The Teacher Who Needed Children and the Rebbe’s Promise

The following story was shared by Rabbi Yossi Bukiet, a longtime mechanech and maggid shiur from Pomona, New York, at a Rosh Chodesh Kislev farbrengen in Kingston, PA.

In the early 1960s, Beis Rivkah was going through a very hard stretch. The school had its first graduating eighth-grade class, and the girls were quite a handful. Teachers came and quit within a week or two, and nobody wanted the job. The dean, Rabbi Yakov Yehuda Majeski, was desperate to get the class through the year.

Meanwhile, in Yerushalayim, a young couple was facing a struggle of their own. They were not Lubavitch and belonged to another chassidus. At home, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was always spoken of with great respect, but they never felt any personal connection to the Rebbe.

The husband was a ben Torah and yerei Shamayim who learned in kollel, and the wife was happy with her marriage. But they had no children. She was a warm chassidishe woman and was always there for her friends, helping with a newborn or watching the older children.

After several years, one of her friends, by then with her fourth child, turned to her and said, “I give you a bracha, next year at this time you should have a child.”

The bracha came from the heart, and it reached her heart. She went home and told her husband, “We have to start thinking about this. We’re married four or five years, and we have no children.”

They went from doctor to doctor, and each sent them to another specialist. The answer was always the same. It was not possible.

She heard that there was a clinic in Cleveland that might be able to help, but she did not want to make her plans public. She was a well-known, excellent teacher in Yerushalayim, and a long absence would raise questions. Then her brother got engaged to a girl in New York, with the chasunah set for Shevat. It was the perfect cover.

“I’m going to my brother’s wedding,” she told her principal, and asked him to hire a substitute from Shevat until the end of the year and to pay the substitute instead of her. She planned to return in Elul. The school agreed.

After the chasunah, she traveled to Cleveland for a round of tests. The verdict was the same as in Eretz Yisrael. Nothing could be done. She returned to New York in Adar, crushed and brokenhearted.

Meanwhile, a Lubavitcher relative in Crown Heights, Reb Chanoch, learned that she was in New York. He knew Beis Rivkah was struggling and told the school,

“I have a woman who is going to be a super teacher.” The principal called her and said, “We heard you are a phenomenal teacher. Would you come teach for us?”

“I didn’t come here to work,” she answered. She had just returned from Cleveland, and her heart was shattered. “I have no head for this; I have no interest in it.”

“We’ll pay you double,” the principal offered.

It meant nothing to her. “Double, triple, it doesn’t matter. I can’t. I’m not in it.”

So Rabbi Majeski decided he would call her himself. “I heard you’re a phenomenal teacher,” he said. “Come teach for us.”

“Rabbi, I already told your principal. My head just isn’t here. I can’t do it.”

Then he asked her, “Did you ever think of going in to the Rebbe with your problem?”

She was honest. “No, I never thought of that.” Her family spoke highly of the Rebbe, but she had no real connection to him.

“If I get you a yechidus,” Rabbi Majeski said, “would you go in and ask the Rebbe whether you should teach in Beis Rivkah or not?”

“If you give me a yechidus, I will.”

It was Monday night. Rabbi Majeski called Rabbi Chaim Morchai Aizik Chodakov. “We have a problem,” he told him. “I have a woman I need to get in to the Rebbe tomorrow night, and then get her to work right away. Please make me an appointment.” The Rebbe held yechidus on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Rabbi Chodakov arranged it for the next night.

Rabbi Majeski called the woman back and said that she should be there the following night at 1:00 a.m. She could hardly believe it was happening within a day.

She stayed up that night writing a tzetel to the Rebbe. She poured out everything, from the day she married through every treatment and disappointment, and asked the Rebbe for a bracha for children. The letter ran eight pages. In all that writing, she forgot the one line that had gotten her into yechidus in the first place, the question about Beis Rivkah.

She realized it only when she was standing in front of the Rebbe. As the Rebbe turned from one page to the next, she thought, “Oy vey, what do I do now? My whole reason for coming in was to ask this question, and I never wrote it!”

The Rebbe finished reading and looked up. He saw that she was troubled. “Is something bothering you?” the Rebbe asked. “Is there something you want to say?”

She told the truth. “I forgot to write the main point.” Beis Rivkah had offered her a job, she explained, and she wanted to know whether to take it. “With eight pages like this, you can see why my head isn’t in it.”

The Rebbe heard what she said, then turned to her and said:

“Du vest arbeten far dem Rebbe’s kinder, un der Rebbe vet bentshen mit kinder.”

“You will work for the Rebbe’s children, and the Rebbe will bless you with children.”

Rabbi Majeski had told her to call him whenever she came out, no matter the hour. “What did the Rebbe say?” he asked when she called at 2:00 a.m. She repeated the Rebbe’s words. Then she told him, “I’ll be at Beis Rivkah tomorrow morning at 8:00. I’m starting.”

She took over the class and captivated the girls. She taught from Adar through Nisan, Iyar, and Sivan and brought the class to the end of the year. At the end of Sivan, the graduating class went in to the Rebbe for a bracha, together with their teacher.

She stayed in the Rebbe’s room until the girls had walked out. The Rebbe turned to her and said, “What you did, you did. You helped the Rebbe’s children, and the Rebbe will help you. The Rebbe will give you children.”

She returned to Yerushalayim, went back to teaching, and was blessed with seven children.

“Der Rebbe blaibt nisht kein baal chov,” Rabbi Bukiet concluded the story. “The Rebbe doesn’t leave anyone in his debt. When we do the Rebbe’s work, whether in chinuch or hafotzas hamaayanos, the Rebbe repays it.”

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