By Tzivia Meth
Soviet Union, 1918
The Bolsheviks despised religion — the “opium of the masses,” as they called it — and insisted it be stamped out at all costs. But they also despised the czars, and persecuting Jews mirrored the behavior of the czars — which they wanted to avoid at all costs.
Their solution: Jewish Communists, who could not be accused of anti-Semitism, would stamp out Judaism for them. The ”Yevsektsia,” as these Jewish Communists were called, surpassed the Soviet government’s best hopes. They attempted to crush all vestiges of traditional Judaism, even those the Communist government had declared legal.
And of all forms of Jewish traditional practice, the Yevsektsia had a particular antipathy for Torah study. While most yeshivos, seeing the utter impossibility of further Torah growth in the USSR, fled across the border to Poland, one network of yeshivos became famous for its heroic refusal to leave:
Lubavitch, under the leadership of Rav Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe (also known as the Rebbe Rayatz). The Rebbe is said to have once told a czarist police officer, “The Schneersons don’t run away!”. Upholding that maxim, the Rebbe organized a massive network of underground yeshivos throughout the USSR — around 600 schools, according to one biographer.
The Rebbe knew that in the trying times to come, he and his followers would need the utmost dedication for their mission to succeed. In a secret ceremony in 1922, he gathered a select group of students, urging them to continue the battle for Torah:
“I took eight youngsters who were strong in both body and spirit, and we gathered together in Moscow. There we made a solemn oath: come what may, to persist in our mission, to the very last drop of our blood.”
How Did the Rebbe and His Followers Succeed?
But in the secret police state that was the Soviet Union, blood was shed to the last drop quickly and frequently. How did the Rebbe and his followers succeed in organizing so many underground yeshivos in such circumstances?
“Child guards were placed right outside the doors where learning was taking place, just like in the days of the Spanish Inquisition,” Chabad historian Rabbi Shalom DovBer Levine wrote of the time. “If anyone unfamiliar chanced by, the signal was given: Hide the seforim and stop learning immediately.”
In Novgorod, Rav Chaim Shaul Bruk, a renowned Chabad mashpia in Russia, led an underground yeshivah in a shul attic. Even though it was stiflingly hot, he taught classes there for hours at a stretch, imbued with the Rebbe’s resolve. And to keep away unwanted visitors, Rav Bruk devised a special code: the bochurim would knock in a prearranged sequence when it was safe to enter and exit the hideaway.
But the attic soon came under suspicion, and Rav Bruk hastily moved the yeshivah to the shul chazzan’s home. It would have been the perfect hideout — except that the chazzan’s son, as it turned out, was a Communist. But Rav Bruk knew that there were two kinds of Communists: the ideological ones, who wouldn’t take bribes, and the opportunistic ones, who would. What type was the chazzan’s son?
Yeshiva Bochurim Were Frequently Dragged to Jail and Beaten
Fortunately, for the right price, the chazzan’s son was willing to look the other way so that the yeshivah could continue its activities. But despite the precautions that Chabad leaders took, they faced enormous risks. Yeshivah bochurim were frequently dragged to jail and beaten.
In one instance, the Yevsektsia beat a boy suspected of learning in yeshivah, then stood him against a wall in the prison courtyard. A firing squad took aim, the officer gave the command, and rifle shots rang out — but the boy emerged unscathed. The officer had instructed his soldiers to fire just above the boy’s head as an intimidation tactic. The bochur was released, and went back to yeshivah — where he suffered a nervous breakdown due to the trauma he experienced.
After his release from prison, the Rebbe Rayatz arrives in America in 1929 on a goodwill tour. He would settle there permanently after fleeing Europe at the onset of World War II. It was not only the threat of arrest and torture that yeshivah bochurim had to contend with. The young men were hounded relentlessly to give information on their classmates and rebbeim, so the Yevsektsia could build large case files for a mass arrest.
“There was Something Suspicious about Him”
Rav Nachum Shmarya Sassonkin, who learned in the Tiferes Bochurim yeshivah in Leningrad, recalled that one day, a boy from Minsk joined the underground beis medrash. He learned well, and joined the young men in all their activities. But Rav Sassonkin recalled that the boys felt “there was something suspicious about him.” Expelling him from the yeshivah could invite further trouble, so they decided to keep an eye on him.
On Yom Kippur, he cried harder than everyone else, and the bochurim wondered what terrible secret he was hiding. It became apparent all too soon. Unable to withstand the terrible pressure from the NKVD (the Soviet secret police, a predecessor to the KGB), he had informed on them — with dire consequences. Rav Sassonkin recounted:
First they imprisoned our maggid shiur, Rav Nachum Terebnik, and exiled him [to Siberia] for three years, in the hope that this would frighten the rest of us into submission. But when they saw that Torah study was continuing just as [it had] before, they decided to imprison all of us.
They Were Never Heard from Again
One evening the Agents of Destruction [i.e. the NKVD] came and imprisoned the whole group, among them my two sons, and they were sent to Siberia for ten years of exile. After enduring brutal conditions in the labor camps, where many perished from hunger and thirst, cold and frost, they were never heard from again.
The Yevsektsia, though, were not content with striking just individual bochurim and yeshivos; they really wanted the mastermind whose will and daring kept it all going. All the evidence — in particular, a voluminous paper trail of correspondence — pointed to the Rebbe Rayatz.
One morning, NKVD agents burst into the shul where he was davening with his chassidim, and demanded that he stop his illegal activities. The Rebbe refused to be cowed by their threats.
One agent aimed a gun at his head and said, “This little ‘toy’ has made many a man change his mind!” “No,” the Rebbe replied calmly. “This toy can intimidate only a man with many gods and one world. I, however, have one G-d and two worlds — This World and the Next — so I am not impressed by your little toy.”
When continual threats did not succeed in stopping the Rebbe, the Yevsektsia pushed for more drastic measures. Early in the morning on June 15, 1927, NKVD agents, accompanied by Yevsektsia members, arrested the Rebbe in Leningrad. Taken to the infamous Spalerka Prison, he was tortured there for days, and sentenced to death.
Even in prison, the Rebbe’s determination for Torah did not waver. Without paper or seforim, he scribbled Torah thoughts on cigarette papers, and when he was told he could not have his tefillin, he went on a hunger strike for two and a half days until they were — remarkably — returned to him.
Eventually, a bevy of highly placed and prominent figures — including Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook, US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Senator William Borah of Idaho, and even President Calvin Coolidge — pushed for his release.
Due to their efforts, the Rebbe’s sentence was commuted to forced exile. He continued his work on behalf of Soviet Jewry from his new home in Riga, Latvia, and later Warsaw, Poland, until the outbreak of World War II led him to American shores.