Chaya Milevsky was born in the Jewish ghetto of Shanghai and moved to Cleveland
as a baby, before life took her to Mexico, Israel, Toronto, and ultimately
Baltimore. Her husband, Rabbi Dr. Uziel Milevsky, zt”l, a musmach
of Ner Israel yeshiva, was the former Chief Rabbi of Mexico and
founder/lecturer at Ohr Somayach Toronto. Chaya shared her incredible life
story with me.
* * *
My paternal
grandfather was a big Rav, first in Germany and then in England. My father,
Rabbi Hillel Mannes, zt”l, was considered intellectual and went to
university in Bavaria. He was in the middle of writing a thesis on “The Talmud
and Freud’s Psychoanalysis” when he found a sign on the university door, one
day, that said, “No Jews or dogs allowed to register.” That was the end of his
Ph.D., which was very important to him; unfortunately, he didn’t live to see my
three sons get their Ph.Ds.
After my father was kicked out of the university in Germany,
his parents sent him to study in the Telz yeshiva in Lithuania. (He was
roommates with Rabbi Mendel Poliakoff, z”l,
whom I was able to visit when I first moved to Baltimore.) My father was
supposed to go to America, but he was
still in Telz when the war broke out.
My
mother, who was from Poland, was also sent to Telz. She was teaching there
after finishing Sarah Schenirer’s Bais Yaakov. My mother was one of Sarah
Schenirer’s first students, and I grew up hearing stories about how she would
go to the main plaza wearing a spotless white apron to spread her philosophy
that girls have to learn Torah as well as boys. Until then, girls in Poland
stayed home and learned to sew and cook, and that was it.
Someone
in Telz made the shidduch between my
mother and father. My mother had an uncle in Shanghai and another one who got
married in America; he sponsored her family so they could escape to America.
For some odd reason, the money never got there, and they ended up taking the
last train out of the Russian port, which only went to Shanghai.
Life in Shanghai
My parents got
married in Shanghai, and life was very difficult; it was a primitive slum with
horrible heating. My parents were shocked. Opium was sold all over, and there
were robbers. Starving kids were dying in the streets. It was horrendous. They
came from Lithuania, which was not America but was certainly a normal country.
Yet they were very
productive during their stay, until they left in 1945. My mother took a couple
of girls at a time into her living room and taught them. My father was the
secretary of the beis din because he
knew a couple of languages. We lived upstairs from Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz, zt”l.
When they arrived
in Shanghai, Jews were able to live wherever they could find a place in the
city, but after Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, they were transferred to the
Shanghai ghetto. The Japanese, who were in control of Shanghai at the time,
believed that American Jewry had power over the American government. They
figured if they put the Jews in a ghetto, they could have bargaining power with
the U.S. That’s when things became very worrisome, and the Yidden
started to ask for help from America.
When
Rav Kotler wanted to help, but when he got to America, our country was already
at war with Japan. Therefore, anyone who wanted to send money to help the Jews
in Shanghai – which is what Rav Kotler was trying to get them to do – couldn’t,
because the two countries were at war. Fortunately, Rav Kotler remembered a
fellow talmid of the famous Alter of
Slabodka, zt”l. It was my father-in-law,
who had became a Rav in South America, in Uruguay. The fact that he thought of
this plan is just unbelievable. Uruguay was a neutral country; it never joined
the war. So, they were able to send money to Shanghai from Uruguay. Rav Kotler
contacted my father-in-law and told him that there were people who were going
to die of starvation. My father-in-law started collecting money, and when he
couldn’t raise enough money from people in Uruguay, he took a boat to Argentina
to collect there, as well. Sending it was risky, though, and they had to do it
in a very careful way.
Desperate
communications were sent, via telegram, in code, to solicit funds for the
yeshiva students (and their families) attending two yeshivos – the Mir
and Kletsk. Amounts solicited were not written out in numbers; instead, the
names of the 12 shevatim (tribes), Yaakov Avinu’s sons, were used. Every
month, instead of using a number, they used the name of one of the sons; that
is how they knew how much to send and how much to deposit.
When asking for
funds for the Mir, the telegram said, “Regards. Mirsky.” For the Kletsk
yeshiva, it said “Regards, Kotler.” Rav Aharon Kotler was the head of the Kletsk
yeshiva at the time. This is how they got away with it. If it weren’t for the
telegrams that brought in this money, we wouldn’t have survived all those
years. For years and years, I saw the telegrams. The incredible part of it all
is that my husband was born at that time, as was I. Under our chuppa, my father-in-law said to my
father, “Nu, we did well in Shanghai!
We did well!”
Growing Up in
Cleveland
After the war was
over, we were able to go to America and settled in Cleveland. My father was
offered Rav Shimon Schwab’s shteller in New York. Luckily, he didn’t
take it; he was a mechanech (educator),
not a Rav. Instead, he
became the principal of Telz in Cleveland, and my mother taught first grade in
Hebrew Academy. Both of them served in those positions for 40 years. In fact, some
of my father’s students reside in Baltimore.
My
father knew English, but my mother didn’t. They would speak to us in Yiddish,
and we would answer them in English so my mother could learn the language. The
teachers we had in Cleveland were the children of gedolim. Both Rebbetzin Ausband and Rebbetzin Sorotzkin
were daughter of the Telzer Roshe Yeshiva in Europe, Rav Avraham Yitzchok
Bloch, zt”l, who unfortunately never
made it out of Europe. I believe that having such teachers contributed to a
different kind of chinuch (education). True, we didn’t have TV or all
the other gadgets that kids have now – but it was a really spiritual
upbringing.
Meeting the gedolim
was a very big thing for me. My earliest memory of meeting a gadol was
when I was six years old and I attended the birthday party of a grandchild of
Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch, zt”l, who
started the Telz yeshiva in Cleveland. He was the son of Rav Avraham Yitzchok.
His entire family perished back in Telz, but, remarkably, he rebuilt his life
in Cleveland. At the party, he started to talk to me. He said, “When it is time
for you to get married, come to me. I am going to get you the best bochur
in Telz to marry!” I don’t know what made him say that!
I also remember my
parents taking me – also at age six – to Rav Mordechai (Mottel) Katz, who was
Rav Bloch’s assistant. He gave the shiur daas, a shiur about how
to be a mensch, a good person. I
would sit up on the ledge in the women’s section. I understood it because I
knew Yiddish, and I was fascinated, probably because my mother went to Sarah Schenirer’s
school, where learning was stressed for girls. I remember my father treating me
as he would later treat my younger brother, regarding the importance of
learning.
These are some of
the things that I grew up with that stayed with me. If my mother would see us
sitting and not doing anything, she would say, “Go take a sefer.” No one
would say that today; you have to be able to relax and not working or study
every minute. Because she went to Sarah Schenirer’s school, it was very
important and special for her to see that her children would also be involved
in learning.
The two teachers
that I remember well are Rebbetzin Ausband, a”h, my high school teacher,
who was a powerful woman. (She told us in grade nine that when we got married,
we should hire a cleaning woman rather than waste time not using our brains or
exercising our kochos.) Her sister, Rebbetzin Sorotzkin, a”h,
taught me in grade four. They were daughters of the big Telz Rosh Hayeshiva,
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchok Bloch, zt”l, who never made it out of Europe,
unfortunately. It was his son who came to Cleveland to start the yeshiva.
Every time I daven
Hallel and I get to the part that
says, “Lo amus ki echya…I should be able to stay alive to tell over my
accomplishments, thanks to Hashem,” I still remember the story Rebbetzin Sorotzkin
told us on Rosh Chodesh about
her father. Not every town had a Rav, so rabbanim would travel to
different towns and do whatever had to be done, like watch the schechita,
and then return. It was dangerous traveling then, so every time he would
travel, before leaving, he would sing this pasuk in a beautiful niggun.
Off to Sem
I graduated Yavneh
high school in Cleveland when I was 16. My father wanted me to graduate early
so I could do a lot of things before I got married, including studying in Eretz
Yisrael for two years. I was out of touch with my parents for two whole years.
It’s not like nowadays; I spoke to them on the phone only once in all that
time.
There were no
American seminaries in Israel at the time, so I went to an Israeli seminary
that had 800 to 900 girls. Rav Pinney Levin was the very highly respected
principal, and I had an amazing experience. I remember walking through the
halls of the school; the girls would look at me in silence because I was
wearing American clothes, different than they ever saw.
While in Israel, I
met Rebbetzin Tzelah Sorotzkin, who was a mentor to me. She was also a student
of Sarah Schenirer and knew my mother. My Israel experience got me through life
as far as learning, studying, and teaching. Right after I returned home, the
Federation hired me. I taught limudei kodesh in second and third grades
at the Hebrew Academy in Cleveland.
My Shidduch
When shidduch
time came, one of the rabbis in Telz who knew my father-in-law from Uruguay,
told my parents that the Milevsky boy was a big learner and had just come to
Ner Israel in Baltimore; he didn’t know a word of English – just Spanish and
Yiddish – but he was brilliant. (To learn English, he actually sat down with
the New York Times and a dictionary.)
He got on a Greyhound bus for 10 to 12 hours to come meet me, sight unseen. Who
would do that nowadays? It was a different time.
My husband was
part of Rav Yaakov Weinberg’s chabura, together with Rav Yochanan Zweig
(Miami), Reb Nochum Lansky (Baltimore), who was a very dear friend of my
husband, z”l, and Reb Moishe Hochman
(Toronto). Because my husband was so close to Rav Weinberg, he took me to Rav
Weinberg’s mother’s house in the Bronx, when he was there visiting her. I had a
meeting with Rav Weinberg to decide if it was okay for my husband to marry me.
He sat with me for two hours asking me questions. Afterwards, my husband-to-be
called him to ask what he thought. Rav Weinberg said, “I threw many daggers at
her and she accepted them very beautifully.” Once I was approved, my husband
proposed.
We got married in
1966. When Ner Yisrael decided to open a branch in Toronto, with Rav Weinberg
as rosh yeshiva, he took my husband
along. He said, “You are getting married. Move to Toronto.” My husband was the rosh mesivta, head of the high school. When
Rav Weinberg left Toronto for Baltimore, he would come back to visit us.
Meanwhile, my father-in-law found out about an Ashkenazi rabbinic position
opening up in Mexico. He suggested that my husband be interviewed for it, and
he got the job.
Soon after we got
married, we took a quick trip to Eretz Yisrael. I will never forget going to
Rav Aryeh Levin, zt”l, who was close to my in-laws. He was in his 80s
when we visited; I was a recent kallah. He said, “Ein minute; ein
minute – One minute; one minute.” I had no idea where he was going; he was
walking very slowly. He dragged a high wooden chair from his combined living
room-dining room and said to me in Yiddish, “This is a chair that is full of yichus,
because this is a chair that we got for our chasana. I want you to sit
on it because you recently got married.” How unbelievable is that! I learned a
big lesson from Rav Aryeh, which I applied to raising my kids all these years.
He would always say in Yiddish, “A mensch darf shtendig ois trachten tzoon
guttin.” A person should
always think positive. Don’t worry about what will be; just think it’s going to
be good.
From Mexico to
Israel
My husband’s first
job as a pulpit rabbi was in Mexico. Rabbanus in South America was very
different than in North America, where a board of directors is involved. There
was no crime in Mexico then, and it was a beautiful kehilla; it was hard
to leave after a couple of years. My husband was an only son and we made aliyah to care for his ailing parents.
It was also best to leave then, anyway, because our oldest son was turning 13
and needed to go to a good school.
After we moved to
Eretz Yisrael, we would often get together with my husband’s close friend, Dov
Friedberg from Toronto, who was a big yeshiva supporter and traveled there
often. My husband and I visited many gedolim with him, including Rav
Shach, zt”l, who made the assumption that if a lady is coming along, I
must be Mrs. Friedberg. When we went to Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach, zt”l –
I can still see him smiling at me – the first thing he asked me was if he could
bring me a glezele tay (a glass of tea).
When my husband
was sick, we went to Rav Elyashiv, zt”l, to
get a bracha. The only gadol who
did not accept women into his inner room was the Steipler Rav, zt”l. I
was chalishing to see him, so I went into the hall; I had to peek. When
I saw his face, I realized why he doesn’t see women. It was such an emotional
face. I have never seen a face like that. I got into a little trouble for going
into the hall when his daughter found me there. In Hebrew, she said to me, “At
lo yodaat shelo miskabel nashim?” I braced myself and said in my American-accented
Hebrew, “I am so sorry, I am so sorry” and then left.
On to Toronto,
Then Baltimore
We stayed in Eretz
Yisrael for 11 years until both of my in-laws passed away. When my husband was
diagnosed with cancer, we decided to relocate to either America or Canada; we
thought he would get better treatment in one of those countries. (By the way, through
our many moves, my husband used to quip that, because he married someone who loves to move, he couldn’t keep track
of where the milchigs and fleishigs were. So how could he possibly help me out
in the kitchen?) We ended up moving to Toronto and were very happy
there. I taught teenagers at Eitz Chaim, and my husband opened Ohr Somayach and
gave shiurim in the yeshiva. He passed away in 1991.
I stayed in
Toronto for a while, where I was the director of Bikur Cholim. Eventually, I
decided to move to Baltimore after my only daughter got married and moved here.
I have three sons in Toronto and one who made aliyah. Living up to my mother’s mantra, I decided to go back to
school for a Ph.D. in gerontology. To this day, I enjoy working and living with
seniors, making them laugh and making life a bit easier for them. They joke
with me, calling me “the teenager” – but that is just compared to them!
