Rise and Fall

Back in 1987, Avrohom Aron Rubashkin, a Lubavitcher chassid and successful butcher and restauranteur in Brooklyn, opened the Iowa slaughterhouse and appointed his son Sholom Mordechai, who at the time was on shlichus with his wife, Leah, and young family in Atlanta, as vice president. Within ten years, Agriprocessors was one of the largest meat-packing plants in the country.

With a constant stream of shochtim converging on the small town, the Rubashkins established a full-service kehillah, with schools, a mikveh, and even a yeshivah for bochurim (Benny Friedman was one of them) who dormed in the Rubashkins’ rambling, energetic home. He also provided a communal structure for his non-Jewish employees, building them a community center and even paying for their children’s medical and dental care.

It was the community of dreams, until the helicopters that blackened the skies over Postville in May of 2008 turned it into a nightmare. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security swooped in, military style. With helicopters hovering above, 600 agents raided the plant and arrested 389 undocumented workers — at the time, the largest workplace raid in the United States.

Agriprocessors was no different than a hundred other meatpacking plants in the US, all of which hired workers based on identification and social security numbers. But Agri, which had rebuffed attempts to unionize, was owned by a chassidic Jew, and had over the past few years been publicly vilified by PETA and other anti-shechitah lobbies, was the only one targeted.

The State of Iowa indicted Rubashkin for child labor violations, but at the trial, it became clear that there was no basis for the charges, and Rubashkin was aquitted. Yet that was just the beginning.

After the immigration arrests, with so many employees taken away, the business began to sink. The Feds then indicted him on multiple charges of bank fraud (even invoking the first-ever prosecution under a 1921 piece of dusted-off legislation called the Packers and Stockyards Act, for paying a cattle dealer 11 days late). There was no suggestion that he pocketed a cent for himself, but rather it was a case of minor commercial fraud, although it did not in itself cost the lender and was an attempt to keep the business going.

But preventing Agri’s ability to sell the company for its true value — more than $60 million — the government worked to drive down the price, threatening buyers who made suitable offers. This meant that the more the company was devalued, the more the alleged fraud and therefore, the longer the prison sentence.

In April 2010, Sholom Mordechai was convicted on 86 charges of financial fraud. Prosecutors asked Judge Linda Reade, who, it was later revealed, was actually in on the planning of the immigration raid from the outset and was in cahoots with the prosecution, to impose a life sentence — totally unprecedented for a first-time offender who didn’t take a penny for himself. The request came under attack from several prominent figures in the justice community, including six former attorney generals, one former solicitor general, and more than a dozen former United States attorneys, so the prosecutor backtracked and instead announced that the government would seek a sentence of 25 years. Judge Reade, though, handed down a sentence of 27 years, two years more than even the prosecutors had requested.

When Sholom Mordechai heard the verdict in the stunned courtroom, he recited the brachah of Shehecheyanu: He now had a new mitzvah of emunah in accepting this Divine decree. Before being handcuffed and hauled away, he scribbled a short note to his wife:

“Please stay strong through this ordeal. Tell the bochurim that I really loved learning with them and Hashem should save me even at this time and who really knows. Just tell everyone I am unshaken in my faith of Hashem. A person goes through life and we are only avadim of Hashem. And so I am an eved of Hashem and accept what comes. Sholom Mordechai haLevi.”

This would be the beginning of his new spiritual journey, and the world would follow along.

The Neis

Their rallying call, which came to be known as “Alef Beis Gimmel,” was initiated by their subsequent private chain of miracles — their personal “cause and effect”: from emunah and bitachon to geulah, and on the first, second, and third days of the month.

The Rubashkins’ first “Alef Beis Gimmel” moment was in January of 2009, at the beginning of the immigration trial. He was denied bail when the judge invoked a far-fetched, first-time ever ruling that as a Jew, he was categorized as a “dual citizen,” as the possibility existed that if he were in Israel, he could receive automatic Israeli citizenship. Although a second bail hearing never happens, he was suddenly freed.

“And we realized that the days of the hearing, decision, and release were alef, beis and gimmel Shevat,” Leah Rubashkin says, “because emunah and bitachon bring geulah. This has been the mantra I’ve clung to throughout the stormy sea.

But the “big” “Alef Beis Gimmel” moment was right before Reb Sholom Mordechai’s release in December of 2017, on alef, beis, and gimmel Teves.

“It was Rosh Chodesh Teves, the seventh day of Chanukah,” Reb Sholom Mordechai relates. “It was one of those ‘non-minyan’ days in prison, and I was davening Hallel in my cell, when they brought me a manila envelope. It was a response to my last possible motion for appeal, after all other legal avenues our legal team tried had been roadblocked during the last eight years, despite a laundry list of constitutional violations. Denied.

“Okay, so what do I do now? This means that I’m going to sit for another 19 years. But then I strengthened myself. Hashem sometimes wants us to make a vessel for His brachah to land, but we had exhausted all avenues b’derech hateva. We did all our hishtadlus, and there was nothing else. No more vessels. Now Hashem would have to create a new one.

“Part of me felt like I was falling off a cliff, that this was the end, but then I realized, ‘No, I did my hishtadlus, and now I can’t. So Hashem, now it’s only You. And that night, Zos Chanukah, when we made the brachah on the menorah, I kept singing ‘al nisecha’ over and over. Because I knew that now, when everything seemed lost, when all the hishtadlus was over, when every petition was denied, when there was nothing more for me to do, there was nothing left but Hashem’s direct salvation.”

Every morning after davening, Reb Sholom Mordechai would say the whole Tehillim. But the next morning, the last day of Chanukah, the yetzer hara grabbed hold of him.

“That destructive inner voice whispered to me, Why say Tehillim? Why even bother getting out of bed? You got a letter yesterday, it’s over. But then I told myself, No, it’s not over. Hashem is in charge of this.”

It was the last day of Chanukah, just six minutes before shkiah, and the inmates were on lockdown for the daily count. Meanwhile, Reb Sholom Mordechai had prepared himself a small Zos Chanukah seudah with his standard eight-year fare – matzah and tuna fish – and was in the middle of his little festive meal, davening, as always, for Hashem to free him, when the cell door opened and the guard shouted, “Rubashkin, get out!”

“I had no idea what was happening, so I grabbed my tallis and tefillin, and they took me to the warden’s office. ‘Congratulations,’ the warden said. ‘The president of the United States has issued you a commutation. You’re free to go home.’”

Alef, Beis, Gimmel, he says. The strengthened emunah after the dashed hopes on alef Teves, the bitachon in Hashem’s salvation on beis Teves (Zos Chanukah), and the actual release, the geulah, that night, gimmel Teves.

The story after that is well-known: Leah Rubashkin was on her way home from a speaking engagement to Monsey, where the family relocated after Iowa in order to be close to the Otisville penitentiary, when she received the phone call from attorney Gary Apfel, who had been notified about the commutation earlier in the day but wasn’t allowed to breathe a word until it was official.

“Don’t go to Monsey,” Apfel told her. “President Trump has just signed a commutation for your husband. Go pick him up!”

She turned around and headed for Otisville without even stopping at home to pick up a change of clothes — that’s because, for eight years, she kept his hat and kapote in the trunk, knowing with unwavering emunah that Hashem could free her husband at any time.

The Biggest Test

Yet that Alef Beis Gimmel, says Reb Sholom Mordechai, is so much more than their personal story. It’s really everyone’s story, everyone’s personal inheritance, and they’re here to open the door.

But Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin’s newest restart didn’t really begin the day he left a place called prison. It began eight years before, when he faced the greatest test of his life, and — handcuffed, chained, and humiliated — made a decision: “I’m going to go through this like a Yid.”

After suffering horrible conditions in a Dubuque, Iowa, maximum security lockup, Federal inmate 10755029 was eventually interned at FCI Otisville, New York, in the medium security unit, in accordance with the length of his sentence, which would be an alleged reflection of the magnitude of his crime.

“My guf wasn’t in the best place,” he says, “so I came to the realization that there really wasn’t a better option than focusing on my neshamah. My neshamah was never imprisoned, so I tried to take care of it as best I could.”

One of the things that kept him going was the chapter Shaar Habitachon from the sefer Chovos Halevavos, a slim sefer his family sent him to get him through the tough times.

It’s not a sefer generally learned in chassidish circles, but Reb Sholom Mordechai says learning it through was a turning point.

“All of us are enveloped by Hashem, but in our daily lives we don’t always connect to that,” he says. “But through these eleventh-century yet eternal words, I felt Hashem wrap His arms around me and I knew He would lead me and hold me up through whatever lay ahead.”

And the book, he knew, would be his map. But not at first.

He was still in the prison in Dubuque when the guards came storming in one day, for a surprise inspection. The guards turned over the tiny cell, then told him, “Rubashkin, you have way too many books here. Choose ten and we’re taking the rest!”

It wasn’t easy to choose, and Chovos Halevavos wasn’t at the top of the list, but when the guards left, he realized that they’d missed the small volume. And then he knew it was a keeper. When he was eventually transferred, he wasn’t allowed to take anything with him, except for his tallis and tefillin. And in the tallis bag was Chovos Halevavos. When he was imprisoned, he would say that he imagined what his release would look like: that he’d walk out with the sefer under his arm.

In the end, that’s not exactly what happened, but it was close. He was ushered out in a frenzy – all he took was his tefillin and tallis bag, and the rest of his possessions would be mailed to him later. But inside the tallis bag, again, was his trusty sefer.

And although the “big” geulah didn’t happen for eight years, there were many smaller salvations, which, Reb Sholom Mordechai learned, means that Hashem always sends you what you need, even if it’s not what you want or even think you need. Small things, he says, but those are things that make you realize Hashem is with you all along.

He shares, for example, how while he wasn’t let out on furlough for his daughter Mushka’s wedding, they did “generously” grant him an extra half-hour phone call — and not a minute more — so that he could at least listen to the festivities and give his daughter a brachah. But when he got to the warden’s office for this privileged phone call, he suddenly couldn’t remember the code — the one he’d been using for his allotted phone minutes for years. He was agitated, afraid that this small gift, too, would be taken away, and then, after about half an hour, he remembered the numbers. When the call went through, his wife told him that the chuppah was delayed, and he’d called just in time. Had he called at the appointed time, the minutes would have been used up before the ceremony had even begun.

Reb Sholom Mordechai flips through the pages of pictures from the book Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin: The Inside Story, written a few years ago by his son Getzel Rubashkin. One of the pictures that catches his eye is him, in his prison khakis, surrounded by a group of bochurim in black and white, who won a “tiyul” to Otisville to spend the afternoon with Sholom Rubashkin. There’s something about that picture that fascinates him.

“You know, all those years, I never saw myself like this, wearing these prison clothes,” he says. “I always saw myself as looking like them.”

Many Ways to Save You

Sometimes people turn to Hashem in times of challenge or struggle, but somehow think they’ve done it on their own during the good times. Reb Sholom Mordechai was one of those who realized that even in the good times, it was all from Hashem. Before it became popular, there was a sign on his door — Ein Od Milvado.

“A Yid is created to serve Hashem, so that means even when you’re building a business, it has to be with emunah and bitachon,” he says. “But then, when things fell apart, and in a very sudden and very vicious way, the question I had was, what do I do now? I was fifty years old. Is my life finished? So I had to get my emunah into gear, to realize that nothing is by chance, that Hashem is making all this happen, and therefore there is a purpose and the purpose must be good. If there is pain, it also has to be for a purpose.

“So now, what was I going to do with this nisayon? I knew Hashem wanted me to answer the question: You were able to serve Me when things were going good, but let’s see what you’ll do now?

“I think, though, that people have more of a problem with the bitachon piece — are you supposed to accept everything that’s going on, or daven for better? Bitachon, trust in Hashem, is really about moving forward. The most important thing for an eved Hashem is knowing that Hashem gives him what he needs. Now, being in prison is no place for a Jew, but Hashem put you there, so what do you do with it?

“Bitachon means that yes, you realize that nothing happens without Hashem making it happen, but at the same time you daven for your yeshuah. Hashem doesn’t want you to fall apart in your tzarah. He wants you to daven to Him to get you out, and to know that when your own hishtadlus runs out, He has many ways to save you. And until that happens, you need to live each day the way Hashem wants you to live — because sometimes, your perceived needs are not what Hashem knows your needs are. So sometimes, geulah comes from an internal switch. I was in prison for eight years. It’s not as  if I got the answer I wanted right away.

“I admit, there were times when I was shaky on this,” Reb Sholom Mordechai admits. “We had hopes, it seemed like we had a strong legal case, and then it fell apart. This happened so many times. But then I would strengthen myself, that I have to accept my life as it is now. Hashem put me here for a purpose, and now, this is my purpose, and it doesn’t belong to anyone else.

“You know, I would get a lot of mail. So this guy in prison comes up to me and demands, ‘Why are you taking away all our mail?’ He didn’t like that I was getting mail and he wasn’t. So to get him off my back, I showed him a letter in Yiddish and told him, ‘This can’t be for you, you can’t even read it.’ The point is, you can’t say, why can’t my life be like that person’s? Why can’t I also have mail? Why does he have monopoly on the mail? If Hashem gave him mail, why can’t he give me mail?

“And just like Hashem wants me to accept the past, he wants me to trust Him for the future. So just because you didn’t get it, or you didn’t get it yet, trust that Hashem can do it for you.”

The day after the release, one of the inmates asked a fellow prisoner, “Who is this Rubashkin guy who President Trump pardoned?”

“You know, that Jewish guy who’s always happy,” his friend said.

“Believe me, I wasn’t walking around with a smile on my face all day — that was a very painful place — but I did have a certain serenity. I knew that Hashem was with me even there,” he says. “Today, I think people want to hear this, to really understand this. Because everyone has something. People are struggling, they’re in pain. There isn’t anyone in this world without some nisayon.”

A Moment to a Movement

Perhaps that’s the reason that the Rubashkin’s personal Zos Chanukah moment became a veritable movement. Thousands of Yidden are tuning into the “Alef Beis Gimmel” revolution, redefining and realigning their lives to more of a G-d-centered existence.

And it’s changed him too. “For the past eight years, I’m living in geulah,” he says. That’s one reason he always wears his Shabbos kapote, even on weekdays. But it’s not just him.

“I think today, people want that connection more than ever. The entire world is now telling them they’re different. The world might define it in derogatory terms, but what they’re saying is that you Jews are the am hanivchar, so people want to understand what that really means.

“So yes, everyone wants to hear more about emunah and bitachon, how to navigate their challenges, how to bring this great gift into their lives. Hundreds of people come to us every week. But I’m not selling anything that’s mine. All I’m doing is teaching them what’s theirs to begin with.”

As Simple as Alef Beis Gimmel

ON

December 20, 2017, when President Trump commuted Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence, he was greeted by thousands of Jews eager to share in the miraculous Zos Chanukah miracle.

But what happened the day after the celebrations died down? And what’s happened in the eight years since Rubashkin’s release?

For the Rubashkin family, miracles — and witnessing the constant Yad Hashem — have become a way of life.

Roiza Hindy Weiss, the Rubashkins’ eldest daughter, was one of the individuals at the forefront of the legal, fundraising, and advocacy efforts. At one point, she met with a chassidish fellow who offered to introduce her to someone he did business with, someone very well-connected who knew people that could move pieces to help her father. If nothing else, he would be a source of chizuk because his own father had also spent time in prison. That man’s name was Jared Kushner, and at the time of the meeting, no one could have fathomed that his father-in-law would become president, and that Jared himself would be instrumental in the commutation efforts. Hashem was beginning to set the pieces in motion, while the legal efforts were facing brick walls.

Roiza Hindy was at her grandparents’ home in Boro Park when the call of the good news came in. The family began dancing around the house, brimming with indescribable happiness. At the same time, they were concerned about their elderly grandmother, Mrs. Rivka Rubashkin. She had just been released from the hospital, and her health was in a very precarious state; there was a serious concern that the news might be too shocking for her.

“With her emunah, she won’t be shocked,” someone pointed out.

At the time, she was sitting on her recliner, reciting Tehillim (she tried to complete it daily as a zechus for her son).

When she heard the news about the president’s commutation, she glanced up from her Tehillim and calmly said, “Baruch Hashem. When will he be home?” She then turned back to her Tehillim and said, “Let me continue saying Tehillim to thank Hashem.”

“My father’s neis on Zos Chanukah put emunah and bitachon on the map,” says Roiza Hindy. “It brought emunah from the books into real life. My father’s nisayon was one that touched Klal Yisrael, and witnessing his salvation was a practical lesson.”

Yet with all the miracles surrounding her father’s release, plus the unexpected canceled probation conditions, Roiza Hindy believes the opportunities and heavenly assistance in the subsequent years are just as miraculous as the one that occurred on Zos Chanukah eight years ago.

During the eight years that Rubashkin was in prison, the family had one singular mission: “We need to get our father home!”

In the days following Rubashkin’s release, there were nonstop celebrations. Rubashkin was exhausted, yet exhilarated as he went from one speaking engagement to another celebration. It was four o’clock in the morning when his oldest daughter turned to her family with the same refrain from his eight years in prison: “We need to get our father home!”

It’s eight years later and she doesn’t bother to say those words anymore.

“My father is unstoppable. He’s on a mission to spread emunah, to take it from the seforim to real life, with one more class, one more shiur. He never says no. This is his way of thanking Hashem for his own miracle.”

During his years in prison, Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin had such tangible belief that he would be released, that he constantly thought about what he would do afterward. He’d spent years in business, but he knew that he didn’t want to go back into business. He wanted to do avodas hakodesh, to learn and teach.

During those eight years, the family collected 14 boxes of letters filled with chizuk and kabbalos that were undertaken in his merit. There was a note from a kollel wife who had donated the money she had saved up for a new sheitel. There were families that donated their vacation funds toward the fundraising efforts.

The Rubashkin family received so much from Klal Yisrael, and now it was time to give back.

Shortly after Rubashkin entered prison, one of his children purchased a copy of Chovos Halevavos and mailed it to him. Over the next eight years, Rubashkin learned the sefer — specifically the fourth segment, Shaar Habitachon (sometimes printed as a standalone work) several thousand times. When he had trouble falling asleep at night, he reviewed the sefer by memory. When faced with a nisayon, he could open the sefer and quickly locate the exact quotes that answered the question. Indeed, Sha’ar HaBitachon had become a part of him.

After the initial celebrations died down, Rubashkin began spreading his message of emunah through classes in Monsey. He also traveled throughout the country for numerous speaking engagements.

In July of 2019, the Rubashkin family, friends, and supporters got serious about the task of creating a shul and a learning center, duplicating the spiritual atmosphere they’d built in their Postville, Iowa shul. They wanted to create a center, where people wouldn’t just learn, but would live the lessons in their everyday lives. And instead of the Rubashkins traveling to other communities for Shabbos, they dreamed of a home where people could come and join them.

The Rubashkins began looking for a home on the outskirts of Monsey. They needed something affordable, so both they and others would be able to afford housing. They also wanted to establish a shul in an area where they could make a real impact.

One of the Rubashkin sons was living in Lakewood, and suggested that perhaps they look for a home on the outskirts of Lakewood instead. It was a time when Jews were spreading further into Jackson. The realtor kept showing them houses connected to established Jackson communities, or close to the border of Lakewood. But the Rubashkins specifically wanted an area with enough homes for sale that both they and other families could affordably move in to. In essence, they were asking for yet another miracle.

Someone close with the family believed in the concept and helped put together funds for down payments for two houses on a quiet cul-de-sac in Jackson, about 30 minutes from central Lakewood. The two 4,000-square foot houses were situated on sprawling lawns, surrounded by trees, in a resort-like development.

In the center of the cul-de-sac is a house that hosts a two-story shul and a large dining room that can accommodate over 100 guests. Each house has guest rooms to host families for Shabbos (accommodating up to 40 guests in each house), as well as a library, playgrounds, and fire pits where kumzitzes go on throughout the night. (Fortunately, the homes are surrounded by enough trees to buff the singing.)

The learning center was given the title of “Alef Beis Gimmel” (Emunah, Bitachon, Geulah), and the Rubashkins began giving shiurim and hosting small-scale shabbatons, while Rabbi Rubashkin continued to traveled to other communities for speaking engagements. Any money earned was used to sustain the foundation.

Word spread quickly and attendance at classes and Shabbos grew over the next three years. When the house next door went up for sale in 2022 (for double the price they had paid for the first two houses) the Rubashkins felt a push from Hashem to purchase the home; this would allow them to host even more guests each Shabbos. With the help of a Charidy campaign, they were able to buy the house.

“When people come to our cul-de-sac, they enter a world of bitachon,” says Roiza Hindy. “We’re bringing the words of Shaar HaBitachon to life, in a safe, nonjudgmental atmosphere, where concepts of emunah brought down to a practical level, where trauma and challenges are understood and processed as a nisayon.”

Throughout the year, the Rubashkins host groups from seminaries, yeshivos, and high schools from around the country. (The food is either catered or cooked by Leah Rubashkin herself, depending on the event.) Aside from the group shabbatons, the Rubashkins host “open Shabbos” weekends for niche groups: families that have lost a parent, siblings of children with special needs, divorced women.

One participant of the Shabbos for single women shared how “we feel like we got a brain transplant. Our davening, mitzvos, and daily lives are different from the emunah and bitachon we gained.”

Today, the center offers shiurim, a “Shaar Habitachon Crash Course,” lunch and earn events, private counseling, shabbatons, retreats, a bitachon hotline, and even a Board of Ed-approved eighth-grade language arts curriculum based on the teen version of The Inside Story, with an accompanying workbook for reading comprehension as well as thinking questions related to moral dilemmas.

There isn’t much in the way of marketing, though, yet the growth has been organic.

Around ten years ago, Roiza Hindy went with her children and some of her younger siblings to visit their father in Otisville. They always tried to keep the visits light (Reb Sholom Mordechai never appreciated when they turned into “nichum aveilim” visits).

It was shortly after Pesach, and Yamim Tovim were always the hardest times in prison. Yet Sholom Rubashkin seemed particularly inspired and uplifted, excited to share his Pesach experiences with his family.

During the course of the Seder that he led in the prison chapel, they got into a discussion about the Korban Pesach, which led to a discussion on bris milah. One Russian Jew in his upper 50s who came over to Rubashkin afterward told him, “I never had a bris milah and I’ve decided that I want to have one.”

Rabbi Rubashkin replied that they’d help him, as soon as he was released from prison. The elderly Russian Jew was adamant that he did not want to wait until then, and he became the first Jew ever to have a bris in a federal prison. With the help of the Aleph Institute, a furlough was arranged, and he was taken to nearby Monroe for his bris and a seudas mitzvah.

Rubashkin’s face was shining as he shared this story with his family.

But his daughter was worried.

“I’m getting nervous,” she admitted. “Perhaps Hashem sees all the amazing things you’re doing in prison. Maybe he’ll want you to accomplish even more here, and keep you here!”

Rubashkin replied, “Don’t worry, Hashem is getting me out. He knows how much more I can accomplish on the outside.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)