In those days, we lived in the settlement of Bolshovo, not far from Moscow. The central problem that occupied me and my family was the difficulty of keeping Shabbat. By good fortune, I worked from home, producing headscarves, which allowed me not to desecrate Shabbat.
But from the children’s side, a very serious problem arose. My children, who for a long time had not attended the local school at all, were eventually forced to begin going, due to the immense pressure placed upon us. Nevertheless, on Shabbat and holidays they remained at home.
The school administration demanded that our children attend classes on Shabbat and festivals, and that they complete all assignments like the other children. For us, this was absolutely out of the question. At school they tried pressuring the children to declare their father was preventing them from attending on Shabbat, but they were wise enough to insist that it was their own decision, without any pressure from me.
Pressure
After several weeks, an angry article appeared in the regional newspaper under the headline: “The Entire Public is Called to Protest.” Beneath the headline it said, among other things: “Let the cantor not think that his children are his private property. The children belong to the entire Soviet public, and therefore we cannot allow his children to be absent from school on Saturday for religious reasons.”
The pressure on us grew stronger and stronger, and our children were subjected at school to harsh attacks.
One Shabbat, after prayer, I went with my son-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, to a friend’s house to congratulate him on his son beginning the study of Chumash. We lingered there for a long while, and when we returned home, I noticed a policeman standing at our doorway. The policeman had already seen me, so I could not retreat.
I entered the house and found my family pale and frightened. Facing them sat the mayor, another man I didn’t recognize, and the principal of the local school.
Guests
“Unpleasant guests have come to you, haven’t they?” the mayor said with a half-question.
“Why ‘unpleasant’?” I replied, trying to sound calm and courteous.
“Meet our comrade, the chief of police,” the mayor introduced the man beside him. “Do you know why we came?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I answered.
“You don’t know?!” he burst out. “And what about your children?”
“What’s the problem with them?” I feigned ignorance.
“They don’t come to school on Saturday,” he said.
“They are unwilling to write on Shabbat, and thus they don’t attend class,” I replied.
“You must influence them to come to school on Shabbat!” the mayor declared.
“I am not an anti-religious propagandist,” I told him.
The mayor thought for a moment and then said: “Send your children to school. It is my responsibility to ensure that children attend school on school days. Whether they write or not is not my concern.”
The school principal quickly objected. “I cannot permit children who come to school to defy the framework and refuse to write on Saturday,” she said. The visit ended with a stern warning from the mayor that if my children did not attend school the coming Shabbat, I would be put on trial.
The Plan
Following the visit and the mayor’s unusually firm threats, we held a family discussion. It was decided that each Shabbat only one child would go to class—without a satchel, without books, and without writing materials. For the first Shabbat, my daughter Batya, then about twelve years old, was chosen for the task.
We went to prayer, and upon returning, we delayed kiddush until Batya came home from school. When she arrived, she was pale, and the intense pressure she had experienced was evident on her face. She recounted what had happened:
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The Power of Shabbat (continued)
“The first lesson was math. The teacher wrote a problem on the board and called on me first to solve it. I went up, and she ordered me to take a piece of chalk and work out the problem. I refused. She began shouting at me and even tried to force a piece of chalk into my hand. It didn’t work. She called the principal, who came with her deputy. Both of them began yelling and threatening me. I repeated firmly that I would not write on Shabbat. They continued shouting hoarsely, while the entire class sat tensely, watching to see what would happen.
“Suddenly, the mayor entered the classroom. ‘Well, how’s it going? Did the Hazzan girl come to learn?’ he asked. ‘Here she is standing at the board,’ the teacher replied, ‘but under no circumstances will she write. She claims she is forbidden to write.’ The mayor asked to see my gradebook. It had remained in the classroom from Friday, so I could show it to him. He flipped through and saw all my grades from the previous week were good.
“The mayor then took the chalk and said: ‘Tell me how to solve the problem, and I will write it down for you.’ I told him, and he wrote it. Then he asked the teacher, ‘Is that correct?’ ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘but she’s not writing!’ The mayor ignored her words, opened my gradebook, and entered the highest grade. Then he turned to the teacher and the principal and said: ‘Let her sit and listen to the lessons,’ and he left.”
From then on, this became the standard arrangement. Each Shabbat, a different child went to class but did not write. After the incident with the mayor, the pressure on our children ceased.
Once again, we saw that our firm stand for the observance of Torah and mitzvot—and especially the sanctity of Shabbat—was stronger than all the pressure, and in the end, it prevailed.
(The story of Rabbi Aharon Hazzan of Bnei Brak, from his book Against the Current; translated from Sichat HaShevua)
