Perfect Strangers/Strangely Perfect

Shul Chronicles 425

Chesed Shel Emes & Two Stories from Opposite Sides of Anonymity 

Febuary, 2019

Several years ago I received a voice message from an organization that find matches for organ donations among the frum.

“Please call us back Rabbi Taub, it is time sensitive”.

I was running into mincha when I heard the message, and I was shaken.

I spent the teffila negotiating with myself that to be told that I was a match would be a beracha, and that when I call back I should not show any fear.

Following davening, I took a deep breath and dialed the number.

“Yes, Rabbi Taub, we still have a Lakewood address for you and we are updating all of our files this week, can you give us your cureent address please?”

I would be lying if I said that I did not feel a little relief. Of course, I would have said yes if the call was of a more serious nature, but it was a reminder that getting ‘the call’ is far more frightening than daydreaming of getting it. Those that do such chesdadim are on the top of the chesed chain.

This past week I heard about just such a chesed.

About twenty years ago, Avraham Levine was helping his father in law, R’ Ely Dovek, run Israel Book Shop in Brookline Mass., the premier judaica shop in Boston and her surrounding area.

There was a woman who worked across the street at the kosher market, let’s call her Deborah. Deborah who would come in to the book store and purchase a very particular type of book.

Aryeh Kaplan books on mitzvos, history books, The Midrash Says, etc. 

Avraham, who is a keen individual, recognized a theme, and figured that this Deborah was in the process of becoming a ger tzedek.

It is very common for a beis din and the sponsoring rav to give a very specific book list to conversion candidates. More, they urge them to live and work among the frum community so as to become seeped in the culture of their soon to be faith.

Avraham and Deborah would talk about different books to help her on her journey. He would also help her with any questions or complications she may have been dealing with in the sometimes-painful yet always-majestic process of becoming a Jew.

Avraham could recognize a good person, and he soon asked if she herself would like to work at the book shop.

She readily agreed, and we can only imagine her excitement at being able to familiarize herself that much more with the written word of Torah!

At times, and without getting into specifics, it was challenging. But Deborah was now converted, needed a job and was still navigating her place in klal yisroel.

She stayed on. Soon, she was married. Then children. Baruch Hashem much Torah has now sprung from that once young soon-to-be convert.

In fact, Deborah still works in Israel Book Shop today!

Avraham, however, about ten years ago moved to Lakewood where he took over Judaica Plaza, one of the world’s premier sefarim stores.

While his business in Lakewood was doing well, Avraham’s health was not.

He was in desperate need a of a Kidney Transplant. There were matches that were close, that fell through or that were besieged with technical issues insurmatable. 

Recently, the organization Renewal called him with good news, they had found a match!

This time everything looked clear.

But something was odd. Although names are always kept confidential, both the donater and the donatee would cause the same name to appear on Renewals caller ID: ‘Israel Book Shop’.

Avraham, you see, never changed that identification from his cell…and Deborah still worked there.

It did not take too long for R’ Avraham to figure out that of all people the lideny that was to save his life would come from Deborah, a georis he had helped so much twenty years ago!

The surgery went well, Baruch Hashem, and Rav Yeruchum Olshin spoke at the seudas hodah that Avraham made for his community, friends and family.

Rav Yeruchum quoted a Chofetz Chaim. The pasuk in the shiras hayam states “nuchisa b’chasdechcha, am zu gedalta, nayhalta v’uzecha el nveh kudshecha- You led this nation (out of Mitzraim) with kindness…”

The Chofetz Chaim wonders that either we earned our redemption, in which case it was not simply an act of chesed on the part of the Riboneh Shel Olam, or, if it was a chesed, then there should not be many sources that allude to merits that caused our geulah?!

HE explains that chazal tell us that zechus that led to our redemption was the chesed one Jew did for another while in slavery.

Explains the Chofetz Chaim, what goes around, comes around. Because we did an act of chesed this alone causes Hashem to act with chesed with us!

Which leads us to our second story.

Most, like me, can’t keep up with messages. Between, voice mail on their cells, home, office, texts, emails, snail mail and items left with my secretary, I can spend my day just getting back to people.

I know I am not alone, so as a shul we are careful not to besiege people with too many emails. 

In addition, an oversaturation of shul EVENTS! DINNERS! SHIURIM! Will cause people –the fear is –to just leave most of emails unopened. 

The other day, however, Steve Baruch, a neighbor and member of the shul, noticed a posting on a Five Towns website:

“CHESED SHEL EMES. There is a Holocaust survivor

that passed away in our community and the funeral will be this Friday, December 28, at 11 AM in Union field Cemetery in Queens. The address is 82-11 Cypress Avenue, Ridgewood, NY 11385. ONLY ONE PERSON GOING SO FAR. 

If you can come to this levaya it is such a big mitzvah.

And if you can help get a minyan to come so she can have kaddesh said for her it would be a great mitzvah too.”

“Can we send this to our shul?” he asked. I thought it would be a nice idea, however, it being the middle of a Thursday, I could not see too many opening, then reading then arranging their schedule to go on a erev Shabbos.

Fast forward twenty-four hours later, when I was walking into shul for mincha before Shabbos.

Steve Nissenfled, another member, pulls me aside. “Rabbi, you will not believe this. Over two hundred people showed up! You could not move! The guy who runs the ground had to turn people away, he said the phone did not stop ringing!”

It was not just our shul. So many members sent me regards from this person or that person this past Shabbos. Whenever I asked them “Where did you see them?” the response was invariably, ‘That levaya in the Five Towns”.

By Shalosh Seudos, I was sitting with a member who was there. “What did the rav say?” I asked.

“Well, he was a wonderful Chabad rav, Rabbi Mendelsohn, and he talked to the granddaughter directly, the one functioning remainder from this family. 

“He looked at her and said…”

He started to cry as he repeated the words

“He said…look around, look at all the people who came. These people…These people are your family”

The next morning in shul I shared the above story with the following message. The pasuk states in the parsha (Shmos 2:6) that Bisya “opened the basket and she saw the child (yeled) he was a weeping lad (na’ar), and she had compassion on him, and she said, “This is [one] of the children of the Jews.”

Many meforshim seek to explain the change from a yeled to a na’ar, as the latter always refers to an older child and not one Moshe’s age.

The Mincha Bellula, Baal Haturim, Chizkuni and many others re-read the pasuk  so that the yeled was Moshe, but the na’ar was in fact Aaron crying over his lost brother!

To this some explain the ending of that pasuk: Moshe cried, his brother was pained by his needs, and that iis how Bisya came to the conclusion’… This is [one] of the children of the Jews’. For Jews always take care of their own.

And Hashem will pay us back.

Mi K’amcha yisroel goy eched b’aratz!