In the entire history of Chabad Hasidism in the Holy Land, there has never been a crisis as acute and serious as the "stinking exercise" crisis of 1990.
However, it is a mistake to think that the volcano that erupted and poured boiling lava on the heads of Chabad and its institutions in the midst of the Passover holiday of the year appeared out of nowhere like a "fallen note from heaven."
Anyone who believes that the reason for the 2009 events in the Chabad-era was due to the 2009 events in the political arena is also mistaken. The connection is merely technical: an opportunity found by interested parties and those with a tongue to jump in and destroy and destroy every good plot in order to invent themselves and cultivate their own personality and status.
Moreover, the dramatic event that erupted on Passover 5750, the details of which will be described in detail, was preceded by 'background noises' and 'earthquakes', which, even at the time of the event, anyone who witnessed and experienced them could have anticipated and speculated to what extent they were harbingers of evil.
In order to understand reality as it is, we must briefly review some factual data that is known to every Rabbi.
A distinctive and exclusive address
From the very beginning, the man who managed the Rebbe's secretariat from the foundation to the details was Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Isaac Chodkov, a Jew endowed with a great personality and blessed talents - and was devoted and devoted to the Rebbe with every fiber of his heart and soul. So devoted, that not a single word that came out of Rabbi Chodkov's mouth was not treated as if it had been spoken from the very mouth of God. Every instruction, statement or question asked by Rabbi Chodkov or spoken in his name - was as if it had been uttered by the Rebbe himself.
Throughout the years, I have witnessed this on countless occasions, and it was impossible not to be awed by this sacred and fascinating power. In my humble opinion, Rabbi Chadokov, in the name of the Rebbe, managed the Chabad kingdom perfectly. All the institutions, with their heads and senior officials, everywhere on the globe, saw him as a clear and exclusive address to which any question addressed to the Rebbe should be submitted, and he was the human focal point from which the Rebbe's instructions, in all their details, emerged one after another, without question.
Rabbi Khodukov, with unsurpassed wisdom and great intelligence, knew how to accommodate mistakes and blunders made by businessmen in various countries, knew how to convey harsh messages from his own mouth and hide the fact that they came from the Rebbe; he never incited a businessman against a businessman, etc. The boundaries were clear to each of the businessmen, and Rabbi Khodukov stood guard over the border.
No one could cross the boundaries of the authority given to him and his sphere of action. Gossip did not exist with Rabbi Khodukov – it had no place at all. You could never hear him speak ill of another businessman. It seems that in this he was the Rebbe’s closest disciple.
Never, not once in decades, have I heard him slander another Jew – and anyone who has had the privilege of working in the service of the Lubavitch Kingdom will testify, as I can, that even telling him slander about another businessman was very difficult, to the point of impossible.
'Conquer' the territory
A turning point occurred in the secretariat in the mid-1980s when Rabbi Leibel Gruner, a man of infinite ambition, decided in his heart to intervene in the field of Chabad activity in the Holy Land. In my opinion, his ultimate goal was to 'conquer' the area and replace Rabbi Chodkov [-who was already in his 80s], as someone who personally manages the institutions and, in effect, Lubavitch life through his followers who were subject to his discipline. It seems that Eretz Israel was chosen by him first, since, unlike other Chabad institutions around the world, there are many institutions there that are managed by more than one management - and it was easier for them to find loopholes and use them to gain control, partial or complete.
His first tangible attempt to gain a foothold and subjugate what was happening in the Holy Land was when, at some point, he began to make prolonged, self-initiated telephone calls to the yeshiva office in Lod, which (as described in another chapter) was a kind of distinct and representative 'address'.
The person who received those phone calls and had long, drawn-out conversations with Rabbi Leibel Gruner was my friend Rabbi Barka Wolf. The conversations, which began as an interest in some technical pretext, soon devolved into details and details. Rabbi Leibel simply wanted to get to know the map in detail, to learn and become as familiar as possible with internal information about the daily routine of the institutions and Chabad activities in the Land of Israel.
I confess: As soon as I noticed this new phenomenon, I suspected that danger lurked behind it and that this was the beginning of an unclear conspiracy. I remember well how I warned my friend Baraka about these distanceless conversations; I didn't know what the trend really was and what was behind the man's urge to call overseas again and squeeze out more and more small pieces of information about what was going on in the institutions, but I felt that no good would come of it. Unfortunately, Baraka did not heed my call to stop the matter - he simply did not feel like doing it.
Incorporating new 'faces'
At a certain point, apparently, Rabbi Leibel Gruner realized that his salvation would not come from this. He understood that in order to advance to a position of control, he had to bring about a personnel change, recruit soldiers, and in effect build a new "business" that would undercut the existing businessmen. Only in this way, he knew, would he achieve a situation in which people from the country would feel committed to him and in turn would make sure to update and later even receive instructions from him and report solely to him.
He soon identified a suitable person and took him under his protection, and this was the stage at which Groner began, persistently and consistently, to cultivate Yosef Yitzhak Aharonov, designating him to be his man in Israel.
Looking back on everything that has happened since then, it is imperative to name the child after him. The very existence of Rabbi Ephraim Wolf, the Rebbe's representative in the Holy Land, and all those who stand at his right hand, was a trifle in the eyes of Rabbi Leibel Gruner. He was looking for people who would follow his discipline without deviating to the right or left without his explicit word.
In Aharonov he saw the appropriate figure for this.
Another element in the system was Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, the rabbi of Kfar Chabad.
Rabbi Ashkenazi, who was endowed with intelligence and talent and was the sharpest of the political Chabad rabbis during the period in question, managed to drag the other rabbis after him, when the time was right, and together with Rabbi Leibel Gruner, they also went to war.
Rabbi Leibel Gruner understood that in order to prepare the ground, two things were needed: First, we had to smother our sense of holiness within. Simply blacken every action, drip drops of poison, belittle and dissolve the credibility of the active workers in the Rebbe's service, and thereby prepare the ground for the integration of new faces. Second, build for Yosef Yitzhak Aharonov a status and prestige that would enable his reign as the head of Chabad in the Holy Land.
He waited for the right moment, and it soon arrived.
To the best of my knowledge, the first opportunity to stink was following the second Rambam Siyum ceremony.
A fatal failure at Yad Eliyahu
Since the Rebbe instituted the daily study of the Rambam, the umbrella organization of Chabad institutions in the Holy Land has taken upon itself the organization of the Rambam graduations. The first event was held on Chol HaMoed Pesach 5785, and was attended by many thousands of Haredi Jews, led by the Rebbe Baal HaLev Simcha Megur zt"l. This was the first time that Chabad Chassidut held an event for the general public of Torah and mitzvot observant people, and the massive presence of thousands from among those who are not Chabad Chassids made a huge impression.
Towards the end of the second Rambam, the management of the umbrella organization decided to raise the bar and hold the event at the Yad Eliyahu Sports Hall in Tel Aviv. This was the first time that Haredi Judaism in general and Chabad in particular had held an event in this huge place. This was an enormous feat that the umbrella organization of Chabad institutions in the Holy Land, under the direction of the Rebbe's emissary, Rabbi Leibel Kaplan, took upon itself.
It was a matter of filling no fewer than seven thousand seats. The task, in those days, was not at all simple and unprecedented - and the fear of failure was real.
At a meeting we held earlier, it was decided that we would bring the five hundred students from the Chabad Village Craft School to the venue. The plan was that if the hall filled up without them, we would not allow them inside.
Soon, a little over an hour after the opening of the event, it became clear that thousands were gathering at the gates. So we immediately implemented the alternative plan, and left the school students outside. Since these were not students who were characterized as being "working" or "educated" in Hasidism, and not exactly the type that characterizes the students of the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva - they didn't really like the fact that they were dragged all the way and ended up being left outside. They rioted outside the gates and demanded to be let in.
But that's not the point of the story: In preparation for the event, the Rebbe sent seven thousand single-dollar bills to be distributed to those attending the Rambam graduation ceremony. On the initiative of Rabbi Leibel Gruner, and in accordance with his hidden efforts to involve himself and his followers in what was happening in the Holy Land, he invited Yosef Yitzhak Aharonov to New York to receive the bills and bring them to Israel. The plan was to distribute the bills in the middle of the event.
An inevitable tipping point
Soon, the news that there was a dollar sent especially by the Rebbe for the participants spread and became known to everyone, and even aroused enormous excitement among all those present, and from then on the event reached an inevitable point of explosion. A storm of emotions inside, from those present who heard about the upcoming distribution and began to move and tremble in order to try to understand how they were guaranteeing that a dollar bill would reach them as well; and outside - five hundred noisy boys who were 'demonstrating' and getting excited and knocking on the gates and asking to enter.
The chaos inside and out caught the attention of the security guards - and apparently the management of the place decided to involve the police. The police began to fear disturbances and danger to life, and informed us immediately after the distribution began that it had to stop and that they were absolutely forbidding the distribution and that this was a pikuach nefesh that could end in disaster.
In rapid preparation, it was decided to listen to the police, stop the distribution - and hold it at the NSH concentration centers later and not during the event itself. Fortunately, the mood soon calmed down and the event continued in a normal, exciting, happy and very respectful manner to the satisfaction of all those present. We even calmed and compensated the students and things ended peacefully.
We could not have imagined then that there would be someone who would see fit to take this incident, blacken it, and benefit from it for their own personal gain.
However, in the winter of 1987, after a period in which I felt that Rabbi Leibel Gruner was leading moves against us, I initiated a meeting with him at his home, in which I sought to feel the pulse and know exactly which way the wind was blowing.
In this meeting, Gruner explicitly told me: "I'm surprised that you don't feel that there is a cool breeze towards you following the chaos that occurred at the end of Maimonides."
I have no doubt that the locked doors and the crowds knocking on them were not the source of the problem. Not the overwhelming success of filling, for the first time ever, such a large and central hall in Israel; on the contrary, in my opinion, this was only a reason to bring satisfaction and contentment to our father, our shepherd - the Rebbe.
Crowds were knocking on the doors while the stands were packed; what was considered "chaos" that justified "coolness" in Gruner's opinion? I understood then that dishonest and unreliable information had been presented, regarding the failure to distribute the dollars to those present during the event.
Rabbi Leibel Kaplan refuses to believe
I returned to Israel, and immediately initiated a serious conversation with Rabbi Leibel Kaplan. I described to him the situation as it had dawned on me. For the sake of historical truth, I must point out that "internal" trends of this kind, at such a high level and so sacred, were unfamiliar to us, and I remember the effort it took to formulate, to explain to Rabbi Leibel Kaplan what I was talking about.
But finally I told him clearly and unequivocally: Our situation is not good. You must give some kind of favor to Aharonov, so that the incitement against us by his patron, who has not ceased to sow venom and destruction within the palace, within the sanctum sanctorum, will cease.
Rabbi Leibel Kaplan did not accept the words and apparently believed that I was exaggerating and overstating my understanding of reality. He had always been endowed with self-confidence, for the better. In his high position, he was unwilling to hear of such a possibility, in which someone would incite against him out of such low bias; and to think that this type of incitement could cause real damage, and undermine the ground on which he stands and on which he acts on the Rebbe's mission, with dedication and absolute loyalty? Impossible, he thought.
The subversion continued with tenacity and perseverance.
On the one hand, these were days of prosperity in every possible sense in the momentum of Chabad activity in Israel. On the other hand, in such a strategic location, in a real king's palace, sat someone who, in everything related to what was happening in the Holy Land, never stopped trying to obscure and wait for another opportunity to quarrel and blacken.
Slowly, Rabbi Leibel Gruner felt that his control battery was charged and perhaps he also appreciated his success more than it had been at certain points in time.
But in late 1948, he decided that the time was ripe for an open putsch.
Chapter One:
35-year-old secrets revealed for the first time: The 'stinking exercise' that shook Chabad
Chapter Two:
Chapter Three:
When Oded Ben Ami asked the Rebbe: "So it is preferable that Mr. Shamir be Prime Minister?"
Chapter Four:
Sharon's Oath and the Mysterious Eve: A Dramatic and Emotional Conversation with the Rebbe
Chapter Five:
English 
Hebrew