"There's No Place in the World Where a Person Can Get a Yeshuah like Sighet" says Satmar Rebbe

 

In this week's Ami Magazine, Issue 542, Yitzchok Frankfurter interviews Rabbi Usher Horowitz, the one who was instrumental in arranging both the building of the new Sighter Bais Medresh in Sighet and the Satmarerer Rebbe's trip to Romania to inaugurate the new Bais Medrish.

R' Usher Horowitz describes in this interview how he managed to buy the properties in Sighet and the difficulties getting to Sighet:

"The thing is that Sighet is very out of the way from anywhere else important to frum Yidden, and the journey isn't easy either. It happens to be quite close geographically to Munkatch, but it's in a different country, which means a very inconvenient border crossing.

But the Rebbe didn't want just want to build something anywhere in town. He said it's only worth it if we can build in the place where the Kedusha always was."

" The closest airport that's currently open for commercial travel is in Cluj (Klausenburg) which is a three-and-a-half hour ride away by car and requires a stopover in Frankfort from New York. "

Did you read this? 

He wanted to build "in the place where the Kedusha always was."

If this place is the only place where "kedusha always was", why is it that R' Yoel Teitelbaum left Sighet to go to Krula eventually settling in Sata-Mara? 

R' Usher Horowitz continues:

"All of the Sigheter sefarim say that when one goes to a place where ancestors davened, even if they're no longer alive, the tefillos ascend immediately to shamayim. This was the strongest point for him (the Satmarer Rebbe) we have to be able to daven in that place. The Rebbe believes that there's no place in the world where a person can get a yeshuah like Sighet." 

Notice that he says that the premise that one should go to a place "where ancestors davened, even if they're no longer alive, the tefillos ascend immediately to shamayim" is written in "all of the Sigheter sefarim" ... 

Why is this idea found only in "Sigheter sefarim?" Why wouldn't this great secret be found in any other Chassidishe sefer?

So let's understand this ..."The Rebbe believes  that there's no place in the world where a person can get a yeshuah like Sighet." 

How about a Chabad guy? Will he only get a Yeshuah if he travels to Maramorsh Sighet? Is this Chabad guy wasting his time at the Ohel in Queens?

What about the tens of thousands that make the annual pilgrimage to Uman? Should they start making the treacherous journey to Sighet?

" no place in the world where a person can get a yeshuah like Sighet." 

I think based on this idea, Kalev ben Yefuna , one of the meraglim made a huge mistake travelling to the Mearas Ha'Machpeilah, to be mispallel, he should have gone to Sighet, he would have been successful!

All the Jews that were chased out of Israel and stopped at Kever Rachel to cry and daven,  "Rachel mevakah al ba'neighu" should have gone to Marmerosh.

"the tefillos ascend immediately to shamayim" this statement is actually blasphemous, this statement is a takeoff from last week's parsha where Yaakov said when he woke up at the place where the Bais Hamikdash would stand

"מה נורא המקום הזה אין זה כי אם בית אלוקים וזה שער השמים"

Listen R' Usher ....

Hashem doesn't want any Jews to go to Sighet and daven. Eli Weisel was a native "Sigheter" open his book  read his description of how the Sigheter goyim helped Nazis lead the Sigheter Jews out to their slaughter, and burnt down the Sigheter shul, read how the "friendly" Sigheter neighbors  (words straight out of R' Usher's naive lips) couldn't wait to  pave over the area to build a soccer field.

In this 4 page interview, Eretz Yisrael, is not mentioned once. Not once.

Poiskim question whether making a blessing, a bracha, is a Biblical obligation or a Rabbinic obligation. The one bracha that comes the closest to be a Biblical obligation is "birchas ha'Torah" the bracha that one makes before davening or learning. But that isn't so simple as there are Rishonim that argue and say that this bracha is Rabbinic" 

There is one solitary bracha where there is not any dispute and all agree that it is Biblical.

The blessing of Birchas Ha'mozon 

הזן את הכל , which thanks Hasem for the miraculous Manna in the desert

and the second bracha

ואכלת ושבעת, וברכת את ה' אלוקך על הארץ הטובה אשר נתן לך ברוך אתה ה' על הארץ ועל המזון

this blessing goes for food in general and for giving us Eretz Yisrael

So What does food have to do with Eretz Yisrael?

Meforshim point out that in the bracha, הארץ is mentioned before המזון, and that is because any substance that you get is only in the merit  of Eretz Yisrael

In fact Chazal say if someone bentched and left out the words 

ארץ חמדה טובה ורחבה

he must repeat the entire bentching.

Can it be that when Sigheters bentch they have in mind soil of the cursed Sighet, the soil soaked in Jewish blood? Do you really think after reading this interview that Satmar Chassidim really thank Hashem for Eretz Yisrael? Or are they thanking the "Samach Mem" that made it possible for them to buy the cursed Sigheter properties to build a shul where goyim hate them and can't stand looking at a Jew? After all they think that Sighet "is their homeland."