“Leave while it’s possible. Things will get worse . . .

. . . it will be difficult to move from one country to another.”

Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Frankel from Brooklyn, known as the Rimanover Rebbe, in 2015 issued an unequivocal order for Jews to leave their homes in the diaspora and immigrate to Israel, before a civil war breaks out in the United States. JPRESS April 29, 2020


The Rimanover Rebbe visiting his forefather’s grave in Poland in 2018

An heir of Menachem Mendel of Rimanov—one of the early promoters of the Chasidic movement in Poland (alongside Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak the Chozeh of Lublin, Rabbi Yisrael Hopstein the Magid of Koznitz, and Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, the Apter Rebbe—Rabbi Frankel has been active in recent years on social media, especially with his talks on YouTube, which often touch on the coming of Moshiach.

This week, according to B’Hadrei Haredim, while visiting South-American and French Jews who have moved to Florida, Rabbi Frankel was extremely specific about the urgent need to make aliyah now: “Leave while it’s possible. Things will get worse and it will be difficult to move from one country to another.”

“After World War II, the survivors came and asked why the Gedolim and the Rebbes did not order European Jews to leave while there was still time and emigrate to Israel or the United States before the war broke out,” Rabbi Frankel told his small audience following the morning prayer service. “Truth be told, they (the rebbes) said and then some, they begged the Jews to flee the scorched earth, but part of the decree was that the Jews didn’t listen.”

“Today,” the Rimanover Rebbe said, “Listen to me well, dear Jews, whoever can afford to rise and ascend to the Holy Land should [do] it as soon as possible, and this includes large parts of South America and most of Europe. The US will also become a dangerous place mired in war, and it is still too early to tell which US state will survive, but many parts will be destroyed and poisoned, and a civil war will break out within the US, and states will secede from the federal government. The US will no longer be a place of refuge, but there will be a Jewish remnant here. The Land of Israel will be the safest place to survive the war, even though there will be terrible difficulties there as well.”

Regarding Chabad emissaries, the Rimanover Rebbe said that they could remain in their places as long as they have real work to do, but they should encourage Jews to immigrate to the Holy Land and flee, and wherever their activity ends, the mission is over and they must leave the city in which they were operating.

“If I could do it myself, I would get up and immigrate to Israel and pray on its soil, but what can I do, I don’t have permission to do so – in Heaven they holding me back for the time being, to stay here in the US,” the Rimanover Rebbe said.