He did not manage to keep everything while he was there in Soviet Russia at the end of the 1950s. He tried, but it was simply too difficult. As a result, his kitchen was not fully kosher, because obtaining kosher products was extremely hard, almost impossible. And their bedroom was not necessarily kosher either, because getting to a mikvah required real self-sacrifice.
Yet he was a Jew whom the Chabad chassidim in Chernivtsi trusted.
He was invited to farbrengens and underground prayer gatherings. The chassidim spoke to him many times, encouraging him to make the extra effort to have a kosher kitchen and a kosher bedroom. He always answered: “It’s impossible, here it’s impossible. With G-d’s help, when I get to Eretz then I will be able to, and with G-d’s help I will immediately keep everything kosher.”
Once, at a farbrengen, he turned to my grandfather, who had only recently returned from the Gulag, where they had not really succeeded in “re-educating” him, and said:
“Reb Moshe, it is well known that what a chassidic farbrengen can accomplish, even the angel Michael cannot. Please, take a small cup, say l’chaim, and bless me that I should be able to leave this place and reach Eretz Yisrael.”
My father, may he live long, who remembers this as if it were yesterday, tells that my grandfather, Rabbi Moshe - whose fortieth yahrzeit we marked just last week - took quite a bit of mashke and said to him:
“You are asking for a miracle. You are truly asking for a miracle. Because in those days, even dreaming of leaving Russia for the Land of Israel was a miracle in every sense.”
And then my grandfather cried out with love from the depths of his heart in Yiddish:
“Be a miracle, and the Almighty will make a miracle for you.”
Give Him a kosher kitchen and a kosher bedroomת and He will give you an exit from Russia.
The meaning and the connection were not explained to me; the story was told to me as I have written it. I reflected on it. In Chassidut we learn that a miracle is a “suspension of the laws of nature.” That is, when a miracle occurs, the Holy One, blessed be He, folds up the laws of nature: water stands still instead of flowing, the sun stands still in Gibeon, a sick person whom nature gives no chance recovers, and those whom nature predicts will not have children are granted a miracle and embrace a baby.
So my grandfather, as I understand it, was crying out to him: overturn your natural order for the sake of G-d, and in that merit you will be granted that G-d overturns the natural order for you.
In Likkutei Sichot, vol. 16, the Rebbe explains that the Egyptians did not believe in a higher power that intervenes in the laws of nature. Yes, there is a G-d who created the world — but from that point on, it is governed by natural law. The Nile was the symbol of this belief. While in the Land of Israel one depends on rain from Heaven to survive, Egypt has a source from the earth that sustains it — the Nile. As Rashi explains in Parashat Miketz: “The Nile rises within them and waters them, because rain does not fall in Egypt regularly as it does in other lands.”
In other words, the Egyptians claim there is no need to pray for a miracle — there is no miracle. There is the Nile. There is the river.
Accordingly, when Pharaoh decrees, “Every newborn son you shall cast into the river,” he is essentially saying: educate the Jews that the source of life is the river, the Nile — nature, the water that already exists — and not a higher power.
Moses, by contrast, seeks to serve G-d and to pray to G-d.
And the secret is quite simple: as long as we submit to the laws of nature and live only by them, our lives will follow the path of nature. From the moment we raise the banner of faith in G-d — who brings everything into being, who has the power to overturn the laws of nature and perform miracles — we live on the path of miracle.
That is likely what my grandfather was saying to that Jew:
You want a miracle? Be a miracle — and G-d will make a miracle for you.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski