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Weekly Chasidic Story #981 (s5776-53 / 9 Elul 5776) The Oldest Living Man's Real Claim to Fame When interviewed during the Guinness World Records ceremony at his Haifa home, his calm response to all the attention encapsulated his basic outlook on life. Connection:Seaonal - Sept 15 (this week) and 22 Elul (next week).
The Oldest Living Man's Real Claim to Fame
When the oldest living man in the world at the time, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died in January at the age of 112 years and 312 days, who would have thought this would be a prelude to a significant event for the Jewish people, and also for the world at large? That is, on March 11, 2016, Guinness World Records publically proclaimed that Israel Kristal of Haifa, Israel, who on that day became 112 years and 178 days old, is now the world's oldest living man.* [Why do I (Yerachmiel Tilles) claim this has such significance? Because when I researched the above "crowning" of Mr Kristal, which I found fascinating, I discovered there were articles and website postings in, among others, the NY Times, USA Today, People Magazine, Wikipedia, Jerusalem Post and Ha'Aretz (Israeli dailies), major network tv coverage, and even a few Orthodox Jewish sources. Yet, while all reported interesting remarks of Kristal and of his son and of his daughter about him during the ceremony that the Guinness representatives organized at his house, not one of them picked up on what I believe is the most extraordinary quote of all. I saw it only in 'Sichat HaShavua', an Israeli 4-page Hebrew weekly, my first source. So perhaps this is an English language exclusive…. As below.]
Israel
Kristal with Marco Frigatti of Guinness World Records, Israel's son Hayim Kristal,
Yisrael Kristal was born in Poland on 22 Elul 5663 (September 15, 1903). When he was seven years old his mother passed away. He lived through both World Wars. In WWI his father was drafted into the Russian army and subsequently killed, so from the young age of 11 Yisrael was on his own. His father had provided him a solid traditional Jewish education, and that helped him to remain a man of deep faith and religious commitment his whole life. In WWII he lost his wife and two children, as well as all his other relatives. He himself survived the Auschwitz, Wustegiersdorf, Dornau, and Schotterwerk Nazi death camps. When he was rescued by Allied forces in May 1945, he weighed only 37 kilos (81.4 lbs) and was on the brink of death. In 1920 Kristal had moved to ?odz, Poland, to join the family confectionary business where they made and sold candy and other sweets, in which he worked for twenty years and became a master of the craft. So, after emigrating to Israel in 1950 with his second wife, also a survivor, and their baby son, and settling in Haifa, in addition to having another child, a daughter, he opened his own Kristal Candy Factory in 1952 on Shivat Zion Street, which became increasingly successful over the years until his retirement in 1970. (Among the sweets he produced were tiny liquor bottles made of chocolate wrapped in colored foil, jam made from carob, and chocolate-covered orange peels. --Wikipedia) His two children, Hayim and Shula, were "fruitful and multiplied," and so were their combined nine children after they married, as the photo below displays.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post [in 2012, when at age 109 Kristal was recognized as the world's oldest Holocaust survivor], his daughter said of her father, "The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs. He is not an angry person, he is not someone who seeks an accounting, he believes everything has a reason in the world. He believes he was saved because that's what God wanted." This year, when interviewed on the occasion of the Guinness ceremony at their Haifa home, she reported that her father's calm response to the fuss over his being the world's oldest living man encapsulated his basic outlook on life: "I didn't create anything, I didn't discover anything or reveal anything new in the world. Everything is from Heaven. The Al-mighty gives me life and I simply live. It is not through my own strength or cleverness or any particular lifestyle. Everything is through the Creator of All. He has granted me long life and I am grateful to Him for it." There is, however, one accomplishment the humble Yisrael Kristal is prepared to take credit for. Except for extreme circumstances during the two great wars, since his thirteenth birthday he never failed to wrap tefillin daily.** In his words: "[Instead of being acclaimed as the world's oldest man,] I'd rather be known as the oldest and longest daily wearer of tefillin in the world." On September 15, 2016, the world will acknowledge with admiration the 113th birthday of Israel Kristal according to the Gregorian calendar. Seven days later, on Elul 22, his birth date on the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish world will celebrate his 113 years of life, a full century since his bar mitzvah, the modern record of 100 years of wrapping tefillin (!), and his message to the world that it is not how many years and days you spend eating and sleeping that does you credit, but whether you spent those years and days fulfilling your purpose in life.
Editor's notes: Connection: Seasonal - Sept 15 (this week) and 22 Elul (next week). Click here for an updating SUPPLEMENT
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Yerachmiel
Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and chief editor
of this website (and of KabbalaOnline.org). He has hundreds of published stories
to his credit, and many have been translated into other languages. He tells
them live at Ascent nearly every Saturday night.