me. I sat there learning from a sefer and singing niggunim, picking up my chizuk and strengthening myself. This was the beginning of the idea that a Yid should be a Yid wherever he is, in the same way. There’s no such thing as, “I’m a Yid in yeshivah, but at home I’m different, and when I go on a trip, I’m different there, too.” When I’m somewhere I don’t like, I shouldn’t look for a way out of being who I am.

Baruch Hashem, mit dem gang, mit dem gang, later there were other situations. In one place the guards tried to take away my tzitzit and put me in the shul and beat me up. That’s for another ma'aseh. I never forgot that the Eibershter is with me. With strong emunah, uvetocho farkert: do a mitzvah properly wherever you are, connect with the Eibershter, and then the Eibershter is with you and gives you all the kochos you need to come out.

I’ll finish with a little appeal for Rabbi Cohen, who’s anxiously standing over there. I was told not to tell this story, but I can’t hold myself back. The Maharal miPrag says that there’s a halachah: if a man gets out of his car in a parking lot, drops a wallet or a package of money, looks around, doesn’t see a siman (identifying sign), gives up on it, and leaves, another person sees who lost it and picks it up. The she'elah is whether he has to return it. It was after ye'ush (despair of recovery). If I remember correctly, al pi halachah, according to Jewish law, he doesn’t have to give it back because there was ye'ush and no siman. But because he knows who lost it, he should give it back.

The Maharal asks: lich'orah, if the Eibershter wants you to give it back, why didn’t the Eibershter pasken in the Torah that you have to give it back? What’s the point of saying that al pi halachah you don’t have to, but midat chasidut (pious conduct) you should? Make it a halachah; you should give it back! He gives a phenomenal explanation. A person’s money isn’t part of the person. The Eibershter gives a person money to use for his needs and for people who need it, too. If he has enough, he has money to give tzedakah. A person’s hand or finger belongs to him. If someone loses his finger, you can’t keep it; it belongs to him, and he wants it back.

If the Eibershter had made a halachah that money has to be given back because you know whose it is, that would mean money and a person can’t be separated; it’s his. The kitzur is not like that. Money is not his. The halachah is that you don’t have to give it back, but because you know who it belongs to and the man feels bad, give it back to him. That’s the nekudah: the Eibershter gives us money so we can help others. Eibershter, open up your pockets—open up your heart, maybe first. Yad L'Achim is very similar to what I went through. It helps women and children who have fallen into mamash matzavim of a prison. I’ve been in their office, watched the famous video that everybody watched, and met the woman who went through it. How Yidden find themselves in galut (exile), falling into situations and relying—who Hashem yafiach koach. The Eibershter sends good shluchim to get them out of their tzarot. Lechaim, everybody. When we can, we’ll continue later.

Somehow, when people are going through something difficult, they see it only as kaparat avonot, and not in the other terms of making the world into an… First, I want to say that the Eibershter gave Avraham Avinu ten nisyonot (tests), obviously not because he did anything wrong. Farkert: Avraham Avinu was breaking through and bringing kedushah into the world.

Here’s what happened in my own story. In prison they gave out mail every day, Monday through Friday. On a holiday, they didn’t. One of the highlights of my day was mail call because I got many letters from men, women, and even children. Many children in yeshivah sent me letters of chizuk. They told me, “We’re davening for you; we’re doing mitzvot for you; hold strong; we’re saying Tehillim for you.” Hearing how the Eibershter was putting it into the hearts of so many Yidden to daven for me showed me that the Eibershter was with me and would help me.

About a hundred guys would stand there, and a man would come with a bag of mail. Many of the goyim standing there didn’t get mail at all. This Jewish boy was getting mail every day, sometimes ten, sometimes twenty, thirty, or fifty letters. “Mr. Johnson, a piece of mail. Mr. Fernandez, a piece of mail. Mr. Rubashkin, a piece of mail. Mr. Rubashkin…” My name was called many times. The mail was a big chizuk for me. I used to wait for it and read the letters. I couldn’t answer them all, but I saved every single one. If you know somebody in prison, sending a letter is like a breath of fresh air. I kept every piece of mail I got. I still have boxes and boxes of them at home.

One day I heard one goy tell the officer, “Hey, why don’t you just give him the whole bag?” He was exaggerating as if I were taking all the mail: “Give him ganze… Why do you take it one by one? Give him the whole bag.” What should I do? How should I handle this? I just stood there. Then, before the man could read the letters, the three clowns all said together, “Hey, Rubashkin, this is for you,” as if they were reading them. It wasn’t my name anyway. They started… Jail is a place where everything is backwards, a backwards world. In the free world you want to be popular; in jail you don’t want anybody to know you’re there because you can become a target for hate, whatever. I’m Jewish. Al kol panim, one day a guy came over after mail call. I was standing with a little peckel of mail. He said, “Hey, Rubashkin, I have a complaint against you.”

“A complaint? What happened, boss? What’s the complaint?” He said, “Why are you taking away all our mail?” Einstein’s second cousin had calculated that there were a hundred people, a hundred pieces of mail, and everybody should get one. He thought I had taken part of other people’s mail. I looked at him. One side of me said, “Get out of here, you meshugener beheima,” but he was accusing me of taking something away from them, and I didn’t feel I could leave because that would make it an incident. So I said, “Where do you get that I’m taking away your mail?” I took out the packet and showed him. Every letter had my name, Sholom Rubashkin, and my prisoner number. “It’s my mail, not your mail.” He wanted a biur, and he was still standing there.

I said, “What do you think? I believe that every single day, God willing, I’m going home. Let’s say I’m going home today. Do you think tomorrow you’ll get more mail because I’m not here? If I’m going, my mail is following me. It’s mine; it goes after me. You’re not getting my mail. If you put food on a plate and I grab it before you do, you can think I took something from you because you could have had it. But this is mine.” He was still standing there, so I gave him a heikhi timtza, a brech a kop. I said, “Lomir zogn, ilu yetzuyar, even if you did get my mail, you couldn’t read it.” I pulled out a piece written in Yiddish or lashon kodesh and showed it to him. “You see? You couldn’t even read it.” He looked at it like the kaporeh hindl by bnei adam, thinking, “Look at that kook.” Of course he couldn’t read it. I always joke I could have shown him English, too, but I wasn’t taking chances there.

Finally he walked away. I said, “What do you think it says? ‘Dear Sholom Rubashkin’—that’s me, not you. ‘We’re praying for you. Stay strong. God is going to help you.’ They’re praying for me, right? What does any of this have to do with you?” He left.

Be'emet, this was a threat. The smallest things can start fights, and I’ve seen it. Even I was once in a matzav where the smallest thing nearly turned into a whole fight. The Eibershter saved me, takeh a derech nes. I asked the guy I was sleeping with, my cellie, to pick up my mail and give it to me because I didn’t want to stay in the line of fire. That’s what he did.

For weeks I thought about it. The Ba'al Shem Tov says that from everything a Yid sees and hears, he should take a lesson in serving Hashem. Like the plane story, I thought: you have to look at what’s up and what’s down, look in the Torah. I felt there was a lesson, but I couldn’t place it exactly. The obvious lesson was how bad kinah vesinah (jealousy and hatred) are: you can be mekaneh somebody over something that has nothing to do with you, that isn’t yours and was never written to you. But I felt there was something more.

Then one day it hit me. I was in a matzav that many people going through a nisayon experience. A person going through a nisayon or hardship always has a thought somewhere in the back, front, or middle of his mind: “Why can’t my life be like his or hers?” Why do I have to go through something so difficult? I had family outside, and I was stuck inside. I was the only guy—other people were building houses, my friends were going on vacations, one was getting married, one was having a child, one was having a chaseneh, miss chasenes. Ich hob do aza fakt in a meshugoim hoiz, a little crazy, insane asylum. It was easy to think, “Why can’t my life be like other people’s?”

Then it hit me: this is my mail. My life is my mail. Emunah means the Eibershter creates me. When He creates me, He creates me for a purpose. Every Yid has the general purpose of doing 613 mitzvot, “ve'asu li mikdash veshachanti betocham.” But each Yid also has a specific shlichut, a specific mission, that the Eibershter gives him. That’s why one person is born in New York, another in Cleveland, and another in a different country. “Me'Hashem mitz'adei gever konanu”: the Eibershter directs a person’s footsteps. Wherever Hashem directs him is by divine providence, because he has something to do there. He has to meet somebody and bring him closer to Yiddishkeit, make a berachah on that food, do a mitzvah, join a minyan, learn a shtikl Torah, whatever it is. He has to do it there, dafka in that place.

Here’s how it works. My mail is my life. The Eibershter sends me mail saying, “Hashem Shomrecha. You have a job in life. Here I give you chizuk; you should know that I’m with you and will give you everything you need. Be strong.” For twenty years things were going well. You were doing good things, things you liked and enjoyed, and you thought they were the right things to do. Mit amol, you find yourself in a choshech shebechoshech, among goyim, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, no one in sight, with a twenty-seven-year sentence. What is the purpose of it all? So that there, you learn and daven, and don’t let the darkness extinguish your neshamah.

Every nisayon is like that. Every hardship is a situation where the hardship tries to stop a person from learning and getting close to the Eibershter. At first he thinks this one did it and that one did it. First you have to realize that the Eibershter did it; He is doing it. Why? Avraham Avinu—He wants you to bring light into the darkness. So do the mitzvah, farkert; get closer to the Eibershter. You’re going through a hard time? Dafka get up in the morning and daven. Show yourself and the Eibershter that you realize it’s from the Eibershter, and that it won’t stop you from learning and davening with a minyan. Dafka that—you’ll break through it. That is what you were created for.

A lot of people think, “If I had that guy’s $100 million, I’d be better off.” Lav davka. A big lav davka. If your mission in life is to get $100 million, you’ll know what to do with it. That’s what He created you for. If your mission is something else, let the Eibershter read your mail. If your mail isn’t exactly what you envisioned, what is it about you? It’s about serving Hashem and fulfilling your purpose in life—not doing what you want to do, but what the Eibershter wants you to do. The Eibershter says, “Nachat ruach lefanai she'amarti vena'asah retzoni.” I have nachat ruach from what I commanded you, when you do what I wanted you to do.

When you realize that, and you do a mitzvah that makes the Eibershter happy, you can connect to the simchah of the Eibershter. What is simchat hachayim? It means being happy you’re alive. Why are you happy you’re alive? The Eibershter is creating you, and your life is exciting because whatever you’re doing, Hashem is happy. “Oh, gib a kuk, mein Yiddish yingele, in this matzav he’s doing what I want him to do.” Mit amol, it can be hard and difficult, but the atzvut is never there. There’s never depression, because what is depression? Depression means something went wrong, something happened that shouldn’t have happened, that could have happened differently. A ma'amin never thinks that if something happened, it could have happened differently. I could have been somewhere else? You couldn’t have been somewhere else. What’s the proof? You’re here. I could have come earlier? You couldn’t have come earlier; you came late. Once something happens, this is what was to happen. Act accordingly.

I remember this ma'aseh about my mail. Mit amol, there were struggles and hard times. I got this news and that piece of news, like somebody punching you in the stomach and knocking the wind out of you. How do you go through another year? Then you remember: this is my mail, farkert. This is what the Eibershter wants from me. What you’re doing means everything to the Eibershter. You were created for this. “Adam le'amal yulad.”

Part of our problem is that we’ve taken in non-secular, parve ways of thinking, and then we have questions in the world of Torah. Lemashal, America is built on what they call “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As a kid, they told me the American dream was life. That sounds good; I’m a Jewish boy. What’s wrong with life? Everybody likes life. Liberty—who doesn’t want cheirut? And the pursuit of happiness. A freilicher Yid, the pursuit of happiness. But they missed a cardinal ingredient. The Eibershter says, “Adam le'amal yulad.” A person was created to toil, to work, to accomplish, to epes ton in der velt. You weren’t created just for the pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes when you accomplish what you’re supposed to accomplish. That’s your happiness.

When you think happiness is only a pursuit, or only what the goyim present in all their advertisements, and it doesn’t work exactly like that, then you feel something is wrong. But when you think like a Yid: “Wait a second, I was created for a purpose. I was created to bring something into my world”—I’m not talking about turning worlds over—“to make a berachah on food, keep a kosher home, have a shiur in learning, daven with a minyan, be mekarev another Yid, bring another Yid for a Shabbat meal, put on tefillin with him.” Then suddenly, that’s amal. Amal tefilah: work on davening. Work on learning Torah. That’s amal; that’s what we were created for. Work is not your problem. The problem is depression.

After I got out, there was a Yid, a young man who doesn’t live in Monsey—though that’s not a shaychut. Baruch Hashem, the Eibershter put it into his heart. He had some money and worked dafka, worked stuff, too. My story really touched him, and he helped my family privately. After I got out, I went to his office to express hakarat hatov, to thank him for being a good messenger for the Eibershter and thinking about us. He gave me some pizza. We ate and talked. Everybody was still excited, dancing all night, and he was excited, too.

Then he told me, “Listen, Shalom, I have to talk to you very seriously now. I work with Yidden coming out of prison. I know: everybody’s excited and dancing now, so you’re not thinking about it. But in two weeks, I’m sure you’ll get up in the morning, be depressed, and not want to get out of bed. I’ve seen it. A guy goes to camp for a year, comes out depressed and needs psychiatric help.” Oh, now you’re talking! He should have told me before; you’d have got more money. Lechaim, lechaim. I was just kidding.

He pulled out a psychiatrist’s card. “When that happens, when you can’t get out of bed in the morning, you need a psychiatrist. Here’s a good guy; I’ll pay the bill.” He was a ba'al chesed (kind person). I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. I didn’t want to… Baruch Hashem, I consider myself an average guy. Where is the depression? I got out, b'simchah. I’m out of prison! Where is the depression? I tried to remember a day when I was depressed in prison. Hurt, that’s right; remember?

It wouldn’t be true to say I never fought depression. I fought it. I used to get up in the morning. My yetzer hara and I talk a lot. I told him, “Listen, I get up in the morning, and you’re always standing over me, telling me to go back to sleep. I can’t fight with you while I’m lying horizontal and you’re standing over me.” Imagine getting up. This room is like Gehinnom. There are two steel beds, two steel plates, and you’re lying on a little mat. You wake up; the guy on top is chropping, the door is locked, and you’re not going anywhere. Go back to sleep. You wake up to this and want to go back to sleep.

I got up every morning at 5:30. How did I do it? I figured out how to get out of bed easily. I told my yetzer hara, “We’re not talking about getting up until after berachot. Shoyn! Hold your thought.” I set my alarm for 4:30. He’d be standing there, trying to violate the deal, and I’d say, “Up!” I’d get up, fir amot, giesen negel, say Modeh Ani, giesen negel vasser, get dressed, and say berachot. Then I’d say, “Now, what did you want to say?” I’d said berachot and Birkat HaTorah, so for sure I was going to say Tehillim. I was energized and didn’t want to go back to sleep. That’s how you fight depression: on your terms, not his, by bringing purpose into your life and not going along with his meshugasen.

You fight depression by revealing who you really are. You’re a Yid, not a goy. A goy has a different set of mechanics. I don’t know computers, but my son was trying to tell me about Windows, Microsoft, and Android—operating systems, right? A Jew and a goy operate in two different systems. They look compatible, but they’re not. A Yid has a neshamah. When a Yid tries to adapt goyishe thoughts into his way of thinking, even if it looks like it helps for a moment, it doesn’t. It can’t, because it goes against his essence as a Yid. If he has an issue, he has to address it like a Yid. Of course the neshamah is in the body, and of course he has to address certain aspects of the body, but he has to take it from the Torah.

Going to sleep at night was one of the hardest times for me. I’m talking about depression. Imagine it’s 10:30 or 11:00 at night. You were locked into a little room, a closet, at 9:30. You finished Kriat Shema and your shiurim, and now you’re going to sleep. You close your eyes, and the yetzer hara is right there with all the questions: “What’s going to happen? How long is this taking? Seven years have passed. Vos hakt men in kop? Emunah ubitachon? What was going on yesterday?” How do you deal with that?

You have two options: go to a psychiatrist, who might give you pills, or think like a Yid. You can’t stop your thoughts, but you can start thinking like a Yid. I started chazer'ing what I had learned in Sha'ar HaBitachon about bitachon in the Eibershter. The parts I could say word for word, I said in my mind. It talks about the seven sibot in which you can trust anybody, and then the five in which you trust Hashem. I started thinking in the terms the Torah tells me to think, and I fell asleep, ruhig, because the Eibershter tells me this is how I’m supposed to think. That’s reality. The other things aren’t reality.

So you fight depression. I don’t remember being depressed—that’s what I’m trying to say. What kind of business is being depressed? Where does depression come from? From feeling that something went wrong. Nothing went wrong. You have a job to do. The matzav you’re in is the matzav the Eibershter put you in. The purpose is to bring out the power of your neshamah, so that even this matzav can’t stop you.

I can go all night, guys, so if anyone wants to leave, you can keep on going. Lechaim, lechaim. The first time they threw me into prison was after what they called a court case in South Dakota. They brought me into a room. The guard came in with a pile of clothes. I laughed at everything: Purim clothes, orange clothes. He told me I had to change into them. I was a prisoner, so I had to listen. I started taking off my clothes, then realized I still had my tzitzit on. I wanted to make sure they would let me keep them.

From my previous experience, I figured I’d tell them I needed them religiously, and they’d give them to me. But here the next nisayon was that they wouldn’t let me keep my own tzitzit. I asked, “Can I wear my tzitzit?” He said, “Nope. Everything has to go in the box.” They had put out a box for my clothes. I couldn’t understand it. America is a country where religious freedom is very important, and even a prisoner is entitled to religious freedom. Maybe he didn’t know what a Jew was, I thought. I asked, “What about my yarmulke?” Everyone knows what a yarmulke is. He said, “Nope, everything in the box.”

So I started explaining: “Listen, mister, you know I’m Jewish. A Jew has to wear a yarmulke and tzitzit at all times. It’s not something I made up. The Torah and the Code of Jewish Law say that a Jew has to wear a head covering, a yarmulke, and tzitzit all the time. If he doesn’t wear them, he can’t walk four steps. You’re going to take them away, and I’ll be stuck in one place; I won’t be able to move. I have to move.” I was trying to explain how important it was to me. I was sure that after such an explanation he’d give them to me.

He told me, word for word, “Listen, buddy,” and came close to my face. He had become friendly now. “A lot of things are going to change for you tonight.” That’s what he told me. You’re standing in such a place, in choshech. I heard the word “buddy” and realized he wasn’t my buddy. The yetzer hara never comes and says, “I’m Mr. Yetzer Hara. I’m going to give you advice you’ll regret later.” He says, “I have a good idea for you, your buddy.” He was Mr. Buddy, telling me he was going to change me. I heard, “Change me,” and made a hachlatah: I’m not changing. I’m staying the same Yid. I realized I wasn’t only in physical danger; I was in danger of losing who I was.

I told him, “Sorry, I can’t do it.” I made up my mind: “I’m not changing. Nothing is changing.” He got mad and threw the bowl. I guess his training hadn’t prepared him for what happens when a man doesn’t want to shave his beard, and he had nothing else to throw. He took me to another room and locked me in a cage. A lieutenant walked in, a higher-ranking man, and asked what was going on. I was standing on one side of the bars and he was on the other. I said, “Your guy is trying to take away my yarmulke and tzitzit. I have to keep them because I can’t walk without them.” He had no clue. He said, “I’m going to check with the rabbi.”

I didn’t want an interview with a Reform rabbi, but every rabbi knows a Jew wears a yarmulke and tzitzit. What’s the problem? If the rabbi said I could have them, mah tov. The Eibershter helped. The lieutenant came back fifteen minutes later with a printout of an email. He said, “The rabbi responded to your request,” and read: “First of all, you should know that you’re in a place called jail.” “I appreciate it; I didn’t know,” I thought. The rabbi continued, “In a place called jail, the officers are in charge. You have to listen to them. If they tell you to take off your tzitzit, you have to listen to them.” A rabbi! And he was saying that to a goy. The rabbi had become the officer’s friend, not mine.

Then he finished off—he was a big talmid chacham, too—“Dina demalchuta dina, you know this?” I looked at the goy and asked, “Do you know what that means?” I was shocked to hear those words rolling out of a goy’s mouth: dina demalchuta dina. He was on one side of the bars; I was on the other, fighting for my freedom to be a Yid. I thought: who’s really in prison, me or him? He’s bound, not me. I’m fighting for my Yiddishkeit.

Looking back, the truth is this was a shlechte ma'aseh. I sensed it. What kind of menuval was this? He was sitting at home and got an email from a Jew in prison who wanted to wear his yarmulke and tzitzit. He could have said, “Yeah,” and gone back to watching his TV show. What was he doing telling a Jew he couldn’t wear a yarmulke and tzitzit? The Jew also knew what dina demalchuta dina meant.

I started talking to the guard. I told him what I understood: “A Jew has to wear a yarmulke and tzitzit. That’s clearly Jewish law. The Frierdiker Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was in prison in 1927 in Soviet Russia, and they wanted to kill him. Miraculously, they freed him. When he came out at the train station, he said something famous, mamash a light in darkness: a Yid has to know that only his body went into galut, not his neshamah. That’s a very important distinction.”

I remember learning it and asking: if only the body is in galut and the neshamah isn’t, where is the neshamah? The neshamah is part of the body. It gets kind of problematic when the neshamah leaves. But when a Yid knows only his body is in galut, not his neshamah, how does he pick himself up out of galut? How does he diminish its effect and go beyond the limitations the nations are trying to impose? By focusing on his neshamah, because his neshamah never went into galut.

I told the guard that dina demalchuta dina refers only to things dealing with the body: paying taxes, not speeding on highways, not jaywalking. That’s dina demalchuta dina; it concerns the body. But when you’re talking about neshamah, keeping kasher, putting on tefillin—they tried to take away my tefillin—or wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit, I’m not in jail; you have to give them to me. That’s basically what I told him. He wasn’t sure what I was talking about, but he heard about Soviet Russia in 1927 and realized something was going on. He said he’d check with the rabbi again.

It’s a chidush over there. They give you an order and you have to listen; it’s not a place where you argue it out. He came back a minute later, mamash marveling. “Okay, the rabbi said you can keep all of them.” I don’t remember—“You can keep all…” This baby? This is a class act. All the yarmulkes? I don’t get it. Eight, eighteen? Yeah, eighteen. So now he’s making a business, yeah? Chai, for sure! Whatever. Before, he had said nothing, but now the goy couldn’t handle it anymore. “Listen, it doesn’t matter. If you’re going to listen to me, I’ll let you out with the other guys. If not, I’m throwing you into solitary confinement.”

They don’t call it solitary confinement; they call it SHU, Special Housing Unit. What a lesson in life from a goy. In England they call solitary confinement what it is. In America, a good country of good people, they pride themselves on kindness. They can’t tolerate having solitary confinement in their jails, because it’s internationally agreed to be a form of torture. How do you resolve that? You think you abolish it? No, aderrabbah, we’ll change the name. It’s not solitary confinement; it’s SHU, Special Housing Unit. What’s special about it? They torture people there. But now we can tolerate it because we changed the name.

My favorite story is the iPhone. When I came out, I’d never seen an iPhone. They put me away in ’05; at that time there was still no iPhone. By the time they became popular outside, I was already in prison. I never watched TV or saw the phone ads. I came out, looked around, and walked into a room where everybody was stuck looking at these strange black boxes. Then a man came over and said, “Hey, Shalom aleichem!” He greeted me; I greeted him. “Look here!” In prison, when a guy says “Look here,” it’s a warning—you have to watch what’s going to happen. I looked up, and he was holding the screen. I saw myself on it. It was like taking a selfie. I’d never seen a selfie before.

Rabbotai, why do they call it an iPhone? At best, it should be called a pocket computer. I suggest calling it a calculator, because the calculator is in there. There’s a phone in there, but that’s not the main chiddush of this little box. The chiddush is all the other accessories. So why is it called an iPhone? If you called it a computer, you’d treat it like a computer. You don’t give computers to kids. You use them at specific times; you’re not on a computer all the time. If you sit down at the dinner table with a laptop, people will say, “Geit nisht.” If it’s a small thing, that’s different.

Two years later, I still can’t get over the scene. I’m tired of talking about it, but it’s really true. People sit down together, then everybody pulls out their thing. They’re together, but everybody’s busy. Even without this, the finger is doing the same thing. For a minute you put it back, “Oh, you see this?” You can’t think for thirty seconds. Did you ever look at it? You sit down and say, “Hey, the picture just came in!” Boom! Then you have a kind of… There’s no menuchat hanefesh. You can’t have menuchat hanefesh.

So the yetzer hara came up with this: we won’t call it a computer, because it’s a computer. People don’t sit at the dinner table with computers or give computers to little kids. We’ll call it an iPhone. Then it sounds very petty: “Tatty, you have a phone. Why can’t I have a phone?”

Al kol panim, I got a little off track. They were throwing me into the SHU. I told the guard, “Listen, mister, I don’t know about the SHU, but I can’t take this off. I need a hat; I can’t move around without it.” He went out. What was he going to do? I wasn’t taking it off. Then he came back with five guys in riot gear. It was really funny. I was sitting in the cell, and five guys came through the door in a line, all wearing helmets with face masks and full body armor, each carrying a big see-through shield, like a little wall. My hands and feet were tied. What was the fight? All I wanted was to get tzitzit.

They came into the cell and took it off. “Stand up and walk.” “What? I can’t.” “Come on, try.” It didn’t help, so the lieutenant went out and came back with a wheelchair. He put me in it. I have to admit this: in the second place, they beat me up. I don’t want to get heavy now, but the first place was chesed verachamim. They put me in the wheelchair, and I got a free ride to the room. On the way, they didn’t put Purim clothes on me anymore; they put clothes on me like a meshugeneh. In a meshugayim house they put on clothes with no strings and no buttons, so you can’t hang yourself. They’re made of very thick material, as if I were a meshuga who was going to hang himself.

I found myself in a dungeon, picture-perfect. This first night was like baruch haba into the underworld. You go into a place with your family, like a whole hospital, and suddenly you find yourself in a dark cell alone: no phone to call anybody, nothing but a door and a cement thing, a thin mat, one sheet, no yarmulke, no tzitzit, dressed like a meshugeneh. It was frightening.

This ma'aseh began with the plane going through dark clouds. Mamash, picture yourself going through the dark clouds. What do you do? The yetzer hara is right there. There’s a famous story about the heilige Ruzhiner, who was in jail. The yetzer hara came to him and started hacking him a kop. He said to the yetzer hara, “I never knew why they call you melech zaken uchesil.” Have you heard the story? It’s a faktishe ma'aseh; I heard it at a farbrengen in yeshivah.

The Ruzhiner said, “I never knew why they call you melech zaken uchesil, an old, foolish king. Melech—I understand; you want to be king over a person and try to fardreh him a kop. Zaken, because you come when a person is born, and you’re thirteen years older than bar mitzvah. But kesil? You’re foolish? You’re pretty sharp. You can fardreh a guy a kop and make him do things he never wanted to do. You’re very good at entrapping a person. Why do the chachamim call you kesil, a fool?” He said to the yetzer hara, “Now I understand. Look at me: I was thrown into this jail. What are you doing here?”

Those stories came to mind. I was sitting in this cell for five minutes, almost half an hour, and the yetzer hara was standing there like a chazan on Yom Kippur. All kinds of ta'anot: “You see? You fought to keep your tzitzit; that’s why you’re here. If you hadn’t fought, you’d be out with…” I can’t even tell you with whom or what. “What did you get? Now you’re here. What are you doing here bichlal? The Eibershter isn’t with you.” All kinds of ta'anot uma'anot. It was mamash like flying through a dark cloud.

When a person goes through a nisayon, you have to put your cheshbonot aside and think about what the Torah says about a nisayon. The Eibershter tells us in the Torah that He loves every single Yid like a father loves his only son. That’s a fact: without cheshbonot, without limitations, without any “for what”—it’s an etzem, an essential bond. The Eibershter is always with us, and He hears our tefillot.

I was sitting there thinking: if the Eibershter is with me, hears my tefillot, and loves me, why am I in jail dressed like a meshugeneh in a hospital? Then the pasuk came to me: “Ki menaseh Hashem Elokeichem lada'at.” The Eibershter tests us to know what’s within us. If I can say it this way, and I think it’s true: the same way the Eibershter loves us unconditionally, like a father loves his son, He wants to see if we love Him unconditionally. Is our love for the Eibershter based on sechel—because He’s good to us and we like what He’s doing—or is our love unconditional because we know He’s our Father and He loves us? Even when we don’t see that love, we still say, “As is, as is, as is.” We know our bond can’t be torn apart.

This is connected to bitachon. When we show the Eibershter that our connection to Him is unconditional, without limitations, the Eibershter helps us unconditionally, without limitations. The Eibershter tells us in the Torah that He works with us middah keneged middah. “Ve'ahavta et Hashem Elokecha bechol levavcha uvechol nafshecha uvechol me'odecha” means this: when your love for the Eibershter is bechol me'odecha, then the Eibershter’s love for you will also be bechol me'odecha, without conditions. Remember what bitachon is: when you rely on the Eibershter and connect to Him with no conditions attached, because you know your life comes from Him and He is going to help you, then the Eibershter helps you without conditions, too.

When you serve the Eibershter with ale cheshbonot, making calculations—“I’ll do this, but not that”—then Hashem leaves you some space. When you want space, you’re in trouble, because in the space you make for yourself, Hashem isn’t there. You have to make sure every part of you is full of the Eibershter.

Nobody is perfect. Somebody asked a question earlier. The Ba'al HaTanya makes a tremendous statement in his Iggeret HaTeshuvah, and I think it’s important. He says that people often wonder, “I did an aveirah once, twice, another time. Who says the Eibershter is mochel me?” When we make the berachah “Selach lanu ki chatanu,” we finish with “Baruch Atah Hashem, chanun hamarbeh lislo'ach.” The chachamim know the halachah that if there’s a safek berachot lehakeil, if there’s any doubt about the berachah you’re making, you’re not allowed to make it. Yet Chazal said that when you say “Selach lanu” and ask the Eibershter for slichah umechilah vechapparah, you do make a berachah: “Baruch Atah Hashem.” When you ask for mechilah, the Eibershter is for sure mochel you.

In the times of the Beit HaMikdash, the Eibershter made a tamid shel shachar and a tamid shel bein ha'arbayim, right? Why? Because the korban for the night was brought in the morning. The Eibershter knows people mess up; He gives the yetzer hara. The main thing is that the Eibershter gives us time, days, and years to perfect ourselves and get better. It’s not a ta'anah if a man messed up. Is that a re'ayah? A re'ayah of what? A re'ayah of the yetzer hara. When you say, “Hachazirenu bitshuvah shelemah lefanecha,” asking the Eibershter to bring you to complete teshuvah, it means you really want to do teshuvah. Look at the pnimiyut of a Yid. Every Yid belongs to Him and wants Him. The yetzer hara fools a Yid into doing an aveirah; that’s not really who he is.

Emunah is built on the fact that we’re Yidden. Emunah isn’t just an idea. We’re Yidden, and we have a natural faith in the Eibershter. Everything comes naturally; you have to reveal it. That’s the point.

To get back to the story: that night was the hardest night of the whole ma'aseh. If we try to quantify things, I’d say that night was probably the hardest. I was going through a very dark cloud. At the end, I davened Ma'ariv and said the words out loud to the Eibershter: “Listen, I have no idea what’s going on. One thing’s for sure: I’m not leaving You. I’m not leaving You.” That means you’re connected tightly to the Eibershter no matter what, through Torah u'mitzvot. That’s not going to change. You have to hold on to the Eibershter.

Torah u'mitzvot: it’s a mitzvah to tap into a yechidah. I have to tell you an amazing story. These prison doors have a little door, a window where they slide in the food. One time there were little eyes peeking in, and a man with round glasses said, “Mr. Rubashkin, I have to ask you a few questions.” I don’t know what time it was, early morning, maybe 5:00 or 6:00. He had a clipboard with a bunch of papers. From the questions I realized they had sent a psychiatrist to find out if I was normal. Page one, page two, and then he looked at me and said, “Hey, what are you doing in here?”

I said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “You don’t belong here.” I said, “You’re right; I don’t belong here. They took away my yarmulke and tzitzit. You may think I’m meshugeneh, but I’m not. I’m Jewish; I need my yarmulke and tzitzit. So they threw me in here.” He said, “Okay,” and left. I always laugh: in the middle of a test. If I had finished it, I would have gotten 100 and a certificate saying I was normal. He stopped the test and left. Twenty minutes later, he sent two guards. They opened the door and gave back my tzitzit. No questions, nothing. The Eibershter was mamash with me.

The night before, I had davened and said that if this was what had to be, I would pay the price. The Eibershter took me through it. They kept me there a day, two days, three days. Why did they let me go? It sounds crazy. What happened was clear: when you daven to the Eibershter for real, He hears you and sends the yeshuah. When I saw that, I said, “Eibershter, no matter what, I’m staying close to You. You want me to stay close; You took away my tzitzit, and I got them back.”

Then they took me out of jail and drove me somewhere else, a few days later. Sault Sault, Sault City on the western side of Ireland—what’s it called? Sault City. There was a Jewish community outside the rabbinic… They brought me there. On the way, I asked, “Where is my tallit u'tefillin?” The driver didn’t know. I was sure they had brought them. They brought me food, but I couldn’t eat. I told him, “I can’t eat before I daven.” I had no tzitzit, so I had to pray first. They wanted me to eat to make sure I was healthy. It worked, but I had to fast all day; I didn’t eat. Unless they knew Lubavitchers eat cake and drink coffee. They weren’t offering me cake and coffee anyway, so it didn’t make a difference.

At about 4:00, they stopped at a little place and brought me into a room. A rabbi was standing there. The guard was there, as always; I was accompanied by an escort. They had left my tallit u'tefillin somewhere. I went out crying. I had lost the day. It was winter, around 4:15 or 4:30, close to sheki'ah. My tallit u'tefillin were there, and there was Herman Harry Green.

I was excited. I said, “Rabbi…” He started telling me ma'asiyot: he had learned in this yeshivah in New York City, then in another yeshivah, and he told me he had learned in Morristown. I was about to tell him something, but I shut up because I would never finish if I kept talking. I said, “Rabbi Green, listen, it’s mamash close to sheki'ah. I have to put on tallit u'tefillin. Let me put them on.” I grabbed my tallit bag and put on my tallit. I’ll tell you something: putting on a tallit after such a fight feels iberhaftik. You feel the kabalat ol. I had to pull myself away from it and open the bag to put on my tefillin.

One pair of tefillin was missing. There were supposed to be two, Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam, but there was only a Rabbeinu Tam and no Rashi. I turned to the guard, a woman, and asked, “There were two bags. Where’s the other one?” She said, “Yes, there were two, but you had permission for only one bag with tefillin. They sent two, but you’re not allowed to have two. One is in the office, and here is one.” What was I supposed to tell her—that there’s a machloket between Rashi and Tosafot? How could I get around this problem? This is interesting, like Tosafot is taking Shulchan Aruch, like the tzitzit. She should know the machloket. How should I start explaining it? She’d believe me, too, right? I figured: I have what I have. What about the Rabbeinu Tam? It’s such a mitzvah to put on Rabbeinu Tam, right?

So I put on the Rabbeinu Tam. In the middle of Kriat Shema, I got to my star dot, and it hit me: hashgachah pratit. I work very hard to understand everything through hashgachah pratit. I thought lechatchilah that Rabbi Green had been sent to me. Enter now, enter now. How did I know? He had said he knew what Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam were because he had learned in yeshivot. When I finished, I turned to Rabbi Green, who had stood quietly the whole time without interrupting. I said, “They’re fighting over Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam. If I tell them, they won’t believe me, but if you tell them that I need both pairs, they’ll give them to me. They think the second pair is extra.”

He went and told them, “Listen, he actually needs both. It’s not extra.” The guard went out and came back with both. I put on the Rashi tefillin, and Baruch Hashem, I didn’t miss a single day of tefillin through the whole ma'aseh. A few times there was a ma'aseh; you have to fight for it. The whole world can be olam hafuch; you have to fight for it. You have to show the Eibershter it matters to you, and when you show Him it’s true, He helps you.

Here’s a folgnde ma'aseh. I was mamash astounded. The night before, I had been fighting in Otisville prison with a man who didn’t want to let me put on a yarmulke and tzitzit. A hundred miles away, I got to the right place, but I had to fight because this man was fighting it. The Eibershter had already arranged things the next morning. Do you know whom Rabbi Green replaced? Rabbi Katz had made a search. There had been a rebbetzin before him in this congregation. Rabbi Green came to take over the rabbanut there. The Eibershter had prepared someone years before so that a Yid passing through would want to do a mitzvah, Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam, and would be able to do it. That’s hashgachah pratit; that’s the prat.

We always hear in this talk and that talk that the world can’t stand against a Yid who wants to do a mitzvah. It really is impossible because the world was created for the Yid. “Bereshit bara Elokim,” right? What Rashi says: the whole world was created for a Yid to do mitzvot. In essence, it’s impossible for the world to oppose him. Take this into your head: anytime you have a matzav and say, “But the world…” there is no world against you. The world was created to help you. I always saw that the world was created to help you do a mitzvah. If you think the world is against you, stand strong and you’ll see that the world will help you.

How do you explain this simply with Avraham Avinu? He was going to the Akedah with Yitzchak. We all know the story. The Midrash says that there was a river on the way, and it was blocking them. Avraham Avinu went into the water until it came up to his neck; then the Eibershter made the river disappear. Why did Avraham go into the water? Nobody talks about that. It’s pashut. Why did he go into the water? Because there was water there; he could drown! Build a boat, call an Uber, do something! How do you go into the water? Ad tzavar. It’s a davar pashut; no explanation is needed.

Chazal are telling us that Avraham Avinu knew the Eibershter had said, “Kach na et bincha, kach et Yitzchak, ve-ha'alehu sham le-olah, ve-lech lecha el eretz ha-Moriah.” Nothing can stop you. He saw a river and thought, “What is a river doing in front of me? This can’t be true, because the Eibershter told me to go. Nothing can really be in front of me. If something is in front of me to stop me, it’s for me to overcome this nisayon. When I overcome the nisayon, it disappears.” That’s the message of the Midrash. I’ve seen this in different forms, but this is the nekudah.

The world really cannot oppose a Yid who wants to do mitzvot. He has to want the mitzvah. The yetzer hara tries to convince a Yid, “Oh, reality, reality.” What’s reality? “Bereshit bara Elokim et ha-shamayim ve-et ha-aretz”—that’s reality. Reality is that the Eibershter creates the world and “u-mechadesh be-tuvo be-chol yom tamid ma'aseh bereshit” every moment. Why does the Eibershter create the world? So the Yid will do a mitzvah. The Eibershter isn’t creating a world that can stand in front of you. He wants to see if you’re a believer. That’s the whole purpose of a nisayon.

Does anybody have anything they want to ask? Or is this open? On the chair? Okay. Bye, everybody. Bye.

The last Pesach in Otisville prison—you know, Pesach in prison. Imagine a seder. You’re sitting around with a whole lot of famous whatever, chap a table. One year, I don’t know if it was the last year, maybe close to the last year, the matzav was like this. The place we were in was a high-security place with dangerous people. I was one of them; I’m very dangerous. If you have more than twenty-seven years, they want to make sure you won’t run away. That’s a double whammy.

The other side is the camp. The guys in the camp prepared everything we needed for Pesach and the seder: matzah, charoset (fruit-and-nut mixture), maror (bitter herbs), and everything else. You could order shemurah matzah (guarded matzah) ahead of time, and the prison allowed it, but everything else came from the camp. The people there had all the businesses, so they put everything in a box. Around 6:00, we put everything together and put on the white plastic things. I opened the box to make sure everything was there. The beitzah (egg) and charoset were there, the maror was there, and the salt was there. I looked at the front: no zero'a (shank bone). There was a hole on the seder plate and no zero'a.

Can you have a seder without a zero'a? You have another egg. Going back to the idea: a mitzvah isn’t only something the Eibershter commanded you to do; it’s an opportunity to connect with the Eibershter. So what does He command? There were a few Yidden there who really learned, and I thought they would agree a little more. I said, “The zero'a is missing. Guys, the zero'a is missing. Let’s go to the chaplain and tell him.” One man said, “Listen, you’re missing the zero'a? Put on two beitzim.”

I looked at him. I know they say anybody in prison has a license to be meshugah because the place is full of tza'ar, but you have to have a zero'a. It’s clear you have to make an effort to get it. Why put on two beitzim? Everybody was busy. They had already passed Maggid, the kos sheni (second cup), and the kezayit matzah (olive-sized portion of matzah), and were up to Shulchan Orech, busy with the food. I decided to go by myself, and the Eibershter would help me.

I had a dilemma: how could I convince a guy from Nigeria, an African American who spoke Nigerian, of the importance of the zero'a? He asked me, “What are you missing? Tefillin? A shofar? A lulav?” The chaplain knew a little about Jewish things. “What are you missing?” I said, “A chicken neck.” How could I explain that without the chicken neck we couldn’t have a religious seder? I thought I had a Haggadah with a picture of the whole seder plate. I showed him: “We need all six. We’re missing this one, so you have to bring it. It’s there. I know it’s there. They forgot to put it in the box.”

On Erev Pesach, all the goyim suddenly want to be Jewish because there’s good food. The only day of the year they eat well is Pesach. The Yidden are mamash generous, and some guys send in a lot of food, Baruch Hashem. The Yidden eat for seven days. The Pesach food was already by the door, and all the goyim wanted to be Jewish. They said their brother, father, or zeidy was Jewish, and the chaplain was busy kicking everybody out.

I got in line. The chaplain asked, “What’s your problem?” I said, “We have a big dilemma. We’re missing something, and we can’t make a seder.” He asked what we were missing. I opened the book, the Haggadah. He looked at it and said, “A chicken neck?” I said, “Yeah.” He stared at the plate. I wondered why he was staring so much. “Mr. Chaplain, just say you’re going to get it and finish.” Then he said, “Listen, I don’t understand. You tell me you have everything on the plate, but you’re missing one. You need six things; you have five. Five out of six isn’t so bad.”

I wasn’t prepared for a second challenge, but my schooling came to me, Baruch Hashem. I looked at the seder plate and thought: wait a second. This is based on the idea that a mitzvah is the ratzon Hashem. The Torah is called chochmato shel Hashem, and there’s something higher, called ratzon Hashem, what the Eibershter wants. With ratzon, you can’t do half. Either you did what the Eibershter wants or you didn’t. You can’t say, “I’ll satisfy half.” With an idea, you can understand half. When it comes to ratzon, either you did what I wanted or you didn’t.

How could I explain this to the goyishe chap? I said, “You drive to work every morning, right? Let’s say you go downstairs to your car and see that somebody took one of its four wheels. You have three out of four. Are you going to get in the car and drive away? Sometimes three out of four doesn’t work; you need all four. It’s the same here. You need all six. Five out of six doesn’t work; it doesn’t move.” He started laughing, and it hit him. Even this goyishe chap understood.

He said, “Okay, I’ll take care of it. You can go back.” I went back, and everybody started talking: “He’s just bluffing you. He’s not going to get it. Let’s start anyway.” You can’t start a seder without the zero'a. Twenty minutes later, the chaplain came in and asked, “How many do you need?” I said, “Two: one for myself and one for the guy with the two beitzim.” I wanted to get one for him, too. I’m a Chabadnik, I guess—Am Yisrael. I wasn’t going to ask for only myself.

He came in holding two packages with a big smile, waving them. I jumped up, ran over, and started dancing with him. Not only did we decide no toch kedei dibbur; I started dancing with an officer. Touching an officer can get you shot, but he understood the simchah and let me dance. He even danced with me for one or two or three turns, whatever it was. I took the packages from him. He was so excited. I gave one to the other guy, and we had a seder.

Here’s the point. Later the Eibershter freed me, b'ezrat Hashem. We want to do a mitzvah. Every mitzvah is mamshich a hamshachah, whether ohr or pnimi, whatever it is. That’s why the Eibershter gave us 248 mitzvot aseh (positive commandments): every mitzvah is another way to draw kedushah onto ourselves and through ourselves into the world.

I can tell you one more story, and then you can go home. One more story, and then you can go. I’ll tell you about the neshamah. This goes straight to the inyan: today we have to speak to ourselves and our children like Yidden, not like behemah or goyim. Talk Yiddishe osiyos. We can understand that because we have a neshamah, and a neshamah understands Yiddishkeit, the Eibershter, kedushah, and everything. You might think, “How are they going to understand? They’re too young.” I have to tell you a mamash amazing story. This is one of the stories of stories. What did that kid think we were going to do, sit and drink coffee? Was it a good event? You had good… So let’s tie Hashavat with a little more inspiring story. I have to tell this story, hert a maiseh. This is a story on a human level, with a child.

One of the big berachot the Eibershter gave me—and Nutty, Nutty, al hachayim, no lechaim? We’re working on it; it’s coming—is that I learned this: one of the sibot you can trust somebody is when you know all the good they’ve done for you until now, the good they’re doing now, and the good they’ll do for you. In the tzarah I was going through, I always looked at the good Hashem was doing for me. Everybody can do the same thing. Along with all your problems, see that Hashem is helping you here and helping you there. Sometimes you don’t pay attention to good things, so pay attention. Di gezunt, pay attention that your kids are okay, that everything is… Ay, you have a farkert, that should show you the Eibershter is with you. Then ask the Eibershter to give you the berachah you need. Don’t get out of control. You ended, right?

Baruch Hashem, He gave me sechel. A lot of times I thought: look, Baruch Hashem, today the government came in and destroyed everything, but how can I not believe? Baruch Hashem, the family is… Thank God, the kids are going to yeshivah, Baruch Hashem, and they’re healthy and learning in yeshivah. One day my kid came into class and said to his rebbe, “My Tatty loves to learn.” “How do you know your Tatty loves to learn?” The child I’m talking about is named Uziel. He was four years old when the men came into the house. They had to come into the house and chain me up in front of the family like a very dangerous person. They couldn’t just call and tell me to report to court. This was all part of the…

What did he see his father doing? Baruch Hashem, I learned every single day, but how much could a four-year-old chacham remember? Ela mai, I made a point of sending divrei Torah home every week. They didn’t let you talk much on the phone. They gave you 300 minutes for a whole month. Think about it: thirty days in a month, and 300 minutes is an average of ten minutes a day. You can’t bleed into the next ten minutes, so it’s really nine. If it’s thirty-one days, it’s nine minutes a day. Imagine. What can you call up and say? “Hi, how are you? What’s happening?”

I tried to call every day. Baruch Hashem, they had computers. They also had a room where they allowed you to use a typewriter, but I couldn’t type. Bekitzur hama'aseh, I used the computer. They let you have a lot more time; you could be on for an hour, then they’d kick you off. If there wasn’t a line, you could get on faster. I used the time on the computer to type. Every week I sent home a devar Torah. This is a good lesson for everybody: Hashem gave me sechel. I sent them a devar Torah every single week. I took it from the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, the Alshich HaKadosh, or the Shelah HaKadosh, whoever it should be. Sichot, my sichot… I sent the children a devar Torah every week. My wife printed it out and put it by the table.

I couldn’t be there, but the neshamah… the guf doesn’t go, but the neshamah. The children would read the devar Torah, and their mother told all the children… This little Uziel saw it every week, from when he was three, four, five, six. That’s what it is. So he comes and tells… The best way to get your child to know you’re learning is great: learn yourself, and you don’t have to tell them so much.