Rabbi Chaim Gross - Re'eh - The Special Zechus that Kept the Nazis Away

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Dovid Kaplan’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Reb Boysch I Azoy, in the summer of 1942, the German army pushed into Egypt, but was forced to retreat back across Libya. And in Morocco, despite the presence of the French Vichy forces, the Germans never even attempted to take over. What was the [music] merit of the Jewish communities in those places they managed to avoid the mass destruction of the Nazis? May I hide? That's not my question. That's the question of Reb Mordechai from Mordechai Alter, otherwise known as the Imrei Emes, the third Gerer Rebbe. He was born in 1865, the oldest son of the Sfas Emes, and he clearly [music] inherited his father's brilliance. Stories abound about how precociously sharp he was in his youth. But in addition to being a goyin and a tzaddik, the Imrei Emes was a manhig. He led both Gerer Chassidus [music] and Polish Yiddishkeit in general for 43 years after he became the Gerer Rebbe following his father's death in 1905. He was instrumental in representing the Jewish community >> [music] >> as a co-founder of Agudas Yisrael and as a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah. When an unknown lady from Warsaw came to see him in the early 1920s, by the name of Sarah Schenirer, >> [music] >> with her plans for Beis Yaakov, which was at the time very controversial, crucially, the Imrei Emes gave her his backing, which was fundamental for that whole school system to start and flourish. And when a relatively anonymous at the time rabbi called Reb Meir Shapiro announced in the Knessiah Gedolah in Vienna in 1923

Jump to a moment

1. 0:03Reb Boysch I Azoy, in the summer of 1942, the German army pushed into Egypt, but…
2. 0:33third Gerer Rebbe. He was born in 1865, the oldest son of the Sfas Emes, and…
3. 1:03Jewish community >> [music] >> as a co-founder of Agudas Yisrael and as a member of…
4. 1:35his plans for the Daf Yomi, few believed that that would take off. But crucially, that…
5. 2:05they remained untouched by the Nazi killing machine? In this week's parsha the Torah commands class…
6. 2:36negative, then certainly the opposite in the positive. If someone is careful with the kedusha of…
7. 3:06a special s'chus which stopped that decree from wiping them away. Of course, the Imre emes…
8. 3:38Gerer Chassidim, were also murdered in the Holocaust. The Imre emes himself made a miraculous escape.…
9. 4:08the 1920s and 1930s, even setting up the Sfas Emes Yeshiva in the Machaneh Yehudah neighborhood…
10. 4:38Menachem, when the badchan managed to induce a smile from him. Yet, despite his suffering, >>…

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