Yud-Alef Nissan

On Yud-Beis Tam­muz, af­ter be­ing in­formed un­of­fi­cially that he was free, the Rebbe re­lated that on Yud-Beis Tam­muz in 5654 (1894 ) (Yud-Beis Tam­muz is the Rebbe’s birth­day, and in 5654 he be­came four­teen years old) they were on va­ca­tion and his fa­ther, the Rebbe Rashab, poured out LeChaims.

“Where did you see such a prac­tice?”² the Rash­batz asked him. “By your fa­ther? Or your grand­fa­ther?”

“Trust me, ” the Rashab replied.

“And I am grate­ful to him, ” con­cluded the Rebbe.

(When I was dis­cussing the sub­ject of birth­days in yechidus with the Rebbe Shlita, and I re­lated the above story, the Rebbe asked me, “Whom did the Rebbe have in mind when he said, ‘I am grate­ful to him’?”

I an­swered that I al­ways tell the story with the un­der­stand­ing that the Rebbe meant his fa­ther. “No, ” the Rebbe replied, “he meant the Rash­batz, who caused the Rebbe to say, ‘Trust me’ - this was the mir­a­cle of Yud- Beis Tam­muz.”)

2. I.e., celebrating a birthday. ↩

Per­haps what a fa­ther wants more than any­thing else is that his chil­dren per­pet­u­ate those things that are dear to him. For this rea­son, R. Yis­roel would al­ways seek to teach his chil­dren the im­por­tance of hiskashrus, bond­ing with the Rebbe, and train them in this en­deavor. In­deed, some of his most im­por­tant in­ter­ac­tions with the Rebbe cen­tered around his chil­dren.

Once when his sec­ond son, Yossi, was a young child, he swal­lowed an open safety pin. The pin had de­scended be­yond the reach of any in­stru­ments and had lodged in a point in his esoph­a­gus where it pre­sented a very real dan­ger. Not know­ing any way to re­move it, the doc­tors planned surgery. They warned that the surgery could have neg­a­tive con­se­quences, but leav­ing the pin there could be life-threat­en­ing. When they asked for R. Yis­roel’s con­sent, he an­swered that be­fore he agreed to any­thing, he would have to con­sult the Rebbe.

The Rebbe ob­jected to the surgery and said that they should see the doc­tor who was sched­uled to per­form the surgery and have him speak to the Rebbe. That sur­geon re­fused to meet with them or speak to the Rebbe on the phone. In­stead, the Rebbe spoke by phone with the head of the emer­gency room, and gave him pre­cise in­struc­tions how the pin could be re­moved by low­er­ing a strong mag­net down the boy’s throat. Need­less to say, by fol­low­ing the Rebbe’s in­struc­tions, the doc­tor was able to ex­tri­cate the pin with­out dif­fi­culty.

Af­ter the pro­ce­dure was fin­ished, the doc­tor who had orig­i­nally been sched­uled to per­form the surgery in­sisted that he speak to the Duch­mans. He told them, “My fa­ther was a doc­tor. If my own fa­ther had told me that he had re­moved the pin with­out surgery, I wouldn’t have be­lieved him. It was pos­si­ble only be­cause of your holy Rebbe. ”

At a later date, when Yossi had al­ready ma­tured, he asked his fa­ther to re­quest a bless­ing from the Rebbe for him. The Rebbe gave a gen­er­ous bless­ing and told R. Yis­roel, “You can tell Yossi, I think about him more than he thinks about me. ”

In Toronto, the Rebbe en­cour­aged R. Eliyahu to en­gage in and de­vote him­self to ed­u­ca­tion. He re­ceived a po­si­tion as an ed­u­ca­tor in a Tal­mud Torah, and in­vested him­self in the field of ed­u­ca­tion.

Due to his busi­ness acu­men and unique skills, his friends con­stantly urged him to go into busi­ness. He was given many very lu­cra­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­ter into busi­ness re­la­tion­ships where he could have earned sub­stan­tial funds – many who went into these busi­nesses be­came very suc­cess­ful and li ter­ally mil­lion­aires – though the Rebbe‘s re­sponse to him was clear: “Be­ing so qual­i­fied in the field of ed­u­ca­tion – is this why you had mesiras ne­fesh in Rus­sia, and went through all the dif­fi­cul­ties to come to Canada so that you can be­come a busi­ness­man?! Re­main in the field of ed­u­ca­tion. ”

As such, R. Eliyahu ded­i­cated him­self ex­clu­sively to chin­uch al pi taha­ras hakodesh for the rest of his life. Dur­ing R. Eliyahu’s thirty-six years in ed­u­ca­tion, he didn’t ar­rive late even once. Sev­eral years be­fore his pass­ing, the Eitz Chaim Tal­mud Torah cel­e­brated a din­ner in his honor. He had taught in this school for thirty years. At this grand event, five hun­dred of the finest in­di­vid­u­als of the com­mu­nity ar­rived to pay trib­ute and to honor this great ed­u­ca­tor, whose in­flu­ence had been greater than that of any­body else in the his­tory of the school. Ul­ti­mately, he had taught an en­tire gen­er­a­tion com­pris­ing of thou­sands of stu­dents. He was a de­voted and tal­ented per­son, a warm and lov­ing man, who was greatly suc­cess­ful.

R. Eliyahu es­tab­lished the first Chabad in­sti­tu­tion in Toronto. At the time, there was a well-known in­di­vid­ual liv­ing in Toronto called R. Yosef As­sul­ski, whom R. Eliyahu be­friended. He per­son­ally funded the build­ing of a shul and a mikva, which he ded­i­cated to the Rebbe.

In his chin­uch work, he also served as a spir­i­tual guide in the Gan Yis­roel sum­mer camp for some two decades.