Tefillin Written by Yosef HaTzaddik

As the Sassover lay on his sickbed in his final days, he appointed his friend and colleague Rav Avrohom Chaim of Zlotshuv as guardian of his son, to raise and care for him as his own. Rav Avrohom Chaim was the author of Orach LeChaim on the Torah and Pri Chaim on Pirkei Avos.

The Sassover's son, Rav Yekusiel Shmelka, related:

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

“When I reached the age of thirteen, they held an honorable bar mitzvah for me, and the Orach LeChaim tied the straps of my tefillin on me for the first time. As he wound the leather straps onto my arm, he said to me:

“‘My precious child, these tefillin are the very ones that your holy father wore and davened in. Your holy father told me himself that the parshiyos in these tefillin were written by none other than Yosef HaTzaddik. When I showed my amazement and asked him what he meant by this testimony, he said to me, ‘Explain it away in any way you understand, but I am telling this to you and I will not change how I say it. This is the truth. Please tell this to my son.’ When I was there in Sassov, before he was niftar (passed away), he told me to pass the tefillin on to you as your rightful inheritance.’”

The Darchei Teshuva, the Munkaczer Rebbe, once explained that Rav Moshe Leib surely meant that the sofer (scribe) had the neshoma or madreiga, the soul or the spiritual stature, of Yosef HaTzaddik. Be that as it may, who can guess the meaning of such holy tzaddikim?

For nine years Rav Yekusiel Shmelka lived in the home of the Orach LeChaim, until Rav Menachem Mendel of Kossov, author of Ahavas Sholom, took him as a son-in-law.