News

The power of t’shuvah is great. Sometimes, all it needs is a little nudge from the right source.

The story is told of a Yerushalmi Torah scholar from Meah Shearim, who was studying a certain topic and realized that he needed a rare sefer that was not commonly found in most yeshivos and shuls. He knew that in the large central library in Jerusalem, there was an extensive collection of rare s’farim and decided to go there in the hopes of locating the sefer. As this was to be an all-day outing for him, he packed himself a lunch – an egg sandwich – and headed off to the library.

The Gemara says that rich people are stingy. Rav Shimon Sofer zt”l explains that if a rich person was not stingy, his tz’dakah would be meaningless. Hashem makes him stingy by nature so that parting with his money will be a challenge, even though financially speaking it is not. This way, he, too, can earn the great mitzvah of tz’dakah with m’siras nefesh just like his less affluent brethren, who are parting with money that they can ill afford to part with.

In the early part of the 20^th century, a young girl stood near her father on the dock of a Polish harbor, a steamer trunk at her feet. Out of her nine siblings, 12-year-old Rose was the child chosen to be sent to the “golden land,” America. Life in Poland was hard, hunger a constant visitor in her home. After much scraping and pinching, her family saved enough for a single one-way ticket to the United States. And Rose, the youngest of the nine, was the lucky one chosen to go.

In 1929, Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz zt”l and his son-in-law, Rav Reuven Grozovsky zt”l arrived in New York City to raise direly needed funds for the Kamenitz Yeshivah. On every occasion that Rav Boruch Ber spoke, he described the material poverty and contrasting spiritual riches of the yeshivah. But money was hard to come by; times were tough, and the language barrier made things all the more difficult. Fortunately, they found a native of Kamenitz who had lived in the United States for some time, Rav Yitzchok Tendler zt”l, rabbi of the Kamenitzer Shul in New York, and rosh yeshivah in Yeshiva Rabbi Jacob Joseph, who volunteered to help them. His task was immense, bridging the gap between two spiritual giants and the land of materialism and secularism. To this, add fund-raising during the Depression. The results could not be very lucrative.

The early 1950s was an especially terrible time for Jews in the Soviet Union, a period filled with terror and dread. With a maniacal tyrant leading the country, Joseph Stalin’s infamous “Doctors’ Plot” was at its peak, and Russia’s Jewish physicians were disappearing rapidly. People were being purged left and right, never to be heard from again. Around the world, Jews wept and pleaded for Divine salvation, but there was none yet in sight.

The chasidic dynasty of Belz is one rich in tradition and righteous devotion. The sleepy little Galician town of Belz may have been small in size, but it was a towering bastion of chasidic zeal and piety, as well as an immeasurable repository of Torah, yir’as Shamayim, and avodas Hashem. Beginning with the holy Sar Shalom who became the first Belzer Rebbe in 5577 (1817), Belzer Rebbes have led their flock for close to 200 years and, during that span, most have emerged as leading lights, not only for their followers, but for all of klal Yisrael. The previous Belzer Rebbe, Rav Aharon Rokeach zt”l, was a spiritual giant and a true saint in the literal sense of the word. Although he was a mere mortal, he was viewed by many followers in the pre-war generation, Jews and gentiles alike – and even contemporaries – as nothing less than a mal’ach, an angel!