Chapter 72: Zecharia Yerucham Flees Nemirov from the Pursuit of the Cossacks

00:01 We are telling the story of the life of the rabbi of Dobromysl and his family, who were then known as the Yonim. In the year 5408, as is well known, terrible massacres of Jews were carried out under the leadership of the bloodthirsty enemy of the Jews, Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Nemirov was one of the places where the slaughter was worst. Multitudes of Jews were murdered there by the Ukrainian killers. Every member of the Yonim family was murdered. Only one survivor remained from that large family: Zechariah Yerucham, an eleven-year-old boy, the grandson of the Zechariah Yerucham who had first settled with his family near Nemirov. Zechariah Yerucham survived the bloodbath by a miracle. He fled Nemirov, and after weeks of wandering and hiding from the murderous gangs, he reached Brisk, despondent, helpless, wounded, hungry, and with torn clothes and shoes. Every little noise, every rustle, frightened him. He could barely get a word or two out. He was the tragic remnant of an entire family killed al kiddush Hashem. After considerable effort, people managed to learn from him that he was a refugee from Nemirov and the sole survivor of his family. The boy was taken into the home of a Brisk resident and slowly began to recover. In time, with the encouragement of kind people, he grew strong enough to lead the prayers for the elevation of the souls of his martyred relatives. Since he was not yet bar mitzvah, after Shacharis he would recite chapters of Tehillim in public and say Kaddish afterward. He also studied Mishnayos with the community every day and delivered a lesson in Midrash. After Minchah there was a Talmud lesson, and after Maariv he said Kaddish; he followed this practice at Tikkun Chatzos as well. Over the course of the day, he managed to say Kaddish several times in memory of those murdered in Nemirov. The boy, Zechariah Yerucham, was exceptionally gifted. When he arrived in Brisk, as we related, at the age of eleven, he already knew several tractates of Gemara by heart. He was also remarkably sharp and gifted with an extraordinary

03:02 memory. He needed only to look through a book once to be able to repeat it all by heart, and so he became known as the prodigy of Nemirov. The rabbi of Brisk, the gaon Rabbi Moshe Yaakov, took him into his home and included him in the lessons he held with his son, the prodigy Tzvi Hirsch, who was two years older. The orphan Zechariah Yerucham was handsome, but his tragic experiences had left a constant sadness on his face. It made him look older than he was. The scholars of Brisk differed over whether, before reaching bar mitzvah, he could lead the prayers, fulfill others’ obligations in matters of study, and say Kaddish. In the end, the city’s great rabbis agreed on solutions. Zechariah Yerucham spent six years in Brisk, studying Torah diligently. At seventeen, he received rabbinic ordination from the great rabbis of Brisk. Meanwhile, Rabbi Moshe Yaakov, the city’s rabbi, passed away, and his son Tzvi Hirsch succeeded him as rabbi. Zechariah Yerucham went to Horodna, where there was a large yeshiva headed by the gaon Raphael Dovid, grandson of the gaon Dovid Zilsburg, who had been a student of the gaon Yosef Katz, rabbi of Krakow and a student of a student of the Maharshal. Zechariah Yerucham studied in Raphael Dovid’s yeshiva in Horodna for two years. During that time he met the gaon Binyamin Zev, the city’s rabbi, and became friends with his son Yehuda. He also visited the gaon Naftali Hertz Ginzburg there, and the rosh yeshiva bestowed on Zechariah Yerucham the title Moreinu. He also wanted Zechariah Yerucham to marry his granddaughter, but Zechariah Yerucham preferred to set out on a period of wandering. Zechariah Yerucham made his way to Slutsk. While still in the yeshiva, he had heard of the greatness of Betzalel, the maggid of Slutsk, and of the Slutsk gaon Aharon Moshe, who was then

05:36 110 years old and had spent eighty years studying Torah in solitude. Zechariah Yerucham wanted to hear Torah from these two great scholars. The elderly gaon Aharon Moshe took a great liking to Zechariah Yerucham, especially after hearing that he descended from the distinguished Nemirovitz family, the Yonim. Aharon Moshe was related to the family of the Rema, from whom Zechariah Yerucham was also descended, as we related. From Slutsk, Zechariah Yerucham continued his wanderings through other cities and towns. Wherever he went, he looked for and found someone he could serve and learn Torah from. In Kremenets, for example, there was a yeshiva called Ohel Yitzchak, named after Yitzchak HaKohen, a student of the Maharshal. There he heard the rosh yeshiva, the gaon Yechezkel Meir. He also discovered a large library there and spent several weeks among its books, the treasure he had found. From there, Zechariah Yerucham headed for Nemirov, the city he had fled ten years earlier. The closer he came to Nemirov, the more he learned about the terrible events that had taken place in that city of bloodshed. In Nemirov itself, he still found heaps of ruins. From there he went to the village where the Yonim family had lived. Only one Jewish family remained in the village then: that of the old miller, Mendel. Mendel was one of three Jews whom the village’s non-Jews had managed to save during the massacre. The other two had left the village. Mendel the miller showed Zechariah Yerucham the houses where the Jews had lived, including the home of the “holy elder,” as the villagers called his grandfather, Zechariah Yerucham. All those houses were old, their ceilings propped up with beams so they would not collapse. They were occupied by villagers, except for the holy elder’s house. It stood empty but was carefully maintained, plastered and whitewashed, with a lovely garden around it. The non-Jews in the village spoke of the holy elder with reverence.

08:20 They said that as long as the elder lived in the village, no woman miscarried there, nor did any animal lose its young. When someone in the village fell ill, or when a resident’s animal became sick, they would come to the elder. He would give the sick person a little water to drink or a slice of bread to eat, tell him to trust in Hashem and act honestly, and the patient would recover. During the four years the elder lived in the village, not a single theft occurred there. The villagers told an interesting story about thefts. Early in the elder’s time in the village, animals were stolen from the cowshed of a Jew and the stable of a non-Jew, both village residents. Suspicion fell on two brothers from the village who had two brothers in another village. The brothers denied the accusation completely. Yet less than a month later, one of the brothers died suddenly. Another, from the second village, went into the forest to chop wood; a tree fell on him and broke his neck. A short time later, a third brother drowned in the river. He had been crossing it while the water was frozen, when the ice broke beneath him and he drowned. The non-Jewish villagers now understood that these things had happened to the brothers as punishment for the thefts they had indeed committed. Then the fourth brother fell ill. He came to the holy elder and admitted that his brothers had committed the thefts. He said that he had not taken part, though he had known about them. He begged the elder to save his life. The elder promised him that if he had truly taken no part in the thefts, he would live and not die. But because he had known about them and had not revealed them, he was destined to remain ill until he paid the owners for the stolen animals. It took the man two years to pay what he owed, and throughout that time he remained confined to his sickbed.

10:59 In the third year, he repaid what he had stolen and immediately recovered. This astonishing incident spread the holy elder’s reputation even further among the non-Jews. Then, as we recall, Zechariah Yerucham and his family left the village and moved to the city of Nemirov. At that time, the villagers purchased his house and the surrounding garden and left it empty. Whenever a couple from the village married, they were allowed to stay in the house for a short time as a segulah for success in their life together. The villagers cultivated the plot of land beside the house in turns determined by lot, and the garden’s produce was distributed to the poor—Jews and, lehavdil, non-Jews. When the village learned that the young visitor was the holy Jew’s grandson, they received him with great honor. They also offered him the house and garden as a place to live. But Zechariah Yerucham had not considered such an idea, and he continued his travels. On his way, Zechariah Yerucham stopped in Ludmir, where he spoke with the renowned Torah scholar Rabbi Shlomo Naftali and his brilliant son Rabbi Nachman, and from there he reached Lutsk. At that time, the renowned Torah scholar Rabbi Pesach Katz, who was famous for performing wonders, lived in Lutsk, and his son Rabbi Moshe Kohen was the local rabbi, the mara d’asra. In Lutsk, Zechariah Yerucham met another Jew, a wanderer. After getting to know him better, he recognized him as a great Torah scholar and tzaddik—a hidden Torah scholar and tzaddik. Zechariah Yerucham then refused to part from him, even though the man firmly refused to reveal who he was. For two months, Zechariah Yerucham accompanied the hidden tzaddik without even knowing his name or where he came from. In the third month of their travels together, in the first days of Nissan, it was the yahrzeit of one of the hidden tzaddik’s relatives. He asked to be called up to the Torah and gave his name. Zechariah Yerucham then learned that the hidden tzaddik’s name was Nachum Tuvia, son of Rabbi Shlomo. He learned nothing more. The two travelers headed toward Vilna.

13:52 The entire surrounding area was strewn with devastation and ruin. This was after the war between the Russians and the Poles, during which the Russians had conquered the whole region with the help of the Cossacks, who had caused the devastation. Tsar Alexander was then on the Russian throne, and he had even shown a measure of friendliness toward the Jewish people. That was because the Jews, through their diligence and devotion, had succeeded in rebuilding a number of cities and towns that had suffered severely in the war, among them Vilna. The tsar also granted the Jews special concessions. But while the cities and towns were rebuilt and began to flourish, the villages remained in ruins, especially the estates of the Polish nobles. Those nobles had fled, and the peasants who had fought for them had been killed in the war or taken captive. The Jews then realized that they could rebuild the villages and estates as well. What did they do? They leased plots of land from the government and began cultivating them. The government supplied the Jews with seeds and, in return, received a certain percentage of the grain. The same applied to the many orchards in the area, which the Polish nobles had planted with the help of agricultural and botanical experts. The Jews leased these orchards from the government in exchange for a share of the produce, and the whole area began to come back to life. The Jews hired the wives and children of peasants who had fallen in the war to work the fields and pick the fruit. On similar terms, they leased the flour mills and other facilities that had belonged to the nobles and put them back into operation. But the rabbis of Vilna began to fear that this situation might bring a new misfortune upon the Jews. There was a danger that, when the nobles returned, they would accuse the Jews of taking over their property and serving the Russians in their war against the Poles. The rabbis therefore gathered to discuss how to forestall this danger. They decided that the Jewish lessees of the estates and facilities would set aside an additional percentage of the produce and income for the nobles. The money

16:46 received in exchange for the portion of produce set aside for the nobles would be deposited in a special fund, held for the owners so they could claim their share at any time. That way, the nobles would not be able to accuse the Jews of stealing from them. It was a wise step, and a necessary one, to prevent accusations by the defeated Poles. Nevertheless, it did not prevent accusations and incitement. Certain Poles were simply jealous of the Jews’ success and began informing on them to the Russian government. A delegation of authorized citizens went to Moscow to demand that the tsar expel the Jews from Vilna and the surrounding area. At the same time, they sent word to the Polish nobles that the Jews had taken over their estates. Fortunately, the tsar paid no heed to the incitement. On the contrary, he instructed the governor of Vilna to commend the Jews for their abilities and devotion. He also ordered measures to protect the Jews against possible attacks by the Poles, who had threatened to harm them if the government did not take action against them. The nobles, too, were not swayed by the incitement. They were pleased that the Jews were restoring their estates and acting honestly by voluntarily setting aside a percentage of their income for the estate owners. Some of the nobles even sent letters of thanks to the Jewish lessees, asking them to continue their work in the future. When Zechariah Yerucham and the hidden tzaddik Nachum Tuvia arrived in Vilna, they found the Jews in a good material situation. Their spiritual condition, by contrast, was not bright, despite the fact that some of the renowned Torah scholars who had fled Vilna when the Cossacks entered it had already returned. The massacre carried out by the Cossacks in 5415, in which twenty-five thousand Jews were murdered in Vilna and the surrounding area, had not yet been forgotten. Four of Vilna’s renowned Torah scholars of that time—Rabbi Moshe Rivkes, author of Be’er Hagolah; Rabbi Ephraim, author of Shaar Ephraim; Rabbi Shabtai Kohen, author of the Shach; and Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Kaidanover—along with other Torah scholars, had over time found a place of refuge

19:32 in other communities, and the Vilna community continued its efforts to bring them back to Vilna.