Rabbi Zilber with a group of Jews slyly celebrated Hanukkah in a concentration camp

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Rav Zilber with a group of Jews slyly celebrated Hanukkah in the concentration camp washstand, and told the guards that he was washing the floors, and they believed him. And so for 8 days in a row. I have questions about this story.

Rav Yitzchak Zilber is the most famous righteous righteous man in Russian-speaking Judaism. He is famous for the fact that, he tells about himself that in the Stalinist concentration camp for several years he secretly observed the complex laws of the Talmud, including managing to secretly not work on Jewish holidays. And all religious Jews believe in him. He is called:

• legendary person, most outstanding"Russian" rabbi (edited by the Center for Torah Studies)
• One of the 36 hidden Jewish righteous people, thanks to whose righteous righteousness, the Jewish God does not destroy the world (this is how all famous rabbis call Rav Zilber, for example, the holy old sage-righteous man of Judaism Rav Eliyashiv)
• one of the 10 righteous people whom God personally knows by name (Avrom Shmulevich)
• Torah giant (Rabbi-chess-poet Arie Yudasin)
• there is a planet on his shoulders (Rabbi-chess-poet-poet Arie Yudasin)
• lighthouse man (Rav Yoel Schwartz)
• a ray of light for thousands and thousands of Jews (Rav Yoel Schwartz)
• the shining image of the gaon (genius) and the tzaddik (righteous) Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef Zilber, to whose light many Jews went (Rabbi Yoel Schwartz)
• Beatiful angel … with naive and pure eyes … If necessary, it will fly to the moon (From Eli Luxemburg's afterword to the first book of Rabbi Zilber, which Rabbi Zilber, out of modesty, inserted into his own book)
• "Policeman Zvi, when he saw Rav Yitzchak, he kissed the hem of his coat, did not dare kiss his hand - he loved him so much" (recalls Yehuda Gordon, Chief Rabbi of the repatriated Rabbinate of Jerusalem)

He wrote the main book of his life, "So that you remain a Jew." On pp. 199-200, 2008 edition, he writes how he secretly celebrated Hanukkah in the Gulag under Stalin:

I divided the candle into 8 parts, calculating that each would burn for half an hour. The warden enters the cell every 15 minutes, and the Hanukkah candles must be lit for at least half an hour.

I collected all fifteen Jews in one of the washrooms, locked the door lit a candle and poured a bucket of water onto the floor. A quarter of an hour later (he also came to the washstands four times an hour) the warden knocks. I say:

Sorry, my floor. I just poured water - you cannot enter. Wait fifteen minutes

During these fifteen minutes, I performed the proclamation of the miracle. … So we spent eight days of Hanukkah. Everything is as it should be.

I don’t understand why the warden would believe the arrested Jew that he would not be able to enter because of the water on the floor? Does he walk barefoot and is afraid of catching a cold? Is he a gentle baby?

And what does it mean "just poured water - you will not enter "? Has he poured water higher than a man's height? The warden is afraid of drowning? He cannot swim? Did the guard believe that there was a real flood in the washstand?"

And if he does not enter, then what prevents him from simply looking without entering? If he opens the door will he break the dam?

What does it mean "I gathered all fifteen Jews in one of the washrooms, locked the door "? Who will allow a prisoner to lock himself up in a concentration camp? What if someone rapes from there or reads hostile literature? In concentration camps and prisons there are no places where you can lock yourself up. This is bondage - everyone should be in sight. Even in the toilet."

And why did Zilber lock the door so that the guard could not break it? Was he locking it with a rail or a tie?

If the candle has to burn for half an hour, and the guard comes every fifteen minutes, then he can catch this Jewish meeting two or three times. And that every time the overseer will be embarrassed to enter?

OK. Once the guard was too lazy to drop in. But on the second day, the situation was repeated again. Before Hanukkah, Zilber did not lock himself at all, and then suddenly two days in a row. Then 3 days, 4 … 8. And all the time the guard was not interested in why the Jewish prisoner was locked for half an hour for the second week in a row, despite the fact that he had never locked himself before?

And every day he sees such a picture - Zilber washes the floors, locks the door, and then suddenly 16 Jews come out of there? I don’t understand how this could be?

Let the Christians cut me to pieces, I can't believe that Rav Zilber was deceiving.

Vote on the veracity of this story: