On the outside, everything looked so good, yet around them it was all crumbling. R. Hershel and Chava Milstein had a big family and lived a comfortable life in a large apartment in the heart of Warsaw’s Jewish neighbourhood, with a shteibl just one flight up in the same building. They had a good business and live-in help (Jewish only, on principle). Extended family, a close-knit kehillah, and their Rebbe were all nearby. But the cracks beneath the surface were growing wider, and they were frightening. R. Hershel Milstein travelled periodically on business, and he was shocked to hear how openly anti-Semitic the Poles were, even in casual conversation. In a letter to a friend in the early thirties, he wrote about the hatred for Jews that seemed to be growing daily and its crushing impact on their ability to earn a living. The grain business, his line, was especially hard-hit.
Where was there to go? Eretz Yisrael was a longed-for dream, but practically speaking, it could have been on another planet. “Certificates,” the coveted immigration permits issued under the British Mandate, were slow to come, and a chassidic family with ten children was not considered prime chalutz material. A tiny percent of the certificates eventually went to the Agudah, but R. Hershel saw no point in even applying – that’s how distant any hopes of Eretz Yisrael were for the Milsteins.
One day in the summer of 1933, an envelope with an unfamiliar return address arrived in the mail. R. Hershel opened it, and it made no sense. Inside was a full set of certificates for R. Hershel, Chava, and their ten children. Someone, somewhere, had arranged it all, from start to finish, but the documents gave no hint of who, how, or why.
R. Hershel and Chava looked at the papers. They talked, they wondered, and they didn’t know what to do. Eretz Yisrael? What would they do there? R. Hershel’s business was not transferable to Palestine. And even if he could start over, how would they raise their sheltered children in a place that, while Jewish, was overwhelmingly secular, without the schools and yeshivos they had at home?
They shoved the envelope into a drawer for future consideration and returned to their daily routines and challenges. The months slipped by until the day R. Hershel happened to open the drawer that held The Envelope. He took out the papers, read them again, and noticed the date.
The certificates were good for exactly one year. After that, they were useless – and there were only two weeks left! They could either wind up their affairs in Poland in fourteen days, book passage, say goodbye to their families, and move to a new world – or they could stay where they were and hope to ride out the rough patch.
Poland or Eretz Yisrael? Warsaw or Tel Aviv? Familiar or unknown? There was almost no time to think.
R. Hershel quietly began calling in debts from his Polish customers. The children were told about the upcoming move and warned to keep it a secret – if word got out that Hershel Milstein was leaving Europe, he would never see the money he was owed. One aristocratic Polish gentleman who dealt in fine Czechoslovakian china claimed that he had no cash and offered to pay with china – lots and lots of china. R. Hershel was so desperate that he agreed, hoping to sell the elaborate set in Eretz Yisrael. In the meantime, Chava packed, and packed, and packed, and the children nearly burst with excitement.
R.Hershel’s parting from the Rebbe wasn’t easy. “How will I ever have peace of mind there, so far away?” he asked the Rebbe.
“I promise you that every day you learn Gemara, you’ll have peace of mind,” the Rebbe said. R. Hershel would follow this advice, many times over, for the rest of his life.
The Milsteins’ departure caused quite a stir; it even made the Polish newspapers. To everyone’s surprise, the Rebbe himself came down to the train station to see them off. Two trains, one ocean liner, and twelve days later, they reached the port of Jaffa, where they had their first taste of what lay ahead.
The shore at the port was very rocky, and ships could only anchor several miles away. The Milsteins, along with their fellow passengers, had to climb down the side of the ship on a swaying rope ladder to reach the rowboats that would bring them to the dock. Stunned, they watched the Arab dock workers casually toss a small child from the ship into the hands of their coworkers in the rowboats. And that was just the beginning.
In the summer of 1934, pilot trips and benefits for olim were still generations down the road. The Milsteins had savings, but no job or investment opportunities. There were no relatives waiting to greet them. Landlords did not want to rent their precious apartments to large families, and certainly not to frum families like the Milsteins. Even their quality tailor-made clothing, ideal for the cooler European climate, was now cumbersome and uncomfortable. The food was different, the language was different, and the mentality was worlds apart from anything they knew. What was worse, the low standard of ruchniyus in Tel Aviv, where the Rebbe had advised them to live, was devastating. Coming on top of all the other hardships, the loneliness and longing for family and kehillah were almost unbearable. There were times when they couldn’t help but wonder if they’d made a mistake.
They quickly learned that there were no customers there for such an expensive item. The beautiful dishes, platters, and tureens served the family for Pesach for many years, and were later divided up among the children.
On Rosh Hashanah, 1939, just over five years after the family’s traumatic experience at the Jaffa port, German aerial bombs decimated Warsaw’s beloved Jewish section. It was the start of a nightmare that would ultimately kill six million Jews. The Milsteins couldn’t have known it then, but they had sailed away from Europe with their lives. There would be weddings and then grandchildren, yet the heartbreak would never fully heal.
After several attempts, R. Hershel opened a successful new business. He began helping others find jobs and get established – at times, hiring more workers than his own factory required. Yeshivos where his sons could learn were founded, and thanks in part to the Milsteins’ mesirus nefesh, there was a small Beis Yaakov for the girls. Their daughters, and with time, their granddaughters, would go on to become Bnos leaders and Beis Yaakov teachers themselves. Shteiblach sprang up, and like-minded families stuck together. R. Hershel’s modest home was once again a magnet for those seeking anything from hot tea and a good meal to a listening ear and congenial company. Today, ninety years after the difficult beginning in a harsh, yet beloved land, fifth- and sixth-generation Milsteins, chassidish and Litvish bnei Torah, are flourishing in numerous Israeli cities, including far-away Tzefat, formerly home to the only yeshivah suitable for the older Milstein boys.
It’s a beautiful piece of history, told in a few lines. But the Milsteins had never actually applied for Aliyah. Where had their certificates come from?
As they later learned, the answer was Chanaleh Milstein – aka Chana the kibbutznik.
R. Hershel’s older brother Meir was a tzaddik. Tragically, he did not live to raise his two small children, and his young wife, suddenly thrust into widowhood, had no way to support them. Chanaleh, Meir’s orphaned daughter, was sent to live with his parents. The grief-stricken older couple gave their granddaughter whatever they could – clean clothes, nourishing food, and a secure home – but for the lonely little girl, bereaved of her father and away from her mother, it was not enough. Only one person in the house picked up on Chanaleh’s very real emotional needs: Fetter (Uncle) Hershel. Yeshivah dormitories were rare in pre-war Poland, and Hershel, still a bachur, lived at home and learned nearby. He played with Chanaleh and told her stories, giving her crucial, essential time and attention. For Chanaleh, Fetter Hershel was everything.
Chanaleh grew up, and like many young people in those difficult years, was swept away by the Zionist fervour that separated many Jewish youths from their families and traditions. She left her grandparents’ home for a kibbutz in Palestine, but she never forgot Fetter Hershel and his kindness. As the skies grew increasingly dark for European Jewry, she relentlessly pulled every string at her disposal to get her beloved uncle and his family out of Poland, without their knowledge.
The envelope with the priceless documents arrived, sat in a drawer, and was retrieved just in time. Young Hershel Milstein’s chesed with his orphaned niece had saved his family. But the Milsteins’ story is not only about R. Hershel.
It’s also about Chanaleh.
Chana, an older single woman, kept in touch with her religious Milstein relatives in Tel Aviv. As the years passed, it seemed that she would remain a fixture on the kibbutz forever – until Dov, a survivor from Poland, arrived. Dov and Chana married, left the kibbutz to live in town, and had a family.
One Shabbos afternoon, R. Hershel awoke from a nap shouting, “Meir’l, wait!” Greatly disturbed, he related a very vivid dream to his family. He had seen his late brother Meir rushing by, and tried to stop him. “Meir’l, it’s been so long,” he said. “Can’t you stay and talk for a few minutes?”
Meir-in-the-dream said, “I have no time to talk now. I have to take care of my daughter Chanaleh,” and hurried off. R. Hershel woke up still calling him.
Dov, Chana’s husband, phoned the Milsteins after Shabbos. “We had a bad scare this afternoon,” he told R. Hershel, “but everything is fine.” He and Chana had gone out for a walk, not realising that army manoeuvres were being held in a field close by. Out of nowhere, a stray shot had whizzed past, just barely missing Chana.
Her father, long in the olam ha’emes, had come to take care of her that very afternoon.
As the Milstein family grows, baruch Hashem, the certificates Chana worked so hard to obtain surely continue to earn her an eternity of zechuyos: one deed, hundreds of Torah-true Jews.
This article first appeared in the Binah Magazine and was shared by the writer, Becky Freidman, an American-born writer, editor, and translator, and a longtime resident of Eretz Yisrael.
