“A TRULY GOOD FRIEND”

About the Rebbe’s sofer, R’ Yeshaya Matlin, a Chassid who had mesirus nefesh for Torah and mitzvos. He was the Rebbe’s sofer and he worked in the Rebbe’s room as he checked the Rebbe’s t’fillin. * Presented for his yahrtzait on 2 Elul.

Erev Shabbos in 770 in the early 60’s. R’ Yeshaya Matlin sitting near the Aron Kodesh and checking the Torah scroll, before the big beis midrash was expandedTHE WEDDING OF THE REBBE’S NIECE

The Chassid, R’ Yeshaya Matlin, who was the Rebbe’s sofer (scribe), was born on 12 Tishrei 5660 in the Ukrainian town of Piryatin in the Poltava district. His parents were Shmaryahu and Devorah Leah Matlin. His mother was the granddaughter of R’ Yeshaya Horowitz, a Chassid of the Tzemach Tzedek, who was ninth generation from the holy Sh’la and bore his name. The baby was named for his great-grandfather.

R’ Yeshaya Horowitz was very rich and a Torah scholar but did not have children. He and his wife were already old and had despaired of having children.

R’ Yeshaya was already close to the same age as Avrohom Avinu when Hashem told him “Lech lecha,” seventy-five, when on one of his many trips from his town of Beshenkowitz to Lubavitch, he was sitting with friends in the beis midrash, the elder Chassidim, and reviewing Chassidus. Then in walked the Rebbe’s aide who said the Rebbe was calling for him.

“You should know,” said the Rebbe, “that while saying the bracha ‘Ata Chonein,’ I thought that you should divorce your wife and marry my Beilka and then you will have children.”

Beilka was the Rebbe’s niece, his sister Devorah’s daughter. Devorah was born after the Tzemach Tzedek’s father, R’ Sholom Shachna, married for a second time into the family of R’ Aharon HaGadol of Karlin, after his first wife, Rebbetzin Devorah Leah, died. Like his first wife, his daughter who bore the same name died young and left a little baby who was raised in the home of her illustrious uncle, the Tzemach Tzedek.

When R’ Yeshaya’s wife heard what the Rebbe said, she immediately agreed to receive a get. R’ Yeshaya remarried and had five children. After the birth of the fifth child, R’ Yeshaya suddenly died. As the Rebbe told her to do, Rebbetzin Beila left Russia with her children for Eretz Yisroel where they lived in Teveria.

Her second son was R’ Chaim Chaikel. He married in Eretz Yisroel and had one daughter, but then his wife died and he decided to return to Russia. Upon arriving there, he found a good shidduch for his daughter, R’ Shmaryahu Matlin, who later became a shochet in Piryatin.

HOSPITALITY AT NO COST

In 5681, R’ Yeshaya Matlin married Gissa, the daughter of R’ Shimon Moshe Diskin who was the rav of Lechovitz (his son was R’ Yehoshua Zelig Diskin, the rav of Pardes Chana). After the wedding they lived in Piryatin where their two older daughters were born, Chaya and Shtzere.

The financial situation in those days, the years following the communist revolution, was very difficult. In order to survive, to obtain a bit of food to be able to live, they had to find work. R’ Yeshaya’s first condition was Shabbos, of course. But work which did not entail chilul Shabbos hardly existed. It was a crime in the workers’ paradise to give up a day of work for religious reasons.

R’ Yeshaya studied accounting and was able to support himself. He avoided working on Shabbos with great effort.

Until the day when the manager came over to him, life was more or less fine. Then the manager asked him, “Why aren’t you working on Saturdays?” That is when life went off the rails. R’ Yeshaya candidly told him that he was a religious Jew and did not work on Shabbos.

“Even if Mother Russia would need your work you wouldn’t work on Shabbos?” the manager grilled him.

“I only do what G-d wants,” said the Chassid. The manager’s reaction, as expected, was to fire him. Not sufficing with that, he went a step further and forbade R’ Yeshaya from working not only in Piryatin but in the entire area.

R’ Yeshaya had to leave town, leaving behind his family. He went to Moscow alone in order to earn money. He stayed with his older sister who lived in Moscow but that arrangement didn’t work out. He tried finding another place to live in Moscow. After half a year he gave up and returned to Piryatin.

Upon arriving there, he decided to move to Yogatin where he was able to find a job without working on Shabbos. His youngest daughter, Sima Alte, was born there.

One winter, a government supervisor came to town for six weeks in order to check and make sure that everything was being done according to Soviet law. The Jewish supervisor secretly observed Shabbos and he would go to R’ Yeshaya’s house for the Shabbos meals. Another Jew was hosted there at that time and the three men would sit and sing Shabbos songs together, an experience which left a powerful impression on R’ Yeshaya’s young daughters.

On the man’s last day in the city, he ate with the Matlins and left an envelope with money for them. When Gissa saw this, she refused to accept money for the mitzva and she left her two little daughters asleep and rushed to the hotel where the supervisor was staying in order to return the money.

THE LIFESAVING MOVE

In those days, the government required all children, without exception, to attend public school. R’ Yeshaya and his wife avoided sending their children to school, which entailed mesirus nefesh. Aside from the serious crime of withholding education from his children, R’ Yeshaya could have been accused of idleness since he himself did not work on Shabbos. After a few years, the family moved to Lyuban where he continued working.

Not much time passed and certain people, whose intentions were quite transparent, began making comments about his two young daughters who were of school age. The parents did not wait. They sadly parted with their daughters and sent them to their uncles in Lechovitch.

In 1937, a most unbearable time began for the Jews of Russia. Their fear was enormous. Nearly every day, more bad news was heard about another Chassid who was arrested, tortured and exiled to some unknown location, while leaving behind a wife and children who might never see him again. Fear of arrest was palpable. The main danger was for those Jews who lived in small towns and could not hide from their neighbors, who informed on them to the police and rejoiced at the sorrows of their unfortunate families left sobbing as the head of the family was taken away.

The Matlin family decided that it was dangerous for them to remain in Lyuban, which was a small town, and they had to move to a bigger city. But if R’ Yeshaya went himself, that would raise suspicions, so his wife went too. She was able to find an apartment in Moscow and the family moved there in the middle of 5698. A few days after their move, the police went to their former house in order to arrest R’ Yeshaya but to their disappointment, he was gone.

During the war years, in 1942, the family moved together with thousands of other people to Tashkent. In 1947, hundreds of families left Russia and after much wearying travel and living for a few months in a refugee camp in Austria, the Matlins arrived in Paris. R’ Yeshaya worked as a scribe, the profession he remained in until his final day.

In Paris, his two older daughters married R’ Yehuda Shechter and R’ Shimshon Charitonov. In 5716, the entire family went to the Rebbe.

WHO IS THE FUTURE SON-IN-LAW?

Purim 5716, the Rebbe farbrenged and said, “R’ Yeshaya, say l’chaim over a full cup.” The Rebbe later called upon him again and said, “Tell all your sons-in-law to say l’chaim. Including the future son-in-law.”

The surprised R’ Yeshaya asked the Rebbe which bachur was his future son-in-law whom he should instruct to say l’chaim. The Rebbe smiled and said, “Out of doubt, tell everyone …”

After Shavuos of that year, his daughter Sima became engaged to Aharon Zakon. At the l’chaim, the mashpia, R’ Peretz Mochkin farbrenged and said to the chassan, “You are going to marry a Chassidishe daughter of a Chassidishe family. Now you will be able to daven and learn without disturbance.”

When the chassan had yechidus before the wedding and asked the Rebbe what to learn, the Rebbe told him to study Shulchan Aruch in the relevant halachos, and Reishis Chochma, Shaar HaK’dusha, osiyos 16-17, and added, “Since you are marrying a bas Kohen, learn an entire masechta before the wedding, once, twice, three times, up to forty times.”

When the shocked chassan stood there frozen, the Rebbe said, “Nu, a small one,” and told him to learn Meseches Kalla.

When R’ Yeshaya and his wife asked the Rebbe about postponing the wedding until after Rosh HaShana, since many people were away in the summer and during Elul and would not attend the wedding, the Rebbe said, “Many of our Rebbeim married in Elul.” The wedding took place on 5 Elul and the Rebbe was the mesader kiddushin (officiating rabbi).

R’ Yeshaya was the Rebbe’s sofer and would go to the Rebbe’s room to check his t’fillin. When he was once asked what he could say about being in the Rebbe’s presence while checking his t’fillin, he said, “I was asked to check t’fillin, not the Rebbe…”

The Rebbe also asked him to write mezuzos for him. He was in charge of checking the Torah that would be read from in 770 on Shabbos, and in order to do his job he would ask the Rebbe each week whether they would read from Moshiach’s Seifer Torah the following Shabbos.

He once told the Rebbe that he thought it was worth repairing something in the t’fillin. The Rebbe said, “I can debate you on that but since you said it already, fix it.”

For many years, he was the Kohen who received the Rebbe’s mishloach manos (the Rebbe would send mishloach manos to a Kohen, Levi and Yisroel). One time, he opened the door for the Rebbe and the Rebbe shrugged and asked, “A Kohen?” (i.e. one is not permitted to use a Kohen for personal service [although that does not apply in a rebbi/talmid relationship]).

When he moved to Kingston Avenue, to a house he rented from a non-Jew, at some point the owner wanted to throw him out and said he could get more money from a black person who wanted to move in. R’ Matlin did not know what to do so he wrote to the Rebbe. The following Shabbos, the Rebbe said at the farbrengen that he received a letter from a “truly good friend,” that his landlord wanted to throw him out of his apartment and give it to a goy, and nobody came to his aid. Of course, after Shabbos, everything was straightened out.

TORAH, AVODA, AND CHESED

R’ Yeshaya davened at length. He once complained about himself by inverting what it says in Tanya into a positive vein, “When I say ‘boruch ata,’ I get so worked up that it is hard for me to get back to myself afterward. What can I do? My mind does not rule my heart.”

He was a big baal tz’daka and would borrow money which he would then lend to people who needed loans. He also greatly assisted his wife who was a teacher for twenty years in Beis Rivka.

He was mekushar heart and soul to the Rebbe. Every Erev Rosh Chodesh he would write a report to the Rebbe which for him was an entire “avoda.” The next day, on Rosh Chodesh, he would give the report to the Rebbe together with Maamad money. He did this every month.

R’ Yeshaya once wrote to the Rebbe about his wife’s health but did not receive a response. He asked the Rebbe about this and the Rebbe said he had not seen the letter. “The Rebbe can give a bracha even without seeing the letter,” said R’ Yeshaya, and the Rebbe did so. When he returned home, he told his wife what happened and said, “You will see that the Rebbe will also respond to the letter.” A few hours later, the secretaries had an answer for him.

In his final years, he once suffered from an ulcer which causes a person to lose blood. It was close to Pesach and when he went to get matza from the Rebbe on Erev Pesach the Rebbe told him that matza is the food of healing. “Spiritually?” asked R’ Yeshaya. “No, physically!” said the Rebbe.

The next time he went for a medical exam, the doctors were amazed to discover that instead of losing blood, he had a lot of blood and they could not understand where it came from.

Every week he would learn the Chassidishe parsha, i.e. Torah Ohr and Likkutei Torah, with great enthusiasm. The Friday night of Parshas Shoftim 5756, the only parsha which does not have maamarim in Likkutei Torah, he passed away.