Rosh Yeshiva’s Envelope of Cash

By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives

Note: Identifying details in this story have been changed to conceal the identity of the student in this story.

The young yeshiva student from Europe, we’ll call him Yaakov, didn’t know much Yiddish. Rabbi Chaim Meir Bukiet, Rosh Yeshiva of the central Lubavitch Yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York, did not speak much English. Still, they managed to communicate.

Whenever the student had a question—and as a relative beginner in the world of Talmudic study, it happened often—he would get up from his place in the large study hall and make his way to the desk at the side of the room where the Rosh Yeshiva spent hours each day. Having asked his question, he would listen as Rabbi Bukiet answered in the mix of Yiddish and English his family affectionately called Yinglish.

“He had a very sharp intellect,” Yaakov, now a Chabad Shliach in the Western USA. “There was always a new and interesting twist that he found to explain what we were learning.”

Rabbi Bukiet may have been close to eighty at the time, he says, but he didn’t act it. “He was lively and excited about his studies as if he was our age.”

Their relationship never went beyond these brief conversations in the study hall, however. Yaakov graduated and moved on to study at Lubavitch World Headquarters on Eastern Parkway, known simply by its address as “770.” There, he would occasionally exchange greetings with Rabbi Bukiet after the Rebbe’s public gatherings.

In the spring of 1991, Yaakov became engaged to a girl from Argentina. It was a joyous time, but also a stressful one. Their families lived too far away to provide much material assistance to the new couple, and Yaakov began to worry about how he would afford their most basic needs.

Indeed, the wedding day was approaching, and he had yet to put down a deposit on their apartment or purchase some simple furniture for them to use when they returned from the wedding in Argentina.

One day around this time, Rabbi Bukiet arrived at the 770 study hall for Mincha and noticed that the groom was looking particularly dejected. Yaakov had kept his troubles to himself, and the rabbi did not know why, but apparently, it was not hard for him to guess.

The Rosh Yeshiva walked over to him, as if he had come just for this purpose, and gave him a bank envelope of cash, saying, “This is to help with the upcoming wedding.” Recalling his surprise and gratitude, Yaakov says that he remembers most the “expression of benevolence” on the rabbi’s face.

At the time, and for years afterwards, he assumed the money came from one of the Yeshiva’s funds. In fact, it had been a spontaneous gift. Years of involvement with charities to support the Yeshiva students had given the rabbi a keen sense for when people were in financial distress.

It was not the first time Rabbi Bukiet came home without his salary. When his wife asked, he would say, “I don’t need to worry about money. It is blotte [mud].”

Rebbetzin Esther Bukiet, who was meticulous about the cleanliness of her home, would happily reply, “That kind of mud you could bring home anytime.” To others, she would say, “My rich husband gave out checks this week.”

Now a father of many children, Yaakov says that if he had known, he would not have accepted the money. Rabbi Bukiet would be glad that he did not.

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