Here’s My Story: The Russians Are Coming!
Rabbi Mordechai Dov Ber Pupko
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In 1908, around the time my grandfather, Rabbi Eliezer Pupko, got married, he accepted a rabbinic position in a town called Velizh in the Smolensk region of Russia. Half of the residents were Jewish, and it was an enclave of Chabad chasidim, although my grandfather himself was not a chasid. He remained the rabbi there until 1930, when he, along with my grandmother and their children who were still in Velizh, escaped to Latvia under the noses of the OGPU – as the predecessor to the KGB was known.
This meant that they experienced the upheaval of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the bad times that followed. Once the communists had taken control, they ruled with an iron hand.
Now, at the time, Velizh still had a large religious community, with one main synagogue and two or three smaller ones. My grandfather would spend every Shabbat in a different synagogue, but for the festivals and High Holidays, he would be in the main one. Although these synagogues were allowed to keep functioning into the 1920s, the communists had spies and infiltrators all over. As a result, it became very difficult to do anything related to religion without being spied upon, harassed, or worse. Teaching or helping others observe Judaism was even more dangerous, especially when it came to the education of children.
One of the first things the Soviets did after coming to power was to take over the schools and compel every child to attend. At school, the children would be asked to report on the activities in their own home and if, for some reason, the child said the “wrong” thing, their parents could be taken out and shot.
As a result of this kind of pressure, there were many Jewish people – members of the Velizh community included – who decided to take on the “free life” of being communists.
In the first half of 1927, when things were really bad, a group of these Jewish communists came over to my grandfather with inside information. They revealed that the then-Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, was going to be arrested on account of his “counter-revolutionary” activities in continuing to promote Judaism in the Soviet Union. These people had been Lubavitcher chasidim, and carried strong feelings of affection for the Rebbe. They couldn’t bring this information directly to the Rebbe, who was at the time in the city of Leningrad – today, as in tsarist times, S. Petersburg – and so they asked my grandfather to go to the Rebbe and pass on this message.
They wanted my grandfather to tell him that if he would lay low and stop spreading Torah and chasidic teachings, there was a real possibility that he could still avoid arrest. After a certain period of time, he may even be able to resume his efforts.
On receiving this warning, my grandfather immediately left town and headed to Leningrad. Once there, he met with the Rebbe as well as some other members of his family – including Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who would soon marry the Rebbe’s daughter and eventually become his successor – and passed on the message.
Now, in those days, people spoke very politely to each other. Rather than call him “Rabbi Pupko,” the Previous Rebbe addressed my grandfather by his title, “Velizher Rov.”
“Velizher Rov,” replied the Rebbe, “I am prepared to give up my life!” Despite the warning, the Rebbe refused to budge or reduce any of his activities, and continued to act with self-sacrifice – “mesirus nefesh” was the term he used. And the rest is history. Shortly thereafter, the Previous Rebbe was arrested in his home in Leningrad, and was sentenced for capital punishment. In a miraculous turn of events, his sentence was commuted to exile and then lifted altogether, when the Rebbe was liberated and expelled from the country.
Twenty-three years later, the Previous Rebbe passed away in New York and was succeeded by his son-in-law. At the time, my grandfather was serving as a rabbi in Philadelphia, and the new Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote a letter to my grandfather about the state of Jewish education in the city, encouraging him to pay more attention to the “younger generation – the future of our people.”
What I find interesting about that letter is the opening line. “I remember the esteemed sage,” begins the Rebbe, in a formal reference to my grandfather, “from the day that we met in S. Petersburg in 1927. And on the basis of that meeting, it is my firm hope that reaching out to you regarding this matter will bring about good results.” This, I believe, is a reference to that very trip my grandfather took to warn the Previous Rebbe all those years ago.
Following a long career in social services, Rabbi Mordechai Dov Ber Pupko succeeded his father in heading the Bais Torah Damesek Eliezer synagogue – the “Pupko Shul” – in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was interviewed in February of 2014, and passed away several weeks ago, in February of 2025.
