Call it a good sign. An auspicious start. On the nighttime El Al flight from Boston to Tel Aviv, I saw a whole row of empty seats next to me. There would be nothing selfish about taking the row for myself, sleeping lying down rather than squished into my narrow single seat sitting up — nothing selfish at all, because there were, in fact, many rows of empty seats, one row for each of the people in the back of the plane. It was a great way to spend the long flight on my short trip to the Holy Land.
• • •
The storage area (machsan) in our former home had been untouched for 40 years. I was alone on this trip and took the opportunity to look through, to try to weed out and reorganize. Among the precious items I came upon was a handwritten condolence note to my mother after the passing of my father — from Elie Wiesel.
• • •
I came to Israel for the Bar Mitzvah of our grandson Michel Yehuda. In the Holy Land, the Priestly Blessing is recited daily; not, as is the Ashkenazi practice in the Diaspora, only on the biblically mandated Jewish holidays. It is rare that the males in our family are together, living as they do on different continents. On Shabbos morning, since I am a kohen (“priest”), I was able to bless the congregation together with two sons, two grandsons and one son-in-law. What a rush of feeling! The last word in the blessing — “Peace” — recited in this time of war, recited in unison, recited with force, with amplified voice, recited with hope . . .
• • •
Another precious item found in that storage area was a letter written to me in 1968 by a person undergoing conversion to Judaism. Among the searing emotions shared in that letter was this (slightly edited): “I pray that with the help of G-d I’ll be able to become a Jew before Yom Kippur. It’s hard living in between the death of one life and the birth of another.”
• • •
A 45-year-old question was resolved. Back in the 1970s when I was a student in the Novorodock yeshiva in the Holy City, a certain person would appear on Shavuot after a whole night in Torah study. He would chant the Torah like I had never heard it before, shuddering as if under the voice, the fire and the thunder at the revelation on Mount Sinai, making us all shudder as if we were standing at Mount Sinai ourselves. I never saw him any other time. Once a year, that’s it. Who was this mysterious person? Based on my memory of his appearance and on pictures in newspapers I saw subsequently, I suspected he was Rabbi Binyamin Finkel of the Mir yeshiva.
On the Thursday evening before the Bar Mitzvah, my son and his son (the Bar Mitzvah boy) and I met with Rabbi Finkel for grace and blessing. I asked him: “Was it you?” He said, “Yes!”
“ . . . no joy like the resolution of doubts.”
• • •
I reached the Western Wall, walking through the Arab marketplace. The walk was good. Silent preparation for prayer is good. I picked up one of the thousands of siddurim at the Kotel. On the title page was a verse from Psalms. How many thousands of verses are in Psalms? The verse on the title page was none other than “my” verse! The one beginning with the first letter of my name and ending with the last letter of my name.
Then, after praying, I picked up one of the thousands of copies of the book of Psalms at the Kotel. It was donated in memory of one Ezra ben Parcha, described as “beloved and righteous.” It listed his birth and death dates. The death date was the same as my father’s, “beloved and righteous.”
• • •
Israeli soldiers patrol various regions at and near the Kotel. I approach them. I am a perfect stranger. I thank them for protecting us. They nod in appreciation.
• • •
As I said, I took a book of Psalms in hand and began to recite, having in mind many friends and others who need Divine assistance. Among the Denverites I prayed for was Zev Shmuel ben Helena, Dr. Bill Silvers.
• • •
Our family became close to the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Horowitz, beginning in 1969, when, as newlyweds, Elaine and I moved from New York to Boston. The Rebbe subsequently made a shabbaton in our Jerusalem apartment and then again, some 12 years later, in our home in Denver. He officiated at the wedding of our son Mattis, the father of the Bar Mitzvah. The Rebbe died 10 years ago — a painful loss to this day — and his sons succeeded him. One of his successors, the Bostoner Rebbe of Jerusalem — Rabbi Meir Horowitz — is blessed with a tremendous singing voice and penetrating insights into the Torah. He graced our Shabbos table — open to the public — and sang and spoke for hours deep into Friday night, in honor of the Bar Mitzvah.
• • •
Back to that storage area again. It holds many papers, notes, texts, curricula, photos, etc. Trying to put some really rough order to all this, out slips a single sheet — my notes of a lecture given on the fourth night of Chanukah in 1979 by the chief rabbi of Jerusalem then, Bezalel Zolti. Who has time to read these thousands of sheets in the few hours I have? But for some reason — perhaps because Rabbi Zolti ordained me — I stopped and read this one. It pulled me up short. I am currently writing a Hebrew volume and am stuck. Or, I must say, I was stuck. My problem was exactly the one addressed by, and elucidated by, Rabbi Zolti.
• • •
Among those who attended the Bar Mitzvah reception was “Moshe Shimon,” whom I remembered as a young yeshiva student in Jerusalem in 1984. Forty years later he is the distinguished Bostoner Rebbe in Beitar, Israel. The father of his uncle, of the late Bostoner Rebbe Levi Yitzhak, had purchased land in Palestine in the 1930s to build a community. WW II put an end to that dream — for him. But his son — Moshe Shimon’s uncle — pursued the dream. Politics and history being what they are, Moshe Shimon’s uncle ended up with a synagogue in what was then the brand new neighborhood of Har Nof in the Holy City. The Rebbe Moshe Shimon spots me — we hadn’t seen each other in 40 years — and immediately recalls: The celebration of the first Torah scroll in the Har Nof synagogue began in your home!
• • •
I am standing in a restaurant in Mamilla, just outside the Old City of Jersalem, the night before my departure from Israel. Someone in back of me taps me on the my shoulder. Of the nine million people in the State of Israel, who could it be? Who tapped me? It was the person who sits two rows in back of me in shul in Denver, Tzvi Horowitz.
• • •
What should a grandfather say to his grandson on his Bar Mitzvah?
One of the really great souls of the past generations was Rabbi Meir Shapiro, who devised the idea of Daf Yomi, the study of one folio page of Talmud every day. This has elevated the mind and soul of hundreds of thousands of Jews, at least. Some time after his idea took hold, he met a certain woman and asked her, “Do you remember, we used to play together as kids?”
She remembered.
He said, “Do you remember, I used to say I had a big idea that would make a big difference?”
She said, “Yes, I remember.”
He said, “And do you remember, you used to make fun of me. You would tell me that my dream was silly. Remember?”
She remembered.
He said, “Because of your making fun, I came very close to giving up on my idea. I was really hurt. I was a child. Somehow, I persevered.”
I observed to those present: Never make fun of the dream of a child.
I said to my grandson Michel Yehuda: “Believe in your dreams.”
© IJN 2025
