The early 1950s was an especially terrible time for Jews in the Soviet Union, a period filled with terror and dread. Joseph Stalin's infamous "Doctors' Plot" was at its peak, and Russia's Jewish physicians were disappearing rapidly. People were being purged left and right, never to be heard from again. Around the world, Jews wept and pleaded with G-d, but there was no salvation in sight.
It was the night after the holiday of Purim, 1953. In Brooklyn, New York, a large crowd of Jews had gathered to farbreng with the Rebbe. Many of the participants had themselves just recently escaped from the behind the Iron Curtain. A good number had personally suffered the wrath of Stalin's tyranny, wasting away for years in Russian prisons. Still, many such Chasidim could not forget their oppressed brethren across the sea.
That year at the Purim gathering the Rebbe delivered a Chasidic maamar (discourse) on the verse, "And he brought up Hadassah, who is Esther." As always, the Rebbe's holy countenance underwent a visible transformation before beginning the discourse, his elevated state of deveikut (attachment to G-d) signaling that he was about to utter the "words of the living G-d." Indeed, a few minutes later the Rebbe delivered his maamar.
The gathering continued for the next few hours, during which the Rebbe gave several informal talks, Chasidic melodies were sung, and numerous glasses were hoisted in "l'chaim."
It was late at night - almost dawn, in fact - when an unusual thing occurred. For the second time that evening the Rebbe's holy face began to radiate with that special solemnity and earnestness that meant that he was preparing to deliver a maamar. The Chasidim could barely believe what was happening. The Rebbe had never delivered two maamarim at the same gathering!
The room was still. No one uttered a sound. The Rebbe began to speak:
"After the Czar fell in Russia, it was announced that the government would be holding elections. The Rebbe Rashab [the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe] went word to the Chasidim that they were to participate in the voting process. There was one particular Chasid who was completely removed from worldly affairs; to him the political arena was foreign territory.
"Nonetheless, having received an explicit instruction from the Rebbe, he set out to fulfill his command. With a sense of awe and reverence he immersed himself in a mikva, donned his gartel (sash) and set out for the polling booth.
"Of course, when he got there he had no idea what he was expected to do, but some of the more worldly Chasidim helped him cast his vote. Adjusting his gartel, the Chasid did what everyone else was doing. When the votes were cast, everyone cried out 'Hurrah!' Taking his cue from those around him he likewise cried out, 'Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!' "
As he uttered these words, the Rebbe's face burned with a holy fire. The Chasidim were astounded; they realized that more was going on than met the eye, but they did not understand the significance of what had just occurred. Swept up by the powerful emotion that filled the air, the crowd spontaneously rose to its feet and shouted, "Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" three times.
After this strange preamble the Rebbe delivered his second maamar, based on the verse in the Megilah, "Therefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur."
[In the introduction to a different Chasidic discourse published almost 50 years later, reference is made to that second maamar: "...It was obviously connected to the events that were then taking place in 'that country,' the fall of its dictator, an enemy of the Jews. This was understood from the story the Rebbe told right before the maamar about the Rebbe Rashab's directive to the Chasidim during the Russian Revolution, after the Czar was toppled."]
In 1953, March 4th coincided with the 17th of Adar. On that fateful day the Russian state radio in Moscow made the startling announcement that two days previously, the night after Purim, Joseph Stalin had fallen gravely ill and had lost consciousness. The next morning, the 18th of Adar, the whole truth was finally revealed: Stalin was dead. He died at the exact moment the Chasidim were shouting "Hurrah!" back in Brooklyn at the Rebbe's gathering. [The Hebrew words "hu rah" mean "he is evil"]
Jews throughout the Soviet Union breathed a collective sigh of relief, tempered, of course, by a realistic apprehension of the future. No one, however, could have imagined in his wildest dreams a more miraculous end to Stalin's reign of terror.
At long last the "Doctors' Plot" was over, and countless prisoners were set free. In the wake of Stalin's death the oppressive atmosphere in the Soviet Union was greatly lightened, and so ended one of the grimmest chapters in the annals of Russian Jewish history.
