Ashes and Tears

The Rebbe settled in Boro Park, and Rabbi Cohn became a member of the Ribnitzer’s inner circle.

An inviolable part of the Rebbe’s schedule was Tikkun Chatzos. The Rebbe would sit on the floor with ashes on his head, surrounded by candles. Only once he was alone would the weeping begin, wails loud and intense enough to melt the heart of anyone within earshot. It was the eternal cry of Klal Yisrael trapped in galus, expressed in the agonizing sobs of this elderly Jew. “If you heard those cries, then you knew the Rebbe in a different way,” says Rabbi Cohn.

When the Rebbe was finished, the tears and ashes had mingled, and he would be sitting in a puddle of thick mud.

Rabbi Cohn made some minor renovations in the Rebbe’s private room. “I was worried that the stone floor was too cold for him to be sitting on, so I built a concrete floor and added heating, so that he would be warm and the many candles wouldn’t present a fire hazard.”

The Rebbe never formally thanked his chassid, but from then on, the relationship shifted.

“Reb Avrohom,” the Rebbe would say fondly, “iz mein bester gitter freint, my dear, beloved friend.”

Shabbos left slowly, reluctantly, in Ribnitz. From the notebook:

The Rebbe would finish Melaveh Malkah so late that my only concern would be to make my daily shiur, at 4 a.m., on time. He couldn’t let go of Shabbos. Late one Motzaei Shabbos, the Rebbe sat at his table and suddenly reached out toward the flame of the burning candles. Holding his hand in the fire, the Rebbe told me quietly, “This has no power over me.”

In the notes, black letters dance predictably along white pages, but if you look closely, you can hear the hiss of fire, smell the melting wax.

Rabbi Cohn taps his notebook. “These are just words… The Rebbe didn’t use words. He was alone, because no one else could see what he saw. We accepted it, we understood that he lived in a different dimension.”

For example, when the Rebbe would sit in Brooklyn or Los Angeles and say, “What’s doing here?” his people knew that “here” referred to Eretz Yisrael, while “what’s doing there” meant America. He saw a different reality than they did.

My host indicates a particular paragraph from the memoir:

I was sitting with the Rebbe one day and a woman came in, crying profusely. Her husband was paralyzed — unable to move out of bed, she said between sobs.

The Rebbe listened and asked, “Vi shteit ehr?” which literally means “Where is he standing?” The Rebbe meant to ask for his location, but the woman misunderstood.

“Rebbe, he can’t even move a single limb, how could he possibly be standing anywhere?”

The Rebbe, who preferred to speak as little as possible, indicated that she should write down the address and then motioned for his coat and stood up. I drove him through the streets of Brooklyn to the address she’d written. When we arrived at the home, the Rebbe didn’t hesitate. He hurried up a long staircase and turned right at the top, as if he had a map. He headed directly to the room where the patient lay, immobile.

“Nu, stand up already, genig shoin, it’s enough,” the Rebbe commanded him.

Two tears fell from the eyes of the patient. “I can’t move any part of my body,” he said.

“Nu, privt, try,” the Rebbe insisted.

The patient sat up. Wide-eyed, he moved his legs toward the floor. By the time the wife, who’d followed us home on foot, arrived home, her husband was coming to greet her. Two weeks later, he joined us at the tish.

Another “miracle” story:

A visitor from Eretz Yisrael handed the Rebbe a kvittel. The Rebbe quickly scanned it and said, “Your father should have a refuah sheleimah.” The visitor looked confused and indicated the kvittel, assuming the Rebbe was mixing him up with someone else. When the Rebbe repeated the very same brachah, the visitor hurried to investigate. His father back in Eretz Yisrael had sustained a heart attack moments earlier, but would have a refuah sheleimah.

Not all the stories preserved on the pages tell of miracles. In one, Rabbi Cohn recalls driving the Rebbe home from a bris in Manhattan:

The Rebbe was upset. He kept repeating, “A bris uhn a seedah, a bris without a meal.” The Rebbe was surprised. “I don’t understand. The baal habris has parnassah, why didn’t he make a meal?”

I didn’t understand what the Rebbe meant, for in fact, there had been a lavish seudah following the bris. Finally, I realized what the Rebbe meant. There had been a seudah, but it hadn’t been fleishig — and that bothered the Rebbe enough that he considered it a bris without a meal!

Miraculous tales of Alexei, the Baal Shem Tov’s wagon driver, occupy a prominent place in chassidic lore. Rabbi Romi Cohn tasted some of that wonder at the wheel of an oversized black Cadillac.

Late one afternoon, we had a bris in Monsey, but we had to rush to a pidyon haben in Brooklyn before nightfall. It was already just around shkiah, and I didn’t think it possible. To make things more difficult, as we were leaving the home of the baal simchah in Monsey, a neighbor stopped the Rebbe to share a tale of woe about his daughter, whose husband refused to give her a get. The unfortunate woman had been chained for more than ten years.

The Rebbe listened, ignoring my entreaties that we had to hurry. Finally, the Rebbe spoke. “She’ll go free — either he’ll give the get or the other way [meaning with his death].”

The Rebbe headed to the car; it was already growing dark. “Don’t worry so much,” he told me, “we’ll make it.”

I began to drive. The Rebbe closed his eyes, turning his head to the back seat and saying “shalom aleichem” three times. Then he began to turn his cane in front of him, as if controlling the car. A little sports car suddenly appeared in front of the Cadillac and I swung into the lane behind it. Traffic seemed to open before the tiny vehicle and we didn’t let up, following it as we passed through traffic all around like a gale wind. The Rebbe seemed to be dozing, but as we pulled up in front of the Brooklyn destination, the Rebbe sprung awake and opened the door. “Nu, we made it on time, burech Hashem,” he exclaimed.

The next morning, the father from Monsey came to tell the Rebbe that his son-in-law had agreed to give a get.

“Ich veis, I know,” the Rebbe said quietly.

The Grocer’s Gratitude

Eventually the Rebbe left Boro Park, moving to a series of locations including Miami, Sea Gate, Los Angeles, and Monsey.

The Rebbe’s devoted chassid, his “bester gitter freint,” saw less of him. “There were different periods, different gabbaim, some of whom understood the Rebbe and some who didn’t. It wasn’t always easy for him,” says Rabbi Cohn.

But there was one of the Rebbe’s confidants, Rabbi Cohn recalls, named Reb Yitzchok Volf Herman, whose devotion to the Rebbe was unparalleled. “He slept on a hard bench outside the Rebbe’s room, always nearby in case the Rebbe needed something. I once asked him why he was so dedicated, and he told me a story about when he was proprietor of a small grocery store in Solesh, Romania.”

And Rabbi Cohn wrote down the story for the next generations:

He told me about one of the other chevreh, Reb Avrohom Lemberger, who had also lived under Communist rule. This Lemberger was a war hero, and so he was given the privilege of holding a job that would allow him to have Shabbos off; he worked as a traveling salesman. Each month, his route took him through Solesh, where he would stop off at Reb Itzik Volf’s store and buy enough kosher food to last him through the following weeks.

One month, Lemberger didn’t appear. Reb Itzik Volf noticed, but wasn’t sure what to do. That night, he had a dream in which an unfamiliar Jew said, “Go, Reb Avrohom needs your help.” He ignored the dream, but it repeated itself the next night. Reb Itzik Volf told his wife about it, and she started to push him to travel, to find out where his friend was. He told her that he had no passport, so she prodded him to get one. The following night, the unknown visitor appeared yet again, with the same message.

Reb Itzik Volf had his friend’s home address, and he set off for Lemberg. He arrived in the early morning and went directly to the apartment, where Reb Avrohom’s wife — who’d heard his name from her husband — welcomed him. He asked if he might have a cup of hot coffee before they spoke, but she apologized and explained that she’d just run out of coffee. He was weak with hunger, and requested a piece of bread or a cracker. She told him that she had just used the last crumbs. He understood that there was nothing in the house and excused himself. He managed to find food on the black market, which he purchased and brought to her home.

The three young children came to life as he lay the food down on the table; they ate with gusto, and the hostess apologized. “My children are usually very well-behaved and polite,” she said, “but they haven’t eaten in three days. Please excuse them.” Then she told her visitor how her husband has been suspected of carrying an infectious disease, so he’d been quarantined in a local hospital. There was no telling if and when he would be released, even though there was nothing wrong with him. Reb Itzik Volf headed over to the hospital and bribed the guards, earning his friend’s release and accompanying him home.

Later on, Reb Avrohom confided in his savior that his family had been starving, but his wife was too bashful to ask for help. In gratitude, he wanted to repay Reb Itzik Volf by introducing him to a special person. They boarded a train, and Reb Avrohom took his visitor to the town of Ribnitz, Moldavia. He knocked on the door of a humble apartment, assuring Reb Itzik Volf that he was about to meet a tzaddik. The door opened, and Reb Itzik Volf beheld the figure who’d appeared in his dream; the same saintly eyes and radiant face, down to the missing button on his coat.

Reb Itzik Volf completed his tale. “How can I leave such a man, even for a moment?”

No Explanations Necessary

Without speaking, Reb Romi stands up. He passes by the pictures of his rebbi, Rav Yosef Grunwald of Pupa, and his rebbe, the tzaddik of Ribnitz, and heads toward the corner of the room.

Like the secrets safeguarded in his heart, there is a treasure hidden behind the barely discernible door. He slides open a small paroches and removes a sefer Torah.

“This was the Rebbe’s.” He holds it tenderly. Like the scroll, he seems to be saying, which carries so much more than parchment and ink, the Rebbe who appeared human was filled with uncontainable light.

He shakes his head. On Isru Chag, the day after Succos, it will be 20 years since the Rebbe’s passing, but really, the tzaddik of Ribnitz was never really here.

He shows me one of his final entries:

The Rebbe was a tremendous talmid chacham and always wanted to meet Rav Moshe Feinstein, but it never worked out because of the disparity in their schedules. One night, when Rav Moshe was already hospitalized, the Rebbe suddenly asked the gabbai to drive him from Monsey to Manhattan. The driver had no idea where to go, but the Rebbe directed him to the hospital entrance, and then they made their way through the empty lobby. They asked no one for instructions, but the Rebbe went up in the elevator, stepping out on a particular floor and walking down the hall to a room. He stopped in the doorway and looked in.

There lay Rav Moshe, his eyes open, though he was unable to speak. The Rebbe and the Rosh Yeshivah locked eyes, neither of them speaking for several minutes. Then, without a word being exchanged, the Rebbe turned and left.

Months later, Rav Moshe was niftar.

Like many of Rabbi Cohn’s stories, it has no explanation, but it needs none; the story itself is the explanation. Not only don’t we know everything about this exalted figure, we know almost nothing.

Other than in the Divine register, there is no record of those years in Russia, when a lone Jew crossed the freezing landscape and lit fires, reminding his people that their Father had not forsaken them. And later, in the land of the free, there were crowds and cameras and commotion, but still, the Rebbe was somewhere else. Alone.

In Rabbi Avrohom Cohn’s notebook, diligently preserved stories live on. Though they can’t tell the full story, they evoke a glorious time, a time when he touched the extraordinary day after day, a time when he merited to serve an angel, a time when the tzaddik looked at him with warmth and love.

And greeted him — a dear, beloved friend.

(Originally featured in The Record Keepers Supplement, Succos 5776)