Now we mourn; we cry over our loss, for we have lost our very soul

ITwas Erev Shabbos morning and I was in middle of preparing a shiur about Purim when I heard the bitter news. The calls, text messages, WhatsApp chats were all exploding with the question that no one wanted to answer. Is it true?

Maran Rav Chaim, the Sar HaTorah, was no longer with us.

I immediately switched gears and sent out a shul email announcing that the topic of the shiur had been changed to “Reflections on the Life of Rav Chaim Kanievsky ztz”l.” I went to my trusted old file cabinet of index cards and pulled out the sh’eilos that I’d asked Rav Chaim over the course of over 30 years and began to review his fascinating responses, trying to pick just a few to use for the shiur.

While we were all left with a terrible feeling of pain and loss, I really didn’t get it just yet. Even a little later, when I tore kri’ah along with so many other Yidden the world over, I still felt numb. It was early Shabbos morning, as I recited my daily Tehillim, that I finally felt it. Waves of overwhelming pain rolled over me.

It was then I understood. Klal Yisrael had lost its very neshamah.

Allow me to explain.

It was more than 45 years ago, when I was a bochur learning in a Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim in Yerushalayim. Rav Shmuel Niman ztz”l, a rebbi who was very dear to me, sent me a letter with a request and a shlichus. A young married woman who had suffered several late miscarriages was expecting again; she was extremely anxious that she would lose this pregnancy as well. A friend had told her about a particular mekubal who had achieved fame dispensing amulets that served as protection against miscarriages. She desperately wanted to get one as soon as possible, but she didn’t know anyone in Eretz Yisrael (in those days, traveling to Eretz Yisrael was not too common). My rebbi asked me to please be the shaliach to get hold of an amulet from the mekubal and send it back to America as soon as possible to alleviate her fear.

I was a young teenager who had only recently arrived in Eretz Yisrael myself. I didn’t know the language and I was unfamiliar with the modes of transportation available. Not only had I never heard of this mekubal, I’d never even heard of the city he lived in. I asked my rebbi, Rav Avrohom Kanarek ztz”l, whether I should take off time from yeshivah to try to fulfill this request, when I was at a loss as to how to even start.

Rav Kanarek told me that this sh’eilah needed to be presented to a posek. He recommended that I go to a certain Rav Elyashiv, who was a great posek, he told me, even though he was not so well known. (Until Rav Kanarek’s passing last year, I repeatedly expressed my hakaras hatov to him for that suggestion; that visit was the catalyst for a lifetime connection to the famed posek hador Rav Elyashiv ztz”l.)

When I presented my sh’eilah to Rav Elyashiv, he responded that there were definitely amulets that serve as protection from miscarriage. (It was only much later that I learned his own maternal grandfather was the Leshem, a famed mekubal.) However, since he had never met the individual dispensing this amulet, he could not advise me to go to him.

“But if you want a guaranteed segulah that is brought down in Chazal,” he added, “I have a suggestion for you. Go to Bnei Brak, where you will find a person who is a great tzaddik. Chazal tell us, ‘Tzaddik gozer v’HaKadosh Baruch Hu mekayeim’ — if a tzaddik says something will happen, then Hashem will fulfill his words. The Steipler Gaon is exactly the type of tzaddik Chazal are speaking about.”

Rav Elyashiv then proceeded to write me an introductory letter to the Steipler — at the time I didn’t know they were mechutanim — which I still have today.

I followed Rav Elyashiv’s instructions and traveled to Bnei Brak to ask the Steipler to daven and possibly send some words of chizuk to assuage this young woman’s anxiety. The Steipler was very welcoming to me, but told me that he was feeling unwell and suggested I go to his son Reb Chaim, who would help me. I began to protest — Rav Elyashiv had referred to him as the tzaddik Chazal are speaking of, not his son! — but the Steipler dismissed my words.

“There is no amulet in the world that is more powerful than the brachah that comes from my Chaim’l’s pure mouth and heart,” he insisted. “He is kulo tahor.”

I went as instructed — and I was hooked for life. What a zechus to sit in the same orbit as someone who was kulo tahor, kulo Torah, and whose renowned father vouched for the potency of his brachah!