Thursday, December 14, 2017

Aneinu Tefillos Needed & Chanuka and our own Kiddish Hashem


Dear Alumni and Friends,   I have a short message about Chanukah and Kiddush Hashem which I want to share with you, but first a request from Rebbetzen Price.  Rabbi Price is in an extremely critical condition.  There is a possibility the doctors say that the heart condition that threatens him could cure itself but no procedure now is possible.  She has asked that the alumni should try to get brachos for Shlomo Yoel ben Chaya Leah for any tzaddikim or Rebbis that they might know or know somebody who can reach them.  But I want to add that you fellows should not underestimate what you can do with your tefillos, with your kabbalas and with your learning in his merit.  May Hashem hear our cries and grant Rabbi Price shlita a refuah sheleimah.   There are many caves in the hills that surround Neveh.  This is where it all happened.  This is where 1,000 men, women and children inside a large cave were suffocated by fires that the Greeks made because we refused to profane the Shabbos.  Unfortunately, our own Jewish Hellenists informed the Greeks where they were hiding.  This was a Kiddush Hashem.   It was from other similar caves that Yehuda and his make-shift army of Rosh Yeshivas, yungerleit and loyal patriots attacked the trained and experienced mighty Greek army.  Their guerilla warfare was also a Kiddush Hashem.    It was Erev Chanukah, this past Tuesday when we in Eretz Yisrael witnessed our own Kiddush Hashem.   Some say there were as many as 600,000 from all over the Land, from every walk of life, who came to pay their respects to the Gadol HaDor, Rav Aharon Leib Steinman ztz"l.  Buses were provided from Telzstone but the return was not promised and uncertain, so I had my son drive our half working car.  We left at 10.30am and returned after 4pm, with hours and hours in traffic.  We parked in Ramat Gan, not even trying to get closer to Bnei Brak.  Route 4 was closed to private cars before we could reach it.  All this for the few minutes we were able to walk behind the 'mita'.  But nobody would hesitate such an ordeal for a chance to show Kavod HaTorah for a Gadol HaDor.  This was a Kiddush Hashem.    Perhaps you remember how we would daven Mincha in his home on Shabbos during the Bnei Brak Shabbaton.  As the fellows would walk around in a circle, he would give a bracha to each and every one.  I vividly remember that once he asked a Neveh guy his age and then made a comment that I alone understood.  I took the bochur aside and told him what the Rosh Yeshiva said and he begged me to ask him how he could do teshuva.  This insight, this ruach hakodesh is only a fraction of what Klal Yisrael has lost.  May he be a meiletz yosher for all our people and all the dangers that threaten us.  May he be a meiletz yosher to bring once again nissim and niflaos and herald the geula and the building of the Bayis Shlishi.    Have a lichtige Chanukah, Mash  

No comments:

Post a Comment