Rabbi Yehuda Weg was asked if he was aware of Shluchim in small cities turning to the Rebbe for guidance, how to approach the seemingly impossible task of building community, when for Yiddishkeit reasons, the closest Mekuravim move on to Frum communities.

Rabbi Weg shared his personal story with the Rebbe.

Thank you Rabbi Weg for sharing for the benefit of the Rabim.

____________

Rabbi Weg's story

After we had been in Tulsa for about three years, our closest people left and it was very difficult for us. I wasn’t sure how to approach this. 

I wrote to the Rebbe and I explained the situation. A large part of the challenge was the second tier balebatim who were harassing us big time that we’ll never build up a community over here. Their complaint was "why am I letting people go and why am I encouraging them (depending on the situation) to actually go, if we’ll never build anything as far as a community, locally." 

So I asked the Rebbe, and as I was in the habit of, I would ask the Rebbe very clearly. I would, and still do, describe the situation in detail, I go over it countless times to make sure that’s there’s not an extra word, and then I ask three possibilities:

Should I do Alef, should I do Bays…

In this case, Alef: should I encourage people to move, Bays: should I encourage people to stay because that’s what other people are saying, or Gimmel:  whatever the Rebbe will say. 

In this case the Rebbe answered "Niskabel V’tac"h V’y’hay B’hosofo V’chooloo, Azkir Al Hatzion" which totally floored me because I had asked should I do Alef or Beis and obviously also asked Gimmel but I didn’t understand exactly what the Rebbe was saying over here "V’y’hay B’hosofo V’chooloo".

I decided to consult with other shluchim. The bottom line is, I don’t think there’s one answer for everybody and I’ll explain exactly what I’m saying. This is my interpretation of what the Rebbe is saying. 

There are some people who for them it’s an emergency, and they have to move right away and you have to encourage them. Other people can stay a while and it will be beneficial to them and beneficial to others. And for some people you’re better off keeping them there. 

I came to a conclusion, I don’t know if at that time, probably later, that I’m not going to build a community over here and that my shlichus is an adventure each and every day, and that’s the adventure. It has helped me tremendously. And I could explain what happened that brought me to that and what I mean by that. 

But getting back to the initial question and the answer that I got from the Rebbe, some people need to move right away. 

For example, there was a family that was here that had grown up in Eretz Yisroel, gone to a Reshet vocational school in Eretz Yisroel, it wasn’t a Chabad school in the full sense of the word but it was run by Chabad, and many of the teachers were Chabadniks. 

Anyway he moved to Tulsa and got a job here and he had a pretty good job with Ford Glass.

He had three children. One of them was grown and out of the house, one was a teenager that went to Broken Arrow High. Broken Arrow high school is a school of over three thousand students.

He was the only Jewish kid in the school at that time and the father was terrified that his son was going to come home with a non-Jewish girl.  The father told me "if my son comes home with a shiksa I will murder him. So if the police call you, you don’t have to look any further, I’m the one who did it. I’ve warned my son, I told him not to bring home a shiksa, he’s not even to date a shiksa."

This was a very traditional guy, a sefardishe. 

For this fellow, it was simply sakanas nefashos for him and for his son and for the rest of the family; they had to move, and the sooner the better. 

I encouraged him to move. Eventually he moved to California because he had some relatives there, that wasn’t frum enough for him, and eventually they moved to Queens,. He now is the one who opens up the Shul every day. 

He is an example of one who had to move right away. 

On the other hand, there’s a family that lived by us, they live now in Eretz Yisroel,. She has some children from a previous marriage, she remarried to a Jewish guy locally. She had a question whether she should stay in Tulsa or whether she should move to Houston where her older children were living at that time, or should she move to Eretz Yisroel where her parents lived and she’d be able to live a frum life. I told her that this was a question for the Rebbe.

To make a long story short, the Rebbe answered that "They should move to Eretz Yisroel, but not yet." They ended up staying five more years. During those five years they accomplished tremendous things: they are a 101% normal family, and they did tremendous things for themselves, for the community, for other people, they were a perfect example. 

Eventually, when their younger children were about five years old and needed chinuch, they moved to Eretz Yisroel as the Rebbe had told them, and they became part of a Chabad community. Baruch HaShem today both children are part of Anash. They learned in Tomchei Temimim and Beis Rivkah, the father wears a kapota, the son wears a kapota, etc. 

So that was the person who was not ready to move at that time. Had she moved, a lot would have been lost. During those five years, they actually developed a lot, both in terms of their own shaychus to the Rebbe and Chassidus, and their effect on other people. 

So I realized that the question was sort of ridiculous because there was no single answer. I just gave you two examples, there are others. But these are two ends of the spectrum.

Some people need to move right away, other people could stay longer and it would be a benefit for the community, and some people should stay long term. 

Anyway that’s as far as that specific question.

Later Baruch HaShem we built up, we had Shiurim going on, we had minyanim several times a week, I didn’t have to do anything. All I had to do was respond to people’s needs. But I didn’t really have to build so much, it was building by itself. 

As it turns out, people come and go to communities based primarily on one factor and one factor only, and that is jobs. If there are jobs there it will attract people. If they need to move, they’re going to move because of the job. That’s usually the case. So that’s what happened in Tulsa, there was a downturn in the economy, and about eleven families left the same year. 

I was devastated. I was ois-mentch. I had thought that "Bosi El Hamenucha V’el Hanachala" and our community is very strong and of course some people will come, some people will go, but the basic community will stay. And suddenly everything fell apart and it was ad kidei kach that in my mind I said "the last guy here, shut the lights."

It took me years, several years, to recover from that. But what helped me was, I came to the realization that I’m not here to build a community locally, but that every single day is an adventure. And when I get up and I say Modeh Ani, I am thrilled. I have another day of shlichus. My shlichus is to find each and every person and to do whatever I can with them.  

It is really a question of whose needs come first: that of the individual, or that of the community. My conclusion has been that the individual comes first. That is my understanding of what the Rebbe wants us to do. You, or someone else, might come to a different conclusion.

Baruch HaShem, we are always doing new things that we have not done before, however, it is not about building a community. It’s about what happens right now. And that’s where I am at.