Rabbi Itamar Rosenbaum was born in 5646 (1886) to Rabbi Meir Rosenbaum, the Rebbe of Kretchnif, son of Rabbi Mordechai of Nadvorna. His mother was the daughter of Rabbi Yechiel Michl Tirer, Rabbi of Dorohoi, a descendant of the "Be'er Mayim Chaim". He married Malka, daughter of Rabbi Asher Yeshaya of Kolbasov. At the age of 15, he began serving as Rebbe in Chernowitz. With the outbreak of the first World War, he moved to Vienna, and after the war returned to Kretchnif. Before the second World War, he returned to serve as Rabbi in Chernowitz. After the war, he immigrated to the United States, and in 5729 (1969) he moved to Land of Israel, settling in Tel Aviv, in the Yad Eliyahu neighborhood. Towards the end of his life, he was considered the elder of the Nadvorna rebbes, and lived longer than most of his family. He passed away on the 22nd of Sivan 5733 (1973) and was buried on the Mount of Olives.
Rebbe Itamar’s son, Yitzchak Isaac, the Rebbe of Zhuchka (Ukraine), recounted:
I remember from my childhood, once at night my father, the holy Rebbe Itamar, of blessed memory, woke my mother, the righteous Rebbetzin Malkah, of blessed memory, from her sleep, and told her that one of his followers, a certain man from the nearby town, needed salvation and that she should help by reciting Psalms. They both sat and recited Psalms with fervor, and after some time, somebody knocked loudly on the door. My holy father opened the door, and there stood the very Jew for whom they had been reciting the Psalms.
My father calmed him down and gave him something to drink, and the man related that he had been with a local merchant for his business as usual. This merchant owed him a sum of money. The two made some small talk, and suddenly the merchant locked him in one of the rooms and tied him up there and went to bring a weapon to kill him.
At first, he couldn't find a way to escape, but then he felt that he wasn't tied so tightly. He immediately undid the knots and fled from the merchant's house. He didn't know why he had fled here, to the Rebbe's house...
Rebbe Itamar of Nadvorna was a great tzaddik, and through his prayers, he effected many salvations. However, in our story, he felt the need for his wife, his “helpmate” to assist him with prayers that would be offered together with his own in the urgent task he had seen with his spiritual vision. Like Isaac (קחצי) and Rebecca (הקבר), the sum of whose names equals “prayer” (התפל), who prayed together for children, Rebbe Itamar and Rebbetzin Malkah also felt the virtue of joint prayer.
The Talmud mentions another couple who prayed together: Abba Chilkiyah, the grandson of Choni HaMe'agel, prayed for rain at the request of the sages and asked his wife to pray with him. After the prayer was answered, Abba Chilkiyah explained that his wife's prayer was even more important than his due to her enhanced observance of the mitzvah of charity.
It is also interesting to note that while the prayer of Isaac and Rebecca was a personal and private prayer, and the prayer of Abba Chilkiyah and his wife was for the public, Rebbe Itamar and Rebbetzin Malkah’s prayer is somewhere in between: their prayer is for one person, and as such it is private. But it is the prayer of a rebbe who cares for his followers and feels their distress, and as such it is indeed general.
Perhaps this is what characterizes the prayer of a couple together: on the one hand it is not prayer in a minyan (quorum of 10), but it also not performed in solitude. It has two partners, but they are two who are one.
Regarding Rabbi Itamar's feeling for the souls connected to him, R' Mendel Eckstein relates:
One year I was with our holy Rebbe Itamar of Nadvorna, may his merit protect us, during the Days of Awe. My father, Rabbi Moshe, served as the prayer leader. During Kiddush, a man entered with his daughter who had been wheelchair-bound for 18 years. He poured out his sorrow before our rebbe, saying that he could no longer bear the burden. Our rebbe handed him a piece of leikach (honey cake) and said to give it to his daughter and it would be for her healing.
After they left, our rebbe turned to my father and said: "Reb Moshe, why is it necessary to have so many rebbes in the world? Couldn't we make do with one rebbe, to whom the whole world would travel, and he would affect salvations for everyone? The answer it is not possible for a person to be saved by every rebbe, and it is not possible for a particular rebbe to save every person. Those who need salvation therefore go around to all the rebbes, until they reach the one rebbe who holds their salvation in his hands." A few days later, it was the talk of the town that a paralyzed girl from Tel Aviv had started walking again after eighteen years...
The sum of the names of the righteous couple, Itamar (רמייתא) and Malkah (הכלמ), is “Names” (תומותש), as in the name of the Book of Exodus, which begins with “These are the names of the children of Israel.”
The middle letters of their names together (הכלמרמייתא) equal five hundred, the value of “Be fruitful and multiply” (וברוּרוּפּ). These allusions prompt us to hear about another joint effort of the couple: their holy children.
Their son, the Admor of Nadvorna-Hadera, related:
My father, the holy Rebbe Itamar of blessed memory, lived in Czernowitz. Despite it being a modern city, my father raised all his children with devotion to the Torah and fear of Heaven. He would hire a teacher for his sons from the age of three, and until their wedding, they did not go out anywhere. Once, they traveled to a brit milah, and my brother, the holy Rebbe Chaim Mordechai of blessed memory, who was then a 12-year-old child, asked my father if he could join the trip. Indeed, they took him along, and when they returned from the brit, they passed through the nearby square two minutes from our house, a place that was popular with local ruffians. My brother asked our father: "What is going on here, what is this place?" He had no idea where he was; he didn't recognize the place... That is how much they guarded their children.
And one final story about Rebbe Itamar:
A simple Jew from Czernowitz approached Rebbe Itamar with a complaint: Why does he lock the doors of his house, keeping his sons secluded and limiting their education? Rebbe Itamar showed him the prayer "Ribbono Shel Olam, Av HaRachamim" (Master of the Universe, Father of Compassion) said at the end of Shabbat, and showed him all the gates that open for those who keep the Torah: Gates of light, Gates of blessing, Gates of understanding, and so on.
Then he added in his pleasant manner: “See, my dear, I lock one door before them, but I open before them all these lofty gates. Surely this is preferable to opening one door in this town and thereby closing all the good gates before them.”
1. Exodus 1:1.
2. Genesis 1:28.
