Profile of a Chassid, R’ Nachum Yitzchok Pinson, presented to mark his passing on 22 Cheshvan.
R’ Nachum Yitzchok Pinson with his sons in Nissan 1937. Second from the left is R’ Nissan Pinson, shliach in Tunisia (d. 2007)R Nachum Yitzchok Pinson, may Hashem avenge his blood, was born in 5645/1885 in Pahar. His father, Yosef, died when Nachum Yitzchok was a little boy, and he went to live with his grandfather. His grandfather was a farmer who worked land he sharecropped from one of the gentile landowners in the area.
The grandfather, son of one of the Chassidim of the Mitteler Rebbe, was a talmid chacham who had set times for learning Torah and he learned with his grandson until he was ready for yeshiva. The boy learned in a yeshiva near where they lived until he was 17. Then he went to Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim in Lubavitch.
After completing his studies he returned to his grandfather’s home and married. Within a few years after his marriage he had four sons and a daughter.
WHY LIVE IF MY SONS AREN’T T’MIMIM?
R’ Nachum Yitzchok was a businessman who worked hard to support his family. As a result, he was unable to properly supervise his children’s chinuch. His sons attended schools that were run in the spirit of the time and place. “Torah is good with derech eretz,” was a common refrain among the local Jews. The women would say, “Derech eretz precedes Torah,” and since these children wouldn’t become rabbanim anyway, it was enough if they knew just a little Torah. The ignorant men followed their wives and for G-d fearing Jews it was very hard. (In those days there were no schools for girls yet and they were exposed solely to the secular winds that blew in the streets of Russia.)
This bothered him very much and a number of times he prevented his sons from learning secular studies, but he felt he did not have the power to oppose everyone around him including relatives.
In Starodub, where he lived, he was the only Lubavitcher. Being busy with business, and being isolated, adversely affected his firmness when it came to his children’s chinuch and he gave in. He consoled himself that the day would come when he would earn some money and would be able to correct the damage.
But unfortunately, his business was not doing well and he had to travel even more. Of course, when he wasn’t at home, his children were completely unsupervised and became friendly with other children who were not the type their father wanted them to associate with.
One day, when he returned from a long trip, he observed his children and was very upset. “Why live if my children won’t be T’mimim?” he asked himself and he decided he had to find a way out of the situation.
GOVERNMENT INSPECTION
Those were the difficult years after the Revolution. The communists began making laws against yeshivos and they were shut down, one after another. Throughout the area there wasn’t a single yeshiva. The closest branch of Tomchei T’mimim was at a great distance, such that R’ Nachum Yitzchok, given his difficult financial situation, could not allow himself to spend the money for the trip.
He thought it over and then packed up his gold watch and some of his wife’s jewelry and ran to a goldsmith where he sold the items in exchange for cash. The next day, he asked his wife to prepare some food for the trip for himself and his sons, Tanchum who was bar mitzva and his brother who was two years younger. He was going to take them to yeshiva.
His wife anxiously asked,
“How can you do that? Send little children so far away to a city where they have no relatives or even friends to look after them?”
It got out to the extended family and R’ Nachum Yitzchok’s house had many visitors. They tried to explain to him that this wasn’t the time to insist on Torah study when the government was fighting against it. It was time to send the children to government schools so they would become doctors or engineers, and contribute more to the country than if they wasted their time in yeshiva
R’ Nachum Yitzchok however, was firm in his resolve. His wife knew, despite her compassion for her children, that her husband was right. In tears, she packed their bags and the next day said goodbye to her husband and children.
When they arrived at yeshiva, after three days of traveling, they found it in an uproar. That day, government officials had come to inspect the yeshiva. Fortunately, someone had informed the rabbis of the yeshiva ahead of time and the students had immediately dispersed. When the inspectors arrived they did not find a single student.
The frightened R’ Nachum, who suddenly realized how serious the situation was, refused to leave the city for the next two and a half weeks until a new place was arranged for learning and the rosh yeshiva promised him personally that he would take responsibility for the children.
These boys grew up to be Chassidim, G-d fearing, and lamdanim, all thanks to the mesirus nefesh of their father.
WORKING HALF A DAY AND LEARNING HALF A DAY
After returning home, his financial situation got even worse. The government nationalized the stores and raised taxes so that he had no money with which to buy food.
The situation grew worse when the government announced that the only way to work was in a kolkhoz. The government confiscated land on which communal farms were established, and farmers worked
together and divided what they produced according to the days that they worked. Since they did not have anyone to run the kolkhoz in the area, and R’ Nachum Yitzchok knew how to manage a farm business, he was taken to work at the kolkhoz.
The kolkhozes, which were the ultimate expression of true communism, were an abject failure. The bitter farmers, who were forced to sell their produce to the government in exchange for meager prices, didn’t work too hard. Consequently, there was a severe lack of food and many people tried to leave the kolkhoz.
The situation for the Jews was dire. Like Pharaoh before he enslaved the Jews, the communists first turned to the Jews and sweetly promised that they would not have to work on Shabbos. However, they broke their promise and whoever did not work on Shabbos lost out on wages. R’ Nachum Yitzchok was forced to remain on the kolkhoz and he suffered from starvation. The daily allotment was a little bread with vegetables, an amount that did not suffice for even one meal.
His two sons had to leave yeshiva and went to Charkov where the T’mimim helped them find work weaving so as to be able to help the family.
In 5690, R’ Nachum Yitzchok was able to run away and he went to live in Charkov near his sons. From the day he arrived there things changed for the better. He and his sons had ample livelihoods. The three of them opened a business to manufacture pins and were very successful.
The boys did not work more than half a day. The other half, they learned together with many other bachurim who had a similar arrangement.
It was a time of arrests and persecution. The group of Chassidim in Charkov knew that the secret police was after them. R’ Nachum Yitzchok tried not to sleep at home. His son Yehoshua, who already had a beard, also tried to sleep away from home. An old bearded man did not have to worry that much, but a young person with a beard was demonstrating that he was against the ideas of the Revolution!
R’ Nachum’s home was open to guests. Any Tamim who came to town was given information in shul about his house, despite the danger involved. Once a year, the house hosted the annual fundraiser for Maamad, a gathering which was attended by R’ Nissan Nemanov and R’ Zalman Shimon Dworkin, who were among the appointed directors.
And it wasn’t only for hospitality. R’ Yehuda Chitrik told in his memoirs that when the Rebbe heard rumors that they were planning on building on top of the old cemetery in Rostov, he wanted to move his father’s grave before the wicked ones touched it. R’ Chitrik himself was afraid to travel since he knew that the Russians were after him. The one who volunteered to replace him was R’ Nachum Yitzchok. When he got there, he saw that construction had been halted and the grave did not have to be moved.
IN THE TRAP OF THE INFORMER
In Tishrei 5699/1938, the famous informer arrived in Charkov, a snake dressed as a Chassid. In shul, he met a graduate of the yeshiva he had learned in who was not too smart and who gave him information about all the T’mimim in the city. He sent him to sleep at R’ Nachum Yitzchok’s house. Aside from him, the evil man visited the homes of some Chassidim who did not suspect him, including R’ Meir Gurkov and R’ Avrohom Boruch Pevsner (of Charkov).
Motzaei Shushan Purim, at one in the morning, there was loud banging at the door which frightened the sleeping members of the house. With faltering steps they went to see who the uninvited guests were. At the door were two NKVD agents. As soon as they entered, they warned everyone not to move and began conducting a search that lasted for hours. In the end, they noticed a few lines that were written on the last page of one of the s’farim, the address of the Rebbe in Vienna.
To them, this was incontrovertible proof. They had caught Schneersohn’s agent, his contact man in Russia. That night, the other two Chassidim mentioned above were also arrested.
Right after the arrest, his children tried to obtain information about where he was taken, but were unable to. After a few days, his son and household received a summons to appear for interrogation. They were extremely frightened and debated about whether to go or not. They ultimately decided to go.
The interrogator was charming and he asked questions that weren’t that suspicious sounding. When there was a break in the questioning, the son Yehoshua tried to ask whether they knew where his father was, and he was directed to ask the other interrogator, a Jew. The interrogator exploded, “You counter-revolutionary! You think you’ll teach me?! I can teach you! In my house I have more s’farim than you do!” Yehoshua realized he wouldn’t get any information from him and left in great disappointment.
When the government person at his place of work tried to get information from his friend the procurator general, he was told that R’ Nachum Yitzchok’s situation was worse than the rest, because people kept asking about him. That meant he had a lot of friends and he was a very dangerous counter-revolutionary. That is how the Stalinist logic worked.
FINAL RESTING PLACE IN SIBERIA
Only later did they find out the purpose of the strange interrogation. The Russians simply wanted to see whether his children followed in his footsteps. When they found out that his son had a beard and his daughter dressed modestly, they decided to send him for five years of labor in Siberia.
On Pesach, R’ Nachum Yitzchok was in the same room as R’ Meir Gurkov. They had three sugar cubes and an onion and a half. That was supposed to last them for eight days!
On the fourth day, he was terribly weak and could not get out of bed. It reached the point that the gentile prisoners who would kill for some food, made the effort to get him some sugar cubes.
After a few months he was transferred to a distant camp. He was sent to the Urals in Siberia. His children discovered his location thanks to the mesirus nefesh of his son Tanchum who went with a bottle of vodka to the camp and met the wife of the commandant of the camps. He bribed her for information about where his father was. He met his father and was able to give him clothes and some food.
When he returned, he told his brothers about his visit and they prepared packages to send to the camp. A few weeks later, the packages came back stamped: Deceased on…
R’ Nachum Yitzchok’s strength gave out and he died on 22 Cheshvan 5702/1941 at the young age of 57.