The Nadvorna Rebbe ztz”l was the address for people in financial trouble, for couples with irreparable marital issues, for parents with children on the fringe, for those others had given up on. His heart was huge, and even the most miserable and forsaken knew they would receive honor from the Rebbe. This week, he would have celebrated his 82nd birthday, but like Moshe Rabbeinu, he left the world on 7 Adar — a shepherd of the generation who cared for the single, thirsty sheep that wandered from the flock.
It was the day after Pesach and Yaakov Yissachar Ber Rosenbaum was becoming bar mitzvah. But it was also 1943 in the Dzurin labor camp and the fact that he was still alive was enough of a reason to celebrate. Yet Yaakov Yissachar Ber son of Rebbe Chaim Mordechai of Nadvorna had been preparing for months. He was drawn to purity – of body and soul – and would toivel every day in the river throughout his twelfth year; during the frozen winter months that meant chopping away the layers of ice and enduring the freezing waters. Purification became his trademark and the avodah of ritual immersion remained a fixture in his life until the end. Even as he was battling end-stage cancer he would drag himself to the mikveh with his last reserves of strength.
Nearly seven decades later Rebbe Yaakov Yissachar Ber the Nadvorna Rebbe of Bnei Brak was seated on his carved regal chair – a million miles away from Dzurin but really still in the same place where all that mattered was being able to help other broken Jews and bringing them along with him to a higher spiritual plane. In front of him were a pile of pills for his chemotherapy treatments a cup of tea and a secret signed document carefully concealed beneath a stack of books. It was the Rebbe’s will signed the month before containing hundreds of instructions relating to individuals to families and to the Chassidus as a whole so that the Rebbe would not leave behind any machlokes on his departure from this world.
The Rebbe was feeble his entire body racked by intense pain. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Battelman who enjoyed a particularly warm relationship with the Rebbe approached the door.
“I sat before him and saw that he possessed astonishing clarity. He had a painfully clear understanding of his situation” Rabbi Battelman told Mishpacha. “As I was preparing to leave the Rebbe made a frightening statement: ‘We will meet again soon at the Redemption.’
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