The Tefillin of Yosef HaTzaddik

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

Rav Yekusiel Shmelka later related: "When my father, Rav Moshe Leib Sassover, passed away on 4 Shevat, I was left an orphan at seven years of age. My guardian, the holy author of Orach LeChaim, took me in, 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 child. He supported and raised me as a father loves his son. He taught me Torah, and I called him my uncle and his wife I called my aunt.

"When I reached thirteen, they made 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 around my arm, he told 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 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, and please tell it to my son. When I was there in Sassov, before he was niftar he told me that I should 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 had the neshoma, the soul, or the madreiga, 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.