The great Rav Yitzchak Zilber - teacher of an entire generation of Russian-speaking rabbis
Yahrzeit - 8 Av
Burial place - Jerusalem
Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber - Isaac Yakovlevich Zilber, Yitzchok Yosef Tziyoni (1917-2014) - an activist of the Jewish religious underground in the USSR, founder of the Toldot Yeshurun movement to bring Russian-speaking Jews of Israel back to Judaism, and its spiritual leader.
Rabbi Zilber was born to Rav Bentzion Tziyoni Zilber - the Rabbi of Kazan - and Leah-Gitl Shapiro. He received a traditional Jewish upbringing under conditions where this was practically impossible, which had a significant influence on his entire subsequent life. His religious feeling made itself known very early. Already at the age of 5, Yitzchak dreamed of moving to Israel.
The Rav received his entire education, both religious and secular, from his father and never attended a single day of school. At 13 he began learning locksmithing, then worked as a 6th-grade locksmith in the city council's production workshops. In 1935 he studied at the evening preparatory courses of the Kazan Chemical-Technological Institute. He then enrolled there and studied for a year, but his passion for mathematics led him to transfer to the mathematics department of Kazan University. In his application to the rector, G. Kh. Kamai, he wrote of his "passionate" love of mathematics and promised to study only for "good" and "excellent" grades. In 1935 he passed the exams for Kazan University as an external student. He initially chose chemistry but switched to mathematics. He became an associate to Professor Nikolai Chebotarev, the leading algebraist. Zilber was expelled from the Chemical-Technological Institute at his own request on July 14, 1936. That same day his application to transfer to the second year of the physics-mathematics department of Kazan University is dated. Zilber kept his promise, graduating from the university with honors in 1941. After graduating, he worked as a village teacher. In 1945, Mordechai Dubinin arranged a shidduch for him, and he soon married Gita-Leah Zaidman in Kuibyshev. The Zilbers had 4 children - a son, Bentzion, and 3 daughters.
In 1951-1953 he was imprisoned in a labor camp in Tatarstan on a fabricated charge. In 1959 he was summoned for interrogation on charges of instilling Jewish upbringing in children and their refusal to write on Shabbat. After the local Communist Party cell threatened to strip him of his parental rights, he fled Kazan, later taking his entire family with him.
In 1960 he settled in Tashkent, where he became one of the central figures of the local Jewish community.
In 1972, after many years as a refusenik, he made aliyah to Israel and settled in Jerusalem, in the Sanhedria neighborhood. He initiated the creation of Torah classes for Russian-speaking Jews throughout Israel. Rabbi Zilber stood behind almost every project in Israel and abroad connected with the creation of educational centers for Russian-speaking Jews, including the yeshivot "Shvut Ami" and "Torat Chaim" in Moscow, among others. In 2000 he established the organization "Toldot Yeshurun".
Rabbi Zilber is the author of a series of books, video/audio cassettes on the weekly Torah portion, as well as an autobiography containing fascinating facts about Jewish life in the Soviet Union.
After a prolonged illness, on 8 Av 2004, Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber ascended to the Heavenly Yeshiva. More than 10,000 people accompanied him on his final journey, including the most eminent, world-renowned rabbis. He was buried on 9 Av at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem, next to his wife.
Purim in a Soviet Labor Camp
On February 28, 1953, I gathered several Jews with whom I was serving my sentence in one of the Soviet corrective labor camps, to mark the arrival of the holiday of Purim together. I recounted to my fellow inmates the content of Megillat Esther - one of the books of Tanach that is read in synagogues on this day. The men listened attentively to the story of Achashverosh and Esther, Haman and Mordechai - the story of a nation watched over by the Almighty.
Suddenly one of them jumped up from his seat:
- What fairy tales are you telling us?! Where is your Al-mighty now? A little longer and all the Jews in this country will be ground to dust!
- It's too early to despair! - I answered him. - Haman also managed to send out an order to destroy the Jews throughout all of Persia...
- What kind of comparison is that! - my companion exclaimed. - Stalin is no Haman to you! He turned peasants into slaves, destroyed millions of people since '37, drove entire peoples from their homes - just look at the Crimean Tatars.
- It worked with the peasants, - I answered, - it worked with the Tatars, but he'll break his teeth on the Jews! Everything is in the hands of the Al-mighty, "the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps"! And Stalin is just a man of flesh and blood.
- At seventy years old he's as healthy as a bull!
- We cannot know what will become of a man in half an hour, - I answered my companion and went to sleep - it was already eight o'clock in the evening.
The next morning Aizik Mironovich - that was the man's name - found me:
- Isaac, word has come from outside that yesterday evening, at 20:23, Stalin had a stroke, the doctors think he won't survive! I will never forget our conversation yesterday!
And indeed, Aizik Mironovich did not forget what had happened more than thirty years earlier. Recently, he and I happened to meet in Jerusalem, and he told me that he had been offered a job that would require him to violate the laws of Shabbat, and he categorically refused...
All the Jews with whom we had marked Purim that unforgettable evening came up to me the next day, stunned: "You are right, Isaac, - they said, - there is a G-d above us! One would have to be blind not to see it!" On March 5, 1953, Stalin's death was announced.
It's worth recalling here that Hitler had declared 1 Adar a day of mourning: it was on that very day that the German defeat at Stalingrad was completed.
How Rav Yitzchak Zilber Read Tehillim for 3 Days
On March 5, Stalin's death was officially announced. His friends came to the funeral, including the president of Czechoslovakia, Klement Gottwald. Shortly before this, 100 thousand Jews had been allowed to leave Czechoslovakia for Israel, and Stalin had been enraged. On his orders, Klement Gottwald dealt with the "guilty": he had the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and several ministers shot - 11 people in all (remember that number 11?).
This executioner came to Moscow, fell ill that same day, and died suddenly. As they say in Yiddish, "tsvei kapores in ein tog" (two atonements in one day).
As soon as I heard that Stalin had fallen gravely ill, I immediately began reciting the Psalms of David (Tehillim), and I read with all my heart, without interruption, for three days and nights, so that the wicked man's end would come quickly. And when it happened - I stopped: for his soul I no longer recited Tehillim.
(Yitzchak Zilber, from his memoirs)
May the merit of the Tzadik protect Am Yisrael!
(https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80,_%D0%98%D1%86%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%BA)
