Rebbetzin Devorah Kirshboim’s faith is a fusion of Breslov and Novardok

When Rav Yaakov Galinsky, the renowned maggid from Eretz Yisrael, was on his deathbed, his family gathered around him and sang. One of the songs was something he’d taught them. “Don’t worry about what will be tomorrow, because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Tomorrow will come, and either the trouble will pass, or you will pass. And you will have been sorry about nothing.”

As they sang the message of calmness in the face of challenge that their father had always exemplified, his heart rate rose dramatically.

Rav Galinsky would often quote the Gemara that when a person passes on to the Next World, the first thing he’ll be asked is, “Did you carry out your business dealings with faithfulness?”

He offered his own interpretation. “Did you make emunah your business?”

It was how he lived his own life.

Rebbetzin Devorah Kirshboim, née Galinsky, absorbed her father’s message, and while she’s faced intense challenges, she never lost sight of the One behind it all.

Novardok Intersects with Uman

Yaakov Galinsky was only 14 when he left his home in Krinek, Poland, to attend Yeshivas Novardok in Bialystok.

“He was young and short and small and happy… and active,” Rebbetzin Kirshboim says. She laughs as she describes this extraordinary youth, full of chutzpah and humor, who grew into a ben Torah with an intense love of Hashem and the Jewish People.

In 1939, Reb Yaakov fled Bialystok together with some other bochurim. Before the Novardok yeshivah split up, a group of boys gathered next to a sefer Torah, and each boy pricked his finger and signed in blood his commitment to be moser nefesh for Torah.

Reb Yaakov’s group was captured and exiled to Siberia. A true talmid of Novardok, with their emphasis on self-mastery, even beatings and threats could not get him to show any fear of the Soviet authorities.

His biography, written by another daughter, describes a scene in the forests of Siberia. The Novardok bochurim, forced to work on Shabbos, would stand in a row and pass pieces of wood to each other, thus avoiding the melachah of carrying on Shabbos. The guard, impressed by their seeming efficiency, yelled out, “Look what you all have accomplished, compared to those lazy Lithuanians!”

“That’s because we love Father Stalin and Mother Russia!” yelled Yaakov Galinsky, without missing a beat. “But because we worked doubly hard, we deserve twice the amount of bread!” he added. And the starving boys received extra bread.