Reb Yankel Lipskier was hardly your typical New Jersey chicken farmer. He had made his bones in Soviet Russia, where he was the manager of a factory and an active participant in the underground Chabad movement. He was well positioned to support the secret yeshivah that had sprung up in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he and his family lived during World War II.
When the Iron Curtain lifted briefly during the chaotic years that followed the war, Reb Yankel, his wife, Taibel, and their growing brood escaped to the west and lived in France for a short while before coming to the United States. Once they arrived, they settled in Brooklyn to be close to the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, of righteous memory—who had left the Soviet Union in 1927, but had maintained a close, if clandestine, connection with the Jews who remained there.
Entering the rebbe’s study, Reb Yankel asked the rebbe to advise him regarding parnassah. What should he do to earn a livelihood? The rebbe advised him to purchase a Yiddish newspaper and see what opportunities were being advertised. Then the rebbe looked at a page of the newspaper that was in front of him. Running his pencil along the columns of notices, he paused to mark an ad for a chicken farm for sale.
Located in Hightstown, N.J., 60 miles southwest of Brooklyn, the farm hardly seemed like a place to raise a growing chassidic family. But Reb Yankel and Taibel needed no more convincing. Clutching the newspaper clipping, Reb Yankel approached the offices of the Joint Distribution Committee and asked for assistance to purchase the farm.
“I’m sorry,” he was told by the sympathetic but skeptical case worker, “that farm is a losing proposition. Why don’t you look into something that has more potential?”
Crestfallen, Reb Yankel returned to the rebbe, who told him, “They will give you funds for the farm. Go back and ask again.”
And so it was. With the help of the Joint, the Lipskier family soon found themselves on a farm in New Jersey.
They weren’t entirely alone. In those days, there were numerous Jewish farmers in the area—mostly fellow immigrants from Europe—and Reb Yankel did his best to kindle the latent spark of Judaism within them.
Even as his farm floundered (the officials from the Joint had been correct in their assessment), his spiritual endeavors thrived. The sleepy synagogue was alive with classes in Tanya, Ein Yaakov and Jewish law.
“You think I sent you to New Jersey to be a farmer?” the rebbe once remarked to Reb Yankel. “Many others can be farmers. You are there to fulfill a Divine mission!”
Life on the farm was hard. The community remained painfully small, and there were few if any other young chassidic families for miles around.
A bright spot in the monotony of loneliness and poverty that was their lot was when the rebbe would dispatch groups of rabbinical students to the area. Sleeping on the synagogue’s hard benches, the young men would travel from farm to farm every day for several weeks, selling Jewish texts for nominal fees, encouraging the farmers to increase their Jewish engagement, and reminding them that there was a Jew in Brooklyn who cared for them deeply.
It once happened that a group of students arrived before Shabbat and told Reb Yankel that they had been given a specific instruction from the rebbe: to find out the full Hebrew name of Moishe Green. (When praying for someone, it is customary to pray using their Hebrew name and the Hebrew name of their mother.)
Reb Yankel’s mind began racing. He knew just about everybody in the tight-knit Jewish community, and he could not think of anyone named Moishe Green.
Shabbat morning came, and Reb Yankel approached the gabbai, the synagogue caretaker, to see if he perhaps knew the identity of the mysterious Moishe Green.
“Yes, I know who he is,” the gabbai said. “He lives around here but has never stepped foot in the synagogue, not even on Yom Kippur. Oddly enough, he came to synagogue this morning and is actually sitting and praying right over there.” The caretaker gestured discreetly in the direction of a man with a pronounced hunchback.
Looking at the stranger, Reb Yankel realized that his face was familiar. Every Shabbat, as Reb Yankel walked to synagogue, he would see the man, a fat cigar in his mouth, waiting at the bus stop for the express bus to Jersey City.
Following prayers, Reb Yankel announced that there would be a grand kiddush reception, during which the visiting rabbinical students would share words of inspiration and lively chassidic melodies. Reb Yankel made sure to sit down next to the newcomer.
Once everyone was seated around the table, happily tucking into the herring, kichel (sweet cracker) and spirits, Reb Yankel raised his glass and announced that there was another reason for the celebration. He was marking the yahrzeit (anniversary of passing) of his mother, whose name was Batsheva. “And what was your mother’s name?” he asked Moishe Green as nonchalantly as he could.
With the prized information in hand, the rabbinical students were able to report back to the rebbe with the information he had requested.
Meanwhile, Reb Yankel was curious to know what would happen to Moishe Green. The following Shabbat, as he walked to the synagogue, he passed the bus stop, but Moishe was nowhere to be seen. The same thing happened the next week, and the next. Moishe had disappeared.
“Do you know what happened to Moishe Green?” he asked the synagogue caretaker, who seemed to know everything about everyone. “I have not seen him for several weeks now.”
“You didn’t hear?” replied the caretaker. “After spending Shabbat with the rabbinical students sent by the rebbe, he suddenly left his non-Jewish family and moved out of town!”
While our story ends here, we can only speculate that somewhere in the world the stooped figure of Moishe Green entered a synagogue or yeshivah, ready to resume the Jewish life he had left behind so many years prior.
As for Reb Yankel? It was several more years that he would remain on the chicken farm. In 1954, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, told him that his mission in New Jersey was over, and that he could relocate with his family to Brooklyn. He did so, opened a small grocery, and threw himself into communal life, serving as a gabbai in the Rebbe’s synagogue.
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