While I was in Yerushalayim last week, I met someone who resides in the USA and his American based family owns a home in Jerusalem. Not so unusual. What was special was the reason they own a home in Israel.
His father was a child Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the USA after the war. After feeling the absolute despair and statelessness of the Jewish survivors after the war, he vowed to himself that when he was able to afford it, he would buy a home in the enteral Jewish homeland, Eretz Yisrael.
He was blessed with success; his son discovered a good deal while he was doing a high level consulting job in Israel. He fulfilled his commitment and made the purchase. The home was renovated and is now a very nice homey dwelling.
The father has since passed. I was now visiting with the son who had come to Israel with his family for the bar mitzvah of their son.
It was so special to see that the natural place the family gravitates to when they take time off, is their home in Israel. How visionary of the grandfather. Creating an attachment to the Holy Land, the land of the Jewish People, for his children and grandchildren. Some people buy second homes in the mountains, others near the seaside. Having a home in Israel is next level in terms of Jewish commitment.
Owning a home in Israel is not without precedent. Many great people did so. This week’s parsha Vayishlach relates that the first thing Yaakov did when he arrived back in Israel, was buy a plot of land. The land was so beloved to him that he wanted to demonstrate his endearment to it buy making a land purchase in Israel.
Even though Jacob had no intention of remaining in Shechem permanently, he purchased the small parcel of land upon which he had pitched his tent in order to demonstrate his love for the land promised him by God. (Book of Bereshit 33:19)
Accompanying the family was their mother who is thank G-d healthy and well. I asked the mother about her background. She told me that was born just after the war to two parents who survived the Holocaust. She was raised in the USA. When I asked her for the story of how her parents met, she told me excitedly that it’s a fascinating story and shared the following:
‘When my father was a boy, he was deported to a concentration camp. Lying in the ‘clinic’ after contracting typhus, there was an older woman who looked at him and thought to herself, ‘what a tragedy’. ‘There is a mother somewhere who is about to lose her son. There is no way that this boy will survive.’ The boy looked at the older woman and thought to himself,’ there is no way the Nazis will let her live. She is too old to be of real value to the work machine that was operating at the camps. They will exterminate her like they did to the millions of others.’
The woman’s maternal instinct was awakened, and she wanted to inject the boy with some hope about a possible future. She told the boy ‘Remember my address. After the war you have a home to come to’.
Miraculously they both survived. Indeed, the young man managed to make his way to the older woman’s house. When he knocked, a teenage girl answered. The woman had a daughter who had been hidden as a gentile in one of the surrounding villages. Some time later they got married. They emigrated to Israel and planned to live there. Unfortunately, the husband fell ill because of his ordeals in the concentration camp and required a very nutritious diet and much rest. The doctor told him that if he stayed in Israel, he had less chance to survive his illness. It was at the early stages of Israel’s independence; there were food shortages and many challenges. They made it to the USA where their daughter, (the mother I was speaking to), was raised.
I was inspired by this story.
The woman who thought she was helping a young boy, was preparing, unbeknownst to her, the future husband of her daughter.
The Torah teaches that when you help someone else you are really helping yourself.
This story portrays that quite vividly.
Next time you see someone who needs help, reach out and help them.
Sometimes they need a nice supportive conversation.
Or a warm nutritious meal or urgently needed funds.
Sharing a mitzvah opportunity is a incredible gift to give someone as it yields eternal benefits. In this world and the next world.
And Hashem has embedded into creation that there is an epic side benefit to helping someone else.
You get helped yourself!
There is another story that illustrates this.
There was a man trudging through the forest during a brutal winter night. The traveler was freezing, weary and desperate. He thought to himself, ‘let me stop for a little rest.’ But he knows that if he stops, he may not start again and he will almost certainly meet his death in the snow. He pushes himself and keeps going. Eventually, he feels that he is just so exhausted that he can’t go further and convinces himself that if he rests for a few minutes he will regain his strength. As he clears away some snow to prepare an area to sit down in, he notices a lifeless human form in the snow. After closer scrutiny he determines that the person he found is still alive albeit barely hanging on to life.
Moved by compassion, the first man decides to help the other, despite his own extreme weakness. He wraps his arms around the second man, hugging him tightly, and begins to rub his hands, legs, face, and neck to stimulate circulation and share his body heat. He spends the entire night focused on keeping the other person alive, pleading with him not to give up.
When dawn breaks, a person with a sled drove by and took them both, to safety and medical help.
As the doctor treats the patient, the rescuer relates the sequence of events. The doctor exclaims, ‘your intervention saved two people. The one you saved and your yourself who would have frozen to death were you to have stopped to rest’.
The message is so clear.
When you nurture someone else's spirit, your own spirit is strengthened.
In giving warmth, you receive it.
When you lift others, you too are lifted.
When you help someone do a mitzvah you are helping them connec to G-d and to their deepest essence.
You too are simultaneously connecting to G-d and strengthening your inner spark of G-d – your neshama.
So, next time you meet someone who can use some help, don’t say oy vey and complain about the possible inconvenience.
Rather think about the amazing opportunity that G-d has presented to you.
To help His child.
G-d loves each of us – his children.
We ought to get better and yet better at loving each other.
Our sages teach that one never loses out by helping someone else.
Hinei mah tov umahnaim shevet achim gam yachad.
הנה מה טוב ומה נעים שבת אחים גם יחד
Lechayim!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Kantor