Story: Tears for a Dollar
The Holocaust shattered both their spirit and any sense of spirituality. Even though their bodies made it alive out of the German murderous ashes of death, any visible connection to Judaism or the Creator did not survive the war. Instead, their hearts turned cold and they were left with an anti-religious sentiment of ice.
When they married they wanted nothing to do with Judaism, Jews, or G-d. Needless to say, they didn’t keep any holidays and keeping in line with their angst, didn’t circumcise any of their sons including ‘Alex.’
surprisingly, Alex married a Jewess. She wasn’t observant, but she was Jewish nevertheless. Alex’s in laws, unlike his own parents who were anti-Jewish and anti-religious to the extreme, didn’t harbor any such ill feelings. Although not observant, they insisted a Bris, a circumcision, should be performed on the sons of Alex and his wife.
Years later, one of their sons became a Baal Teshuvah.
At his son’s engagement, Alex, who happens to be well to do, asked his son what would he like as a wedding present. “I will get you anything you desire” he promised. Without hesitation, his son asked of him something that pulled the rug from underneath him.
“For my wedding, I would like for you to have a Bris,” his son simply asked. ‘Unbecoming’ of a person of such a fierce anti religious upbringing, he agreed and actually complied a couple of days before the wedding.
At the wedding celebration, a stranger walked up to him. “I heard you had a Bris before the wedding” the wedding guest said.
Alex nodded his head with a reserved smile. “I have something for you, actually a gift” the stranger said as he dug through his inner jacket pocket retrieving a dollar bill.
“This is a dollar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I received this dollar bill from the Rebbe himself, and I would like for you to take it as a gift in celebration of your Bris.”
Alex looked at the dollar and tears started pouring down his cheeks. The tears made the guest uncomfortable. “Why are you crying?” he asked.
Alex lifted his eyes, locking with the eyes of the perplexed guest, and said “Let me explain.”
“In my youth, my adolescence, I lived with my family in Brooklyn. One time my friends and I wanted to go to the movies but we had no money. One of my friends suggested we go to the Lubavitcher Rebbe who gave out dollars on Sundays for people to give to charity, and use the money to purchase our tickets instead. We all agreed with the ‘brilliant’ plan and decided to go.
After standing in the long line, my friends, who were standing in front of me, got dollars from the Rebbe. However, when it came to be my turn, the Rebbe stopped and asked me if I was Jewish. ‘Yes, I am,’ I replied, but then he asked me if I had a Bris, I told him that I didn’t. The Rebbe then told me ‘I won’t give you a dollar now, however I will give you a dollar when you get a Bris Milah…”
This story was shared by R’ Benyamin Silberstein on the occasion of the Bar Mitzvah celebration of Yitzchak Avraham (Yitzi) Silberstein, on the sixth of Nissan.
Rabbi Bentzion Elisha is an award winning photographer and writer based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. His book ‘Mental Museum,’ a collection of contemporary stories, is scheduled for publication by late summer.
nice story but...
The timing seems weird here. I woud love it if this story were true, but something’s not adding up.
The Rebbe started giving out dollars in 1986.
http://www.chabad.org/62181/
The average price of a movie ticket in 1986 was close to $4.
http://www.ask.com/question…
Also, who were these second generation fraier kids in Crown Heights? By the late 80s, the only Jewish youth left in Crown Heights were Lubavitchers. If you say that they came from another neighborhood, well, that doesn’t make sense either since in 1986, the subway fare alone was $1 which would have made the whole trip a wash.
joe
Story sounds made up to me. plus there would be video evidence of this as there was always a video camera by dollars
Nobody
#1, besides the dollar amounts, the claim is that Alex was in his adolescence. Let us say 17, in 1986. Married and having a wedding of a child? Barely possible, hardly plausible.
So something got messed up in the transmission of this story.
Suspicious
I do not think the Rebbe EVER refused to give anyone a first dollar. This story sounds very suspicious. The Rebbe I remember would have given the kid a second dollar as a brocho and said “This is for the bris.”
Great!
I love the story! Thanks for posting…
To 1 & 3: I don’t get the criticism.
Since 1986 to now is 26 years!
Within that time a person certainly can get married and have a child even if they are under 20 in 1986…
To 2: If you think every Rebbe story is documented and in the books, you are just dreaming. There are countless stories out there of the Rebbe none of us will probably ever know simply because he touched and touches many peoples lives to this very day…
Take the cynic glasses off, and try to get the point.
Author-s Note
Since telling it over, I heard some other people have heard of this story too, so perhaps it’s true after all.
However, I don’t know for sure that this story is true but it’s message, for me, holds true.
Perhaps ‘Alex’ was a little older perhaps not.
I wrote it as I heard it.
I hope you are inspired by the story as I was when I heard it.
Bentzion Elisha
to #1 and #3
where does it say when the story took place?
lets say he was 17 in 1986, married a few yrs later and had a child in 1990,and that child got married in 2011? very possible.
and i also heard this story from someone else a few weeks ago
Shimon from Shushan
I Heard this story a few months ago from my barber in park slope his name happens to be Alex…
Nobody
So say he was 17 in 1986. Say he got married at 22 (remember, he is completely not Frum, so that is really very young, even for a Frum person it is kind of young), that is 1991. So a first child (assuming he had a child right away, which is also not all that likely) is 1992. The child getting married this year is 20 (and a boy). Again, very young.
So while the timeline *could* work biologically, it seems very implausible.