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My latest story on @Chabad is a real trip. During corona, the rabbi of Berdichev, Ukraine, decided to install heating under what was thought to be the floor of the mausoleum of the great Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (1740-1809). Work began ... 1 https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/4821458/jewish/Workers-Discover-Real-Resting-Place-of-Rabbi-Levi-Yitzchok-of-Berdichev.htm#utm_medium=page_tools&utm_content=desktop&utm_source=twitter
With the Berdichev Rabbi Moshe Thaler's constant supervision, workers began digging. They hit a brick wall, beautiful and very old. Rabbinic experts advised Thaler to slow down and follow the path the wall took. Soon, a tiled floor emerged. Then four horizontal gravestones 2
They cleared away the dirt and rubble and realized they had discovered the original ohel of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and his three sons. It had been hiding in plain sight for approximately 90 years 3
In fact, visitors to the grave had been standing right on top of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak's resting place! (this picture is what the Ohel looked like for the last 17 or so years) 4
How did this happen? When Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, beloved as the "defender of the Jewish people," passed away on 25 Tishrei 1809, a pillar of fire is said to have gone before the deceased as the Jewish townsfolk led him to burial. Apparently he asked that no inscription be written 5
But the Jews of Berdichev built an elegant ohel over the spot, and for generations they knew that there, in the cemetery, lay the great Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, and during the worst of times they would go there and pour hearts out 6
That included czarist edicts, vicious Ukrainian (and other) pogroms of 1919-21, and into the dawn of the Bolshevik era. But then the Communists began destroying Jewish graveyards. The ancient Jewish cemetery in the city is now Park Shevchenko 7
In Berdichev and around the world a cry was raised. Of course the desecration of ALL Jewish graves was a travesty, but what would be with the resting place of the great and beloved Rabbi Levi Yitzchak? (Here is the July 1929 Warsaw Unzer Express) 8
As illustrated now by how intact the Ohel is (rather than rubble), apparently the observant Jews of Berdichev themselves took down the mausoleum and capped it with cement so as to make it less of a target. It would be hidden, but still there 9
It deteriorated but survived, first the Nazis and then another 70 years of Communism. As Prof. Sofya Nayer told me, her mother would take her and her sisters to the cemetery to visit their father and then to the burial site of "a very famous man." She was afraid to say rabbi. 10
First Lubavitch activists cleaned and restored the gravesite in the mid '80s. Then, during Perestroika in 1989m a new Ohel was built over what was thought to be the spot, and in 2002 an even bigger one built around it (here you can see the newer one in midst construction) 11
Little did anyone know that five feet below them lay the original, undamaged Ohel, tiled floor and stone bench included, of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and his three sons. 12
As I worked I found a beautiful story told by the Rebbe in 1953: The Berdichever said that if he were given a choice to go to Gan Eden himself or gehinnom with other Jews, he'd choose the latter. “This is the nature of a shepherd of Israel,” the Rebbe said... 13
“His entire being is his role as a leader of the Jewish people, and so matters of Gan Eden are of no concern to him. What does matter is to be together with the Jewish people, for this is his purpose and mission…” End
You can read the whole story here: https://www.chabad.org/4821458
You can read the whole story here: https://www.chabad.org/4821458
