“We Cannot Slack Off”
When the Chelkas Yehoshua reached Eretz Yisroel in 1947, he greeted his son with a call to rebuild everything.
A story ofRav Dovid Matisyohu Rabinowitz of Bialaרבי דוד מתתיהו רבינוביץ מביאלאProfile ›
It is told that for years Dovid Matisyahu waited for the day his father would reach Eretz Yisroel. He had been separated from him in Russia and had gone on to Ponevezh with the other children of Tehran, while his father was still held behind. In 1947 the Chelkas Yehoshua finally arrived, and father and son stood together again.
Chassidim relate that the Rebbe did not spend the reunion on tears alone. He turned to his son and said, in Yiddish, that they could not afford to slacken their efforts. Much of Biala had been destroyed, he said, and they would have to rebuild all of it from the beginning.
The son took the words to heart. He helped to bring back Biala's yeshivos and Chassidic seforim, including the writings of the Biala Rebbes, and he edited and printed the seforim of his forefathers. Later he founded Yeshivas Ohr Kedoshim–Biala in memory of the Chassidim who had been lost. Year after year he went on building, as his father had told him.
Source: Aryeh Ehrlich, “The Best Defense,” Mishpacha, issue 678 (18 September 2017), and Aharon Kliger, “Return in Real Time,” Mishpacha, issue 862 (26 May 2021), both of which report the Chelkas Yehoshua's words to his son (“Mein kind, we can't slack off”) on his arrival in 1947. No English edition.
Most of us have something we keep postponing: a seder in learning, a call to someone we hurt, a corner of our home that needs to feel more like a place for Hashem. You do not have to rebuild all of it. Choose one brick for today. Learn five minutes of Mishnah, send one message of peace, or set a time for a regular learning session. When you finish, write down tomorrow's brick. A life is built the way a yeshiva is: patiently, with a stubborn refusal to slack off.