R’ Bentzion Cohen of Kfar Chabad merited dozens of special signs of affection from the Rebbe. The most famous of them took place in 5730 when the mashpia, R’ Shlomo Chaim Kesselman, was preparing for a trip to the Rebbe. Many of the bachurim accompanied him to the airport including Bentzion Cohen. In his pocket was a check he had received from his mother and he gave it to the mashpia as “shlichus mitzva” money.
Right: The one Jewish boy in public school
When R’ Shlomo Chaim had yechidus, he gave the check to the Rebbe and said he had received it from Bentzion Cohen. The Rebbe then inquired about R’ Cohen’s progress in Torah and mitzvos. The mashpia told the Rebbe about his progress and mentioned a resolution Bentzion had made, to meditate every day before davening on a topic in Chassidus.
Hearing this, the Rebbe stood up and excitedly asked, “Bentzion thinks Chassidus before davening?”
Those who learned in 770 at the time and remember with what passion and drama R’ Shlomo Chaim described this scene at several farbrengens, are moved till today.
Another kiruv, one that R’ Bentzion merited personally, was when he had yechidus and the Rebbe asked him when he was going to Eretz Yisroel. When R’ Bentzion said a date, the Rebbe got up and said, “You are a Kohen, so bless the Jews in the holy land.”
When I related this anecdote to R’ Bentzion, he did not take pride or even enjoy talking about it, for those who know him know that he is a Chassid who exemplifies bittul. He is a genuine Chassid and mekushar to the Rebbe, utterly dedicated to the Rebbe’s instructions. His life is devoted to the Rebbe’s mivtzaim. He visits the Asaf HaRofeh hospital daily and helps people put on t’fillin and creates an atmosphere of hope and encouragement.
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Bentzion was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His parents, who came from religious families – his father was a Litvak who learned in Slobodka and his mother was from a Ruzhiner Chassidic background – dropped their religious observance when they arrived in America. The home he was raised in was liberal in outlook. Kiddush was made and they only ate kosher meat, not much more than that. On Shabbos, his parents would drive their car to the Conservative synagogue.
“I heard about Chabad when I was young. My father published an independent liberal newspaper which was printed in 15,000 copies and distributed all over the country. Thanks to this, he had connections with Chabad Chassidim and one of them would send him shmura matza every year for Pesach.
“I went to public school and all my friends were gentiles; I was the only Jew. When I became bar mitzva, we had a ceremony but I did not put on t’fillin.”
There were eight children in the Cohen family and this was the largest family in the area. One became a professor of biology at Seattle University, one is a computer programmer, a third is a teacher, two sisters are social workers, one sister heals with Chinese medicine and the youngest sister is a professor.
“I would go a few times a week in the afternoon to a Hebrew class arranged by the Conservative movement. I benefited from these classes after nine years of study when I graduated high school and my class went on a two month trip to Eretz Yisroel, paid for by the movement.
“I enjoyed the trip and felt drawn to Eretz Yisroel. After only a month I decided to remain in the country, come what may. I didn’t want to waste time and so I registered at Hebrew University where I studied chemistry, mathematics, and physics.
“At that time, I was in a constant search; my soul knew no rest. I would sit for hours and read science fiction books. One time, I went to a bookstore in Yerushalayim and looked for something to read that would fill my free time. I came across a book that described the origin of yoga and what its advantages and goals are. I found it interesting and bought it.
“The more I read of it, the more the subject interested me. The reality I lived with in the US, where the goal was a constant pursuit of glory and blindly striving by exploiting others drew me toward these teachings. I felt that I had finally found what I was looking for. After I finished the book, I bought other books on yoga and I read them avidly over and over.
“I felt relaxed, calm, and happy. I was thrilled when a yoga course opened at the student dorm. It was run by a fellow who had just returned from India and who had studied these teachings. We learned how to do yoga and meditation and we spent hours on meditation, creating for ourselves an imaginary inner peace.
“I would sit in my room and meditate. Interestingly, it was these teachings that strengthened my belief in G-d. It was only after I did t’shuva that I found out that this was avoda zara.
“After a year at the university I returned home, deeply immersed in the teachings of yoga. On my first Shabbos at home, my parents dragged me to the Conservative temple though I felt perfectly fine praying on my own. I read the words of the Siddur and also did yoga. When the prayers ended I did not even realize it and continued my meditation and yoga. My mother was frightened and asked for explanations but I pushed her off with various excuses.
“In hindsight, when I think of that period, I realize I was absorbed in a very deep search for self. I did crazy things, which bordered on the insane, thinking at the time that it was the right thing to do. I actually looked at everyone with pity. I was sure they were all immersed in materialism. I was open to listening to everything and did not stop searching.
“My first disconnect from yoga and my connecting to Judaism was when I boarded a ship back to Eretz Yisroel. Before we set sail, my father’s partner, Yechezkel (Charlie) Roth, came to say goodbye. He was one of the first talmidim in Tomchei T’mimim that the Rebbe Rayatz founded in America. He had gone off the derech and we spoke for such a long time that I suddenly found myself opening up to him. I enthusiastically told him about the yoga I had studied and my meditation exercises. He deflected all my attempts to explain to him what was so wonderful about yoga and instead, told me that Judaism also has meditation and it appears in a book called Tanya.
“I didn’t give credence to what he said and I took his claims with a grain of salt. I was young, and listening to someone older than me was not something I did.
“Toward the end of our conversation, I told him that I had a dream of flying to India and searching out the source of yoga. At that point, he lost his patience with me and said, ‘Instead of going to India, a place of diseases, go to Kfar Chabad where you will find true peace for your soul.’ He then sat down, there and then, and wrote a letter to someone by the name of Zushe Posner. I had never met him before; I later found out that the two of them had been childhood friends who learned together.
“My kiruv process to Judaism began incidentally on the boat. There were two kitchens, one kosher and one treif. As soon as I entered the kosher kitchen they included me in a minyan. In hindsight, maybe it was because of my conversation with Charlie that I agreed to take part in the minyan. That was the first time I davened with a minyan.
“These were my first steps in the direction of a life of Torah and mitzvos.
“After I landed, I went straight to the university to continue with my second year of studies. I decided to drop the sciences and registered for courses in Jewish philosophy. The professor was Mrs. Nechama Leibowitz who was greatly mekarev me. I loved her classes which were presented in a clear and amazing manner.
“I did not drop my idea of flying off one day to India. In my free time I studied the languages spoken in India.
“Then one day I got an invitation from Zushe Posner. He had gotten Charlie’s letter and asked me to come and spend Shabbos with him in the Rakevet neighborhood in Lud. At the time, R’ Zushe arranged Shabbatons for students and many came back to Judaism thanks to him.
“It wasn’t easy for me to decide to go to him for Shabbos. My final decision was accompanied by much ambivalence but I finally decided I had nothing to lose.
“I arrived at R’ Zushe’s house Friday afternoon and he welcomed me with a friendly handshake and immediately suggested that I put on t’fillin. I had already learned about t’fillin (and what they are made of) and refused for the reason that it went against the principle of not being cruel to animals. In my yoga studies this was a cardinal principle. It took a long time for R’ Zushe to explain that you did not have to slaughter or kill an animal in order to make battim for t’fillin. I finally agreed half-heartedly.
“Later, we went to shul. I remember an old shul, not with the pomp and beauty I was used to in the Conservative synagogues that I had prayed in, in my childhood.
“The Shabbos meal was problematic. I did not dare touch the fish or meat that was served but the Chassidic niggunim and the relaxed atmosphere made a tremendous and unforgettable impression on me. I felt swept up in the atmosphere. The interesting thing is that when I went back to the university on Sunday, I suddenly felt out of place.
“I slowly began to realize that secular culture is all bluff, and that all the seeming admiration one had for another was nothing but hypocrisy. My Jewish philosophy studies were more and more appealing and I had already started looking into where I could learn Torah for real, no more Jewish studies and philosophy but authentic Torah which is not mixed with fantasies that people made up.
“I finally decided to take classes at university half a day and to learn in yeshiva the other half.
“The first yeshiva I went to was a Litvishe one. The rosh yeshiva who interviewed me said he did not have a program for guys like me and if I wanted to learn Torah I would have to pay a bachur to learn with me privately. I didn’t have the means to do that so I said goodbye. Someone recommended a yeshiva for English speakers, which was in the Har Tziyon neighborhood of Yerushalayim. The rosh yeshiva there told me, “You can do your yoga here and learn Torah too, do what you want.” When I walked into the main hall of the yeshiva I saw what he meant. Every bachur was doing what he felt like doing, one was meditating, another was playing a guitar, etc. This was not a place for me.
“The following Shabbos I visited R’ Zushe in Lud again and told him about my conundrum. He advised me to go learn in the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad. At first I thought that was out of the question since I wanted to learn in yeshiva only half a day. But I was finally persuaded to try it out for a day.
“When I got to the yeshiva I met Sholom Dovber Wolpo who warmly directed me to a group of American students. They convinced me to stay for a Gemara shiur the next day with R’ S. Z. Gafni. I enjoyed the shiur and stayed another day and then another day until I had abandoned university altogether.
“A year later, I flew to New York where I learned for a year and a half in Hadar HaTorah, a yeshiva for baalei t’shuva. Then I went back to Kfar Chabad and learned for two years in the yeshiva g’dola. Then I married and learned in the kollel in Kfar Chabad.
“A few weeks after R’ Shlomo Chaim came back from the Rebbe and told everyone the story with the check, I came down with a severe case of hepatitis and I spent weeks in the hospital. Being sick and in the hospital made me feel very down. To my surprise, one day as I lay there, I received a letter from the Rebbe which was a follow-up to the yechidus R’ Shlomo Chaim had with the Rebbe. The letter, from 18 Shvat 5730/1970, said:
I was happy to hear good regards about you from R’ Shlomo Chaim Kesselman who also informed me of your progress in Torah study, Nigleh and Chassidus, and observing mitzvos b’hiddur. R’ Kesselman also gave me your contribution, which was designated for the “twenty fund” that you surely heard about.
I hereby send you my blessing that you go from strength to strength along with your entire family. As I have already had occasion to mention, a Kohen has special obligations as well as privileges because of his elevated stature. These obligations include the main obligation, “They [the tribe of Levi] shall teach Your judgments to Yaakov, and Your Torah to Israel” (D’varim 33:10). This pertains, of course, also to your father and brother as well as to your mother and sisters because the daughters of Aharon the priest also benefit from an elevated status among Jewish women. Above all else, and I’ve already emphasized this in the past, when Hashem places obligations and special tasks upon a person, together with them He provides the powers and opportunities to carry them out.
With blessings.
“I cannot describe in words what a shot of encouragement this letter from the Rebbe gave me. Although I was still dejected because of my condition, the Rebbe said a Kohen has to teach, so I got out of bed, took a Gemara, and began to lecture on the sugya with whomever I met. This letter from the Rebbe ended up being a turning point in my condition.
“After I recovered I was still weak for a long time. My friends in yeshiva suggested I go home to the US to rest. I stayed home for three months during which time I went to 770 several times. Each time I went, I merited kiruvim from the Rebbe. Most interesting were the Rebbe’s demands—I would say even strong demands—that I keep in touch with my parents.
“One year, at kos shel bracha on Motzaei Shmini Atzeres, the Rebbe asked me whether I had already been to my parents. This happened several more times. That is what pushed me to adopt the mitzva of honoring parents also by writing to them once a week.
“My father, who as I mentioned, published a popular Jewish newspaper, published these letters in a special column. Later on, in one of the Rebbe’s letters to my father, I saw a reference to this column with the Rebbe writing that he knows me personally. This letter was from 4 Cheshvan 5730:
Mr. Gavriel Cohen
The Jewish Post and Opinion
Greetings!
I acknowledge receipt of your letter from the eighth of October.
Enclosed is a copy of my letter to Mr. H Golden, which speaks for itself.
I take this opportunity to convey to you my delight in meeting with your son Bentzion and personally getting to know him after our correspondence. I also want to thank you for the regards that he brought from you and the family.
It is known that good is never-ending. May G-d enable you to go from strength to strength with the nachas you receive from your son Bentzion and from all your children.
With blessings.
“Once, at kos shel bracha, the Rebbe gave me wine and when I started moving on, the Rebbe called me back and brought me more wine and said, ‘This is for your father.’ Then he called me back yet again and said, ‘This is for your mother.’ I was taken aback by these signs of affection and did not understand them. A few days later I understood. Doctors had discovered a malignant tumor in my mother and then in my father too. The Rebbe’s wine was ‘the cure before the blow.’ Both my parents recovered miraculously.
“As I returned to Judaism, there were a number of letters from the Rebbe to my father, and over time a special relationship formed between the Rebbe and my father.
“One day, when I was in yeshiva in Kfar Chabad, I heard that my father had had yechidus with the Rebbe and the Rebbe spoke to him for more than an hour about the state of Judaism in America and how to change direction. That yechidus, even though the Rebbe did not speak directly to my father about his personal situation, had an effect, making a tremendous impression on him. My father subsequently closed the office on Shabbos and began walking to shul.”
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“At the beginning of Tammuz 5738, I received a ‘routine’ letter from the Rebbe at the end of which it said: ‘I double my blessing that you raise your son Levi Yitzchok …’ I did not understand why the Rebbe singled him out. Not many days passed and all became clear.
“On Shabbos, he swallowed a marble which got stuck in his throat. His face turned colors and he could not breathe. We were helpless. We rushed him to a nurse who lived opposite our house and she told us to rush him to the hospital. His face was blue and we were terrified. Then the miracle occurred; at the entrance to Kfar Chabad the marble popped out and he quickly recovered. That’s when we understood the special bracha in the Rebbe’s letter.
“Another time, I was exhausted and fell asleep while saying Chitas. A few days went by and in a letter I received from the Rebbe about a completely different topic, it said in the margin, ‘Surely you are particular about the three shiurim that are applicable to all.’ I was stunned. I saw how the Rebbe knows everything and sees everything.”
MIRACLE CURE
The following is an incredible story that happened to R’ Bentzion in the course of his outreach at the hospital in Tzrifin:
One day, I went to one of the departments where a young woman was hospitalized following a hit and run accident. The woman had been lying there for months with the doctors trying one thing after another including operating on her foot ten times! Every time I saw her husband, he was willing to put on t’fillin.
One day, I came into the room and the woman said she had just had surgery in which they amputated ten centimeters from her foot and still, her condition had worsened.
I had a volume of Likkutei Sichos with me. I told them about writing to the Rebbe and guided them in how to do so. They wrote a letter and the page they opened to was in Parshas Ki Seitzei where the Rebbe speaks about making a railing around a roof so that you don’t have “damim” (blood) in your house. I explained that they needed to do good deeds so that “damim,” i.e. undesirable things, did not happen.
The husband said that the day before his wife was hit, someone suggested to him that he purchase t’fillin, but his wife refused since, she said, he wouldn’t use them anyway. On the spot, the husband committed to putting t’fillin on every day and to keeping Shabbos. Their difficult situation really pained me and I could not help it, I burst into tears. When I got home, I wrote to the Rebbe about their plight and put the letter into a volume of Igros Kodesh.
The answer I opened to was amazing and clear and ended with “refua shleima.” I immediately informed them that they had nothing to worry about.
When I went the next day, they told me the doctors might amputate her entire foot and the family was very agitated. They were waiting for the opinion of the top doctor who would come the following week. I continued to reassure them and to give them hope that if the Rebbe blessed them, it would be all right.
When that doctor came, he absolutely rejected amputation and sent the woman home, telling her to return in six months for another exam. Half a year later, all was well.
T’FILLIN EVERY DAY
R’ Bentzion Cohen relates:
My father, after celebrating his bar mitzva, did not continue putting on t’fillin for more than a few days. His mother told him that if he did not put on t’fillin he would not get breakfast. So he took a rope, tied it on his hand and then showed his mother the marks so she would think he had put on t’fillin. One day, my grandmother discovered his trick and she wrung her hands in despair and screamed.
When I became a baal t’shuva, every time I would go home I would put t’fillin on with my father. One time, when I suggested he put on t’fillin, he told me he had already done so and that he had decided to put t’fillin on every day.
He told me that his decision had to do with a miracle from the Rebbe. There was an Orthodox rabbi in his city who had three daughters. After many years the Rabbi and his wife finally had a son but their joy quickly turned to distress when the baby became sick. The boy’s condition continued to deteriorate until it became critical.
The father called to ask the Rebbe for a bracha and the answer was that he should check his t’fillin. He sent his t’fillin to Chicago to be checked and was told that the battim were pasul. Amazingly, as soon as they were fixed, the child’s condition began to improve until he became well again.
At his bris, the father told this miracle and it made a tremendous impression on my father. He resolved that from that day on, he would put t’fillin on every day.