By Devorah Leah
The Place: S Paul, Minnesota
The Time: Yud Shvat 5739
Adina looked around the full hall. In another few minutes, the Yud Shvat farbrengen would begin, and the room was filling up with Chassidim and Jews who came from all over.
The truth is, she didn’t really belong here. She grew up in a typical American home, went to college and was enjoying life. She knew she was Jewish and was proud of that, but Judaism to her was something quaint and nice that belonged to history.
Her main connection to Judaism was through her grandfather. Adina’s mother’s father was a religious Jew. She fondly remembered how, when she was a little girl, he would pick her up and put her on his lap and tell her about life in Russia. Back then, he slept on a bench in yeshiva and went hungry most of the day, but he was happy that he could learn Torah.
When her grandfather told her about this he would cry, and Adina knew that these were tears of longing for days long gone. Her grandfather died a few years ago and since then her connection to Judaism had become weaker and weaker.
Then, one day, her fifteen-year-old brother announced that he was starting to keep Torah and mitzvos. At first, Adina reacted with a certain disdain for things he did that seemed strange to her. But slowly, she became interested too. He told her about the world of Kabbala and Chassidus and Adina discovered a deep and very wise body of knowledge that she had never known about before. She felt that here, within Judaism, lay the truth and she began keeping kosher and later on, Shabbos too.
But something within her still did not quite connect to Judaism. For several months she went back and forth between the world of Judaism and the sparkling outside world, and she finally decided she was giving up. Judaism was beautiful and real but … it just didn’t feel right to her.
This week, friends invited her to join a hike in the mountains that they were planning for Friday night. The truth is she did not have a reason to refuse, but something in her heart made her say no. She decided she would keep just one more Shabbos and then …
This is why she was sitting here on Motzaei Shabbos and waiting for the program to begin, the evening that was going to be the finale to her acquaintance with the wonderful world of Judaism.
***
The guest speaker for the evening was Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Hecht of Chicago who was an eloquent speaker. For the past ten years the community in Minnesota had tried, without success, to bring Rabbi Hecht to speak. They had finally succeeded in getting him.
His white beard and pleasant voice impressed the crowd. He began to talk about the greatness of the Rebbe Rayatz, about his mesirus nefesh for Jews and Judaism, about his genius and righteousness. Adina listened closely to the rabbi but when he began telling the following story, she became glued to his words. She looked at the rabbi as though hypnotized and took in every word he said:
After World War II, we started a fund in our city that everyone contributed towards. The purpose of the fund was to help needy families in Europe who remained there after the Holocaust. The director of the fund was someone named Mr. Samuel Brody. He was a fine man who ran a meat packing plant in Chicago.
After a nice amount of money was collected, we sent Mr. Brody to Europe to give it out personally to families in need. When he returned from Europe he was shaken up. He told about the great suffering that was the lot of many survivors, about the starvation that was their plight.
But one little story astounded him. When he was in Paris, he met a little boy of eight who survived the war. Mr. Brody asked him if he could do something for him. He expected a child of that age to ask for candy, clothes or something like that. But the boy looked at him with big eyes and said, “I want to go to America to see the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”
He couldn’t get over it and he said to me, “If a starving, eight-year-old boy who never saw the Rebbe before, yearned to see him, more than food and clothes which he lacked, that shows that the Rebbe is someone very special.”
Mr. Brody was so amazed that he asked me, even though he wasn’t a Chassid, to arrange for him to see the Rebbe Rayatz. I arranged it and we traveled together to New York.
When Mr. Brody came out of the Rebbe’s room, he was overcome. He said he had never met someone as great as this man. The Rebbe then called for me to enter his room.
“Mr. Brody was here by me today,” began the Rebbe. “When I asked him about his children, he burst into tears and said that not one of his six children was religious. I told him that one day he would have nachas, when his grandchildren returned to Judaism.”
***
There was silence in the room when Rabbi Hecht finished the story. “I have often thought of this encounter with the Rebbe and have wondered whether the promise was fulfilled already and how. Mr. Brody died a few years ago and I don’t know what happened to his children, but I am sure that the promise of a tzaddik will come true.”
Rabbi Hecht finished his speech and Adina sat there and cried. She knew the answer because Mr. Shmuel Brody was her grandfather.