1501 (5787-02) 3 Tishrei 5787 (Sept.14, 2026)

"A Chasid's Skeptical Question on Yom Kippur"

Rabbi Mendel Futerfass was transferred to a Siberian concentration camp and squeezed into a hall, where about sixty beds were crammed in tiers on the surrounding walls. All the hardened criminals snatched the best places, while he was pushed into a corner. He tried his best to be inconspicuous.

Why this week? This coming Sunday night is the beginning of Yom Kippur.

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A Chasid's Skeptical Question on Yom Kippur

Rabbi Mendel Futerfass was a chasid of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the Rebbe said that everyone must be prepared to sacrifice their lives to ensure that as many Jews as possible get a genuine Torah education, even in [or especially in] the G-dless U.S.S.R, where Reb Mendel was born and lived.

Eventually, Reb Mendel was arrested, charged with the subversive activity of teaching Judaism and put in jail shortly after Rosh HaShana 5708 (1947) until his trial. It was pretty clear that he would be found guilty and spend the rest of his life in Siberia, which in most cases wasn't much time at all.

A few days had gone by in his damp prison cell together with dozens of violent criminals, when he realized with dread that he would have to be there for all of Yom Kippur; The day of Forgiveness!

On one hand he was sad to spend the holiest day of the year in this hell of a prison. But on the other hand he was alive! And Jewish! And…a chasid of the Lubavitcher Rebbe! And that means, he said to himself, he must rise above the situation! That is what being a chasid is about.

That Yom Kippur night he decided he would consider his bed (which was a long plank of wood attached to the wall) to be a little Synagogue, and do his best to blank out the presence of the scary violent criminals and anti-Semitic Russian guards while he prayed. So he sat on the sole seat in his shul (i.e. his bed) and said as many of the prayers of Yom Kipper as he remembered by heart.

But it wasn't so easy. The prayers of Yom Kippur are only said once a year and there are a lot of them. He succeeded somehow in saying the evening and morning prayers by heart. But when he reached of the lengthy complex poems of Musaf [a second "Additional" morning prayer], he only remembered a small fraction, and that with difficulty.

One prayer, however, stood out in his mind: a poem of the twenty-two lines, and each line begins with the words "Everyone believes…" ("Kol Ma'aminim"), and the third word on each line is in aleph-beit sequence:
So, in the stillness of the night, while everyone else was asleep, he sat swaying gently back and forth on his bed praying quietly to the Creator:
[beginnings of selected sample verses]
And all believe that HE is and there is none other…
And all believe that HE knows our deepest feelings…
And all believe that HE remembers the Covenant…
And all believe that HE is good to all…
And all believe that HE is a righteous judge…etc.

Suddenly the thought entered his mind "Oy, what am I saying here? 'Everyone believes? Everyone believes!' What about the evil communist regime? And what of the Jews of the atheist bloodthirsty Yevsektsia ('Jewish division' of the communist party), who are so fiercely dedicated to wipe out any mention of G-d and His people?

Reb Mendel put this new question aside and finished his prayers.

Two weeks later he was transferred to a concentration camp and squeezed into a hall, where about sixty beds were crammed in tiers on the surrounding walls. All the hardened criminals snatched the best places, while he was pushed into a corner.
He tried his best to be inconspicuous. It was Shabbat night, so he decided to wait until all the other prisoners were sound asleep. Finally, he was able to close his eyes and immerse myself in the Shabbat prayers.

Suddenly he felt that someone was staring at him. He looked up. It was Ivan, a huge mountain of a man with a scarred ugly face featuring a thick Uzbek mustache. Everyone knew him and was afraid of him. He was a known murderer. Now it seems that he had set his sights on poor Reb Mendel.

Ivan jumped silently from his bed, crouching like a huge cat and quietly approached the Rabbi. When he reached Reb Mendel he bent down, put his face into his and whispered forcefully and slowly, "You're Jewish, right?"

Reb Mendel never hid his Judaism; better to die a Jew than to live a lie. He looked him in the eye and answered firmly, "Yes!"

"And you are praying now, aren't you?" Reb Mendel nodded.
The murderer pointed to his own chest and whispered clearly, "So am I."

Reb Mendel was stunned.

"And I'll tell you something else" Ivan continued, "I even fasted this Yom Kippur!.

He paused for what seemed an eternity and continued. "A few days ago I heard one of the Jewish prisoners say 'Tomorrow is Yom Kippur' and I don't know why, but I did it; I decided I was going to fast!
The next day I told the guards I was sick and they put me in the 'hospital' (which was no more than an empty room with a wooden bed in it) and locked the door. I just sat there.

After a while, however, I felt really uneasy. Then I remembered that my grandfather took me to services and he used to pray and cry to G-d with all the other Jews. Then suddenly I remembered a prayer!

"It was something my grandmother used to say to me every morning when she woke me up. I remembered her soft, sad eyes and I began to cry.

"Do you hear? I cried on Yom Kippur just like my grandfather did! Just like all the Jews! And when I stopped crying, I didn't even wipe my eyes I just said the prayer, my grandmother's prayer:

"Modeh Ani L'fa'ne'chaw Melech Chai v'Ka'yam" ('I offer thanks before You, living and eternal King [for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your trustworthiness is great.')

"I don't even know what it means. Actually I don't know a word of Hebrew, for even my father received a communist education, and I did not see a trace of Judaism in my father's house.

So I sat in that room the entire day. That's right, I sat from the morning until when it became dark, and said over and over again: 'Modeh Ani L'fanechaw Melech Chai v'Kayam. Modeh Ani L'fanechaw Melech Chai v'Kayam.' "

He paused for another minute in deep thought, then snapped out of it. He pointed his finger at Reb Mendel and whispered menacingly, 'Now don't you tell anyone what I just told you, understand?! I-said-nothing." After this conclusion he turned and slipped silently back to his place.

Reb Mendel sat in the silence staring at Ivan, who simply climbed into his bed, turned his face to the wall and was snoring instantly.

That's when the thought entered his mind. 'Aha! This is an answer from Heaven to the question I had on Yom Kippur. If even that murderer believes, that is a sign that "Kol Maaminim' -- Everyone believes!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Source: Compiled and freely adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from a weekly email a few years ago by Rabbi Tuvia Bolton, and from "Days of Awe, Days of Joy", the translation by Rabbi Chaim Miller of the original Hebrew edition by Rabbi Eli Friedman; (Kehot).]

Biographical note:

Rabbi Menachem-Mendel ("Reb Mendel") Futerfas (1906 - 4 Tammuz 1995), was a near legendary Lubavitcher chasid, even for those who knew him personally. In 1947 he was arrested for administrating networks of underground yeshivas and Jewish schools, and for facilitating the repatriation of thousands of Soviet Jews to Poland after WWII. For three months he was interrogated, tortured and threatened with death, but he would not reveal anything about his co-conspirators or the underground religious schools. In the end, he was sentenced to 8 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, which he went through without compromising any religious observances, despite the cruel pressure to do so. After another six years in Siberian exile, he was allowed to emigrate to England, thanks to an appeal for family repatriation made by prime minister Harold Wilson during his summit meeting in Moscow with Chairman Nikita Khrushchev. In 1973 he settled in Kfar Chabad, Israel, for the rest of his life.

[photo credit: chabadpedia.com] "Reb Mendel in Action"

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.

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