Rabbi Yitzchok Raitport presenting another newly written sefer to the Rebbe. Regarding the Rebbe's one-time haskamah "The one I gave Raitport is my personal matter"

When Rabbi Yitzchok Raitport came to the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s beis medrash in the 1950s he was a penniless orphaned war refugee. But he was also a brilliant Torah scholar who under the Rebbe’s personal guidance became a prolific author and — with the subsequent windfall blessing of wealth — a generous benefactor. Twenty-two years after the Rebbe’s passing he’s still a humble talmid.

Now as he closely peruses the tiny letters of his beloved seforim it’s clear that the huge fortune and material wealth attributed to him can’t compare in worth to a small comment written into one of the margins. Because for Rabbi Raitport — refugee child brilliant teenage scholar prolific author and supporter of institutions — it’s about fulfilling the blessing of a holy tzaddik at the outset of World War II about perpetuating the legacy of G-d-fearing parents and about staying connected to the rebbe who spiritually nurtured him for decades.

No Harm Will Befall You

When Yitzchok Raitport — the third and youngest child of Rachmistrivka chassid Reb Chaim Raitport — was born in Zhitomir in 1938, the venerated Korzover Rebbe was invited to be sandek. According to the Rebbe’s instructions, the bris was held with great publicity, despite the danger involved in holding a religious ceremony right under the noses of the KGB.

“The Korzover Rebbe said that he was taking responsibility, that no harm would befall the participants at the bris,” Rabbi Raitport relates. “In the end though, the Rebbe arrived very late because of his custom of davening at length, yet right after the bris, the Rebbe only permitted a minyan to take part in the seudah and eat only a hasty kezayis. The meal lasted just ten minutes, and then the Rebbe instructed everyone to disperse quickly. He explained that until now, the participants merited Divine protection because of ‘holchim l’dvar mitzvah’ but once the bris was over, they had to run. Before he turned to go though, the Korzover Rebbe wanted to bentsh all the children, to give them a measure of protection during those precarious times. He managed to bentsh me and my brother and sister, and then disappeared. Half a year later, this tzaddik passed away.” (Rabbi Raitport recently has the merit of building a tziyun over his gravesite in Zhitomir.)

The haste in which Reb Yitzchok’s bris was carried out would be a precursor for his entire childhood — made up of a long string of escapes and travails in an attempt to flee both Communist persecution and the Nazi onslaught.

“In Communist Russia, my older brother Eliyahu learned each day with a special melamed after he returned from the local school,” Rabbi Raitport remembers. “And my father made him learn all of Sefer Tehillim by heart, saying that dangerous days were coming upon Am Yisrael and this would serve as a protection.

“He had to go to school even on Shabbos, but made sure not to write and as a result, his fingers were rapped with metal sticks. He had scars of those beatings for the rest of his life. When it became more dangerous, Eliyahu and his melamed would learn while hiding in a closet.”

But in July 1941, what was difficult now became untenable, as the skies of Zhitomir darkened with the Nazi invasion as part of Operation Barbarossa. The Nazis established the “General District of Zhitomir” and arch-murderer Heinrich Himmler established his Ukrainian headquarters there. It soon became clear that fleeing was the only option for survival.

Bombed Out

The horrific scenes are indelibly ingrained Rabbi Yitzchok Raitport’s mind. “When the Nazis came,” he recalls, “the first thing they did was bombard the city with artillery fire. I remember watching in desperation how our house was bombed and became nothing but a pile of rubble.”

The Raitport family realized that if they wanted to live, they had to escape the Nazi-occupied city. “We ran toward the train station on our way out of the city. I was just three, and complained to my mother that it was too hard to run on the big rocks, that I felt like I was going to collapse.

“We reached the train station and my parents had to decide which direction we should take. Meanwhile, my parents went to buy a bit of water to drink so we shouldn’t get dehydrated, and I was left on the platform to guard our few possessions. As I waited, I heard a deafening noise overhead. I looked up and saw a Nazi plane releasing a bomb right onto the train station. I ran as fast as my little legs would take me, and my parents and sister and brother, who had moved off the platform in their search for water, were also saved. After the bombardment passed we found each other, grateful that our family survived intact.”

But now, the option of fleeing by train was no longer viable. The Raitports continued running, wandering further into the Soviet Union, walking and taking carriages when the option became available.

“We traveled in open cargo trains,” he recalls. “I remember that at one point I looked up when I heard fighter planes overhead. I remember telling my mother that the planes didn’t look like the familiar Russian bombers, and then my mother looked up and realized right away that they were German planes, flying low and ready to strike. We knew we had to get off that train right away — my sister was the first to jump. Then I was tossed off, and then my parents and Eliyahu jumped. A few minutes later as we lay on the grass on the side of the tracks, we saw the whole train go up in smoke.

The family continued on their journey, passed Samarkand, and wound up in a village that seemed like a safe enough place to rest. But the forage for food cost Reb Chaim Raitport his life.

“My father caught a cold and apparently came down with pneumonia. He returned home weak and sick, and soon after passed away.” Yitzchok Raitport was now an orphan.

French Connection

Far from home, with no personal possessions or familiar surroundings, with a freshly widowed mother and an orphaned brother and sister, Yitzchok Raitport tried to organize his gloomy new life.

“My mother was a professional seamstress,” Reb Yitzchok relates. “She tried to get some work, but I remember days when we didn’t have a crumb of food to eat. So we decided to back track to Samarkand, where there was a Jewish community and where my mother thankfully found some work among the local Bukharians. With the little we had, my mother gave me over to the melamed, Reb Zusha der Shamash, so he could teach me the aleph beis.”

The war finally came to an end, and in 1946 the Raitports decided to leave the ruins of the Soviet Union and move to a place where the children could learn Torah. “My sister Mussi,” Reb Yitzchok relates, “who was quite a bit older than me, got married in Samarkand to Reb Yehoshua Kozlovsky, who was a Polish citizen. That’s how we were able to exit the Soviet Union — we became a family with Polish papers.”

The family met up with a group of Lubavitcher chassidim with whom they managed to travel back through Russia and over the Polish border into Czechoslovakia until they reached Pocking, a small village near Munich in Germany, where the Americans established a refugee camp and where hundreds of Chabad chassidim who fled Russia had settled.

In Pocking, Mrs. Raitport remarried Reb Chaim Rosen z”l, a Gerrer chassid and a relative of the Rogatchover Gaon, who served as the rabbinic leader of the Vaad Hatzolah. Meanwhile, Yitzchok’s older brother Eliyahu deepened his ties with the Chabad chassidim, and Reb Yitzchok, who was still a child, followed his brother’s lead.

But while his older brother managed in the yeshivah that had opened for refugees in Pocking, for 8-year-old Yitzchok there was no suitable learning framework. But they heard from the chassidim that in the southern French town of Brunoy, a yeshivah had been established for war refugees by the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rav Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson zy”a, who arrived in America in 1940 and worked with the Joint to obtain a large structure in the town for Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim-Chabad.

“My mother sent me with my brother to France, promising to follow us later on,” says Rabbi Raitport. But as they neared the French border, they realized they were in a pickle. Yitzchok had no papers that would enable him to cross the border. So his brother appealed to a group of Jews traveling legally, and they took the young boy across — hidden in a trunk.

Rabbi Raitport clearly remembers the time he spent inside the dark box in the winter of 1947. “I cried a lot in there,” he recalls. “I’ll never forget the weight of the passengers who sat on the box to make it even less conspicuous.” Soon enough though, Yitzchok and Eliyahu found themselves in France, eventually reaching the yeshivah in Brunoy.

The staff of the yeshivah was comprised of the “arayos bechaburah”, the “lions” of the chassidim: the rosh yeshivah Rav Yosef Goldenberg, the mashpia Rav Shlomo Chaim Kesselman, the mashgiach Rav Nachum Labkovsky, and the maggidei shiur Rav Nachum Terebnick and Rav Moshe Robinson. The mashpia Rav Nissan Nemanov — who over the years taught thousands of students in Brunoy — arrived at the yeshivah together with the Raitports.

“I was a little boy when I arrived in Brunoy, younger than all the bochurim,” Rabbi Raitport says. “But Reb Nissan decided to find a few more boys my age to be able to open a class.”

Eliyahu Raitport continued on at the yeshivah for another year and then began working to support himself, while his little brother remained. During his years of learning in Brunoy, Yitzchok Raitport was completely cut off from the outside world, even from his mother, who was afraid to write to him because of his illegal status in France. He had no documents and was petrified of being caught and deported.

Lakewood or Lubavitch?

“I don’t know what I did to merit it, but Hashem gave me a tremendous cheshek to learn,” Rabbi Raitport says. “In Brunoy I barely slept — I would learn until I had no strength left. Looking back today, I envy that boy Yitzchok Raitport who did nothing from morning to night but learn Torah. The truth is, I came to Brunoy shattered and dejected. I was all alone — orphaned of my father, far from my mother. I found my refuge in Torah. The more I delved into it, the more I felt like I was taking a walk in Gan Eden.”

Rabbi Raitport once heard Rav Nissan Nemanov talk about how he himself originally wound up in Lubavitch. “He had planned to learn in Slabodka, but he was so involved in his learning that he mistakenly got on the train going in the wrong direction. When he got off the train he asked the first Jew he met where Slabodka Yeshivah was, and the man replied that it was hundreds of miles away, but nearby there was Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim of Lubavitch. So that’s how he mistakenly went to learn in Chabad.”

Rabbi Raitport stayed in the Brunoy yeshivah for eight years (during which time his status was clarified), until his obligation of kibbud eim drove him to travel to the United States, where his mother and her husband had immigrated several years earlier. Rav Nissan Nemanov, who as a bochur wound up in Lubavitch as a “mistake”, wanted to make sure his prized talmid would remain in a Chabad yeshivah, and quickly dispatched a letter to 770 Eastern Parkway in New York, where, four years earlier, the Lubavitcher Rebbe had begun to lead the court after his father-in-law’s passing. Reb Nissan asked that the Rebbe keep an eye on the young boy traveling from Brunoy, and indeed, 16-year-old Yitzchok’s first stop was in the Chabad center in Brooklyn.

“I entered the 770 building,” he describes, “and looked at the zahl, the learning hall. There were masmidim who impressed me with their diligence, but at the same time I also saw some young American bochurim whose behavior was a bit too placid and made me worry. I wasn’t used to the American mentality, which incorporates free time and recreation. In Brunoy, I’d never seen such a thing. This made me want to find a different yeshivah.”

In their first meeting, the Rebbe told him that if he remained in Lubavitch, he would be guaranteed success in learning and in all his endeavors, but despite the Rebbe’s guarantee, Rabbi Raitport chose to first evaluate the other yeshivos that America had to offer. He traveled to Cincinnati and asked to speak with Rav Eliezer Silver in learning, but at first the Rav refused, saying he didn’t generally speak in learning to anyone who hadn’t learned 1,000 pages of Gemara. The bochur Yitzchok told him that he may not have learned 1,000 pages, but he had definitely learned 800, and so Rav Eliezer agreed to give him a “discount.”

When he came to Rav Aharon Kotler in Bais Medrash Govohah in Lakewood, Reb Yitzchok felt a soul bond with the Rosh Yeshivah, who begged him to stay.

“I explained to Reb Aharon that I was not sure I could remain, but I would definitely consider it. I stayed there for a while, and before I left, the Rosh Yeshivah asked me again if I planned to stay in Lakewood. I told him it depended on two people, my mother and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who I felt had custodianship over me because I learned my Torah in Lubavitch.

“When Reb Aharon saw me deliberating, he suggested that I learn in Lakewood during the week and for Shabbos I could go to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This was a special exception, because Reb Aharon delivered his central shiur on Shabbos.”

Yitzchok tried out this arrangement for a while. Until Simchas Torah of 1957.

“Each year on Simchas Torah, the Rebbe would say l’chaim to all those who accepted upon themselves another regular shiur in chassidus,” says Rabbi Raitport. “I didn’t want to come forward because I didn’t learn so much chassidus, but the Rebbe prodded me on with that warm smile of his and said, ‘The time has come for you to learn more chassidus.’”

Ultimately the Rebbe prevailed in the struggle for the heart of the young illui and Reb Yitzchok remained in Lubavitch. Reb Yitzchok relates that on Purim 1959, when the Rebbe had drunk wine, he announced at the farbrengen that ‘because there is someone in the crowd who thinks that in Lubavitch they don’t know how to learn, I will now deliver a pilpul on the sugya of eved ivri and amah ivriyah…’

Personal Matter

Rabbi Raitport was just nineteen when his brilliance earned recognition among Torah scholars in America. The Rebbe supervised his learning from up close, and when gedolei Torah would come to visit, the Rebbe would request that Rabbi Raitport engage them in Torah discussions while they were waiting. When one of these rabbanim told the Lubavitcher Rebbe that “the yungerman with the blond beard is proficient in all of Shas,” the Rebbe replied, “That young man knows much more than you think…”

The Rebbe, who was himself in his room learning until the wee hours of the morning, would pop into the beis medrash at all hours of the night, and on those spot-checks, would always find Yitzchok Raitport toiling in Torah — often he’d be the only one there.

“They once painted the ceiling in the beis medrash,” Rabbi Raitport remembers, “and not realizing what was going on, I remained the only one learning there, while everyone else moved to an alternate location. When the Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Yisrael Yitzchok Piekarski, noticed me, he wondered why I had remained. I told him that long ago, from my first day in beis medrash, I had resolved that nothing in the world would disturb my learning.”

It’s no wonder he was chosen as one of the “shivah kanim,” a title given to the seven most gifted and accomplished students in the Lubavitcher yeshivah at any given time.

A year later, the young scholar published his first sefer, Bidvar Melech on the Rambam. The sefer is the only one known to have ever earned a clear, written approbation (by contrast to a letter of brachah) from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

In fact, it was the Rebbe who urged Reb Yitzchok, then just 20, to publish the mammoth work in the first place.

“Many years later,” says Rabbi Raitport, “the family of a gaon who had passed away asked the Rebbe to write a similar approbation for their father’s sefer as he had given me. The Rebbe replied: ‘In the Rav’s house it is customary not to give approbations. What you said regarding the one I gave Rav Raitport — dos iz meiner an inyan, this is my personal matter.’”

But getting that approbation from the Rebbe was no easy matter either.

“The Rebbe instructed me to first collect approbations from other gedolim. There was a person who collected money for the National Council for Family Purity and was close to the gedolim in Eretz Yisrael. I asked him if, when he returned to Israel, he could present the sefer to the Tchebiner Rav, Rav Pinchas Epstein, Rav Yechezkel Abramsky, and Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin. All the rabbanim gave enthusiastic approbations after going over the sefer, except for Rav Abramsky. Rav Yechezkel Abramsky, however, refused to give an approbation, saying that it was not possible that a young bochur should write such a sefer, and that I must have found a packet of writings of a gadol who had perished in the Holocaust and published them in my own name.”

“Meanwhile, the Rebbe’s own approbation was delayed, yet at the same time the Rebbe would quote from the sefer in his sichos, and at a farbrengen even once sent him a l’chaim, addressing him as “mein chaver.” The elder chassidim thought it was surely a man of their age who had authored many seforim but the Rebbe indicated the young bochur from Bruony.

Fueling a Fortune

Orphaned of his father, far from his mother, lacking any financial means yet armed with his sterling reputation, Reb Yitzchok Raitport reached the stage of shidduchim.

“Suggestions came from all kinds of place — except Lubavitch,” Rabbi Raitport says with a smile. “One day, the Lubavitcher Rebbe called me over and said I shouldn’t involve myself in the subject of shidduchim but that he would take care of me through his people. And that’s what happened — the Rebbe activated his chassidim for the project of getting me married.”

In the winter of 1964, the awaited shidduch arrived. The Katz family from Boro Park was only too happy to take the young talmid chacham for their daughter Sheindel, and signed a document of commitments that the Rebbe himself drew up.

“Before the wedding, my mother and I went to the Rebbe’s room, and he sensed that I was feeling anxious, so he said to me, ‘Really I should be your mesader kiddushin. But because I have long stopped doing so, and people may become jealous, I’ll give you a chasunah present in the form of funding the printing of your sefer.’ Indeed, the Rebbe gave me $3,500 from his own pocket — a massive sum in those days — for the sefer.

“The Rebbe also said he had two positions to offer me: either rosh yeshivah or the rosh kollel of Lubavitch. He said he would suggest I take the first one because there were avreichim for whom the kollel was just a stepping stone between the yeshivah world and olam hazeh, and I’d prefer to serve in a place where there were no thoughts about olam hazeh.”

So during his shanah rishonah, Rabbi Raitport became rosh yeshivah in the Rebbe’s beis medrash, and also acceded to a request by his young wife — she was just 17 — to move to Boro Park, where they live to this day.

Eight years of intense hasmadah later, Rabbi Raitport — with his growing family — began to feel the financial pinch. They’d always lived frugally, but now they couldn’t make tuition or pay for doctors visits. Still, how could he bring himself to leave the beis medrash?  

But, says Rabbi Raitport, Hashem has many ways to keep people afloat, and one day an acquaintance offered him to become an agent for heating fuel. “He explained that I wouldn’t need to spend much time doing it. All I had to do was make sure people purchased their home gas needs through me and I would receive agents’ fees. I didn’t see any other financial options, so I decided to give it a try. My wife took care of the paperwork and collections. I purchased the fuel from J&S and slowly, the profits grew.”

A few years later during an economic downturn, some of his Manhattan clients weren’t able to pay for their fuel and Rabbi Raitport, whose own suppliers were demanding payment, faced debts of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the end, after much negotiation over payment terms through a third party, some of those clients offered to clean up their debts by transferring ownership of real estate assets to him for much under market value.

“At first the offer seemed terrible to me: What would I do with real estate? I had no experience in the field. But they weren’t offering anything else, so I agreed. For a few years, entire buildings in Manhattan were registered in my name, without me doing anything about it.” Eventually those assets made him a rich man, and with time the Raitports became fuel suppliers, not just agents.

“Our customer base expanded and many corporations trusted our company because they realized that the owner was a ben Torah who learned and authored seforim and they wanted to have a chelek in that too. So I spent many years sitting and learning while my wife ran the businesses and took care of all our needs.”

When his business succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, Rabbi Raitport began designating huge sums of money for Chabad institutions in Crown Heights and for shuls and yeshivos in Boro Park. But he’s best known for his generous donations to establish mikvaos around the world. He’s helped finance the building of more than 120 mikvaos to date, with each of those donations starting at $130,000. He says this particular worldwide project began with a dream, which he took to mean that his mission was to dedicate money to taharah in Klal Yisrael.

At a dedication ceremony for a magnificent new mikveh building in Crown Heights last year, Rabbi Raitport revealed that the Rebbe had instructed him years ago, when he was approached to help fund the original Crown Heights mikveh, Mikvah, that he should specifically not underwrite all the costs, since the community as a whole is responsible to contribute to its building. When Rabbi Raitport heard that over 1,000 people had contributed to the building costs, he picked up the rest of the huge tab.

When Rabbi Raitport’s own daughters became of age, the criteria for the conclusion of each shidduch was the future chassan’s greatness in Torah, without any consideration of which community he belonged to. That’s how this devoted chassid has some sons-in-law affiliated with the Litvishe yeshivah world.

“I arrived in America without a penny, without knowing a soul, with no one to help me, and Hashem gave me everything, in gashmiyus and ruchniyus,” Rabbi Raitport says. “I clearly saw the realization of the words of Chazal who said: ‘Anyone who accepts upon himself the ol Torah then the ol of derech eretz is lifted from him.’ Baruch Hashem, I lack for nothing, but I do have one request from the Almighty — that I be able to write seforim for many years to come.”

On 26 Adar I 5752/1992, a day before the Lubavitcher Rebbe suffered the stroke which left him unable to speak, and from which he never recovered, he bid an unknowing farewell to the chassid he was so proud of. It was right after Rabbi Raitport had printed a sefer.

“I presented the sefer to the Rebbe and he gave me two dollars, ‘one for the next sefer that you’ll write…’

“I was perplexed. I had just printed a sefer; why was the Rebbe already talking about the next one? And then, Rebbe turned to my wife and said, ‘Yasher koach for the help you have given your husband all the years.’ True that from our marriage, my wife had typed all my chiddushim on a typewriter and managed our business, but still, why the gratitude only now? She’d been my ezer kenegdo for nearly thirty years — only now the Rebbe remembered to thank her?”

Two years later, on 3 Tammuz 5754/1994, it all became clear. The surprising conversation two years earlier was the Rebbe’s farewell.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 617)