'You and the Rebbe took over Leningrad before the Mossad!'
Rebbe ahead of Mossad
I looked at him and couldn't stop being amazed. “You and the Rebbe took over this city before the Mossad!” I said. “You are already carrying out the task that was entrusted to me!”
Mission: infiltrate the USSR
To this day, I do not understand why the Mossad chose me among my fellow officers. Maybe because I also had a foreign passport? I served in the Israel Defense Forces, in the Nahal Brigade. After demobilization, I received an invitation to join the Mossad. According to my beliefs, I could not disobey! There is a law in the army: if you are given the command to jump, you will jump, despite the dangers associated with it. I did not even think then about the consequences, and about whether I was ready to take such a risk. Just as once, proudly throwing up my head, I went to battle in Lebanon, sitting in my armored personnel carrier, with the same determination I entered the office of the Mossad. I received a special order.
My task included: to infiltrate the USSR, which at that time, in 1989, was already beginning to disintegrate, and to organize Jewish youth groups wishing to ascend to Israel. We had to secretly meet with young Jews, give them books in Hebrew, religious literature and objects of worship, and thereby encourage them to want to leave for Israel. We met with them at railway stations and at safe houses. Both we and they were in danger.
In the early 70s, the communists allowed a small number of Jews to leave the USSR. Unfortunately, many of those who left the country immigrated to the diaspora. Our task was to strengthen the desire of the Jews to choose the Land of Israel as their place of residence.
Miracle at the airport
For decades, since Nativ was created, its agents have been coming to the Soviet Union via Finland and other Scandinavian countries. The year I was traveling, the management decided that I should come to Russia via Vienna. Since the communist regime had already shown a crack, there was no need to play it safe, and my ticket could simply be Tel Aviv - Vienna - Moscow. This way, Russian customs control will know where I came from.
I was supposed to act openly and simply, as if I had nothing to hide. On my first trip, I had a huge 60 kilogram backpack on my shoulders, stuffed with Jewish and religious books, as well as a lot of video cassettes, in general, what was forbidden to be imported into the USSR at that time.
Naturally, when I approached the checkpoint, the customs officer rubbed his eyes in surprise. They decided to detain me for a more detailed check. All the contents of the backpack were gutted, and, of course, sedition was discovered.
The customs officers acted as if they had caught a smuggler with an astronomical amount of drugs. They pulled out cassette after cassette, book after book, talking about something. There was a long queue behind me, people looked at me with surprise and shock.
After a couple of minutes, which seemed like an eternity, two tall soldiers came up and asked me to follow them into one of the rooms. An officer, hung with medals, entered the room and immediately began to yell at me. I speak Yiddish, German and English, but I don't know Russian. I did not understand a single word that this officer shouted out.
When he finally realized that I did not understand at all what he wanted from me, he switched to English and asked: for whom are the videotapes intended? I told the officer, as I had been instructed, that I was a Jew and had come to Russia with Jewish souvenirs to leave as a gift in the first synagogue I went to.
The officer was furious. He pounded the steel table furiously with his fists and ordered the soldiers to leave. At this stage, it became clear to me that this was the end. That's how sadly and unexpectedly ended my brief job as a Mossad agent. Now I have only one way, stage by stage, to Siberia, and for a long time.
But suddenly, something amazing happened, for which I can not find an explanation to this day. The officer grabbed me threateningly by the collar of my shirt and brought his mouth close to my ear. I felt his breath on me. Chills seized me. With a heavy Russian accent, the officer whispered in my ear, "Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Ehad." Then he hurled me sharply into the distance.
For a moment I thought it was a hallucination. I looked at him, I was shaking with shock, and the officer, on the contrary, said quite calmly: “He needs to go to the synagogue, you see…”
The officer ordered me to follow him, and the two of us walked past all the airport security checkpoints. Then, he let me go in peace. I left the airport, pinching myself in disbelief: was this a dream? Either he is really a Jew, or something happened that only the Almighty knows. After all, I was a "fat fish" for them. Before I left, the officer ordered the soldiers to return all the things back to the backpack, which they had so carelessly gutted earlier. My things turned out to be packed much better than they were packed in Nativa!
The Rebbe's Messenger got ahead of me
Gradually unwinding from the events at the airport, I concentrated on my mission: to come to Leningrad, find a synagogue, and leave my “goods” that I brought there. From a brief briefing, I knew that the synagogue exists, but what it is, and whether there are parishioners in it, I did not know.
The synagogue was found, I was upset to see it in such a neglected state. Spider webs covered the corners of the old building. However, the synagogue was active and was open. In it sat two elderly Jews with white beards, both praying. Against the backdrop of everything that happened to me in Russia, they seemed like angels to me. I approached the old people and started a conversation with them in Yiddish, and began to ask: how many Jews come here, how many praying Jews do not attend this synagogue?
The elders were friendly and willing to answer. After a short conversation, they pointed to another Jew sitting not far away. I turned around and saw a room that was once intended for Torah study. There was a young man sitting there who didn't look like a local. Passing by two long benches that separated us, I addressed him in Yiddish. He smiled and said, "I speak Hebrew." I was taken by surprise: “What, are you from Israel? What are you doing here?!"
He said that he had been sent to Leningrad by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I was confused: “A Lubavitcher Rebbe? But you don't look like a Hasid at all!"
He said his name was Avi Taub, the head of a diamond polishing company in Netanya, and he was close to Chabad. In recent years, the Rebbe gave a number of assignments that Avi, with his close friend, Rabbi Dovid Nakhshon, were to complete in the Soviet Union.
At the direction of the Rebbe, shortly before my arrival, they organized the delivery of the necessary elements of the Passover Seder for the Jews of Leningrad. Avi bought a large amount of matzah, Haggadah editions, fish and other necessary things for Passover. He arrived a few days before the holiday, and handed over everything he had bought into the hands of Chabad Hasidim, who were engaged in Jewish events in Leningrad. Thanks to the Rebbe's messengers, many Jews were able to hold a kosher and joyful Seder.
I looked at him and couldn't stop being amazed. “You and the Rebbe took over this city before the Mossad!” I said. “You are already carrying out the task that was entrusted to me!”