It sometimes happens in a person’s life that a certain event brings back memories of decades long past and then he discovers what really protected him and what saved his life. In this case, it was a camp counselor and ultimately, the Rebbe.
The Rebbe quotes the first Rashi in Parshas Massei about the prince who became sick, and whom the king took with him to be cured. On their way back home, the king reminisced, “Here is where we slept, here is where we were chilled, here is where your head hurt etc.” The Rebbe explains that Rashi is alluding here to four stops, which are the four necessary stages in the journeys of the Jewish people towards the Geula.
“Here is where we slept” expresses the darkness of galus.
“Here is where we were cooled” expresses the light, Hashem’s help in enduring the period of darkness.
“Here is where your head hurt” expresses the ability to discern and make a choice between good and bad, “And you shall choose life.”
“Etc.” – even when the prince is sick, at the height of galus, it is obvious that the purpose of the illness is only so that the prince will have the additional quality of a sick person who recovers, i.e. intentional sins that become like merits.
HERE WE FLEW, HERE YOU WERE STRANDED IN THE AIRPORT
One of the difficulties that shluchim have to deal with is chinuch. A shliach in distant Nepal, Rabbi Chezki Lifschitz, told about one of his chinuch challenges at a Chassidishe farbrengen in Beitar Ilit:
“Our son Mendy has been learning in a yeshiva far from home for years already. In order to get there, he needs to take two flights with a stopover in a foreign country. Usually one of us accompanies him, or we pay the airline and they provide an escort for him. We once showed up at the airport with our son, but the airline apologized and said that due to a glitch there was no escort for him. We had to postpone the trip to the next day.
The following day we went back to the airport and introduced our son to his escort. As planned, there was a stopover, but our son noticed that the escort had disappeared. He was twelve years old and on his own in a foreign country where he did not know the language. It’s a country where Jews hardly ever go and it would be unlikely for a Jew to pass by and help him.
He went to the airline desk and barely managed to communicate that his escort had disappeared. They were very nice and explained that in another three days they would put him on a plane back home. He was stuck. He had nowhere to go. What could he do alone for three days? Who would help him? Who would tell us, his parents, what happened?
Then a phone call came in to the Chabad house in Nepal. It was a friend of ours, a shliach to a Far Eastern country. He asked me, “Is it possible that I saw your son in an airport in country X?”
“Yes,” I said. “He is on his way to yeshiva. Maybe you can find him and see that he’s all right.”
The shliach went over to my son, who told him what was going on. The shliach immediately took charge, taking him to the next flight and finding him an escort. Our son arrived safely in yeshiva.
HERE I WAS IN CAMP; HERE I NEARLY COMMITTED SUICIDE; AND HERE THE REBBE SAVED MY LIFE
This story is from R’ Yosef Yitzchok Wilschansky, shliach to Eretz Yisroel and rosh yeshiva of the Chabad yeshiva in Tzfas. He heard it from someone who heard it from the son of the protagonist.
There was a wedding last year in Crown Heights, where one of the mechutanim was Rabbi Mordechai Krasniansky of Australia. The band consisted of some musicians who came from Staten Island. During the wedding, one of the musicians heard the name of the baal simcha from Australia and it sounded familiar to him. He too was from Australia and the name of the mechutan brought back memories from dozens of years ago.
At the end of the wedding, he went over to the baal simcha and asked him, “Are you the Mordechai Krasniansky who was a counselor in a Chabad camp in year X?”
“Yes, I was,” he said.
“Then you saved my life,” said the musician, and this is the story that he told:
My family is from Iran and we immigrated to Australia. When I was a boy, my parents sent me to a Chabad camp and I enjoyed it very much. Some years later, I met a gentile woman and we were friends for a while. I did not want to marry a non-Jew, but she suddenly began talking about marriage as though it was our plan. I couldn’t think of a way out.
Then I had an idea. I would bring her to meet my parents. They would surely be upset that I was thinking of intermarrying and would yell at her and embarrass her until she would realize that this would never work. So I brought her home, but unfortunately, they liked her. They did not faint over the fact that she wasn’t Jewish, and they got along just fine. My parents even wanted me to change the wedding date to an earlier one. Their request only complicated matters and I could not think of a way to break the engagement.
One day, she said to me, “You have savings in the bank. I know someone who is a financial adviser. It’s worth your while to withdraw your money and give it to him. This way, we will have more money for the wedding.”
I agreed and gave her all the money. It was quite a large sum that I had amassed over the years. The next day, she disappeared. That was the end of the bride and my money.
When I told my parents, they said, “What a fool you are. How could you give her all your money? You are irresponsible! We don’t want to see you anymore. Get out of here!”
I left the house with just my clothes on my back. I had nowhere to go. I looked for a job and didn’t find one. My state of mind deteriorated until I thought, “I have no money, no parents, no fiancée, and no home. I’m better off dying.” I went to a local library and distracted myself by reading. I started thinking about my life thus far. I remembered my childhood, my maturing, and the recent years. I observed that the nicest time in my life was the time I had been in the Chabad camp with my counselor Mordechai Krasniansky. I remembered the atmosphere of achdus and love in camp, and how we were always involved in good things.
I recalled that in camp they had told us a lot of stories about the Lubavitcher Rebbe who is a tzaddik who can bless people and save them from their sorrows. I decided that I had to go to the Rebbe before I ended my life prematurely. It took me a few days until I got the money for the trip.
I found out that anyone can meet the Rebbe on Sunday when he gave out dollars for tz’daka. I stood on line and waited two hours while I planned what I was going to say. I naively thought that when it would be my turn, I would get to sit down with the Rebbe and discuss whatever was on my mind.
The line slowly moved forward and I suddenly realized that I would have only a few seconds with the Rebbe. I could see people in the distance moving quickly past the Rebbe. I revised what I wanted to say to him, thinking of how to condense my entire story into a few seconds.
As I tried to find the words to express myself, I found myself swept along by the line, receiving a dollar from the Rebbe and leaving out the door. I felt I had lost out big time. I had pinned my hopes on this encounter and it had ended just like that.
As I sadly thought about this, I heard them calling me back to the Rebbe. I stepped back and the Rebbe gave me another dollar and said in English, “This is for a new beginning.”
From that point on, I had a new beginning. The Rebbe’s words echoed in my ears. All my thoughts were focused on how to begin anew.
Some time later, I found a place to study music. Later on, I joined a band which today provides me with a nice living – thanks to the Rebbe and thanks to camp.
THANKS TO A TEACHER IN SCHOOL
Rabbi Leibel Schildkraut, shliach and dean of Chabad schools in Haifa, relates:
My father, R’ Zev, was an educator in the early years of the Rebbe’s leadership. (The Rebbe was the mesader kiddushin at my parents’ wedding). Once a week, my father would travel to a distant neighborhood and teach a group of American kids. These children were not religious. They went to public school, and once a week they had this Talmud Torah where my father taught them about Judaism.
My father told the children repeatedly, “Never ever marry a goy.” Some people laughed at him, wondering why he discussed marriage with ten year olds. What would they remember in another ten or fifteen years? But he kept it up and repeatedly conveyed his message: don’t marry a goy.
Years went by and he got a phone call that proved how worthwhile his efforts were. The caller introduced himself as his former student at the Talmud Torah and said, “Rabbi Schildkraut, please stop disturbing my sleep.”
The young man said that he had met a gentile girl and had decided to marry her. The wedding date was the upcoming Saturday at a church. Then he dreamed that he saw Rabbi Schildkraut, whom he knew from the Talmud Torah, warning him not to marry a gentile because if he did, his children would not be Jewish. He had this dream every night until he decided to cancel the wedding. “Now that I’ve canceled the wedding, I am asking you to stop bothering me.”
My father told him that based on his description of the situation he would no longer be bothering him.
Please daven for Yaakov Aryeh ben Rochel for a refua shleima