Israel Matzav

Overnight music video

I find the destruction of synagogues very difficult, so I hope you will forgive me if I post a sad song and story tonight. Unfortunately, the English version of the story is a bit disjointed (it was originally in Spanish and I am trying to fix it), but hopefully even those of you who don't understand Hebrew will understand it.

The story is a student in Baltimore, he visited a nursing home regularly, and prayed with elders. One day he was told that one of the rooms there is an old man very difficult to convince to bring the tefilin and to pray. This student was one quarter of the old man's age, but he went and knocked on the door. After greeting each other, the old man told the student.

"I don't put on Tefilin" This old man looks and what he says, "Dear, I was a boy of the concentration camps and in the camp there was just one Tefilin of the head and everyone took turns to put it on. "

For my Bar Mitzva my father wanted me to put on both halves of the Tefillin and he knew that the other camp had a couple of full Tefilin, namely the arm and head.

Then my father was in search of that Tefilin, and I remember what was waiting beside the window seeing that nothing happens until all of a sudden I see him coming with Tefilin in hand, and as I was about to enter the room where we were a Nazi Yimach Shemo (may his name be obliterated), shot my father in front of me.

And then the man told the student "and you want me to put on Tefilin after what I witnessed."

A few weeks later, the student was at the old age home and saw an old man who had Yortzait (observing the anniversary of a parent's death) and lacked one for a Minyan (quorum).

So the student went to the man who refused to put on Tefillin, and asked him please to go to complete the Minyan, because no one knows if next year this other man will be around to observe his parent's yahrtzeit.

After that, the first man started to put on Tefillin regularly, until one day the student came to the old age home and the man wasn't there. The old man had gone to the hospital and died.

At the end of the year, the old age home had a ceremony in which they expressed appreciation to all the students who came to visit. A woman came up to the student who told the story and thanked him. He asked "do I know you?" She said, "you got my father to put on Tefillin. On the day he died, he insisted on putting on his Tefillin before going to the hospital. He died wearing them. He was so happy that he was wearing them."

Let's go to the videotape. It's Mordechai Ben David telling the story and singing the song at the end.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:26 AM