Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria a'h

[Jude]

Mrs. Tzila Bar-Eli, daughter of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria, a”h, relates:

“The connection between my father and the Lubavitcher Rebbe was very strong. It’s hard to gather all the relevant details now, but from the little that I know, my father had a lively correspondence with the Rebbe. He would consult with him about both communal as well as personal matters. I know that my father met the Rebbe many times and participated in farbrengens.”

R’ Neria was the one who instilled the importance of learning chassidus into the talmidim of the B’nei Akiva yeshivos. He also taught them many Chabad niggunim. He even went so far as to encourage the B’nei Akiva roshei yeshivos to send their students to the farbrengens for yeshiva students that took place every Yud-Tes Kislev in Kfar Chabad, and he was the main speaker at these farbrengens. This paved the way for the Tanya classes in B’nei Akiva yeshivos. As a result of this, many of their talmidim became Chabad chassidim, some of them serving as roshei yeshivos, shluchim, directors of institutions, etc.

When his father R’ Pesachya Menkin (the family’s original name was Menkin; the name Neria was a literary name he adopted).
was young he was curious about the world of chassidus. He heard about Lubavitch while in his hometown of Poltava, where there was a large Chabad community. He traveled to Lubavitch for Elul-Tishrei and in Tomchei T’mimim he learned, listened to sichos, and studied maamarim of the Rebbe Rashab.

He later told his children about his positive impressions of his visit to Lubavitch, and his son, Moshe Tzvi, wanted a taste of chassidus, too.

Despite the persecution that religious people suffered in those days, young Moshe Tzvi Menkin (Neria) wasn’t scared off; he continued learning. Not only that, but he began learning chassidus, something that was completely “pasul” (unacceptable) to the communists, since this meant he belonged to the “Schneersohns.”

He joined some friends and they learned chassidus from the mashpia Rabbi Avrohom Boruch Pevzner, a”h. The class took place daily in the afternoon at the Lubavitcher shtibel in Minsk. Lippa, the son of the dayan in Bobruisk, organized the shiur.

For a full year they learned Shaar HaYichud V’HaEmuna and in Elul they learned Igeres HaT’shuva and Kuntres HaT’filla. Every so often they attended farbrengens that took place in R’ Pevzner’s house, where they heard chassidus and sang heartwarming chassidic niggunim.

Moshe Tzvi enjoyed these chassidus classes since he still remembered his father’s praise for the chassidus he had learned in Tomchei T’mimim in Lubavitch. “When I told my father about it, and he was from a family of misnagdim, he told me that in his youth he had traveled to Lubavitch and stayed there for the Yomim Noraim because he wanted to see what Chabad chassidus was all about. My father told me that he still had the taste of the chassidic talks of Rashbatz, the teacher of the Rebbe Rayatz, as at the time they were said.”

[Jude]

When trying to leave the country, he stayed in Moscow with his brother, R’ Yosef Menkin, though he quickly realized that it was too crowded for him to remain there. The next morning he went to daven, where he met some bachurim whose place of learning had been closed down by the government. He became acquainted with Zisel Bunin, later known as the chassid Rabbi Alexander Bin Nun, who became a close friend.

“I met a young Lubavitcher with a fair face and brown eyes who said he was also exiled from his place of Torah study, the yeshiva Tomchei T’mimim in Nevel, which had been closed down.”

Moshe Tzvi visited the home of Rabbi Abba Dovid Goldfein, where he met a young bachur by the name of Dovid Chanzin, later to become a member of the Beis Din Rabbanei Chabad in Eretz Yisroel. According to R’ Neria’s testimony, R’ Chanzin had learned through all of Shas by the time he was seventeen. The two boys liked each other and learned together in R’ Chanzin’s house, where he lived with his widowed mother in Cherkizova, a small suburb of Moscow. They learned the tractate of Bava Kama together in depth, and the tractate of P’sachim more quickly.

R’ Neria made great efforts to obtain permission to leave the country. Many people helped him, among them Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, z”l. When it came time to pay for the passport, he had to pay thirty dollars, a huge sum in those days. R’ Neria asked some people abroad for help. A letter came from the Rebbe Rayatz, who sent him the full amount!

On 23 Sivan 5690 (1930), R’ Neria got permission to leave the country, and four years later, R’ Chanzin left too. When R’ Chanzin arrived in Eretz Yisroel, the two resumed their learning together. This is what R’ Neria wrote in his diary in the winter of 5694 (when he was learning in Yeshivas Merkaz HaRav, led by Rabbi Avrohom Yitzchok Kook):

“Rabbi Dovid Chanzin arrived. I know him from Moscow. He has already learned through Shas. Now he’ll live in my apartment. I think I will arrange to learn with him. He’s a shakdan (diligent) and a fine bachur.”

R’ Neria’s daughter, Tzila Bar Eli, says that the two lived in the same apartment for a long time and learned together for hours. “In one of my father’s diaries it mentions what he said at a friend’s Sheva Brachos. It was repeated from his friend Dovid Chanzin.”

[rebayzl]

I would like to understand how all this connection to Chasidus and study of chasidus Chabad affected R Neriah's Leadership of "B'nei Akivah" which was always the "ultra modern" wing of Modern Orthodoxy in Israel.

[Jude]

I think the information in the following posts will answer your question

Upon his arrival in Eretz Yisroel, R’ Neria entered Merkaz HaRav, and absorbed the teachings of Rabbi Avrohom Yitzchok Kook, which helped form his spiritual worldview. However, he didn’t lose the sweet taste of chassidus that he gotten from the mashpia R’ Pevzner and the farbrengens he attended. Over the years, he started many chassidus classes and taught thousands of talmidim Chabad niggunim.

R’ Neria didn’t see this as a contradiction to his teacher, R’ Kook. R’ Kook also had a warm connection with Chabad, as Rabbi Harel Cohen, one of R’ Neria’s close disciples, relates:

“Our teacher, as one who wrote of the life and deeds of his great teacher, Rabbi A.Y. Kook, zt”l, did not neglect to write of his outlook towards chassidus Chabad. In ‘Sichos HaRaYaH,’ he even devoted a chapter to this, chapter 23, which is called, ‘The World of Chabad.’

“R’ Kook’s mother, Perel Zlate,” said R’ Neria, “was the daughter of R’ Refael, a talmid of Yeshivas Volozhin, who found his way to Chabad and was mekushar to the Tzemach Tzedek.”

R’ Refael was a great Torah scholar and he founded the Chabad shtibel in Griba, the birthplace of R’ Kook, in the Korland district in Latvia. R’ Refael even brought the mashpia-chozer R’ Yechezkel Yanover, z”l, the “chozer from Kopust” to the chassidic community in the town and its environs. R’ Kook, in his childhood, heard the talks of the chozer and was greatly influenced by them, as he said to R’ Neria.

Rabbi Nechemia Schmerling, director of the Chabad House in Kfar Yona: “There’s a famous Chabad niggun which is sung regularly in B’nei Akiva yeshivos every Friday night for “Yedid Nefesh.” How is it that they use this tune? I once heard from R’ Moshe Tzvi Neria that when he was in Minsk he would walk many kilometers in order to daven at the Chabad minyan, and he learned the niggun there.

“When he moved to Eretz Yisroel, R’ Kook sent him to be with the first settlers in Kfar HaRoeh, and on the first Shabbos he spent with them, he taught them the niggun he had learned in Minsk. Since then, it became the tune they all use.”

[rebayzl]

How does this answer the question?

[Jude]

When Rav Neria founded the yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh, he worked to establish a class in Chabad chassidus, which was given for a long time by Rabbi Meir Blizinsky, who would travel from Ramat Gan to Kfar HaRoeh, which is near Chadera.

We don’t know exactly when Rav Neria’s connection with the Rebbe began, but when he started this Tanya class, he wrote to the Rebbe about it. We don’t know what he wrote, but in his response (vol. 12 of Igros Kodesh, p. 377) the Rebbe writes:

I was pleased to read in your letter that there are regular classes on the study of Tanya, once a week, and the participants show great interest and understanding. Even though a class given once a week is not nearly enough, and it should be as Chazal say – that three days do not pass without (the light of) Torah, namely p’nimius ha’Torah, referred to in the holy Zohar as the soul of Torah, which in our generation is Toras ha’chassidus. There is nothing that stands in the way of one’s will. If this is so in the Diaspora, all the more so in a land which has Hashem’s eyes upon it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year. Certainly, for one such as yourself, expanding on this point is unnecessary.

I’ve only come to fulfill Chazal’s injunction: one does not urge except those who are energized, and that this is only necessary for the sake of an increase, as said previously. May it be Hashem’s will that you succeed in raising G-d-fearing students who learn Torah in purity and fulfill mitzvos punctiliously.

[Jude]

Regarding his love for chassidus Chabad, Rabbi Yigal Pizem, rosh yeshivas Chabad in Kiryot recalls that when he learned in the yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh and the talmidim asked Rav Neria what they could buy him as a gift for the end of the year, he said that he’d be happy if they bought him Likkutei Torah of the Alter Rebbe. Rav Neria also learned the daily HaYom Yom which the Rebbe compiled.

Rabbi Dovid Meir Druckman, rav of Kiryat Mochkin, says, “When I learned in Kfar HaRoeh, I saw Rav Neria learning Likkutei Torah on Rosh HaShana night with great enthusiasm. I remember that when we learned with him the section of Kuzari about the level of a prophet and the d’veikus (inner bond) of his students to him, he gave us an example: how a Chabad chassid enters a private audience with the Rebbe.

“I also remember that he davened in a Chabad siddur – Nusach Ari – and also used t’fillin with Nusach Chabad. In his old room in the yeshiva there were only two pictures, of the Alter Rebbe and of his teacher, Rabbi Y. M. Charlop.”

His wife, Rebbetzin Rochel Neria, also said that on Shabbos, the Tanya would be on his table.

The chassidus that he taught his students had a tremendous influence on them. Many of his students later became ardent Lubavitcher chassidim, and even those who did not become chassidim hold Chabad in high esteem. As R’ Chaim Elbaz, a mekurav to the Chabad house in Afula says, “After Rav Neria returned from the Rebbe, he told us what the Rebbe had said to him, and spoke about him with the greatest admiration. At that time I began to get close to Chabad, and in hindsight I believe it was the feeling I had that my rosh yeshiva admired the Rebbe that helped me get closer to Chabad.

[Jude]

In Iyar 5717, Rav Neria came to the U.S. in order to fundraise for his yeshiva. Apparently Rav Neria wasn’t familiar with the challenge of fundraising, and the Rebbe helped him with this. “The Rebbe sent messages to people whom my husband was going to meet. The Rebbe asked them to welcome him graciously and to help him,” says his wife, Rochel.

In a letter Rav Neria wrote to Rabbi Volpe, he says, “The Rebbe showed a great interest in the B’nei Akiva yeshivos. I left his room at three o’clock in the morning (and there were certainly other people waiting to enter), and I found out, to my surprise, that at eight in the morning Rabbi Chadakov, a”h, called Rabbi Nissan Telushkin, zt”l (who had influence on Mizrachi circles in the U.S.), and told him that the Rebbe asked him to help me with the Mizrachi leadership on behalf of the yeshivos.”

We can read about this assistance by examining the Rebbe’s letters to Rav Neria. From these letters we learn that the effort to raise money for B’nei Akiva yeshivos continued in later years, too. In a letter from 5 Av 5718, the Rebbe writes in the margin: “I’d be interested in knowing if you met with members of the RCA who visited Eretz Yisroel in recent months, as per my prior letter to you, and if there were any results of that meeting.”

A few months later, on 11 Kislev 5719, the Rebbe wrote a long letter in which he reveals that he worked on behalf of Rav Neria’s schools (Heichal Menachem 3 p. 151): “You write about the RCA and their support for the school that you run. In the past weeks I’ve spoken a number of times about this to the aforementioned. A few days ago a new, at least in my view, delay cropped up... Understandably, despite this I continued in my talks.

The Rebbe also explains in his letter, why he worked on behalf of Yeshivas B’nei Akiva in Kfar HaRoeh: “I said that the complaint that I’m interested is out in the open, and I really hope that they too are interested that the greatest possible number [of students] will transfer from Leftist education to your institution...”

You must remember that in those days, the Mapai (anti-religious communist) party ruled the land and they did all they could to get as many children as possible into schools that taught heresy.

[Jude]

On the visit Rav Neria made in the spring of 5717, he had a long private meeting with the Rebbe. Naturally, they spoke about the B’nei Akiva movement. Rav Neria shared his concerns with the Rebbe, “I often suffer from pangs of conscience since I know that a coed youth movement, and some of the practices therein, are not in accordance with halacha, and are not according to the ways of the Torah.”

The Rebbe responded, “As long as you are aware az dos is an umglick, nor dos kumt rateven fun a greseren umglick (that it’s a tragedy, but it is for the purpose of saving people from a worse tragedy), you can continue doing what you are doing ... This is the shlichus placed upon you from Above. And even if you encounter difficulties, you must keep going and try to fulfill your shlichus faithfully. Today there aren’t many people involved in education, and if you are successful in this, it is your obligation to continue being involved in it.”

On 24 Elul 5717 (letter #8130) the Rebbe urges Rav Neria to try and correct the problem of youth from religious youth organizations who “daven in mixed company, r”l, without a proper mechitza, and sometimes for ideological reasons.” The Rebbe emphasizes in his letter, “you surely remember that in our conversation we also touched on this point,” and the Rebbe says Rav Neria is greatly influential, and he asks him to let him know about his success in correcting this breach.

Apparently, Rav Neria tried to do so and reported his efforts in this to the Rebbe. In letter #8150, written on Yud-Alef Nissan 5718, the Rebbe writes again, “I received your letter ... and surely, based on what you write there, your efforts continue in all possible ways in the matter of separation [of boys and girls].”

On 11 Kislev 5719 (#6596) the Rebbe writes to Rav Neria again about this (the complete letter appears in Heichal Menachem vol. 3, p. 151):

Surprisingly, you don’t mention anything about the issue of separation, although I strongly hope that you continue to work on this and with the appropriate energy, considering the importance of the matter.”

The Rebbe notes, “Even though each of our Rebbeim, z”l, was an “ohev Yisroel” ([one who loves Jews] for they are a chain from generation to generation going back to Moshe Rabbeinu, who was an ohev Yisroel), and therefore, certainly our Sages didn’t want to say anything negative about the Jewish people, they still warned that there must be a separation between men and women.

Rav Neria worked very hard to strengthen tznius and separation at B’nei Akiva, being influenced to do so by the requests and encouragement of the Rebbe. He also supported the publishing of the book, K’doshim Tihiyu, which was written by Rabbi Shmuel Katz, “to strengthen tznius in society and in youth movements.”

In his approbation to the book, Rav Neria explains that the mixed format of B’nei Akiva was a bidiovad (post facto) measure taken to save youth “whose parents’ behavior was even more compromised.” Rav Neria added in his approbation that they needed to battle with “those who want to see these emergency measures as L’chat’chilla” (preferable behavior).

The Rebbe wrote to Rav Neria time and again about separation between boys and girls. When he got involved in the B’nei Akiva movement many years before that, Rav Neria made sure that boys and girls didn’t dance together. He did this in stages and in various ways, until he was successful. He worked on this issue for years, step-by-step, with the ongoing encouragement of the Rebbe.

[Jude]

On 2 Kislev 5728, Rav Neria had a private audience with the Rebbe that lasted two hours. After the yechidus he asked Dovid Meir Drukman, his former student who was learning in 770, to write down what he had discussed. R’ Drukman wrote, “Before he had the meeting, I saw him standing in the “Lower Gan Eden,” and saying T’hillim, preparing to enter the “Upper Gan Eden.” What follows is a summary, which I wrote down as he told it to me:

“Rav Neria said that when he meets with youth who are not yet observant, he asks them to start learning Torah, in the hopes that ‘the light within will return them to good.’ The Rebbe pointed out that as great as Torah study is, since the youth would be doing it in order to attain yet another intellectual idea and not with kabbalas ol, it wouldn’t be that effective in getting them to change their ways. On the other hand, doing an action mitzva, and on a daily basis, is what affects the corporeality of the body and through this they would eventually do all the mitzvos.

Among other things, the Rebbe spoke sharply against the idea of “is’chalta d’Geula.”

In the course of the yechidus, the Rebbe also referred to an announcement that B’nei Akiva made which called on yeshiva boys to join the army, and he expressed his displeasure with this. Rav Neria said the announcement was not made by the national administration of B’nei Akiva but by a person whom he didn’t even know. The Rebbe asked Rav Neria to find a way to protest the announcement.

Then the Rebbe asked about the participation of the talmidim of the B’nei Akiva yeshivos in the special farbrengen that took place for them in Kfar Chabad on Yud-Tes Kislev, and asked to hear Rav Neria’s impression and opinion about it.

[Jude]

Rav Neria was one of those who led the battle for shleimus ha’Aretz and was strongly opposed to giving away parts of our land to our enemies. He was one of the leading opponents to Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai and the destruction of Yamit, not just with words, but with actions, too. For a number of months he lived in Yamit. He was on the scene when Yamit was destroyed, and made sure that it didn’t reach the point where brothers fought one another.

During those difficult days when he lived in Yamit, a Lubavitcher told him that the Tanya had been printed in Yamit. When Rav Neria heard this, he was moved, and he asked for a copy.

***
The following is from a letter the Rebbe wrote to a bachur who moved from France to Eretz Yisroel and was undecided whether to learn or to work. (After the Rebbe encouraged him to learn, the Rebbe writes): “Since you are in Kfar HaRoeh, you should see Rav Moshe Tzvi Neria and tell him your problem, and you can show him this letter. He will certainly elaborate and explain to you, if you need more of an explanation.”

Rav Neria learned a lot of Tanya, started a Tanya shiur in his yeshiva, learned Likkutei Torah and encouraged the talmidim of B’nei Akiva yeshivos to participate in the Yud-Tes Kislev farbrengens, where he himself spoke.

The last farbrengen of the Rebbe’s that he attended was on Yud-Tes Kislev 5742, and a number of those who eulogized him said it wasn’t coincidental that he passed away on Yud-Tes Kislev 5756.