“I’ve never relinquished the title of secretary,” shares Rabbi Yehuda (Yudel) Krinsky, the only living secretary of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson zy”a, whose 30th yahrtzeit falls out next week on 3 Tammuz. Yet Reb Yudel was much more than an administrator sifting through and answering the thousands of letters that arrived at 770 Eastern Parkway every single day. This man of secrets, entrusted with the Rebbe’s most sensitive matters, even penned the Rebbe’s will; a solemn figure dedicated to his mission, he was unwavering in his commitment, knowing every moment carried the weight of something or someone greater than his comprehension. With his trademark refinement and elegance, always impeccably groomed in a well-tailored suit and tie, Reb Yudel — who turned 90 last December yet still chairs Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Agudas Chassidei Chabad, and Chabad’s social service arm Machne Israel — is privy, perhaps more than anyone alive today, to the essence of the Rebbe.
In addition to his personal service to the Rebbe (as part of the secretariat that included Rabbis Mordechai Hodakov, Nissan Mindel, Leibel Groner, and Binyamin Klein), he served as the face of Lubavitch for decades, interfacing with both media and government, having been appointed by the Rebbe back in the 1950s to direct the Lubavitch News Service, including disseminating the Rebbe’s talks around the world via satellite. From 2007 to 2013, Rabbi Krinsky was in the top five of Newsweek’s annual list of the most influential rabbis in the US.
While he was appointed by the Rebbe to head Chabad’s flagship institutions, perhaps the role that identified with him more than any other was that of the Rebbe’s right hand, his secretary, and his driver. He was always there, insightful and mysterious, adept in American diplomatic channels, yet a humble, self-effaced chassid as he entered the Rebbe’s room.
Sitting at his vintage manual Hebrew typewriter, Rabbi Krinsky would spend long hours in the Rebbe’s anteroom, penning correspondence for the Rebbe, handling administrative duties, and, on nights when the Rebbe would receive visitors for yechidus, Reb Yudel would often remain there until dawn, admitting the visitors and being there to drive the Rebbe home.
Yet despite being on the Rebbe’s time-defying schedule, he somehow managed to fit in all his own Torah learning quotas. “Even on the busiest days with the Rebbe, my father-in-law never missed his regular Torah study,” says son-in-law Rabbi Yosef Baruch Friedman, associate director of the Kehot Publication Society (and brother of educator Rabbi Manis Friedman and singer Avraham Fried). “He finished Shas many times and made 40 siyumim on Rambam.”
And he was there during the Rebbe’s most personal, spiritual, and sublime hours, at the weekly visits to the Ohel, the gravesite of his father-in-law, the Rebbe Rayatz — the Rebbe’s only forays outside of Crown Heights.
He was the driver on the Rebbe’s long trips back and forth from Brooklyn to Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, the two of them sitting alone in the front seat of the silver-gray Cadillac Fleetwood. In fact, Reb Yudel shows me a letter he handed to the Rebbe after the Cadillac began to clunk and whine. In the letter, he informs the Rebbe about “an opportunity to buy a car, through the Goldberg brothers, a Buick ‘65 Electra, it doesn’t have air-conditioning or power windows, but the car is in good condition and worth the price. The price is $2,375. The car was checked by an expert who reiterated that it was in good condition. The car is black, and I am asking if I should buy it.”
The Rebbe responded, “Only if it’s impossible to fix the previous one.” (It turns out that in the end, the first car was fixable.)
During the Rebbe’s hours-long avodah at the Ohel, where he carried a large paper bag filled with requests, concerns and hope from so many petitioners, Rabbi Krinsky, his sole companion on these trips, was always hovering in the background, always there if needed – holding an umbrella for hours during a downpour, bringing a portable air conditioner in the summer and a heater in the winter. (The Ohel, the section of the cemetery where the Rebbe Rayatz, and later, the Rebbe himself, are buried, is accessed through a structure with a door that opens onto the graves, which is walled in but roofless, under the sky and exposed to the elements.)
And when the Rebbe secluded himself in the Ohel, Reb Yudel stood nearby, waiting for the door to open and the Rebbe to exit. From time to time he would gently knock, cautiously, to see that everything was in order.
But the last time the Rebbe was at the Ohel, at the end of Adar in 1992, everything was not in order. Following hours of spiritual exertion, the Rebbe suffered a devastating stroke. Reb Yudel immediately summoned emergency medical teams, and the news spread far and wide: The Rebbe was partially paralyzed and unable to speak. A little over two years later, once again it was Reb Yudel who was there, at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
“I knew that Chabad and the entire Jewish world were entering a new era,” he tells me as we sit in his dining room on Montgomery Street.
Now, as Chabad chassidim and others around the world mark 30 years of the chassidus’s continued growth and advancement despite the Rebbe’s absence, Rabbi Krinsky himself admits that it was something he couldn’t predict.
Perhaps it has to do with the last conversation they had right before the Rebbe’s stroke.
“The Rebbe spoke about the shluchim, and he spoke with more energy than usual,” Reb Yudel remembers. “He was discussing the future of his shluchim and shluchos and in a sense, he was preparing us to keep going, to engage the world with Yiddishkeit. So we keep going. That’s what the Rebbe taught us. Someone charged with a major project once told the Rebbe that he was exhausted. The Rebbe, who rarely spoke about himself, said, ‘Iz vos? I’m also tired.’
“You know, there were those who counted Chabad out after Gimmel Tammuz, but we never doubted. There was too much to do. We’re sending out so many shluchim each year, an entire generation of soldiers who never even saw their general. It defies explanation. I sometimes sit here, in my ivory tower, and I marvel at these young men and women — what makes them go, give up the easy life to stake it out in a literal or figurative desert? The only rationale is the effect of the Rebbe, the koach he invested in his chassidim that continues to drive us.”
IT’S
been a long journey for Rabbi Krinsky since his first encounter with the Rebbe as a 12-year-old bochur from Massachusetts.
Yudel Krinsky, born in December of 1933, is the ninth and youngest child of Rabbi Shmaya and Eta Krinsky, Russian immigrants to Boston. Reb Shmaya, a Chabad chassid, served as the city’s shochet, working in tandem with Rav Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik, who had arrived in Boston the year before and became the city’s chief rabbi. In 1937, Rav Soloveitchik opened the Maimonides day school, and Yudel was one of the first students. (Four years later, Rav Soloveitchik became rosh yeshivah of REITS at Yeshiva University in New York.)
Little Yudel was six years old when the Rebbe Rayatz (Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the “Frierdiker Rebbe”), together with family members, arrived safely in New York in March of 1940 after escaping the slaughter in Europe. A few of those close to him gently reminded the Rebbe, who arrived with a broken body yet a determined spirit, that “America is different,” and not to start up all the activities Lubavitch was known for in Europe. The Rebbe was undeterred, and from that day on, the Rebbe was determined to rebuild Yiddishkeit on American soil, starting with the first Lubavitcher yeshivah, declaring, “America is no different.” The following year, his daughter Chaya Mushka and son-in-law Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson were able to escape Vichy, France and joined him. The chassidim scraped together some funds and purchased a building on 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.
The Krinsky home in Boston had been a gathering place for visiting chassidim and shluchim, so Yehuda was acquainted with the personalities in the reborn chassidus, including the “Ramash,” as the Rebbe Rayatz’s son-in-law was referred to before he became Rebbe [an acronym for Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson]. In the Fall before Yehuda’s bar mitzvah, his parents sent him to New York to learn in the fledging Lubavitch yeshivah.
Yehuda arrived in New York on Erev Hoshana Rabbah, and that night, the Bostonian bochur saw the future Rebbe for the first time.
“My brother pulled me over when everyone was reciting the tikkun and indicated a man standing near the seforim shelf. ‘That’s Ramash,’ my brother said. I saw him and I was taken. I felt drawn to him.”
On Simchas Torah, Ramash danced hakafos with the bochurim. “I managed to get near him in the circle,” Rabbi Krinsky remembers. “He put his hand on my shoulder, though, of course, I wouldn’t put my hand on his shoulder. I felt elevated.
“My older brothers would prepare a Chumash for the Rebbe every Shabbos. Later, I would prepare the Rebbe’s Chumash — he wasn’t Rebbe yet, but it was my first task in his service.”
Rabbi Krinsky shares that in the beginning, he wasn’t sure the future Rebbe knew who he was. But it wasn’t long before he realized the Rebbe had his eye out for him.
“We studied in 770, and every day the boys would walk to the middle school building on Bedford and Dean, where there was a dining room. The Rebbe would say to the boys, ‘When you see Yudel Krinsky, tell him I have something for him.’ I had never told the Rebbe my name, so that was a surprise.
“I entered the future Rebbe’s room, and he smiled at me and handed me a postcard. ‘Dos iz far dir (This is for you),’ he said. This repeated itself every time I’d get a postcard from home. The Rebbe didn’t want my privacy violated by having those postcards floating around the office where everyone could read them.”
Rabbi Krinsky remembers how, before he became Rebbe, Ramash would always have a Shabbos Mevorchim gathering after davening where there would be singing and where he would farbreng (“We all made l’chayim, but Ramash never tasted anything”). At some point, when the yeshivah’s kitchen closed for Shabbos and the boys would eat at various homes, it didn’t deter young Yudel — he would buy some rolls and salami and eat alone in his room, but he’d never miss Ramash’s farbrengen.
Rabbi Krinsky says that as a student, he didn’t have access to see the Rebbe Rayatz in the last years of his life — the Rebbe was in poor health and could only speak with great difficulty. But he did hold small farbrengens in his home on certain auspicious days, including 12 Tammuz — the day of his salvation from a death sentence in Russia.
“I’d been into the Rebbe Rayatz once before, on my bar mitzvah, when I went with my older brother to get a brachah, but I really wanted to go to one of the farbrengens. Usually, only select individuals would participate in these gatherings. About 40 men would enter, along with a few women in the kitchen,” he says. “But a bochur didn’t have a chance. I would wait by the door, hoping someone from the household would let me in, but I was disappointed time after time. Finally, on Shavuot in 1948, the opportunity came. I was standing alone, and suddenly the door opened. Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka looked at me, saw that there were no more boys vying to get in, and told me to come in and go upstairs. The Rayatz sat at the head of the table, flanked on either side by his two sons-in-law, Rav Shemaryahu Gurary and the future Rebbe. There were more men around the table and in the living room and hallway. I couldn’t understand a lot of what the Rebbe was saying, but almost eight decades later, I still feel the awe in my bones.”
A
nd then came Shabbos parshas Bo, 10 Shevat 1950. The sudden passing of the Rebbe, at age 69, after years of pain and suffering at the hands of the Russian regime.
“It was a little after eight in the morning,” he recalls, “and we were on our way to 770. When we reached the corner of Eastern Parkway and Brooklyn Avenue, the non-Jewish postman came running and shouted, ‘Hurry, something happened at 770!’ When we got there, it turned out that 15 minutes earlier the Rebbe had passed away.
“We went upstairs to the apartment — the Rebbe was lying on the bed covered with a sheet, and we recited Tehillim around the bed. Ramash, the future Rebbe, was also there. But I didn’t see him cry all of Shabbos. He conducted a minyan, and then we spent the rest of the day in the Rebbe’s room saying Tehillim. Ramash didn’t leave 770, and it was really ‘mind over heart.’ Only after Shabbos, he wept and wept. It was the same way when the Rebbe’s mother passed away on Shabbot, 6 Tishrei in 1964. Then, too, the Rebbe conducted himself as usual until the end of Shabbos, when he gave himself permission to weep.”
After the Rebbe Rayatz’s passing, chassidim began persuading Ramash to succeed his father-in-law as Rebbe, but he kept refusing. Yet on the first yahrtzeit of his father-in-law, he formally accepted the post, delivering a maamar (chassidic discourse) which is the mark of a rebbe.
“I was 17 at the time,” Reb Yudel relates. “We knew there would be a gathering, but we never suspected the Rebbe would actually take on the leadership. He pushed back against it so strongly throughout the year, we didn’t think he would relent. We gathered, maybe a hundred people, in the small shul. At first the Rebbe began to deliver a regular talk, but after a few minutes, it was clear that he’d segued into a maamar. We couldn’t believe it. And then I knew: History will change course.”
And indeed, the Rebbe took Lubavitch from a few dozen families of chassidim to a worldwide movement. From the moment the Rebbe took the helm, he created a new reality in the spreading of Judaism and bringing Jews in the most far-flung places closer to their heritage.
But he also took care of his chassidim. When Yudel was 23, he approached the Rebbe with some names that had been suggested to him for a shidduch.
“The Rebbe looked at the note, and when I told him I didn’t know any of the families, he said to me, ‘What about Moshe’s sister?’
“Moshe Kasinetz was a chavrusa of mine, but I didn’t even know he had a sister… But at the Rebbe’s suggestion, we met and indeed, the shidduch went through, and the Rebbe was our mesader kiddushin.
“I think it was a very successful match,” says Rabbi Krinsky with no small amount of emotion, tears welling up in his eyes when he speaks of his wife of 55 years, who passed away in 2012 at age 74. “We established doros yesharim. And when it came to the secretariat, to working for the Rebbe and Chabad, we were always on the same team.”
Yudel and Devorah got married on 20 Elul in 1957. When the Rebbe met his parents, who had driven in from Boston, the Rebbe told them, “You don’t need to worry about anything related to your son’s parnassah. I will take care of him.” Many years later he learned that around the same time, his friend, a prominent Lubavitcher shaliach, asked the Rebbe if he could hire Yudel to join him in his shlichus, to which the Rebbe answered, “Yudel I’m keeping for myself….”
R
abbi Krinsky remembers his first official interaction with the Rebbe in his new job.
“I was alone in the secretary’s office, which is located on the other side of the entrance lobby to 770, facing the door to the Rebbe’s room,” he relates. “I was sitting on a pile of letters, and suddenly the intercom rang. It was, of course, the Rebbe. I was alone in the office, and I needed to answer. I felt tremors all over my body. I picked up the receiver, and the Rebbe asked me to come in. We had been close since I was a bochur, but this was something else entirely.
“I put on my gartel and entered. The Rebbe was sitting at the side of his study table with a pen in his hand, working on a typed letter from the previous day. The Rebbe made many corrections on the letter, deleting here and adding there between the lines. Six or seven minutes passed while I stood by and waited for the Rebbe to finish correcting. When the Rebbe finished, he stood up, handed me the letter, and said to me, ‘Zei nisht tzutumult — don’t get overwhelmed. Just start from the first word, word by word, line by line, and in the end, you’ll see that everything will be in order.’
“It was clear to me that the Rebbe was not just talking about the letter, but about the entire position — and perhaps about life itself. I did as the Rebbe instructed, and he was right — everything was in order.”
The Rebbe’s inner circle was made up of many landsleit, but Rabbi Krinsky was a born-and-bred American. With his faint New England twang, he became the primary address for anything public-relations related, and initiated relationships all over the American media.
“The Rebbe didn’t like exaggerations,” says Reb Yudel, “but he saw in publicity and in media a means to reach as many Jews as possible, and therefore he believed it should be exploited as much as possible for holy purposes. And really, that’s how he changed the world.
“There was a Jewish writer for the New York Times named Irving Spiegel, who for over 30 years was the paper’s expert on Jewish affairs,” Reb Yudel continues. “However, it was hard to get his attention when it came to anything Orthodox, and even when I’d try inviting him to a meeting with the Rebbe, he would ignore me.
“When the Rebbe announced that there would be ‘mitzvah tanks’ around the country to promote the Rebbe’s Tefillin Campaign, I thought Spiegel would bite. I sent him a message that on Sunday morning, six ‘tanks’ would depart across the United States. He was surprised and actually came to see it. I told the Rebbe that he was coming, and the Rebbe said to me, ‘Tell him that the role of these tanks is to fight assimilation and give recognition to the Creator of the world.’ The next day, the Times published a large article with a prominent photo.
“Several months later, my wife suggested that I invite him to some event where he could see the Rebbe. Most farbrengens were on Shabbos, though, but then I remembered that the Rebbe would hold a farbrengen on the night of Tu B’Shevat. I invited both him and his wife to 770, and they actually accepted the invitation. During the singing between the Rebbe’s talks, I introduced him to the Rebbe. The Rebbe looked at him, poured him a cup of mashkeh for a l’chayim, and then said to him, ‘Mr. Spiegel, always remember that you can reach a lot more people than I can.’
“And after hearing that from the Rebbe, something inside him shifted. He became my media friend.”
T
here’s a question no one wants to ask, but everyone wants to know: Did the Rebbe prepare his confidant Reb Yudel for his passing?
“I can answer a definitive yes on that,” he says. “For me there is no question at all. There was a series of general and private instructions, including writing a will.
“One thing I can share is that in the period leading up to the stroke, the Rebbe began to reorganize his room. For years, the room was filled with boxes of books and various items, filling every space and surface. And then suddenly, the Rebbe began to pack boxes and asked that they be transferred to the library of the chassidus. By the time the Rebbe collapsed, the room was clean and organized. And the only thing remaining on his table were the four volumes of Sefer Hashluchim, with pictures of shluchim from all over the world. It was the message of his enduring legacy.
“And of course, there was the will, which he asked me to arrange after Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka’s passing on 22 Shevat, 1988. As we drove home from the funeral, the Rebbe arrived at his home to sit shivah, led the minyan in Minchah, and then went up to one of the rooms on the second floor of the house, where two doctors who had served the Rebbetzin the night before were waiting for him. The Rebbe thanked them for their efforts, they left, and then the Rebbe called me up. He turned to me and said, ‘For some reason, I have not made a will until now. But now I want to prepare a will, and I want this matter to be implemented during the shivah period.’
“The Rebbe asked three things from me: First, to organize the writing of a legally-binding will. Second, to make a review of Chabad’s three main institutions, and suggest new board members for any vacant positions with suitable individuals. And third, to establish a tzedakah fund to be named after the Rebbetzin, funds designated for matters related to Jewish women.”
Rabbi Krinsky contacted a lawyer, and the next day he came down and the Rebbe provided the necessary information. The Rebbe told the lawyer, “Krinsky will be the sole executor.” The lawyer asked the Rebbe, “But the Rebbe has so many tasks and institutions. Why only one executor?” And the Rebbe replied, “Because I trust him.”
The will was actually very short, the gist of it being that all the private property would pass to the possession of Agudas Chassidei Chabad. Additionally, the Rebbe requested that the institutions continue to operate according to the laws of the country.
“Over the years, the Rebbe would instruct me to remind the shluchim that all Chabad institutions must constantly keep the legal status of their corporations on par with all the local laws,” Reb Yudel says. “One time he asked me to purchase a certain item, and when he asked for the receipt, he saw that I had paid without tax. The Rebbe asked, ‘Where’s the tax?’ I said, ‘Institutions are exempt from tax by law.’ The Rebbe said, ‘But this is for me, not for the institution. When you have time, please go back to the store and pay the tax on this item.’”
R
abbi Krinsky is open about the Rebbe’s will, and even about his own preparation for his passing. But I wonder — will he be comfortable describing what happened at the Ohel on 27 Adar I, 1992?
“It was a shocking moment. I know that everything was planned in advance from Above, yet my heart is filled with pain every time I remember it.
“Our last conversation before the Rebbe entered the Ohel was about the shluchim, and he gave very specific and animated instructions regarding specific countries and emissaries. We arrived at the cemetery and the Rebbe went to the Ohel, while I waited in the car. The Rebbe would often stand in place for several hours, and I would give him his privacy. When the Rebbe was there, the chassidim knew not to be in the area. But that day, it seemed to be taking longer than usual — it was time to leave. As always, I would go in and assist the Rebbe in packing up the many letters and other things he brought with him, but this time….” Thirty years later, tears still form at the corners of his eyes.
Did Rabbi Krinsky understand that the Rebbe was preparing him, and the chassidim, for this new reality?
“Well, there are many things we understand in retrospect,” he says. “But the honest truth is that although we were close to the Rebbe physically, spiritually we never grasped him. We never came close to understanding the depth of his holy mind and the actions he initiated. Some things become clear after ten years, some things become evident after 20 years, and some things we understand now, after 30 years.
“And there are things,” Rabbi Krinsky whispers, “that we will never understand. Because the Rebbe was far above. And all we have to remember is the instructions he left us. To learn, to pray, to educate children and grandchildren on the path of Torah, to bring every Jew closer to the Creator, and to anticipate, with all our hearts, the final Redemption.
“After the Rebbe’s stroke, journalists would ask me, ‘What will happen with Lubavitch on the day the Rebbe leaves the world?’ I told them, “I’m not a prophet, and neither are you prophets. But I can tell you that if something like that happens — everything will continue even more than today. And today we see it. Chabad has grown more than anyone could have imagined, and it only continues to get stronger. It’s the Rebbe’s great vision and power that continues to guide the chassidim, and the entire Jewish world until the coming of Mashiach.”
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1018)
