BELOVED BY ALL “It would have been worth opening the yeshivah just for Pinchas from Dukla” said Rav Meir Shapiro ztz”l referring to his prized student who knew all 2711 pages of Gemara by heart when he was yet a teenager. A young Reb Pinchas (left) with two friends Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin late 1920s; the Hirschprung study in Montreal (Photos: Moishy Spira Montreal)

N ineteen years ago the Montreal Jewish community mourned the passing of its much loved and esteemed chief rabbi the venerated Rav Pinchas Hirschprung. He was a man renowned for his Talmudic brilliance and eidetic memory; he was leader of a Bais Yaakov and a rosh yeshivah and the rebbi of his younger years — Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin founder Rav Meir Shapiro ztz”l — once remarked that “it would have been worth opening the yeshivah… just for Pinchas from Dukla.” He enjoyed a special relationship with the gedolim of the previous generation and especially with the Lubavitcher Rebbe who had his own talmidim forward their sh’eilos to the gaon of Montreal.

But most of all he was known for his sterling character and purity of soul — his humility kindness and compassion were legendary. “You never have to ask me to do a favor. Just tell me what to do for you ” he would often remark.

Nineteen might not be one of those round landmark numbers but this year 27 Teves was a significant yahrtzeit for family members and admirers who were able to connect to Rav Hirschprung’s special persona on a new level. Thanks to a largely unknown Yiddish memoir Rav Hirschprung wrote as a young man his unique voice still reverberates — and now that the manuscript has been translated into English and released as a book called The Vale of Tears that voice is accessible to everyone.

The memoir which chronicles the years 1939–1941 at the onslaught of World War II details Rav Hirschprung’s journey as a brilliant 27-year-old Torah scholar from his hometown of Dukla in southeastern Galicia across Nazi-occupied and Soviet-occupied Poland Lithuania and the Soviet Union to Japan Shanghai and eventually to Canada securing passage on the last boat to leave Shanghai before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He wrote the journal in 1944 three years after arriving in Montreal and although the memories were fresh the full extent of the tragedy was still unknown — including the murder of his parents sisters and his beloved grandfather Rav Dovid Tzvi Sehmann (known as the Minchas Soles) Dukla’s esteemed rav and Rav Hirschprung’s primary teacher.

It’s a memoir he felt compelled to write despite the discouragement of some Torah scholars who believed that this kind of honest emotional writing was demeaning to a talmid chacham. He disagreed. “I told myself that it was in no way demeaning for a Torah student to fulfill the commandment to ‘remember what Amalek did to you’ by describing at least a bit of what I’d seen with my own eyes” the Rav once told a family member.

Rav Hirschprung’s The Vale of Tears which was translated by Vivian Felson and edited and published by the Azrieli Foundation is more than just a chronological journey across territorial borders; it’s a metaphysical journey over time. The universe the Rav portrays is not black-and-white; it’s one in which gradations within the human spirit are recognized while spiritual insights are shared at opportune times and from the most unlikely of prophets — such as the Christian woman who when watching the Jewish exodus from Dukla answered the Nazis “The Jews’ G-d is here. He who took revenge on Pharaoh Haman Titus and Sancheriv… will also take revenge on you.”

It’s a deeply personal memoir. But in the hands of this master storyteller it’s not only a testament to a lost era but to the human spirit that is capable of transcending physical and emotional adversities terror despondency and disillusionment when an abiding faith in G-d and commitment to one’s higher purpose remains one’s driving principle.

Despite Rav Hirschprung being such a private person daughter Carmella Nussbaum is not surprised her father wrote these deeply personal and revealing memoirs. The war had impacted him profoundly: He told her mother — Rebbetzin Alte Chaya a”h — that there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think about the war. It was therefore something he needed to do for himself. But what was surprising to her and her siblings is that Rav Hirschprung never spoke about the book; in fact most of them didn’t even know it existed until a close friend brought a copy to the shivah house after their father’s petirah.