The Brothers' Kiddush Hashem

The brothers met their sentence with calm trust in Hashem. On the night before the flogging, two chassidim came to see them, Rav Dovid of Vaslikov and Rav Nota of Chaslivitch. The brothers spoke with them in Torah with great fervor, as though nothing out of the ordinary lay ahead. Then Rav Shmuel Abba quietly asked them to make sure that a doctor, a minyan, lemon juice (to clean the wounds) and ice would be ready the next day, and that any blood or pieces of flesh would be gathered up.

The visitors later wrote that they stood speechless, seized by holy fear, and that the impression never left them. It seemed to them that they were watching Avraham Avinu before the Akeidah, wholly given over to his Creator's will, or Rebbi Akiva before his flesh was torn with combs, without a word of complaint and without the slightest loss of calm.

Floggings in the army of that time were carried out with spiessruten, a punishment Prussian officers had brought to Russia. In its harshest form the prisoner was led slowly between two lines of 250 soldiers, each holding a knout. It was not unusual for the punished man to die of heart failure or blood poisoning. Their sentence of 1,500 blows meant passing through the lines three times.

As they walked to the place of punishment, the brothers sang a special niggun, which is still sung today. In the middle of the beating Rav Pinchos's yarmulke fell off. Because the long ropes bound to his hands were pulling him along, he could not go back for it, so he simply stood still, letting the blows rain down on his back, until someone put it back on his head.

The brothers came to on Shabbos, and their first words were that they had to make Kiddush. Rav Shmuel Abba then washed for bread and made Hamotzi, yet he was too weak to eat even a crumb of bread. For the rest of his life he regretted that beracha levatalah (blessing said in vain).

It was months before they were strong enough to begin the march in chains toward Siberia. They got as far as Moscow by the end of 5600 (1840), and there they were too sick to continue. After more months of recovery, officials asked that the brothers be allowed to go home to Slovita. Czar Nicholas I refused: if they were ill, they could be kept in a bogadelnia (old-age home) in Moscow, but they were not to go home.

Fifteen years later they were still barred from living in a normal Jewish community. Bibikov, by then Minister of Internal Affairs, argued that they might have a harmful influence on the Jews around them and might give other convicts hope of similar leniency.

Their only consolation came in 5607 (1847), when their sons were granted the license to open the second authorized Jewish printing house in the Russian Empire, in Zhitomir. The first was the Romm press in Vilna; every other Jewish press had been closed.

Only in June 5616 (1856) were the brothers set free, by Czar Alexander II, the more liberal son of Nicholas I, who is remembered for freeing the Russian serfs. To everyone's surprise, Rav Shmuel Abba was not happy at the news. Now, he said, he feared he was about to lose his freedom. At home they would be greeted as martyrs; would he be strong enough to withstand that test? He dreaded being pressed to become a Rebbe, and begged Hashem to protect him from that path.

His fear came true once Rav Aharon the Second of Karlin gave him a kvittel. His admirers pressed him to lead as Rebbe in Shepetovka, and from then on both brothers were honored as Rebbes until their last days.

Their memory lives on not only through their suffering but through their holy seforim. Rav Aharon Roth, the Shomrei Emunim Rebbe, wrote in his sefer Taharas HaKodesh that every G-d-fearing Jew should try to obtain seforim of old printings, above all those printed in Slovita and Zhitomir, the work of the holy grandsons of the Rav of Koretz.