We Lived in the Steipler’s Home

The daily chizuk from The Rav, the holy gaon and tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer Berland shlit"a, in a story about how his family lived in the home of Maran the Steipler zt"l

Thursday, 4 Elul 5785 — The Rav Rabbi Berland shlit"a shares revelations from the past, opening a window into his life as a young avreich together with his family in the Steipler’s home.

These are his holy words:

We were living on Rashbam Street, in the Steipler’s house (Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, the Steipler [9 Tammuz 5659, June 17, 1899 – 23 Av 5745, August 10, 1985], was one of the leaders of the Lithuanian Chareidi community in Eretz Yisrael, and the author of the Kehillos Yaakov series on the Talmud). He gave us his own home.

The Steipler moved out on 1 Nissan, when the house he was supposed to move into still wasn’t ready. He told me, “I’m leaving so that you’ll have time to prepare the house before Pesach.”

Everything was black. In his whole life he never painted the house. In the bathroom there were kerosene wick-stoves—nothing like today. There wasn’t even a stove. For a year or two we cooked on wick-stoves, and it made tremendous smoke.

You do laundry on a primus, and the primus explodes—tips over.

https://vimeo.com/1113760151?share=copy

There was no refrigerator, so Shagi would wait for the ice truck. I was in kollel, so she would wait for the ice truck. I would put a quarter-block in the icebox cabinet; sometimes it had already completely melted and the ice truck still hadn’t come.

We lived like three thousand years ago—except that we had water in pipes. Because in Uman they don’t even have water in pipes. When we come, they run water only because we pay the municipality; but without that, there’s no water in the pipes there. They have to prepare water in the bathtub.