My Rebbe Has Died (for the shloshim of Reb Chaim Feldman, of blessed memory — Wednesday, 13 Tevet).

When a rebbe dies, one cannot discharge one's duty with an obituary in a newspaper. A person owes his rebbe too much, is too grateful to him, to be able to discharge it with a few dry words. All the more so when the rebbe was Reb Chaim Feldman, the Kosover rebbe, who raised whole generations of pupils and, above all, who took small children and, as it were, converted them anew, made them into human beings and into good Jews — one certainly cannot discharge one's duty with a short eulogy. Such a scholar must be properly mourned. I do not write this for him but for myself; it is my most sacred duty, just as it is the duty of every one of his pupils, to say at his fresh grave, even if from afar, what I owe him and whom I have lost with his death. The memory of Reb Chaim Feldman is bound up with my childhood years. After I had gone through the beginners' course with Reb Lipa, I came to the Kosover rebbe. That was a privilege and a distinction at once. In his cheder, which was something more than even a reformed cheder, I spent three and a half years. There I received my Jewishness and my humanity together. There characters were forged, the souls of young children were bound to their people and to all the better and finer people in the world. How this happened, and why the educational work of Rebbe Chaim Feldman was different from all others — that was his secret. Himself a great scholar and a kind man, a good Jew, a nationalist, a learned man and a great Hebraist, Rebbe Chaim Feldman was able to pass on all these qualities of his to his pupils. Scenes awaken in my memory of studying Pirkei Avot, of studying Gemara, of the stories of Kol Aggadot Yisrael every Sabbath afternoon, and it is enough for me to take stock of how great the rebbe's influence was on the souls of his pupils. One did not fear him; one loved him. One only had to study, not be lazy and not be too great a prankster to have the rebbe's sympathy. If one had it, one had the feeling that a good angel was accompanying one on the path of life. With Rebbe Chaim Feldman the pupils had to know their lessons. Almost all who studied with him did know. With him one learned much Hebrew, Bible and Talmud. All this stayed with the pupil his whole life. In our later years there was a sign: if you studied with the Kosover rebbe, you knew Hebrew and Bible and had been made a Jew. For the rebbe taught in a modern way, Hebrew in Hebrew, according to the newest books and systems. Many years ago he understood the great treasure of the Midrashim, of the Aggadah [unclear], which young Jewish minds can draw from them. He planted it in the hearts of his pupils. He roused them to read books and himself paid attention to what they read and how they read. He used to give marks for reading, and it was the ambition of his good pupils to get a "five plus" for reading. Is it any wonder, then, that his memory will remain forever in the hearts of his pupils? Is it any wonder that those who had the privilege of studying with him will always remember him with gratitude? It is to him we owe it that we became Zionists, that from our youngest years we became bound to the Land of Israel. I do not know whether there is a second Jew in Pruzhany who has such merits in preparing the generation for Zionism as he. While still in his cheder we formed Zionist circles and wove our dreams of the Land of Israel. Our Zionism then was indeed no more than dreams, but how beautiful those dreams were! In them already lay the body of later Zionist activity and the beginning of Zionist consciousness. All this we owe to our late rebbe. Our Torah, our Jewishness and Zionism are his. We received them from him.

My last visit to him was in Warsaw. When I came to the Palestine congress of Polish Jewry at the end of October, Levi Kaplan told me that Rebbe Chaim Feldman lay ill in Dr. Soloveitchik's clinic on Chmielna. Before leaving Warsaw I visited him on his deathbed. My rebbe did not recognise me. And when he did recognise me he was very glad that he had not been forgotten. He burst into tears. His last words, after I told him that I was thinking of emigrating to the Land of Israel, were: "Tell my children there to take me to the Land of Israel as soon as possible. There I will no longer be ill..." I have not kept my word. I have not yet emigrated myself and so could not deliver to his daughters, who live there, their father's and my rebbe's wish.

Instead I must write a eulogy article and mourn, with the whole community of his hundreds of pupils, the death of the rebbe. Were the world calmer, and did people live a normal life and have the possibility of fulfilling the commandments between man and his fellow and between man and his teacher, all his pupils would have had to be alerted with the short words "your rebbe is dead" and gathered around his bier. But the world is far from calm and the generation does not live so normally that it can fulfil the duties between man and his teacher, and therefore it has come about that the loss of the rebbe is mourned by his pupils from afar. Let this article of mine, then, be the expression of the sorrow and grief that a pupil feels at the death of his great rebbe, in whose light the pupil walks all his life... Y. Friedlender.