Chapter 41: Devorah Leah's Acquaintance with Her Sister-in-Law Rivka Avraham

00:01 After telling at great length the story of Rabbi Moishe, the Maharal’s grandson and the leader of the Pozna community, who was the grandfather of Rabbi Schneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad Chassidus, we turn to Baruch. Baruch was the son of Rabbi Moishe’s son Schneur Zalman, who, as we know, married Rachel, the daughter of Baruch Batlan. Rachel was both a great Torah scholar and a deeply righteous woman. As we have already learned, after Baruch’s mother and father passed away, he set out to wander from city to city and town to town. We now follow his return from those wanderings. Three and a half years passed before Baruch suddenly appeared in Vitebsk. He met with his sister Devorah Leah and her husband, the rosh yeshiva Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak. He also sought out and found his uncle Kadish and his aunt Freida. Everyone had long known that Avraham the gardener, from the Liozna area, wanted Baruch as a husband for his daughter Rivka. To his sister Devorah Leah’s surprise, Baruch responded by leaving the decision in her hands—the sister from whom he had kept his distance all those years—and in the hands of his aunt Freida. They would decide whether the match was suitable. Devorah Leah felt the weight of that responsibility. Was Rivka right for Baruch? Suddenly she had to be both a father and a mother to her brother. So she traveled with her aunt Freida to Liozna, where Rabbi Avraham the gardener had the orchards that provided his livelihood. There they got to know Rivka and the whole family. Devorah Leah saw that Rivka was a very suitable match for Baruch. She was not especially learned, but she was G-d-fearing, had good character and a heart of gold, and was good toward Hashem and toward others. Rabbi Avraham was among those who held that women should not study. The fact that Rivka was not very learned did not sit well with

02:38 Devorah Leah, since her mother Rachel had been a great scholar, and Devorah Leah had learned much from her. Besides, after marrying her brilliant husband, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, she studied a daily lesson with him in the Talmud and the halachic authorities, and became a great scholar herself. On the other hand, she appreciated Rivka, whose good character made up for what she lacked in learning. What settled the matter was a heart-to-heart conversation between Devorah Leah and Rivka. During it, Rivka expressed her deep desire to study Torah and gain knowledge, and Devorah Leah promised to help her. She began studying with her, too. In the short time Devorah Leah and Freida stayed in Liozna, Devorah Leah brought Rivka to the point where she could study certain books on her own and continue learning without help. In the end, Devorah Leah said that the match seemed right to her. She did, however, ask that the engagement celebration be held specifically in her home in Vitebsk. And indeed, a short time later Rabbi Avraham the gardener, his wife Sarah, and their daughter Rivka came to Vitebsk for a modest celebration. Baruch, for his part, also agreed to the match, but stipulated that the wedding be postponed as long as possible. He wanted at least a year to continue his wanderings and complete his search for the right path in serving Hashem. For that reason, he hurried the signing of the tena’im and immediately afterward set off on his travels. During Baruch’s wanderings, Rivka remained in Vitebsk as a bride-to-be in the home of her future sister-in-law, progressing in her studies under Devorah Leah’s guidance. Meanwhile, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, Devorah Leah’s husband, had an opportunity to get to know Rabbi Avraham, Baruch’s future father-in-law, and to learn about his lineage. Rabbi Avraham, for his part, already knew a great deal about Baruch and his family from the inquiries and investigations he had made in the time

05:03 leading up to this period. In the process, he had also come to greatly appreciate Baruch’s stature and lineage... Baruch’s. Now it was Rabbi Avraham’s turn to become acquainted with Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, who wanted to learn about him on Baruch’s behalf, since Baruch had not had a chance to hear much about him before setting out. It became clear that Rabbi Avraham combined Torah and fear of Heaven perfectly, while also earning a living through his own labor. He was a great scholar and a great tzaddik, though he supported himself by gardening. His work also gave him the satisfaction of fulfilling the verse, “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread.” Rabbi Avraham came from a family of distinguished lineage. He was a fourth-generation descendant of the gaon Rabbi Avraham Chaim, author of Toras Chaim and Tzon Kodashim. He was also the son of Rabbi Naftali Hertz of the Bechor Shor family. Ah, that is, Rabbi Chaim—yes, the grandfather of Rabbi Avraham’s grandfather—was the son of Rabbi Naftali Hertz of the Bechor Shor family, who came from Moravia to Poland in the year 5400. Going back a little in the family history, Rabbi Naftali Hertz was taken with great honor from one of the yeshivos as a young man and became the son-in-law of a very wealthy man in Polotsk. For forty years he studied Torah while supported by his father-in-law, devoting himself to Torah all that time. One thing pained him greatly: he had only daughters, no sons. When he reached the age of seventy-eight, after being widowed, he married a second time. His second wife bore him Rabbi Avraham, and he lived to see that child reach bar mitzvah age. In accordance with Rabbi Naftali Hertz’s will, Avraham and his mother moved to Beshenkovichi. There Avraham learned Torah from Rabbi Avraham Zev, a great scholar who had been a friend of his late father. His mother opened a shop that provided her livelihood. Because she was still a young woman, she married

07:28 a rosh yeshiva, and they had a son and a daughter. The son later became a famous rabbi. The daughter married the gaon Rabbi Aryeh Leib, who had studied alongside the prodigy from Salant, later renowned as the Gaon of Vilna. While Rabbi Avraham was connected to the Gaon of Vilna through his brother-in-law [unclear], his teacher in Beshenkovichi had also taught him about the successive Baalei Shem. These were later leaders of the hidden tzaddikim, who prepared the ground for the emergence of Chassidus. Rabbi Avraham therefore had a great deal to tell about the great Torah scholars and tzaddikim of earlier generations, and about those of his own generation. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, the prodigy, was very interested in hearing the stories of the future father-in-law of his brother-in-law Baruch. Among other things, Rabbi Avraham told of a visit by Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms, founder of the circle of kabbalists and hidden tzaddikim, to the city of Pinsk. This is how it happened. Pinsk was famous for its yeshivos. Three in particular were renowned: the yeshiva named for Rav Tavel and his wife Chava Devorah, Rabbi Shimon’s yeshiva, and the yeshiva of Grandmother Golda Leah. Rabbi Avraham knew especially much to tell Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak about the yeshiva named for Rav Tavel and his wife Chava Devorah. This was the story. Rav Tavel was an interesting character. He was born in Kobrin, on the opposite bank of the Dvina River from Pinsk. In fact, Pinsk was on one side of the river and Kobrin on the other. Tavel inherited a plot of land from his father. There were beehives on it, and Tavel made his living from the honey they produced. The land was full of different flowers from which, of course, the bees gathered nectar. Tavel had no fewer than 120 hives on his property. They produced a great quantity of honey, and he grew wealthy

09:59 from it. His estate was near Kobrin. Tavel’s mother died when he was a small child, and his father passed away when he was seventeen. Although Tavel was a simple young man, he was extremely G-d-fearing. Three times a day he davened with concentration, and he regularly set aside a tenth of his income for tzedakah. Whenever he had free time, he would say Tehillim with great fervor. He could read, but understood only a little of what the words meant. Though Tavel was still very young when he started out, he knew well how to run his business. He knew how to tend the hives and market their produce. He also knew it was safer if people generally did not know how much profit he made, so as not to arouse envy that could cause real harm. From Hakadosh Boruch Hu, however, he did not hide his income, and so he was meticulous about setting aside a tenth of his profits for tzedakah. What he did not know was how to decide which charitable causes should receive it. He was young and very uncertain, lacking knowledge and experience, and he also wanted to give the tzedakah discreetly.