A GIFT FROM THE REBBE

By Yaakov Touito

This story happened at the end of Shvat 5751. R’ Yitzchok Krispil who lives in Kiryat Shmuel in the Krayot owned a pizza store and bakery. Over the years, the business was fine and his customers included Sephardim, Litvishe, and National Religious types.

There is a large community of Lubavitchers in Kiryat Shmuel which, back then, numbered dozens of families. But since the pizzeria’s hechsher wasn’t good enough for them, they did not patronize the store.

One day, R’ Eitan Pizem, one of the directors of Nefesh Chaya in Krayot, went to the pizza store and suggested that R’ Yitzchok upgrade his kashrus by using the community’s rav, Rabbi Yigal Pizem, so the Lubavitcher community could eat there. R’ Yitzchok happily agreed to the idea in the hopes that by changing hechsherim, he would gain more customers.

R’ Yitzchok continues the story:

R’ Eitan came every day to oversee the products that came into the bakery and to sift the flour. We would talk a lot about many things and my connection to the Rebbe and Chabad grew.

My hopes of getting more customers though, were dashed. After changing hechsherim, more and more customers from other groups (not fans of Chabad, to say the least), began leaving one by one. The business began going into the red and sinking into debt.

One day, when I was returning from the bank, I met R’ Eitan at the pizza store. He noticed my disturbed look and asked me what was going on. I told him I was coming from the bank where the assistant manager told me that since I had gone over the borrowing limit, I had to pay back a debt of 59,900 shekels as soon as possible, an amount that I, obviously, did not have.

R’ Eitan, who was my contact person with Chabad, advised me to write to the Rebbe and ask for a present – the amount of money that I needed. I asked him whether he meant this seriously (I should ask the Rebbe for a gift?!) and he said yes, he did.

I took a paper and sat down to write to the Rebbe about everything that happened with the store lately, starting with losing customers, going into debt, what the assistant bank manager said, and the precise amount of money I was asking from the Rebbe as a gift, 59,900 shekels.

I sent the letter off by mail, not fax, since I wanted it to be personal and for the letter, in my handwriting, to be seen by the Rebbe.

Within a short time, about a week, I received an express response from the Rebbe which said: Your pidyon nefesh from 2/15 was received and it will be read, at an auspicious time, at the gravesite of the Rebbe, my father-in-law. It would be proper to check your tefillin and the mezuzos in your home to be sure they are all kosher.

I was suffused with a feeling of confidence that everything would work out well. I took the tefillin and mezuzos to a sofer and to my great surprise, they were pasul. Of course, I replaced them and fixed what needed fixing.

After about a week and a half, I went to Chutzot HaMifratz (a shopping and business center near Krayot) to visit my former place of work. When I got there, I met a friend who emigrated from the Soviet Union a few years earlier, and had worked with me.

We began talking and he said that before he came there, he had been at a company that is in the business of tax refunds. When I asked him what exactly is a tax refund, he said when a citizen pays taxes on a fixed schedule, and at the end of the month his expenses are more than his income, the tax authority recalculates and returns part of the money.

This company does all the “dirty work,” i.e., it handles all the paperwork and legal filings, and at the end of the process, it takes a certain percentage for being the go-between. This friend advised me to try it out, especially when I had nothing to lose.

That same day, I went to the office. The clerk told me which documents I need and said that usually, until they send the documents and get a response with a check, it takes around three months.

I went home and incredibly, found all the papers I needed right away. I considered this the start of the fulfillment of the Rebbe’s bracha. I called the company office and asked whether I could come back the same day to submit my documents. When I was told yes, I went there and formally made the request.

I left feeling great, feeling it would all work out and there was nothing to worry about. I anticipated a positive response within a few months.

I sat down again to write to the Rebbe about recent developments and received a swift response which was similar to the previous one.

A few days later, I got an angry phone call from the assistant bank manager who called me to an urgent meeting. I went to the bank and the assistant manager told me severely that my account was too far over the limit and he had to bounce some of the checks I had written.

I don’t know where I got the confidence from, but I banged on the table and asked him to give me an extension and promised that within two and a half weeks, he would have the money. He did not understand where I would be getting the money from (neither did I) and asked me whether I would be able to keep my word.

About two weeks later, I got a phone call from someone who said he was one of the agents of that tax company. He asked me whether I had connections with senior people at the tax authority. I told him I had no such connections.

Greatly surprised, he told me that they were sitting in the office when suddenly they saw a check arrive for me. They could not understand how, in two weeks, there was such a quick and positive response with such a large amount of money, something that normally takes at least three months.

I was curious to know what the amount of the check was, but the agent said he could not tell me on the phone and that he would come to my home that same day and bring it.

I called my wife a”h, to tell her about the guest who was going to come and bring us a check. She tried bringing me down to reality and did not want my expectations to be that high.

I arrived home minutes before the agent arrived. When the agent, named Henry, came, I offered him coffee and cake. He said that the company he worked for is also an insurance company, and he began explaining about insurance and tried to convince me to join them.

I told him that I was very interested but not now! After he gave me the check, he could discuss what he liked with me. He gave me the check and the amount was exactly 59,900. I was stunned. I asked the Rebbe for a gift of this amount and he sent it to me posthaste.

When I arrived at the store the next day, I focused on the picture of the Rebbe that held a place of honor in the center of the store. I gazed upon it and tears of joy came to my eyes. I thanked the Rebbe from the depths of my heart for this wonderful gift.

MORE MIRACLES

When I went to the assistant bank manager to give him the full amount, he was quite surprised that I had kept my word. He asked me how I had managed to obtain the money. I told him the miracle story and about the gift the Rebbe sent me.

The assistant manager, who was amazed by the story, asked me whether he could also write to the Rebbe and receive his blessing. He said that it was a long time already that he wanted to be promoted to manager of a branch of the bank in Kiryat Ata. We sat down together and he wrote to the Rebbe and asked for a bracha.

The answer was identical to the answer I got, that his request would be mentioned at the gravesite and to check tefillin and mezuzos. We sent his tefillin and mezuzos to be checked and they needed some fixing.

A short time later, when I went to my branch, I asked whether the assistant manager is in and they told me he wasn’t there, because he had recently been promoted to manager of the branch in Kiryat Ata.

The miracles did not end there.

The agent from the tax refund company who brought me the check did not understand what I was so excited about. I told him the whole story from the beginning, and about the Rebbe’s bracha that just came true (through him) and he was very amazed. Like the assistant bank manager, he asked whether he could ask for a bracha from the Rebbe too. I said, of course.

He told me that he wanted to tender his candidacy for a promotion where he worked, going from a low-level clerk to a national manager. Other people had submitted their applications too and they were more likely than him to be accepted, which is why he wanted the Rebbe’s bracha.

I sat with him and explained how to write. We sent the letter via fax which was in the Chabad shul in Kiryat Shmuel, and within a short time he received a response which said to check tefillin and mezuzos and to commit to putting on tefillin every day.

I brought the answer to him and told him that in order for the bracha to be fulfilled, he had to follow the Rebbe’s instructions. He said his tefillin were in the closet since his bar mitzva.

We took all his mezuzos and his tefillin and brought them to a sofer. In the battim of the tefillin were empty papers. Most of the mezuzos were completely pasul. We bought new mezuzos and tefillin and went to his house to put the mezuzos up. Also, he committed to using the tefillin daily.

On the day of the formal tender, he called me and asked whether it paid for him to submit his candidacy since he didn’t think he had much of a chance. I said that if the Rebbe blessed him, surely he would win and there was no reason to worry. After he submitted his application, he called me again and said he felt it “wasn’t his day” and that he did not believe he would get it.

A few days later he called to announce that (as I expected) he had won and was promoted to the job of national manager. We arranged to keep in touch and he asked that any time he wanted to write to the Rebbe that I should help him.

HE JUST RECENTLY SAW A MIRACLE

Back to me:

A few months after the story, I wrote to the Rebbe about something for which I needed a bracha. I sent the letter with my son Nachum, now a shliach in Shlomi, who worked for a while with the Chabad mosdos in Krayot and occasionally went to the Rebbe.

A short time later, an interesting response from the Rebbe was sent by fax to Rabbi Chaim Sholom Segal in Afula which said, “He just recently saw a revealed miracle from heaven, what else is he asking for.” I understood from this that the Rebbe was telling me, after the miracles I witnessed lately, what did I have to complain about?

R’ Yitzchok concludes his story:

Whenever I think of this story I feel as though it just happened. This feeling, that the Rebbe cleared a few minutes from his life and devoted his precious time to me, fills me with such an elevated feeling and connects me more to the Rebbe.

Boruch Hashem, thanks to the wonderful gift the Rebbe sent me, and thanks to the series of miraculous events I had, I came closer to the Rebbe and Chabad and consider myself a Chabad Chassid now, in every respect.