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Weekly Chasidic Story #760 (s5772-38 / 29 Sivan 5772) Four Days in Brussels "During my flights and business exhibits there's plenty of free time, and I take advantage of it for the Tefilin Campaign of the Lubavitcher Rebbe." Connection: Seasonal - The 18th yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, M. M. Shneerson, on Shabbat
Four Days in BrusselsMy name is Meir Zeiler. My business is manufacturing and selling velvet fabric. I live in Kiryat Malachi in the south of Israel and travel extensively around the world for trade fairs and exhibitions to market our products. For 25 years I made business or exhibition trips outside of Israel only after consulting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe and, thank G-d, I've experienced great success in these efforts. During flights and exhibits there's plenty of free time, and I take advantage of it for the Rebbe's Tefillin Campaign [which began during the Six Day War in 1967]. When setting up exhibits I always arrange a small cubicle for myself to which I can invite Jews to put on tefillin conveniently, and drink light beverages if they wish. I've kept up this custom through the years, and in this too I've met success. Generally speaking, Jews relate to me as a solid businessman, and when they meet me personally, they discover someone proud of his Jewishness, with a full beard. I've always felt that in this way I'm able to add some holiness to the world. In late 1994 [a few months after the Rebbe passed on -ed.] we learned of an international textile exhibition to be held in Brussels for four days, two days of which coincided with Rosh HaShanah. That left one-and-a half days for a presentation. I felt very uncertain about participating: the sum needed to set up a pavilion and pay the staff, plus hotel accommodations, would be in the vicinity of $30,000. In situations like this I always directed my questions to the Rebbe through Rabbi Binyamin Klein [one of the Rebbe's main secretaries], so once again I turned to him first for advice. Rabbi Klein's response was that the Rebbe always encouraged me to participate in exhibitions, and thank G-d I've always been successful. "Go along your time-proven path," he said. "For sure you'll succeed as you have until now." I took the advice, got organized, and set out. Armed with an additional pair of tefillin, a shofar, a Machzor, and a stockpile of kosher food, we opened our exhibit in Brussels. In the afternoon hours of erev Rosh HaShanah, we arranged to close our pavilion and adjust the curtain with a sign: Closed for the Jewish New Year, plus a notice that the stall would be closed two days. As we were finishing, a man, who appeared about 70, accompanied by a woman (his wife, we presumed), came toward us. As he become aware of the sign and the closed curtain, he looked angrily at my staff people and yelled: "What! What's going on here? Who closes an exhibit for something as trivial as this? No one in 1994 relates seriously to Rosh HaShanah!" - His anger and volume increasing with each passing moment. I came out from the pavilion when I heard all the noise outside, and introduced myself as the one in charge. "How can I help you?" I asked him. I barely finished the sentence, when he exploded at me in a torrent of Yiddish: "Who on earth appointed you to close an exhibit because of some insignificant Jewish holiday?! In the world of the 90s who still believes in this lunacy! Days of Judgment? What we went through in Poland - myself, and my family who were destroyed on Rosh HaShanah in Auschwitz' ovens- confirms one thing only: There's no judgment; there's no judge! Drop this craziness! Throw it away! Leave your exhibit open, stay here, and let's sit down to do some business." "I want to tell you something," I said to him, putting my hand on his shoulder. "There is a judgment, and there is a judge. Every last one of my family was also murdered in the Holocaust. But specifically doing this, closing on Rosh HaShanah - is my revenge against Hitler, on the Days of Judgment. And specifically because there is a judgment and a judge, I'm going to do yet another mitzvah and help you put on tefillin. Here, inside...." That
set him boiling again: "What! Tefillin? We left those back there.
What worth, what point has any of this after the Holocaust?! How you waste your
time...." He is furious: "Forget it!" he bellows, but he follows me inside nevertheless. Finally
we're standing alone in my cubicle, away from the crowd gathered around the exhibit.
Suddenly he's compliant, like a child. He rolls up his left sleeve; I take the
tefillin and start putting them on him, and he repeats after me word by
word: Baruch Atah...tefillin. It was a while before he calmed down. Someone brought him some cold water to wash his face, and a cup of tea. His wife, standing by him the whole time, was stunned, speechless; the crowd surrounded us, staring, tense. When he was composed I asked him what he did; what brought him to the exhibit. He told me his name was Lieberman, and said that at the age of 18 he had gone through the Holocaust. He managed to survive, and reach Chile, where the Jewish community put him back on his feet. But he fled from anything with the faintest scent of Judaism. "For 55 years I've avoided all this," he
said. "I raised a small family, and didn't worry about passing along any
Jewish values. I live in an exclusive gentile area. I built up a fish canning
factory, and I'm quite successful in production and marketing. He finished speaking, and
disappeared into the milling crowds. I stood there, awed by the Divine Guidance
that takes a Jewish fish merchant from a deep abyss in Chile all the way to a
Brussels textile exhibit - to wake up his Jewish spark, and put on tefillin.
Biographical note:
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Source:
Kfar Chabad Magazine - English (Spring 2002), as retold by Tuvia Natkin, and lightly
edited by Yerachmiel Tilles [including all the remarks in square brackets].
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.