The Siddur and the Song

Rabbi Avrohom Gold was walking through the streets of Yerushalayim when a stranger stopped him.

"Are you from Detroit?” the stranger asked him.

"Yes,” Rabbi Gold replied.

"Then I have a story you need to hear."

Rabbi Gold explained that he was on his way to his mother-in-law's home and was already running late.

The man smiled. “Your mother-in-law will be very happy you stopped. This story is about her."

Well then, Rabbi Gold thought, then I certainly should hear what he has to say.

In the 1930s, the Klein family* settled in Detroit, where proper Jewish education was difficult to find. Their daughter grew up with almost no connection to Yiddishkeit and eventually drifted far from her roots.

When she announced that she intended to marry a non- Jew, her father was devastated.

During a trip to New York, Mr. Klein met a frum young Holocaust survivor named Yisrael.* Impressed by him, he encouraged Yisrael to move to Detroit, promising to help him find work and rebuild his life. Deep-down, Mr. Klein hoped that perhaps his daughter would take an interest in him and reconsider her plans.

But when Yisrael arrived, she wanted nothing to do with him. Her mind was made up.

In one final attempt, Mr. Klein offered to send his daughter to Eretz Yisrael for several weeks, all expenses paid. He hoped that seeing the land and experiencing Yiddishkeit firsthand might awaken something within her. He promised that if she returned unchanged, he would no longer stand in her way. She agreed.

During her trip, she visited Meron. The niggunim, the dancing, and the intensity of the tefillos stirred her deeply. At one point, she noticed a man davening with extraordinary concentration from a small white siddur. When he finished, she asked if she could borrow it. He gladly handed it to her. When she was done, he told her she could keep it.

She returned to Detroit carrying the small white siddur, but told her father that her decision had not changed. She still intended to marry the non-Jew. Her father was heartbroken, but he had given his word.

Then, one Shabbos, as she was walking down the street, she heard a niggun drifting from a home in her neighborhood. She stopped. It was the same niggun she had heard in Meron. She stood outside listening as the melody stirred everything she had felt there. Something inside her shifted.

When she returned home, she told her father that she had changed her mind. She would not marry the non-Jew. Soon afterward, she agreed to meet Yisrael, and this time, she saw him differently. Before long, they became engaged, much to her father's immeasurable joy.

One afternoon, while visiting his kallah, Yisrael asked if he could borrow a siddur for Minchah. She brought him the small white siddur from Meron. He opened the cover, and then he froze. The color drained from his face. "Where did you get this?” he asked her.

She told him about the man she had seen davening in Meron, the stranger who had lent her his siddur and then insisted that she keep it.

Yisrael's hands began to tremble. “The name written inside this siddur is my brother's name."

For years, Yisrael had believed that his brother had perished in the Holocaust. Now, holding his siddur, he realized that his brother had survived.

The young woman's journey to Eretz Yisrael had not only changed the course of her own life. It had revealed that a brother long believed lost was still alive.

The man in Yerushalayim then turned to Rabbi Gold.

"And do you know which home that niggun was coming from on the Shabbos when she changed her mind?” Rabbi Gold shook his head. "It was the home of your in-laws, Rav and Rebbetzin Kahane."

Rabbi Gold stood speechless.

A niggun sung inside an ordinary Jewish home had drifted through an open window and stopped a young woman in her tracks. That melody led her back to Yiddishkeit, brought her together with her roots, and ultimately helped reunite a family torn apart by the Holocaust.

Rav and Rebbetzin Kahane had never known who was standing outside their home that Shabbos. They had never known what their singing had set in motion. (Heard from Harav Eli Yelen.)