Borough Park, NY – Bobover Talmidim Compile Family Holocaust Histories

Borough Park, NY – My rebbeim in the Satmar cheder in Montreal during the ’50s and ’60s were warm and caring; I remember them all with great fondness. All were survivors, but somehow they did not fit the stereotypical image often portrayed.

I grew up thinking there could never be as wonderful a rebbi as Reb Mordechai Arye Moskowitz. I remember how we marveled at his color-chalk art on the board and his spellbinding story-telling.

Reb Mordche Arye lost a wife and children in the war, and then rebuilt a new family in Montreal. He was a talented composer who taught us many of his Yiddish compositions, some of which, we later realized, had been composed in the concentration camp. (His grandson, the badchan Yoeli Lebowitz, remembers some of those tunes.) As time went by, I thought I would never find another melamed with the heart and soul of my beloved rebbi — until I had the pleasure of meeting Reb Yehoshua Rosen.

My grandson, Meir Menachem Rapaport, is in Rabbi Rosen’s eighth-grade class in Yeshivas Bnei Zion Bobov.
After meeting Reb Shia, one might wish to travel back in time and be part of this class. Reb Shia proudly displays writing assignments from previous talmidim. Every year, the rebbi assigns a different theme for his students to write about, and then collects the work and binds it.

This is just one example of the many projects the rebbi assigns. “We try to bring everything we teach into reality. If we learn about a din Torah, we set up a court with a hypothetical case and have the children take sides and be judges.”

If they are learning that Dovid Hamelech had a harp with eight strings, he teaches them musical notes and the structure of music. Reb Shia raises funds on his own for his classroom so he can bring the studies alive and even bring performers into the class.

When I inquire about the piano in the rebbi’s modest apartment, Reb Shia relates that it is his life-long hobby to research the origins of Chassidic and Jewish tunes. “Just recently, I taught the children a tune composed by the great Kamenitzer Rosh Yeshivah, Harav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, zt”l, who, in addition to being a great gaon and author of the classic Birkas Shmuel, also composed many well-known heartfelt songs.”

The rebbi then treated me to a rendition of Kol Dodi Dofek, an evocative niggun by Rav Boruch Ber that I had heard before but whose origins I never knew.

In the eighth grade, yeshivah boys are approaching bar mitzvah age. “In my class, there is no such thing as a child not being able to shine,” the rebbi insists. “I ask the child; ‘Who told you you can’t? Only you yourself. I say you can, your father and mother say you can, so tell yourself you can and you will be successful.’ In my class, every talmid succeeds in writing something every year.”

In the beginning of the year the boys are not very enthusiastic about the project but, as the year progresses, they become totally immersed in it. The rebbi tells the boys, “When you grow up and become a zeide and your einiklach ask you, ‘What did you learn as a boy? What did you do?’ you will be able to show them and say, ‘Look what I did!’” It gives them an incentive to do their best and use their talents.

According to Reb Shia, success and failure are all in the child’s mind. Every child can shine with the right encouragement.

This year, Reb Shia asked the boys to seek out members of their immediate family and find out how they survived the Holocaust. After much research and writing, they published a beautifully bound softcover booklet telling the stories of 21 families.

Named Kesuvim Be’etzba (written by finger), the book is a compilation of essays hand-written by each child in the class, with a foreword by the rebbi. “My aim was to give the children a chance to learn how to write clearly, with neat, proper Yiddish grammar. Over many months, a project like this gives a child an opportunity to acquire multiple skills, besides learning about the important subject itself,” the rebbi points out.

Given the serious nature of the subject, all the stories are memorable, but when pressed for what is outstanding, the rebbi says, “Every story is really a mussar story. The stories of mesirus nefesh are so inspiring that I am now using them for our daily mussar.”

“The children were astounded to hear about the heroism of their grandparents,” the rebbi continues. “One person, Reb Dovid Yitzchok Teitelbaum, told his grandson — a talmid in my class — about how he hid his tefillin in his shoes. Towards evening, he and others who stood in line to do the mitzvah put them on. One day, the German guards caught him and beat him mercilessly.”

His grandson, Nussen Shmiel Greenfeld, says that his grandfather told him, “Es hut zich altz geloint,” it was all worthwhile to be able to perform the mitzvah.

“Nussen Shmiel told me that now, when he sees bachurim carrying their tefillin casually to shul, he thinks about how his zeide feels about tefillin and wonders if we give proper honor to these holy items. Every story has had a direct effect on the young historians,” the rebbi observes.

Another story was about a chashuve Bobover chassid from Montreal (whom I knew), Reb Shlomo Goldberg, who had extreme mesirus nefesh for the morning netilas yadayim.

Some writers were moved to add their own commentaries, either proudly citing the achievements of their great-grandparents as they created a new life built around Yiddishkeit or commenting on a lesson they had learned from a particular episode.

The children and their rebbi decided to celebrate the book’s publishing with a seudah. Meir Rapaport suggested that they invite Reb Yidel Stern, a nonagenarian sprightly survivor whom he knew from shul, to come to talk about his experiences to the children.

Reb Yidel and his wife live in Boro Park, where he davens in the Satmar shul on 10th Avenue. Reb Yidel, who has no children of his own, loves to talk to people about his history, and he told the children personal stories of survival and sorrow.

“On the last day of Pesach, an order came in to the town of Satu Mare [now known as Satmar] that all Jews should gather to be transported [taken away]. My father came home and never told my mother and the children about the order. He watched us pack away the Pesach dishes in the attic as usual, even though he knew it was for the last time. He tried to spare us the pain…”

Reb Yidel could not contain his tears as he related this story to the young Bobover “historians,” who listened intently.

Reb Yidel also cried tears of joy and immense satisfaction as he spoke to young Chassidishe children who spoke the same language and had the same garb and appearance as those he had known in the alte heim.

These and many other riveting stories, including one written by my einikel Meir about my zeide, Dovid Simcha Rapaport, Hy”d, who sold two weeks’ worth of bread for one small siddur, have all been lovingly compiled in a memorable book, one that we can all be immensely proud of and use as a living mussar sefer.

Yosef Rapaport can be contacted by email at [email protected].