Episode 203 - Chaim Yehoshua

00:01 In connection with the redemption of Jewish children drafted into the Russian army, some of whom had been abducted, we will tell the story of Chaim Yehoshua, who rescued a great many Cantonists. Chaim Yehoshua recounts: One winter night in 5595 or 5596, that is, 1835 or 1836, there was a knock at the door. I got out of bed and opened it. Two Jews stood in the doorway, wrapped in winter coats and covered in snow. I extended my hand and greeted them with “Shalom aleichem.” I asked them to take off their coats and come warm themselves by the stove. I offered them a hot drink, and also served bread, butter and milk, and they sat down to eat. I, Chaim Yehoshua relates, went out to tend to the cattle. When I stepped outside, I heard what sounded like a child crying, but I paid no attention, thinking it was a cat. As I drew closer to where the sound was coming from, however, I could make out a child’s voice. “Who’s crying?” I called. “It’s me, Binyamin,” a trembling voice replied. I followed the voice to the winter wagon the Jewish guests had left at the edge of the yard. I looked inside, and a shudder went through my whole body. Two children lay there bound with ropes. One was asleep and the other was crying. In those days, kidnappers had become common—Jews who abducted and stole Jewish children and sold them to communities to hand over to the army. When I saw the children, I immediately guessed that these men were kidnappers and the children had been stolen. I was afraid they might steal our children too. I hurried to untie the children, lifted them down from the wagon and took them to the house of my brother Michael, which stood in the garden. Michael was already awake. I told him what I suspected and hurried home. When I got there, I saw one of the Jews sitting beside my son Ephraim Zalman. I woke my household and whispered to them that these Jews were kidnappers and were taking two children who were bound with ropes,

03:00 children who had undoubtedly been stolen. The Jew sitting beside my son Ephraim Zalman said, “That one seems to be a good child. But Heaven has afflicted me with two deranged children who speak wildly, and I had to tie them up. I’m taking them to the specialist in Vitebsk.” Meanwhile, my brother Michael gave the children food and drink and shut them in a room. He came to my house, and when he saw the Jews his anger flared. He went up to them and said, “Shalom aleichem, Jewish kidnappers! Kidnappers! Leave this house at once, or you’ll regret it.” The Jews immediately understood that they had been caught. One said to the other, “Let’s go.” He added, “To think that we’ve fallen among heartless Jews who have no pity for an unfortunate man taking his deranged sons to a doctor! I live in a village too, just like you,” the Jew said. “When I saw that both children of Smoler [unclear], who lives in the forest, had lost their minds and had no doctor to treat them, I took pity on him. I saw his distress, and I’m taking him and his two children to the specialist in Vitebsk.” The Jews left the house in a rush. When they discovered that the children were gone, they came back shouting, but quickly realized that shouting would do them no good. They hurried out of the village, and the two children stayed with us. About a month later, the time came for my brother Michael to travel to Lubavitch to see the Tzemach Tzedek. When he went in to the Rebbe, he told him about the children. My brother saw the Rebbe’s face light up with joy. The Rebbe blessed us all and instructed us to look after the children for about a year, then take them home. The children stayed with us and studied alongside our children under the teacher Yerucham Zev, making fine progress in their studies. From then on, Chaim Yehoshua relates, I felt a desire to devote myself to redeeming captives, and I could not hold back. I traveled to the Tzemach Tzedek in Lubavitch and told him of my great desire. The Rebbe agreed and laid out a plan for this work. For about three or four months each year, once in the summer and once

05:40 in the winter, I would travel to various places to redeem the abducted children who had been handed over as Cantonists. I did this for about seven years, Chaim Yehoshua relates, until I fell into a trap and came within a hair’s breadth of death. After I was freed, I traveled to the Tzemach Tzedek. He chose the town of Glukhov as my place of residence, blessed me with long life and promised me a place in his company. Chaim Yehoshua went on working throughout the region to redeem and free children who had been abducted for service in the Russian army. Then, toward the end of the six or seven years he spent in this work, he reached Kazan. The chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua stayed in Kazan for about four months. Since he was a merchant from a village himself, he knew the ways of village people. He traveled from village to village redeeming the children. Some fled after he freed them; for others, he had to find a place of refuge himself. The chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua carried out his work with clever tactics. On arriving in a village, he would first trade in its produce—wool, flax and the like—to account for his presence. Then, in passing, he would ask about the boys there. One day, while he was in one of the villages, a Jewish man arrived who spoke Yiddish with a Volhynian accent. He too said he had come to trade in the village’s wool and flax, and he befriended the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua. Trusting him, Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua spent about a month in his company. All the while, the newcomer watched him until he learned everything about his work redeeming Cantonists. At that point the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua had eight children with him. He did not yet know how to make arrangements for them, so they remained with him in Kazan. Some stayed at his lodging; others went to townspeople to ask for food. On the advice of his Volhynian friend, the wool and flax merchant, who had been helping him redeem the Cantonists and find places for them, he settled six children in Kazan,

08:32 while the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua decided to take the other two with him when he prepared to travel home. But on the very day he intended to leave, three armed soldiers suddenly arrived with the Volhynian merchant and put the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua in chains. At the sight of the soldiers, the children fled for their lives. They also alerted their friends who had been settled in the city, and all of them disappeared without a trace. For seven months, the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua was taken from prison to prison in shackles, until they brought him to Vitebsk. The Tzemach Tzedek then sent a letter to the chossid Rabbi Zev Wolf, asking him to save the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua. When Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua was brought to Vitebsk in shackles, the elderly Reb Gavriel—whom we remember from the story of Reb Gavriel Nosei Chen—was in Shklov for the wedding of a grandson of his youngest son, and stayed away for several months. By the time he returned home to Vitebsk, the townspeople had already persuaded the city governor to send Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua to a civilian court rather than a military court, where he would have faced the death penalty. Since the elderly Reb Gavriel was held in very high regard by the governor, he went to speak with him about the merits of the chossid Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua. He found favor in the governor’s eyes, and the governor granted his request to release Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua, on condition that he leave the entire region and that no one know of it. Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua spent about three months imprisoned in Vitebsk before the governor released him. The Tzemach Tzedek lent him money to start trading, advised him to settle in Glukhov and blessed him on his way. Chaim Yehoshua lived in Glukhov for about twenty-five years and earned a respectable living. From time to time he would travel to the Tzemach Tzedek in Lubavitch, and after his passing

11:31 Of the Tzemach Tzedek, he traveled to his son, the Rebbe Maharash. The well-known chossid Reb Dov Zev of Yekaterinoslav related that when he served as a shadar, an emissary of the Rebbe Maharash, he would also visit the town of Glukhov. One of the elder chassidim lived there, Reb Chaim Yehoshua, and whenever Reb Dov Zev came to Glukhov, he delighted in hearing stories from him about the lives of the older chassidim. Once, when Reb Dov Zev arrived in Glukhov—it was in 5636—Reb Chaim Yehoshua was already eighty-seven years old. Sensing that his time had come, he called for the elder chassidim of the town, Reb Avraham Zalman HaKohen, Reb Shlomo Menachem the teacher, and Reb Ephraim Fishel the teacher, and asked them to call the visiting emissary, Reb Dov Zev, as well. When Reb Dov Zev heard that Reb Chaim Yehoshua was ill and growing weak, he went to visit him. Reb Chaim Yehoshua was ill for about a week. His strength failed, but his mind remained clear until the last moment, and he told his visitors various stories. Then he expressed his final request. “In 5593 or 5594, I spent all eight days of Chanukah with the Tzemach Tzedek and heard three maamarim of Chassidus. Their central theme was that the Greeks’ war was a spiritual war, as the Greeks said, ‘Write on the horn of the ox that you have no share in the G-d of Israel.’ Through the Jewish people’s self-sacrifice, they defeated the Greeks. The Tzemach Tzedek spoke with great admiration of, and greatly praised, the service of self-sacrifice for the sanctification of Hashem’s name, as with Rabbi Akiva and others. I,” said Reb Chaim Yehoshua, “was then over forty years old. My four brothers, my two brothers-in-law, and I had lived since our youth in the village of Zhetski[?], near Kalisk, where our father, Reb Avraham Yisroel, a chossid of the Alter Rebbe and his son the Mitteler Rebbe, had settled. He guided us to study and work the land, and we also made a point of fulfilling the mitzvah of hospitality.” Reb Chaim Yehoshua then recounted

14:40 all the events that had happened to him in connection with redeeming the Cantonist children. Reb Chaim Yehoshua concluded: “Today or tomorrow my soul will return to its Maker. My final request of you,” he told them, “is that after the grave is closed, a minyan of our fellow chassidim should say these words: ‘Your holy honor, our Rebbe, son-in-law of our Rebbe, and grandson of our Rebbe: Your servant Chaim Yehoshua son of Neser[?] has died. Before his death, he appointed us as emissaries for a mitzvah to inform your holy honor that your servant Chaim Yehoshua son of Neser[?] has died, and to remind your holy honor of the promise you made to your servant Chaim Yehoshua son of Neser[?] for his work in the mitzvah of redeeming captives—the promise that he would be “with me in my place.”’” Everyone promised Reb Chaim Yehoshua that they would fulfill his request. The next morning, after Reb Chaim Yehoshua davened Shacharis and put on Rabbeinu Tam tefillin, he passed away with his mind clear, saying, “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” Reb Chaim Yehoshua was buried that same day, and when the grave was closed, ten of us stood there. All this was related by the chossid Reb Dov Zev. “We said the prescribed words,” he recounted to the Rebbe Maharash, the son of the Tzemach Tzedek. “When I later came to the Rebbe Maharash in Lubavitch,” Reb Dov Zev concluded, “I told him what Reb Chaim Yehoshua had related and what he had asked of us.” The Rebbe Maharash said, “Action is paramount. Actual work brings one to the highest levels. A wise chossid secured a fine place for himself. My father is a man of his word; he will certainly keep his promise.”