Dear Friends,
I am going to Siberia to visit my good friend, Rabbi Asher Krichevsky, who lives in Omsk, Siberia.
Asher, with his wife and six children, has been living for 13 years already in Omsk, as a Shaliach of the Rebbe. He’s there in order to warm the hearts in Siberia.
There was nothing there before he came, and today there is a warm, vibrant Jewish community with a fine Jewish school, kindergartens, a shul; and the community is about to complete the building of a big, beautiful Mikveh.
The Rebbe says, that the reason the Torah was given to us in the desert (as is told in this week’s Parasha), is to teach us that Torah can be brought anywhere, even to a desert. And the Rebbe, as only he could, indeed brought Torah and Mitzvot to every place in the world by way of his dedicated Shluchim – even to that immense, cold and faraway place called Siberia (the Omsk region is six times the size of the State of Israel, three times the size of Switzerland).
My friends, the Shluchim from Hamburg and Düsseldorf will join me in Moscow, and together we will go, with G-d’s help, to Omsk for Shabbat. This year I will receive the Ten Commandments, which will be read this coming Shabbat as part of the Torah reading, in Siberia.
I am going to Siberia. My grandfather, too, Rabbi Moshe Wishedski, went to Siberia. Stalin tore him away from his children in 1949 and sent him to a work camp in Siberia for many long years.
My grandfather found cold and suffering there; I will find there warmth and Jewish joy. My grandfather was sent to Siberia because he taught boys Torah. My friend Asher was sent to Siberia in order to teach boys Torah.
I am going to Siberia, and I am very excited about it – and moved. Because I am sure that my Zeideh Moshe is sitting up there and smiling triumphantly. “It was worth the fight,” he is saying to himself. And so we are coming full circle.
I am going to Siberia, but don’t tell Asher – he doesn’t know about it yet. He’ll know only tomorrow, G-d willing, when we knock on his front door.
I am going to Siberia to be warm!
Shabbat Shalom,
Zalmen Wishedski