LIONS AND LIONESSES

Stories about shluchim who fight like lions when contending with endless hardships.

On the verse, “He crouches and lies like a lion, like a lioness; who will dare rouse him,” the Rebbe quotes the Midrash that says that this verse refers to the period from the time of King Tzidkiyahu until Melech HaMoshiach. Although the Jewish people are in exile, “crouched, lying down,” nevertheless, we have the power of a lion and lioness. In the holy Zohar it says that a lioness is even stronger than a lion.

If we apply this explanation to the army of shluchim, we can say that when a couple leaves their homes, families, and Chassidic environment and goes into a state of galus in their place of shlichus, sometimes there are hardships and despite this, the shluchim and shluchos overcome it like lions and do their shlichus with joy and love.

The Rebbe quotes the point about the lioness from which we see that sometimes it is the shlucha, the lioness, who overcomes the challenges more than her husband. The following are stories about shluchim and shluchos overcoming difficulties.

SECRET DEAL WITH G-D

The A family went on shlichus about thirteen years ago, to a city somewhere in America. The husband worked in the Chabad house and the wife worked at various jobs. A Chabad school opened in their city that developed slowly, despite ongoing budgetary concerns. At a certain point, Mrs. A worked as a teacher and administrator at the school. Her contribution to the good reputation of the school and its high educational standards was immediately felt. However, due to the school’s financial problems, she received a meager salary which was regularly delayed.

Mrs. A received an offer to switch to another Jewish school in the same city, to teach for double the salary that would be paid on time in addition to other benefits. At first, she said there was nothing to talk about since she would not abandon the Chabad school, but when it reached a point where the school couldn’t pay her at all, she had a talk with the principal and asked her openly, “How will your school be affected if I leave?”

The principal burst into tears and said to Mrs. A, “You know how our reputation improved with you on our staff. You also realize how hard it is for us to hire quality teachers because of our money problems. Only those teachers who can’t find jobs elsewhere come to us, and we have no choice but to take them. If you leave, who will replace you? What will happen to our image?”

The principal told Mrs. A about the many problems she had to contend with. Among other things, she confided that she was soon to give birth and the doctors had told her that it looked as though the baby would be brain damaged. She showed Mrs. A. the medical documents with the horrifying prognosis. Mrs. A had tears in her eyes when she left the room.

In a wordless conversation that she had with Hashem, Mrs. A said, “I will make a deal with you. You make a miracle for the principal so that she delivers a healthy child and I will continue working for the Chabad school despite the dismal financial circumstances. You go ‘above nature,’ and I too will go ‘above nature.’”

The principal gave birth two days later to a healthy child to the delight of the entire family and Mrs. A.

Like a lion and a lioness …

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

Rabbi Shmuel Sharf has been on shlichus in Delhi in India for eight years. He started working there as a bachur and right after he married he set up house in a modest guest room near the center of town.

Delhi is the capitol of India, but it is terribly crowded which is the cause of sanitation, engineering and other problems. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of tourists pass through there every year including Jews and Israelis. R’ Sharf rented a large building in the center of Delhi for them and set it up as a Chabad house.

Between preparing for Shabbos for hundreds of guests to giving shiurim and running minyanim three times a day, R’ Sharf is working on a mikva. In a normal, developed city it takes a year to build a mikva, but in Delhi, construction has been going on for three years. There are many obstacles and delays and it is only thanks to the strength the Rebbe provides his shluchim that they don’t give up.

“Why was it so important to build a mikva in Delhi?” I asked R’ Sharf when I met him in 770. He responded that the nearest mikva entails a fourteen hour trip!

R’ Sharf began by digging a large pit in the yard of the Chabad house with the intention of bringing in a rav who is expert in mikvaos and under his guidance, pouring the cement that will contain the immersion pit and the reservoir of rainwater. That is when a series of problems began with the shluchim making superhuman efforts to solve every problem that cropped up. Each problem was immediately followed by the next. And so it went, for three years.

At first, the Indian Interior Ministry refused to approve the entry visa of a Yerushalmi rabbi who was supposed to come and advise them on the mikva. For months, they rejected the Chabad house requests. “Come next week,” “Come in a month,” until they finally obtained a visa. At that point, they discovered a mysterious water leak into the open pit. It was filling up with sewer water and nobody had any idea how it was getting to the yard of the Chabad house.

R’ Sharf brought various experts from all over India who finally discovered that when the neighborhood was built, the builders hadn’t bothered finishing connecting the sewage pipe to the municipal sewer system. They left it at half the length and all the water ran off into a pit which was now leaking directly into the pit that was dug for the new mikva. Once again, they searched for experts to fix the leak and experienced a miracle and incredible hashgacha pratis. Just at that time, there was a flood of the entire sewer system throughout the neighborhood and municipal workers came en masse to fix the problem. In exchange for a token payment, they also fixed the too short feeding pipe and the leak was fixed. It seemed that in heaven they ordered the neighborhood problem so that the Chabad house problem would be fixed as soon as possible.

At this point, the rabbi from Yerushalayim came and provided the necessary guidance in how to go about pouring the cement. A Lubavitcher contractor came from Eretz Yisroel to carry out the process, but before the work began, a leak of clean water was discovered that prevented the work from continuing. Once again, everything was checked. The contractor had a creative solution which diverted the water outside of the pit and the work could begin.

R’ Sharf had planned a trip to Eretz Yisroel and his younger brother replaced him for a few days in the outreach work as well as overseeing the mikva project. Thanks to modern technology, pictures of the dry pit were sent via computer to Eretz Yisroel. R’ Sharf noticed that one wall of the pit was tilting at a dangerous angle. He knew that the earth in India is soft, and he immediately called his brother and warned him that the wall could collapse at any moment. He told him to be careful and warn the contractor and all the workers not to enter the pit until the issue was resolved.

A few hours later there was a phone call from India. The wall of the pit had collapsed and only thanks to R’ Sharf’s warning was nobody there at the time. An ordinary person would have despaired over this mikva long ago but not R’ Sharf. This article is about lions, after all.

He wrote to the Rebbe about the construction of the mikva in India and begged for a bracha and help. In the few remaining days of the Israeli contractor’s stay in India, he managed to dig a new pit, build a pit with strong walls, and even to complete the cement pouring according to the Yerushalmi rabbi’s instructions. Finally, the reservoir and immersion pits were ready and kosher. As of the writing of this article, they were working to raise money in order to complete the other details that need to be taken care of.

A CHASSIDIC LION

It’s unbelievable what one bachur can do when he is devoted to the Rebbe’s shlichus. Avrahami Meiri opened the (second) Chabad house in Guatemala located in Central America. To be precise, Avrahami has experience opening Chabad houses in far-flung places. He started the outreach work in Playa del Carmen in southern Mexico and it was only when R’ Chaim Brod took over that he went back to 770 to learn for a while. There, at a Shabbos farbrengen, he decided that he and his friend, Yaakov Shatz, would open a Chabad house in S Pedro La Laguna in Guatemala. They did this, of course, in coordination with the longtime shliach in Guatemala, R’ Sholom Pelman.

The bachurim arrived in the Guatemalan village without resources and got down to work. T’fillin, shiurim, Shabbos meals, and all the tourists in Pedro knew that Chabad was there. For Purim they made a big seuda and right after that began registration for the seder that would be taking place thirty days later.

Avrahami knew that vast amounts of money were needed in order to buy Hagados, wine, matza and everything else needed for Pesach for hundreds of tourists. At that point, he didn’t have a cent for these major expenses.

Avrahami went back to Crown Heights and combined learning with fundraising. He had a hard time raising even a quarter of the money he needed. After buying 200 Hagados and taking care of some other small expenses, the money was used up and he did not see how he could continue preparing for Pesach. This was all in theory since shluchim of the Rebbe are not fazed by difficulties and don’t stop. And of course, miracles do happen.

At that farbrengen mentioned earlier, when Avrahami had made the decision to go on shlichus, a friend of his was present who was a resident of Crown Heights. When he heard that Avrahami was making a Chabad house in S Pedro La Laguna, he said, “Listen Avrahami, if you’re opening a Chabad house in Pedro, my family and I will come to be with you for Pesach.”

A week before Yom Tov, the friend called and said, “I, my parents, and my married and single brothers, twenty people in all, will be there for Pesach.”

Avrahami got into high gear. 200 tourists were already registered, but aside from a spacious hall in the building he had rented for ten years, there were still no furnishings and nowhere near enough supplies. Nor did he have the money with which to purchase what he needed. Then the family showed up and one of the brothers-in-law asked to see where he was up to with the preparations. Avrahami proudly showed him the hall and 200 Hagados. The brother-in-law took out 2000 quetzals (local currency) and said, “Here is my share towards the expenses.”

The next day, the generous brother-in-law gave him another 2000 quetzals and went to a nearby city to buy industrial sinks, numerous pots and other kitchen utensils and brought them back as a donation to the Chabad house.

In the end, despite the obstacles that placed the entire operation in jeopardy, a beautiful seder was held which greatly impressed the guests from Crown Heights. At the end of Yom Tov, the father of the family made a donation of 15,000 quetzals to the Chabad house, which gave a major boost to the work of the Chabad house in Pedro that continues to grow till this day.

SHLUCHIM FROM THE MIRER YESHIVA

Another shliach is contending with unbelievable hardships and he is not even an official shliach, but a bachur in 770. Yet, he has hundreds of shluchim working under him, some of them not-yet-religious kibbutznikim and some of them bachurim from Litvishe yeshivos including the Mirer yeshiva.

Lior Elimelech, who learned in the Chabad yeshiva in Ramat Aviv and was a talmid on K’vutza in 770, grew up in Beit Shaan. As a young boy, his family moved to Kibbutz Kalia to the north of the Dead Sea. Lior would occasionally visit his grandfather Dovid Pachima in Beit Shaan and then he would show up at the davening at the Chabad house. It was from him that I heard of his speedy advancement on the ladder of the Rebbe’s mivtzaim outreach work.

It all began when R’ Yitzchok Arad volunteered to go once a week to Kalia to give a shiur on his way to the weekly shiur that he gave at Kibbutz Ein Gedi. Among the participants at the shiur was a professor and director of a department in a hospital in Yerushalayim. The professor was very impressed by the classes and he wanted to open a shul on the kibbutz.

The professor’s daughter later became a baalas t’shuva and married a Breslover Chassid. For the Shabbos Sheva brachos, the professor arranged a minyan in the old shul on the kibbutz. The successful minyan inspired the professor who decided to arrange a minyan every Shabbos. Since the residents of the kibbutz did not commit to showing up every Shabbos, putting together a minyan was a problem. The professor spoke to Lior who was attending college at the time in Rishon L’Tziyon and was a mekurav of R’ Dotan Korati of the Chabad house at the college. Every Shabbos, Lior and four friends went to the kibbutz to complete the minyan.

The professor hosted the bachurim with five star amenities and continues to do so till this very day. After some time though, the bachurim from Ramat Aviv could not go to the kibbutz every Shabbos and the professor asked friends from the Mirer yeshiva and other yeshivos to send five bachurim to complete the minyan. Thanks to his superior accommodations, bachurim from many yeshivos signed up and the rotation filled up for the next six months.

Lior, who by then had become acquainted with Chassidic concepts, went for Shabbos whenever he was able to, and provided the Litvish bachurim with the atmosphere of Tomchei T’mimim. He conveyed Chassidic ideas in the divrei Torah at every meal.

Lior continued visiting his grandfather in Beit Shaan and I observed his meteoric progress in Torah and mitzvos. When he switched from college to the Chabad yeshiva in Ramat Aviv, the outreach at the kibbutz advanced too. With the help of the shliach to the Jordan Valley, R’ Shmuel Weinkert, the Tanya was printed on the kibbutz. Dozens of families from the kibbutz contributed nice amounts of money towards the printing and had their names printed in the dedications.

Lior looked forward to the day when the s’farim would be ready so he could personally distribute them to the members of the kibbutz who made donations, but for some reason the binding was delayed.

In the meantime, he went on K’vutza. It was only when he arrived at 770 that he heard over the phone about the miracle that took place at the kibbutz. The s’farim arrived just one day after he left for New York and there was nobody to distribute them. Then, like a story about Messianic times, Lior’s parents who had initially opposed the printing of the Tanya went from house to house and distributed the Tanyas.

Lior was so happy and moved by this turn of events that he sat down in 770 and wrote the good news to the Rebbe. He also asked for a bracha for his grandfather that he regain his vision. In the answer that he opened to in the Igros Kodesh, there was a clear bracha for vision improvement.

A few days later, Lior called his grandmother in Beit Shaan and carefully asked how his grandfather was doing. She shrieked, “What? You didn’t hear? His sight came back and he went back to driving his motorized scooter.”