Here’s My Story: Se Habla Espanol

Rabbi Moshe Herson

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I came to New York from Brazil in 1950, a few months after the passing of the Previous Rebbe, and spent the next decade there as a yeshivah student, learning Torah in the vicinity of his son-in-law, who would soon become the seventh Rebbe.

One day, as I was learning in the study hall at 770 Eastern Parkway, Rabbi Hodakov, the Rebbe’s secretary, called me into his office, and asked whether I spoke Spanish. Being from Brazil, I was fluent in Portuguese, but I also spoke Spanish fairly well.

“Can we trust you with translating the letters that the Rebbe gets in Spanish and Portuguese?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“You must understand that these letters are private; you need to forget about what you read after writing the translation,” he warned drily, making clear the office’s strict rules for confidentiality – which I accepted.

So, for a few years, I was given the letters written to the Rebbe in Spanish and Portuguese, and I would translate them to the best of my ability. Some of the envelopes had already been opened by the Rebbe, and some had not, but usually the Rebbe wrote an instruction “to be translated,” on the envelope, underlined, in Hebrew.

There were several such letters per week, not a very heavy volume, but translating them was time consuming. Just deciphering the handwriting was often difficult, and then I had to figure out what the writer wanted to say, without knowing them or the situation they were describing. It made me think about what the Rebbe went through on a daily basis with all of the other letters he received.

If I didn’t understand what somebody had written, I would write a literal translation, and then add a few dots indicating that I didn’t know what the words meant. I might also add a note saying that I had difficulty understanding the letter.

Living in the yeshivah dormitory as I did complicated things further: I had to find a time and place to do this work without any of my colleagues seeing what I was doing.

It was the night before Passover, and I had a few letters to translate. Although everybody was searching for the chametz and preparing for Passover, I wanted to make sure that the Rebbe would have these letters before the holiday. So, I went back to 770.

It was completely empty. I sat down far from the entrance of the study hall, near the western wall, spread out the letters on the table, and got to work. After working comfortably for some time, I heard the door to the Rebbe’s office open, just down the hall.

The Rebbe was going home, but before he left, he took a peek into the study hall. I hadn’t even known that he was in the building, but when I saw him at the door, I stood up out of respect, and remained standing until he left. It was all very brief; as quickly as he had appeared, he turned around and left.

Now, it was obvious that I was writing something, and not studying, but I was too far from the entrance for anyone to read the papers in front of me; I could have been writing a letter home or to friends. But the Rebbe didn’t need much, and later I would realize that in that brief time he had picked up exactly what I was doing.

The next morning, I came early to 770 to continue translating. Being the morning before Passover, the burning of the chametz would be taking place soon.

Normally, the Rebbe would go downstairs together with one of his secretaries for the burning ceremony. There was an incinerator there, and the Rebbe would throw in the chametz that had been gathered in the search the night before, along with some other things.

When the time came, there were many people gathered in the study hall, waiting for the Rebbe to come out of his office and down to the incinerator on the floor below. I had positioned myself in the corner of the room, so that I could continue working without unwanted attention. Suddenly, the Rebbe came to the entrance of the room, without entering, looked around quickly, and then left. He walked down the hall to the smaller, adjacent room and did the same; it seemed like he was looking for someone, but hadn’t found them.

Then he came back to the first door, and walked into the middle of the study hall. I had moved from my unobtrusive corner in the meantime, so now the Rebbe saw me, and he pointed in my direction.

“Herson, come with me,” he said. I barely had time to put my pen and papers away, and I hurried to follow the Rebbe to his office. There, on the floor, the Rebbe showed me a few tightly packed bundles of what I believe were letters that the Rebbe received.

“If it isn’t difficult for you,” he said, “you can help me carry these packages.”

I picked them up, and out of respect, I stepped aside to allow the Rebbe to leave the room first. The Rebbe hesitated for a moment. But then he went ahead, I closed the door behind me, and from there we went to the waiting elevator to go down to the floor below. I was so nervous that after walking into the elevator I just stood there, without pressing the button to go down.

As soon as the elevator door closed, the Rebbe asked, “Did you close the door properly?” I replied that I had, and then I understood why the Rebbe had hesitated earlier; he wanted to leave his office last to make sure the door was locked properly. The Rebbe then pressed the elevator button and we went down to the incinerator with the bundles, and I stayed with the Rebbe until he had completed the burning of the chametz and the other packages.

Now, generally the Rebbe had one of his secretaries assist him every year during the burning of the chametz. At first, I didn’t understand why the Rebbe had called on me to help him. He had never done so before, and he never did so again after.

Did his secretary arrive a little late that day – which I doubt was the case –or had the Rebbe started the burning of the chametz a little earlier than planned, so that he could select a different person for the job? Perhaps this was his way of giving the task to me without offending any of his secretaries; by the time they arrived it was already over.

I can’t say for sure, but it seems to me that after the Rebbe had seen me working on those letters the night before Passover, he wanted to show his appreciation to me by giving me the honor of assisting him with the burning of the chametz.

It was something I observed about the Rebbe over the years: When a person did something for him, the Rebbe would always look for an opportunity to reciprocate.

To my regret, in the early ‘60s I gave up the translation work. I had started helping to run the Chabad yeshivah in Newark, among other responsibilities, and I felt that the letters weren’t being translated quickly enough. After a conversation with the Rebbe’s secretary Rabbi Binyamin Klein, he agreed to find someone else.

I was still too young to realize that this was one thing I should have never given up.

Rabbi Moshe Herson is the regional director of Chabad of New Jersey. He was interviewed in May 2008 and November 2016.