Here’s My Story: The Boy With The Light

Rabbi Eli Amsel

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My father, Rabbi Meir Amsel, was born in Neudorf, Slovakia. As a young boy, his mother would wake him up at 4:00 AM, tie a lantern to his chest, and send him to study Torah in the rundown local synagogue, where there was one teacher for all seven boys of the village. As a result of World War I, the family fled to nearby Košice, where under the guidance of the city’s leading rabbis, he pursued his deep passion for studying Torah. We, as children, never saw him without a Torah book in hand – he went to sleep with a volume of Talmud and woke up with it – and he had vast knowledge in all areas of Torah.

After World War II, my father came to America and started a monthly rabbinical journal called Hamaor. He had a sharp pen, a tremendous command of the Hebrew language, and a firm grasp on current affairs, especially those pertaining to the Jewish world. Dedicated to Torah discourse and the practical application of Jewish law, each issue of Hamaor discussed issues in the Jewish religious arena that needed attention.

As a result of all this, he developed close relationships with many of the great rabbinic figures in America, from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to Rabbi Eliezer Silver, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, as well as the Satmar Rebbe, the Bobover Rebbe, and the Bluzhever Rebbe. They were all subscribers, contributors, and friends who appreciated him and his Torah knowledge.

When I was a youngster, my father would take my brother and me with him to the different sages and rebbes he visited. And from 1951, which is when I was born, until after my Bar Mitzvah, we lived in Crown Heights, around the corner from 770, where we would go regularly.

When my father walked in the street, he used the time to think about matters of Torah learning, with his mind everywhere but the sidewalk in front of him. One time, he was walking up to 770 for the morning prayers and, unbeknownst to him, the Rebbe was just ahead of him. Had he noticed, he would have slowed to give the Rebbe more space, but instead, just as he got to the door of 770, he saw the Rebbe holding the door open for him. He stopped, but to his surprise, the Rebbe invited my father to enter first!

Of course, my father refused, but the Rebbe insisted: “You are holding tefilin. You should go first.”

Despite my father’s requests, the Rebbe declined to write responsa for the Hamaor, explaining that this was the field of Rabbi Zalman Shimon Dvorkin, the chief Halachic authority of the Lubavitch community. Instead, he submitted articles – edited specifically for Hamaor, and recently republished in a separate collection – containing his teachings on the weekly Torah portion or an upcoming holiday. They are fascinating teachings, composed so that the average rabbi could appreciate and understand; often, when I need to speak, I take out an old Hamaor to reference what the Rebbe wrote. For decades, the first fifteen pages or so of each issue were dedicated to these teachings.

Along with the article, the Rebbe would also send a check of $1,500 or $2,000. Those checks kept my father going for another month, especially when the journal got involved in various Halachic controversies, and some people pulled their advertisements. So for about thirty years, the Rebbe was the main supporter of the journal.

By 1965, living in our area of Crown Heights became very difficult; you could hardly traverse the neighborhood without getting mugged or attacked. So, my father decided to move. He found an old, decrepit building for sale in Borough Park, on the corner of 50th Street and 18th Avenue, and decided to turn the ground floor into a synagogue and a mikveh, while we could live in an apartment above. Many of the articles that my father wrote were on the subject of mikveh, and in those days, he felt that this practice– broadly speaking, the laws of Family Purity – was not being observed according to the standards and seriousness it warranted.

The problem was that he had no money, and he needed $23,000, so he went to his friends for help.

“Rebbe,” he said, “I need money.”

The Rebbe gave him $5,000 and a blessing for success: “Your building is on the corner of 50th and 18th,” he remarked. “That represents the [Kabbalistic] 50 Gates of Understanding and chai [life]!” After that, my father went to his next friend, the Satmar Rebbe, who contributed another $5,000. The mikveh is still in use to this day!

When the Rebbe began the practice of handing out dollars for people to donate to charity, my father once went by, and the Rebbe gave him a whole stack of fifty singles. “Rabbi Amsel,” he said, “we have to support you!”

I still have those bills today, and I’ve been able to give each of my children and grandchildren a dollar from that stack. When we go over fifty, please G-d, we’ll worry about it then.

Whenever my father had an audience with the Rebbe, it lasted for hours. The Rebbe once told him that he liked these meetings because they could converse comfortably. Most people who went to the Rebbe would tell him about their problems, “but with you,” the Rebbe commented, “I can schmooze.”

My father never shared his private conversations with us, but in 1988, when the Rebbe’s wife passed away, my father went to offer his condolences, and that conversation was recorded.

The Rebbe was obviously feeling deeply distressed at the time, and my father wanted to encourage him. He felt that, as a leader of the Jewish world, the Rebbe could not allow himself to fall into depression. As their conversations always involved Torah, he expressed this sentiment by citing the Talmudic Tractate Yomah, which states that since the High Priest had to be married in order to perform his duties on Yom Kippur, if his wife passed on the day, he would be required to remarry immediately. To this, my father added that since the Temple service had to be performed with joy, this meant that a Jewish leader could and must be joyful even under such circumstances.

“I don’t want to argue with you,” the Rebbe replied, but “there is an entire Talmudic discussion in Tractate Sanhedrin about how one never forgets the wife of one’s youth.” The Rebbe explained that this is why the Torah describes how Jacob was so brokenhearted at the loss of his wife Rachel. He was still surrounded by a large family, with three other wives and many more children, but that did not console him.

In essence, the Rebbe was asking, how could someone not be despondent in such circumstances? Having been married for nearly sixty years, the Rebbetzin was the Rebbe’s “wife of youth,” and her passing was a tremendous loss for him. Not many people would have received an answer like that from the Rebbe, but this was how he related to my father.

For the past twenty-five years, Rabbi Eli Amsel has specialized in preparing rare and antique Jewish books and handwritten manuscripts for auction. He was interviewed in July 2018.