----- Forwarded Message -----From: "'Chicago Aneinu' via chicago-aneinu" <chicago-aneinu@googlegroups.com>To: "Chaya Miriam Wolper" <myysbyy@aol.com>Sent: Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 12:11 PMSubject: [chicago-aneinu] Tons of great stories -- PLUS chizuk for right now!--From: Tamar Ansh <info@atasteofchallah.com>Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2023 at 12:05:43 AM CSTSubject: [Chazak v'Amatz 26] Tons of great stories -- PLUS chizuk for right now!
L'Iluy Nishmas
לעילוי נשמת Sorah Miriam bas Reuven Laibel
תנצב"ה
(Your dedication can go here. Contact us about it.)
CHAZAK V'AMATZ ISSUE 26
17 Kislev, 5784
A compilation of inspirational stories from this war, incredible miracles, chessed, Shabbos stories... our spiritual growth...and YOUR impact, too!
Compiled by Tamar Ansh
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Okay, and now…for a very overdue Chazak V'Amatz email. I have so much stuff saved up here I will have to split it into several sessions!
B'H I've personally gained so much chizuk by finding the materials we share in these emails, delving into the words of our Rabbanim right now, and just hearing from so many of you. It's literally been keeping things in perspective for me. And it's been a huge zechus to share it with all of you, our challah and Jewish inspo community.
But even more than this, it's your feedback, all of you, who take the time to tell me such truly encouraging words, who tell me how meaningful these emails are for you and especially who reach out and share such beautiful personal thoughts and stories with me, that touch me so deeply and keep it going!
💥Going forward, it's time to shshare this zechus with others,share this zechus with others,ecause it's been so impactful.
👉If you'd like to reserve your partnership and share in this zechus of giving chizuk to so many thousands of others around the world, please click here.
And thank you so much!
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💭💭💭 "As if you don't have enough, bli ayin harah! As long as these emails get they have the distinction of being the ONLY long emails I read from start to finish!"
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In honor of the fact that today is issue number 26 (!!!)! Twenty-six! That's a lotta emails in just one-month plus! – I found it interesting about the number 26.
Twenty-six is the gematria of the shem havayah of Hashem. The four-letter name of Hashem that we are not allowed to pronounce (hence we say "Hashem" which literally means "the name".) I found that very appropriate.
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🌟🌟True story from one of you, our Chazak readers! 🌟🌟
In the surgery room…
This story is being shared here with the permission of the people it happened to…
Please daven for Chana Bracha bas Shoshana Rivka for a speedy recovery.
Now that we are breathing again, I just have to share what my husband and I witnessed the other day... This is not the first surgery for our CB and whenever she is in surgery, we sit in the waiting room which is full of other families and daven. This is often quite hard because people are watching movies on their phones, or chatting loudly together or speaking on phone etc... which is all OK, each to their own,, everyone absorbed in their own things.
But yesterday, as we sat there in the family area of the surgery waiting room… we were blown away and moved to tears (more than we were already).... the scene in the waiting room was one that we have never, ever witnessed in the 11 years of hanging out in surgery waiting rooms!
There was silence... everyone, and I mean everyone, was davening. Every type of Jewish person sat in that room, and everyone was saying something to Hakadosh Baruch Hu...
In all the years I'm sitting in such rooms, I have never been asked if someone can borrow my Tehillim or siddur. This time, I was asked 4 times!!!!!
When one woman took my siddur, she said she wanted to say shemoneh esrei. And then I saw another woman come up to her and asked her to find the Shema for her..
A man sitting near us (with an earring in his ear) gave a siddur to his son to say Tehillim and took off the shelf a kipa and told his son to put it on. His son was around 16 years old with a design calved into his hair, actually put it on and finished two books of tehilim mechulak … and the proceeded to put on tefillin!
I saw men with no kippot putting on tefillin... borrowing each other caps…
Another man told a different man to give tzedaka in the zechus of a relative who was having surgery and told him to say a perek tehilim (they were both bare headed...)
Another woman had a new tehilim mechulak (these are divided booklets of Tehillim) and gave each member of her family a few to say. One woman told her to wait, and she took her cardigan and covered her hair with it...
Again, I am not judging. One does not need to be black and white to daven, obviously... but I am telling you that something like this we have never witnessed before, as much as we did this time.
HASHEM!!.. "Ha'bet m'shomaim u're'ay!" Look at YOUR children... connecting to You, pleading with you, acknowledging that there is nothing else but YOU...Please, please – SAVE US, Hashem!
In the zechus of the tefilos, the mitzvahs, the achdus.... please HaShem save us..."__________________
Look at this amazing picture! It tells it all!
(Thank you Bracha Goetz and many others that sent it to me! I wish I had the actual story to share also!)
This soldier had a bullet aimed right at him…and look what saved him! Not his bullet proof vest, not his guns…it was… his Tehillim!
I got this one from a fellow reader, Rachel K, and she saw it in the Monsey Mevasser! I didn't hear it or see it anywhere else but wow!
Your chizuk messages are so incredible. I send them to my kids and my family in chutz le'Aretz!
This latest one with the video of the Torah Ve Halocha kollel means so much to me as my two sons and son-in law learned there. In fact my son and son-in-law appear in the video. The Rav of the kollel, HaRav Avramovsky is a visionary! I call him 'The Magician'. He does so much for the bochurim that learn there. He simply believes in them so strongly, that they begin to truly believe in themselves. Rachel G.
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Miraculous salvation in Kfar Maimon
This out-of-this-world story was shared with me by the same reader as above, Rachel Kaufman, Ashdod. She heard it from R' Forhman.
💭💭💭"Thank you for your Chazak Ve'Amatz posts. They really show the light in all the darkness around us. I would like to share with you the attached story about an amazing nes that took place in Kfar Maimon.
(Ladies, I put it in its entirety below, instead of as a link.)
In addition, as we know, as the IDF are advancing further into Gaza, they are bringing in more troops and the danger to our precious soldiers is increasing, so we must keep up our davening and Tehillim. Please remind and encourage everyone who signed up for the Daily Tehillim Around the Clock to maintain it diligently, especially our American friends who are awake and alert at those times when it is night here in E'Y.
Rachel continues and says: she heard this story from Rabbi Fohrman on his podcast (Link: this is a podcast link, not google drive so it will only work for those that can view these things.) Listen to the first 6 mins and you'll hear him directly telling the story.
שנבשר ונתבשר בשורות טובות
Miraculous salvation in Kfar Maimon – A Heaven Sent Army
Rabbi Fohrman (founder of Aleph Beta Academy for teaching and disseminating Torah) was visiting evacuees from Kfar Maimon at a hotel in Israel. One of them told him how it happened that their settlement did not suffer any casualties, even though it is situated back to back with Be'eri and other settlements that came under attack and suffered bitterly on Shabbat Simchat Torah.
"We were in shul when we heard the sirens go off with incessant rocket attacks in the morning, and our Rav told us to go home, go into the safe room and turn on the radio. We learned that terrorists had infiltrated the communities. At the time we thought it was a few dozen and had no idea that it was an invasion of over 2000 Hamas terrorists. Although every settlement has a volunteer group to defend itself, for some inexplicable reason the army had taken away the guns from Kfar Maimon, so they literally were unarmed.
I created a plan with my 4 sons how to defend ourselves if terrorists come to the door. I took them into the kitchen and told them to each take the longest knife they could find and station themselves near the door. Maybe if one or two terrorists came in we would be able to overcome them and my wife and daughter would escape through the back door.
Meanwhile news was coming in that a band of 40 heavily armed terrorists was gathering outside the Yishuv and getting reading to blast their way in. We made an emergency call to the army to send us back-up right now. IDF replied, "We have no-one to send you". All IDF forces were in pitch battle with terrorists in Be'eri, the next-door kibbutz.
At that point an army helicopter 🚁came overhead flying low on its way to Kibbutz Be'eri. The terrorists amassed at the gate saw the helicopter and sensed an opportunity. One of them fired an anti-tank missile at the helicopter. It brought the helicopter down, and the helicopter crashed to the ground but did not explode, (miracle one!) Instead, its doors opened and 25 IDF soldiers came pouring out and immediately took up positions as they saw these 40 terrorists. (Miracle 2!) (The helicopter exploded without harming anyone. Miracle 3!)
In the ensuing fierce gun battle which lasted 4 hours, the soldiers eliminated all 40 terrorists with no IDF casualties. (Miracle 4 -- and this is only the parts we "know" about!)
That is why I and my family are here to tell the story to you."
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Tamar's note: HA! And here, this took me all week, because I thought I didn't have "enough inspiring stuff" to send you a good chazak email! This is getting too long already!)
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There's a lot of pictures and clips and so forth (I'm SURE) flying all over the place of all the different hostages who were zoche to be released. I'm not going to share so many as this is for the news outlets to do instead.
But this one I just had to share. A nine year old boy!! B'H Ohad is back with Am Yisrael! And look at the chessed Hashem did for this boy while he was in captivity -- for reasons none of us will know, why this had to be - but even so, Hashem did for this boy a little bit like what Hashem did for Yosef Hatzaddik in the parsha this week...
The Torah relates that when Yosef was sold and being carted off to Egypt, with no one to care and no way to know if he'd ever see his father again...Hashem sweetened the blow a little bit for him and the caravans that transported Yosef were carrying sweet-smelling spices, instead of something foul or stinky. A caring touch to make Yosef's burden just a bit lighter.
This is what this short story reminded me of, as I heard what happened to this nine year old boy, Ohad.
Am Yisrael Chai.
May we all be zoche to keep Torah and mitzvohs in love, friendship and security.
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WOW. What an email.
And for now, this is plenty to keep us moving forward.
How can we go forward?
For many of us, these past few days have been stressful, full of doubts and fears, full of "how do I know that any of my little efforts are doing anything?"
And then comes those feelings of despair. No hope. Nothing is happening. When is anything going to change.
But LOOK! Hashem is sending us so many messages, loud and clear!
SO—until next time, "Chazak V'Amatz!" Stay strong!
And just to prove to you that this correct – let me emphasize that I myself get every one of these stories directly dropped into my inbox, my lap, in front of my nose nearly literally – just like that! I do not trawl the internet or scour news sites for any of this! Hashem keeps sending them to me, one after the other, each time from more special people who take the time to share!
It's as clear as day to me that I'm meant to be sharing all of this and that YES – Hashem is trying to give us as much chizuk as possible!
Keep davening!
Have a great day and a wonderful time preparing for Shabbos early!
😊
All the best,
Tamar Ansh
With blessings for a good day, filled with yeshuos and shemira for all of Klal Yisrael.
Good Shabbos,
Tamar Ansh
Yerushalayim Ihr Hakodesh, תתבב"א
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Have a great day! 😀
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