Chapter 60: Baruch the Young One's Second Visit to Binovitch

00:01 As we related, the villagers’ new rabbi, Rabbi Ber, ruled that the slaughtered animal was kosher. Zalman Leib, on the other hand, maintained that it was treif, and the Jews in the village did not really know what to do. After all, they did not understand these matters. Zalman Leib passionately pointed to sources among the halachic authorities that, he argued, showed the animal was treif. Rabbi Ber proved from those very same sources that it was not treif. Meanwhile, the villagers remained confused. Rabbi Ber took the matter very seriously and tried to engage Zalman Leib in a scholarly debate to show him that his ruling was correct. But Zalman Leib stood his ground, answered him contemptuously, and called him someone who feeds Jews treif food. Rabbi Ber promptly wrote to the rabbi in Binovitch with the question, including a thorough halachic analysis, and asked him to rule on the matter. In writing it, Rabbi Ber displayed deep scholarship. To put Zalman Leib’s mind at ease, he showed him the letter before sending it. But Zalman Leib refused even to look at the manuscript. He threw it on the ground and shouted that he had no wish to examine such nonsense. Well, Rabbi Ber sent the question to Binovitch. A few days later, the rabbi’s answer arrived, endorsing Rabbi Ber’s ruling. The village Jews were reassured, but Zalman Leib would not give in and continued to insist on his opinion. Rabbi Ber would probably have continued to suffer at Zalman Leib’s hands, but fortunately for him, the following summer Mordechai the miller moved to the city of Binovitch itself and took his son-in-law with him. Only then did Rabbi Ber feel at ease and begin to find pleasure in his stay in the village. Mordechai the miller bought himself a house and a shop in the Binovitch marketplace, next to the shul where Zalman Chaim served as shamash. He began to daven there every day and attend the classes that the shamash gave to the public. Before long,

03:03 Mordechai became the gabbai of the beis midrash and helped the shamash, Zalman Chaim, with his activities. His son-in-law Zalman Leib also davened in that shul, where he found a circle of scholars with whom he could debate and display his learning. Zalman Chaim the shamash felt a personal bond with Zalman Leib, since it was through him that Zalman Leib had become Mordechai’s son-in-law. He also helped Zalman Leib be chosen to give the daily Gemara class in the beis midrash. Zalman Leib enjoyed this greatly, and his father-in-law took much pleasure in it. Mordechai’s son-in-law, Zalman Leib, became the talk of Binovitch. But Zalman Leib noticed that only seven or eight young men came to his class, while Zalman Chaim’s audience numbered many dozens, perhaps even hundreds, who attended his Chumash or Midrash classes. This kindled a fire of jealousy in Zalman Leib’s heart, and he began to show hatred toward the shamash and to persecute him. Zalman Chaim the shamash did not understand what Mordechai’s son-in-law wanted from him, and he spoke about it with Mordechai. Zalman Leib’s hatred did not trouble Zalman Chaim, but it pained him to discover that Zalman Leib lacked good character traits. To Zalman Chaim, good character traits carried more weight than scholarship, for our Sages said, “Study is not the main thing, but action.” He also felt a certain guilt that, because of him, Mordechai had acquired a son-in-law who chased after honor. For all these reasons, Zalman Chaim decided to do everything he could to move Zalman Leib to change his ways. And so, without regard for Zalman Leib’s attitude toward him, he made a point of treating him with esteem and respect. In his public classes, he would explain to his listeners the great value of studying and knowing Torah, and point

05:51 to Zalman Leib as an example—to his scholarship and to the Gemara class he gave in public. This made a deep impression on Zalman Leib. Here was something he had not encountered before: a man who repaid evil with good. Zalman Leib had expected Zalman Chaim, who could see his hatred, to treat him with unfriendliness. Instead, Zalman Chaim showed him such affection. Zalman Leib also began to notice the remarkable shamash’s good character traits. Little by little, feelings of regret began to trouble him, until at last a great change took place within him, and Zalman Chaim began to have an influence on him. Over time, Zalman Leib came to understand that scholarship alone was not enough; good character traits and good deeds were needed too. From then on, a deep friendship developed between the shamash and Mordechai’s son-in-law. What no one else had managed to accomplish in influencing Zalman Leib, Zalman Chaim the shamash achieved simply by being an example of kindness and patience. Now, when Boruch came to Binovitch for the second time, Zalman Leib was already known throughout the city both for his scholarship and for his good deeds. Boruch understood well that Zalman Chaim the shamash deserved the credit for the great change in Mordechai’s son-in-law. By being a living example of kindness and gentleness, he had succeeded in influencing Zalman Leib to adopt a new way of life. Boruch wanted to get to know Zalman Chaim more closely and learn good character traits from him. He also wanted to know more about his past and his life, but Zalman Chaim was no longer in Binovitch. About a year earlier, he had left the place and handed over his duties as shamash to someone else. No one knew where he had gone. Boruch also wanted to meet again with all the people he had known during his first stay in the city. He visited the shul near the cemetery, which had been his first stop in Binovitch.

08:46 His experiences of fear and joy in that beis midrash were still fresh in his memory. It served as a gathering place for the gravediggers, who often fortified themselves with a bottle of spirits. Boruch also remembered the Gemara passage he had been studying when one of the drunken gravediggers fell upon him with hugs and kisses, until he decided to leave and moved to the beis midrash in the marketplace. The passage he was studying then was in Bava Kamma, page 67, on the subject of yei’ush—giving up hope of recovering lost property. He had been delving into Tosafos on the debate over whether yei’ush alone effects acquisition, or whether yei’ush together with a change of name does. Now, in Yanovitch, Boruch also met the shopkeepers, doctors, and others for whom he had sometimes worked to earn his bread. He was now a grown young man on the verge of marriage, and none of them recognized him. Boruch wanted to learn something from each of them and to hear about their lives and experiences. He wanted to determine precisely which path in life was the right one: the path of Zalman Chaim, who devoted himself to ordinary people, or that of the brilliant Rabbi Simcha Zelig, the recluse from Vitebsk, who lived apart from the world within his own four cubits and looked down on ordinary people who were far from Torah. This question troubled Boruch deeply and touched him personally. He simply wanted to chart his own course in life. He had spent all his years until now investigating and learning, but he still had much to learn and many levels to pass through before he reached completeness. Boruch knew Rabbi Simcha Zelig the recluse well and personally. Like others, Boruch knew the extent of the elderly recluse’s genius. Legends circulated about his scholarship and greatness, and Boruch held this great scholar in deep esteem. Simcha Zelig came from a family of renowned scholars in Poland. At fifteen, he was famous as the prodigy of Mostovisk [?], Mostovitk [?]. He knew the entire Shas thoroughly, and in his diligence he was

11:37 like him. He sat and studied Torah virtually every hour of the day, apart from two or three hours of sleep. He also fasted every Monday and Thursday, as well as Friday. From his earliest youth, he had completely avoided casual conversation and spoke only words of Torah. He kept his distance from unlearned people and avoided contact with ordinary folk, simply because he had nothing to talk about with them. Since arriving in Vitebsk as a young man, he had spent some fifty years secluded in the city’s large beis midrash, making his home in one of its rooms. Now Baruch wanted to decide which of the two—Rabbi Simcha Zelig, the great scholar, or Rabbi Zalman Chaim, the shamash—brought more pleasure, so to speak, to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Was it Simcha Zelig, through his Torah study and seclusion, or Zalman Chaim, through his work among ordinary Jews? Baruch was inclined to conclude that it was Zalman Chaim, not Simcha Zelig, who was following the path pleasing to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Baruch did not meet Zalman Chaim again in Yanovitch, but he could see the profound impression Zalman Chaim had left at every turn. He visited the beis midrash where Zalman Chaim had served as shamash and listened to a lesson Zalman Leib gave before a large audience. It dealt with the passage in Tractate Kiddushin concerning betrothal with a loan and betrothal with stolen property. Zalman Leib delivered the lesson with great acuity. This was nothing new to Baruch, who already knew of Zalman Leib’s great scholarship. What astonished him was the fervor with which Zalman Leib davened. His davening was entirely different from before. In the past, he had hurried through it without a spark of warmth. Baruch understood that this change—this warmth now finding expression in Zalman Leib’s soul—was due solely to the influence of Rabbi Zalman Chaim the shamash,

14:16 who had kindled his soul, awakened his inner self, and brought him to recognize that what matters most in life is to be a person of good character. When Baruch had occasion to visit Zalman Leib at home, he found him absorbed in one of the books of the Maharal of Prague, his face glowing. It was clear that his study was captivating not only his mind but also his heart and soul. As Zalman Leib sat studying in his room, his six-year-old son came in, and Zalman Leib rebuked him on the spot when he noticed that a thread was missing from his tzitzis. For Baruch, this was further proof that Zalman Leib now felt his Judaism not only in his mind but also in his heart and with his whole soul. Baruch noticed similar changes among other Jews in Yanovitch, particularly among those who davened at the beis midrash in the marketplace, where Rabbi Zalman Chaim had exerted his influence. Take Pinya the tinsmith. Pinya had been among the first to attend Zalman Chaim’s Ein Yaakov lessons, and now he was sitting in the Gemara lesson given by Rabbi Yaakov Isaac, the wealthy man of Yanovitch. This lesson was well known in Yanovitch, not only because of Yaakov Isaac’s standing, but also because the city’s finest scholars attended it. Baruch was therefore astonished to see Pinya, a simple tinsmith who had once struggled to grasp even a passage of Ein Yaakov, sitting in a Gemara lesson with the leading scholars. At first he assumed Pinya had simply taken a seat there without understanding what was being discussed. But to his great surprise, he heard Pinya actively taking part in the intricate discussion and the exchange of arguments around the table. That meant Pinya had become a learned man. How had that happened? Simply because Pinya had listened carefully to the lessons all along. To Baruch, this was the clearest proof that even the most ordinary Jews, despite having learned very little in childhood, could greatly increase their knowledge. By consistently listening to what was taught publicly in the beis midrash, they could reach

16:58 a very high level of learning. There you have it, he told himself: another achievement of Zalman Chaim