I went to get some inspiration for my personal battle with Amalek and spoke with shluchos Mrs. Chani Beckerman of Beer Yaakov, Mrs. Marina Fein, housemother at Machon Chomesh in Moscow, and Mrs. Mushky Shiffman of Maaleh Efraim. I asked them how they handle the spiritual Amalek on shlichus, i.e., the coldness when it comes to doing mitzvos, the doubts, and those who “believe in their hearts.” I also spoke with the shlucha to Almaty, Kazakhstan, Mrs. Leah Cohen, who tells about her victory and revenge against the German Amalek, may his name be erased. * Presented for Parshas Ki Seitzei, which ends with the mitzva to remember what Amalek did to us.
By Chaya Mushka Cohen 1107
Whoever starts out learning about Judaism knows that we are commanded to constantly remember Amalek and to wipe him out. That refers to Amalek, his descendants, and the Amalek within each of us. The spiritual wiping out of Amalek is meant to help us soon be able to destroy the actual Amalek through the Rebbe MH”M. That is when Hashem’s malchus will be fully revealed in the world. How do we do this?
THE REBBE VERSUS AMALEK
“You understand, I believe in G-d. My sister keeps kosher, Shabbos and holidays.” This was what the retired nurse, who volunteers at the religious preschool for special needs children, said to the teacher. “I believe in G-d, but at my age, it is hard to change things,” she said in a tone of resignation.
I imagine that on shlichus you have encountered people who are “cardiac Jews.” How do you help them translate their belief into action?
Chani Beckerman: When we first arrived on shlichus, my husband R’ Shmulik Beckerman made a Lag B’Omer gathering. One of the people was incensed and vehemently opposed it. I told my father R’ Asher Lemel Cohen, rav of the Chabad community in Beitar Ilit, and he said to me, “Those who scream do so because their neshama is crying out.”
Once we started running a shul, this same person began serving as gabbai! Today he is very connected to religion. When you do things, you can never know what will be the catalyst that will get them to connect to Judaism.
Marina Fein: At 3:30 in the morning, I left my apartment and saw a girl sitting on the couch and thinking. (Mrs. Fein’s apartment is within the Machon Chomesh building.) Something about the way she was sitting alerted me to the fact that she had a dilemma. I went over to her and started talking.
She had gotten a marriage proposal. A non-Jewish young man from the school she went to as a child had sought her friendship back when they had studied together. Now, he had renewed the connection with her while she was on vacation at home and he gave her no peace. The girl was undecided. This was after spending three years at the Machon. I told her that before such a fateful decision, she should write to the Rebbe. She agreed and prepared seriously before writing. It may have taken her an hour to write. I was on the sidelines, very nervous about what the Rebbe would tell her.
She put the letter into a volume of Igros Kodesh and there were two letters on the page. The first was a sharp letter about marriage with a non-Jew, which said that no good would result from such a marriage. Eisav always hates Yaakov and one never knows when this hatred will crop up.
As I translated the letter, the girl burst into tears. “It can’t be,” she said plaintively. “He loves me.” Then, what I feared came to pass. In the second letter, the Rebbe gives a blessing for a marriage. She had an explanation for this, “Maybe the Rebbe changed his mind?” G-d forbid!
I explained to her that this blessing for marriage was based on meeting the right person according to Judaism, but the girl held her ground. She refused to speak to a shadchan, saying she was not religious.
The next day (!), the mother of the non-Jewish suitor called the girl and yelled at her and told her not to dare approach her son. “No zhid will be in our family!” She was shattered by that conversation. Even after the young man called and promised they would leave his mother, she was not reassured and refused to leave her city where her mother and sisters lived.
The girl cut off ties with him. After two or three weeks, a shidduch came up with an amazing bachur. She successfully navigated her heartbreak and I supported her throughout. Today, the married couple observes Shabbos and family purity and is very connected to one of the Chabad communities in Moscow.
Mushky Shiffman: I don’t think I did anything that was able to help anyone, because with everything that happened, I simply saw how the Rebbe was arranging it all. It was so obviously not us …
We just had a henna ceremony for a kalla from the yishuv with whom I had a connection. One of the organizers asked me to deliver a D’var Torah. A WhatsApp group started to arrange the henna and when they realized what my role was they began attacking, saying this was a party and dancing and they didn’t want a shiur. This made me get cold feet and I almost let them know that I was canceling.
In the end, with the encouragement of some friends, I reminded myself that I was going for the Rebbe, and if not for that, I had no reason to be there. I went. The two girls who opposed me the most left in protest, while I said a few words. I was happy that at least those who stayed listened.
But afterward, when the dancing began and I was on my way out, one of those girls, apparently under the influence of alcohol, began saying the P’sukim, one after the other, in the tune used at Mesibos Shabbos. She even announced that she could teach me the P’sukim.
That is when I realized that nobody is truly cold to holiness, and even the toughest people have emuna burning within them.
COLD-HOT
So what do you do when the G-dly temperature is lower than normal? Ups and downs are an integral part of all of our lives. One of the outstanding features among mekuravim is getting cold feet. Tell us of a time that you helped a mekurav warm up.
Marina Fein: At the Machon where I am the housemother, when there is a girl who experiences a fall, I tell her that Hashem picks us up and then we see the beauty in keeping mitzvos; it’s much more joyous and certain. But after that, it can happen that Hashem lowers us and we need to rise up of our own accord. It is exhausting and difficult.
If you feel the need to ascend, that’s a sign that you are starting to go the right way.
On Shabbos, a few years ago, when we were on vacation in Yerushalayim, I returned with my children from shul. A woman came over to me, wearing a head covering, and she asked me whether I recognized her. I did not.
In the summer a few years before that, we were also in Eretz Yisroel and for two weeks I helped a wealthy Jewish couple from Ukraine. They had come to Eretz Yisroel to buy property and my friend sent them to me so I could translate for them at the lawyer. I used this opportunity to explain to them about Judaism. They had some background. The shul where they live was not unfamiliar to them. Between meetings with their lawyer, I took them to a cafe and told them about kashrus, a Jewish wedding, and mitzvos in general. They became excited about the mitzvos and committed to kashrus and even considered remarrying with a Jewish wedding. I figured that in a few days they would make a leap in fulfilling mitzvos.
We made up that they would come to us for Shabbos. We met again on Thursday and I mentioned that I would be happy for them to come for Shabbos as we had arranged. But the couple had changed their plans. They planned on going to Teveria for Shabbos to visit a Christian place and bring back gifts for their employees from there. I understood from what they said that they planned on desecrating Shabbos. I began pleading with them to change their mind and spoke about the holiness of Shabbos and the severity of idol worship. It made no impression. I was afraid that they would get stuck and forget their early interest in Jewish practice. I was very frustrated.
To my surprise, the woman with the head covering that I met when I left shul was the woman I had helped years before. She filled me in.
The rented car they traveled in to Teveria broke down. On their way back, they had to use the bus. They put their luggage with the statuettes and other Christian symbols in the luggage compartment and the bus began moving. When they reached their destination, they took the suitcase, opened it and discovered, to their disappointment, that it wasn’t theirs.
The next day, they had to return to Ukraine. They did not believe they would see their belongings again. They were very upset and went to Egged to return the suitcase they had and to leave information about their suitcase. They gave their phone number and address and when the clerk asked them what the luggage contained, they said it was full of books, presents, and icons.
After a while, the couple received the missing luggage. They were bitterly disappointed when they discovered that the suitcase again wasn’t theirs and contained Jewish and Lubavitch books translated into Russian, a Birkas HaBayis, a Birkas HaEsek and similar items. They were furious and stuck the suitcase up in the attic.
One day, the husband fell and broke his leg. In perfect synchronicity, the wife came down with bronchitis. They were bored at home and yearned to read something new. An old, forgotten memory surfaced in their minds and they asked the cleaning lady to take down the suitcase with the s’farim.
The couple got excited all over again. They remembered the conversations with me and after recovering from their ailments they started going to shul and attending shiurim. They ended up becoming baalei t’shuva and they moved to Eretz Yisroel as a couple married according to Halacha, and they had children.
I was excited, but the Divine Providence does not end there. When I told my husband, he began laughing and he asked me, “Don’t you remember the suitcase we lost when we shipped it from Teveria to Yerushalayim?” At that time, he was a mashgiach for kashrus and he also sold s’farim and Judaica. At one of the sales, he forgot a suitcase and it was this item that reminded the couple about their Jewishness.
Chani Beckerman: The husband of a certain woman was very sick. I spoke to her a lot at that time. I suggested she take action like switching her children’s schools so they get a proper Jewish education and to have shiurim as a merit for his recovery. She didn’t want to; she said she was going at her own pace and did things she understood. She wanted to remain where she was at. She was more than willing to listen and did a little bit, now and then. Interestingly, her husband, during his illness, wanted very much to do things more religiously.
Her husband passed away and she wanted to make shiurim l’ilui his neshama. Since then, there are Tanya classes in her house. Last 19 Kislev, they finished Tanya. Thanks to the shiur, the ice broke and she began to feel closer to the Rebbe. Today, we have a warm relationship with her, and she has a warm relationship with us and religion. She sends her daughter to the Chabad School in Nes Tziyona and helps us with the Shifra and Puah organization by delivering breakfast to new mothers.
VANQUISHING AMALEK
As opposed to the coldness we regularly encounter, we sometimes come across “Baal Shem Tov Jews” who are receptive to everything holy, since, as Mushky Shiffman pointed out, no Jew is cold to holiness. The shlucha to Almaty, Leah Cohen, told about a victory and revenge against the German Amalek:
Among the responsibilities of my husband R’ Elchonon is that of being a shochet. Until a few years ago, he had to travel to villages near Almaty to supply kosher sh’chita for the Jews there. When he went to a kolkhoz in Varandai, he looked for Jews and found a few. They told him about an old Holocaust survivor by the name of Yona.
My husband went to visit him and found a 90 year old, Yiddish-speaking man. As a boy, Yona grew up in Mir in a frum home and he went to cheider until the Germans conquered Poland and the Jews were sent to ghettos, including him and his family. He saw the murder of his parents. One black night, he was told that the next day the Germans would be wiping out the ghetto. He ran for his life to the forest and joined the partisans. After the war, he went to Russia and to Kazakhstan.
Yona was convinced that the Jewish people were annihilated. When he heard that there was a Chabad House and an active community in Almaty, he went there for Sukkos to the shul, after years of not seeing Jews. For the first time in decades, he saw a lulav. He exclaimed, “Dos iz a lulav!” and burst into tears and held the lulav. In a trembling voice he recited the bracha, “Boruch Ata Hashem … HaMotzi Lechem Min HaAretz …”
***
The shlucha shared another story that happened with her husband and a Jew who just started taking his first steps in Jewish practice:
On Motzaei Yom Kippur, my husband’s phone rang. On the line was someone from our community who began the fast in Almaty and was now in another country. He asked according to which time zone he should complete the fast. It was that important to him to complete the fast properly.
A year later, this Jew was already more knowledgeable about mitzvos, including the prohibition of flying or using the phone on Yom Kippur.