It has been thirteen years since the passing of the esteemed mashpia, R’ Reuven Dunin a”h, who was a model of a Chassid and mekushar to the Rebbe MH”M. Thirteen year, and still hundreds of his mekuravim miss him and think of him every day. * Stories and sayings of R’ Reuven about hiskashrus to the Rebbe, Geula and Moshiach.
Compiled and prepared for publication by his student, Chanoch Shachar
FLYING FOR TISHREI
R’ Gil Benisti relates:
One morning, at eight o’clock, the telephone in my house rang; it was R’ Reuven on the line. I heard his deep voice say, “Kid, I’m going to the Rebbe. Please be here at one o’clock.”
I was surprised since I knew his health did not permit him to travel. But if R’ Reuven said something, you listened. I went to his house, took down the huge suitcase, loaded it into my car and we headed for the airport.
On the way, R’ Reuven suddenly said to me, “First let’s go to Ramat Aviv,” referring to the yeshiva where he was a mashpia.
When we got to the yeshiva, R’ Reuven said to me, “Take down the suitcase, we’ve arrived.” And R’ Reuven remained in the yeshiva for a month, and throughout Elul the bachurim enjoyed many farbrengens and personal guidance from him.
YOU’VE REVIVED ME
R’ Reuven Dunin spent a number of years by the Rebbe and was drawn close by the Rebbe who treated him in a special, fatherly way.
At one of the farbrengens, R’ Reuven said that one morning he got up “not in good form.” He went from the dormitory to 770 feeling really down. He suddenly saw the Rebbe approaching the spot where he was standing, also on his way to 770. R’ Reuven was frightened and he hid in shame behind a parked car. He hoped the Rebbe had not seen him, but when the Rebbe walked on the pavement opposite his hiding place, he suddenly turned his head, smiled at him, and made an encouraging motion with his hand (as reported by R’ Moshe Abad).
R’ Moshe Zev Pizem adds:
At one of his private audiences, the Rebbe told him, “report good news.” That was something the Rebbe would say routinely and most people took it as a wish, while R’ Reuven took it with the utmost seriousness as an order. After that, each time he wrote to the Rebbe, he tried to include at least one piece of good news.
One time, he wrote a letter to the Rebbe and thought of what good news he could write about. He couldn’t come up with any. He wrote to the Rebbe about all the shiurim and “Evenings with Chabad” etc., but to him, this wasn’t in the category of “good news.” He ended up apologizing that when it came to ruchnius (spirituality) he still had no good news, but otherwise, they added a few liras to his salary and this was his good news.
He received an immediate response from the Rebbe, “You have revived me, like cold water on a tired soul.”
I WANT TO BE THE REBBE’S
The entire topic of “Rebbe” was top priority to R’ Reuven. “Rebbe” was the essence of his life, always, morning, noon and night. He was once asked, “Why do you speak about the Rebbe so that every second word is ‘Rebbe’ and everything revolves around him such as ‘This is what I saw by the Rebbe,’ ‘This is what I heard from the Rebbe?’”
R’ Yisroel Halperin of Hertzliya related that when R’ Reuven went to the Rebbe for the first time, as a 25 year old bachur, he had yechidus. The Rebbe asked him what he knows how to do. R’ Reuven said he was an expert in cars. The Rebbe suggested that he work at a garage, but R’ Reuven said, “I came to be by the Rebbe.” The Rebbe said, “If you came to be by me, then you need to be part of the sidrei ha’yeshiva (the yeshiva study sessions).”
For a while, R’ Reuven attended the s’darim, but it was hard for him. He went to the secretaries and asked for an appointment with the Rebbe. They told him that it wasn’t so simple, and it wasn’t like every time you had a problem you could just go and see the Rebbe.
R’ Reuven simply went and knocked on the Rebbe’s door. When he heard the Rebbe’s voice, he went in and told the Rebbe he was not satisfied.
“Why aren’t you satisfied?” asked the Rebbe.
“I feel that I will become a chacham (wise person).”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked the Rebbe.
Said R’ Reuven, “I don’t want to be a chacham. I want to belong to the Rebbe.”
Not surprisingly, whatever the Rebbe spoke about over the years, R’ Reuven, as a loyal soldier, got up and did it unhesitatingly.
R’ Uriel Kalev related that his father has a friend, a kibbutznik, who went to an astrologist with his wife. The astrologist said that she sees in the stars that they need to do t’shuva. Indeed, some time later, he started the t’shuva process and today he is a Chabad Chassid living in the north.
“In 5747, my father went to the Rebbe and stayed in Crown Heights with a family where the lady of the house was a principal in a local school. During one of the meals, when someone spoke in praise of R’ Reuven Dunin, the hostess exclaimed, ‘I will tell you who Reuven Dunin is.’ She said that she used to be an astrologist (the one who got my father’s friend to do t’shuva) and at one point, she had lived with the Dunins for three years!
“Back then, they transmitted the Rebbe’s farbrengens via a live telephone hookup to Eretz Yisroel. One time, the Rebbe spoke about the need to provide education for seniors, Tiferes Z’keinim, and the Rebbe suggested naming it for his father.
“The broadcast ended at 4:55 in the morning (Israeli time) and five minutes later, at five o’clock in the morning, R’ Reuven was already busy working on starting a Tiferes Z’keinim in his city of Haifa.
“‘That was R’ Reuven Dunin,’ she concluded emotionally.”
R’ Yitzchok Axelrod remembers that at one of R’ Reuven’s farbrengens he spoke sarcastically about the “help” the Chassidim gave to the Rebbe:
“The Rebbe asked the Chassidim to work on Mihu Yehudi and … we know the result. The Rebbe asked that the Chassidim work on shleimus ha’aretz and … we know the result. When it came to the s’farim, the Rebbe himself took care of the legal matters and after that we sang Didan Notzach. Didan – we won? Do you see how impudent we are?”
WHETHER LIKE CHILDREN OR LIKE SLAVES
R’ Yair Maman recounted:
R’ Reuven once told me that when the Rebbe returned from the Ohel, he noticed that the edge of the Rebbe’s pants’ leg was folded so his sock was visible. R’ Reuven did not think it was proper for a king to walk about that way and he decided to unfold it without disturbing the Rebbe. He crawled between the people that stood asking the Rebbe for brachos. He felt himself being stepped on but did not care. He finally reached the Rebbe while hiding behind people’s feet and gently undid the fold. The Rebbe noticed, looked down, and smiled at R’ Reuven, turned around and entered 770.
R’ Kuti Rapp a”h told a similar story:
One time, before the Rebbe came down from his room for Kabbalas Shabbos, I saw R’ Reuven standing near the steps leading from Gan Eden HaTachton to the beis midrash. I noticed that R’ Reuven looked agitated and realized something was about to happen. I hid among the lockers and waited.
When the Rebbe came downstairs and reached the bottom, R’ Reuven bent over and began doing something with the Rebbe’s shoelaces. “What’s this?” asked the Rebbe.
R’ Reuven asked, “Is it comfortable like this?”
“It’s that way on purpose!” replied the Rebbe in Ivrit with a Sephardic pronunciation and immediately continued walking toward the beis midrash with nobody having noticed anything.
A REAL GENTLEMAN
R’ Eliezer Reichman related:
R’ Reuven once told me that at the beginning of Kingston Avenue there was a hat store that belonged to a Jew who externally had no connection with G-d. This man was well-built and every free moment he had without customers he used to work out. He kept weights at the back of the store and that is where he exercised.
One day, he said to me, “You know, your rabbi is a real gentleman.”
I asked him why he thought so and the man said, “Every day, your rabbi passes the store [on his way to his mother] and he says hello. One time, I decided I would say hello first but I was never able to. He always says hello first.”
LIVING MOSHIACH NO MATTER WHAT
R’ Reuven, to whom everything about the Rebbe was infinitely precious, worked diligently to publicize the Besuras Ha’Geula and the Goel. The topic of Moshiach burned in him and at every opportunity he would urge those who attended his farbrengens to strengthen their emuna.
R’ Tom Rettig related that once, when he farbrenged at Tiferes Bachurim in Kfar Chabad, one of the participants dared to ask him, “What if Moshiach comes and he doesn’t look like the Rebbe? How will we know it’s the Rebbe?” R’ Reuven answered simply, “You will hear that he’s the Rebbe.”
At an interview he once gave (which turned into a farbrengen), R’ Reuven explained a deep topic and then was asked about proclaiming Yechi. R’ Chaim Eliezer Wilschansky said that R’ Reuven replied thus:
“To me, saying Yechi is like standing before the king, before the Rebbe. You don’t suddenly appear before the Rebbe.” R’ Reuven then related memories he had from the time he spent in 770:
“When I wanted to see the Rebbe, I would wait after davening, and if I discerned the Rebbe’s consent, I would head for his office. If I saw that the door was slightly ajar, that was a sign that I could enter.
“It once happened that I went in after Mincha and spoke to the Rebbe. A few hours later I decided I felt I had to speak to the Rebbe again. After Maariv, based on the agreed-upon signs I had with the Rebbe, I felt I had permission to go in. The Rebbe then looked at me with some surprise, ‘We just spoke.’ Then I understood that I couldn’t just walk in unless I had made some preparations beforehand.
“The same is true for Yechi. Something has to be done in honor of the Yechi before going to the king and proclaiming Yechi.”
***
As was his way all the years, R’ Reuven shied away from p’shetlach and personal interpretations that come from the person’s own mind. He was like this from the start of Mivtza Moshiach and even more so afterward, when the Rebbe encouraged the singing of Yechi. R’ Reuven, as a Chassid and mekushar with all his heart and soul, knew that this is what the Rebbe wants and so he publicized it everywhere. He wore a Moshiach pin in his lapel and hat. If that wasn’t enough, he carried around a bag of these pins and gave them out to whoever said he would wear them. He explained by saying that the word “Moshiach” on the pin represented pure emuna; Moshiach, without p’shetlach and additional wording.
At one of his farbrengens, he spoke about everyone being a walking bulletin board when it came to publicizing the Besuras Ha’Geula. He said (from a transcript of a recording, thanks to R’ Mendel Schechter):
“Publicizing this is the least we can do so as not to forget this subject of Moshiach. I think the person who invented these Moshiach pins will be blessed and I’ve already heard about some successes in this regard. All the stories and clever arguments and excuses don’t interest me … I think simply: You know the Rebbe wants Moshiach? Shout it out. You don’t think you can be a rooster that calls out in a loud voice? Then become a bulletin board. Wear a Moshiach pin. If you say you are not a bulletin board, there are dolls that you insert a battery into them and they start walking. What’s the problem?
“The minimum is to do something as it says, ‘and you will see it [the tzitzis] and remember and do.’ We learn from this that seeing leads to remembering and remembering leads to action. So too with Moshiach, when you see the word ‘Moshiach,’ obviously this will remind you of Moshiach …”
YEARNING IN ACTION
R’ Gil Benisti relates:
I once heard a Chassidic story from a friend about one of the Polish Admurim who had a sick son. The Chassidim told him that his son went every morning on a long walk to a spring to immerse. Hearing this and knowing that his son was not allowed to do this, he immediately ordered him not to immerse anymore. The son accepted this.
A few weeks later, the Admur’s brother-in-law told him that he had seen his son a few times near the spring. He had noticed that when the son approached the spring, he undressed but did not immerse and then got dressed again. He cried and said, “Mikva, mikva, how much I want to immerse, only you and G-d know, but my father forbade me to immerse,” and he turned around and left.
One Friday night, I told R’ Reuven this story and it moved him to tears. The next day, Shabbos, I went to pick him up from the house he was staying in, in Raanana. He asked that we go together to the mikva. I knew that he could not immerse and I asked him about this. “If you can’t immerse anyway, why should you go so far?”
He said, “You hit me very powerfully with that story you told me last night. So at least one time I am going to try to do what the son did.”