24 Tishrei · Yahrzeit
The Rybnitzer Rebbe
The Rybnitzer Rebbe – Rabbi Chaim Zanvil ben Moshe
Yahrzeit – 24 Tishrei;
Resting Place – Monsey, America.
The holy tzadik, the Admor of Rybnitz - Rabbi Chaim Zanvil Abramovich, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, was born in 1898 in the town of Buhan in Bukovina. At the age of two and a half he lost his father and was raised in the home of Rabbi Avrum Matisyahu, the tzadik of Stefanesht, who was the grandson of the famous Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin, with whom the great grandfather himself had managed to study the entire aleph-bet for the first time at the age of three. The Stefaneshter Rebbe was one of the leaders of Romanian Jewry, and his portrait hung in every Jewish home before the war. A tzadik of the highest holiness who worked wonders, he received a multitude of people every day until late at night, who came to him for advice and blessing. Here is what the Rebbe of Stefanesht was described as by his disciple, the Rybnitzer Rebbe.
Once, during the first prayer of Yom Kippur, "Kol Nidrei," the beit midrash in Stefanesht was extremely crowded with people.
When the Rebbe was told about this, he said: "Let all the living remove the tallis from their heads." As soon as people began doing this, the hall became half empty. All the souls who had come from the other world, who were obligated to conceal themselves, urgently left.
After his passing in the early 1930s, the grave of the tzadik of Stefanesht became a place of mass pilgrimage.
After the war, in the early 1950s, the body of the tzadik was brought to the Holy Land and buried near Bnei Brak, in Givatayim. Today many people visit this place. Interestingly, in the town of Stefanesht itself, where there have been no Jews for many years, the site of his original grave is carefully guarded by local residents.
They consider this place holy, coming there to pray, and newlyweds visit it before their weddings, believing it brings blessing.
The Stefaneshter tzadik had no children of his own, and he raised Rabbi Chaim Zanvil as a son.
He studied Torah under the Rebbe and simultaneously under the Gaon Rabbi Yehuda Leib Tzirelson, who granted him rabbinic ordination (semicha). He once related that already at the age of 18 he knew the entire Talmud with Rashi. After his marriage, Rabbi Chaim Zanvil lived in various towns, but eventually settled in Rybnitza, Moldova, where he lived through all the years he spent in the Soviet Union.
After the war, when Soviet power had become firmly established in the region and began systematically uprooting Jewish life, the Rybnitzer Rebbe became one of the few pillars upon which all of Jewry rested. Coordinating his actions with the Chabad underground, he sustained minyanim and mikvehs, and organized underground Torah education for children and adults. As a shochet and a mohel, he was able to cover distances of many kilometers through impassable forests in order to perform yet another circumcision or shechita. In the course of his life, the Rebbe circumcised several thousand Jewish children. As a token of support, the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent him a siddur as a gift from the USA, which he cherished greatly and from which he would read the entire Book of Tehillim every Shabbat.
But most important for the Jews was that he was a tzadik who blessed, healed, saved, and helped in the most hopeless situations. Living in poverty, dressed in old, worn-out clothes, a man not of this world, he received a multitude of people.
And everyone could see that in our day, when science has explained everything and knows everything, when Gagarin went into space and met no one there, there is a G-d, Who rewards and punishes, and Who gives to those who truly serve Him the strength to wait for miracles.
For his activities, the Rybnitzer Rebbe was subjected to persecution. He was partly saved by personal connections with representatives of the local authorities, who were indebted to the Rebbe.
The fact is that during the war years, some of them had been partisans, and the Rebbe, risking his life, gathered food for them and sent it into the forest, which saved them from starvation. In addition, there were situations when they themselves were forced to ask for his help to heal their relatives and loved ones. The Rebbe prayed for them, and it helped.
The Rebbe left the Soviet Union in 1973, when emigration began to be permitted. In the Holy Land he settled first in Bnei Brak, and then in Jerusalem, living in the same house as Rav Yitzchak Zilber, as the latter recounts in his book. The appearance of the Rebbe from Rybnitz made an indelible impression in Eretz Yisrael. From distant Russia came a tzadik strikingly reminiscent of the stories about the righteous of the past, who fasted for entire days, perceived hidden things, and worked miracles. The Rebbe's small apartment was packed with people all day long. Everyone came to him: Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Chassidim and Litvaks.
According to accounts, the siddur the Rebbe prayed from was stuffed with numerous notes bearing names and requests.
Amazing details were passed from mouth to mouth.
When on Shabbat, after the prayer, people would pass before the Rebbe to say to him, "A gitten Shabbos," he would extend his hand to everyone. But to someone who had not been to the mikveh before Shabbat, he would not extend his hand, sensing this unerringly.
The Rebbe soon faced another problem as well. In Israel, just as under communism, one had to fight for Jewishness. In the 1970s, a large (relatively speaking) wave of aliyah of Jews from the USSR began. For the most part, these were people cut off from Jewish life, lacking even basic knowledge and understanding.
But from the Carpathian region, from which the Rebbe himself had come, there also came observant families and traditional Jews whose Jewishness was still strong—people he had already dealt with back in the Soviet Union. Such olim were deliberately settled by the authorities on the periphery, far from the Torah centers of Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, in order to assimilate them and their children into secular society and raise them anew.
What they had preserved with such difficulty under communism was falling apart before their eyes in the land of the Jews. The Rebbe began an active campaign to save these Jews. He communicated with the Jews of the Carpathian region, trying to support their Jewish spirit. He maintained contact with them both from the USA, where he moved soon afterward, and during his visits to the Holy Land. He sent trustworthy people to various towns to reach these families, and organized Torah study for their children. Some of them were successfully placed in yeshivas. There were people who entered into negotiations with the authorities to secure apartments for religious families from Russia, as was customary at the time in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. In some cases this succeeded. Soon the Satmar Rebbe from the USA joined this effort, as well as the fledgling organization "Yad L'Achim." In this way, the work grew in scale.
In 1974, the Rebbe left for the USA. In America he lived in various places: Miami, Crown Heights, Boro Park, and at the end of his life – in Monsey. In every place he lived, he was an address for Jews who found themselves in trouble, seeking salvation, advice, or blessing. Everyone turned to him, including those in the circle of the Gaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. The Rybnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Zanvil Abramovich, passed away on 24 Tishrei, 1996, and is buried in Monsey. At his request, his grave was built so that it would be convenient to pray beside it. Since then, many people have come there.
The Rybnitzer Rebbe served the Creator with self-sacrifice, giving all his strength to this service. Under any conditions and at any time, he immersed in a mikveh or a body of water that could serve as one every single day, and no obstacles could stop him. If necessary, for the sake of the mikveh he would travel many kilometers uphill, or cut a hole through the ice of a frozen river. If, at the end of a long journey home, he happened to encounter, for example, an immodestly dressed woman, he would turn back and walk for several hours to immerse again. He adhered to strict rules of guarding the purity of his eyes and thoughts. Therefore he never rode in the same car or wagon together with a woman, even his own wife. When during the war they had to flee, the rebbetzin rode on the wagon while the Rebbe ran many kilometers, holding onto the back of the wagon. This guarding of the eyes was also the reason for the miracle that occurred with him during the early period of his life in the USA. In the house where he lived there was no mikveh, and to immerse he had to cross a busy highway. Despite his advanced age, he made this trip running there and back, never looking to either side. Cars sped by at high speed on the wide highway, and it was a great miracle that day after day nothing happened to him. This continued until a mikveh was built in his house.
All his time was filled with prayers, preparation for them, various mitzvot, and receiving people. The Rybnitzer Rebbe never slept in a bed, only sitting in a chair. His sleep usually lasted from half an hour to an hour. And from the night before Friday until the end of Shabbat, he did not sleep at all, so as not to waste the precious minutes of the holy Shabbat on sleep. As a result, when, finishing the Mincha of Shabbat, he stepped back the required three steps after the Amidah, he would simply collapse, exhausted, into a chair, and for a while would be unable to move. And this happened every single Shabbat.
The Rebbe was especially known for his recitation of "Tikkun Chatzot," which he said in the deep of night, lasting about four hours. During this prayer he would light many candles, put on sackcloth, sit on the floor, and literally weep over the exile of the Shechinah and the desecration of the Name of the Almighty in the world. During these hours, no one was to be present in his room, but his weeping and moaning could be clearly heard through the locked door. This "Tikkun Chatzot" inspired a sacred awe in those around him, and they were afraid even to approach the closed door of his room. Once, when the rebbetzin fell ill and had to be taken to the hospital, it was necessary to inform the Rebbe, but he was in the middle of reciting "Tikkun Chatzot" at that moment. Despite the emergency, the household members were simply too afraid to disturb him, so they wrote a note and slipped it under the door.
The Rybnitzer Rebbe fasted literally every day, except for days when fasting is forbidden by halacha. Fasts end after the conclusion of the evening prayer, Maariv, with the start of the next day. Since the Rebbe usually prayed Maariv around midnight, it was precisely at that time that he would break his fast. And so it went, day after day. Being a well-known mohel, he often performed circumcisions and, as required, took part in the seudat mitzvah, the festive meal following a brit. The Rebbe would sit at the table, speak divrei Torah, offer congratulations, give blessings, and sing, but not eat. One of his secrets lay in these fasts. Once, during such a meal in which the Admor of Sanz-Klausenburg also took part, the Sanzer Rebbe tried to persuade him to break his custom just this once and partake in the mitzvah. He began citing sayings of our Sages about the importance of this meal.
"I tried it once already," the Rebbe answered him, "and a great misfortune resulted."
Evidently, in these fasts he saw a remedy for the accusations hanging in the Heavens over our people.
I do not know whether the Rebbe ever saw a doctor during his life in the Soviet Union, but in the more comfortable years in America he did seek medical care. After running tests on his digestive tract, the doctors were horrified. "One cannot live in this condition," they declared. "He must stop his fasts immediately." But the Rebbe did not stop fasting, and he lived past the age of 90.
On Shabbat and holidays the Rebbe would hold a tisch, during which he would eat. Knowing about his fasts, one could only marvel at how much he ate in honor of Shabbat and the holidays. The only explanation could be that both his eating and his fasting had nothing to do with the desires of the body, but were dictated solely by considerations of mitzvah. During the tisch at the Rybnitzer Rebbe's it was joyous; guests were given "shirayim," a lechaim was made over good vodka, which the Rebbe valued, and there was singing. Sometimes, in the middle of the gathering, the Rebbe would close his eyes as if falling asleep. Those who understood said this was "deveikut," a state of cleaving, in which the tzadik's mind travels very far away and connects with the Source of all. Sometimes, opening his eyes, the Rebbe would say to one of those present: "And I just did something for you."
The Rybnitzer Rebbe was a renowned mohel, and in this capacity he was often invited. His attitude toward brit milah was special. According to testimonies, from the outside he looked like a kohen serving in the Temple. Long before a circumcision he would begin to prepare for it, going to the mikveh once more especially for the brit, and performing the circumcision wearing a tallis and the tefillin of Rabbeinu Tam.
Each of us receives help from Above according to the principle of measure for measure, in accordance with the level of our service. If a Jew truly puts all his strength into the mitzvot — and often we are capable of far more than we think — in response he receives Heavenly support that comes within the framework of nature. But if he breaks his own nature and takes upon himself what is beyond his strength, purely in order to fulfill the Creator's command with the greatest possible perfection, doing what seems impossible, in response the Almighty sends him supernatural help, beyond the framework of nature. The Rybnitzer Rebbe served the Creator, literally sacrificing himself, and in response G-d gave him the power to work true miracles. There are many stories of his miracles. I will bring just a few, those with a specific narrator.
Sipurei Tzadikim
This story was told by the Rebbe himself.
Once during the war, the Jews of the town of Rybnitz received an order to gather at a certain place. There, armed Ukrainian police surrounded them on all sides and led them into the forest to be shot. At a pre-prepared spot, several hundred of them were lined up and preparations were made to shoot. At the last moment, the Rebbe turned to the commander:
"Before an execution, there is a custom of granting the person's last request."
"What do you want?"
"Ten minutes to pray," he answered.
Having received it, the Rebbe turned to the people with words of encouragement, saying they must pray and not lose hope of salvation. While they prayed, a column of German vehicles pulled up to the site, and a high-ranking officer got out and asked what was happening there. Upon hearing the answer, he ordered that all the Jews be released home immediately. In this way they were saved.
2. Reb Yitzchak Wolf Erman was a devoted gabbai of the Rebbe who had known him back in Russia. He emigrated to the USA. From the moment the Rebbe arrived in the States, he and his wife Golda faithfully served him and the rebbetzin for many years. Here is the story of how they met, as he told it himself. Reb Yitzchak Wolf lived in the town of Seleš, in a region that before the war had been part of Hungary and only afterward became part of the Soviet Union. For this reason, Jewish life in the town partially survived in the first period after the war. Religious Jews from other places often came to the town to stock up on kosher food. Among them was Avrum Markovich from Lvov, who came about once a month. At some point it happened that he disappeared and did not show up in the town for a long time. One night Reb Yitzchak Wolf had a dream. In the dream an unknown old man came to him and said that Avrum Markovich was in trouble and that he must save him. He remembered with complete clarity every detail, even the old man's coat, which was missing a button. But dreams, as is well known, are not to be trusted, and he did not act on it. But this dream began to repeat itself every night, and eventually Reb Yitzchak Wolf had to drop everything and set out on a long journey to Lvov. For this, special permission from the authorities was required at the time. Finding Reb Avrum's address and entering his home, he learned that Avrum was in the hospital in serious condition, that no one there was treating him, and that his wife could do nothing about it. The family itself, lacking a breadwinner, was simply starving. Reb Yitzchak Wolf fed the children and the wife, gave them food for the future, and then began seeking connections at the hospital. In the end, his intervention helped, and Avrum finally began to be treated properly. When he recovered, as a token of gratitude he introduced Reb Yitzchak Wolf to his Rebbe, who lived in the town of Rybnitz. When Reb Yitzchak Wolf first came before the tzadik, he immediately recognized in him the old man from his dream. Everything matched completely, even the coat missing a button.
This story was told by Mordechai Luxemburg, father of the writer Eli Luxemburg.
As is well known, no one was allowed to leave the USSR, so when a family did manage to receive permission to emigrate, it was considered a great miracle. One Jewish family whom Mordechai knew received such permission, but then misfortune struck. Their son had begun seeing a non-Jewish girl and wanted to marry her. He refused to leave himself and was holding everyone else back. They turned to the Rebbe, and he said he would speak with the young man.
"You know," said the Rebbe, "there is a mitzvah in the Torah about the beautiful captive. If a Jewish soldier in war becomes attracted to a non-Jewish woman, he is permitted to marry her. But first the Torah requires that her hair and nails be cut, and that her beautiful clothing be exchanged for mourning garments. She must live in his house and mourn her gods and family. The point is that what people call love is often simply infatuation with outward beauty. If that beauty is taken away, the infatuation passes. Tell me, would you still love this girl if she turned out not to be beautiful on the outside?"
The young man answered that their love for each other was real, not dependent on outward beauty. With that they parted. Soon afterward the girl was in a car accident, as a result of which she was badly burned. The young man devotedly cared for her, spending whole days at the hospital. But evidently her appearance affected him. The girl fully recovered, but the relationship cooled and soon ended. This family left the Soviet Union.
4. Reb Avrum Cohen – a Jew from Slovakia who miraculously survived the Holocaust. In the USA he was very close to the Rybnitzer Rebbe for many years and served as his right hand in matters of circumcision. He recently published a book of memories about him. He tells of their first meeting, which took place before the Rebbe's move to America, in Jerusalem. When he came before the Rebbe, the Rebbe warmly took his hand in his and began to say, "Reb Avrum, do you remember..." He began to recount episodes from his past that had been forgotten, even by himself, moments that absolutely no one else could possibly have known.
5. Reb Zalman Margaliot – a businessman from London, whose son fell ill with leukemia, may G-d save us all from such things, and the doctors gave him no chance. They sent him home and said he had two weeks left. At his request, messengers went to the Rebbe and gave him a kvitel—a note with the sick boy's name and a request to save him. Having read it, the Rebbe closed his eyes as if he had fallen asleep. Only the veins on his face pulsed intensely. This continued for a very long time, so long that the messengers grew tired of standing. Finally, opening his eyes, the Rebbe said: "Call him and tell him he will be well." That very same day, Reb Zalman received a call from the hospital. He was told that the doctors had a new medication they wanted to try on his son. The young man fully recovered, got married, and today, thank G-d, is already marrying off his own children.
6. Once, a Russian Jew who knew and understood nothing of Jewish practice happened to appear at the Rebbe's minyan. Seeing him, the Rybnitzer Rebbe immediately called him over and said, "Repeat after me." Word for word, together they recited the entire text of the Kaddish. When the worshippers later began asking the man who he was and where he was from, it turned out that that very day was the yahrzeit—the anniversary of his father's death. The man himself, of course, had not known this.
I would like to conclude this article as is customary among Jews on such occasions. May the merit of the holy tzadik Rabbi Chaim Zanvil ben Rabbi Moshe of Rybnitz help and protect us and all of Israel. Zechuso yagen aleinu ve'al kol Yisrael!
(from the book "Constellation Chernobyl," with the personal permission of Rav Yaakov Doctor)