Another anecdote from after our wedding and before actually leaving to Michigan for our full time shlichus. The custom was that for the first year after marriage the young couple would eat the Shabbos meals with their parents. My mother was not very happy when we informed her that we were going to be eating at our own home on Shabbos for we wanted very much to have our own guests for the Shabbos meals. She wanted very much to be a part of that so she sent gefilte fish for the meals. However, she had no clue as to what we meant about having guests. So she would send each week three pieces of gefilte fish. We never told her that from the first Shabbos after Sheva Berachos, we never had less than 10 guests for each Shabbos meal.
The very first Shabbos after Sheva Berachos, Lubavitch Yoiuth Organization hosted a Shabbaton for a group of teenagers from Long Island, NY. A group of them stayed by us. One of the girls was a girl named Judy. Of course, we were always very into calling all our guests by their Hebrew names, so we called her by her Hebrew name as well – Yehudis. That Shabbos I spoke at one of the sessions and I encouraged all the teenagers that they should commit to keeping just one mitzvah that they learned about during that weekend. Yehudis committed to washing negel vaaser at her bedside. During those 7-8 months that we remained in New York we had Yehudis over for Shabbos two more times, and each time she would commit to another mitzvah. One of the weeks she asked if we could pick her up from her home in Amityville, NY since she had no way of getting to us, I agreed, and both my wife and I went to pick her up, which was when we also met her mother. Unfortunately we misjudged the Friday afternoon traffic and we ended up walking about a mile to our home, because of the onset of Shabbos before we got there. When we realized that we weren’t going to make it in time for candle-lighting, we called a bochur who was a regular weekly Shabbos guest, Yerachmiel Benjaminson (he eventually became the founding director of Tzivos Hashem) and he ran over to our apartment and set up the blech and lit Shabbos candles for us.
We lost contact with Yehudis when we moved to Michigan. 13 years later, after we left Michigan to our next stage of shlichus in Alabama, we spent a summer in New York. Numerous times through the years I wondered whatever happened to Yehudis? So that summer I figured let me take a wild shot. I looked up the number of her parents in Amityville and sure enough they were listed. So I called and her mother answered the phone. I asked if Yehudis was in, and was totally bowled over when she shrieked “Itchie, it so nice to hear from you. She doesn’t live here anymore. She is married and you will be happy to hear that she became totally religious and her and her husband live in Flatbush.” I was amazed, to say the least, that after 13 years her mother was able to recognize my voice. She gave me Yehudis’ telephone number and I called her home in Flatbush. Yehudis’ husband, Richard, answered the phone and when I asked for Yehudis, he too yelled out, Itchie it is so nice to hear from you.” At this I was totally confused, how would he know who I am, I never met him? How would he recognize my voice? When Yehudis got on the phone, I told her how awesome it was that after 13 years her mother still recognized my voice, but how would her husband, whom I’ve never met, be able to know who I am? Yehudis laughed and explained, that it had nothing to do with voice recognition. Everyone knows her as Judy, I was the only one in the world who ever called her Yehudis! We arranged a time for my wife and I to get together with her and her husband.
When we met, she gave us a run down on her journey and growth in yiddishkeit. We were amazed at her strength in giving up things which meant a lot to her, when she realized it was not consistent with Jewish law. Just one example: she loved dancing and wanted to be a professional dancer. She studied for it and put a lot into it. However, when she learnt that it was not acceptable in Jewish law for her to dance in front of men, she gave it up. On the other hand, since a lot of what she learned about Judaism was self-taught, she didn’t understand the importance of other things. She also opened up to us her pain at the fact that they were already married for a number of years and couldn’t have children. We recommended that she and her husband accept upon themselves to keep the laws of family purity and to write to the Rebbe for his blessings. They did so, and B”H they now have children. Once again, Hashem showed us His kindness in allowing us to see how much a little effort on our part had such far-reaching effects.
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68. A Bewitching Story: In order to appreciate my next story, I want to first tell a story told by Rabbi Yosef Wineberg a”h, who travelled the world as the Rebbe’s shliach. Although in today’s age such stories are much less prevalent than in the past, there are still such things happening and especially in South American countries (I believe in Africa as well) where people are very heavily involved in the occult. In a certain South American country there was a woman who was a large donor to Lubavitch institutions through Rabbi Wineberg’s efforts. One day she shared the following story with Rabbi Wineberg: Her husband had died and after the period of mourning, she needed to get her life back in order, especially her financial situation. Her husband basically had left all the necessary documents and papers in order, and so it was generally well organized. However, when she came upon a certain aspect of the finances, one that was related to a large amount of money, she could ...
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