By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
Having fought the Nazis as a partisan during World War II, Rabbi Zushe Wilmovsky was still unmarried when he moved to Israel in the early 1950s. Soon a dedicated Chabad chasid, he quickly became involved in the movement’s outreach activities in the country, and was too busy to think about finding a wife.
Finally, in 1952, at the age of thirty, he decided it was time to settle down. “I purchased two suits, traveled to Jerusalem, and let it be known that I was available,” he told his family years later. The strategy worked. He was introduced to Feigeh Puker, one of eleven children in a family that had roots in the Sanz Hasidic dynasty.
With little preparation, the new Mrs. Wilmovsky was thrown into the life of a Chabad activist. Her husband, who founded Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch in Lod and the Reshet Oholei Yosef Yitzchok school network in Israel, was seldom at home during the day, returning late at night, tired and hungry.
Because his “job” earned him little, she had to stretch and improvise to feed her family. His son Rabbi Levi recalled that when his father would sit at the table for a meager dinner, he would always be “heaping on praise about how tasty everything was.”
In the late 1960s, Mrs. Wilmovsky saved up a little money to buy her husband a gift: a Shabbos tallis. She went to the Judaica store and purchased a beautiful prayer shawl with a silver “crown,” not realizing that Chabad Chassidim eschew such adornments.
Rabbi Wilmovsky received the gift graciously, said nothing about the crown, and wore it to Shabbos morning services that week.
His fellow congregants were not so discreet, however. One, in particular, made no effort to hide his amusement at the sight of the iconic Chabad activist wearing a non-Chabad tallis. Rabbi Wilmovsky bore his jokes and comments without flinching and made no effort to defend himself.
On the way home after services, his son asked, “Father, why didn’t you explain to him what happened, that you were wearing it out of respect for mother?”
The stout, energetic rabbi responded, “Why does it bother you that from one deed, two people had enjoyment?”
Find Hasidic Archives latest books on HasidicArchives.com Dear Rebbe and The Edifice: Dating, Marriage and an Everlasting Home, also available on Amazon Prime
What a special Chossid, די רבי’ס פארטיזאן
A book on the life of Reb Zushe was recently published, titled: The Partisan.
See here: https://staging.collive.com/partisan-book-published-in-english/