Signed, Sealed, and Saved   

Nowadays, when our communication often takes the form of emoji-splattered text messages, it’s hard for us to relate to the import of what we sometimes derisively call snail mail. But back in the day, a letter was something to be treasured, a tangible medium of interest, hope, and love.

A Final Missive

From: My grandfather, Rabbi Aharon Berek, Vilna

To: Rebbetzin Basya Bender, New York

Date: 1941

I was born in Shanghai, where my father had joined the Mirrer yeshivah in their escape from Europe. In 1946, we arrived in America. About 50 years later, Rabbi Yaakov Bender phoned me. His mother, Rebbetzin Basya Bender, had been a friend of my mother’s, and had been very close to the Berek family in Vilna. Now he’d found a letter among her papers. The letter was from my mother’s father, Rav Aharon Berek of Vilna, who was Rav Chaim Ozer’s private secretary and the secretary and bookkeeper of the Vaad Hayeshivos, and was written to Rebbetzin Bender. Dated September 1941, it read as follows:

“My daughter Rashel has left here with her husband, who will be a very fine talmid chacham. I do not know where they are, but maybe, from America, you can find out.”

My parents got married in Vilna in 1940, against the backdrop of crisis and uncertainty. But the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Germany and Russia had left Vilna temporarily safe, and Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky had invited all the yeshivahs to take refuge in the town. The Mirrer yeshivah, which had also relocated to Vilna, was planning their escape. Although my father was a talmid of Kletzk, not Mir, he wanted to go along with the Mirrer group.

My mother, though, didn’t want to leave her family to travel across the world. So my father went in to the Brisker Rav and told him that his wife didn’t want to escape. The Rav sent his daughter, Lifsha (later Rebbetzin Feinstein) to call my mother in. “Go,” he said. “You will be saved.”