Here’s My Story: Unanswered Questions, Unquestioned Answers
Dr. David Portowicz
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When World War Two broke out in 1939, my father, Rabbi Yosef Portowicz, was studying at the Lubavitch yeshivah in Otwock, near Warsaw, Poland. Along with his fellow students, he fled east and, by the grace of G-d, found refuge in Shanghai, which was then an international city. There, the Lubavitch yeshivah was reestablished and he studied there until the war ended and he immigrated to the United States.
By then he was already married – to a Jewish refugee girl in Shanghai – and he settled with my mother in New York, where I was born in 1949. But, although he was a highly-respected Torah scholar, he found it hard to earn a livelihood not knowing English, and he struggled to support his family.
That’s when the Rebbe came to his rescue. At the time the Rebbe was not yet the Rebbe – he was assisting the Previous Rebbe and running (among other things) Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Chabad’s central educational arm. He suggested that my father become a fundraiser for this organization, and he told him exactly how to raise money. My father was to visit various synagogues in the New York area for Shabbat and speak there. During his speeches, he was to explain the outreach work Chabad was doing; then as people from that community would donate money to Merkos after Shabbat, the organization would pay him a percentage.
So this is what my father did, with varying degrees of success. Every Shabbat, he would leave our family and travel to some other place and try his best.
Along the way, an amazing thing happened. As a child, I never ceased hearing about the Friday afternoon when my maternal grandfather came running to our house to summon my father to his telephone. My grandfather was the only person in our Brownsville neighborhood who had a telephone at that time – this was the late 1940s after all. What was so urgent? The Rebbe had called three times and needed to speak with my father before the onset of Shabbat.
The Rebbe was making this urgent call to tell my father that money had come in that day from his previous fundraising appeal. “I wanted you to know right away,” the Rebbe said, “so you could enjoy your Shabbat knowing that there is money coming to you.”
This was incredible – that the Rebbe should have such empathy for a person struggling to make a living as to go to so much trouble to let him know immediately that he could rest easy for a while. My father was enormously grateful and, later on, when he would tell this story to his children and grandchildren, he would stress that this is how a holy person (tzadik) behaves – he might be very busy and have a million things on his mind, but he still remembers the individual concerns of others and tries to ease their worries.
As he got to know him, my father developed the greatest admiration for the Rebbe, and whenever he had a question regarding Jewish philosophy of life (hashkafa) this is whom he would consult. And, over time, they developed a close relationship.
Of course, when it came time for my Bar Mitzvah, my father wanted me to get a blessing from the Rebbe who, following the passing of the Previous Rebbe, became the leader of the Chabad Movement.
I must admit that I was reluctant to go because I had not yet prepared my Bar Mitzvah speech and I was sure he would ask me about it. The format for my speech called for a question in Torah followed by the answer. By that point, I knew what my question would be, but had not yet learned the answer.
My father convinced me to go by saying, “Don’t worry about it. The Rebbe doesn’t have enough time to ask you about your speech. He is too busy. He is just going to bless you and then you will leave.”
But that is not what happened. When I went into the room, the Rebbe acted as if he had all the time in the world, and he made me feel very comfortable. And of course, he wanted to know about my speech. “What are you going to say?” he asked.
Shamefaced, I admitted that I haven’t yet prepared it – at the moment all I knew was the question. “Fine,” he replied, “tell me the question.”
So I told him the question, and then he said, “That is such a good question. Obviously, you got this idea from your father. It’s his Torah.”
I took that as a compliment and so did my father, and the whole encounter was a very positive experience. Upon reflection, I understand that the Rebbe knew exactly how to make me – and by extension my father – feel good. Although I have to say that he also knew how to deliver a gentle rebuke.
Sometime after, when I was in 10th grade, I became bothered by things I was learning in biology class. A great deal of this had to do with Darwin’s theory of evolution, which doesn’t agree with the Torah view. Seeing my struggle with these issues, my father encouraged me to write about it to the Rebbe.
And so, in 1964, I did.
In reply, I got a typed response of about five pages with explanations of why Darwin’s ideas are just theories and should not be accepted as the absolute truth. The Rebbe pointed out that some of these theories have already been refuted, and others could still be refuted in the future as science advances. Everything was written out in English and very, very clear. (Later I learned that this answer was originally prepared for a university student who had asked the same questions.)
Then, at the bottom of the letter, the Rebbe wrote by hand a personal note to me, which I no longer have, so I am paraphrasing: “Since you asked the questions, I provided the answers, but I want you to know that a yeshivah student doesn’t need to ask these questions. First and foremost, you should have faith. And you should know what it says in the Torah. That’s what counts.”
I got the point.
Dr. David Portowicz teaches social work at Bar Illan University in Israel. He is also the founder of the non-profit Jaffa Institute, which serves underprivileged children. He was interviewed in September, 2023.
