The 5th of Shevat of this year 5784, marks the 25th Yahrzeit of my father Rav Pinchas Biberfeld זצ”ל.
His Levaya, the funeral, which commenced in London and ended in the Mount of Olives – Jerusalem – , made a brief stop in Tel Aviv, outside the Beith Hamedrash which he founded many decades earlier.
At this point, Rav Yizchak Halberstadt, my father’s cousin – expressed his wish to say a few words of eulogy. I will never forget the story which he shared with us :
Young Yitzchak left Berlin only at the very last moment he could. He had an elderly mother who could not leave, and he stayed with her as long as he could. He tried to make it to Eretz Iisrael, but was stopped on the way and was deported by the British mandate to Australia. Eventually he managed to get to Eretz Yisrael in 1941.
There, he met with my father and told Rav Pinchas that he wants to find a job, and make enough money so that “by the end of the war he could go back to Europe and search for his mother”….
My father told him that as no one knows how long the war would continue for, and it is impossible to predict the outcome, he advised Yitzchak to join Yeshivat Hebron (in Jerusalem) and to immerse himself in continuing his Torah education, rather than take “any job”.
Yitzchak followed my father’s advice and indeed, not only studied in Hebron, but became a prominent scholar and was later leading a respected community in Bnei Brak.
Now comes the amazing part of this story :
in 1960 – Rav Yitzchak received by post an envelope addressed to “Itzchak Halberstadt. Palestine” – the letter had a Berlin post stamp dating 1942, and the Israel post authority thought it might be an important letter…
In that letter, Rosa Halberstadt writes to her only son – Yitzchak, that she is now being deported to a concentration camp, and is unlikely to see him anymore. She has one request to her son: “Please go to study at a Yeshiva, in which you can develop your Torah knowledge”. – This was her last wish.
Rav Halberstadt concluded his emotional obituary by saying “Thank you my dear cousin Pinchas, for giving me that advice in 1941…”
Best wishes and only Simchas.
Rabbi Chaim Michael Biberfeld