Parshas Pinchas

In 5689 (1929), the ob­ser­vance of the Shab­bos was banned, and frum Jews were vic­tim­ized as “coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies” and “re­ac­tionary na­tion­al­ists. ” The N.K. V .D. and its Jew­ish branch, the Yevsek­tzia, be­gan to per­se­cute those who were ac­tive in spread­ing Yid­dishkeit. Al­though the Frierdiker Rebbe had left Rus­sia, chas­sidim stood to the prom­ise they took and con­tin­ued to dis­sem­i­nate Torah and Ju­daism. As a ded­i­cated chos­sid, R. Zal­man opened his home for Torah study through­out the day. He knew that the su­per­in­ten­dent of the build­ing had been placed by the gov­ern­ment to keep tabs on its oc­cu­pants, and that the traf­fic of vis­it­ing chas­sidim was cer­tainly be­ing watched, yet he was de­ter­mined to con­tinue teach­ing Torah in his home.

On a sin­gle night in the win­ter of 5698 (1938), the N.K. V .D. ar­rested dozens of chas­sidim and shot ten prom­i­nent chas­sidim to death, HY”D. Chas­sidim called that night, “The Night of Asarah Harugei Malchus – The Night of the Ten Mar­tyrs” [a term orig­i­nally re­fer­ring to ten sages killed by the Ro­mans ]. Yet R. Zal­man was not de­terred by the im­pend­ing dan­ger.

Reb Aizel re­lated that he once went to see the Mit­teler Rebbe — it was in the Rebbe’s last years — and found him ly­ing in bed. The Rebbe lamented to Reb Aizel that he was in great pain, but that when he sits down to write Chas­sidus on the po­suk “Your hair is like a flock of goats,”⁸ he for­gets all his suf­fer­ing.

With that, he jumped out of bed and sat down to write Chas­sidus.

8. Shir HaShirim 4:1. ↩

The Rebbe once spoke with R. Elchanan Mo­ro­zov, one of the renowned chas­sidim of our gen­er­a­tion, of the dif­fi­cul­ties of yechidus: “Some­one comes and says that the chil­dren that he fa­thered with­out fam­ily pu­rity should pass away. Nu, what should I an­swer?”