The Short Vort by Rabbi Eisenman

 

The man seemed from another era as he slowly and carefully walked into the office and quietly sat down.

The wrinkles running across his face revealed his painful past.

Laibel Leibstein* had recently turned 90.

He had lived in Boro Park for years, yet sometimes still confused the streets.

As he had walked down 48^th Street, he took a minute to savor the sweet niggun of the boys learning Chumash, which cascaded down from the open windows of their Cheder.

Born in 1934 in Kyiv, Laibel was seven years old when the Nazis overran the city in September of 1941, rounding up and murdering over thirty thousand Jews at Babi Yar in just two days.

Babi Yar is a name that lives in infamy as the "largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" up to that date.

Even though he was a young boy, he can recite from memory the signs posted in Kyiv on Friday, September 26, Erev Shabbos Shuva.

All Yids ("zhid" in Russian- a defamatory and offensive term) of the city of Kyiv and its vicinity must appear on Monday, September 29, by 8 o'clock ….

Any Yids who do not follow this order and are found elsewhere will be shot

To this day, when he hears a truck backfire, he is taken back to the night of September 29- Erev Yom Kippur when the Jews were forced to march to Babi Yar, a ravine in the middle of the city.

He still hears the sound of the machine gun as his parents were murdered.                                           

Only through the chesed of Hashem and his small size combined with the darkness of the night did he survive that nightmare.

He was pushed into the mass graves by a Jew he could not see a moment before the shooting started.

His lifeless parents, gunned down by the Nazi machine gunners, fell on top of him.

He remained the entire night buried under the mound of Kedoshim.

On the morning of Erev Yom Kippur, he clawed his way through the corpses and miraculously made his way back to a distant relative who possessed "legal papers" and was not included in the massacre.

The rest of the war was a blur of memories full of suffering.

When he arrived in America in 1946, he was twelve, an orphan with a second-grade education.

Yet, Laibel persevered and eventually married Esther, an Auschwitz survivor.

As both were orphans without vocational training, they took whatever jobs they could to support themselves.

They settled in the Catskills in the early 1960s, the final decade of the heyday of the Borscht Belt.

At the time, there were as many as 500 resorts in the Catskills.

These resorts of the Borscht Belt were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s.

The couple worked at Brickman's, Brown's, The Concord, Grossinger's, Granit, the Heiden Hotel, Irvington, Kutsher's Hotel and Country Club, the Nevele, Friar Tuck Inn, the Laurels Hotel, the Pines Resort, Raleigh Hotel, the Overlook, the Tamarack Lodge, Shady Nook Hotel and Country Club, Stevensville, Stier's Hotel, and the Gibber Hotel in Kiamesha Lake and of course, the Pineview.

Laibel and Ethel made a modest living fixing showers, mending fences, unstuffing toilets, and putting up chain link fences for whatever resort needed them.

They often came to work at the resorts on Sunday mornings and observed with a sense of pride, a tinge of sadness, too much anger, and perhaps no small measure of jealousy; Jewish men and women gorge themselves on endless mounds of bagels, lox, and cream cheese.

The amounts and the varieties of herring consumed every Sunday, until "brunch" officially closed at 1 PM (although patrons could be clearly seen at the pastry tables till well past 2) seemed more like a weekly attempt to achieve a new entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest amount of herring consumed in a four-hour window- than a simple leisurely Sunday morning breakfast.

Many of the clientele back then were survivors, and after the hunger of the Holocaust, their simple reaction to food was, "Too much was not enough."

Yet, Laibel and Ethel were not blessed with children, as Esther had suffered additional horrors during her time in Auschwitz.

After the Borscht Belt collapsed and most of the establishments by the early 90s had disappeared, been bought out, or Laibel's services were no longer needed as owners opted for cheaper immigrant laborers, Laibel and Ethel relocated to Boro Park.

They lived a quiet life in Boro Park; Laibel spent a fair amount of time learning, and Ether was involved in many Chesed projects.

Ethel passed away during Covid after over sixty years together, and Laibel was left to navigate life once again alone.

Laibel thought about Ethel as he passed the Cheder and heard the children tieaching Chumash, and a wave of sadness enveloped him.

He realized there would be no child to say Kaddish to him when he left this world.

As the voices of the Cheder Kinderlach faded, replaced by the bustle of 14^th Ave, Laibel wondered what his experience at this new agency would be.

Past experiences at other agencies had not gone well. 

Without Ethel at his side, he felt so helpless and, most of all, so lonely.

At the agency, Laibel remained seated, silently recalling the good years he and Ethel spent hosting Bochurim at their various homes in Ellenville, Monticello, and South Fallsburgh.

One warm and cherished memory of Laibel was his time in the Borsht Belt, having Bachurim over for Friday night Seuda.

At the time, many young Jewish men (this author is one of them) worked in their spare time at various resorts.

During the summer, the hotels made Shabbos early, and since Laibel and Ethel always made Shabbos B'Zman, they were able to invite many of the Bachurim who, after finishing their shift at the hotel dining room, would come over and enjoy Ethel's homecooked Challahs and potato Kugel.

The "boys" would also come to them on their days off from being waiters at the Pines and Grossingers and would heartily consume the large, heimish-cooked meals he and Ethel would prepare.

The Bochurim would ask Laibel how they could repay his HaChnosos Orchim.

Laibel would reply with a hearty laugh, "One day, when I am old, you will host me in your home for Shabbos. That's how you will pay me back!"

Yet, those days were long gone; he now lived alone and needed assistance navigating his Social Security and Medicare benefits. He was hoping someone from the agency could help him.

As the young case manager signaled him to enter, he shyly entered the inner office.

She asked for his name and address and was very professional in her demeanor.

As Baila Tennenstein* typed in his name and address, she suddenly stopped and looked up at the nonagenarian before her.

A look of disbelief was on her face.

"Mr. Laibel Leibstein, is that your real name, and do you really live so close to this agency?"

"It is, and I live just two blocks from here."

Baila did not react. Instead, she asked one more question:

"Did you ever live in South Fallsburg?"

"Yes, I did, in the 1970s. Why do you ask?"

"Were you the maintenance man at Grossingers for many years?

"Yes, I was, but how could you have known that?"

The case manager did not answer.

She excused herself and went out of the office only to quickly return with a man in his sixties with a large beard.

As the man entered, Laibel wondered if he had done something wrong.

Yet before he could say a word, the man embraced Laibel in a big bear hug.

After giving Laibel a proper Shalom Aleichem, the man proudly announced, "Laibel, it's been almost fifty years since those huge meals I enjoyed in South Fallsburg. Yet, this Shabbos, you will be my guest. I have been waiting half a century for this day. Now that you live in Boro Park, you will eat with me every Shabbos. It's nothing compared to the love and caring you and Ethel showed me and many other Bochurim back then. In fact, if not for you and Ethel giving me a weekly taste of Shabbos, who knows where I would have been now? Laibel, you saved me!

 I am Yehuda Greenstein, who ate by you more times than I can count. And this girl is my married daughter Baila; you must know that the house she grew up in was patterned after your beautiful Shabbos home.

This daughter is your granddaughter; what's mine is yours!

This Shabbos is payback time."

Leibel looked up at R' Yehuda, and as tears welled in his eyes, his only words were, "I am no longer alone.”

He held tight onto Yehuda, never intending to let go.