An Orphan and the Tefillin of Yosef HaTzaddik

When Rav Moshe Leib of Sassov lay on his sickbed in his final days, he appointed his friend and colleague, Rav Avrohom Chaim of Zlotchov, author of Orach LeChaim on the Torah and Pri Chaim on Pirkei Avos, as guardian of his son. Rav Avrohom Chaim was to raise and care for the boy as his own.

Rav Moshe Leib's son, Rav Yekusiel Shmelka, later related:

"When my father, Rav Moshe Leib of Sassov, passed away on 4 Shevat, I was seven years old and an orphan. My guardian, the holy author of Orach LeChaim, took me in, and I moved to his home in Zlotchov. My father had no other children, and he had asked that Rav Avrohom Chaim adopt me and raise me as his own child. He supported me and raised me as a father loves his son. He taught me Torah, and I called him my uncle and his wife my aunt.

"When I turned thirteen, they made me an honorable bar mitzvah. The Orach LeChaim put on my tefillin for the first time, and as he wound the straps around my arm he said to me:

"'My precious child, these are the very tefillin that your holy father wore and davened in. He told me himself that the parshiyos inside them were written by none other than Yosef HaTzaddik. I was amazed, and I asked him what he meant. He said to me: explain it however you understand, but I am telling you this, and I will not change how I say it. This is the truth. Tell it to my son. When I was there in Sassov, before he passed away, he told me to give the tefillin to you as your rightful inheritance.'"

The Darchei Teshuva, the Munkaszcer Rebbe, once explained that Rav Moshe Leib surely meant that the sofer who wrote the parshiyos had the neshoma, or the spiritual stature, of Yosef HaTzaddik.

Be that as it may, who can fathom the meaning of such holy tzaddikim? Rav Yekusiel Shmelka lived in the home of the Orach LeChaim for nine years, until Rav Menachem Mendel of Kossov, author of Ahavas Sholom, took him as a son-in-law.