A Fearless Leader

 The life story of Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Landau, a Chabad Chassid who was the chief rabbi of Bnei Brak, for over 30 years

Rabbi Moshe Yehuda was born on 9 Tammuz 5695/1935 in Ramatayim (today, Hod HaSharon). His father was Rabbi Yaakov Landau z’l, who then served as the local rav of the yishuv and his mother was Mrs. Chaya Minna Landau a’h. At his bris, he was named for his grandfather, rav of Kurenitz in White Russia.

About a year after his birth, his father was appointed as rav of the fledgling settlement of Bnei Brak and the family moved to live in this city of Torah and Chassidus.

Rabbi Landau later related:

“It was because of my older sister that my father had to leave Ramatayim and take on the rabbinic position in Bnei Brak. There was one nursery school in Ramatayim that, of course, was not religious. It was next to the shack that we lived in. My older sister would stand at the fence and see how the children played, but she wasn’t sent to the school.

“One day, my parents decided to send her to school. My mother met with the teacher and said she would send her daughter if, when she ate something, she reminded her to say a bracha. My sister knew how to say brachos but needed a reminder.

“The word got out in Ramatayim and made an uproar. Residents angrily protested this demand and complained that my father wanted to transform the town. ‘Soon, he will demand that we all wear kippot,’ they fumed. In the end, when matters did not die down but continued to intensify, we had to leave. Our next and final stop was Bnei Brak.”

From a young age, Rav Landau witnessed his father’s many rabbinic activities and observed his devotion to the proper establishment of Jewish life in Bnei Brak, and in Eretz Yisrael in general.

He described a trip to Metulla which was ek velt (the end of the world since it is the most northern town in Eretz Yisrael, bordering on Lebanon), as he put it, together with his brother and their father:

“One day, we went with our father to Metulla. Why? Because my father found out that in Metulla there was no mikva. In conjunction with the local residents, he decided to go and supervise the work of building a mikva, the first in the town’s history.

“A short while after building the mikva, it became necessary to install a heating system for the water.  This required close rabbinic supervision so the mikva would not become invalidated. My father decided to go back up north and supervise the installation. He told us that he was willing to take us on a tour of Metulla so of course, we happily joined him.

“The trip to Metulla wasn’t undertaken as it is today. If someone drove at 60 kilometers an hour (about 37 miles per hour), he was considered someone who drove quickly. As children, we would sing a song to that effect.

“Since the trip to Metulla could not be made in one excursion, we traveled to Tel Aviv and bought seats on Egged, on a bus going to Teveria. We arrived in Teveria and went to spend the night in the Tel Aviv Hotel. In the morning, after davening, we walked to the bus station near the sea. We discovered that many people were pushing near the doors of the bus, fighting to board. We got seats and set out for Metulla.

“When we arrived, my father rushed to deal with the matter for which we had come.  He oversaw all of the arrangements for the kashrus of the mikva that was built and finished the work at the end of the day. We had to spend the night in Metulla. They had reserved a room in the local hotel on the second floor, but only the first floor had water and plumbing. At night, he brought us a big pitcher of water with cups for netilas yodayim.

“In the morning, we went to the local shochet who was constantly in touch with my my father. He took us on a walking tour of the city and made a stop at the place that represented a key moment in the lives of Jews in Eretz Yisrael. We stood under a tree which, for several hours, served as shelter against the paratroopers of the German army, who had managed to land inside Eretz Yisrael with intentions to conquer it.

“I remember that on the lectern of the chazzan in shul, there was a charred siddur that was damaged by a German bullet fired during the battle against the British. I haven’t been back to Metulla since then.

“In one of the sefarim I inherited from my father, there is a leaf from that carob tree that my father took with him to Bnei Brak as a reminder of the miracle that prevented the Germans from entering Eretz Yisrael and conquering it.”

***

In his youth, R’ Landau learned in various yeshivos until he finally went to Yeshivas Tomchei Tmimim in Lud. There, he learned by Rabbi Boruch Shimon Schneerson and the mashpia Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Kesselman.

As a young bachur, only 20 years old, in 5715, he was hired as a teacher of young talmidim in the yeshiva in Rishon L’Tziyon, which shows the extent of his great talents.

Three years later, in Elul 5718/1958, he married. In 5724, he began teaching in Yeshivas Tomchei Tmimim in Kfar Chabad, a job he retained for 23 years. His students speak nostalgically about his shiurim that were delivered with great clarity, with outstanding broad knowledge and acuity. Thousands of talmidim acquired knowledge and wisdom from him over the years. He established legions of talmidim, many of whom later became shluchim and rabbonim in various communities. Many of them kept in touch with him and consulted with him on halachic topics, kashrus, and the world of rabbonus.

He also began serving as his father’s right hand and dealt with various rabbinic issues in Bnei Brak. Starting from 5740, he began running the municipal kashrus system that came to be admired by Jews all around the world.

“When I was starting out,” said R’ Landau, “the Rebbe guided me to continue teaching Torah in yeshiva and not to take the kashrus supervision position. Not long afterward, I realized that the Rebbe had seen what we had yet to see…

“This was back in the days that I gave shiurim in the Chabad yeshiva in Rishon L’Tziyon.  At the time that I traveled to the Rebbe, the yeshiva had run into difficulties and as such, they planned on opening a slaughterhouse for chickens in the Pardes Katz neighborhood of Bnei Brak and my father suggested that I serve as the supervising rabbi of the plant. When I had yechidus, I presented the question and offer, and the Rebbe said that considering my success in chinuch until then, I should continue in that field.

“Within a short time, it became apparent that the slaughterhouse would not be opened due to the opposition of the command staff of the nearby army base. The Rebbe already saw this ahead of time…

“In the years that followed, I helped my father with hashgacha in addition to working at the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad, and over the years, with Hashem’s help, we were privileged to set up and develop a wide ranging kashrus organization.”

FIGHTER FOR RELIGIOUS CAUSES

Even before accepting the rabbonus, R’ Landau was already involved in the struggles over the Jewish character of the city. When he was once asked in an interview for Hamevaser what was the thing that “built” Bnei Brak as a spiritual-chareidi city, he said, “Shabbos! Shabbos is what built the city.”

He recounted:

“I remember that, fifty years ago, when I entered the apartment that I live in till today, on Rechov Yehuda HaLevi, a mechalel Shabbos lived across from me. My first Shabbos in the apartment, I was about to make kiddush when I heard the radio that he had turned up loud. I could not remain quiet. I had no choice. I went outside and began to scream, ‘Chutzpah, a radio on Shabbos!’

“This is what went on one Shabbos, two Shabbosos, until the screaming began to have an effect. The neighbor left the apartment and was replaced by a religious man. This is how, step by step, our city took shape.”

His father passed away on 26 Shevat 5746. During the funeral, the mayor announced that according to the will and request of Rabbi Yaakov Landau, his son, R’ Moshe Yehuda Leib, would be the rav of Bnei Brak.

Being the rav and Av Beis Din of the city takes up a lot of time. To run a huge kashrus organization in addition, is a recipe for a daily schedule without a free moment. This is why he had to forgo the job he held for 24 years as rosh yeshiva in Yeshivas Tomchei Tmimim, alongside his brother R’ Eliyahu Landau.

At that time, the misnagdim in town began an all-out war against his appointment as rav of the city, because he was a Lubavitcher Chassid. But all of the Chassidic factions joined forces to defend the honor of Chassidus and did all they could to firm up his position as rav of the city. The one who waged the war behind the scenes was the Rebbe MH”M himself. He sent askanim to the great Admorim and poskim, so that they would support R’ Landau’s rabbonus. Until today, the campaign waged by the Rebbe is shrouded in secrecy.

In the period that followed, he did indeed firmly establish his role as rav of the city. In this position, he ran all religious matters in the city: eiruvin, mikvaos, kashrus, etc. Despite the opposition, his hashgacha was the most dominant in the overwhelming majority of grocery stores, fruit and vegetable stores and butchers in Bnei Brak.

In 5766, all Admorim in Bnei Brak signed a psak that no simchos could be held in a hall that was not under R’ Landau’s hashgacha.

At the same time, R’ Landau ruled on dinei Torah and worked to arrange compromises among litigants. Many benefited from his advice and wisdom as well as his experience in all aspects of life.

He also led the central Beis Hora’ah (center for halachic rulings) of Bnei Brak and trained a generation of halachic deciders and rabbanim, who answer questions in all areas of halacha and are highly regarded.  He also founded the Paamei Yaakov kollel, named for his father and led by his son-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Belinov. This kollel produced from its ranks legions of rabbanim and halachic deciders who are distinguished members of the world of halachic rulings.

RABBI LANDAU’S KASHRUS LABEL

The kashrus organization under his leadership that he built up and turned into the “number one” such organization in the entire world of kashrus, is an entire story unto itself. There aren’t enough words to describe his mesirus nefesh in the field of kashrus. All his days were dedicated to improving and developing the high standards of kashrus under his supervision.

For the sake of this holy goal, he worked day and night. R’ Landau would travel great distances, by day and by night, on the surprise trips he made to factories and stores under his hashgacha. He never spared any effort so that every Jew would know he could rely on his kashrus without a doubt. He always expended the effort to get to the bottom of every detail, and himself researched the production processes and ingredients and everything associated with them. He personally involved himself in the oversight of every single plant, with the help of the team of rabbis and expert mashgichim who operated according to his direct orders and together produced the best result.

R’ Landau was gifted with an impressive clarity of thought, an outstandingly sharp grasp and a fearless strength that he inherited from his father. He used all this in his rabbinic work in general and in protecting the highest standards of kashrus in particular.

The rav of Bnei Brak sat at home or in his office with a special telephone line dedicated for his kashrus supervisors to reach him at all times.  He was available to them 24 hours a day, and fully accessible to every individual supervisor, whether he was overseeing hundreds of acres of farmland or in charge of a small corner falafel store somewhere in Bnei Brak.  Any question that came up and every concern that was raised was reason enough to pick up the phone and call the person on top of this massive kashrus pyramid, and involve him in the smallest details of the small dried chickpeas that would be ground into falafal balls.

R’ Landau continued his father’s tradition of not charging a penny to receive a kashrus certificate, as opposed to all of the other supervising agencies (aside from minimal expenses; the rest of the expenses are paid for by the city of Bnei Brak) and not to charge a fee for his psak in dinei Torah.

R’ Landau’s kashrus organization is considered one of the most stringent, with many large food corporations also choosing to use his certification.  

Other kashrus agencies, despite being independent, would always check to see what R’ Landau says. This consideration and respect, helped tremendously in various important decisions that cropped up.

A TRUE CHASSID

R’ Landau had a strong personality that coexisted with his tremendous compassion, incorporating softness with firmness, extreme curiosity with warm and easy conversational skills, personal humility with rabbinic dignity, all fused into a practical life approach with both feet firmly planted on even firmer ground.

R’ Landau, before becoming rav, was first and foremost a Chassid, devoted to the Rebbe. For years, he received the Rebbe’s encouragement every step of the way. The Rebbe encouraged him to accept his role as rav after the passing of his father, as per the famous letter which stated, “It was already decided in the heavenly court that he would be rav of an ihr v’eim b’Yisroel (a major Jewish city) and he has doubts?”

R’ Landau once went to the Rebbe for “dollars” on 21 Sivan 5751. The night before, there had been a melave malka for Kollel Chabad and R’ Landau was invited as the guest speaker.

The next day, the Rebbe blessed him, “to have long days upon his kingship,” and asked how his speech went. R’ Landau, who in his great of awe of the Rebbe was afraid to open his mouth, shrugged and did not reply.

The Rebbe asked him, “Why are you shrugging?”

The secretary, R’ Groner, said the speech was very successful. The Rebbe looked at R’ Landau fondly and asked, “Then why are you acting with humility?” and gave him an additional dollar “for the anivus (humility). It is written that the difference between an ‘anav’ and a ‘shafal’ is that an anav knows his good qualities even though it has no effect on him, but a shafal is someone who does not even know his good qualities.  It is not a problem if you will be an anav… there should be good news.”

Over the years, the Rebbe himself showed complete trust and unshakable reliance on the sweeping kashrus organization led by R’ Landau, as the rav himself revealed in an interview that he gave to Hamevaser:

“The Rebbe gave his fullest support to our hashgacha. When we began to provide kashrus certification on tzitzis, the Rebbe announced that from now on, he would only wear tzitzis from the factory under our hashgacha. This was a chiddush, because in Lubavitch it was customary to spin particularly thin tzitzis and Chassidim considered this a hiddur and a beautification, to the point that they were known as, ‘geshmake Lubavitcher tzitzis.’”

The reason, said R’ Landau, was because the threads were spun by women whose expertise was such that they knew how to make them thin. Today, there are tzitzis on the market that are labeled “spun by men,” but this is solely for financial concerns and has no source in halacha. The Alter Rebbe writes explicitly about women spinning thread, that one should warn them to be particular about saying, “l’sheim mitzvas tzitzis,” which shows that their work is perfectly kosher.

“There was a factory owner who made thin tzitzis and he would occasionally send the Rebbe new tzitzis. The Rebbe accepted them with thanks. When I started giving a hashgacha on another factory, the Rebbe informed me that he prefers these tzitzis despite their not being thin as he was accustomed to. Some came to me with complaints about the tzitzis not being ‘Lubavitch,’ but at that time we were unable to make them thinner and yet, the Rebbe opted to use them.”

R’ Landau recalled an amazing story that shows how much the Rebbe relied on his hashgacha, this time, the kashrus of tefillin:

“There was a big dealer in Yerushalayim who sold tefillin straps that he marketed in all the cities. He once sent straps to the Rebbe as a gift and surprisingly, the Rebbe just felt the straps and immediately told R’ Groner to ask me to check them. Obviously, I followed through on a direct order from the Rebbe, and I made up with that manufacturer that I wanted to see the tanning operation for myself.

“I went to him and to my consternation I saw that he sprayed a coating of plastic-rubber on the leather. [I’ll explain: there is a thin layer of tiny scaly protrusions on the hide that do not hold the dye color for long. As such, it is first necessary to sand down the leather and remove that layer, but because of the scraping the strap loses its sheen.  As a solution, he would apply this special spray and then dyed it over the spray].

“I was alarmed. The dyeing is a Torah obligation passed down as a halacha l’Moshe Mi’Sinai. ‘Are you dyeing leather or dyeing plastic?,’ I asked him. He played dumb and answered that at the next stage they would rub off the spray, and it only helped the strap to remain smooth and shiny.  I told him: Let us do an experiment to see whether it is realistic. His spray was transparent and it was hard to really check out the process, and so I came up with an idea.  We mixed black dye in the transparent spray and after smearing it, the strap was completely black even before applying the kosher tefillin dye. 

“Then we scraped the spray layer as per the claim of the manufacturer and the results were clear: After careful scraping there still remained black dots on the strap, proving that the dyeing of the tefillin had taken place on plastic material and not on the straps themselves!

“In any case, in order to fully research the matter I had to look into what the ingredients of the spray were so as to see whether they meet the halachic standard of using only materials that are permitted for eating. Here, I came up against adamant refusal. They refused to reveal the list of ingredients to me.

“The manufacturer maintained that he could be relied upon and that he himself had checked all the data and observed that the spray itself was kosher. We did not compromise and in the end we were able to get the compound. We were horrified to discover that there was, in fact, what to hide … Among the ingredients was a material that was derived from the pancreas of a pig!

“In light of the sorry facts that were discovered, thanks to the far-reaching vision of the Rebbe, we mobilized to provide kashrus certification for tefillin straps made according to all the particulars of halacha.”

R’ Landau used that occasion to mention that often the Rebbe sent people to check tefillin and mezuzos when he was asked for brachos for sick people or other difficult circumstances. “I also have a miracle story like that …”

This is what he told:

“In Lubavitch there are certain customs regarding the spacing of the writing between the parshiyos of the tefillin, unlike what others do. Once and once only, the Rebbe told my father to check his tefillin. We did so and concluded that his, which were of distinguished provenance, did not meet this criterion. My father did not want to forgo putting on his tefillin, so every day after davening, he would also put on my tefillin in order to fulfill this obligation.

“One day, I lent my tefillin to someone and when it was time for davening and I still hadn’t gotten my tefillin back, I put on my father’s tefillin. That day, a certain problem arose and I sent a letter to the Rebbe. To my surprise, I received an answer to check tefillin, for the first time in my life. It was the only time I received this answer and the only time I put on tefillin that weren’t mine that were not in line with Lubavitch custom.”

THE REBBE’S MIRACLE

In his position, R’ Landau received many questions on an array of topics. There were occasions when the same question that was sent to him was also sent to the Rebbe, who ruled on it.  The answer wasn’t always from the legal perspective of a rav, but derived from the unique spiritual powers of a Rebbe. R’ Landau told an interesting story about this that occurred in the first years of the Rebbe’s nesius:

“There was a distinguished Jew in Bnei Brak who belonged to a certain Chassidic group in the United States, but when it came to his daily issues he would consult with my father.

“One day, my father was walking down the street on his way back from davening in the big shul on Rechov Rabbi Akiva and the wife of that man approached him and burst into tears. She told him she was returning from the hospital after a series of tests and they told her that one of her husband’s lungs had begun to shrivel and was in bad shape. The doctors told her that medically, there wasn’t much of a chance that he would survive. She was terrified and cried that she had little children at home who needed him.

“My father went to the hospital and asked to see the X-rays of the lungs. When his request was approved, he sent it to New York to the Rebbe and asked for a bracha.

“The Rebbe sent the X-rays to a well-known doctor in New York and asked him to personally review them. This doctor said that the situation was not that dire and it was merely a shrinkage that had resulted from a traumatic fear, a phenomenon that could be cured with an operation. In the halachic laws of treifos there is this distinction: there is a shriveling that makes it treif and a shriveling from fear, like an animal that sees the slaughtering of another animal, and there are different dinim that apply.

“Under the Rebbe’s direction, we went to the hospital in Beer Yaakov that specialized in lung treatment and made an appointment with a top doctor there. He examined the file and accepted the opinion of the doctor in NY and agreed to operate. I sat outside the operating room and after a few hours, the doctor emerged with encouraging news that the second diagnosis was accurate and they were able to save the lung.

“After this miracle, this prominent person who was one of the respected personages of Bnei Brak went to the Rebbe to thank him for his part in this.”

HIS FINAL JOURNEY

R’ Landau became sick at the end of Shevat and on motzoei Shabbos Parashas Shemini, the parasha that speaks at length about the kashrus of food, which so defined his life’s work, he passed away at the age of 84.

According to his will, there were no eulogies but before the procession set out, the mashpia Rabbi Elimelech Biderman said divrei hisorerus. He said that on Shabbos, Jews read the command “and you shall make yourselves holy and be holy,” for the foundation of the holiness of the Jewish people is a pure table.

“This Shabbos, Klal Yisrael lost the person who most symbolized in this generation, taking a stand for the sanctity of food. Chazal say that when one sheds tears for a ‘kosher person,’ Hashem counts the tears and places them in His treasury. We are all crying for a kosher man, who ‘kashered’ the tables of the entire generation.”

At the massive funeral, the mayor of Bnei Brak, Rabbi Avrohom Rubinstein, announced the appointment of his son, Rabbi Chaim Yitzchok Isaac Landau as his father’s successor along with Rabbi Rosenblatt, one of the leading halachic deciders in the city.

R’ Landau is survived by his impressive sons and sons-in-law; mashpiim and shluchim, roshei yeshiva and rabbonim. ■