"I can still see the fire. Rav Aharon's eyes were burning,
and his heart was burning, with ahavas Hashem, ahavas
haTorah and ahavas Yisroel."
With those words, Rebbetzin Nechama Karlinsky invited an
audience of 200 women and girls to step out of our everyday
lives and through the doors of history to revisit Gedolim of
the previous generation. She was joined by Rebbetzin Rina
Tarshish, great-granddaughter of Rav Avrohom Yitzchok Bloch,
Hy"d, Rosh Yeshiva of Telz (Lithuania), and Rebbetzin
Sara Meislish, daughter of the previous Bobover Rebbe, who
shared their personal recollections in an unusual seminar
called, "I Still See Them," hosted by Mercaz Beit Yaakov,
Jerusalem.
Although we ourselves didn't merit to see Rav Kotler, we
gazed into the eyes of one who did, and were warmed by the
reflection. "I can still picture myself as a six-year-old
girl in Lakewood, [sitting with my father] in close proximity
to Rav Aharon," recalled Rebbetzin Karlinsky. "As an eight-
year-old, I remember myself in the ezras nashim, eager
to catch a glimpse of the Rosh Yeshiva. I felt that, no
doubt, the Shechinah was resting on him. I can also still
hear Rebbetzin Kotler saying, Yehei Shmei Rabbah and
Kedushah. I can still see her tears pouring while she
davened. She would open her siddur, and it
would get wet."
Rav Aharon fought with the ferocity of a lion to implant the
idea of yeshiva and kollel learning on American shores. Yet
"his genius in Torah was paralleled by his genius in bein
odom lachaveiro," Rebbetzin Karlinsky described. Her
father, a talmid of Rav Aharon in Kletzk, was one of
36 Kletzker bochurim exiled by the Russians to Siberia
in June 1941. Providentially, their sentence of ten years'
hard labor in a prison camp was commuted after only four
months, but they were not allowed to leave Russia until after
the war. As their train stopped in Novosibirsk, en route to a
collective farm in Dzijak, they sent a telegram to Rav
Aharon, who was then in Lakewood, N.J.
"Did you send the telegram so the Rosh Yeshiva would worry
about you?" Rebbetzin Karlinsky asked her father.
He smiled. "Not really," he replied. "But we knew that if the
Rosh Yeshiva knew where we were, we wouldn't starve to
death." Indeed, after their arrival in Dzijak, parcels began
arriving from Lakewood. Each package contained a new suit, a
pair of shoes, tea and cocoa, which could be sold on the
black market for rice and flour. The proceeds from each
parcel would feed the bochurim for three months . . .
and then another package would arrive.
*
"When I close my eyes and try to relive the image of my
father, it is definitely the enthusiasm and bren that
comes to mind," said Rebbetzin Sara Meislish, daughter of
HaRav Shlomo Halberstam, the previous Bobover Rebbe. "It was
a privilege for him to do a mitzvah. He lived from
mitzvah to mitzvah."
Rav Halberstam lost his wife and most of his children during
the Holocaust. Yet when he came to America with his eldest
son, Rav Naftuli, to rebuild his life and the life of Bobover
Chassidus, his dedication to mitzvos never wavered.
"Whether he was lighting Chanukah licht, baking matzos
on Erev Pesach or shaking a lulav and esrog on
Succos, thousands of people were inspired," she recalled. The
Jewish Observer wrote: 'His simcha and fervor
were the same whether he was making Kiddush before thousands
of people or at his own table with two guests.'
"Once, when he was in his eighties, he was in Florida for a
vacation and had to have a cataract removed. Never had he had
any medical procedure done on him, and he was frightened. My
sister flew down to be with him. The doctor saw his fear and
said, `Rabbi, don't worry. I've been doing this operation for
so many years that I can do it with my eyes closed.'
"My father turned to my sister and his gabbai and
said, `Did you hear that? I've been putting on
tefillin for 72 years, and I still can't do it with my
eyes closed.' Each time he put them on, it was like the first
time."
Rebbetzin Meislish also described her father's love for the
mitzvah of tzedakah, which saw him give away
hundreds of thousands of dollars in charity. He taught her
the proper use of money at a young age. Once he took her to
the home of a wealthy benefactor. "Ooh, Tatte, what a house,"
the little girl whispered admiringly.
"Does it help?" the Rebbe replied. "Does it help our
avodas Hashem? The Eibishter should save me, my
children, my grandchildren and all our generations from such
a house!"
*
Rebbetzin Rina Tarshish, who has guided hundreds of Beis
Yaakov mothers and daughters across the Torah landscape of
Eastern Europe, still sees the royal legacy of Telz in her
grandmother's presence. "To this day, when I look at my
grandmother (Rebbetzin Rochel Sorotzkin, daughter of the last
Rosh Yeshiva of Telz, Lithuania) and her sister, I see
malchus. It's in the way they carry themselves. It
comes from the fact that from beginning to the end, [their
lives are saturated with] Torah."
During the war, that attitude saved her grandmother's life.
When she and her husband made their escape from Lithuania to
Shanghai, Rebbetzin Sorotzkin was traveling on a forged
passport. Her husband already had a passport, so one of her
brothers forged her name onto his own. As the couple prepared
to leave, her father, Rav Avrohom Yitzchok Bloch,
Hy'd, told her, "I don't know how long you'll be gone,
but you must make a seder hayom. Every day, set the
table, eat a meal together, and then learn. You learn Rashi,
halacha, or Novi, and your husband will learn
gemara."
Rebbetzin Sorotzkin followed that advice faithfully
throughout their long, wearying journey. Though they were
delayed in certain transit stops for up to six months, she
set a table every day, ate with her husband and then sat down
to learn.
"Once, they were sitting and learning on the train when
someone came through to check passports," Rebbetzin Tarshish
related. "When he entered their compartment, he saw it was
very neat, the table was set, and two people were learning
very comfortably. He asked the man for his passport, and my
grandfather casually waved it at him. There was nothing wrong
with that passport, of course. The conductor was sure that
people like that couldn't have any trouble, so he didn't ask
my grandmother for hers, and he went on to the next car."
As the speakers described the middos and maasim
of their great ancestors, it was hard not to regret how much
we have lost. However, Rebbetzin Tarshish gave us hope with
an interesting observation. Why do so many yeshivas from the
past continue to be known by the names of the towns they
occupied (e.g. Telz Yeshiva, the Mir, Ponovezh Yeshiva,
etc.)? One explanation, according to the Midrash Rabbah on
Parshas Massai, is that any place that was zocheh to
be a resting-place for Torah gains a measure of eternity.
"But when I walked into Telz, and heard what the town had
done [the Nazis massacred all the males of the city,
including all the members of the yeshiva, on 20 Tammuz
5701/1941, and murdered the women and children on 7 Elul], I
said, 'This is not Telz,'" Rebbetzin Tarshish recalled. "Telz
is the yeshiva, the ahavas haTorah, the malchus
haTorah and the students who went on to open yeshivas
around the world. This city is left with nothing. The
eternity was moved from this place to every place around the
world. Today, every yeshiva that bears the name of one from
the past is the real community."
May we be worthy of living in these exalted tents of
Torah.
*
The seminar ended on a poignant note with the first-ever
English-language screening of a Mercaz Beit Yaakov film
entitled, "I Still See Them." Decades after World War
II, candid and formal photographs of ordinary Yidden in pre-
war Poland began to surface throughout that country. Some had
been left in the hands of gentiles, others set aside as
keepsakes, and still others plucked from the ruins of
ghettos. The comments that accompanied these photos rend the
heart:
(An outdoor group photo of learned men, talking together
in Torah): "I received the photo from my father. He said
they must have been Jews from the way they were dressed."
(A Jewish boy sharing a laugh with his father): "I saw
these faces for the first time in Gura-Kalewia in 1939 and
photographed them."
(A man on a park bench): "Dear Ksziv, I am sending you
a picture of one of my patients from the clinic."
A photo of a smiling girl dressed in a starched blouse,
seated at her piano, was found in a glass frame in Radomsk. A
snapshot of a Jewish family adorned the mantelpiece of an
elderly Polish woman — they were once her neighbors.
The words and poetry of Leah Landau and the evocative music
of N. Hakohen underscored the tragic fate of these people,
while at the same time connected them to the viewer in a
profound way.
"This is a whole different way of looking at the Holocaust,"
explained Mrs. Leah Averbuch, the seminar coordinator. "We
want to show that these people had a life beforehand. A mark
on a report card meant the same to a little girl then as it
does now."
