Yamim Tovim in Bobov

Pesi Teitelbaum, a daughter of the Bobover community, shared her memories of the Yamim Tovim in the Rosh Hashana 5781 issue of Mishpacha. The family waited eagerly for them. The beis medrash was large enough for the men and the women of the community, and the girls absorbed the nusach and the songs of the baal tefilah, which were so familiar to their parents. They were proud Beis Yaakov girls who knew when to sit and when to stand, and they knew the halachos of the Shemoneh Esrei. They listened closely to the choir singing V'chol Maaminim, and their brothers had practiced for days.

After Yom Kippur the excitement climbed as Sukkos drew near. The men's section had a sliding roof, and with it opened the beis medrash turned into a spacious, airy sukkah, handsomely decorated. The author recalls sitting as a teenager at the Chol Hamoed tisch and marveling at the huge central candelabrum with ninety-one bulbs, the gematria of the word Sukkah.

Simchas Torah was always a thrill. The girls pushed good-naturedly to the front to see the hakafos and called to their friends to join them, and the laughter spread. Their parents had suffered enormous losses in the war, yet they rejoiced in the Torah, though the children could sense the sadness behind it. The pain peaked at Yizkor. The young children of survivors left the beis medrash quickly and listened from outside to the sobs and wailing of their parents as the memories returned. The weeping went on well into Mussaf. The war was the shadow under which they all grew up.

Today she takes her grandchildren on a Chol Hamoed trip to Crown Heights, where it was all rebuilt, to show them where she grew up. Those were simpler days, when expectations were low and most people were content. She remembers her parents living with the constant awareness that, having survived, they had a mission to rebuild the Chassidic life they had known before the war. In gratitude she writes that Hashem kept her parents alive, brought them to a new land and helped them restore what had been, so that a part of Klal Yisroel that came out of the fires of the war as glowing embers has now blossomed.