Here’s My Story: The Man Who Held Up The Line

Rabbi Elchanan Jacobovez

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The first time I traveled to the Rebbe was at the end of 1963, as part of a group of yeshivah students from Israel. The journey was more than a week long; part by ship; then by train from Italy to England, by way of France; and from there by plane to the United States. After arriving, I had my turn to go to the Rebbe for a private audience. That audience was thirteen minutes long, which was considered extraordinary.

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Among other things, the Rebbe took an interest in my family relation to Rabbi Aryeh Levine, the famous “Tzaddik of Jerusalem.” He was also known as the “Rabbi of the Prisoners,” a moniker that stuck ever since he took to visiting the incarcerated members of the Jewish underground in the days of British Mandatory Palestine.

“How are you related to Reb Aryeh Levine?” the Rebbe had inquired at the beginning of our meeting. “Is he your mother’s father?”

When I confirmed that that was the case, the Rebbe had a request for me: “I have already written to your grandfather, but if you would, please go to his home as well, and send him my regards.”

My grandfather was educated in the Lithuanian yeshivah world and was not a member of the chasidic community, but he and the Rebbe shared a bond of friendship and of deep mutual respect. In one of his letters to Reb Aryeh, the Rebbe wrote of his fine reputation — “his name goes before him,” was how he put it. My grandfather would also send all kinds of manuscripts to the Rebbe, and on his part the Rebbe would send him various publications released by Kehot, the Chabad publishing house. Indeed, after returning to Israel, I fulfilled my mission and passed the Rebbe’s regards on to my grandfather, who was most happy to receive them.

As an aside, Reb Aryeh was also one of three people to whom the Rebbe would send matzah every year before Passover, through Rabbi Yehosaf Ralbag, the rabbi of Kiryat Hayovel, a Jerusalem neighborhood. Interestingly, in the final year of my grandfather’s life, the Rebbe only gave Rabbi Ralbag two Matzos. When he asked about the third, the Rebbe did not answer him. On the 9th of Nissan of that year, five days before Passover, my grandfather passed away.

After my wedding in 1966, my wife and I lived in the Kiryat Malachi neighborhood of Nachlat Har Chabad, where I worked as a teacher in the local school. Back in those days, it was considered acceptable for teachers to spank students who were misbehaving. So, in another audience, I asked the Rebbe for a blessing that I wouldn’t need to give corporal punishment to my students. “Adopting a gentle and pleasant approach, rather than a strict one, will prove more successful,” the Rebbe told me, before adding another thing: “This will also be a vessel for blessing in your life; for having children who are healthy and well.”

We had been married for several years by then, and G-d had not yet granted us any children. It was something I had written to the Rebbe about, and had already received a similar blessing, but here he was drawing a connection between the two things.

After a few more years of waiting and hoping, we returned for another visit to the Rebbe, during the month of Tishrei. After the holiday, the Rebbe was giving out wine from his cup — kos shel bracha — and I stood in line along with everyone else. The way it worked at these distributions was that two lines would form, on either side of the Rebbe. For several minutes, the Rebbe would pour wine for a few people on one side, and then he’d turn and do the same for those on the other line.

So after the Rebbe poured some wine from his cup into mine, he turned around to the other line, and began giving to them. At that point, I was supposed to move on, but I stayed. My turn was over, but I did not budge. It had been nine years since our wedding, and we still hadn’t seen the Rebbe’s blessing for children come to fruition. I was going to use this opportunity to ask again.

When the Rebbe turned back to my line, I was still standing there, and told the Rebbe that I was asking for a blessing for children. To this he answered, “May Hashem fulfill all of your hearts’ desires for the good,” and then he turned back to the other line.

But, after all those years of waiting expectantly for that blessing to be realized, I decided to dig my heels in and continued to stand on the spot, in the hopes that I would receive something more explicit — a promise from the Rebbe.

When he turned back to me again, I reiterated my request. This time, he said, “Why are you arguing with me?” At the time, I wasn’t sure how to interpret this response, but I understood that I shouldn’t stand there any longer, and I moved on.

A year later, our daughter was born. G-d indeed “fulfilled our hearts’ desires,” and we realized that the Rebbe had understood that the matter was already settled; there had been no need for me to continue petitioning him for his blessing.

Not long after, we also had a son, thank G-d, and a year later we wound up taking both children to the Rebbe. The Rebbe asked our daughter whether she was lighting Shabbat candles, and whether she gave money to charity before doing so. At some point during the exchange, and without even meaning to, I exclaimed emotionally, “Rebbe — these are your children!”

A smile seemed to flicker over the Rebbe’s face, and then he replied, “All of the Jewish people are the children of G-d.”

Towards the end of that audience, the Rebbe handed my wife five single dollar bills. When she counted them and saw that there were five, she innocently handed back one bill, thinking that there had been a mistake: After all, with her, myself, and our two children, we were only four. But the Rebbe didn’t take the dollar.

Actually, my wife was in the early stages of pregnancy. Nothing was visible, however, and nobody knew about it, which is why we weren’t even thinking along those lines, and didn’t expect to get an extra dollar. But, it seems as though the Rebbe was thinking differently.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he told my wife with a smile.

Rabbi Elchanan Jacobovez (1945-2020) was a teacher in Nachlat Har Chabad, Israel, for many decades. He was interviewed in September of 2014.