‘We’re Not Strangers After All’

Rabbi Moshe Klein, a renowned Crown Heights Sofer, always carries a pair of Tefilin with him wherever he travels, hoping to find a Jewish man who will agree to put them on and say a prayer.

Yesterday, Sunday, he landed in San Francisco for a Torah-writing event at an area Chabad House. As he waited for the Shliach to come pick him up from the airport, he struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler.

Amid their conversation, Rabbi Klein asked the man if he was Jewish. The man answered in the affirmative. “My name is Levi Yitzchok,” he said, “and I am a member of the Chabad synagogue in Dayton, Ohio.”

Rabbi Klein responded that he had actually recently been to the Chabad Synagogue in Dayton, where he had written a Sefer Torah with the community’s participation.

“That was you!?” the man responded excitedly. He immediately pulled out his phone and, after a bit of searching, showed Rabbi Klein a picture of them two sitting together to write a letter in that Sefer Torah.

Needless to say, the man readily agreed to put on Tefilin right there in the airport.