The Skverer Rebbetzin turned a village into a kingdom

As a newlywed, Rebbetzin Chaya Chana Twersky a”h was transported from the bastion of Vizhnitz chassidus in Bnei Brak to the wilderness of New Square. There, together with her husband, the current Skverer Rebbe, she raised a majestic family, turning a fledgling village of survivors into an empire, while nurturing her children, grandchildren, and community with a mother’s love

IN 1959, two weeks after her wedding to Rav Dovid Twersky shlita, the current Skverer Rebbe, 16-year-old Rebbetzin Chaya Chana left bustling Bnei Brak for New Square in faraway New York, to the isolated village her father-in-law had established.

“Nisht leicht, it wasn’t easy,” the Skverer Rebbe says about his young bride’s move, which brought her so far from her “artzecha umibeis avicha.”

At the time, New Square was comprised of 70 survivors cobbling together a life after the Holocaust. There was no one her age; the residents were at least a decade older than she. The village was still unpaved, and newly built Cape Cod houses stood in an unsteady circle at the center of the development. She was lucky if her elegant shoes weren’t scuffed by pebbles and tree roots; most of the time she sank into the dirt and, when it rained, mud.

But far from the place she called home, she brought the grandeur of chassidish royalty across the world and turned a fledgling, remote village into the majestic kingdom it is today.

A Sweet Start

Rebbetzin Chaya Chana was born in 1943, in Dej, Hungary, to Rav Moshe and Leah Esther Hager, son and daughter-in-law of the illustrious Vizhnitzer Rebbe, the Imrei Chaim ztz”l. When she was just a year old, her parents, seeking to escape the Nazi inferno, paid a smuggler to take them across the border to Romania. As they neared the border, young Chana’la, possibly sensing the tension, began wailing inconsolably. The guide grabbed the wailing infant, ready to choke her to death. “She’s endangering the entire group. I can’t take the risk,” he said.

Her parents promised to pay more, a full ransom, anything for the life of their daughter, but the guide was unmoved. Frantically searching for something, anything, someone in the group found a sugar cube and gave it to her father. He put it in Chana’la’s mouth, and she sucked, placated, the crisis averted.

The family made it safely out of Europe and settled in Eretz Yisrael. The Imrei Chaim and his Rebbetzin joined them a few years later. Harav Moshe headed the Vizhnitz Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, and went on to write a sefer, the Yeshios Moshe, the name by which he became known. The Rebbetzin’s childhood was spent in the sweetness of sitting at the feet of greatness.

At one point, the Yeshios Moshe was invited by a chassid to visit the diamond bourse in Antwerp. “You know? I have a diamond factory, as well,” he told the chassid. “My entire life is dedicated to polishing diamonds — human ones. Your diamonds remain stone, while my diamonds light up the world with Torah.” So dedicated was he to spreading the light of Torah and chassidus, that even during the 1948 War of Independence, when bombs were dropping from overhead, he would walk to yeshivah every day, while his wife and young children hid in the relative protection of the stairwell.

“I don’t care that you should become chassidim of Vizhnitz,” he’d tell his students, “as much as I want you to become chassidim infused with a love for Torah and a connection to Hashem.”