The Chassid who did not have sons in the underground network of Tomchei T’mimim but was one of its biggest fundraisers, as a result of which he suffered torture in a Russian prison. * About a Chassid bound heart and soul to three of our Rebbeim. * To mark the day of his passing, Rosh Chodesh Teves.
Photo on the right: With his son-in-law and granddaughtersR’ Eliyahu Perr, who was known as R’ Eli, was born around 5640/1880. His father, R’ Moshe, counted himself as a member of the Litvishe community. He raised his children in his way, but R’ Eli in his youth was attracted to Chabad and became mekushar to the Rebbe Rashab.
After the Communist Revolution, when the Tomchei T’mimim yeshivos wandered throughout Russia, the yeshivos began suffering from unbearable financial woes. Aside from the government persecution, fundraising became almost impossible since a Chassid who donated toward a yeshiva put his life in danger.
R’ Eli was a Chassid with mesirus nefesh and although he did not have sons who learned in Tomchei T’mimim, he got involved in the complicated and dangerous work of raising funds for the yeshivos. He gave out pushkas into which Chassidim put penny after penny. The Chassidim helped the yeshivos with nice sums despite the prevailing difficult economic times in the country and especially among those who were shomrei Shabbos and so had a hard time finding work. R’ Boruch Shifrin, his son-in-law, was his right-hand man.
The two of them wrote coded letters to their fellow Chassidim throughout Russia who responded in kind, wanting to know how and where to send money. Thanks to these donations, the yeshiva in his city of Vitebsk was sustained, a yeshiva that over the years became a central yeshiva in which many talmidim, sons of Lubavitcher families from all over the Soviet Union, learned.
There were also students who were not from Chabad backgrounds and this was because the majority of yeshivos had been shut down and someone who wanted to learn went to Tomchei T’mimim. R’ Eli’s home was open to the T’mimim even though his son-in-law and family lived with him as well and he did not have space. He was so goodhearted that yeshiva bachurim would sleep in his bed and on chairs in his house and he slept on the floor. He made sure they had not only a place to sleep but also clothes and food.
TORTURE
In the winter of 5691, the Yevsektzia discovered the yeshiva. Fifteen people including rabbanim and askanim were arrested and the talmidim were expelled from the city.
It was one night in Adar II when NKVD men banged at the door of the Perr home. They entered the house without permission and conducted a search. They turned the house over, moving closets, beds, and kitchen utensils. They were looking for incriminating evidence, something to connect R’ Eli to the yeshivos Tomchei T’mimim. They found what they were looking for: receipt books, pushkas and more.
When they finished their search, they told R’ Eli he was under arrest. He emotionally parted from his wife, daughter and son-in-law and was roughly taken out of the house in handcuffs and brought to the city jail.
The fear and worry that prevailed in his home upon his arrest is indescribable, but his daughter Sonia (Sarah) immediately thought ahead. “What if they realize that you also raise money and they arrest you?” she asked her husband. As soon as it turned light, the two of them left the house with their year old daughter and found another place to live.
R’ Eli’s wife, Henia, was left home alone and could only wait and worry. As for the Shifrins, who sat in their new residence where they worried lest Boruch be arrested, their fears were realized. R’ Boruch was arrested at the beginning of Nissan. His wife and daughter remained alone.
Five days after his arrest, R’ Boruch was taken for interrogation at the end of which he was led through the dark hallways of the prison until he was brought into a little room. “There, in a corner were two doors, one door led to the bathroom and the other door led to a small cell where there was a basin of water, some wood and cleaning supplies. They opened that door and pushed me in and closed it behind me. I was in a cell that was less than eight feet square, all alone in a new world.
“Suddenly, as I sat there for a few minutes, I heard groans and a voice saying T’hillim. I immediately recognized the voice as that of my father-in-law’s! Until that moment, I knew nothing about what had become of him and where he was and then, there I was, in his presence, with just a wall separating us, without either of us being able to see the other.”
Pesach was approaching and the two prisoners were determined not to eat chametz. They were well aware of the significance of this decision. They knew they were endangering their lives. In prison they were given a little bit of bread and some murky soup and if they did not eat bread for eight days, their health would be compromised. And who knew whether they would make it through Pesach in a small filthy room, from which they were periodically taken and interrogated and tortured? When bread appeared on the first day of Pesach, R’ Boruch Shifrin heard his father-in-law through the wall saying, “I don’t need bread because it is Pesach for us now.”
The interrogations and torture continued. The cruel interrogators demanded that R’ Eli tell them which homes had pushkas and from which Chassidim he had received donations to the yeshiva, who did he answer to, to whom did he give the money for the yeshiva, and who ran the yeshiva. R’ Eli was not willing to incriminate others and he suffered for this.
The fifth day of Pesach was a particularly terrible day. Soldiers who came to his cell began beating him. One held his hands up and the other hit him mercilessly. That wasn’t enough for them. They took R’ Boruch from his cell and brought him to R’ Eli’s cell for him to observe the horrifying scene.
R’ Eli was astonished to suddenly see his son-in-law and he shouted, “Don’t go away. They are literally murdering me!” The soldiers continued to beat him and when they were done, they put R’ Boruch back in his cell.
In those days, there was no such thing as a fair trial. A troika of senior interrogators would decide on the spot and without batting an eye who to send to Siberia for three years, who for twenty-five, and who would be killed. R’ Eli’s “serious crime” got him sent to labor camps in Siberia.
The night of Shvii shel Pesach he was taken from his cell and put on a train that took him to Siberia. R’ Eli arrived in Siberia very weak. He had been tortured, he hadn’t eaten throughout Pesach, and in Siberia he had to labor under difficult conditions in the freezing cold.
Fortunately for him, he came down with pneumonia a short while later and was transferred to a hospital in Vitebsk. He lay there for six months until he was released a sick, broken man. After a while, he moved to the outskirts of Leningrad.
A DELAYED MEETING WITH THE PRIME MINISTER
R’ Eli lived a frugal life since regular work entailed Shabbos desecration. He supported himself, barely, by making and selling socks. It was very hard for him to live under communist rule and he wanted to leave the Soviet Union for Eretz Yisroel.
For three years he worked on obtaining a visa for a country that was under British domination and which made it very hard for Jews to enter. Aside from a visa, he also needed permission from Russia to emigrate. At this time, the gates were locked and Jews who wanted to make aliya were turned down, fired from their jobs, and were put under surveillance and persecuted.
R’ Eli did not despair and despite the hardships he made a big effort so that he could leave Russia and live as a Jew without fear. He eventually obtained a visa.
He wrote about his complicated situation to the Rebbe Rayatz. He told him he suffered for three years until he obtained a passport for a lot of money and how he needed a visa.
At that time, writing a letter to the Rebbe who was living in Otvotzk in Poland was dangerous. If the government saw that he had a connection abroad, especially with the Lubavitcher Rebbe with his history in Russia, they would surely disqualify his passport. This was especially true when what he wrote shamed Mother Russia. Nevertheless, he wrote everything to the Rebbe in an act of hiskashrus and mesirus nefesh.
The letter reached its destination and the Rebbe wrote a letter to the Chassid, R’ Zalman Moshe HaYitzchaki who lived in Eretz Yisroel and asked him to help arrange a visa for R’ Eli. His efforts were successful and R’ Eli made aliya and settled in Tel Aviv.
Making a livelihood was the first problem he and his wife had upon arriving in Eretz Yisroel. They could not find a way to support themselves. R’ Eli wrote to the Rebbe and on 27 Tishrei the Rebbe wrote that upon arriving in Eretz Yisroel he should have immediately sought work and not despair.
His personal hardships did not stop him from working with others. He worked to ensure that the Rebbe’s instructions were carried out. The Rebbe Rayatz instituted the shiurei Chitas which includes reciting T’hillim after Shacharis in a daily schedule. R’ Eli asked the people in his shul, Kahal Chassidim, where he davened, to say T’hillim according to the daily schedule, together after Shacharis. They declined, saying they said the daily T’hillim on their own during the course of the day.
To this, the Rebbe responded in the same letter, “There is a big difference between saying T’hillim individually and saying it with the congregation; it’s another matter altogether. Try, in ways of pleasantness, to get them to say T’hillim every day as it is divided according to the days of the month after Shacharis and with the congregation.”
After a while, he wrote to the Rebbe again and reported about the shiurei Torah and the recital of T’hillim in shul. The Rebbe responded to this good news on 20 Teves 5704 in two letters, one to the people who davened at the shul and the other to R’ Eli.
R’ Eli lived in Tel Aviv for a number of years and was the Shamash in Kahal Chassidim. In later years he was the Shamash in the Chabad shul.
CHANNEL BETWEEN THE CHASSIDIM AND THE REBBE
In Eretz Yisroel, R’ Eli started “spreading the wellsprings.” Since he had no way of obtaining sichos and maamarim, he wrote to the Rebbe asking for copies of sichos and maamarim for the purpose of distributing them. On Rosh Chodesh Iyar 1940, the Rebbe sent him a letter from Lakewood, New Jersey in which he informed him that he would be sent sichos and maamarim. That same day, the Rebbe wrote to R’ Avrohom Pariz who was involved in printing sichos and maamarim and told him to send copies to R’ Eli Perr.
How does one become connected to the Rebbe, R’ Eli asked. The Rebbe responded in the famous letter, “True hiskashrus is in learning the maamarim and kuntreisim, in farbrengens with Anash, and in arousing love.”
He was not only mekushar himself but was a conduit between the Chassidim and the Rebbe. The relationship between Russia and the US was bad and Russian citizens were afraid to send letters to the US. Letters for the Rebbe were sent to Chassidim in Eretz Yisroel, including R’ Eli, who passed them along to the Rebbe. When the answer arrived, they would find a way of sending it to the Chassidim in Russia.
When the Rebbe Rayatz passed away, R’ Eli became mekushar to the Rebbe MH”M with whom he corresponded a lot. In 5712 he wanted to move and he asked the Rebbe whether to move to Kfar Chabad, Yerushalayim or within Tel Aviv. The Rebbe told him to move to a place where he would have parnasa and if there was no difference, “I think Safraya [Kfar Chabad] would be best.” R’ Eli moved to Kfar Chabad where he lived his final years.
The residents of Kfar Chabad remember R’ Eli Perr as a special individual, tall and broad with a white beard, very impressive looking. He was the image of a typical Russian Chassid, say the elders of the Kfar, who remember the gemach he ran in which he made many loans and helped many families.
R’ Eli was particular about every minhag and hiddur and always immersed in a mikva before Shacharis. R’ Avrohom Meizlich of Kfar Chabad remembers that one year, after the Yud-Tes Kislev farbrengen lasted until dawn, he went together with the mashpia, R’ Shlomo Chaim Kesselman, to the mikva. “We were going and R’ Eli was coming back already. This was early in the morning and R’ Sholom Chaim said to him, ‘We are young and so we are particular to go to the mikva every day,’ and R’ Eli replied, ‘And we are old and don’t know when we will have to go … so we must go to the mikva.”
R’ Eli passed away at the beginning of Teves 5723. Tragically, his daughter Sonia Shifrin passed away of an illness on 17 Shevat, six weeks after her father. The house he lived in, in his final years, was bequeathed to schools in Kfar Chabad. After his passing it was sold and the money was given to the local schools.”
Based on the book Geza Chassidim by Shneur Zalman Berger