In a previous story, I mentioned that after we opened the Chabad House at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, my next project was opening Chabad of West Bloomfield. How that came about was in itself interesting.
The main center of Chabad of Michigan was on Nine Mile Road in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit. Most of the Chabad Anash and shluchim lived around that center. Rabbi Yankel Kranz a”h, was the rabbi of that center. He was very sharp, and he too taught me a lot and had a strong influence on me, in my early years of shlichus. He was a dynamic, charismatic rabbi who influenced many special people in returning to their Jewish roots.
The lawyer Shaya Levine, who played a major role in both the acquisition of the Farmington Cheder Building together with the Labor Zionist Organization as well as in the purchase of the Ann Arbor Chabad House, (two previous stories,) was brought to Yiddishkeit through Rabbi Kranz. There was a group of seven very talented girls, who were dubbed “the magnificent seven,” that were influenced by Rabbi Kranz. Some of them went on to become shluchos in their own right.
One of the interesting lessons that he taught me was that you don’t have to be a great fundraiser to be a successful shliach. He, in fact, was not a great fundraiser. His strength and talent was in knowing how to get the most out of every dollar spent. He was able to make classy dinners, programs and projects and would cut costs only in the “behind the scenes” preparations. The visible appearance always looked like a “million dollar production.” Unfortunately, I never quite got the hang of that talent myself, but thank G-d, my wife has that talent and through the years, some of my secretaries had that same talent.
One of the special people that Rabbi Kranz started bringing closer to Torah observance was a successful accountant, Erwin Hollander a”h. This young man lived with his wife and three little children in Oak Park, quite near to the Chabad shul. He became a member and regular attendee to Shabbat services. When Rabbi Kranz left Michigan, first to start Chabad in San Diego, California and then to become Head Shliach in Virginia, he paired me off with some of his mushpa’im, those being influenced by him in their journey of growth in Torah and mitzvos. Erwin Hollander was one of them.
I began learning Shulchan Aruch (The Code of Jewish Law) with him every morning for about 20 minutes. We began learning the Laws of Shabbos and one day he turned to me and said, “You know, you can never appreciate Shabbos as much as I can. As an accountant, I worked 24/7. I never had time to stop and rest. Now that I stopped working on Shabbos, I can appreciate the beauty of its ‘rest’ like none of those of you who never worked on Shabbos.” I, of course, wholeheartedly agreed with him.
In the early years, of his transformation to Torah observance, his wife Carol, who was fearfully watching her husband changing into someone different than the person she married, was quite understandably upset and antagonistic towards his attending services and programs at the Chabad Center. [She eventually became totally supportive of him, and together they had much Yiddishe nachasfrom their children and grandchildren.] One day, he asked me during learning, “didn’t you once tell me that there is a Jewish Law that if a student is sent into exile, his teacher must also go with him into exile?” [The Jewish law he was referring to was that if one person inadvertently kills another, he is required to go to one of six especially designated “refuge cities” that were set up in the time of the Jewish Commonwealth. He had to live there until the Kohein Gadol (the High Priest) of that generation passed away. If the one exiled, was a Torah student, in order to make sure that his Torah studies were not interrupted, his teacher was commanded to join him in his exile.] I agreed that his memory was correct. So he told me that his wife, wanting him to stop having anything to do with us and the Chabad Center “forced him” to buy a house in the outlying suburb of West Bloomfield where there was no Orthodox synagogue. He had no choice and would soon be moving there. So he continued, “according to that law, you are required to move, or at least start a Chabad shul, in my new neighborhood.” I smiled, and said, “Speak to Rabbi Shemtov, and if he agrees, I am willing to do so.”
Now, as wild and undoable as this idea sounds, there was reason at the time for Rabbi Shemtov and I to consider it a viability. For the past year Rabbi Kagan and I were running a successful weekly Shabbaton for university students in the Farmington Cheder building, as mentioned previously. There was no reason to believe that that program wasn’t going to continue. So the idea we came up with was that, since I and my family anyway were spending Shabbos in the Cheder building with Rabbi Kagan and the students, Shabbos morning I would walk the 3 ½ miles to West Bloomfield to run a minyan and then return to the Shabbaton program, leaving Rabbi Kagan to run the davening himself. So we all agreed, and I committed to starting this West Bloomfield project.
This seems to have totally bent Satan out of shape, so after the summer, when both projects -- the Shabbatons to restart and the West Bloomfield minyan to begin -- were supposed to happen, Rabbi Kagan informed me that the weekly Shabbatons were cancelled. I never really heard why, but figured one of two reasons, or a combination of both. It was not an easy thing for the Kagans and ourselves, to pack up our families and all the home cooked Shabbos meals for a crowd every Friday and move into the cheder building for Shabbos, with all of us sleeping on mattresses on the floor in classrooms that had to be rearranged before and after. Also, the year before was such an amazing success that 22 of our regular students went off to learn in different yeshivas. So Rabbi Kagan informed Rabbi Shemtov that he is discontinuing the weekly Shabbatons. This now created a different scenario. It would mean that it would only be my family spending every Shabbos in the cheder building while Shabbos morning I would leave my wife and kids alone while I made the 3 ½ mile trek to West Bloomfield and back, and the three hours spent there for davening and Kiddush. Had I not already made the commitment to Erwin Hollander, I don’t know if I would have done so, but the commitment was made so I kept it. There were some Shabbosim that I wanted to be part of Shabbos in Oak Park, so I would leave my family in Oak Park for Shabbos and I would walk the 15 miles one way, so that I could run the minyan.
The very first time I did so there was an interesting outcome. It was one Shabbos in the Fall. One of my mekuravim had a baby boy and they wanted me at the Shalom Zachor Friday night. So I got up at 4:00 a.m. Shabbos morning, prepared krias haTorah, went to the mikva and started the 4 hour trek. It was a slightly cool Fall pre-dawn, but warm enough for me not to wear an overcoat, just my Shabbos kapota. However, just as I passed the first mile, the heavens opened up and it started to pour. The rest of the fourteen mile hike it was just raining heavily. It is no exaggeration when I say that it felt like there was someone flying overhead with an unending bucket of water that was being dumped on my head the entire way. Normally, I was the first one at the Ealy Public School, where we were renting the auditorium for services, in order to set up the shul. However, this time when I got there, the minyan of regulars were already there. When I walked in I was so soaked through and through, that water was literally flowing out of my bodyclothing. None of us ever saw anything like that in our lives. They all asked me in surprise, where I had walked from? I told them Oak Park. None of them would believe me except for Erwin Hollander, who knew me and knew it was true.
I did not learn of the effect this had until 6 months later. Since I was always in shul first and left last, I never realized that every single one of the people in the minyan would drive to shul on Shabbos. Even Erwin Hollander who lived right behind the school, a 5 minute walk, would jump in his car, drive out of his sub-division, and drive all the way around to park in the school parking lot. A longer drive than if he had walked. I had no clue. Six months later, Hollander told me that he had wanted to tell me earlier but the rest of the minyan didn’t let him because they thought I would be upset. Erwin knew me well enough to know not only would I not be upset I would be very happy to hear it. Only half a year later, when the rest of the minyan began to understand me, they realized he was right about what my reaction would be and they allowed him to tell me. You see, that Shabbos that I walked into shul with water pouring out of me like a fire hydrant, after davening they all went out to the parking lot to their cars. They were all parked in the same area. Every one of them stopped and looked at each other. They said, one to another, “Are we crazy? The Rabbi can walk in pouring rain 15 miles and we have an issue of walking less than a mile?!?” Right then, they all left their cars in the lot, walked home, and resolved never to drive to shul again.”
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