About two years ago we went to Lizhensk. We went up to the grave site of Reb Elimelch zy”a, and after davening we went in to eat in the hachnasas orchim building. There we met a precious Yid from Yerushalayim, and he told us the incredible story of an excellent bachur who had succeeded in yeshivah ketanah and yeshivah gedolah, and now he had come of age. He traveled to Lizhensk and said the entire sefer Tehillim as a zechus to find his zivug quickly.
A year passed, and he was still a single bachur. Again he traveled to Lizhensk, again he poured out his heart and finished the whole sefer Tehillim. Another year passed, and his yeshuah was delayed. From year to year his tefillos became more desperate, more pained, the tears poured out and came up from the depths of his bitter struggle, and yet...proposals came and went, and nothing moved; there was no hope on the horizon.
The tenth time the bachur came to Lizhensk, he was already thirty years old. At that time there was no one else at the tziyun. The bachur started speaking, and with his bitter heart, he screamed a long scream that had been bottled up inside him for ten years. “Rebbe!” he cried, “for ten years I’ve been coming here. My friends came only once and were immediately saved, while I come here year after year with the strongest emunah that I’ll be zocheh to siyata d’Shmaya in the merit of the Rebbe. This is it. I can’t do this anymore. Ad masai? I’m letting you know that the next time I come here, I’ll be wearing a shtreimel!”
That’s what the bachur screamed from the depths of his bitter heart, and he concluded his tefillah, his face awash in tears.
At the time there was a chassidishe Yid who lived in a small moshav and thought to himself that his children were getting older, and if he wanted proper shidduchim for them, he should move to Yerushalayim in order to enable people to get to know him and make shidduchim with him. He started looking into rental apartments, and for some reason was unsuccessful in finding one. Time after time, different matters held him back from signing. Once the price was too high for him; another time, moments before he signed a contract, someone else came and signed; another time, for some unknown reason, the owner did not want to sign a contract with him.
He told his problem to a friend who lived in Yerushalayim, and this friend told him, “I just saw an advertisement for an apartment for rent in Sanhedria Murchevet. Try speaking to the owner of the apartment.” He gave him the phone number, and indeed, it was a wonderful apartment in a great area.
“This dirah has been waiting for you for a long time,” the owner told him. “For several months it’s been empty and I haven’t been able to rent it out. This is really strange, because it’s an excellent apartment in a sought-after location. It seems totally miShamayim that it was held back from everyone else so that you would get it.”
The Yid from the moshav settled in Yerushalayim and went on to the next stage – seeking a shidduch for his daughter. Several shidduchim were suggested for her, but none worked out. At a certain point, this older bachur, whom we know from Lizhensk, was suggested. The proposal went over nicely, and the meeting between the bachur and the girl took place in the home of a neighbor – a family named Weisblum.
While the meeting was going on, the girl’s father got a call: “I’m only telling you this for your own good,” the caller told him. “I think you’re making a mistake marrying off a young girl to a thirty-year-old bachur. I really don’t understand you. Call it off now, before it’s too late.”
The father was very confused. He’d actually thought the bachur was very suitable, but the call gave him cold feet, and he almost cancelled everything.
