Grandson Talks, Where Grandfather Taught

By COLlive reporter

In a talk at Tomchei Tmimim Ocean Parkway, author Dovid Zaklikowski, told the gathered that it was an emotional moment for him to be speaking in the very room where his grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Meir Bukiet, long time Rosh Yeshivah at the yeshivah, taught.

For over forty-five minutes, Zaklikowski told students, about his long journey in writing a book about Rabbi Bukiet. “It has been over twenty-five years since I began to research his life,” Zaklikowski told the students, “and there is still much more to do.”

He explained to them the process of research, interviews, fact checking and the forming of a storyline. “The talmidim were glued to his every word,” Rabbi Shmuel Turk, the school’s assistant principal said.

One of the students who traveled from Poland, through the Soviet Union, Lithuania, back to the Soviet Union, to Japan, then Shanghai and after WWII to New York, Rabbi Bukiet’s life story is a fascinating and painful journey.

Zaklikowski, through a PowerPoint, showed the students the stages he has travelled to learn about every detail of Rabbi Bukiet’s life.

Part of the research of his life, has taken place at the yeshivah. “You may have seen me here over the past year,” the researcher told the students, “to find one document could take many long days searching through forgotten, dusty files.”

At the end, he told the students, the harder he works, the more compelling the story will be. “That one line you will read in the final book,” he said, “may have taken many months to do research on.”

Dovid Zaklikowski’s books are available at your local Jewish bookstore, or at HasidicArchives.com.