הרב נחום קפלן

Rav Menachem Nachum Kaplan (5571/1811–8 Cheshvan 5640/1879), known across Lithuania and in Poland as Reb Nachum’ke of Horodna — Grodno — and in English sources as Reb Nahum Grodner, was the rebbe muvhak of the Chofetz Chaim, and held no rabbinic office in his life. He was born in Baisogala in northern Lithuania to Uziel Kaplan, a laborer in a distillery who could not afford a melamed for his bright son, and to his wife Meida; as a boy he gathered wood in the forests with his sisters to sell at the market. Rav Karpel Atlas, one of the leading men of Šiauliai and grandfather of Rav Meir Atlas, offered to support him in learning together with his own sons Rav Meir and Rav Binyamin Beinush, and under them he grew in Torah.

His years of learning carried him to Ashmyany (Belarus) and to the yeshiva of Mir, and after his marriage to Itta, daughter of Rav Yosef Eliezer HaKohen of Nesvizh, to Volozhin, where they called him the masmid of Zamut. The honor shown him there pained him, and he moved to Kovno to learn in seclusion, where he would learn a month or two at a stretch without speaking of anything else. Each year from Elul until after the Yamim Tovim he left for a small town to learn undisturbed, and on Simchat Torah he danced there to rhymed Yiddish songs of his own composing, telling the townspeople that he was the drum rousing them to dance in honor of the Torah.

In 5593/1833 his father-in-law was ruined by a false accusation and left Nesvizh for Horodna, and Rav Nachum went with him. He served there as a moreh tzedek and as rav of the Chevra Shas shul, and after a severe illness took the humble post of shammash in that same shul, which he kept for the rest of his life. He turned down the rabbanut of the city and would not rule in halacha but for one case where life hung on it. He collected for the poor in bitter cold and snow, reviewing daf and Tehillim by heart as he walked, and gave in secret to talmidei chachamim in need. Twenty of his children were niftar in his lifetime, and he accepted his suffering with love.

At sixty-eight he fell ill and wrote a tzava’ah asking to be buried beside a wealthy man of Horodna and that man’s son, who had been taken for misers and nicknamed Kamtza and bar Kamtza; when it was opened after his passing on leil Shabbat parashat Lech Lecha, it emerged that the two had been giving in secret every week through his hand. Twenty thousand came to his levayah. His son-in-law Rav Gavriel Zev Margolis served as av beit din of Dubrowna and as moreh tzedek in Grodno, went to America in 5667/1907 as rav hakollel of Boston, and from 5672/1912 led the Adath Israel kehillah in New York.