This is Yisrael Yehuda Rotenberg from Tzfas. In the old Kosov shul where I daven there was a sefer Torah that had served the people devotedly until the Yid who loaned it to the shul took it back for himself. I wondered: What would be now? Where would we get hold of a sefer Torah?
Several days after the sefer Torah was taken from the shul, I was invited to the bris of the son of the shul’s shamash. At the simchah I met an avreich whom I knew from years gone by. He’d learned in the Kosov yeshivah twenty years earlier, and we spoke of memories from the good old days in the holy city of Tzfas. He told me that he was married to an American woman and had several children. I told him what had happened to our city, and about the sefer Torah that had been taken back by its owner.
“I have an idea for you,” the avreich said. “My father-in-law, who lives abroad, recently made a siyum haShas, and he wrote a Sefer Torah in honor of the event. The sefer Torah is now in a Litvishe shul. They took it even though it is written in ksav Ari, since they didn’t have anything else. I wonder whether they’re still using it. It’s likely that they’ve already found a sefer Torah written in ksav Beis Yosef, and if so, my father-in-law could loan you the sefer.”
A few days later this avreich called me and told me that the sefer Torah had been returned to its owner. “The shul moved, and they received another sefer Torah at their new location,” he explained. “My father-in-law says he can loan the sefer Torah, but it’s important for you to know that he will need it back from time to time.”
I wasn’t happy about that comment, but I did not see any other possibility of getting a sefer Torah, so I waited for the flight that would bring in our temporary sefer Torah. Even a sefer Torah in the heichal depends on mazal, and even if it’s one that you get for just a short period of time. When they opened the sefer Torah in order to turn it to the right week, I was surprised to discover that it opened to the very parshah of the week of the bris, when I’d spoken to the avreich about it, as though the sefer Torah itself was asking to be read in the place where it was needed...
Several months passed. Erev Pesach came, and with it a phone call: The young man’s father-in-law wanted the sefer Torah back. He was going to spend Pesach with his extended family; they would be having their own minyan, and he needed the sefer Torah to be with them.
What could I possibly do? This was his sefer Torah. We arranged to send it back to him.
That day, several hours after I had heard the sefer Torah being read for the last time, a woman called and told me, “My father z”l was born in the city of Kosov. When he was niftar, he left in his will a request that we have a sefer Torah written and bring it to the Kosov shul in Tzfas. The sefer is now completed, and we want to donate it to the shul.”
I was dumfounded by the hashgachah pratis. The phone call came with such amazing timing! The previous sefer Torah hadn’t yet left the shul, and the new one was already on the way, this time a permanent sefer Torah that had been written especially for our shul!
