The Bas Ayin was niftar childless, and his kever in Tzfas is noted as a place of yeshuos. As he has done in the last several years, the famous mashpia Harav Elimelech Biderman presides over a yahrtzeit seudah in Tzfas, and also arranges for many buses from across Eretz Yisrael to converge on Tzfas, bringing many thousands in need of yeshuos and refuos to daven at the kever. (To donate a seudah le’ilu nishmas the great Bas Ayin, Harav Avraham Dov Auerbach of Ovritch, on his yahrtzeit email us at [email protected])
Those in the original chaburah remember the young man who hadn’t been blessed with children. They recall how he shared his pain with Reb Meilech on one of those Thursday nights in Reb Shloim’ke’s dirah opposite the Mir.
Reb Meilech listened and said, “Next week is the Bas Ayin’s yahrtzeit. You will host the seudah in your home.”
The yungerman was bewildered by the advice, but the next week, the little group gathered in his apartment. Nine months later, they rejoiced when their friend had his first child, a girl.
Why the Bas Ayin?
No one can know for sure, but a close talmid speculates. Nearly every single vort in the sefer Bas Ayin centers around the same theme: Hachna’ah. Submissiveness. And who takes up less space than Rav Meilech Biderman? He is a smile and voice, a call of courage and hope, but he takes nothing, asks for nothing, needs nothing. The man who dances on tables and throws himself on kevarim, who sits down on the low wall outside the shul after the shiur to chat with a dejected 15-year-old bochur.
