Chapter 53: Baruch the Young One Leaves Dubrovna and Arrives in Vitebsk

00:01 The story of young Baruch, from Dobromysl, continues. He came again to celebrate Pesach at the home of Eliezer Reuven the blacksmith. Once again Baruch spent Pesach in Eliezer Reuven’s home, but this time the atmosphere was entirely different. Eliezer Reuven’s two sons-in-law were there—genuine Torah scholars whom he had brought from the yeshiva in Vitebsk. Baruch now had people with whom he could discuss Torah. He spent many hours debating deep Talmudic questions with the blacksmith’s sons-in-law. When Baruch and the sons-in-law discussed Torah, Eliezer Reuven would sit to one side and listen with interest, though he did not understand a word of the three young scholars’ conversation. His face shone with happiness. A sublime light glowed in his eyes. You could plainly see how much nachas Eliezer Reuven felt. He was in seventh heaven to have brought Torah into his own four cubits. Baruch felt completely at ease in Eliezer Reuven’s home. Here he saw no reason to hide his scholarship. The fact that he was learned would not be taken as showing off his Torah knowledge or feeling superior. That was because of how natural it felt to be among simple, upright Jews who feared Hashem and loved Torah, whose whole desire was to serve Hashem and observe the Torah in every detail. Off to one side sat Shmuel Nachum, the blacksmith’s son, silent, with a look of sorrow on his face. It was clear that Shmuel Nachum felt inferior because he could not take part in the Torah discussions; he could not grasp what was being said. He was overcome by the painful envy of someone forced to sit on the sidelines, unable to join a discussion among Torah scholars. Baruch’s sharp eye noticed what was happening. More than most people, Baruch had a gift for sensing the feelings of any Jew, and so he understood the heart of Shmuel Nachum, the simple boy. Baruch also saw that from time to time

02:52 Eliezer Reuven looked toward his son and shook his head sadly. At those moments he must have felt more keenly than ever the gap between his learned sons-in-law and his only son, who was unlearned. Perhaps the blacksmith also found himself comparing his son to Baruch, who, through hard work and despite every difficulty, had distinguished himself so greatly in Torah study. Baruch kept watching Shmuel Nachum, whose distress stirred deep compassion in him, and an idea came to mind. Didn’t Shmuel Nachum’s distress show how strongly he wanted to be like his brothers-in-law and be able to study Torah? So Baruch began speaking with Eliezer Reuven. “It’s true,” he said, “that a person can be a G-d-fearing Jew without being a scholar, and that working at a trade is certainly a fine thing. After all, I myself live by the work of my hands, and I look down on no trade. That’s why I told you before that you needn’t be upset that Shmuel Nachum is a craftsman. But when I see the sorrow on Shmuel Nachum’s face as he follows the Torah discussions between your sons-in-law, I think his strong desire to learn could lead him to become a scholar.” So Baruch said to Eliezer Reuven, “My advice is to send your son to a yeshiva.” When Shmuel Nachum heard the suggestion, he burst into tears and began begging his father to send him to yeshiva. Eliezer Reuven granted his wish. As Baruch learned years later, Shmuel Nachum did indeed become a Torah scholar, and even became the son-in-law of a learned Jew. When Baruch heard this, he felt gratified to have played a part in it. His satisfaction was not only for Shmuel Nachum’s sake, but also for his father Eliezer Reuven’s, whose great wish had been for his son to become learned. After Pesach, Baruch set out again. He still intended to reach

05:37 Beshenkovichi to study Torah there under the gaon Rabbi Avraham Zev. Since the road to Beshenkovichi passed through Vitebsk, Baruch decided to stop there briefly to see his family—his uncle, aunt and sister. As we know, his sister was already married to the yeshiva student Yosef Yitzchak, who later became one of the heads of the Vitebsk yeshiva. By the time Baruch arrived in Vitebsk, the couple had been blessed with a child. Their home was on the edge of town. Baruch first sought out his uncle and aunt. Naturally, they were very happy to see him again. They hoped he would now remain in their home. Of course, if Baruch had stayed, he would have lacked nothing there. They were even ready to forgive him for leaving them several years earlier without ever telling them where he was, as though he had vanished off the face of the earth. In truth, they had no idea what had drawn Baruch away from them in the first place or what had brought him back now. Baruch, for his part, did not go into lengthy explanations. He preferred, by nature, to keep his words brief. He only explained that he had chosen a way of life in which he would support himself solely by the work of his hands and depend on no one. When Baruch heard that his brother-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, was one of the heads of the yeshiva, he went there. He also wanted to meet its leaders and students and get a sense of the yeshiva as a whole. When Baruch arrived, his brother-in-law was delivering a shiur. Baruch watched him from the side. He was a young married man of average height, good-looking, with dark eyes. His face showed determination. He stood by the lectern and delivered his shiur in a clear, strong voice, explaining it well. The material was deep. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak analyzed the passage with great acuity, while making his points easy to follow. Both the shiur and the man who delivered it made a good impression on Baruch. When the students dispersed, each

08:10 to his own place to review the shiur, Baruch sat down too and began delving into the passage it had covered. He could see that his brother-in-law had put great scholarship into preparing it and had offered many original insights along the way. At the end of the shiur, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak shared an explanation of an aggadic teaching of Rav Chisda in Tractate Kesubos, 75a: “A deep voice in a woman is a blemish, as it says, ‘For your voice is sweet and your appearance is lovely.’” He explained that this refers to Knesses Yisroel—the Jewish people, who are called the wife of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What is meant by a “deep voice”? When a person prays as though demanding what he needs, that is a blemish, for prayer should be offered as a plea. Then the voice is sweet. Afterward, Baruch listened to a shiur by the rosh yeshiva, the gaon Rabbi Paltiel, and was captivated. He had never encountered such depth. Baruch then set out to carry out several things he had resolved to do in Vitebsk. First, he went to pray at the graves of his loved ones. Then he fulfilled his longing to walk once more outside the town, along the banks of the Dvina River, where he used to walk with his father as a child. Those walks and the conversations they had during them had never faded from Baruch’s memory. Having done these things that mattered so much to him, he went to his sister’s home, where his brother-in-law arrived later. The reunion between brother and sister, and between the brothers-in-law, was very warm. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak now got to know his brother-in-law, whom he had seen earlier in the yeshiva without knowing who he was. After a short conversation with his sister, Baruch began a Torah discussion with his brother-in-law that went on for a long time. It was Friday, before Shabbos. Devorah’le wanted him to stay at her home. “Surely you’ll spend Shabbos with us,” she said, “after we’ve waited so long for you?” His brother-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, also asked him to stay. But Baruch had an answer ready: surely they were expecting him at his uncle’s home, after all,

11:02 A woman appeared today for the first time. He acted the same way at his uncle’s home, where he went afterward and found them preparing for him to spend Shabbos there. His excuse was that his sister very much wanted him to stay at her home. In fact, Baruch had plans of his own. He wanted to continue on his way, live by the work of his own hands, and not depend on anyone. He did not want to be a guest at anyone else’s table, even for one Shabbos, even if it was his sister’s or his uncle’s. Baruch had already looked for and found a beis midrash where he could study and sleep, and before Shabbos he bought himself challahs and something to eat with them, as he always did. Meanwhile, he decided to stay in Vitebsk instead of traveling to Beshenkovichi, as he had originally planned, and to study at the yeshiva where his brother-in-law was one of the teachers. Baruch was already quite firm in his views, so he had no reason to fear that his sister or brother-in-law, his uncle or aunt, or anyone else would persuade him to change his ways. After several days, his relatives realized that Baruch was avoiding sleeping or eating in their homes and was making do with meager fare. They pressed him to explain his behavior. Baruch then told them of his decision to live by the work of his own hands, and that this was why he had left them earlier and had not told them where he was. Throughout that time, he had feared he would not be able to withstand conflicting influences because he was young and vulnerable. So he had decided to go somewhere no one knew him and keep his whereabouts hidden, so that neither his relatives nor anyone else could force him to depend on the help of other people. But now that he was older, knew clearly what lay ahead of him, and was determined to follow the path he had chosen, he no longer feared the influence of others, and his relatives could know about it. Baruch asked only that they not burden him with questions

13:50 and complaints about his path—a path full of hardship, yet also full of satisfaction from knowing that he stood on his own feet in his service of Hashem, with clean hands and a pure heart.