Chapter 43: The Rescue of Chava Devorah and Her Marriage to Teveel

00:01 We continue the interesting, even gripping, story of Tevel and Chava Devorah. We heard about Tevel’s early life as a young man, and now we’ve heard a little about Chava Devorah’s life as well. We continue with her experiences under her new employers, who treated her cruelly. The orphaned Chava Devorah’s suffering was great. She had agreed to move from Pinsk to the tavern, but she now understood that she had brought a terrible misfortune upon herself. Her new employers’ cruelty knew no bounds. They mistreated her and worked her to the bone. Chava Devorah had no relative or protector to whom she could pour out her heart and ask for help. Only before Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself did she pour out her soul in prayer. In the summer, she would often go out to the garden toward evening. There, under the open sky, she would pray with deep concentration and recite chapters of Tehillim in supplication. Chava Devorah was sure no one could hear her, so she felt free to pour out the bitterness in her heart without restraint. One morning, Tevel set out as usual for Karlin to daven with the first minyan. On his way, he passed the tavern near his estate. Suddenly, he heard a woman weeping as she prayed. Tevel stopped and listened to her heartfelt prayer. He wondered who she was. Surely, he thought, it could not be the tavern keeper’s wife. He knew her and her husband as coarse, uncouth people, incapable of praying with such an outpouring of the soul. It did not occur to him that a servant girl might pray with such deep concentration. He decided to look into it, but because he was hurrying to daven, he put it off until his return from shul. On his way back, Tevel entered the tavern. He saw the tavern keeper sitting among a group of peasants, joking with them in the manner of non-Jews. As Tevel stood there, before he had a chance to speak to anyone, he heard shouting and insults. It was

03:09 the tavern keeper’s wife, yelling at Chava Devorah. “Here’s something new: a servant who thinks she’s a rebbetzin!” she shrieked. “She gets out of doing her work and spends her time praying and saying Tehillim instead. Who ever heard of a servant girl praying and saying Tehillim?” After a brief pause, she warned Chava Devorah loudly, “If I see you with a siddur in your hand one more time, I’ll break your neck. You’ll remember what I give you for the rest of your life, you ugly spinster!” Tevel needed no explanation. Everything was clear to him. He looked toward the corner where the voices came from and saw Chava Devorah standing before her mistress, frightened and ashamed, as though bracing herself for a beating. The woman went on shouting for quite some time, with no sign of calming down. Tevel’s heart went out to the girl. From then on, he looked for opportunities to enter the tavern and make contact with Chava Devorah, hoping to find a way to help her. But he could not speak with her under her employers’ watchful eyes. One Shabbos afternoon, while Chava Devorah was sitting as usual in the shade of a tree and saying Tehillim, Tevel approached her and began to talk. They spoke for a long time. He wanted to hear as much as he could from Chava Devorah about her situation. For her part, she was willing to tell him everything: for the first time in her life, someone wanted to listen. She told him about life in her new employers’ home, which was far worse than it had been in the home of the tavern keeper’s brother. Once Tevel knew all the details, he hurried to the gaon Rabbi Moshe Yaffe, the rabbi of Pinsk, through whom, as we recall, he distributed most of his tzedakah funds. He told the rabbi everything he knew about the orphaned Chava Devorah. During their conversation, he asked for the rabbi’s opinion and advice about an idea he had: that he marry the orphan girl. It seemed to him that she was

05:57 a suitable match, though he was troubled by the fact that, as he had learned, Chava Devorah knew more about reading than he did. Tevel himself could barely read, while Chava Devorah understood the prayers and other things. He shared this concern with the rabbi and awaited his advice. Tevel was so kindhearted that, if the rabbi felt the orphan girl was not a suitable match for him, he was prepared to arrange for her to marry someone suitable at his own expense and provide her dowry and everything else she needed. His foremost and immediate wish was to save her from her cruel employers, who were making her life miserable. Rabbi Moshe Yaffe listened with great interest to the young estate owner. He immediately summoned the tavern keeper and the orphan girl, ordered the tavern keeper to release her at once, and sent her to the home of one of Pinsk’s respected merchants to rest and regain her strength. The rabbi asked the merchant to keep her in his home for a while; in the meantime, she could help in his business as much as she was able. Rabbi Moshe Yaffe intended to gather information about the orphan girl’s personality and character to determine whether she would make a suitable wife for kindhearted Tevel. He felt a double responsibility—for Tevel’s future and for Chava Devorah’s. Both were orphans, alone in the world, without father or mother. After several weeks, the rabbi of Pinsk summoned Tevel and told him that, following his inquiries, he had concluded that Chava Devorah was a suitable match for him. Tevel was overjoyed, though he wondered whether Chava Devorah would agree to marry him. The rabbi sent for Chava Devorah and presented Tevel’s marriage proposal to her. Chava Devorah agreed immediately. The tena’im were written, and a wedding date was set. Tevel asked to add a provision to the tena’im: until the wedding, each of them would receive full credit for the mitzvah of tzedakah that he or she performed

08:39 individually, but after the marriage, both their property in this world and the merit of their good deeds in the World to Come would belong to them equally. He wanted Chava Devorah to be his full partner. He immediately put his considerable property in both their names as equal partners. He asked the rabbi of Pinsk to calculate the value of his estate and the half belonging to Chava Devorah. For her part, Chava Devorah immediately gave a fifth of her newly acquired property to tzedakah. The couple settled on Tevel’s estate. Since Tevel was unlearned, while Chava Devorah had some knowledge, she immediately began teaching him what she knew. Within a year, Tevel had learned to read a passage from the Chumash and a chapter of Tehillim, and to understand a little of the meaning of the words. “Now,” Chava Devorah said, “let’s find a teacher for both of us so we can continue to make progress.” For this purpose, they brought a suitable couple to live on their estate. The husband was a young scholar from Rabbi Moshe Yaffe’s yeshivah, and his wife was a friend of Chava Devorah’s. The young scholar’s name was Reb Nosson Aryeh. The couple received lodging on the estate and a respectable salary. Tevel and his wife treated them with great honor, provided for all their needs, and increased their salary from time to time. Reb Nosson Aryeh was to study every day with the estate owners, Tevel and Chava Devorah. For fifteen years, Tevel and Chava Devorah passed their tzedakah funds to the rabbi of Pinsk, as they had committed to do from their income, which the rabbi reviewed each month. When Rabbi Moshe Yaffe left Pinsk, Rabbi Naftali Katz of Prague took his place. With Tevel’s consent, Rabbi Moshe Yaffe revealed the couple’s secret to Rabbi Naftali, who from then on took charge of their discreet giving. Meanwhile, through his diligence and his progress under Reb Nosson’s guidance, Tevel had become a Torah scholar

11:23 Aryeh, and Chava Devorah also made great progress in her studies. Yet just as they did not want the public to know about the charity they gave, they did not want anyone to know about their Torah study or how much they knew. They asked Rabbi Nosson Aryeh to keep these things secret. In everyone’s eyes, they remained what they had always been: simple, honest, kindhearted people. In time, they were blessed with children, who grew up and established homes of their own. The parents, meanwhile, continued to live modestly, studying Torah and giving generously to charity in secret. From time to time, they traveled to visit the leading yeshivos of the day in Ostroh, Brisk, Slutsk, Minsk, Vilna, Krakow, and Prague. Everywhere they went, they left large sums to support the yeshivos, on condition that it be kept secret. Many years passed. No one knew that Tevel and Chava Devorah were exceptionally learned, or that they were very wealthy and gave a large portion of their money to charity. Twenty-five years after taking up the rabbinate of Pinsk, Rabbi Naftali Katz left the city, and Rabbi Naftali Hertz of Poznan took his place. The new rabbi, who had heard the details of Tevel and Chava Devorah’s lives from his predecessor, insisted that they let him tell the public about the great acts of charity they had carried out for decades. And so the wider public suddenly learned that Chava Devorah and Tevel were a couple who had concealed their greatness