Indeed, from that point on, the Rebbe was present when his father received people. He stood behind his father’s chair and learned the secrets of true leadership.

That year, Rebbe Dovid Moshe traveled to Romania, accompanied by his son Reb Mendel and some other chassidim who were born in Sighet, including Rav Aryeh Feinstein, one of the Rebbe’s close confidants and supporters. On Friday, Rav Feinstein suggested to the Rebbe’s son: “Mendel, let me take you on a tour of the city, and I’ll show you where there were vibrant Jewish centers before the war.”

When they returned, Rebbe Dovid Moshe was obviously disappointed: “Mendel, where were you?” It turned out that when they had been out, two non-Jews came to the Rebbe’s lodgings. Reb Yossele Pollack, the gabbai, had written a kvittel for them, and they entered to ask for a brachah. “There were a few non-Jews here,” the Rebbe told his son, “and I wanted you to know how to give a brachah to a gentile.”

Rebbe Dovid Moshe would frequently extol the virtues of his bechor. Whenever a severe tzarah was presented to the Rebbe, he would call his son and ask him to stand next to him as he tried to effect a yeshuah for the petitioner.

The following year, while on a trip to Romania to visit kivrei avos, accompanied by the Rebbetzin and one gabbai, Rebbe Dovid Moshe suddenly passed away.

At the heartrending levayah that took place after the Rebbe was brought back to Eretz Yisrael, his eldest son was appointed in his place. But for the first year, Reb Mendel couldn’t bring himself to lead: the fresh wound, the young age, and the Rebbe’s natural humility prevented him from taking the reins. But on Purim of 1970, he acquiesced to the demands of the chassidim. Even the elder chassidim — Rav Chaim Yosef Teitelbaum, Rav Dovid Hershkowitz, and Rav Baruch Lichtenstein, who reestablished the chassidus together with Rebbe Dovid Moshe — submitted themselves entirely to the new Rebbe.

“Chazal say that a son is the foot of his father,” the Rebbe said in his inaugural derashah. “I did not merit even that. All I have is intense awe and longing. But even those emotions are not a simple thing.”

One Level Higher

Forty-eight years later, the Rebbe still sees himself as a mere shadow of his father (“A person who knew my father and sees me would think that perhaps I was his great-great-grandson,” he tells me), although in his room on Ahavas Shalom Street in Kiryat Kretchnif, the Rebbe spends his days in esoteric service of Hashem. From dawn until midnight, the Rebbe eats no solid food — just tea and seltzer. He insists that this is the best nutrition for him; yet when a chassid who is suffering health problems comes to him, he will urge him to pamper himself and obey the doctors’ instructions to the letter.

There is a stack of kvittlach on the table in the Rebbe’s room, attesting to how easily accessible he is to the chassidim. He’s like a father to them, just as he served as a father to his younger siblings after their own father’s sudden passing, and after the tragic passing of his mother six years later, as she returned from the wedding of her daughter to the future Sassover Rebbe.

That the Rebbe was the father figure for his orphaned brothers and sisters was the source for an unusual custom — or non-custom — in the Rebbe’s home. On Friday nights, the Rebbe did not bless his children, but contrary to some assumptions, this had nothing to do with a Kretchnif minhag. “When you were young,” the Rebbe explained to his children several years ago, “I didn’t bless you because my younger brothers and sisters were at the table, and I didn’t want to remind them that they didn’t have a father. But this is not our minhag, so I’m asking all of you to go back to blessing your children on Friday nights.”

Jews from all over find their way to the Rebbe’s door — some look chassidish or yeshivish, others are more “modern,” and some aren’t even religious. “My father would often say,” the Rebbe tells me, “that it is incumbent upon us to help Jews rise one more level above the level they are on. If someone who came to him sent his children to the government schools, my father made sure that at least they would go to state religious schools. When a child was in the state religious school, he tried to get the father to upgrade to a chareidi school. Wherever the person was holding, he pushed them one step ahead.”

“So,” I ask, “is there ever a stage where a person can say, baruch Hashem, I’ve reached the peak?”

The Rebbe looks at me with compassion. “Yungerman,” he says, “in avodas Hashem there is no peak. As much as we do, it is not enough. A Jew can never be satisfied with himself. That is what the Rebbe Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk said on the pasuk ‘Zeh hashaar l’Hashem, tzaddikim yavo’u vo’ — the tzaddikim always feel like they are at the gate, at the threshold, and that they have not yet crossed it. And if that is how the righteous feel, then what about us?”

The Rebbe continues: “Yirmiyahu Hanavi says, ‘Al yishallel chacham bechachmaso — a wise man should not boast of his wisdom, a strong man should not boast of his strength, and a wealthy man should not boast of his wealth.’ The question is asked: If he is wise, what’s wrong with recognizing his wisdom and boasting about it? The answer is that he should not boast about his wisdom but rather he should know that it is a gift from the One Who grants wisdom to mankind. He should not boast of his wealth, but rather should know that this is a gift from Hashem’s open and generous Hand. It is not your strength, your wealth, or your wisdom. The Gemara says: A person’s yetzer overtakes him each day and if not for Hashem helping him, he could not withstand it. In other words, one who is able to overcome his yetzer needs to know that it is only in the merit of the strength he received from Above.”

But Rebbe, I ask, isn’t it possible that this constant feeling of powerlessness can lead a person to despair and despondency?

“No,” says the Rebbe, “a Yid needs to always be happy. In Karlin they say that simchah is not a mitzvah and sadness is not an aveirah, but the damage that can be caused by sadness, the biggest sin cannot cause, and the benefits that can be reaped from simchah, the biggest mitzvah cannot generate.

“We see a lot in this generation how the yetzer hara makes people stumble with sins so he can say later: ‘Look to where you have fallen, how low you are, there is no hope for you.’ But Dovid Hamelech says ‘the sins of my youth do not recall.’ When a person repents, he should not delve into his sins, for two reasons: One, it will evoke within him a black despair. And two, the thoughts might drag him back to his bad ways.”

Rebbe for a Minister

The Rebbe’s way of leadership has many paradoxes: He is extremely conservative in his own avodah, very demanding of his chassidim, yet extremely compassionate to every Jew that comes to his home. And as open and enveloping as he is to everyone who crosses his threshold, his personal path is closer to the shitah of Satmar than to those of the Agudah courts. The Rebbe has never visited the Kosel, as his father didn’t in the two years between the liberation of Jerusalem’s Old City and his sudden passing. At the time, Rebbe Dovid Moshe said, “If there is a dispute in which the Satmar Rebbe is on one side and all the gedolei Yisrael are on the other, then sitting and doing nothing is preferable.” Thus, his son and successor does the same. The Rebbe has also never voted in elections.

“People run to the tziyun of my father for yeshuos,” the Rebbe said, “but how does it look when the chassid does not adhere to one of my father’s basic demands — to make sure to speak with the family only in Yiddish?”

Yet as exacting as the Rebbe is with his own kehillah, he has a keen understanding of the weaknesses and challenges facing those within its sheltered fences. The Rebbe gives workshops and guidance to melamdim and maggidei shiur and emphasizes professional supervision for weaker bochurim. In recent years, he has implemented a program under which young kollel avreichim remain in yeshivah for half a day and receive a special stipend to help weaker boys with their learning.

With that, the Rebbe is pragmatic when it comes to matters of the klal. When the Lev Simchah of Gur zy”a suggested that the Rebbe join the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, he refused, because of his father’s distance from public leadership. And to my own questions relating to public matters of the day, the Rebbe responded, “I’m not a leader and not a gadol. There is a Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah that leads the chareidi public.”

Yet there were years when the Rebbe was highly involved in public matters. When the issue of “Who is a Jew” was on the agenda, the current Gerrer Rebbe was sent to Rechovot by his father, the Lev Simchah, to ask for the Kretchnifer Rebbe’s assistance. At the time, the Rebbe had significant influence on the political echelons in Israel, among them Minister Yitzchak Moda’i, who according to veteran chassidim, “two weeks didn’t pass without him coming to the Rebbe. You could almost consider him a chassid of the Rebbe.”

Arik Sharon was also in touch with the Rebbe during the time he lived in Rechovot. In 1989, he wanted to be appointed defense minister in the Begin government, but the liberal camp of the Likud vetoed the appointment. Sharon, who had heard about the Rebbe’s influence on the liberals of the Likud, appealed to the Rebbe and asked him to intervene on his behalf. The Rebbe complied… and Sharon was appointed defense minister. Elder chassidim relate how each year on Erev Yom Kippur, Tel Aviv deputy mayor Yigal Greenfeld would come to Kiryat Kretchnif together with Mayor Shlomo (Cheech) Lahat in order to daven with the Rebbe.

In Kiryat Kretchnif, no one is distanced because of his identity, appearance, or affiliation. That’s how it is now, and that’s how it’s always been. Rav Alter Eliyahu Rubinstein z”l, the previous chief rabbi of Antwerp, grew up on Moshav Beit Gamliel, and his father, Reb Fishel Rubinstein, who came to Eretz Yisrael from Romania, would frequent the home of Rebbe Dovid Moshe. At first he sent his children to a state religious school, until the Rebbe told him to take his children out of the state religious school and send them to cheder in Kiryat Sanz. Reb Fishel complied, and his son, Rav Alter Eliyahu, became a gadol b’Yisrael.

Everyone Is an Only Son

When the challenges and tests of this generation are raised, the Rebbe’s face winces in pain. “Only someone who hears the troubles of Jews knows what a terrible scourge it is. I hear of so many cases of destructive addiction to modern technological devices, which destroys families and lives. My father ztz”l would say that ‘a bochur who stands at the window of the yeshivah and looks out instead of looking in is taking a knife to his soul.’ What can we say today when people don’t just look outside, they put the whole street into their pocket? My grandfather, Rav Eliezer Wolf of Kretchnif zechuso yagen aleinu, would say that Avraham Avinu endured ten tests, and from there an entire Torah was made. The Torah makes a big deal of these ten nisyonos, yet today, a person goes through more than a hundred tests a day. Gedolei Yisrael are at a loss as to how to save the generation from this dark pit, and still have not reached a solution that will totally eradicate it. Some completely ban it, and others encourage finding solutions. It will not be decided here, but what I can say is that it is incumbent on every person for himself and his family to distance himself from anything impure.”

Still, that doesn’t mean the Rebbe’s chassidim bury their heads in the sand. “There are avreichim here that regularly go to Kaplan hospital to distribute meals and food for free to patients and families. When someone nonobservant sees a chassidic young man coming to help him, and when he asks ‘how much does it cost’ and is told it is free — this Jew will ultimately discover the light of Torah. All the preconceptions and the poison he has absorbed in the media melt away, and then the path is paved for this Jew to draw closer to the light of Torah. This was the power of my father, who came to this city by instruction of the Chazon Ish when Rechovot was a totally secular town. Today we see thousands of Torah-observant Jews here. It’s the power of Jews who are mekadesh Sheim Shamayim.”

In fact, the Kretchnif chassidic center is the busiest religious institution in Rechovot. There are minyanim here from six in the morning until 1 a.m. and many of the frequenters come from the religious Zionist community, who also enjoy the advantage of the kehillah’s subsidized supermarket, where basic products are sold for cost price.

Avreichim regularly go out to nearby towns, encouraged by the Rebbe to reach out and draw Jews closer to the light of Torah. “What’s the Rebbe’s secret?” I ask one of the elder chassidim: “It’s complicated,” he says. “Some see him as a wise Jew. Others see him as an oved Hashem sitting on the seat of his forebears. Some are captivated by the Rebbe’s warmth — but everyone marvels at his ability to go down to the root of each person’s problems, and to live it with them as though the problem were about his only son.”