When Bochurim Blocked NYPD

By COLlive reporter

Agudas Chassidei Chabad International will be holding its annual Didan Notzach – Hei Teves Farbrengen on Tuesday, 8:30pm at Campus Chomesh in Crown Heights.

It will mark the 1987 Seforim victory, when a U.S. Federal Court ruled that the priceless Chabad library was not private property and a Rebbe is not a private individual but a communal figure synonymous with the body of Chassidim.

Among those addressing Anash and bochurim in both Yiddish and English will be those who were involved in the case on behalf of the Rebbe to bring back the stolen seforim:

Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, Chairman of Agudas Chassidei Chabad, and 2 members of the umbrella body – South Africa Head Shliach Rabbi Mendel Lipskar and New Jersey Head Shliach Rabbi Moshe Herson; Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chairman of Merkos; and Crown Heights posek Rabbi Moshe Bogomilsky.

Also scheduled to speak, following a video presentation from JEM and a full meal, will be the Rebbe’s choizer Rabbi Yoel Kahn, Oholei Torah Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Yisroel Friedman and South Carolina Head Shliach Rabbi Yosef Groner.

A guest speaker will be Rabbi Yosef Greenberg, Director of Lubavitch Jewish Center of Alaska, who flew in from Anchorage to speak at the farbrengen.

Greenberg was a 20-year-old bochur at the time learning in the central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim in 770 Eastern Parkway when the seforim were being stolen from the Agudas Chassidei Chabad library.

“If not for Hei Teves, Chabad as we know it today would not exist,” he told COLlive.com ahead of his speech. “It was to our generation what Yud Tes Kislev was to chassidim in the Alter Rebbe’s times – that a Rebbe and his teachings are eternal.”

Greenberg said he will be sharing memories of what transpired in Lubavitch Headquarters 770 on 12 Tammuz 5745 after the Rebbe first notified the public about the theft, until then only known to a small group of individuals.

“After that farbrengen there was a lot of confusion,” he recalls. “We didn’t know who was the one responsible for it, and rumors began circling.”

He says that at one point the New York Police Department arrived at 770 only to be denied entry by zealous bochurim worried about their intentions and the implications on the question of ownership of 770.

Looking back, Rabbi Greenberg sees what happened that night and during those days as a defining moment in modern Lubavitch history.

Following the formal speeches, participants will sit down together for a farbrengen that traditionally continues until the wee hours of the morning.

VIDEO: Didan Notzach in 770