Pesach

One Erev Pe­sach, be­fore R. Yis­roel went to ap­proach the Rebbe to re­ceive matzah for Chaim Grade, his youngest son, Boruch, by then a young man, asked his fa­ther to get matzah for him as well. When R. Yis­roel made his re­quest, the Rebbe asked R. Yis­roel if Boruch was still in Mi­ami. Af­ter R. Yis­roel an­swered pos­i­tively, the Rebbe hap­pily gave him a piece of matzah for Boruch and told R. Yis­roel to tell his son that it was shmu­rah matzah, shmu­rah with all its mean­ings. It will pro­tect him. ”

In 5736 (1976), when get­ting matzah from the Rebbe, R. Yis­roel asked for matzah for his Sholom who had be­come one of the Rebbe’s spe­cial shluchim to Eretz Yis­roel. The Rebbe told him lov­ingly, “He’s my shli­ach. I sent him matza my­self, and I don’t need an in­ter­me­di­ary. ” The fol­low­ing year, in 5737 (1977), R. Yis­roel had learned his les­son and he didn’t ask for his son. But the Rebbe asked him, “Why didn’t you ask for your son? I hear that he’s do­ing great things. ” See­ing R. Yis­roel’s be­wil­dered look, the Rebbe joked, “What hap­pened? Sholom ran away?” and the Rebbe con­tin­ued, “In­deed, he should want to be here, but in ac­tu­al­ity, he should be there. ” And the Rebbe gave him a matzah for his son.

My zeide told a story that il­lus­trated Reb Aizel’s unique qual­i­ties, as well as the in­no­cent virtue of Yid­dishe men and women of past gen­er­a­tions.

It once hap­pened in Homil that there was no more Pe­sach flour; ev­ery­thing was sold out. The only flour avail­able came from mills whose wheat hadn’t been washed — and Reb Aizel, who was the rov of Homil, per­mit­ted its use.⁴⁴

A bal­a­busta ap­proached him. “Rebbe, they told me that you said it was all right to bake matzah for Pe­sach from chomet­zdike flour!”

“Chometz on Pe­sach is for­bid­den to eat, ” Reb Aizel an­swered, “but it is per­mit­ted to bake matzah from sim­ple flour. ”

That’s how it was for the whole day; you can imag­ine how he suf­fered.

(And in­deed I re­mem­ber that at our Pe­sach seder — at the sec­ond ques­tion, “chometz or matzah” — we were ac­cus­tomed to add, “and it is for­bid­den to eat chometz.”)

44. Ideally, flour for matzos should be guarded from contact with water from the time of harvest. In case of great need, one can use unguarded flour, provided that it hadn't come in contact with water. ↩

On Erev Pe­sach, in the af­ter­noon, the Rebbe would per­son­ally dis­trib­ute a piece of matzah to each mem­ber of the chas­sidic com­mu­nity. R. Yis­roel would take matzah not only for him­self, but also for the Yid­dish writer Chaim Grade. Though Grade lived sev­eral hours from 770, R. Yis­roel would al­ways make the jour­ney so that the writer would have the Rebbe’s matzah for the Seder night. Chaim Grade was very ap­pre­cia­tive of the matzah, and he would send back greet­ings to the Rebbe and a poem or short story as a present. On the sec­ond night of Pe­sach, R. Yis­roel would ap­proach the Rebbe and give him re­gards from Grade and the gift that he sent. The Rebbe would al­ways press R. Yis­roel for de­tails on their in­ter­ac­tion.

R. Yis­roel was un­sure of whether he should col­lect matzah or not, and he de­cided not to. The next day, he re­gret­ted not hav­ing gone, and on the sec­ond night, he stood in line to re­ceive matzah. When he ap­proached the Rebbe, he ex­plained that ev­ery year he would re­ceive matzah, and even now that Chaim Grade passed away, he shouldn’t lose out. The Rebbe replied that he had in­deed won­dered on the pre­vi­ous day why hadn’t come to re­ceive matza. Ev­ery year af­ter that, R. Yis­roel would merit re­ceiv­ing matzah from the Rebbe, and af­ter his pass­ing, his son R. Sholom in­her­ited this merit, (though he would re­ceive an en­tire matza “ far der gantzer colel” - for Colel Chabad).

R. Eliyahu’s hos­pi­tal­ity was leg­endary. He kept an open house, avail­able for any­body who wished to stay.

A typ­i­cal ex­am­ple of the ex­tent of his hos­pi­tal­ity: in the year 5715 (1955), some years af­ter his ar­rival in Toronto, his fam­ily was still liv­ing in a small dwelling. All five of his chil­dren slept in one small room. That year, a large Mo­roc­can fam­ily ar­rived in Toronto on the eve of Pe­sach. At the con­clu­sion of the ser­vice, the shul’s rov stood up and in­formed the com­mu­nity about the new ar­rivals. He sug­gested that it was in­cum­bent upon the wor­ship­pers to take this fam­ily into their homes and to pro­vide them with their fes­ti­val needs. Es­pe­cially on the hol­i­day of “who­ever is hun­gry let him come and eat. ”

Af­ter the ser­vice, the com­mu­nity mem­bers dis­persed to their homes to cel­e­brate the Pe­sach seder. No­body re­sponded to the rov’s ur­gent re­quest to take this fam­ily into their home. R. Eliyahu was the only in­di­vid­ual who ac­com­mo­dated them. He took this fam­ily of seven into his home for the en­tire du­ra­tion of the fes­ti­val. He en­sured that they lacked noth­ing. Hos­pi­tal­ity was not the only area of chessed in which R. Eliyahu ex­celled.

Due to the strike, the in­stall­ment of the matzeiva (tomb­stone) was also de­layed. When R. Yis­roel Duch­man passed the Rebbe to re­ceive matza on erev Pe­sach, the Rebbe asked why he didn’t in­sist that the matzeiva not be in­stalled on chol hamoed. As R. Yis­roel later found out, the matzeiva was brought be­fore Pe­sach with the in­tent of in­stalling it on chol hamoed. R. Yis­roel in­ter­vened and it was resched­uled for af­ter yom tov.

On Pe­sach night, R. Yis­roel at­tended the Rebbe’s seder, as he would each year. Through­out the seder, the Rebbe kept look­ing around as if he were search­ing for some­one, and when he saw R. Yis­roel, he glanced at him sev­eral times. At the con­clu­sion of the un­usu­ally up­lift­ing seder, the Rebbe headed elat­edly to his of­fice, and, see­ing R. Yis­roel in the hall­way, he said to him with a smile, “Where were you? I was look­ing for you! Why didn’t you stand where your fa­ther would nor­mally stand?”

The schol­arly R. Zavil Zei­den­feld¹¹ (may G-d avenge his blood) al­ways re­counted this story with over­whelm­ing hispa’alus:

R. Yaakov Ko­rinitzer¹² had told him in Ros­tov that, days be­fore the Rebbe’s last Purim,¹³ the Rebbe gave him in­struc­tions with re­gard to check­ing the wheat to be ground for she­mu­rah matzah. The Rebbe’s words were, “The term tzav ( com­mand) al­ways refers to the present mo­ment — and to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”¹⁴

11. A great lamdan and Kotzker chossid who lived in Warsaw, and was later killed by the Nazis. ↩
12. R. Yaakov Landau, a student in Tomchei Temimim and a rov in the Rebbe Rashab's court. He later became the rov of Bnei Brak. ↩
13. Roughly two weeks before the Rebbe’s passing on the second of Nissan, 5680 (1920). ↩
14. Rashi on Vayikra 6:2. The Rebbe gave him instructions for then — and for future years. ↩