GROWING THROUGH THE DARKNESS

It’s springtime and the natural world around us is blooming. In this article, about another time of growth, Mrs. Avishag Solomon of Kfar Chabad shares two experiences with us from which she grew, and how!

By Chana Astrik

The Rebbe speaks about a descent for the sake of a later ascent. From the descent, from the darkness, emerges the light. In the sicha of Mikeitz 5752, the Rebbe says that shortly before the great light, the darkness becomes thicker. Galus is compared to hard labor pains out of which the Geula is born. Avishag Solomon had experiences like that when a great light shone forth from the darkness. Today she is involved in running Beis Chaya Mushka, a school for girls in Kfar Chabad, to the satisfaction of the parents and the students

BUDS OF T’SHUVA

Avishag began with a description of the home she grew up in:

“I grew up in a healthy, warm home. There was some tradition that was observed, not from the sources but from general knowledge. My mother is from a Moroccan home and tradition is in her blood. We celebrated the holidays, kiddush was made on Shabbos, we separated milk and meat, and expressions like “bli neder” and “b’ezrat Hashem” were typical.”

She attended public school but participated in Chabad’s Shabbos activities. She went on to public high school and had no connection to religion. In 5747 she was drafted into an elite Intelligence unit in the Israeli army and after ten months was sent to officer training. “I was an officer, and spent two and a half years in the Lebanon division and was discharged in the year 2000.”

Like all Israelis after the army, she left the country. She traveled to the U.S. and lived in Florida where there is a large Chabad community. A friend urged her to attend shiurim.

“I went to pass the time. I was not religious. In Elul 5762, the shliach, R’ Yossi Korf, told me that if I am coming to shiurim at the shul, I should also come for Shabbos. I was unfamiliar with the Chumash and the Siddur and as soon as I walked in I wanted to leave.

“R’ Korf begged me to stay for the kiddush. When the kiddush was over, he said, ‘Now come to my house.’ I went to his house and found an amazing family. I told them, ‘What an atmosphere! What a family! G-d is here!’ In the days that followed I bought a Shulchan Aruch and a Siddur. The winds of t’shuva blow in Elul and I felt that there was something extraordinary here, like a slingshot that was pulled all the way back and then released.”

It was a serious transformation. Avishag learned to say Modeh Ani and bought a basin for negel vasser and even started keeping Shabbos according to her limited knowledge.

In the beginning of her t’shuva process she started a new job and did not want to work on Shabbos. “That was my condition,” she says. The boss, who was also in the t’shuva process, agreed to her condition. Avishag was in an office with other Israeli girls who were all growing along with her. “Hashem ‘swaddled’ me from all sides and showed me that I am on the right path.” 

She describes the beginning, “Nobody tried to influence me in the other direction. When I spoke with my mother on the phone, she was very accepting and said, ‘Boruch Hashem, ashrayich.’ I was in a pleasant ‘cocoon.’ After two months I changed my clothes for a more modest wardrobe and had a tremendous sense of yiras Shamayim. I don’t remember what I learned at that time but what I learned went to my core.”

VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COMPANY

Just as everything seemed to be progressing nicely, a terrible thing happened. In Kislev 5763, she flew for a vacation to Eretz Yisroel where she remained until Adar and then she returned to the U.S. Before she returned, the FBI arrested 72 Israelis. Friends tried to warn her that someone had mentioned her name to the FBI and that she should stay in Eretz Yisroel, but she saw no reason for concern, saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” They told her it was someone with whom she had worked with previously, but she calmly repeated, “I did not do anything wrong.”

She could not imagine what could happen to someone who did nothing. A week after she arrived, her bank account was frozen by the federal prosecutor.

“I called the bank and the clerk told me that the account was frozen ‘because of some legal issues relating to your company’ and he named the company I had worked for a year earlier. When I said that I hadn’t worked there in a year he replied that I was listed as the vice president of the company. This was a big company, worth millions, and I only had $800 in my account.

“I told him that I wanted to meet with him and he said he would check his calendar. Of course he didn’t check but immediately called the FBI and then made an appointment with me for Thursday, 5 Adar II 5763.”

The Shulchan Aruch says that in Adar a Jew’s mazal is greater and it is a good time for legal interactions with gentiles. 

“Thanks to this, I had a yerida for the sake of an aliya,” says Avishag.

When she arrived at the meeting, a prosecutor and two FBI agents were sitting there waiting for her. The FBI told her she has the right to a lawyer but in her naïveté she thought that if she asked for a lawyer that would prove that she was guilty in some way or another, and so she did not ask for one. They say that the United States is an empire of justice and righteousness but during the investigation they wrote down on the record only what suited them. 

“By the end of the investigation I told them that I did not understand where this was leading. They said that the bosses had a document which had me listed as the vice president of the company! The document was unsigned. They handcuffed and arrested me and I suddenly realized that the investigation wasn’t for the purpose of determining the truth. Reality hit; I was going to jail!”

DESCENT INTO DARKNESS

I asked Avishag to tell me a little about prison but it was hard for her to go back to those dark days. She went on to tell me the story of her arrest and release, her personal Geula.

“In prison, nobody explains anything to you. I felt like an object. They don’t tell you what they’ll do with you. You live with uncertainty and transiency. The absurdity was that the bosses were out free. Along with me another employee was arrested and we were held in order to exert pressure on the others.”

There was no kosher food. Avishag thought that if she ate non-kosher food she would die, so she ate nothing.

“It was terrible. You enter this building and it’s a prison and it makes no difference who you are. I was together with women who were from the dregs of society with addictions, who committed crimes, etc., and we were treated like common criminals.”

After four hours of interrogation they pushed her into the shower along with other inmates. They were under constant surveillance and it was awful.

“It was utter degradation.” Avishag becomes very emotional and then goes on. “There were no doors for the bathrooms or shower. I felt like I was in a zoo; we were treated like animals.”

Fortunately for her, in her naïveté, she kept thinking, during the year and eight months of her incarceration, that any day now it would all be okay, they would realize it was a mistake. 

Sometimes, it is while enduring a difficult situation that a person discovers inner strengths and grows from it. Avishag tells of the insights she had. She did not know Chassidus at the time, but she wasn’t far off. Later, when she studied at Machon Alte, she realized that she had done the “field work” before the classroom study.

For example:

“I kept thinking that I have to protect my mind. I did not want the situation to become part of me. It was a kind of demographic that before being in prison I had never seen before. I was a very sheltered child and my parents taught us that a human being has innate dignity and if you do undignified things, you won’t be respected. That message helped me.

“I knew they had taken my body and free will but my thoughts had to remain clean. This is Chassidus, I just didn’t know it at the time. Likewise, I had a certain inexplicable holy stubbornness and when you have this, Hashem helps!”

She made contact with the Aleph Institute which aids Jewish prisoners and they brought her a Siddur, Chumash, and sichos of the Rebbe which she learned on Shabbos in order to create an aura of k’dusha. She also washed her blouse in honor of Shabbos. On Yom Kippur she wrapped herself in a white sheet and on Pesach she ate shmura matza and had four cups of wine.

Going back to the beginning, there was a non-Jewish black inmate who saw that Avishag wasn’t eating anything and she made sure to get her crackers. “When I asked, ‘Why did you do that?’ she said, ‘If only I could be stubborn like you and show G-d that I love Him.’”

“After I studied at Machon Alte, I realized that a goy does not have free choice and she was actually the agent used to save me from starvation because it took a full week until I got kosher food.”

Another Chassidic insight she had was, “In material things look at those beneath you and in spiritual things look at those above you.” After eleven months, on Chanuka 5764, her material circumstances began to improve.

G’MAR CHASIMA TOVA

“I was assigned a lawyer by the government and they told me I was being used to exert pressure on the bosses and that I should sign a confession. I didn’t want to sign. I wasn’t willing to sign to something I didn’t do.”  

The months passed and as time went by and the trial was postponed again and again, the prosecution reduced the amount of jail time they were requesting. 

While she was in prison she was visited by religious figures. “In the first jail I was visited by a Reform rabbi who wanted to shake my hand. When I refused, he took out a red kippa like the pope and said, ‘Let’s do Kabbalat Shabbat.’”

In the second prison she was visited by a Litvishe rabbi from whom she asked for something to learn. He brought her the Yalkut Me’am Loez which she read avidly.

She also learned knitting there. As the number of months was reduced, she was transferred from prison to prison and the conditions improved. However, when she moved from one prison to the next they did not allow her to take her Siddur, “So I sat and wrote the entire Siddur on the case file (see the picture).”

However, she finally gave in and signed her admission of guilt. It was her mother who convinced her to do so. When she heard that Avishag was in prison she left her husband and children and went to live near her. Her mother said an important thing, “Those who are truly important know the truth and in Eretz Yisroel you do not have a criminal file. So what do you care? Sign it.”

That message has stayed with her. “It enables me to say to myself, ‘It makes no difference what they think when they hear that I am sending my daughter to a school al taharas ha’kodesh without the Israeli core curriculum. What counts is what the Rebbe wants and that is the truth.”

Even the guard who had processed her into prison told her, “I know you will be a successful person. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and he also encouraged her to sign the admittance of guilt. 

In the meantime, she was transferred to another prison where she was faced with a test about her commitment to Shabbos observance. Every morning there was a roll call to count the prisoners. In order to go to the roll call she had to pass through an electronic door. “On Shabbos I did not go down to roll call and I waited for the warden to open the door. The woman was annoyed and she said, ‘What do you think, that you’re a privileged character that I have to open the door for you?’ I told her that it was my Sabbath and I did not want to use electricity and desecrate the Sabbath, not for me but for my G-d. She was quiet for a bit and then said that the following Saturday the door would be opened for me. I also got permission to clean my room on Friday.”

SHLICHUS IN PRISON

She finally signed an admission of guilt but was not released, because the judges had the right to veto her release. On Friday, 14 Shvat 5764, two weeks after she signed, she went to court for the sentencing.

“The prosecution asked for fourteen months. I had been inside for nearly twelve months already which meant that I would be freed in two weeks since they take off ten percent for good behavior. The judge ignored all the recommendations of the defense and prosecution and said, ‘What message would we be sending to society if we released her now? I recommend twenty months in prison.’ That meant I had to be in jail for another half a year.” 

What actually happened was amazing. She could no longer remain in Miami after the sentencing, they were going to transfer her to Tallahassee. R’ Mendy Katz of Aleph (who was in touch with her the entire time and looked out for her and helped her with things like shmura matza for Pesach) urged her to agree to be transferred to Tallahassee. Avishag didn’t want to because the conditions there are known to be dreadful. Then R’ Katz told her, “Go there because you have a shlichus there. If you go, that will help R’ Oirechman become the prison rabbi and there are Jewish inmates there who need his help. You have work to do there!

“I brought you enough Beis Moshiachs…” he concluded encouragingly. 

She concludes this story, “My main t’shuva journey was in prison where I learned a lot and implemented it too.”

Avishag was eventually transferred to Tallahassee. She had no kosher food and she refused to eat. The Catholic chaplain was excited about her zealously observing her faith and made sure she got kosher food and candles for Shabbos. One day, he brought her the business card of a rabbi and called him. After the call he asked, “He is a rabbi from Lubavitch, do you know him?” It turned out he was talking to the shliach, R’ Shneur Oirechman. This chaplain was sympathetic toward Jews because his father had been a “Shabbos goy” in Poland. 

“They allowed the rabbi to call me and he brought me s’farim. One time, when the chaplain and rabbi went out, they met the prison director. The chaplain introduced R’ Oirechman to him and said, ‘We don’t have a Jewish chaplain.’ That very day R’ Oirechman became the official rabbi of the prison. Then R’ Katz wrote me, ‘The first mission was carried out successfully,’ i.e. R’ Oirechman’s appointment. ‘Now get the Jewish girls together, this is the second mission.’”

After six months in Tallahassee, Avishag was transferred on 10 Elul to the immigration holding prison where she stayed for a little over a month until she was released on 13 Tishrei 5765. Whoever is discharged from immigration holding is immediately expelled from the country, so she landed in Eretz Yisroel on Erev Sukkos.

For those who want to know – yes, in the end, those who incriminated her and were at fault for her incarceration ended up being forced to confess and each sat in jail for at least a year.

How did this affect her emuna, I wondered. I asked her to sum up her first ordeal. She said, 

“I felt no guilt, I did not feel that this happened because something is wrong with me. I understood this to be a tikkun (rectification) for my neshama and that’s it, not a punishment. Hashem wasn’t angry with me. I always told Hashem, even when I was forced to fast on Pesach, ‘Abba, you will be proud of me.’”

20 VERSUS 20

Avishag returned home and lived with her parents for two months and then went to Machon Alte. She spent a year and eight months there, a total of twenty months, twenty months of purity corresponding to the twenty months of impurity in jail. She summed up the years to come briefly:

“I became engaged while at Machon Alte. I went from there straight to the chuppa. I married on 21 Elul 5766 and we lived in Tzfas for a while. After a year and a half we moved closer to Tel Aviv where my husband grew up; he is an only child. After two years of marriage we opened to an explicit letter from the Rebbe in the Igros Kodesh that we had to live in Kfar Chabad. We moved to Kfar Chabad Beis with our oldest daughter Shaina.”

MAY THESE DAYS BE TRANSFORMED TO GLADNESS AND JOY

Now we come to the next big ordeal that occurred in Cheshvan of this year when her four-month old daughter, Chaya Mushka, passed away. She was born perfectly healthy on 20 Tammuz 5775 and was named for the Rebbetzin on 22 Tammuz. 

“My husband said that all 22’s are blessed as alluded to in the verse “becha yevoreich Yisroel.” She was very alert and advanced.”

Avishag describes what happened on that tragic day.

“I went to pick her up from the daycare center. She was always sleeping at that time and would wake up and smile. That day I went to her before I went to my other children. The babysitter went into the room and picked her up and saw that something was wrong. She said to me, ‘Something happened to her.’ I took her, turned her on her side, and when I did so it was obvious that it was all over. She had died. I said, ‘She is dead!’

“I screamed, ‘My Chaya Mushka!’ even though we always called her Mussi or Mussia. I collapsed on the floor with her and said, ‘Hashem gave and Hashem took, yehi sheim Hashem mevorach l’olam.’ When I said, ‘Shma Yisroel,’ I hugged her tightly and said, ‘Hashem, I love You, I accept it, I accept it.’”

Her awareness was extremely heightened and she remembers everything in detail. The babysitter screamed, “Don’t talk like that, let’s resuscitate her,” and she wanted to call Hatzolah. “The baby was already cold but we did mouth to mouth resuscitation for several minutes until Hatzolah came and began working on her. Then I sent a text to Kfar Chabad Beis to the women, ‘Chaya Mushka bas Avishag, rent the heavens.’”

Avishag asked for a volume of Igros Kodesh and the page she opened to had two letters in which one said, “These days will be transformed to joy and gladness and surely you observe Chitas,” and the other said, “You have the strength and influence and you should influence others and use all your abilities.”

“I understood what the Rebbe meant,” sighed Avishag. “I called my husband and said, ‘Come to Kfar Chabad immediately. Mussy is undergoing resuscitation.’ He was brave and he came and said, ‘It’s a test and we will get through it, we will be strong, we won’t break.’”

CONSTRUCTIVE OUTLOOK

When I went to console her, I met a woman full of chayus and simcha. I went to console her but left being consoled and I heard this from everyone who went to console her. I asked her how she accomplished this.

“It’s the reality of life. In the stories of tzaddikim there is a story like this when a child who was born died two years later. The first thing that went through my mind is that I had the z’chus of being part of the tikkun of a holy soul for at four months there is no real evil inclination.

“What jumped out at me from Chassidus was what the Rebbe Rayatz said in the maamer, ‘Nosata L’Yirecha Neis L’Hisnoses.’ A nisayon (test) is something that raises a person up. It was amazing to discover how everything connected, down to the smallest details. In Parshas Chayei Sarah, the parsha of that week, it says, ‘to eulogize Sarah and weep over her.’ The Haftora was about Avishag HaShunamis.”

When they wanted to tell her in-laws, on their way to see them her husband said, “Nothing can be done, this was a korban.”

Avishag did not agree and she explains why.

“I must be a happy mother and raise four children who need to be emotionally healthy. A korban does not serve this goal. It’s not it; it’s not a korban. It’s not atonement for sins. Hashem sent her so that we can rectify her neshama in the best way and in my opinion, this is how we need to view it. This does not contradict the fact that I miss her because with every child that is born, the heart for that child is born within the mother and I have a heart devoted to Mussia and nobody will or can fill it. I can miss her and at the same time feel grateful that I accomplished the tikkun. Chassidus says that we need to look at every situation from a position of the mind ruling the heart. The question ‘why’ does not get me anywhere and so I don’t deal with it.”

Her husband, Shai, responded with tremendous inner strength when he found out what happened. After the police came to ascertain what happened and completed their investigation, he said to them while holding a pair of t’fillin, “Surely you won’t tell me ‘no’ now…” Of course they put on t’fillin. 

“I was so proud of him. A Jew in his moment of sorrow was concerned for another Jew. I looked at him and saw the Rebbe.”

THE “BEIS LUBAVITCH” SCHOOL IN KFAR CHABAD

To conclude, I asked Avishag, today you are a shlucha of the Rebbe in Beis Lubavitch in Kfar Chabad. Tell us about the school.

“There are 130 boys and a small number of girls. The emphasis is on chinuch al taharas ha’kodesh. I want to put an emphasis on the girls because from the day Mussy was born and even before that, the answers I opened to were about that. When I knew that I was going to have a C-section, the Rebbe told me about a school for girls in Crown Heights. Then I opened to another answer about a school for girls in Montreal. When I informed the Rebbe that my daughter died, I opened to a letter where the Rebbe writes that the registration for the girls school should be properly organized and so my goal is to develop and advance the chinuch for girls al taharas ha’kodesh.”

***

May Hashem bless you among the rest of the Jewish people with an abundance of blessing and success and from now on may you experience only good and chesed and the consolation of Tziyon and Yerushalayim.