The holy tzaddik, Rebbe Yeshaya’le of Kerestir zy”a, requested in his sacred will that the ohel (tomb structure) to be built over his resting place should have several windows.
However, after the Holocaust, when the surviving Jews returned to the city of Kerestir and rebuilt the ohel upon his sacred tziyun, they somehow forgot to make openings for windows in its walls. In their haste to complete the ohel before the wicked authorities then ruling the Soviet Union would object, they quickly erected the structure and neglected the windows.
Yet, several decades later, when the Iron Curtain fell and multitudes began making great pilgrimages to his holy resting place, several of his descendants realized that the ohel had no windows. They immediately set out to correct this, following the tzaddik’s will, and opened large windows in the walls of the ohel, as can still be seen to this day.
To everyone’s astonishment, several caretakers and descendants testified that from the very day those windows were opened, wondrous salvations began to occur at the site. They explained that aside from the practical benefit — that the many worshippers standing outside the ohel, unable to enter due to the great crowding within, could now participate in prayer through the windows — the opening of those windows also opened the Gates of Heaven, bringing down abundant blessing and salvation.
This idea parallels what we find regarding windows. The Beis Yosef (Orach Chaim 90) writes:
“A person should pray only in a house that has windows, as Rabbi Chanina said (Berachos 34b): ‘One should not pray in a room without windows.’ Rashi explains that windows cause a person to focus his heart, as he gazes heavenward and becomes humbled. The students of Rabbeinu Yonah add that the sight of daylight settles one’s mind, enabling proper concentration. And the Zohar (Parashas Pekudei 251a) writes that there should be twelve windows, for hidden mystical reasons.” So too rules the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 90:4).
The Zohar continues, “Fortunate are Yisrael in this world and in the World to Come, for they know the ways of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and how to cleave to Him in unity as is fitting... These ‘windows’ and ‘lattices’ are channels through which all the prayers ascend from below to above and are received on high before the Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Therefore, any beis k’nesses that lacks windows is not a proper place for tefillah. For the beis k’nesses below corresponds to the heavenly beis k’nesses above — and since the heavenly one has windows, so must the earthly one, that the worlds may reflect one another and the glory of Hashem be exalted in all. Hence, בְּיוֹם רָעָה יְמַלְּטֵהוּ ה’ - In the day of trouble Hashem will deliver him (Tehillim 41:2).”
Accordingly, those windows at the tziyun of the holy Rebbe of Kerestir also serve as channels through which the heartfelt s of Yisrael ascend — especially when Jews come in their distress, each one with his own burden — and indeed, in the day of trouble the Lord will deliver him.
