On the night of Shemini Atzeret, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kot got ready to dance with the Torah, expecting to dance alone.
Among most Chassidic groups, including Chabad-Lubavitch, the joyous dancing with the Torah known as hakafot takes place on Shemini Atzeret as well as Simchat Torah. But this was not the practice at the synagogue in Gomel, Belarus, where Kot and his wife, Rochel, had arrived as Chabad emissaries only weeks earlier.
The Jewish community president Yosef Zholdov noticed him preparing. When Kot explained the Chassidic custom, Zholdov was intrigued.
“If the rabbi will do hakafot, I will too,” he declared.
Zholdov stayed. Another Jewish man soon joined, and the three danced together like brothers. Kot says it confirmed what he had sensed in Gomel from the start.
“From the rosh kehila, the head of the community, and on, this town has a Chassidic spirit,” he says.
This spirit has deep roots in Gomel, pronounced Homel in the Belarussian accent, as it has always been known in Yiddish as well. “Homel was one of the first towns after Liozna to become a town of Chabad Chassidut,” explained the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, in a 1940 talk. “From the greatest scholars to the unlettered craftsmen and peddlers who frequented the surrounding villages, all were Chabad Chassidim.”
In Chabad historiography the town is most famously associated with its longtime rabbi, Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik Epstein (c. 1770–1857), who led its community for 58 years.
‘Befriend a Fellow Jew’
Jewish life in Gomel dates back to the 16th century. Located in southeastern Belarus, the city grew into a major Jewish center along with its trade and industry. By 1897, its 20,000 Jews made up more than half the population, served by some 30 synagogues. The 20th century brought a pogrom in 1903, Soviet suppression of Jewish religious life and, during the Holocaust, the murder of much of its Jewish population.
Reb Ytzchak Aizik Epstein was among the city’s most celebrated figures. A disciple of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of the Chabad movement, known as the Alter Rebbe, he became rabbi of Homel in 1805. He was among the foremost Chassidim of the first three Chabad Rebbes, renowned for his mastery of Talmud and Chassidic philosophy, and the author of influential works of Chassidic thought. His name became so bound up with the city that he is known as Reb Aizik of Homel, or simply Reb Aizik Homiler.
Many are the stories about Reb Aizik, and his sayings and teachings are quoted to this day. Indeed, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, quotes him in the Hayom Yom for the 27th of the Jewish month of Cheshvan:
R’ Aizik HaLevi of Homel related: “When I came to Liozna [to study with the Alter Rebbe], I met elder Chassidim who had been disciples of the Maggid of Mezritch and R’ Menachem Mendel of Horodok. They would frequently repeat the adage: ‘Love a fellow Jew, and G‑d will love you. Do a favor for a fellow Jew, and G‑d will do a favor for you. Befriend a fellow Jew, and G‑d will befriend you.’”
Simchat Torah has also figured in the city’s Chabad story before. At a Simchat Torah gathering in 1921, local Chassidim, worried that it was becoming more difficult to send their children to existing Chabad yeshivahs, resolved to open their own branch of Tomchei Temimim. With the blessing of the Sixth Rebbe, the yeshivah opened that Chanukah under Rabbi Yechezkel Feigin, who would later serve as the Sixth Rebbe’s secretary. Feigin and his family were murdered by the Nazis in Latvia in 1941.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Jewish community began to rebuild. In 1995, a synagogue building dating to 1895 was returned to it. Today, the community has a synagogue, children’s education programs and a group of local men who gather daily for prayer and study.
Much of the work sustaining those activities has fallen to Zholdov and to roving rabbis who came to Gomel on internships. Convinced that a permanent Chabad presence would strengthen the community and secure its future, Zholdov contacted Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, who helped arrange the Kots’ move.
‘A Taste of the Old Times’
For Kot, the move drew on a childhood spent watching his parents, Rabbi Shmuel and Chana Kot, serve as chief rabbi of Estonia and Chabad emissaries there. Rochel Kot also grew up in a family of emissaries; her father, Rabbi Moshe and Chanie Marinovsky, serve as Chabad representatives in Kfar Daniel, Israel. Having grown up speaking Russian, Kot can speak directly with the people he meets in Gomel.
“It’s an honor to be a shliach and see how our parents do their work, and that we get to follow in their ways, how they care for each Jew,” he says.
The Kots arrived in Gomel shortly before Rosh Hashanah, and are now working to expand Jewish education in Reb Aizik’s city, reach more families and introduce programs for teenagers and young adults.
As Rosh Hashanah approached, they wondered how to reach residents who didn’t take part in the community’s regular activities. They invited residents to tashlich by the river, to recite the traditional prayers beside the water and hear the shofar. About 50 people showed up, most of whom, says Kot, would not otherwise have attended synagogue. It was the couple’s first event in the city.
On the second day of Sukkot, a festive meal in the community’s large sukkah and a children’s program drew 60 people, including children from SmartJ, an after-school program that pairs Jewish learning with science, English and coding. SmartJ and the community’s Sunday school use educational resources from Ohr Avner, part of the Federation of Jewish Communities framework, which since 1993 has expanded Jewish education across the former Soviet Union.
Throughout Chol Hamoed, the intermediate days of the festival, the Kots hosted daily gatherings in their own sukkah, where visitors recited the blessing on the sukkah, shook the lulav and etrog and met the new emissaries.
After the High Holiday season concluded, they began regular activities. A Hebrew school is already running, and on Sunday, Oct. 18, the Kots launched EnerJew, an Ohr Avner program for young teens, along with Yahad, a program for young adults.
His new hometown of Gomel, the young rabbi says, feels different from anything he’s ever experienced before.
“Here, you get a taste of what it was like in the old times.”
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