One cold and rainy winter Shabbat morning found our son Yisroel fearlessly striding along the leafy roads toward Hampstead (in Northwest London), where he read the Torah each week in the local synagogue. He hardly noticed the perfectly manicured privet hedges nor the beautiful trees and flowers in the front gardens as he walked steadfastly towards his destination. His thoughts were focused on the matter at hand: arriving in shul on time to fulfill his responsibility as the baal koreh - Torah reader. As he hurried on his way, Yisroel was overtaken by a red London bus.
Back in the '80s, when this incident took place, London buses still had both a driver and a conductor aboard. While the driver drove the bus, the conductor, wearing a heavy metal ticket machine strapped to his body, supervised the passengers boarding and dismounting the bus. Once they were seated, the conductor would come to their seats collecting their fares in cash and issuing paper tickets from his ticket machine.
On that particular Shabbat, a bus drove past my son as, dressed in his Sabbath best, he purposefully made his way along the winding roads. The driver turned towards the conductor and venomously remarked, "Look at that Jewish kid, walking in his old-fashioned black clothing with that silly hat on his head. I hate the Jews; why do they have to be different? They think they own the world."
Jack, the conductor, a 19-year-old Cockney lad, covered with tattoos and into the world of '80s punk, angrily retorted, "What has that kid or any Jew ever done to you? Why do you hate him?"
The unexpected irritation in Jack's voice surprised the driver. What's got into him, he wondered, Jack is usually so even-tempered. He shrugged his shoulder and carried driving.
But the unprovoked anti-Semitic outburst had unsettled the conductor. Jack had never told his workmates that he was Jewish. Jack's father, Avrohom, a friend of ours, was a Holocaust survivor. Before the war he had lived in Europe. With the onset of World War II, the Nazis had invaded his hometown and his life was changed forever. By a series of miracles, Avrohom survived and escaped to England, the only member of his family still alive after the war.
Avrohom eventually met and married a Jewish girl and had two children, Jack and Donna. Avrohom, now called Arthur, was kind and gentle, but he no longer celebrated the religion of his youth. After his parents divorced, Jack left home, abandoning the few Jewish practices his father had maintained.
Now living alone, Avrohom was befriended by a work-colleague, a Lubavitcher chasid, who often invited him to his home. Slowly Avrohom began to again observe the commandments he had taken pride in as a youth. Eventually Avrohom remarried and become fully observant. He was content and fulfilled with his new life, but was troubled that he had not raised or educated his children to observe Jewish traditions.
After that Shabbat, Jack called his father and told him what had happened. He was extremely upset at the anti-Semitism displayed by the bus driver, and was surprised at his own strong reaction. Avrohom was amazed by Jack's story, and was naturally curious to know the identity of the boy who had so incensed the driver, and consequently had had such an effect on Jack. Assuming that it was likely to be a Lubavitcher boy, he went to the Lubavitcher synagogue and after making some inquiries, identified our Yisroel as the protagonist.
Avrohom animatedly told my son, who had been totally oblivious, the drama that had played out on the bus.
Fast forward a year or so. Jack planned a vacation to the United States, and would be spending some time in New York. Avrohom begged his son to visit the Rebbe in 770. Jack had no desire to do any such thing, but when Avrohom persisted, he reluctantly agreed. When he went past the Rebbe, the Rebbe suggested to Jack that he should study in a yeshiva. The very notion seemed preposterous to Jack; he had no affiliation with anything Jewish and the idea of learning in a yeshiva, whatever that was, was completely alien to him.
However, the Jewish spark which had been aroused on the bus that Shabbat began to stir within him. Very slowly, he became more involved in Judaism. Some 10 years after that fateful Shabbat morning, about nine years after his first visit to the Rebbe, he enrolled in a yeshiva.
More than a quarter century had passed since those events. The synagogues my son attended in the East End have an aging, dwindling membership, and most have long since closed. The Hampstead shul, being in fashionable Northwest London, is fortunately flourishing.
Each Shabbat, sees Yisroel yet again striding along leafy lanes to read the holy words of the Torah. Nowadays he has his own son or two in tow, as he makes the long weekly walk in a far-flung corner of the United States to his own Chabad House, where he continues to be a devoted emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and lamplighter of Jewish souls.
Lieba Rosen
