By COLlive reporter

At 10:00 PM on Sunday, 5th of Teves 5754 (December 19, 1993), Rabbi Yossi Cunin received a phone call from Thomas Pickering, the United States Ambassador to Russia. “Be at the Raddison Hotel at 2:00 AM,” he instructed.

Cunin, today a Chabad Shliach in Beverly Hills, California, was stationed in Moscow at the time. Representing Agudas Chasidei Chabad, he and his brothers were working all avenues to release the Schneerson Collection, a treasure trove of Chabad seforim and manuscripts from Russia.

Having endured repeated disappointments, the phone call from Pickering offered a ray of hope. The Ambassador informed him that attending the late-night meeting would be Undersecretary of State Nick Burns and Leon Fuerth, National Security Adviser to Vice President Al Gore.

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the visit of the vice president the next day at the Russian State Library (RSL), the largest library in Russia and the second-largest library in the world.

“He will demand one book from the Russians!” Pickering reported.

For the young Cunin, it was a promising breakthrough. “Finally, we are seeing the brachos of the Rebbe for us to lobby in Washington, DC bearing fruit,” he thought.

INSIDER’S TIP

His father, Rabbi Shlomo Cunin, was one of the Chassidim has been enlisted by the Rebbe to obtain the Schneerson Archive that belonged to the dynasty of Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbes before the Russian Revolution.

Working on it along with Rabbi Cunin, the Head Shliach of California, were Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Aharonov – Chairman of the Lubavitch Youth Organization (Tzach) in Israel, Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan of the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue in Moscow and Rabbi Berel Levine, Head Librarian of the Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library in New York.

The group was thrilled when in the winter of 1991, a staffer from the office of Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, shared with them some invaluable advice.

“Congress is approving millions of dollars in grants and loans to Russia,” the insider reported. “It would be in your best interest to have a congressman write a letter to the Russian government demanding the return of the Schneerson library.”

The person indicated that by applying pressure on the Russian government, the Kremlin would be forced to negotiate the return of the Schneerson library due to their dire need for U.S. financial aid, and by seeing the U.S. government’s interest in the cause.

Rabbi Cunin relayed this information in a phone call to the Rebbe’s secretariat (Mazkirus) at Lubavitch World Headquarters – 770 Eastern Parkway in New York. “With the Rebbe on the phone, I raised the idea of sending my sons to Washington, DC,” Rabbi Cunin recalls.

The Rebbe approved the plan and when the Cunin sons passed by the Rebbe’s during Sunday Dollars, each received an extra dollar and blessing for their Shlichus to lobby U.S. officials. The sons were Chabad Yeshiva students at the time but quickly familiarized themselves with the halls of Capitol Hill.

The sons knocked on doors, and rode the underground subway between the House and Senate to catch a word to elected officials. In 1992, they succeeded in producing a historic unanimous letter from all 100 U.S. senators addressed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin demanding the return of the Schneerson library.

VIDEO: The Cunin brothers by the Rebbe on 2 Nissan 5751 (March 17, 1991)

RUSSIAN STALEMATE

But Yeltsin remained quiet on the matter, so the Cunins and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut worked with Senator Al Gore of Tennessee to introduce the “Freedom for Russia Act” bill in July 1992. It was approved and thereby cut all financial aid to any Russian entity withholding the Schneerson Library (it remains in effect to this day).

The Kremlin still didn’t budge. This was despite two rulings by the Supreme Court of Russia in favor of Chabad’s claim. The government itself refused to implement those decisions. “The Russians declared flatly that they would not comply with the court’s decisions,” Rabbi Yossi Cunin told COLlive.com.

In Moscow, negotiations had come to a standstill. “At one point, after more than a year, the Russians didn’t talk to us anymore,” Rabbi Levin recalled. “We exhausted all our efforts. So, for two months, we were alas at what to do.”

Then there was a positive development. The Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States and asked Al Gore to be his running mate. The Cunins were excited about the prospect of having an ally in the White House.

Even before winning the election, Clinton and Gore signed a letter to Rabbi Shlomo Cunin expressing their support for the cause. “A Clinton/Gore Administration will support your efforts to secure the return of the Schneerson-Agudas Chabad texts,” they wrote on September 12, 1992.

“We support your struggle to retrieve these historic texts and look forward to the day when you achieve this long-awaited goal,” they added.

VIDEO: Al Gore presents the Freedom to Russia Act at a Senate Session in July 2, 1992

THE PHONE CALL

That connection came into play when Ambassador Pickering called the Cunins for the late-night meeting.

“My son Yossi and I arrived at the Raddison Hotel,” recalled Rabbi Shlomo Cunin. “During the meeting, Undersecretary Burns said that the Russians will be giving Vice President Gore a book called “Magen Avraham.” I looked at him and said, “one book and this is what they will give me?! I want to bring the Rebbe a book from his dynasty!”

His son Yossi then chirped in. “A few days ago, I was in the library with my friend Simcha Backman, and we came across a 100-year-old Tanya, from first single-volume printing ever made. It was gifted by bochurim of the Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim to the Frierdiker Rebbe who was the Menahel at the time. We have the book record number, so Mr. Gore can request this book.”

Later that day, Rabbi Shlomo Cunin was called to meet Vice President Gore in his hotel room. The day itself, the 5th of Teves, carried great significance to the Chabad movement as the day stollen books from the Rebbe’s Library were ordered by a U.S. court to be returned.

Gore presented Rabbi Cunin with the rare edition of the Tanya that he received from the Russians. “I know how the Russians work,” the vice president said. “So to ensure that you make it through Russian Customs, I wrote a brief letter in the book, both in Russian and English, using my Vice Presidential power, authorizing you to take the Tanya to Rabbi Schneerson in Brooklyn.”

It didn’t end there. Rabbi Cunin says, “Mr. Gore sent us to the airport in his motorcade and had the Secret Service escort us all the way throughout the airport until we were safely in our seats on the “American” airplane to New York.”

“When we landed, we headed for Crown Heights, straight into Gan Eden Hatachtoin, where the Rebbe was sitting at the entrance to the office,” Rabbi Cunin recalled. “We presented the Rebbe with this great matono (gift). You could see the smile and the nachas ruach the Rebbe had.”

Undersecretary of State Leon Fuerth recalled: “Although it was only one book that was returned, that did not stop Vice President Al Gore. At every meeting he had with the Russian government, he had a picture of the Rebbe placed in front of him to remind the Russians of what was important to him.”

The Cunins say that whenever they meet a U.S. official, they hand out a photo of the Rebbe as they exchange business cards. “We do it to remind us all of what the Rebbe’s directives are – to have all of the seforim and kisvai yad returned to Beis Rabeinu Shebebavel 770 Eastern Parkway,” concludes Rabbi Yossi Cunin.

VIDEO: Rabbi Shlomo Cunin in a message for Hei Teves 5783