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Weekly Chasidic Story #727 (s5772-06 /3 Cheshvan 5772) You Never Know He went to the Mohel in Germany to finally be circumcised, but an extraordinary technical obstacle arose. Connection: Weekly Torah - Circumcision
You Never KnowThe black-hatted man on your left in the photo is Yitzchak-Mendel Wagner, a Chabad rabbi in Krefeld, Germany, his home town, located northwest of Dusseldorf, and the first and only rabbi there since WWII. The gentleman in the middle is a Russian Jew named Leonid, who left Russia and now lives in Germany. His parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts were all members of the communist party, and as such, they never gave their children any Jewish education. After all, the communist party was renowned for being against religion. For Leonid's entire life, until this day, he remembers absolutely nothing Jewish ever happening in his home.
Rabbi Wagner flew with Leonid to Belgium. They arrived at the office of the mohel, who took Leonid upstairs for the circumcision. Rabbi Wagner and a few of his and Leonid's friends read Tehillim (Book of Psalms). After ten minutes, the mohel returned to them and said that he never had such a case as this. Leonid had already been circumcised! Not that he was born circumcised as sometimes, although very rarely, can happen, but that he already had a kosher circumcision by a proper mohel! Leonid had no awareness of it. All his life his parents never told him. He did not even know what a bris mila was. He had been told that the mohel was going to cut something off of him, a "minor surgery," and had prepared himself emotionally for the ordeal. He couldn't understand why it wasn't happening. The mohel called a second mohel to verify what he thought. The second mohel said that this was a one in a million story. So it was only now, after 46 years, that Leonid learned of the
mesirus nefesh (dedicated self sacrifice) of his parents. If the mila
had been discovered, his parents would have lost their positions in the Party,
their jobs, their home,…everything. And then they would have had to look
for new work in a hostile environment. But still, they somehow found a way in
communist Russia in 1955, while living as communists, to arrange a secret bris
mila, a bris so secret that even their son did not know about it
until this year!
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His
father passed away 23 years ago, and two years ago his mother also passed away.
He went to the local Chabad shul (synagogue) to say kaddish (the
mourner's prayer) for her. Leonid liked what he saw there, and he continued
on. In the two years since his mother's death, he has grown in Torah observance.
Yerachmiel
Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and chief editor
of this website (and of KabbalaOnline.org). He has hundreds of published stories
to his credit, and many have been translated into other languages. He tells
them live at Ascent nearly every Saturday night.