A Boyaner chasid came to Melbourne, Australia, this year for the High Holidays to be the chazan (cantor). Rabbi Mottel Krasnjanski noticed that from time to time in the middle of the services he would pause and glance at a little piece of paper that he had placed on the podium with his Machzor (High Holiday prayer book). After the services were over, Rabbi Krasnjanski asked the chazan about the paper.
The chazan replied that about 20 years earlier, before the High Holidays, he had gone to the Lubavitcher Rebbe on a Sunday when the Rebbe distributed dollars to be given to charity. The chazan told the Rebbe that he was going to be a chazan in a certain shul. The Rebbe's response was, "M'darf gedeinken az m'davent tzum Oibershten." ("We must remember that we are praying to G-d.")
The chazan appreciated the nice thought but didn't take it too seriously at the time. After the holidays that year, however, it suddenly occurred to him that throughout the services he was so preoccupied with remembering the tunes, hitting the notes crisply, creating the right emotions through his voice, that he really hadn't thought much about G-d! He then realized that the Rebbe hadn't just told him a "nice thought," but rather had given him guidance and something to work on.
"Since then," the chazan concluded, "whenever I lead the prayers, I carry with me this piece of paper on which I wrote the Rebbe's message, 'We must remember that we are praying to G-d,' and look at it from time to time during the prayers to make sure that I never forget it!"
Rabbi Krasnjanski asked the chazan what brought him to the Lubavitcher Rebbe that Sunday for a dollar? The chazan answered that he had previously corresponded with the Rebbe, and then began to relate the following story:
"Years earlier, as a young man, I would go every Thursday to the grave of Rabbi Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar (known as the "Ohr Hachaim" after his Torah commentary by that name). There in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives, I would study the weekly Torah portion with the commentary of the holy Ohr Hachaim.
"At the time, the Mount of Olives was not a totally safe place to be. And, sure enough, one time when I was studying at the Ohr Hachaim's grave, I turned around and saw an Arab standing behind him with a drawn knife. Petrified I turned back to the grave and beseeched the Ohr Hachaim to protect me from the great and immediate danger in
