I am a Yid from Yerushalayim. I have a friend who made Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael from the States. He was married twenty years ago and has been learning in an excellent kollel since then. At first he would travel abroad from time to time, but with time, his trips to chutz la’Aretz became more and more rare until they stopped completely. For fifteen years he didn’t leave Eretz Hakodesh; he’s been learning with hasmadah, breathing the air and being infused with its kedushah, and he had hoped to continue in this way until Moshiach comes.
In the meantime, Moshiach still hasn’t come, and his brother, who lives “in the galus,” was suffering a lot. He was ill, and his situation became complicated; he needed serious treatment in the hospital.
My friend received an urgent call from his brother’s family in America, asking him to come and strengthen his brother physically and spiritually, to give him what only a brother can give. As they say, blood is not water, and here his suffering brother was in need of a great deal of help and encouragement.
My friend understood that he was needed in America, so he quickly arranged everything, prepared all the necessary documents, and boarded a flight.
When he got there, he met his brother whom he hadn’t seen for fifteen years, but within minutes they felt as though they’d been together forever. My friend did his job wholeheartedly, offering his heart and his words, his advice and his time. The years of Torah learning in Eretz Yisrael had done him well, and the presence of a brother from Eretz Hakodesh could only do good for someone living in galus.
Once, when my friend was in the hospital with his brother, he suddenly had a terrible headache. It wasn’t the first time his head hurt, but the intensity of the pain was cause for concern. Here I am in the hospital, he thought to himself. I may as well ask them to examine me.
He was taken in for an examination, and the doctors were shocked. The results of the examination revealed something very problematic, and my friend needed immediate medical intervention.
What would have happened if the same headache had hit him on a routine day in Yerushalayim? He would have said that this was something familiar to him, and there was no need to get excited. You don’t go to the hospital for this sort of thing. He would simply have waited for it to pass.
But he had this intense headache precisely when he came to help his brother in the hospital – and his life was saved.
Sometimes a person thinks he is doing something with mesirus nefesh to help another, and he doesn’t realize that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to help him, to save him and to heal him.
