Yesterday (Sunday) was the Yohrtzeit of Reb Avigdor Miller. Not that I keep track of that bit of info, I learned about it from Yeshiva World News, that bastion of useful information. Then, I was reading the memoirs of the late Reb Mottel Shusterman, aka "The Rebbe's Baal Koreh," and owner of the עזרא and בלשן printing companies. He was a chossid from Zhlobin, Russia who survived the war by moving eastward to Uzbekistan and then leaving Russia with the עשאלאנען as a Polish citizen in 1946. Upon arriving in New York in 1949 he took a job as the שמש in the Yeshivas Reb Meir Simcha haCohenshul in East Flatbush. (Rabbi JJ Hecht was the Rov there.) Being a shamash also meant giving shiurim for Baaleibatim, leining, and also davening for the amud. It was after hours that he learned the American style of typeset and printing. [agav, the way he got his visa is one for the ages: He was a first cousin thru marriage to the late Reb Chaim Shtein of Telshe. Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland managed to obtain 6 visas for Professors of Talmud after WW2. These very precious visas were a lot harder to get than the student visas and basically guaranteed almost immediate entry to the US. Student visas meant you had to get in line and wait your turn... Rebbetzin Shtein made sure that one of those precious six visas went to her Lubavitcher cousin, Mottel Shusterman and family!)
Well: I'll let Reb Mottel himself tell the story....
