Rabbi Thumim, the Alshtadter Rav of Boro Park, arrived in New York in the early 1940's and attended yeshivas Torah Vodaas. This is a memory from those early years in yeshiva as recounted in an interview in Mishpacha magazine:
"I was a frumme bochur and I didn't want to eat the yeshiva's food since the shochet had no beard. R' Heiman called me over and told me that he felt I was being too stringent and that I needed the nourishment of wholesome meals. I said, "Rosh Yeshiva, with all due respect, I am a bochur who is all alone in this country. If I drop the minhagim of my father's house, I am lost. I have to maintain the beard, the chassidishe shechita, all of it, if I hope to guard my zeide's path."
R' Heiman said he was right. As to what he ate, his mother sent him sardines which he would share with another chassidishe bochur who also did not eat the yeshiva's meat, Levi Yitzchok Horowitz, son of the Bostoner Rebbe.
Mind you, Torah Vodaas was an exemplary yeshiva! The food was 100% kosher. And yet, a bochur had the pride and backbone to forgo good meals in order to preserve who he was and what he stood for. What sort of chinuch creates teenagers like these?
This is absolutely fascinating. Rabbi Thumim is my uncle (my father's half brother), though I have met him only twice. I think I can answer your question, and there is a funny twist that makes this story absolutely incredible.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the exact date that Rabbi Thumim arrived in New York, but I'm pretty sure that he was in his early twenties, not a teenager. He came as a Holocaust survivor. His father was a Zionist and did not remain a chassid, and he learned from his zeide after his parents divorced. His zeide, his maternal grandfather the Altstadt Rav, perished in 1942. The way of life that he wanted to maintain was that which was being destroyed along with his zeide in Europe. The answer to your question is that his strong desire to maintain that way of life was created not (only) by chinuch, but by life circumstances.
Now the funny twist, for which we have to go back four generations in the family history: Rabbi Yaakov Thumim, of Boro Park, is the son of Rabbi Pinchas Yosef, son of Rabbi Avraham, son of Rabbi Yitzchak, son of Rabbi Efraim Thumim. The last three were successively A.B.D. Krystynopol (now known as Chervonohrad).
There is a story, which appears in The Unbroken Chain by Dr. Neil Rosenstein (second edition, page 268), about Rabbi Efraim. A shochet from Krystynopol went to Belz, and brought back some kosher meat prepared there (chassidishe shechita). Rabbi Efraim declared the meat unfit, causing a rift that lasted many years until after his son (Rabbi Yitzchak) succeeded him, and reconciled with the Belzer Rebbe. Rabbi Yitzchak sent his son Avraham to study in Belz. Avraham was the first in the family who became a chassid, following the Belzer Rebbe.
Thus, coming back to our original subject: on his father's side, his grandfather was the only chasid out of a (very) long line of non-chassidic Rabbis. You could say (in jest, of course) that the tradition that he was maintaining was not that of being chassidic, which was only from his grandfather. He was maintaining the tradition from his great-great-grandfather, of bickering over the kashrut of meat!
Thank you very much for writing that!
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