You Will Survive: Rebbe Dovid Moshe Rosenbaum of Kretchnif charted a route from Rechovot to Heaven

Photos: Flash90, Ezra Trabelsi, Kretchnif archives

Illustration: Menachem Weinreb

At a writer’s seminar I once attended, the lecturer cautioned against falling down a rabbit hole and losing focus of the article.

“The reader doesn’t want to watch you play connect the dots,” the lecturer said as he emphasized the word “doesn’t.”

But this story is a rabbit hole that I have yet to emerge from, a sacred and sublime path inspired by a text message that I got from one person, then another, and then ten more, following the publication of some easily-skipped words in an obscure sefer.

“Who’s the Rebbe?”

The question wasn’t just who this rebbe was who penned the mysterious words, but also who his father was, and what is the secret wellspring from whence these people draw their words and customs?

The words in the sefer Noam Yisrael were from Seudah Shlishis Torah delivered on Shabbos Chanukah of 5778, 2018, by the Rebbe of Kretchnif-Kiryat Gat — Rav Yisrael Nissan Rosenbaum ztz”l — who passed away less than a year later, in November 2019.

“And Pharaoh dreamed: Hakadosh Boruch Hu can bring something to the world that is like a dream, in that it is intangible and invisible. For example, Hashem can bring a virus and spread it throughout the world and it can confuse and interrupt the entire universe, like a dream, attacking everyone despite the sophisticated technology of the generation.

And this will come to pass at the end of days, not a war, not with force or with intellect either, not the Iranians and not the Syrians, but Hashem Himself. He will wage the war of Gog and Magog, and bring Yisrael to teshuvah and the ultimate Geulah…”

I’m not a big proponent of the WhatsApp fortune-tellers and obscure kabbalistic seforim that suddenly pop up after major events with clear predictions that “anyone could have seen,” but this was different, a respected rebbe, not known for drama, who was niftar a month before COVID hit and casually offered a startlingly precise prediction before his petirah.

Kiryat Gat was a development town with factories and new immigrants when the Rebbe was sent there by his holy father, who’d chosen to settle in Rechovot at a time when rebbes were choosing between Bnei Brak and Jerusalem.

His father. A “rebbe’s rebbe.” Rav Dovid Moshe Rosenbaum of Kretchnif.

In preparing this article, I spoke to family members and close chassidim, those who remembered the father and those who grew up with stories of his sanctity. Like the great rebbes of prewar Europe, Rav Dovid Moshe Rosenbaum of Kretchnif was known as a “Baal Shem’ske” figure, and although he passed away over half a century ago, his kever in Rechovot draws masses until today.

A man who appeared, then disappeared just as suddenly.

He had been crowned as Rebbe in the darkest place on earth.

In 1944, at a moment when all seemed lost, the Rebbe of Kretchnif, Rav Eliezer Zev Rosenbaum — son of Rav Meir and grandson of Rav Mordche’le of Nadvorna, one of the great rebbes of Hungary and progenitor of so many contemporary admorim — made a prophetic statement.

The Rebbe, who lived in Sighet, had several sons, all of them great men, but it was Rav Dovid Moshe whom he entrusted with the future. When they arrived in Auschwitz, he turned to this youngest son. “You will survive,” Rav Eliezer Zev said, “and you will continue the holy chain in Eretz Yisrael. May the power to bless be given to you… that which my father gave to me, I give to you…”

Soon afterward, father and son were separated for the last time — Rebbe Eliezer Zev sent left to the gas chambers, his son sent to the right.

“I proclaim,” called out the Rebbe as he walked to his imminent death, his head held high, “that my faith and connection to the Creator, may His Name be blessed, isn’t weakened for a moment.”

He, his rebbetzin, and six of their children would perish on that day.