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simple Jewish strength and fortitude

Friday, 21 December, 2018 - 7:03 am

Recently I had the opportunity of seeing simple Jewish strength and fortitude.

It was not a speech in front of thousands of people, nor did it have the background of a heroic story; all it was, was a short conversation between two people. One of them was my good friend, Rabbi Asher Krichevsky, who was expelled just a month ago from his city and community in Omsk, after seventeen years of constructing there an impressive Jewish empire. He and his family left behind a nice, well-equipped home and were deported from the country even though they were totally innocent of any wrongdoing. They left behind not only a home, but the stability in their lives. On the other end was my dear older brother, Rabbi Pinchas Wishedski, who several years ago was forced to leave his city, community and Jewish empire as well – which he had built with his family for twenty years in the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine – because of the war that is going on there. He, too, left an orderly, pleasant and well-equipped home, and like many Jews throughout the generations, locked the door and came away with just a few possessions.

I just stood on the side and watched this meeting between two people who understand each other very well, as well as any two people can. There was a pause after their mutual “Shalom Aleichem”s. Their eyes locked, and then, my brother, who in the meantime has managed to set up a thriving community in Kiev, said: “Asher, I understand you more than anyone in the world. I feel what you feel, but I promise you that you will see with your own eyes the words of Yosef Hatzaddik in parashat Vayechi, ‘You intended me harm, but G-d intended it for good.’ You are, indeed, experiencing a ‘hiding of the face’, but in the future you’ll see visible and revealed good.” Asher listened and responded. “I am sure of that; I haven’t the slightest doubt.”

They went on their way and I continue to reconstruct that meeting from time to time. I don’t want to forget it – both in order to follow things and see how it will all work out, like with Yaakov after he heard the dreams of Yosef, and “kept the matter in mind,” and also because such simple and quiet fortitude, faith and trust in the Divine Providence of the world’s Creator and Ruler means much to me and even gives me the strength to cope with the challenges laid before me.

True, Yosef Hatzaddik did say that sentence, “G-d intended it for good” after he was already king, after the good had already been revealed to him, but I’m sure that he knew during the terrible period of the hiding the face that he experienced that “G-d intended it for good.”

The Rebbe, when he would wish someone good, would make sure to spell out that it was “the visible and revealed good” that he was wishing him or her. I join in this blessing to all of us that we should see only good and chesed, preferably of the kind that doesn’t need to be explained.

 

Shabbat Shalom,

 

Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski

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