At the age when bachurim today are just entering beis midrash, the Chassid, R’ Henoch Rappaport, was sent to serve as a rosh yeshiva. * He was caught after a year, sent to a protracted exile in Siberia, survived, and then made aliya. * To commemorate the day of his passing on 25 Teves.
The shul in Kurasik | R’ Henoch Rappaport at his oldest daughter’s lechayimThe Chassid, R’ Henoch Rappaport, was born on 18 Tishrei 5682/1923 in Pereyaslav. His father was R’ Meir Zev. When he was four, he was sent to learn with a group of children in a secret school. When he turned six, the age when mandatory schooling began, he was sent to public school. For his father, who had already sat in jail after refusing to send another child to school, there was no choice.
After a brief time, his father was called in by the school’s administration: Why did the child miss school one day every week?
Shabbos is out of the question, said his father, despite the enormous danger involved. The principal, an older Jew who knew R’ Meir Zev, offered to excuse the absences if the child would bring a doctor’s note every week.
It wasn’t peaceful for long. There was an educational committee at the school whose job it was to ascertain that the education at the school was faithful to the spirit of communism. The members of the committee noticed the absence of the Jewish boy each Shabbos, and despite the doctor’s notes presented by the principal, they insisted it was just a ploy to avoid attending school on Shabbos. So they came up with a plan.
On every religious holiday, the communists would arrange an event for the children during which they would mock the religious symbols of the holiday. On the second day of Pesach, the Rappaport family was frightened by noise from outside the house. One hundred agitated youth who had just finished a delicious chametz meal, courtesy of the communists, had come to protest that Henoch was not at school.
When the family saw that the rabble had no intention of giving up on their demands that they come out and explain Henoch’s absence on Pesach, they decided that Henoch himself would go out to the demonstrators. The little boy, who was about eight, stood there for an hour, facing boys who were older than him, and explained why he did not attend school while they heaped insults upon him.
That night, the principal came to their home and suggested that Henoch not attend school the next day but bring a doctor’s note which said the occurrences had adversely affected him until he became sick. That is what they did and for a long time, Henoch managed to skip school. Then his parents decided to move to Kiev and there was no reason for him to attend school when they would be moving soon anyway.
In the big city it was easier to avoid school. Every morning Henoch would leave the house with his briefcase on his shoulders and the neighbors thought he was going to school in another neighborhood. In actuality, he was walking to the house of the melamed, a former rosh yeshiva of Novardok, who taught the boys Gemara.
The atmosphere when they learned was tense. Whenever anyone knocked the students had to quickly hide. Their fears increased with the increase of searches conducted in the city. The melamed was afraid to continue and Henoch had to leave home for yeshivos Tomchei T’mimim in Berditchev and Klinets.
A FATEFUL MEETING
In 1937, the evil Yezhov began serving as director of the KGB. To establish his power he instituted widespread purges against anyone he considered suspect. He received support from his leader, Stalin. The communist ideology had come face to face with reality, the communist dream began to wane and the people started to complain. Stalin was afraid of changes in the regime and took the approach of eliminating the opposition.
Many Chassidim were arrested in that period and those who weren’t arrested had to go into hiding. It was a terrifying time.
R’ Yona Cohen, may Hashem avenge his blood, the director of the Vaad Yeshivos Tomchei T’mimim, convened an urgent meeting which was attended by some bachurim. He told them about a letter he had received from the Rebbe Rayatz. The Rebbe said that now those who had been educated themselves with mesirus nefesh would have to take responsibility. From now on, said R’ Yona, the responsibility for Tomchei T’mimim would pass to the shoulders of those whom, if something happened to them, at least wouldn’t leave behind an aguna.
R’ Henoch Rappaport, at 17 years old, suddenly became the head of the secret yeshiva in Kursk. It was his responsibility to look out for the bachurim, to provide them with food and lodging, teach them Nigleh and Chassidus, and act as both their mother and father.
Talmidim from those days remember him as a clever person and a gifted communicator, which was combined with a tremendous resoluteness to succeed at the complicated and dangerous task thrust upon him.
It wasn’t easy being a yeshiva student in those days. The talmidim were holed up in the attic of a shul which was constructed from iron. In the heat of the summer they suffered terrible thirst but they could not leave lest they be seen. At night they slept in a pit in a cellar so they wouldn’t be discovered. Their daily fare which constituted their three meals was bread with melon. Only on Shabbos did they eat with families of Anash.
Peaceful days did not last long in Kursk either. A local Jew who met Henoch told him that the KGB was on to them. As a result, the yeshiva was moved from the shul to the homes of local Jews. It didn’t help. One dark night, KGB agents showed up. Henoch managed to escape but was caught at his sister’s house in Kiev. He was sent back to Kursk where he was interrogated and tortured.
He spent three months in a dark cell where the only object was a broken chair. To dispel the boredom of sitting he would walk around the chair, and to dispel the boredom of walking he would sit on the chair. Aside from that there was nothing else to do. As for sleeping, he couldn’t. In Russian prisons you were woken at six in the morning and you were not allowed to go to sleep until ten at night.
When the inmates collapsed into bed at ten, they knew that they wouldn’t be resting for long. At midnight the guard would come and wake them up for interrogation.
At two o’clock he was taken again for interrogation in a state of utter exhaustion. The interrogators would take advantage of the prisoner’s terrible state in order to try and extract information from him. If the prisoner erred and blurted out a word out of line, he generated another round of questions, accompanied by beatings and torture.
Three months, night after night. If not for his strong faith and the strength which he received from the one who gave the order to send bachurim on this assignment, the 18 year old would have been unable to withstand the suffering. Many people went crazy, as is known, from torture in Russian jails. This was another means of getting rid of opponents to the regime.
The focus of the interrogation was on the most serious crime of all, his connection with the Rebbe. Henoch vehemently denied that charge, but there were things he could not deny. One of the talmidim who broke in interrogation said that he saw Henoch receive an envelope with money from Moscow where the yeshiva committee was.
Sentence was passed and after the sentence, there were no more interrogations. The sentence was harsh, as expected for the director of a yeshiva, ten years of hard labor in a labor camp.
LABOR CAMPS
In the first labor camp he had to work at backbreaking labor, digging coal and laying train tracks. It was a camp for people who were not expected to see the light of day. There was hardly any food and twelve hours of physical labor in the Siberian cold weakened his body until he dropped in exhaustion.
Henoch was hospitalized in a local hospital where the conditions were a bit more humane than in the labor camp. For half a year he lay there until he was released and sent to do easier work on a kolkhoz where he had to pick vegetables. It was relatively easy work compared to the labor camp but someone informed on him, saying that considering the terrible crimes he had committed, it was too easy.
Henoch was then sent to cut trees in order to level an area for another coal mine that had been discovered in the area. He labored until his strength gave out again. He was sent to the hospital and from there, back to the kolkhoz. When a year later supervisors came to inspect his situation, they decided once again to send him back for hard labor.
This time he was sent to a stone quarry where he labored until a big rock which detached from the mountain fell on his leg. He underwent medical treatment for months. The treatment that was available in Soviet era “modern” hospitals was dismally backward, and from that time forward he remained lame.
After becoming crippled they couldn’t send him back to hard labor so he was sent to do bookkeeping in Margilan in Kyrgyzstan. Henoch, who knew about the war in Europe, thought that it was the end of European Jewry. How great was his surprise and joy when he heard from a Jew that he met that there was a large Jewish community in Tashkent. R’ Henoch decided that he had worked more than enough for Mother Russia and he escaped and traveled to Tashkent.
In Tashkent, he found someone who agreed to forge papers for him. From there he went to Moscow where he met R’ Aharon Chazan who took him as his son-in-law for his daughter Chana.
R’ Henoch found work in a knitting factory and he worked there for several years. The work wasn’t easy, the salary was minimal, and he had to travel two hours each way, but he was happy because he could keep Shabbos. With mesirus nefesh combined with Chassidic cleverness, he and his wife established a Chassidic home throughout the years that they lived in the suburbs of Moscow. He shared an apartment and kitchen with other families, including anti-Semites.
In order to observe Torah and mitzvos at that time, he had to display ingenuity and courage. For example, for Sukkos there was no way they could build a sukka near their home. Having no other choice, and his Jewish head being forced to come up with a creative solution, he made a sukka in the city park. There, among the playground equipment, they set up a little hut which was covered with leaves. To an onlooker it looked like it was put up for the children’s enjoyment.
PERMISSION TO LEAVE RUSSIA
When he submitted a request to leave Russia, he was repeatedly refused, even when most of the Chassidim were able to leave. In honor of 18 Elul 5731, he decided along with two other Chassidim who were also refused visas, that come what may, they would go to Rostov to celebrate Chai Elul and pray at the Rebbe Rashab’s gravesite. Within a month of their visit to Rostov, all three received visas.
R’ Henoch left Russia for London where Chassidim wanted him to stay, but the Rebbe told him to go to Eretz Yisroel. He settled in Yerushalayim.
NO RESTING ON HIS LAURELS
R’ Henoch looked for weaving work in Yerushalayim but did not find any. He spoke to the askan R’ Menachem Porush who suggested that he work for him. R’ Henoch turned out to be a talented askan so that Kollel Chabad also took him to work for them. In a letter to him the Rebbe added in his handwriting, “one who is involved in communal matters.”
His Chassidic visage made a great impact on his community. He would get up every morning and go to work from which he returned very late. Despite his many involvements, he found time to spread the wellsprings. He arranged parties and events for Russian Jews and was devoted to drawing them close.
He was one of the founders of the Chabad shul in the Pagi neighborhood in Yerushalayim. The Rebbe told him to review Chassidus every Shabbos in public. Someone who remembered him said, “He did not appear as though it was an effort for him to do so.”
R’ Henoch was a genuine Chassid who combined seriousness and mesirus nefesh in everything having to do with Torah and mitzvos with a Chassidic joie de vivre despite the hard life he had. He had a good sense of humor and always had a smile on his face and a sharp Chassidic saying on his lips.
R’ Henoch was not old when he passed away on 25 Teves 5743 but he is one of the best proofs to what the Rebbe said that age is not what is written on a passport. What he managed to live through in his little more than sixty years, many people do not live through in many more years than that.
This Chassid who was moser nefesh and suffered terribly to carry out the Rebbe’s wishes, raised a beautiful family. All his children and grandchildren follow in his ways with some of them serving as shluchim around the world.