Leningrad Nights: Midrashim According to Chassidus
As I Heard Them, Vol. 1, pp. 435-436, no. 32 · Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson
Continued from the biography of R. Zalman Duchman:
He continues to describe the time they spend together in Leningrad:
“The pleasure, the delight we had then in Leningrad is beyond description. We went to visit him nearly every night and he explained Midrashim according to Chassidus. “Nu, Zalman,” Pinya [Althoiz] would ask me, “are you overwhelmed yet?” R. Michoel Dvorkin once mustered the courage to ask him, “How do you know all this?” “He [the Rebbe Rashab ] gave me the basic rules, ” he answered.
“Shabbos in wintertime Leningrad begins at three in the afternoon, and after the Shabbos dinner we — R. Michoel Dvorkin, both Pinyas, Menashe62 and I — would come to him. When we came once and saw him resting on a small sofa, he told us that the Rebbe Rashab had said to him, ‘Above all, one must always be engaged in thought, even when resting for a while. ’”
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Both Pinyas: R. Pinchas, the son of R. Eliyahu Chaim Althoiz; and the brothers R. Pinchas and R. Menashe, the sons of R. Binyomin Althoiz. ↩