Monthly Archives: June 2018

I was born in 1947 in Hungary to parents who lost their entire families in the concentration camps. They married after the war and settled in Zomba (near Bonyhad), where my father operated a general store. However, because of problems with anti-Semites, we left there shortly following the Communist takeover, when my father was offered a position as a rabbi in Ujpest.

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In 1956 came the Hungarian Revolution, and during the chaos, with the borders unguarded, we managed to escape to Austria. From there we immigrated to Canada, where I was introduced to Chabad-Lubavitch, which offered me a different outlook, a beautiful outlook, on life.

When I was seventeen I came with a group from Montreal to New York for Simchat Torah. I will never forget the crowds, the dancing and the singing. The Rebbe presided over it all, and a tremendous energy emanated from him.

Afterwards, I was granted a private audience with the Rebbe, in advance of which I wrote a letter telling him that I was at a crossroads. I had one more year before I finished high school, and I didn’t know which way to go after. I had already been accepted to McGill University, but I didn’t want to go, even though that’s what my parents wanted me to do. Instead, I wanted to attend a seminary to learn Jewish subjects and eventually to teach Torah.

The Rebbe’s response was: “Dos iz a guteh velen – This is a good desire.” But he didn’t give me any other specific directions. He asked me a lot about my parents and what they had been through, and he gave me a blessing for them. He advised me to tell them what I wanted to do with my life, and he blessed me to succeed. (more…)

I was born in Kisvarda, Hungary, in 1947, when the country was ruled by a Communist regime. Life there was extremely difficult, depressing and bereft of Yiddishkeit.

But, in 1965, when I was seventeen and still in high school, I managed to leave Hungary with the aid of a friend of the family from Williamsburg, New York. He sent a fake letter saying he was my uncle, was very sick and needed me to come immediately to care for him. Based on that letter, the Hungarian authorities issued me a passport, and that’s how I made it to the West. Once in the U.S., I finished high school and then enrolled in Tel Aviv University in Israel.

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Sometime during the school year, my roommate suggested that I join him for a Shabbat at Kfar Chabad. I took him up on his offer but, for reasons I don’t recall, I was not very impressed. I returned a second time and was even less impressed. Yet, I went back again. By the third visit something clicked, and I decided to leave the university altogether and learn full time in yeshivah – at first in Kfar Chabad and later in Hadar HaTorah yeshivah in New York.

During my time in New York, I was fortunate to meet with the Rebbe several times, as it was the custom back then for yeshivah students to get a private audience on the occasion of their birthdays.

Generally, when I saw him, I would ask for a blessing to succeed in my Torah studies. However, on one occasion, I told the Rebbe that I had a strong inclination to become a teacher, and I asked if I should pursue education as a profession. The Rebbe responded, “Es iz a gleiche zach – It is a good idea,” and he gave me a blessing to succeed.

After I got married in 1971, I came with my wife to ask the Rebbe if we should become the Rebbe’s emissaries out in the world.  The Rebbe agreed but said, “You should go to a place where there are already other young Chabad couples in the community.” In other words, he didn’t want use to go to some corner of the earth, as some emissaries do, becoming the only Chabad presence in a place that has hardly any, if any, religious Jews. This path was not for us. But shortly thereafter, the Rebbe approved us going to Miami Beach, which fit his criteria. (more…)

When I was four years old, all the Jews of my birthplace – Gura Humorului, Romania – were deported to Transnistria, where most perished at the hands of the fascists allied with the Nazis, including my own grandmother. My family and I survived and, in 1950, just before my Bar Mitzvah, we managed to leave Romania and immigrate to Israel.

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Once in Israel, I went looking for a yeshivah and, although my parents were Vishnitzer chasidim, by chance I ended up in a Lubavitcher yeshivah in Lod. There I learned for about eighteen months before my father, worried about my ability to earn a living in the future, took me out and sent me to learn car mechanics in Tel Aviv.  When informed of my plan to leave, Rabbi Yonah Edelkopf suggested that I write to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for advice.

I was shocked at the suggestion. Who was I, a fifteen year old teenager, to be writing to the Rebbe?! But he persisted in trying to convince me that I should. When he told me, “Write to the Rebbe that Yonah Edelkopf told you to write,” he finally succeeded in convincing me.

So I wrote, explaining my family situation and my reasons for leaving. The Rebbe responded:

It is clear that since, through miraculous circumstances, you have merited to enter a yeshivah …  you must recognize how you are being assisted from on high to follow a path which is good for you materially and spiritually. And you should also understand that, in order to test you, thoughts occasionally fall in to you mind about abandoning your studies. You must get rid of these thoughts … Clearly, when the time comes for you to support yourself, the One who sustains all living will also provide a livelihood for you … A person’s livelihood depends exclusively on the Holy One Blessed Be He, so connecting with his Torah and mitzvot now are a great way to help you earn a living later on, while leaving the tent of Torah too early will only disturb this …

However, despite the Rebbe’s advice, I wound up leaving the yeshivah to become a mechanic’s apprentice in secular Tel Aviv. To do so, I cut my long side-curls, my long peyot, which I knew my employer and co-workers would consider strange. I didn’t want to feel ashamed in front of them.

One day, however, as I was coming home from my apprentice job covered in dirt and oil, I began to feel bad that I had left the yeshivah, and so I wrote to the Rebbe again. And, as before, and as many times since then, he answered. (more…)

I grew up in 1950s Brooklyn in a very American home – that is, we knew we were Jews, but we led an American lifestyle. For me, this translated into sports participation. Indeed, I became so good at baseball, America’s favorite pastime that, while in college, I was scouted by the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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But that was not to be, as I was a student during a time of turbulence in America, the time of the Vietnam War. I was drafted and called to report for a physical to the induction center at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. Many people were trying to get out of the draft back then, but I was taught that “you’ve got to face it,” so I did.

I fully expected, as an athlete in top condition, to pass the physical, but I was very nervous about being sent to Vietnam and all that it meant, so I prayed – though it was more like I mumbled than prayed – “G-d, if You get me out of this, I will do whatever You want.”

And G-d got me out of it. At the end of all the tests, they found that I had a hearing problem – which was total news to me – and I received an exemption.

I left the induction center crying with happiness. I realized that I had been saved, which moved me very deeply.

Shortly thereafter, I had a strange dream. In that dream, I was in a field, holding a shovel, and I was digging up a gigantic footprint. In that field, there were other people (some of them people I knew) who were doing the same thing – also digging up their footprints.

At some point in the dream, I saw an open book which read, “King Solomon had deep faith.” And then I looked up to the sky and heard a voice from on high saying, “There is going to be a resurrection of the dead,” and I turned to see millions of graves.

When I woke up, I was very moved by this dream, but I didn’t know what it meant. (more…)