For brothers Rabbi Manis Friedman and Avraham Fried, it’s always been about the message they imbibed growing up

Photos: Itzik Roitman

It’s that time of year when we begin to re-examine our lives, taking stock of the past and hoping to move forward to a future using the talents and opportunities we’ve been gifted. For two of the Jewish world’s most famous brothers — Rabbi Menachem Manis Hakohein Friedman and Reb Avraham Shabsai Hakohein Friedman, a.k.a. Rabbi Manis Friedman and Avraham Fried — having an impact on hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world has meant harnessing those gifts, each in his own way. While one is a venerated kiruv personality and chassidic educator and the other a king of Jewish music for four decades, it’s all about the unswerving messages of mission with which they were imbued growing up.

Although there are 13 years and a bit of a generation gap between them, you can’t miss the mutual admiration and farginning, as they’ve  come together for a nostalgic interview to reflect on the place where it all began, the home in which they grew up, their successes and failures, and to try to answer the question: How to stay focused on the bigger picture, on humility and on your shlichus, in the shadow of so much hype and fame?

For them one thing is clear: More than they chose their professions, the professions chose them: “I think that at the end of the day, each of us sees ourself as an emissary of HaKadosh Baruch Hu,” says Fried.

We sit together in Rabbi Manis Friedman’s modest Crown Heights living room, a few blocks away from his brother Avraham Fried’s home. For Reb Manis, being back in Brooklyn still takes some getting used to — for close to five decades he carved out his niche in Minneapolis, Minnesota as director of the Beis Chana Women’s Kiruv Institute, as a world-class lecturer and even the disembodied voice of “Tanya in English” on international call numbers (although the younger generation mostly knows him as “YouTube’s most popular rabbi” for his abundance of online lectures and seminars).

“We grew up in a home of mesirus nefesh,” says Reb Manis, noting that the roots of Jewish activism have been in the family for generations. “Our grandfather, Rav Meir Yisroel Isser Friedman, was the rav of Krynica, or Krenitz, a vacation spot in western Galicia that was frequented by many of the pre-World War II gedolim. He was close to the Sanzer and Bluzhever Rebbes, and his children — including our father, Reb Yaakov Moshe — grew up in the presence of the rebbes and gedolei Yisrael who came to Krenitz in the summer months. One of them was the Kedushas Tzion of Bobov Hy”d, and our father attended the yeshivah he established in the city.”

“When they were children,” says Avremel, “they had a special rotation to wave a fan whenever the Kedushas Tzion would lie down to rest, so that the flies wouldn’t disturb his sleep.”

The onset of the war forced the Friedman family into exile, first into Siberia, then into Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The teenage Yaakov Moshe — or Yankel, as he was called — worked a double shift to spare both himself and his father, the Krenitzer Rav, from having to work on Shabbos.

Yankel dedicated himself to the many refugees who’d also fled east. In one instance, he walked more than 30 kilometers in tattered shoes to bring food to a starving widow and her seven young children, fighting off wild dogs on the way.

It wasn’t long before the energetic, dedicated Yaakov Moshe was noticed by Rav Yosef Baruch Reichverger and his rebbetzin, fellow refugees from the Ukrainian town of Kuzmyn. He’d been declared a “parasite” for the crime of being a rabbi, and after surviving an arrest, his family too fled east. Yaakov Moshe married Miriam Reichverger in 1944, and their first child, a daughter, was born the following year.

When the war ended, Yaakov Moshe arranged passage for his father and siblings to America, but he and his young wife accepted an invitation to assist the legendary Dr. Jacob Griffel of the Vaad Hatzalah in helping stranded survivors who’d made their way to Prague.

Reb Manis was born in Prague in 1946, as his parents threw themselves into dangerous rescue work that involved forging entry visas, smuggling refugees across borders, and paying off all sorts of government officials. Yaakov Moshe established particularly good connections with the Guatemalan and San Salvadorian consulates, and through them managed to secure visas for thousands of refugees.

With the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the authorities caught up with the couple’s activities, and Yaakov Moshe was arrested and tortured, leaving Miriam to care for three young children — although before his six-month prison sentence, he managed to transfer an entire orphanage of Jewish children to Vienna, where suitable arrangements were made for each child to travel to Eretz Yisrael.

Family in the United States raised money for his release, and with the blessings and financial assistance of Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson of Lubavitch, Yaakov Moshe was freed from prison, and able to obtain exit papers for himself and his family.

They made their way to the United States in 1950 and settled in Crown Heights, where Yaakov Moshe got a job working in the administration of the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva, a position he would hold for 40 years.