A story for Chaf Av
PART I
R’ Levi Yitzchok Schneersohn had been sentenced to exile, and his faithful wife Rebbetzin Chana joined him there. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok and his wife lived through difficult times while they were in exile. They lived in a small hut in Chili, an exile within an exile, in distant Kazakhstan, subject to the caprices of the landlady, a short-tempered gentile who was just waiting for the moment when her tenants would break one of her rules.
Nevertheless, there were also some points of light and chesed in their bitter lives. This was the ability to help other Jews who needed help; even in such dire circumstances, it was possible to do chesed.
PART II
It was winter. Mud filled the streets and there were numerous mosquitoes and plagues, including spotted typhus and pneumonia. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok became sick and he took to his bed, burning with high fever, for fifteen days. It was an open miracle that the tzaddik recovered, but their troubles weren’t over.
A month later, Rebbetzin Chana became sick and she suffered from a fever of 40 degrees C. It was a most serious situation. It wasn’t even possible to call for a doctor; he would surely say she should go to the hospital which was five kilometers away from where they lived, in fear of contagion. The couple had to hide the situation and manage it on their own.
Among those exiled was a Christian doctor who was acquainted with Rabbi Levi Yitzchok. He was somewhat aware of R’ Levi Yitzchok’s greatness. When he heard about the Rebbetzin’s illness, he did not hesitate. At one or two in the morning, he took off his doctor clothes so he wouldn’t be recognized. He would go to where the Schneersohns lived to write prescriptions for the Rebbetzin, while being careful not to sign his name on them.
The Rebbetzin lay in bed with fever, and the doctor diagnosed her with spotted typhus, a highly contagious disease.
Due to the respect that many of the locals had for the holy man in their midst, he was also fortunate to receive special treatment at the local pharmacy. They agreed to give him the medication even though it was illegal, thus making it risky for the pharmacist.
PART III
In a nearby village lived a shochet and his wife who were also exiled by the government to distant Kazakhstan. The shochet and Rabbi Levi Yitzchok became acquainted and he, too, was charmed by R’ Levi Yitzchok’s personality.
One day, unexpectedly, the couple went to the home of the Schneersons. The shochet had come to ask for R’ Levi Yitzchok’s help. He had gotten a draft notice and he was afraid to be sent to the front. Such a situation would spell true danger to life. He might have known, or guessed, that R’ Levi Yitzchok had some connection or influence with the doctors at the nearby hospital. He hoped that R’ Levi Yitzchok would persuade them to give him a medical exemption from the army.
Despite the protests of the gentile landlady, who could not contain her anger, the two of them went to the room of these tzaddikim to ask for help.
The sight that met their eyes was pathetic and even worse. They saw the Rebbetzin lying in bed, pale and weak, while R’ Levi Yitzchok stood near the oven, cooking some cereal for her. R’ Levi Yitzchok’s genius was in all parts of Torah but not in cooking cereal … Just as they walked in, he stood there wondering what he should do first, pour the milk or first mix in the groats. The guests felt great pain as, within seconds, they assessed the sorry situation.
The wife of the shochet declared she would not leave until the Rebbetzin recovered and got out of bed, strong in body and spirit.
The Rebbetzin weakly waved her hand and said, “My illness might be contagious and if it is, it is dangerous for you. Please do not exert yourself.”
But the guest refused to accept that and said, “I’m not afraid. I will remain until the Rebbetzin is well.”
As though to show she meant it, she quickly took off her travel clothes, served her husband food, and went over to help the Rebbetzin. She first removed the Rebbetzin’s outer garments for she had sweated for a few days, with a high temperature. When she was done, she began refreshing the Rebbetzin’s bed and with deft movements she put clean linens on the pillow and the bed. “As the linens were being changed, it felt like my flesh was being cut with a knife,” wrote the Rebbetzin in her memoirs. “Nobody could imagine how ‘pleasurable’ it was.”
When she was finished, she went over to the oven and began preparing cereal from wheat groats, which she cooked quickly. Within minutes, she was sitting next to the bed and feeding the Rebbetzin.
The fever was still not going down. That night, the faithful doctor came again and made a careful examination as he trembled in fear. The examination took a long time and he looked grave. Then he wrote down another prescription, and when he finished his work he left the house. R’ Levi Yitzchok took a T’hillim and said, “Now it is my turn to get involved in the healing process.”
In that small room within the gentile woman’s home now lived four people under less than normal conditions. Having no other place, the shochet slept on the floor near the door; it was also to keep his distance so he wouldn’t get typhus too. His wife arranged a sort of spot for sleeping not far from the Rebbetzin’s bed. Because of the Rav’s presence, she slept in her clothes all those days she spent there.
Tension ran high. The guests could not even sneeze or make any movement so the landlady would not realize they were present.
As the Rebbetzin lay in her sick bed, her husband sat at the small table and began saying T’hillim. Rivers of tears flowed from his eyes. It was hard not to hear just how brokenhearted he was as he recited the verses of T’hillim with bitterness and emotion. “It could move rocks from their place,” noted the Rebbetzin in her diary. “I believed with complete faith, and I believe now too, that his saying of T’hillim helped my recovery.”
The days passed, and with time and the devotion of the shochet’s wife, along with the black market medications of the doctor, the Rebbetzin’s condition began to improve little by little, and her temperature began to go down.
PART IV
One Friday, there was tremendous poverty in the house. Shabbos, the day of pleasure and rest, would be arriving in a few hours and they did not even have a piece of bread. The shochet went to the market where he managed, with difficulty, to buy a few small fish which his wife cooked. Then he went out and brought two pails of water in honor of Shabbos. This was never easy because the rope that the Rav and Rebbetzin used to draw water had torn. Their gentile neighbors refused to lend them another rope.
The preparations for Shabbos were completed. Even the room was cleaned and organized in honor of Shabbos and the floor was washed, but there was no bread. Nor did they have any idea of where to get some.
They all sat there in a state of resignation, waiting for Shabbos to arrive. “It seems that people’s behavior becomes somewhat odd in situations like this,” wrote the Rebbetzin in her memoirs. R’ Levi Yitzchok was sitting next to the window and was lost in his thoughts. He knew there was nothing he could do. It would soon be time to light the candles.
The previous night, R’ Levi Yitzchok sat and emotionally read chapters of T’hillim. This was no ordinary recitation of T’hillim, nor was it just plain crying or despair. It was a sort of pouring out of the soul, expressing the yearning of this great tzaddik to cleave to Hashem.
Shabbos was approaching when the Rebbetzin noticed a young girl out the window, walking toward their house. She was dressed as a gentile, her face hidden in a large shawl so she wouldn’t be seen. The girl knocked at the door and went directly over to R’ Levi Yitzchok and said, “Are you Rabbi Schneersohn?” Without waiting for an answer, she took out a large loaf of bread from her shawl and said, “My aunt sent you this loaf of bread. We heard that your wife is not well.”
The girl’s uncle was the manager of the government bakery, which is why he was occasionally able to shave off grams from each person’s quota. Doing this was extremely dangerous, because whoever was caught doing that could expect to be punished severely. Still, the man endangered himself for the Rav and Rebbetzin.
Although it was plain, black bread, it tasted particularly good and not because of the quality of the flour. “What a flavor that bread had! That bread removed from us the thoughts of starvation, and on Shabbos yet,” recalls the Rebbetzin wistfully in her memoirs.
R’ Levi Yitzchok immediately cut it into pieces and covered them with a cloth so as to have Lechem Mishneh for Shabbos.
On Shabbos, the Rebbetzin was able to sit up in bed and there was even bread to eat and some fish. Shabbos morning, R’ Levi Yitzchok and the shochet got up to daven. They wrapped themselves in their talleisim and began to daven while the women chatted.
The proverb says, when does the poor man rejoice? When he loses and then finds something. That is how the Rebbetzin felt when she began to recover.
PART V
After that Shabbos, R’ Levi Yitzchok met with a man, a shoemaker by profession, whom he knew from before he was exiled. The man treated the “ilui from Dobryanka,” as he knew him from his youth, with tremendous respect.
The shoemaker had a daughter who was a doctor in the local hospital. At R’ Levi Yitzchok’s request, she immediately accepted the shochet and decided to transfer him to the gastrointestinal department. He needed to be X-rayed in order to ascertain that he had a “severe stomach disease,” so he could be exempted from army duty. In order to get the exemption, the shochet needed a document indicating the disease that she supposedly found.
R’ Levi Yitzchok’s influence was so great on the Jews with whom he came in contact, that every time he made a request, as difficult as it might be, it was hard to refuse him.
As to how to go about getting the necessary X-ray, another clever ruse needed to be found. In the district hospital in Kzyl-Orda, there was an X-ray department run by the daughter of another friend of R’ Levi Yitzchok, named Kolikov, a doctor by profession. It was necessary to work quickly for they were about to send the shochet to the front.
That same afternoon, the shochet went to Kzyl-Orda with the documents that said he was dangerously ill and urgently needed a special operation; but since he was weak, he had to wait several months before he could be operated on.
In Kzyl-Orda, Dr. Kolikov took care of everything, including producing X-ray proof. She gave the shochet the X-rays of someone else who was actually sick with this illness, with the shochet’s name on it.
These preparations took two weeks, in the course of which the shochet stayed in Kolikov’s house. Then the shochet returned to Chili to the home of Rav and Rebbetzin Schneersohn, which was also where the army command post was, where he was required to appear and present all the papers. The grim looking doctors examined the documents and X-rays and signed that the shochet was exempt from the draft for six months because of his stomach illness. He also got permission to travel home.
In the meantime, the Rebbetzin had regained her strength and she was able to walk around at home and do a little of the housework. It was time for the guests to return home.
In her unique refined manner, Rebbetzin Chana sums up the episode, “It was a great simcha in our home that even under those conditions we were able to save someone from real danger. It was a salvation that was literally a death sentence turned to life.”