Weekly Story: A Surprising Call 46 Years Later
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my Merkos Shlichus to Eastern Canada, which took place in the summer of 5738 (1978). Together with Dovid Wilansky, the two of us visited cities and small towns in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Now I will relate what I have just been informed.
After I wrote this week’s post, I realized how appropriate it is for Shabbos Parshas B’Ha’aloscho.
The Parsha begins with the instruction to Aharon, to kindle the lights of the menorah. The halacha is that it must be lit that the new flame can continue burning without outside assistance.
Furthermore, the new flame should be powerful enough to kindle another candle i.e. another neshoma.
In the story below, we see that both aspects were accomplished. The Cohen family was inspired that although they lived in this town with barely anyone Jewish, the fire in their neshoma burned brightly. To the extent that during that year itself they convinced another Jewish family to also begin living as observant Jews and resettle in Eretz Yisroel.
The crown Jewel of all above is, that some of their children made this their life mission, and serve as Shluchim of the Rebbe. May they all succeed of drawing close one Jew at a time, and they too should pass on the beauty of our heritage to others.
As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.
A short introduction is in order. At that time, we were informed that in those three provinces there are around 1000 known Jewish families, and around three quarters of them live in the main city of each province.
Therefore, the bulk of our time was to focus on those three cities: Moncton, Halifax and St. Johns. However, being that from Montreal to Moncton, New Brunswick is a drive of over 500 miles, we decided to stop off and visit some Jewish people who are isolated from Jewish communities in a few small towns along the way there, as well as on the return trip.
Rabbi Simchah Zirkind, who asked us to go, gave us contacts in the main cities as well as in some of the towns, that they will give us the names of additional Jews in their area, as well as a few who will give us a place to sleep. He also mentioned that if we have time we should stop off in Woodstock, New Brunswick and visit the only Jewish family there and we can meet them in the local hardware store, as they are the owners. Looking at the map we decided that we would stop off there on the way back and it would be our final visit for that summer.
When we came to the hardware store, we were informed that just yesterday the family went on vacation. We were disappointed. Even though we were told that they are the only Jews there, we asked the clerk if he knew of any additional Jews in that town. He replied that he wasn’t positive, but he believes that there is another Jewish family, and gave us the directions to their house.
As we pulled into the driveway, I noticed that a man was standing by the open door with his briefcase in his hand transfixed, just staring at us and the van in shock.
We walked towards him, and he asked us to come in. When we all sat down in the living room, he asked us if we knew of a Mendelsohn family, which was living in Crown Heights. We both replied in the negative, and seeing his shock I explained that I am not a resident of Crown Heights, as my parents live in Michigan.
When Dovid also said he doesn’t know that person, he was astounded and asked us, so how did you know to come to my house?
We told him the whole story and he couldn’t believe it. He then explained; Rabbi M is my brother-in-law, who together with his wife became religious and joined the Lubavitch community. At first, we continued our regular family conversation, but then he began pushing us to become more observant, and began sending us Jewish books for our young infant children.
I wasn’t pleased and wrote back, You say Lubavitch is in every place where one can find Coca-Cola. In this city, every food store has Coca-Cola, but not one Lubavitcher visited it as long as I am here. In his letter, he replied, Perhaps, one day.
Now that letter came yesterday and you show up today, and you say you don’t know him, and no one gave you my address, until you met the clerk in that store, that is just unbelievable!
After some light conversation, Mr. Cohen asked us a question, prefacing it that he has asked this question to every Rabbi he had met over the past fifteen years and that is the reason he refuses to follow the commandments. If something bad happens to me, I can accept it, after all I intentionally disobey His commandments, but I can’t understand why a child is born with an illness; what sin did the child do, that it should be born with a defect, or should die in its youth or even infancy?
I didn’t know how to reply but Dovid quickly said, I too had that question and a few years ago, while i was studying in the Rabbinical College in Morristown, I asked it to the dean, Rabbi Heber and he explained that the child is also in the middle of its life journey, as it is a reincarnation. Therefore, there is no difference between a child and a adult, they [meaning the souls] are both in midst of a long journey, and we mortals are just noticing one short frame of the entire story.
We then related a story of the Ba’al Shem that demonstrates that a child is indeed a reincarnation. The story about an elderly couple whom the Baal Shem Tov blessed them to have a child and requested that they bring him to him, before his second birthday. The Baal Shem Tov then held the child on his lap, but as soon as they returned home, the child passed away. Distraught they returned to the Baal Shem Tov and he explained to them the merit they had in helping this saintly soul, to rectify its one and only blemish of nursing from a non-Jewish women for two years.
The man listened the entire time and said that he had to think it over and discuss it with his wife. That was our last visit of that Merkos Shlichus of the summer of 5738 (1978).
The following summer, I mentioned to the young men who were going to those three provinces that they should please visit this family, as there is some interest there.
When the two shluchim returned after their shlichus, they informed me that they indeed saw Mr. and Mrs. Cohen, but it was in Montreal, when they came to have a conversation with Rabbi Hendel.
That was the last I heard of them, until I posted three weeks ago (I 39) the story of my conversation with the Rebbe’s secretary Rabbi Hodakov concerning that Merkos Shlichus.
On that Motzei Shabbos, I saw that on erev Shabbos I had received an email from an individual who asked that I call him about my visit to Woodstock. His name is Reb Shimon Cohen of Toronto and he said he had been trying to find me for over thirty years, but he didn’t know who the two students that visited his parents’ house were.
To make the long story short, after he saw the article that I had written, noting that I am writing it to bring out the importance the Rebbe feels about camp, (and to help the www.thecampfund.com which was established in memory of my brother-in-law Avrohom Eliezer HY”D Goldman, and we have more children that need assistance so please help out,) he was astounded at the tremendous Hashgacha Protis.
He has siblings on Shlichus, and they reached out to Merkos trying to find the names of those who came to their house in Woodstock. But as noted in that previous article, we weren’t sent by Merkos, so they had no record of us.
As noted, the article was about a camp fund, and he too has a camp fund. Tragically one of his young daughters Atara was hit by a speeding van a half block from their house, and never came home. So he established a camp fund in her memory. While he was on the phone informing a parent that he has the funds to help their child, his wife came over and showed him this article.
Everyone can take and does see different things from this story.
- It was an article about a camp fund which was established to perpetuate the memory of a seventeen-year-old Yeshiva student to a camp fund that was established to eternalize the memory of a young Jewish girl, whose life was also cut short.
- After searching for us for over thirty years, he found us because the establishment of this camp fund, which touches his heart, and was forwarded to his wife by a friend of theirs.
- Shimon’s father began questioning Hashem because one of his close friends finally after many years of marriage was blessed with a child, and that child tragically died from an illness. The story we related brought his parents back to Yiddishkeit, and many years later brought comfort to Shimon’s family, when his precious daughter Atara was tragically killed in that accident.
- While Rabbi Zirkind was the one who asked us to go, the van and the expenses were funded by Tzach of Montreal, namely Rabbi Zushe Silberstein. Some years later, Reb Zushe became the part time Rov of a small shul on the outskirts of the city and would stay in the house of Shimon’s maternal grandmother. So Rabbi Silberstein helped that community and was hosted by Shimon’s grandmother, without knowing that he had financed the trip some years before that, that brought their daughter’s family back to Yiddishkeit, as well as a friend of theirs who also lived in Woodstock.
- After speaking with Shimon, I also had a warm conversation with his parents. Mrs. Cohen told me that her parents ran the bikur cholim in Cracow and her brother Efraim Immergluck used to bring from her parents bikur cholim the medicine that the Frierdiker Rebbe needed, when he was in Warsaw/Otwock.
So, they helped the Frierdiker Rebbe’s physical health, and in return Lubavitch chassidim helped their descendants’ spiritual health.
I personally was inspired by a few other points:
- That was not only a random visit, but one that wasn’t supposed to take place. Based on out schedule we were going to be in that town an hour or so and then continue on so we could arrive in Montreal before midnight. If the family was there and we had a nice conversation, we wouldn’t have visited another family.
- One never knows what an effect one action can have. He became disillusioned because of one happening, and the family returned because of one conversation.
- Never in my wildest dream would I have thought that the answer Dovid gave and the story we related would of have such a powerful impact. Look at the outcome; Reb Shimon works for a mossad chimuch of Lubavitch in Toronto. A sister is a shlucha on Campus in Pennsylvania and another sibling is on shlichus in Wyoming.
All because we happened to have an hour discussion.
As the Rambam states, one single action has the ability to tilt the scale in either direction. Let us be careful that it does so in the positive direction.
So, to all of us, a chance meeting is not a chance meeting. It was orchestrated by Hashem, and Hashem puts the words in your mouth and it can and does have tremendous success and outcomes. Yes, most people never realize the outcome and effects of a single action, it took me almost forty-six years, but how rewarding was that experiance.
How wonderous are the ways of Hashem!
A Taste of Chassidus
Ko Sivuraichoo B’nei Yisroel 5733
The Difference between Tefilla (prayer) and Brocha (blessing)
The possuk states that Hashem told Moshe that he should say to Aharon and his children that they should give the Jews the priestly blessing.
There are a few points that need to ne understood:
When a friend says to you, “May Hashem grant you….,” that could be said as a prayer, that the friend is, beseeching Hashem to grant you what you need, or as a blessing. Why does the Torah stress, “So you shall bless the children of Israel?” Evidently there is a major difference between them.
Additionally, one may wonder, being that these are such beautiful blessings, blessings that Hashem chose for His people, why was it only given to the priests to say? Every Jew should bless another Jew with these three blessings.
To understand this, one has to first understand the fundamental difference between a blessing and a prayer.
The concept of prayer is that one is lacking something and prays to Hashem to help them in whatever the matter may be. In essence the person is hoping to attain something, but that thing is presently out of his reach.
However, the Hebrew word for blessing is Brocha. Yet it also has another connotation and that is to bring down, (as our sages describe the act of inserting the middle of a long vine into the earth, in order that it draws more nutrition for the grapes on the vine, with the word mavrich. which is similar to the word brocha).
In this context, Brocha means that the person is merely taking the item which is readily accessible to the one that is giving the blessing and placing it somewhere else. In other words, taking it from a higher place to a lower place; whereas in prayer, the person is requesting to receive something that is not presently accessible to him, as it is above him.
Being that the item is not accessible to some, while it is accessible to others, therefore the one who is giving the blessing must have access to it, otherwise it would be a prayer; therefore, it was given to the priests to give the blessing, as they were granted this ability that others do not necessarily have.
However, at the same time prayer has an advantage or quality that blessings does not have, and that is in a situation that the item that this person is lacking, is not available to others as well. Therefore, the one who would like to give the blessing (a non-Kohen, when we are speaking about the Priestly Blessings, or even a Kohen, when he desires to give a different blessing) is not able to draw it down, as he doesn’t possess it.
However, it is possible to receive it through prayer, as we say by many prayers, Yehi Ratzon – May it be His will; which is explained to mean, although perhaps it wasn’t Hashem’s will that this person should have —-, nevertheless we are requesting that May it NOW becomes His will, which in essence means we are requesting that Hashem create a new will or channel through which I can obtain this that I was lacking until now.
We can now explain another paradox. If the ‘priestly blessings’ are as their name denotes, a blessing, which as explained means drawing down, why did our sages place it and make it part of our prayers every day of the year, Shabbos, Yon Tov and weehday?
But now it is understood. In case it is not accessible through a blessing, we request through prayer that it become accessible.
This explains another point, why indeed was this blessing specifically given over to the priest and not others?
As noted, a blessing is bringing down an aspect that was already in existence, it just didn’t reach the receiver yet. Therefore, the person that is higher than that item can bring it down to them.
However, being that the item needed was already destined to that person, as we just stated that the one who is giving the blessing sees that it is accessible, why hasn’t it arrived until now?
The explanation is, that just because you are to be given that item that you want and perhaps need, that doesn’t mean you will receive it immediately. Therefore, the Torah informs us that when Aharon placed his staff among the staffs of the leaders of the 12 tribes, his staff blossomed immediately, which demonstrated that with Aharon, and subsequently all of his descendants, the blessings materialize immediately without any delay, unlike the nature of the world that it takes time for a fruit to blossom.
Because of this priestly ability, these important blessings were specifically given to the priests, so that they should materialize immediately. [Author’s note: This is similar to the one of the reasons given, why we have to pray every day, and request for whatever our needs may be. One may ask, wasn’t everything decreed on Rosh Hashanah and then sealed on Yom Kippur? So, if it was decreed that one receives or doesn’t receive something, how can that change?
One of the answers given is, for example, Hashem decreed that a certain amount of rain will fall in a certain area during the upcoming year. However, the rain can fall into the reservoir, where it would be tremendously beneficial for all. Or it may fall in an area where barely anyone lives, and the forest would benefit, but not the inhabitants. Similarly, it could fall periodically which would be a blessing, or it may come down in a storm, which will cause harm.
Therefore, each day we pray that it comes and takes care of what is needed now, not less and not more. That is the accomplishment of the Kohen; the people receive what they can benefit from, and not have delays or even worse, harm from it.]
Rabbi Avtzon is a veteran mechanech and the author of numerous books on the Rebbeim and their chassidim. He can be contacted at avtzonbooks@gmail.com
