Behind the Gadol Is a Great Person

It wasn’t until I came to seminary in Eretz Yisrael that I met Reb Zalman Nechemia, my mother’s first cousin. My imagination could not have prepared me for the diminutive man who greeted me with a casual cardigan draped over his shoulders and a twinkle in his blue eyes. “Ah! We have chashuve company from America,” he said, with a broad smile.

Although I was tongue-tied, it wasn’t moments before I was seated at the large dining room table, a mug of tea in my hands and a warm, contented feeling in my heart. I immediately felt accepted as one of the family and an instant bond was formed.

Reb Zalman Nechemia kept me entertained with stories of my grandfather and my mother, many of which I’d never heard before. When my mother’s family left Eretz Yisrael to move to the United States in the early 1950s, Reb Zalman Nechemia accompanied my mother’s family to the airport. On the way, the van they were traveling in went into a ditch and turned over. They all climbed out of the van, and continued walking to the airport! Life was tough in those days, and when the car rolled over, you just got up and walked. He remembered how my grandfather once brought his family a small battery-operated car from America, an item inaccessible in Eretz Yisrael. But they couldn’t afford the battery to run the toy.

Throughout his reminiscing, Rebbetzin Rochel kept my hand in hers as she gestured, “All we are, our entire family, we owe to your Zeide Yosef.” My grandfather had been instrumental in helping his sister’s family escape the Soviet Union and the family never stops expressing their hakaras hatov for that salvation.