2 My tate the chasid
Published in the Forverts on September 19th, 1946
By nature, tate was the sort of person who was always inspired by something. Needless to say, he was a chasid - a Makarover chasid. When he was able to get away from work in the village, he left for Makariv to see the rebbe1, and he would come back a completely different man. He would tell a story of the chiddush2 that he saw at the rebbe’s, and he sang all the nigunim3 that he heard there.
In our house, tate created an atmosphere where you could literally see and feel how his faith in God and in his Makarover rebbe were connected with everything. When business went well and we didn’t have any problems with the landowner, tate was sure that it was thanks to the blessings and wishes that the Makarover rebbe gave him. The first chance he got, he would go to the rebbe and give him pidyon4 and be joyous together with the other chasidim.
And on the other hand if, cholileh, business went poorly and we suffered from the landowner’s capriciousness, of course then he had to go to the rebbe, pour out his bitter heart to him, and beg for him to give his blessing and pray that God will help. When a family member fell ill, before anything else tate would go to the rebbe and ask him to grant refue shlema5. Everything was connected to belief in God and in the holy rebbe, even the nigunim that we used to sing at home, during a simche6, or anytime at all that you had joy in your heart…
In his enthusiasm for the Makarover rebbe, it wasn’t enough for tate to just visit him from time to time. He also brought the rebbe to our home a few times a year. These visits brought great joy, and the local Jewish farmers from all the surrounding shtetlech7 came to us in Zatishiye and they shed their village pride. During shala shudis8, people swallowed, enraptured, every word the rebbe uttered in his dvar toire9 about the parshe10 of the week.
As enthusiastic as tate was about the Makarover rebbe tzaddik11, you can imagine how it went whenever the rebbe came to visit us in Zatishiye. When tate heard that the rebbe had been spotted in his rickshaw at the village gate, he went out to meet him with a song. While singing, he unharnessed the horse from the rickshaw, and taking the reins with both hands, he himself led the great rebbe to our home. You could see on his face how much pleasure this gave him, and he considered it such a great mitzvah that he would not give it up for all the treasures in the world.
To this day, I can still picture tate so clearly pulling the rebbe’s rickshaw while his face shines with joy. I also remember what the joy in general in our house when tate came home with the Makarover rebbe; The Jewish farmers of the neighboring villages, all simple healthy and strong Jews, but ardently chasidic and very pious, were suddenly very different people. It was none other than the ruach-hakoydesh12 coming over them. Just as if a miracle had happened, all of a sudden their arrogance left them and they entered into such a spiritual nobility never before seen.
They sang with such fervor that it was a pleasure to listen to them, and they danced with such exuberance as if they were floating in the air… Among the chasidim, I saw for the first time in my life how Jews danced. And I liked it so much that I went and danced with them… I was still a little boy then, and during the dance I tripped on my feet. I was always trying to grab a hold of the tails of someone’s kaftanas I skipped together with the chasidim who were so delighted the rebbe was there. When tate saw how I danced and caught on to the chasidic movements and the nigunim, he really kvelled over it and pinched me on the cheek, saying “Well done, Shmuel’ikel. Well done.”
The other chasidim also kvelled that I, a little boy, small as an elf, joined in the round and so quickly picked up their style of dancing. One of them, a gabe of the Makarover rebbe, a redheaded man with a beautiful beard and two long plump hands, said to my father afterwards, “Just look, just look, Leyb Sender! He is truly something unusual and delightful, the little one! … Nu, may God help, that he will be dedicated to the Toire, to the chupe, and to maysim toivm13… He is growing, isn’t he… He is a growing vessel…”
In my love for dancing, I went back and forth between both Jewish and goyishe dance. It didn’t make any difference to me - as long as I was dancing. It was enough for me to just hear some nign, and I would immediately start dancing to it. Even just walking around I did in a dancing sort of way. And to this day, I don’t understand what I was so joyful for, what put me in such high spirits, that from the start I danced with such gusto…
But there came a time when I stopped dancing and could not be as happy as I was - when tate suddenly started to complain about his health. “I’m sick, Feige,” he would often say to mame. “I’m very sick… and somehow my heart tells me that it’s not good. Really not good…” He went to the rebbe several times who wished him a refue shlema, but it didn’t help. Still, tate complained, “I am sick, Feige. Very sick.”
No matter how small I was, I still felt and understood that his complaints about his poor health meant a difficult time was falling upon us, and it made me melancholy. When I would forget about it, as children do, I would start to sing some kind of nign, sometimes a Yiddish one and sometimes a goyishe one, and I’d begin to dance along. But mame would scold me, “Shame on you, Shmuel’ikel. You should be ashamed of yourself! Tate is sick and you are acting joyfully…”
Our whole house became a different place when tate fell ill. And there was nothing we could do for his illness, because there was no doctor in the village, no medical practitioner, and not even a pharmacy. No matter how much we begged tate to see a doctor in Vasilkov, or in Belaya Tserkov, he would not go. We could not prevail upon him at all, and he had the same answer to everything: “What can a doctor help me with? How long I am destined to live in the world, to be alive… The doctor will not give me more years to live; A man is in God’s hands…”
With great difficulty, we finally managed to convince him to let us bring a doctor from Vasilyvshchyne, an absent-minded Jew who had some kind of panacea for all diseases in the world. The doctor from Vasilyvshchyne gave tate a tincture, and told him that if things didn’t get better to call him again…
At that time, my oldest sister Bas-Sheyva became a bride, and it is worth telling the story of how the shidduch14 was made, because it’s very typical of the Jewish life in those days.
Among the chasidim that my tate often met at the Makarover rebbe’s court, there was a man named Pinya Radetsky. Radetsky, a Jewish landowner, lived in the town of Rybinka15, which is not far from Vasilyvshchyne, and just like my father, he was also an ardent chasid, a zealot, and he often went to the Makarover rebbe’s. As it usually happens, at the rejoicings at the rebbe’s court, people often drank l’chaim16 and wished for salvation for the Jews. And once, when my father was drinking l’chaim with Pinya Radetsky, they talked for a while about this and that, whatever came to mind. Each time, someone else poured a glass of whiskey and, as usual, an “order” started:
– L’chaim! May God will it so!
– L’chaim toivm u’sholem! God bless you, and so it will be!
So, little by little, they drank another glass and another glass, and showered each other with blessings and wishes. During their conversation, my tate told Pinya that his wife was pregnant and he hoped that, boruch hashem, the birth passes peacefully. And when Pinya heard this, he got excited and told tate that his wife was also preparing to give birth. Soon, in the blink of an eye, it was already agreed between the two Makarover chasidim that if one’s wife gave birth to a boy and the other’s wife to a girl, they would make a shidduch.
They shook hands and made a tekiyat-kaf17. The deal was done.
A short time after that, my mother gave birth to a girl named Bas-Sheyva. Pinya Radetsky’s wife also gave birth to a boy, and he was named Aron18. And so, as agreed in the tekiyat-kaf, this shidduch was beshert and this marriage was m’hashamayim19.
And so, my sister Bas-Sheyva, the oldest of all the children in our family, was already a bride the moment she was born. And that’s how she was really treated even when she was still a very little girl, already “Bas-Sheyva, the bride.” Tate loved Bas-Sheyva very much and showed her a lot of tenderness, not only when she was still little but when also as she grew. All the while, he was looking forward to the time when she would go to the chupe20.
They had decided to have Bas-Sheyva’s wedding on the Shabbes after Shavu’es21, but tate’s health was already so poor that it was no wonder that he couldn’t think about anything other than whether he would live to see his first daughter’s wedding… You could tell because he suddenly started working to move the date up from the Shabbes after Shavu’es to two weeks before Pesach22…
“I want to be at my oldest daughter’s wedding,” he said. “I want to take her to the chupe…” Apparently, he knew in his heart that he would not live for long. He felt it. Everyone in the family felt it. So we decided to move my sister’s wedding up to two weeks before Pesach, as my father wished…
My parents began to prepare for the great simche when, with God’s help, they would lead to the couple who were blessed with a tekiyat-kaf before they were born to the chupe. And while preparing for the wedding, we were also preparing for a funeral…
You had to prepare for it, even when you didn’t want to, because tate was already so sick that it was clear he would not live much longer. He himself knew this more than anyone else. And that’s why tate often repeated the only thing that made sense to him at the time, “I want to at my oldest daughter’s wedding… I want to lead Bas-Sheyva to the chupe and I beg God, give me strength so that I may see before my death that my family honors the tekiyat-kaf…”
He counted the days that remained until two weeks before Pesach. He looked forward to the very hour…
I also counted the days left until the wedding. But I did not understand the silent tragedy that was taking place there. I was still too young to understand it all. I just wanted dance at the first wedding in our family…
Leader of a chasidic dynasty↩︎
halakhic innovation; new way of doing something in orthodox Judaism↩︎
songs/tunes↩︎
A monetary gift to a chasidic rebbe to support them and receive blessings↩︎
healing↩︎
joyous occasion with religious connotation↩︎
Plural of shtetl↩︎
The third meal of Shabbat↩︎
sermon↩︎
Torah portion↩︎
righteous man, generally used when referring to chasidic rebbes↩︎
spirit of God↩︎
good deeds↩︎
match, as in matchmaking↩︎
now known as “Hrebinka”↩︎
Cheers; here it implies everyone making toasts and drinking many drinks↩︎
formal Jewish agreement↩︎
According to their tombstones, they were born in 1859: Aron’s tombstone and Bas-Sheyva’s tombstone, making them about 10 years older than Sam↩︎
from heaven (Hebrew/religious term); so, this is a “match made in heaven”↩︎
the “chuppah” is the Jewish canopy under which one weds↩︎
Shavuot↩︎
Passover; Two weeks before Passover is nine weeks before Shavuot, this would move the wedding 10-11 weeks up.↩︎