A Special Story on the Merkos Shlichus Trail

Roving Rabbis Yosef Schtroks and Yaakov Kotlarsky, are on Merkos Shlichus in Surrey BC, Canada, and have spent the last few days reaching out to Jewish people all around the Surrey/White Rock/Delta/Langley areas, and are dedicated to kindling a flame of Jewish pride and Jewish Life within each and every Jew they meet.

The last few days for them were full of interesting encounters, and already from there first day they had a most incredible story, which follows:

We had hoped to facilitate an early start for our day, by picking up the car last night.

Turns out that we couldn’t get the car till this morning, however even after that we hoped to have a semi normal day, but for some reason one problem after another kept on coming up, and we had some car trouble as well and until we got on the road was already late afternoon.

However we were determined to at least accomplish something today. My colleague Rabbi Yaakov said that we cannot go our first day with out finding at least one Jew to put tefillin on with. So we headed to the local shopping mall.

We were quite disappointed to see as they walked in that the mall was very close to closing, other then a few of the larger stores. So we headed over to the first one called Zellers and started inquiring if any of the people were Jewish. Then just in front of the door we noticed a man sitting in a scooter visibly quite sick.

He didn’t look to Jewish but we figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and then we would be on our way.

We asked him and turned to go expecting the usual answer, but to our surprise we heard a meek “yes of course”! We quickly turned around and began schmoozing with him, and it turned out that his name was “Yankel Goldstien” and he hadn’t had much connection to Jewish people for quite a few years!

Especially due to the fact that he was homebound most of the time which increased his loneliness many fold.

He spoke to us in great detail about his recent bout with terminal illnes r“l and the recent passing of his adoptive mother, who had raised him almost since birth, and how he had barely ten people at the levaya.. He had requested of the temple that his adoptive mother was a member of to find someone to say kaddish for her, however they rarely kept there promise, and he was quite disappointed.

We promised we would contact the closest Shliach right away and ask him to find someone to say kaddish, we also said we would try to make at least one minyan and have him transported there to give him the opportunity to say kaddish himself.

After schmoozing with him for close to half an hour, we mentioned that its such divine providence that we walked in just that moment when he was coming out of the store, because we had entirely different plans for the day. He responded that interestingly enough he too had entirely not planned on even leaving his house today, and for some reason he felt this unexplainable urge to take care of a little shopping which he could have left for another.

However he didn’t even plan on coming to this store, and had planned only on being in a store in the other end of the mall, and he only randomly decided to come to this store because he ”suddenly” remembered that the particular item he needed was cheaper there.

Right away we told him that this is no accident and obviously G-d really wants us to meet each other and if two Jews meet each other it is definitely to bring to a mitzvah. So how about would you like to put on tefillin? we asked, to which he responded, well I have it done it since the day of my bar mitzvah!

To which we responded “then now is the best time to chap arain and have a second Bar Mitzvah!” So right then and there smack in middle of the shopping mall we put on tefillin proudly showing his Judaism.

As he sat there wrapped in tefillin, he closed his eyes closed and he sat emotionally for a few moments, when he told us that today was his birth mother’s (who he had only met 11 years ago) Yohrtzeit! We explained to him how this must have been divinely orchestrated in order for him to do a mitzvah in honor of his mother’s Yohrtzeit, and what a great thing he just did for her. He sat there quite surprised at this amazing turn of events etc.

We both exchanged contact information and promised that we are coming to visit him again soon and what a privilege it was to meet him etc.

Obviously G-d planned our day, and made sure that this amazing event transpired.

Regards from Surrey,
Rabbis Yosef Schtroks and Yaakov Kotlarsky