Rebbetzin Chana’s Memoirs: Final hours
In this 23rd installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chana describes her husband, Reb Levik‘s final days and hours before his passing.
Final hours
During this period, my husband recited his prayers in bed. For the morning prayers, others assisted him with putting on his tefillin. His head had shrunk in size to the point that the tefillin straps around his head were too loose to stay on firmly. Three days before his passing, he asked me to callYaakov Yosef [Raskin] to tighten the knot of the head tefillin, which he did. My husband continued wearing them for his prayers for the next three days.
On the last morning of his life, his lips moved incessantly as he recited holy words. But he wasn’t in a state that day for others to help him put ontefillin.
He was suffering terrible pain. In the course of the day, he asked me several times to help turn him from side to side and from a lying to a sitting position and vice versa. I did whatever he asked and it wasn’t at all difficult for me—at such a time, it seems, hidden powers become revealed.
Late in the afternoon, my husband felt much worse. There were many visitors in our home, and they called a doctor, who prescribed several medications, which were brought immediately.
I realized that his condition was critical, but I thought his struggle for life might continue for another day or two. I gave him a few spoons-full of the medications, which he swallowed. He seemed to be well aware of the critical nature of his condition.
My husband was surrounded by close friends whom I could trust, so I decided to take a short nap in order to gather strength to be to take care of whatever may become necessary to do.
When I awoke half an hour later, my husband’s room was already full of people. One man approached me and suggested I spend the night at a neighbor’s home in order to get some rest. In fact, it was already all over, and this was a well-intentioned effort to conceal the bad news from me. Naturally, I didn’t take his suggestion.
I was asked which practices my husband had considered important to be performed at his burial. I mentioned those I remembered: Making the shrouds of pure linen—an item most difficult to obtain—and that everyone involved in the tahara purification of the body should first immerse themselves in water. As there was no mikveh, a few dozen men immersed themselves in a stream, walking quite a distance to get there. Among them was Yosef Nemoytin, despite the fact that he was generally physically frail and running a fever of 40°C at the time.
For three whole days, all these friends present there didn’t go to work. Most of them worked on machines as knitters who supplied the government with quotas of knit-ware. But for these three days they didn’t fulfill their quotas.
During my husband’s last two days of life, these strangers, who had become so close to us in recent months, left their homes and work in order to be with us all the time. One member of each family might now and then make a quick visit home just to see how things were.
Our visitors included young and old, non-religious and religious Jews. Some had sharp business disputes with each other, and others were involved in the quarrel between Chassidim and non-Chassidim. Here, however, all became united. Under my husband’s influence, they became divested of their ordinary concerns and entered a higher world.
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