Video: Hour Long Video from Purim Farbrengen 1973

As Jews around the world get ready for Purim by packing shalach manos and picking out their costumes, Jewish Educational Media and Chabad.org have teamed up to inject a healthy dose of spirituality into their preparations — newly restored footage of the Rebbe’s Purim farbrengen from 5733 (1973).

The full “Farbrengen Club” DVD runs over 4 hours but a one-hour portion of the farbrengen was also made available for viewing on Chabad.org’s video site Jewish.TV the week before Purim. Shluchim around the world have been inviting the members of their community to watch from home or to join them for this very special video presentation.

According to Rabbi Shais Taub, Jewish.TV’s creative director, the importance of watching and internalizing the teachings in this particular video cannot be underemphasized.

“It’s impossible to calculate just how many people have been exposed to the concepts the Rebbe taught our generation,” explained Taub. “They read articles, and study adaptations of his teachings. Overall, the Rebbe’s unique approach has long entered the collective Jewish consciousness, but there’s really no substitute for the original source material. We want to give people a look behind the scenes.”

At this particular 1973 gathering, the Rebbe focused on the Megillah’s opening description of Achashverosh’s feast. He asked why no detail, even as mundane as the look of the palace’s tapestries, was spared given that the Torah generally uses the most concise language available. The Rebbe concluded that just as this king spared no expense in order to throw the most lavish feast of all time, so too each and every person, no matter their status, has unique talents and opportunities he or she must employ to the fullest in bringing G-dliness into the world.

The Rebbe emphasized that be it a rabbi, lay leader or writer – author Chaim Potok happened to be in the audience – each person must maximize those G-d given gifts.

“It’s a very unique farbrengen,” offered JEM director Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin. “One of the Rebbe’s foundational concepts is to never be satisfied with doing something good; he wanted you to keep going and do something great. That’s on full display here.”

Released as part of the ongoing work associated with JEM’s Living Archive Restoration & Preservation Project, the footage of the 1973 gathering was almost lost to time.

“We are truly lucky this exists on video,” asserted Shmotkin. “It’s a true blessing.”

To quote Rabbi J.J. Hecht who was present that evening and broadcast a live commentary of the Farbrengen over radio station WEVD: “The assembled find themselves in a state of unimaginable excitement […] each attempting to dance while standing in their places. In the background you hear the crowd whistling […]. All I can say is “Fortunate is the eye which beholds this sight!” […] The scene will not leave your memory for years to come; you simply will not be able to forget it!”

This is one of the earliest video-recorded farbrengens of the Rebbe, and was filmed by a crew hired at the time by Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky. The original video, however, had degraded over the years to the point where it had “numerous problems,” said Shmotkin, and the audio was useless.

To produce this release, JEM technicians paired audio retrieved from the donated collection of Rabbis Yossi and Aaron Goldstein, who had recorded the Rebbe’s addresses between 1951 and 1977. Synching the audio with the original video took more than 50 hours of work by video editor Yossi Margolin.

The entire editing process took several weeks, said Shmotkin. Margolin, together with Rabbi Yanky Ascher, painstakingly reviewed every second of the footage, removed the unusable portions, and replaced them with still photos and video footage of the gathering from other sources.

The Rebbe’s sichos were also translated and subtitled in six languages. This task was overseen by Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, who described subtitling the Rebbe’s talk as “an art and a challenge.”

After the editing process was finally complete, the farbrengen was recorded onto DVD, and shipped to more than 1,000 communities around the world. It is now available for order through JEM’s website.

“There is tremendous power in the learning experience through listening to and watching the Rebbe,” said Shmotkin. “Now that this farbrengen is out, the experience can in some way be distilled and re-experienced, or experienced for the first time, by every individual in their own community or home.”