It was a difficult time for the Jewish people. The secret police in communist Russia made every effort to wipe out Judaism. Many Jews did not withstand the test and joined the communists in order to save themselves. During this time, it was the Rebbe Rayatz and his Chassidim who, with mesirus nefesh, preserved Torah and mitzvos and even influenced others. They taught Torah secretly and helped with everything having to do with mitzva observance.
Many of them paid a high price for this “crime.”
R’ Dovid Leib Chein was one of these Chassidim. Because of his activities in spreading Judaism, he was arrested. For nine months they kept him in one prison after another, one worse than the next. Food was meager and the isolation was difficult and oppressive. He didn’t even have a Tehillim or siddur and so he would recite many chapters of Tehillim by heart.
After nine months, he was brought to trial and the merciless sentence was read: “Ten years of hard labor in Siberia.”
If that wasn’t enough, the judges said, “If you do not behave properly in exile, you will get an additional ten years!”
You should know that in Siberia, a person feels like he’s at the end of the world. It’s like life stops. For nearly ten months of the year, there is hardly any sun. There is weak light from eight until eleven in the morning and then it is dark. During the other months, the sun shines nonstop and there is no night.
Of course, in addition to the physical hardship and distance, there are also many problems related to halacha such as: when does Shabbos begin and end and what are the times for davening?
Here, in distant Siberia, he began a spirit-crushing life journey of disconnection from family, being in an isolated place, in subhuman conditions, and working at hard labor that shattered the body.
At first, R’ Dovid Leib was assigned to work with coal diggers. This is difficult and very dangerous work. The coal mine was deep in the earth. In order to extract the black rocks from which they got the coal, they would drill holes into the rocks that contain the coal and fill the holes with dynamite. The workers would exit the mine and then set off the explosion, which broke the rocky earth into little pieces. Then they would clear out the broken pieces of earth, clear out the space for a tunnel and put up wooden scaffolding. This was so that the rocks wouldn’t cave in and bury the workers inside, which occasionally happened when the scaffolds were not strong enough.
They would take the broken pieces of rock out of the mine and had the prisoners pick through and remove that which was not usable. The usable material was left outside until it was burned and turned to coal. It was a great deal of work and took place in two shifts, by day and at night.
R’ Dovid had to bring material in and out of the ground. He worked at this intense labor for a month until he felt his strength giving out.
When the supervisor saw that R’ Dovid wasn’t doing his work with the requisite energy, he began shouting and threatening, but it didn’t help because R’ Dovid Leib wasn’t slacking off; he just couldn’t exert himself any more.
His job was changed to clearing the roads of snow which was less arduous.
Later, through the kindness of Hashem, the supervisor in charge of shipping and storing merchandise, suggested that he work on guarding the main warehouse.
“I see that you are religious and the work is hard for you,” he said. “My advice is that you work as a watchman at the warehouse. Also, when merchandise arrives, you need to show the driver where to drop it off.”
R’ Dovid was happy with the idea but made it conditional on his not having to work on Shabbos. In his free time, he made himself a little, handwritten Tehillim. Whatever chapter he knew by heart he wrote down and that is how he had a partial Tehillim, written with tears and supplications.
This book was precious to him and he always had it in his shirt pocket. Whenever he had a chance, he took out the Tehillim and recited chapter after chapter.
One day, something exciting happened. Once every few months, a prisoner was allowed to send a letter to his family and to receive a package from them. In many instances, the package never reached the prisoner or only some of it arrived.
R’ Dovid received a package from his wife and this time, the package reached the guard at the end of his shift and since he wanted to leave, he said to give the package as is, without checking it at all.
In the package, R’ Dovid discovered a treasure, a real Tehillim! It wasn’t handwritten and it wasn’t incomplete; it was a Tehillim!
He was thrilled, however, it was too big for his pocket.
What did he do? Whenever he had free time, he copied chapter after chapter, thus he created a precise handwritten copy that was pocket-sized. When he completed it after several months, he was happy.
After that, he carried the complete Tehillim that he had written in his pocket. In the morning, he would go outside when nobody was there and it was just snow and barbed-wire fences and he would pour out his heart to Hashem.
He also miraculously received tefillin after a long time in which he was unable to do this mitzva. One day, a religious Jew came to the camp. Unfortunately, this was the second time he was sent to the Siberian exile. Since he had bitter experience without tefillin, this time he managed to smuggle in tefillin. How? He bought a loaf of bread, hollowed it out and put the tefillin inside. Thankfully, nobody caught on and the tefillin arrived safely in the camp. This is how R’ Dovid was able to put on tefillin every weekday.
Many years passed and R’ Dovid left Russia. When he went to the Rebbe, he showed the Rebbe the Tehillim he had written while in exile. The Rebbe greatly valued this Tehillim that served this Chassid in such difficult times and told him that on Shabbos Mevorchim, when the entire Tehillim is recited, he should use this Tehillim. ■