In Tribute: Issue 935

ITwas Yom Kippur of 1945 in Shanghai, China when Rav Shmuel Dovid and Rebbetzin Tzivia Walkin brought their newborn son into briso shel Avraham Avinu and named him Chaim. The baby was named after his uncle, Rav Chaim Walkin, the last rosh yeshivah of Volozhin, but it carried a significance of its own.

Shanghai was full of refugees, separated from their homes and their families, and Rav Shmuel Dovid and Rebbetzin Tzivia made it their business to help these Yidden once again feel the taste of life, restoring an almost-forgotten drive for chayim.

“You know,” Rav Chaim Walkin once recounted, “I lived my entire childhood in the shadow of the stories of Shanghai. Any survivor who couldn’t manage on his own found his way to my parents’ home, where he was given a hot meal, a warm bed, and lots of encouragement. I kept hearing the stories of Shanghai, and those stories stayed with me for years afterward.”

Rav Chaim was born into a prominent Torah family — his father, Rav Shmuel Dovid, was a close talmid of the Chofetz Chaim, and his maternal grandfather was Rav Moshe Landinsky, the rosh yeshivah of the Chofetz Chaim’s yeshivah in Radin — and he went on to become a renowned figure in his own right in the Torah world. Perhaps it was those stories, those memories of his parents’ care and sacrifice in Shanghai, that drove Rav Chaim to become the renowned mashgiach, marbitz Torah, and mechaber seforim that he became.