Reb Yitzchak Chaim Dovber HaLevi Wilensky (“Reb Chaim Ber Kremenchuger”) was born around 5597 (1837) and was a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek, the Rebbe Maharash and the Rebbe Rashab. He was one of the “Kremenchuger Beralach,” a group of great chassidim in Kremenchug named DovBer after the Mitteler Rebbe. He was a phenomenal maskil and a reserved but firm leader. Reb Chaim Ber passed away on the second night of Chanukah, 5653 (1892) and is buried in Kremenchug.
In a questionnaire which the Frierdiker Rebbe sent to Reb Michoel Wilensky to fill out about his father, he writes what he heard from the Rebbe Rashab at a gathering of Simchas Beis Hashoeiva in the year 5654 (1894):
First the Rebbe spoke about the previous chassidim of Kremenchug, and then he said “Olam HaTikkun [the realm of correction and stability] began with Chaim Ber.” He continued to speak of how wary my father was of behaving in a manner that might make him look pretentious: how much he deliberated until he decided to wear a gartel for davening.
He then added, “He was here for several years. I had then repeated my father’s maamar for him with my own ‘introduction.’ My father’s words are good, so he had what to work with, but he didn’t take anything from my additions (those last words the Rebbe said with a smile). The skill of listening, I saw in him. He listened without making a single move, yet all of his limbs heard. He listened with his entire being, until he became red behind his ears.”
In another section, the son writes:
Everything about him gave the opposite impression of who he really was. Starting from his outward appearance—which mostly had nothing to do with him—he didn’t look like a “chossid”: He was a tall man with hardened facial features, a beard as neat as if it were trimmed, and he was extremely particular about the cleanliness of his clothes.
He looked as though he were a cold and calculated man who is impressed by nothing, someone who knows his value and is confident in himself. So much so that people would joke that he was a man whom death could not reach, due to his healthy body and nerves of steel. The truth, however, was quite the opposite, and those who were close to him, dubbed him, “the cold firebrand.”
For the full questionnaire and other stories, see “The Cold Firebrand – The Life of R. Chaim Ber Wilensky” in Perspectives Fifteen.
