The sun was setting. The holiness of Rosh Hashanah filled the world. Hearts pounded with emotion in every community in Am Yisrael, even in the most remote places.
Rav Yochanan Brizel, a veteran baal chessed and kiruv activist, usually does not spend Yom Tov in Eretz Yisrael. Each year, he flies to a different place, seeking ways to disseminate light to warm the hearts of Yidden who were not raised with Torah and mitzvos, and to give them a bit of true Jewish flavor filled with spiritual pleasure.
There are many locations around the globe where secularity and impurity have become dominant, and they need someone with a heart that is fiery in its avodas Hashem to come and touch the souls and ignite that spark that is buried deep in every Yid – his holy neshamah.
Rav Brizel usually spends Rosh Hashanah in Ukraine, but this time, he decided to travel to the small city of Vnukovo, near Moscow, the capital of Russia.
Vnukovo is known as the “city of students” because many students choose to live specifically there. The large educational institutions are located in Moscow, but for that reason, rent there is very high. Some choose to rent another apartment with a number of partners and they split the cost of the rent, while others prefer to rent apartments for a lower price in Vnukovo, which is not far away, and thus they save on expenses.
Many of the students in the city are Jews, but not the type that go to cheder at age three to learn aleph beis with a melamed. No one ever gave them honey to lick, and to feel the sweetness of the holy letters. Their father never carried them wrapped in a tallis to the melamed when they turned three. These Jews did not merit to put on tefillin at age thirteen, and they have no idea what Judaism is and what it means for them.
Each Sunday, the day off for the students, there are kiruv activities in Vnukovo to introduce Judaism to these students, usually through Torah shiurim. They are taught what every little boy already knows: about shofar and tzitzis and sukkah. They start from zero. Some of them visit the Jewish center regularly and others only come from time to time, as they invest most of their time and effort on their studies.
That year, the second day of Rosh Hashanah fell on Sunday, and as such, many students came, as every week, to the shul, to participate in the kiruv activities.
When they entered, some of the students were very taken aback at the sight of the packed shul, and wondered who the Jew dressed in white, the chazzan, standing at the eastern wall of the shul, was. They also were very surprised why the shiur they had come to did not begin, nor end...It was necessary to explain to them the meaning of tefillah and its role on the Yom Hadin.
In order to bring the students closer, the sale of the kibbudim in the shul took place in a unique format. Most of the honors were not sold for money, but rather for perakim of Mishnayos that the students pledged to learn. For those who had already made progress and could learn a daf Gemara, kibbudim were for sold to them for pages of Gemara.
But as is known “if there is no kemach there is no Torah” and therefore, some of the kibbudim were sold for actual money. One of those was pesichas ha’aron on Rosh Hashanah night, before the recital of LeDovid Mizmor.
The pesichah was purchased by an elderly person who lived in the city. He was a simple man, and no one understood why he insisted on competing with the mispallelim to merit this kibbud, and kept raising his bid to acquire it. With his wisdom, Rav Brizel understand that there was a story here...
After davening, Rav Brizel approached the buyer, and asked to hear the story behind the purchase. The Yid answered willingly and this was the story he emotionally told Rav Brizel:
“About two years ago, I decided to establish a small factory. Building such a factory was very expensive, and I’m not a rich man...so I took a big loan from the bank. Based on the reckoning that I made, after a few months, I’d start to earn a profit, and then I’d be able to meet my loan repayments, which were spread over many years. I would even be left with a nice sum each month to earn a good living.
“But then the war began. Russia invaded Ukraine and launched brutal battles. When I heard about the war, my heart sank and I began to fret. War is a hard time, not the type of time when orders flow in and you see profits...I was sure that the merchandise that I was producing would not be in demand during wartime, and I would not be able to profit as much as I had thought. I might even sustain losses. What would be with the loan I took from the bank? How would I return it?!
“There was nothing I could do besides pray,” this man told Rav Brizel. “I pleaded with Hashem to send me salvation and spare me from losing all my assets, even though, by nature, there was no chance of that happening. I believed that He is the Almighty and He can do anything, even when the situation seems lost. I davened that He would be at my side, and would open the gates of success for me, despite the difficult times.
Gratitude in Front of the Aron Kodesh
A short time later, the West began to impose economic sanctions on Russia. They ordered a range of limitations to make it harder for Russia to function economically, in an effort to punish Russia and to deter it from continuing its war.
“Until that time, the products that I manufacture were largely imported to Russia from factories in the West. Due to the sanctions, the governments forbade those factories from continuing to export to Russia. So there was a huge shortage all over Russia for precisely those products that I was producing...Now, orders began to stream in from around the country and my merchandise was snapped up. I doubled my production rate, expanded the factory, raised prices – and still the merchandise was selling fast. My profits swelled! Not only did I meet my loan repayments, I was able to pay back a big chunk of the loan before it came due...
“For this reason,” the man concluded his beautiful story of emunah, “it was very important for me to purchase pesichah on Rosh Hashanah night. After LeDovid Mizmor, it is customary to say the tefillah for parnassah, and I wanted to say it in front of the open Aron Kodesh, in gratitude and joy for the fact that HaKadosh Baruch Hu accepted my tefillah, and transformed my grief to elation and opened for me the gates of parnassah.”
Likras Shabbos Malkesa Issue 408
