Memory Lane: Reb Michoel Tennenbaum

Among the she’eris hapleitah in Boro Park was an esteemed Gerer chossid and philanthropist by the name of Reb Michoel Tennenbaum. 

He survived the Holocaust to rebuild his own shattered world, as well as to help shape and establish numerous mosdos haTorah, thereby rebuilding many lost worlds from Churban Europa. 

In the Yeshivos of Poland 

Reb Michoel was born in the town of Ruzan, Poland, in the year 1912. He hailed from a family where both his father and his mother came from generations of ardent Gerer chassidim. 

He went to the cheder in Ruzan, a one-room cheder with a melamed, like in so many shtetlach across Poland, and later in the Beis Yosef-Novaradok Yeshiva in Ostrolenka. He described his days in Novaradok and the tremendous influence that it had on the Polish bachurim. “We were unaccustomed to hearing such long shmuessen, and to have demanded from us such emphasis on character development… but we got used to it. Everything was middos development,” Reb Michoel later recalled. “Novaradok did for Congress Poland what the Bobover Rebbe did for the youth of Galicia. I still meet men who learned in Novaradok and remained Orthodox because of that experience.” 

His bar mitzvah was celebrated during his time in Novaradok. “What was my bar mitzvah like? I was called up to the Torah for an Aliyah. After davening, the gabbai carried a tray of cake above his head and went through the shtiebel, giving a everyone a piece. That’s all,” he wrote. 

From Novaradok, he went to Lomza, an experience which he likewise described with great reverence. “I remained in Lomza for two years, until I reached the fourth level,” he remembered.  

Reb Michoel was one of the first talmidim to enter the venerated Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin, established by Rav Meir Shapiro. He later recalled the celebratory chanukas habayis, a celebration that drew hundreds of rabbonim from throughout Poland. “Who can forget the royal balcony where there were seated the two ‘kings,’ the Gerer Rebbe and the Chortkover Rebbe. 

“Another image that I can never forget is the rov’s first shiur in yeshiva. He entered that shiur with his shtreimel, and his countenance shone like he was in Olam Haboh. Near the more-than one hundred and sixty talmidim who encircled the rov, the beis medrash was filled from wall to wall with many Yidden whom the beauty of the yeshiva attracted. 

Aftermath 

Reb Michoel made it to Boro Park, where the second part of the story of the niggun played out. 

“Years passed since then,” continues Reb Michoel, “odyssey after odyssey, challenge after challenge… and the episode passed from my memory –but not completely. In the early 1950’s, when I moved to Borough Park, I once chanced into a particular beis medrash to daven. All of a sudden, my ears soaked up the strains of a song, familiar to me from the past. It was a niggun that tugged at the heart and soul. Then it struck me! It was the niggin that I had heard in Samarkand and had become embedded in the inner reaches of my heart. Here was the song in its ascent… in a new land. 

“After davening, I approached the man who sang the song and asked, ‘if you don’t mind, could you tell me from where you know that niggun?’ And this was his answer: “During the war, I wound up in Samarkand. I was running away from the police, and in the house of a certain Jew I met a Zlatopoler chossid who taught me this song… It was plain to me that the period of the revival for that niggun had begun. I began to sing it at my Shabbos table regularly, and I taught my children to sing it heartily, and they have continued the tradition with their own families. It was transformed into a family ritual of sorts—the inspiration from a song.” 

Reb Michoel became a wealthy man, and distributed tzedakah generously to Jewish causes around the world, and his name remains synonymous with tzeddkah and chessed to this day.