By Rabbi Yair Hoffman
It was a difficult time in the travails of the miraculous escape of the students of the Mir Yeshiva in Poland. With their visas obtained from Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, they travelled across Russia, to Kobe Japan and then to Shanghai. But in the height of the war, the money coming in from America had stopped. The Yeshiva bochurim had nothing to eat – only water to drink and the thinnest of bread.
And soon they fell victim to a terrible illness that no one could figure out. They were weak and soon their gums started to bleed from this mysterious illness. None of the doctors could diagnose it.
But there was one doctor who did. It seems to this author that the mysterious disease that plagued the Mir students was scurvy and not Beriberi.
Scurvy is a diseas that is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C in the diet. Its symptoms include muscle and joint pain, fatigue, bruising easily, swollen and bleeding gums, skin rashes, slow wound healing, anemia, tooth loss, and dry, scaly skin.
Beriberi, on the other hand, is a condition caused by a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1) in the diet. Its symptoms include muscle weakness, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, loss of appetite, nausea, and vomiting, weight loss, enlarged heart, shortness of breath, confusion, and memory loss. But no bleeding gums.
The Chabad doctor who cured them had instructed them all to drink..
of all beverages – beer.
Beer had the essential dietary ingredient they were all missing – vitamin C. And as one of my former Rebbeim, Rav Dovid Kviat zatzal, reported – very soon after they started drinking the beer – all of the afflicted Yeshiva bochurim were cured.
Who was this doctor? Rav Kviat zatzal had forgotten his name. Three readers inform me that it was Dr. Avrohom Abba Seligson whose 35th yahrtzeit was this past 25th Shvat. He was originally from Cracow and was trusted by Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky zt”l.
May he be a meilitz yosher for us all.
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3 Responses
Do you really think that Dr Seligson treated the yeshiva “al pi teva”?
Beer itself does not have Vitamin C. Vitamin C is added to beer to extend its shelf life because vitamin C is used as a food preservative.
However, there are different kinds of vitamin C that can be found in food and drinks. The vitamin C added to beer as a preservative is a stereoisomer.
This means that the vitamin C in beer is NOT vitamin C, but a mirror image of the antioxidant.
Therefore, when this Dr Seligson told them to drink beer, he was a direct shaliach of “ani Hashem rofecha”, simply making a keli for a ness.
The doctor was a tzaddik who would daven shachris each day from early morning till mid-afternoon and was regularly seen in talis and tefillin, as in the photo.
Oh, I just got it. It is Adar (Rishon)!!
The Yeshiva was told to drink beer – yoser me’regilus’om. which was marbeh b’simcha.
And the Chabad doc told them to drink beer, not vodka, to be machzik tova l’atzmo.
B’simcha – poretz geder!
There were yeshiva students from various places in Shanghai. While Mir is presumably the most well known, being the largest group, there were also some others, e.g. from Chachmei Lublin, Kletzk, as well as Lubavitch.
So my question is, were the Lubavitchers and Poylishe in Shanghai also “saved” by this doctor?
This tale makes it seem like the entire Mir yeshiva (hundreds) was ill and saved by this fellow. I doubt that was the case. Something is missing. There is spin here as well.
Is there mention of such a thing in other accounts from Shanghai, whether Rav Herzman, Benny Fishoff, or others?
Reliable information is needed to evaluate this for veracity, and context, to get the real facts with no additions or alterations.