This story was sent to us several years ago. About two weeks ago, the person who it happened to asked us to once again share this story in this section. He says that this story is on his mind all the time, as the living testimony of the reward of rising early to go to shul to say Birchos Hashachar bechavrusa.
It was early morning. As Reb Wolf walked down the street, he glanced at the shuttered window of the shul, and something did not look right to him. He took a closer look as he picked up his pace. There was a dim, orange glow flickering in the window, lighting up the darkness and causing his heart to skip a beat.
A few weeks earlier, on a Friday morning, his eye caught sight of the Vechol Ma’aminim pamphlet. When he read about the great virtue of reciting Birchos Hashachar bechavrusa, he decided to be strict about this practice each morning, before davening.
On that very Sunday, Reb Wolf was the first one to turn the lights on in the shul. Ten minutes before davening, he was already seated in his place, wrapped in his tefillin, after he had recited Birchos Hashachar bechavrusa with Reb Tzvi Hirsh, one of the veteran members of the vasikin minyan, slowly reciting the parshiyos of the Korbanos.
This heralded a new dawn in his life. On that day, he davened in a way that he hadn’t davened in a very long time. When the tefillah was over, he decided that from now on, he did not want to forfeit this pleasure.
Reb Wolf continued this practice in the subsequent days. He was surprised at how easy it was for him and how his tefillah, recited properly, filled him with much satisfaction.
Friday was a relatively sparse day at the vasikin minyan. Many of the mispallelim were in no hurry on this day, and they got up a bit later. But even on Friday, Reb Wolf rose early to be the first one in shul. And now, he was walking at that early hour towards the shul, and noticing the flickering light through the windows.
As Reb Wolf drew closer, an acrid odor assailed his nose. It was the smell of scorched plastic. He ran and opened the door, and was hit by a thick cloud of smoke. Reb Wolf coughed and quickly pulled out his phone to call the fire department. At the same time, he pulled the fire extinguisher from its place and began to spray. Even after the fire was out, smoke kept pouring out of the electric box, and the fire department, which arrived pretty quickly at the scene, had a lot of work to do.
The vasikin minyan took place that morning in a nearby shul. After davening, Reb Wolf went to the shul to see what the damages were. The last of the firefighters was still there. The lobby was filthy, but the shul itself, which was actually a very flammable caravan structure, was untouched.
“The initial firefighting action that you took saved your shul,” the firefighter said as he wrote down the final details in his report. “If you would have come just five minutes later, you may not have had what to save. The fire would have spread very rapidly through such a structure, and within minutes, would have swallowed the whole thing, including the sifrei Torah and the seforim.”
Reb Wolf looked at the sooty walls, and realized what the firefighter was saying. He lowered his eyes to the floor, which was flooded with black water, and spotted a colorful pamphlet. He quickly picked it up; the heading “Vechol Ma’aminim” was hardly legible...
“Today is Friday,” he recalled.
“It’s all in the merit of this pamphlet,” he said, and didn’t wait for the firefighter to understand.
Shaarei Yeshuah
The Segulah of Answering Amen
