The Sefer that Was Left Behind

By Dovid Zaklikowski

My grandparents’ home in East Flatbush was a second home to me. Many a weeknight supper, almost every Yom Tov, and for several years, every Shabbos, I sat at their large dining room table. It never struck me as odd that the walls of the room were almost invisible, lined with the bookcases that held my grandfather’s extensive collection of holy books. The same went for the bedrooms, the living room, the basement, the office. Every room was a library, except for the kitchen—my grandmother’s sanctuary.

Looking back two decades after my grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Meir Bukiet, Rosh Yeshivah of the central Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch Yeshivah, passed away, I marvel at his love for Torah study. He never left home without a sefer in his hand, to be used at every free moment, whether he was waiting for a city bus or a friend.

Even his rebukes to his lively grandson took the form of a learned discourse. I’ll never forget how he would say in his Polish Yiddish, “Dovid, Ich hob geleint oifen veg in a sefer vos Ich hob gefinen…” (I read in a sefer on the way, where I found…). Then would come the law that prohibited whatever it was I had just done, or the piece of wisdom that he tried to encourage me to make better choices.

An amateur sleuth of historical documents and information, I often asked him about his eventful life. But for many years he resisted all my questions. He was living in the present, and reveled in every moment he could study another page of Torah. Then, out of the blue, at the Shabbos table, he said with a smile, “If I were you, I would not have sold the sefer with the Chofetz Chayim’s signature in it…”

For the first time, he described some of his experiences during the war (later he would share many more details). He was a young yeshivah student in Otwock, near Warsaw, when war broke out. Inexplicably, the small resort town, then the home of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Lubavitch yeshivah, was among the first targets for the Luftwaffe on September 1, 1939. My grandfather described the scenes of carnage and bedlam as the civilians reacted to the surprise attack. The yeshivah immediately disbanded, the students scattered, and my grandfather, an only child, returned to his hometown of Chmielnik.

His town was soon occupied by the Germans, who made their intentions toward the Jewish population clear. Meanwhile, the Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, was sending urgent messages to all the yeshivah students, begging them to go to Vilna, which he believed would be a safe haven. Reluctantly, my great-grandmother agreed to allow my grandfather to make the dangerous trip. She bid him farewell and gave him her precious ring, saying, “Use this in a time of dire need.”

Vilna turned out to be only the first stop on a long journey, as the group of several dozen Lubavitch students fled the German onslaught. Eventually, they arrived in Shanghai, where they established a yeshivah in exile. There was only one problem: they had no books and no money. It was then that my grandfather decided to pawn his mother’s ring. With the money, he purchased seforim from another exiled Jew in the city. Many of them were rare editions signed by great rabbinical figures.

After the war, the group of Lubavitch students made their way to the United States on a ship organized by the Rebbe Rayatz, who was now in New York. They were greeted with great joy at Chabad headquarters and went on to become leaders of the Chabad community in America.

While some of his companions became emissaries in other cities, my grandfather settled down in Brooklyn. Hi love of learning required a large library, and he decided to sell some of the rare seforim he had purchased in Shanghai to pay for more books. That was how the sefer with the Chofetz Chayim’s signature passed out of his hands, a priceless treasure sacrificed to his insatiable hunger for Torah.

By the time he passed away in 1998, he had more seforim than he could count. I was studying in Israel at the time and did not return for the levaya and shiva. When I did, I thought more of my grandmother than of the books. I dreaded seeing my kind, gracious bubbe devastated by her husband’s loss.

The first visit was as difficult as I had feared. As my grandmother sat sobbing in the kitchen, I walked around the apartment. Now, I realized, I had missed an important opportunity. The shelves were bare. Uncles, aunts, siblings, and cousins had emptied them. There was almost nothing left to take. It hurt, but I understood. He had been their grandfather too.

Recalling the last time I had spent Shabbos there, I made my way to the dining room/living room. In the corner was my grandfather’s favorite La-Z-Boy. There he would sit, shokkeling to and fro, humming a tune, his eyes glued to the sefer in his hand. There he would learn his daily shiurim, and there he would take the tens of phone calls, the shaalos that he received as the chairman of Vaad Rabonei Lubavitch.

I looked at the chair’s worn-out pink material. I could only imagine how much good had been done from this humble piece of furniture. Next to the chair stood yet another bookshelf, where he kept the seforim he used most often. It was almost full, a testament to the poor state of the books—many were literally in tatters. There was his prized Rambam, which he used for his daily study regimen, and there was his one-volume Shulchan Aruch of the Alter Rebbe. At some point it had fallen apart and been rebound with the cover from a different sefer (that had also fallen apart).

I took it out and admired it. How many times had he used it to answer difficult questions? How many people had he aided in their struggles as he leafed through the brittle pages?

This was going to be my heirloom, I decided. Its market value was probably nothing, but to me it was precious, a tangible expression of my zaide’s love for learning.

Today, it sits on a shelf in my office among my relatively new and beautifully bound seforim. I do not answer questions in Halacha like my grandfather did. But I make a point of using it when I need to look something up. I know my grandfather would not want it to go unused.

The volume came in especially handy recently, when I was working on a project of a basic introduction to Judaism for those interested in learning more about their heritage. It seemed appropriate that it should be written using my grandfather’s well-worn sefer. Judaism in a Nutshell is dedicated to my dear zaide, whose yahrtzeit is today the 27th of Teves, in tribute to a life devoted to Torah.

Born and bred in Crown Heights, Dovid Zaklikowski is a writer, author and historian. He lives with his wife, Chana Raizel, and their five children, Motti, Meir, Shaina, Benny and Mendel in Crown Heights. His books are available in Jewish bookstores, on HasidicArchives.com and Amazon.com. It is available in bulk here.