Three souls on different tracks in France, three people destined by divine providence to meet time after time; at a Jewish orphanage in France, some years later in a hospital in Yerushalayim, and at a Shabbos table of a Yerushalmi family. * The moving story of three souls that fulfilled their mission, each in its place. * From a book about to be published about R’ Aharon Mordechai Zilberstrom.
R’ Aharon Mordechai Zilberstrom’s educational career began while he was still a young man. He got involved in rescuing Jewish children in France who were given by their parents to Christian monasteries right before they were taken away to concentration and extermination camps. The parents hoped to save their children, thinking they would retrieve them after the war.
The Chassid, R’ Shneur Zalman Schneersohn is known for his tremendous work on behalf of these children. He saved hundreds of children and brought them to the mosdos he established. One of the institutions was run by R’ Aharon Mordechai Zilberstrom who, along with the exigencies of war and the need to escape, did so much for the material and spiritual relief of these abandoned children.
One of those children was Jean (Yona) Israelewitz. In his moving diary he describes what he experienced, his many wanderings as well as his first encounter with the director of the institution, R’ Zilberstrom, who raised his spirits and treated him lovingly, and fortified his self-confidence.
A SAD, LONELY SOUL
This is what he writes in his memoirs (with some omissions) from the year 5703/1943:
After a long, tiring march, we finally arrived at an estate, the size of which I had never seen before in my life. In the center of the property was a huge mansion. The place looked abandoned; there was nobody around and not even a bird chirped. The silence there made me afraid. The snow continued to fall, soft and white, covering the earth and trees with a white covering. Everything all around shone in a lustrous whiteness. “Here we are. We have finally come home,” said a girl who brought me there.
We entered the property and walked until we reached a large iron gate through which you could see a three-story house surrounded by a spacious garden. It was difficult to open the gate because it was very heavy. We entered the yard and walked toward the house.
I looked at the house very sadly and was afraid about having to live in an orphanage again. This institution looked odd to me with its large windows, as though meant for important people. We stood facing the front door. The wooden door was so large that two people could easily enter simultaneously. We opened the door and found ourselves in a foyer off of which was a long staircase that led to the upper floor. The ground floor was divided; one side had a dining room, a kitchen and a corridor, and the other side had the game room and an office.
An unfamiliar person came out of the office and welcomed us. He looked very serious and wore black glasses which terrified me until my entire body trembled. But the man received us politely and respectfully. I later learned that he was Aharon [Mordechai] Zilberstrom. He greeted the girl and asked me my name.
“Jean,” I replied.
“How are you Jean?” he asked me. “The trip wasn’t too tiring for you, was it? I hope you will be happy here Jean.”
I knew it wouldn’t happen, because I already learned that all orphanages are the same. The children are very cruel to one another and hatred prevails. In addition, this house looked too big and strange with the large windows and humongous doors.
The war years taught me what fear is. All those years, fear churned within me. I remembered the time when the Germans bombed France. All the children in the monastery went down to the bomb shelters, but the counselor told me to stay where I was because I am Jewish. All that night of bombing, I heard everything, the piercing shriek of each bomb seemed to sound for an eternity and I prayed to some G-d that a bomb not land on me. I did not know why I wanted so much to be saved because I was alone and cast aside, and in the meantime, even if a bomb did not kill me, my soul had already been handed a death sentence. I could not tolerate the blows and insults of the counselors and children anymore, which left my soul scarred in a way that no medicine could heal.
I still stood there thinking when suddenly, a group of children came downstairs quickly and by the time I managed to figure out what was going on, they had surrounded me and stared at me as though they had never seen a child before.
There was something that bothered me very much. I remembered what my brother had told me on the train trip, that I had to be a good boy and behave like the other children and be like them. But I felt very sad and unfortunate and I suffered greatly from the terrors. I felt as if I was still under German occupation, that whoever wanted to could slap me, just for fun, or grab me and send me to a concentration camp.
The director introduced me to the children. He said my name was Jean and that I was a very nice boy. He motioned to me that I could join them. I went with them and we began talking about all sorts of things. But I quickly felt that something wasn’t going right and that my way of thinking was different than theirs, because every time I said something, they said it was wrong. I was very insulted. Suddenly, all the children disappeared, vanishing just as they appeared. I remained alone in the room, not understanding what had happened, why they had disappeared without saying a word.
Suddenly, a child returned and called me, “Jean, come eat with us.” I was very surprised by this because I wasn’t used to going to eat that way. I knew that we had to line up in two rows, walk to the dining room, and sit each in his place in utter silence. If someone would say just a word, he would immediately get slapped in such a way that he wouldn’t forget it for a long time, for it was absolutely forbidden to speak during the meal.
When I heard them calling my name, I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears, that I would be called to the table and I would be able to sit and eat without fear.
I sat near the other children. One boy came over to me and said I should go and wash my hands. I told him, “Oh, okay.” I got up while looking at my hands. I was sure they were very dirty which is why I had to wash them, but was surprised to see they were not at all dirty. I looked for soap to wash my hands but did not find any. The boy came over and explained what to do. “Jean, what you need to do is take this cup, fill it up with water, and pour the water over your hands.” This was the first time I had encountered this Jewish practice of hand washing.
In this orphanage, everything was different and I had to change the way I lived, thought, and spoke. I had to change my habits for this was no longer the life I was used to.
On the first day of my arrival there, it was already evening. I saw that each of the children went to sleep on his own, without someone telling him to go to sleep. I remained alone in the dining room. A boy came to call me and said it was time to go to sleep. I said, yes. He asked, “You don’t know this?” I said, no.
“Come with me,” he said, “and I will show you where we sleep. It’s on the second floor.”
We went together to the dormitory and arrived at a large room that had at least twenty beds. The room was still smaller than the room at the orphanage in Brunoy, which was double the size of this room. I noticed that in the center of the room were two pails, one filled with water and the other one empty.
The boy said to me, “Jean, you’ll sleep in this bed.” He pointed at the bed. I got into bed without saying a word, because I was exhausted by the long day. It did not take me long to fall asleep and I slept deeply.
When I woke up in the morning, I saw that once again, I was the only one in the room and I wondered where the other children had gone without telling me. I quickly got up and rushed to get dressed, afraid I would be slapped for oversleeping and being late. Despite this, I was still very tired from the day before.
I went to the dining room. When I stood on the threshold, I saw they were all there already, chattering to one another as though it was a meeting room. I was so surprised by this because I had never seen it permitted to speak during a meal without problems. I quietly entered the room so as not to draw attention and I sat at a corner of the table. But the man with the black beard and black glasses told me, “Jean, go wash your hands.”
Once again, I examined my hands to see if they were dirty but did not notice any dirt and I did not understand why I needed to wash them. Nevertheless, I went to the sink and put my hands under the faucet. A boy came just then and said this is not the way to wash hands and explained again how to do it.
I returned to the table and sat down. I waited to be given bread and a portion of food. I waited a long time until one of the teachers saw me waiting and said, “Jean, you need to take a portion by yourself.” I told him that I don’t know how to serve myself and he said, “Jean, over here everyone serves themselves and you don’t need to worry, we are free now.” I could not believe that children ate this way.
Before I finished the meal, I heard the song of prayer that I did not recognize and did not understand [the Birkas HaMazon]. My face reddened in shame and once again, I felt alone.
I continued eating slowly and then went out to the yard to breathe some fresh air. The yard was empty and there was nobody around because they had all gone somewhere. I looked around and saw that in the center of the yard was a large stone basin and on it was another stone out of which protruded a decorated faucet that continuously poured forth water, but the basin never filled up.
In the yard was a large oak tree that was covered in snow. I watched, enchanted by the beautiful white sight and began thinking about various things.
I felt a sudden tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the man with the black beard and black glasses. I began trembling in fear. I was sure he had come to yell at me and that he would hit me for going outside or doing something bad. Instead, he grasped my shoulders with his two hands and said in a soft, quiet voice which I had never heard in my life, “Jean, how are you?”
“Fine, monsieur.”
“What are you doing outside alone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why aren’t you together with all the other children?”
“I don’t know where they went.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder so gently that a pleasant sensation spread through my body and he said to me in a quiet, pleasant voice, “I know that it is very hard to change one’s life and that it is not a simple stage, but everything will work out in time, you will see, don’t worry. Come, let’s go back to the house and see what the other children are doing.”
We returned to the house as we discussed all sorts of things. When we walked in, he called a boy named Simone and said, “Simone, you will teach Jean to read and pray and you will be his good friend.”
“Yes, rebbi,” said Simone.
The rabbi spoke to me and treated me gently and nicely and made me feel welcome and that I had a right to exist in the world, a feeling I had never had until then.
That is how my life changed and I returned to the Judaism I had never known.
THE DIRECTOR
RAISED ME UP
Jean (Yona) Israelewitz continues his touching account:
Those are my first memories of R’ Aharon Zilberstrom’s institution. I loved R’ Aharon so much. He was a Chassid who ran his life and the life of the institution in a marvelous way. He was a Chassid with a beard, who knew how to combine different fields of life such as Torah with practical life without one undermining the other. Neither one of them was swept into a corner like a worthless child.
To me, R’ Aharon Zilberstrom was a father, uncle, teacher, brother, and most importantly, someone who would never leave me. Someone who transformed me from a child who wasn’t worth anything, to a billion liras. Despite all the love I felt for the Jewish institution, the war period still hadn’t left me. It had liberated Paris but it stubbornly held on to me.
In R’ Aharon’s Jewish institute I learned what real paradise is like. Over time I learned to go and wash my hands on my own, to serve food to myself, and to believe that someone was calling my name. And most importantly, that I was important to someone and that I had a place in the world.
That boy Simone, that R’ Aharon with the black beard asked to help me, taught me to read and write and slowly, I felt at home. More than any other place in the world.
The mission, to get children out of monasteries after the war, was not at all easy. The Christians had had a strong influence on the children, providing them with a new god who did not kill them, for they were his children; I thought so too.
My emotional state while in the monastery was hellish. I no longer knew who I was. My thoughts constantly wandered elsewhere so as not to think of the hell I was living in. In the end, I thought it wasn’t easy being a Jew and it was better to be a Christian. I did not understand why I had to be a Jew and what difference it made if I was Jewish or not. To me, Jews were a people scattered over the world. We did not have Eretz Yisroel; we had nothing.
Staying in the hellish monastery only strengthened this line of thinking. I was always on the sidelines as though I had been thrown into a corner of the room; this was my punishment. A punishment given without prior warning and which was not enforced by any law or regulation.
When you sweep a room, the remnants that you can’t sweep up into the dustpan are swept into the corner of the room, so they are not visible. They are not important; not worth a cent. I am that remnant. I am that child who was not worth a cent. I am afraid that no one will be able to understand a situation like that in which a child can do nothing, who has no reason to live.
Then came R’ Schneersohn who took me from darkness to light. It was not easy and it cannot be counted on the fingers of a hand the number of times the mission failed in other places and the rabbi left Jewish children in Christian monasteries, because Christianity had already captured them and placed a victory flag on their hearts and they did not want to go with him.
One of those captured children, who were with me in the monastery, later became the archbishop of Paris and before he died he asked that they say Kaddish for him.
Along with the failures were many successes, the success of redeeming little captives, and I was one of them.
RESCUE FROM MADNESS AND LONELINESS
Jean (Yona) met his beloved R’ Aharon again after both of them had made aliya and lived in Yerushalayim. Here too, he remembered R’ Aharon in the most positive way as he relates:
I left in France the little that remained to me. Even in France after the war I felt alone and I boarded a ship for Eretz Yisroel. This was the winter of 5709. I remember that we celebrated Chanuka on the ship upon which depended my entire future.
On that ship I met someone familiar to me. I did not remember from where until it came to me – they called him Dovid Lesselbaum. He, like myself, had been in a monastery during the war and wanted to be a Christian, but they extricated him, as they did me. He was sent to a Jewish institution and was in Yeshivas Chachmei Tzorfas in Aix-les-Bains. Now he was on his way, with me, to Eretz Yisroel. We did not know one another personally, but exchanged words with one another and then each of us went to explore the ship on his own.
I arrived in Eretz Yisroel. In my rosiest dreams I did not imagine that I would ever have the privilege to step foot in this holy land. After a short stay on Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim, I went to Yerushalayim and went to learn in Yeshivas Chevron.
Acclimating was difficult. The foreign language, the mentality and culture and my lack of understanding made it hard for me to mingle with the masses. I was very disappointed because I had hoped that in a place where everyone was Jewish, I would finally feel as though I belonged, but I still felt alone. The rosh yeshiva, R’ Yechezkel Sarna, suggested I leave yeshiva and enlist in the army. As a good student, I did as he said.
I joined the Givati brigade where I did most of my military service. However, an old ear and head injury that had developed when I had been in the monastery started to act up again, an injury that left a permanent stretching of my face and affected my ear leaving it mostly deaf.
I was hospitalized in Schneller in Yerushalayim which had once been a British military base and which today belongs to the Jews.
Who remembered me and felt he should come and encourage me and visit me during that time? R’ Aharon Zilberstrom, our memorable director. At that time, he ran an exclusive elementary yeshiva which produced many of the g’dolei ha’dor of the next generation. Since he heard about my condition, he came to do the mitzva of bikkur cholim. He would come now and then and did not neglect me.
That was the second time R’ Zilberstrom rescued me from madness and loneliness.
On one of his visits, as he was sitting there, another person suddenly walked in. I was surprised to see that he was heading straight to my bed and not that of another patient. How strange! I wasn’t used to more than one regular guest but when he approached, I recognized him. It was Dovid Lesselbaum. I hadn’t seen him in a long time.
I introduced Dovid to R’ Zilberstrom and Dovid was very impressed. He wasn’t used to meeting such a refined, gentle soul as was R’ Zilberstrom, who was also a Chassid who was active in all areas of life.
Thus concludes Yona Israelewitz’s memoirs.
FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH A LUBAVITCHER
Years later, R’ Dovid himself described his first meeting with R’ Aharon Mordechai Zilberstrom from his perspective:
I met R’ Aharon Mordechai through an acquaintance who traveled together with me on the ship to Eretz Yisroel. The acquaintance was in Schneller hospital in Yerushalayim and I went to visit him. Next to him I saw an impressive looking person who spoke French on an academic level. It was R’ Aharon Mordechai Zilberstrom. He ran R’ Zalman Schneersohn’s orphanage under whose auspices many Jewish children were saved from the clutches of the Catholic religion.
That year, 5713, was a stormy one when it came to the educational system in Israel. After enacting the “Law of Public Education,” it was decided that starting with the new school year, the “individual streams” system would no longer be in effect, by which every citizen chose the ideological type of schooling he wanted for his children (Histadrut, Mapai, Agudas Yisroel, Mizrachi etc.). From then on, all the streams would be under central government control and funding. The hunt for souls began all across the country, with each of the movements wanting to register as many children as possible. The country roiled. There was nobody who was not involved, in some way or another, on behalf of one of the movements.
R’ Dovid Lesselbaum wanted to jump into the fray. He decided to approach Agudas Yisroel since he was distant from the Chassidic worldview. “The fact that Jewish children would go to irreligious schools was out of the question, as far as I was concerned.
“Then, in a conversation with R’ Aharon Mordechai at Jean’s bed, I was reminded that R’ Aharon Mordechai was the director of the Shiloh Talmud Torah in Yerushalayim. On the spot I offered my services in registering children for his school. I did not know that he was a Chassid. If I had known I think I would have kept my distance from him. I asked him whether he needed my help in recruiting students. ‘No,’ he said gently. ‘We at Shiloh don’t have these problems, but I am a Lubavitcher Chassid and your help is certainly needed for the Chabad school in the Malha (Manachat) neighborhood.’”
R’ Dovid was taken aback.
“That was a calamity for me,” he said candidly. “A Chassid? That’s unbelievable. R’ Aharon seemed such a serious and sympathetic person …”
Jean wrote in his memoirs:
“The yeshiva in France taught him to be a real Yekke and he never expected to encounter a refined, gentle individual, well rounded in all areas of life, and with a Chassidic appearance like R’ Zilberstrom.”
R’ Dovid Lesselbaum continued:
“A second shock from R’ Aharon Mordechai was the fact that he said Chabad Chassidim were planning on opening a fifth stream within Israeli education. I was stunned. You’re a Chassid? How can that be? It’s impossible! And who are these Chassidim who are opening an educational movement? What do they have to do with chinuch? With pedagogy? Where would they get teachers from? And anyway, what did I have to do with Chassidim?
“Nevertheless, I went to register kids in Manachat (where the Reshet school was established for the 5713 school year) so that they wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Histadrut and be sent to irreligious schools. I began registering children mainly among those who were French speaking.”
The registration was a success and Reshet Oholei Yosef Yitzchok opened.
A NIGGUN THAT PROVIDED CLOSURE
The relationship between R’ Lesselbaum and R’ Zilberstrom became closer. His initial fear of Chassidim in general and Chabad Chassidim in particular slowly dissipated, even though R’ Dovid was certain he would never become a Chassid.
He was once invited to a Friday night meal at the Zilberstroms in their modest Yerushalmi apartment. During the meal, R’ Dovid asked permission to sing a niggun he especially liked that he learned in the yeshiva, Chachmei Tzorfas (this niggun is sung in Mizrachi groups after Lecha Dodi). When he finished singing the moving niggun, R’ Aharon Mordechai said with a smile, “Nu, that’s a Chabad niggun!”
“That was the ‘final blow’ which destroyed my preconceived attitudes against Chassidus,” said R’ Lesselbaum.
As a result of this connection R’ Dovid began attending Tanya shiurim given by the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Toras Emes, R’ Moshe Aryeh Leib Shapiro.
“What attracted me most were the magical moments of the niggunim on Shabbos between Mincha and Maariv. I would go every Shabbos and feel that the niggunim were simply ‘taking’ me to hidden spiritual destinations.”
R’ Dovid Lesselbaum eventually became a Lubavitcher Chassid and today he is one of the veteran settlers of Kfar Chabad. He disseminates Chassidus in French and edits Sichat HaShavua in French.
***
Three souls from France, two of them in monasteries and one who rescued souls; three people distant from one another, physically and spiritually. They met at an orphanage, a hospital, and at a Shabbos table. By wondrous divine providence, one soul met another, one soul drew another one close.
Jean concluded his memoirs thus:
“Until today, Dovid Lesselbaum tells me that thanks to me he is religious and a Chabadnik. It’s unbelievable how one person can create an entire world of generations.”