Melava Malka Stories

Tefillin Stand near the Julis base

I must tell you a wondrous story which happened with the Tefillin Stand we established for the soldiers stationed near Kiryat Malachi*, a seven minute drive from an army base. The base called Julis is part of the Emanuel army compound. At the beginning of the war we set up a permanent Tefillin Stand there so people and soldiers could put on Tefillin. At one point we fixed up the stand to look very nice with a table and frame around it to make it beautiful and appealing as befits a Tefillin Stand.

Baseball and Judaism

The first time I met the Rebbe we discussed baseball. It was a month before my bar-mitzvah, and my grandfather, a devout Jew and second-generation American, wanted me to meet the Rebbe and receive his blessing in preparation for my attainment of Jewish adulthood. My parents had all but abandoned religious practice of their faith, so it was Grandfather who assumed the primary role in my Jewish education, giving me lessons in the rudiments of Judaism several times a week and taking me to the synagogue on Shabbat.

A Policeman’s Miracle from the Rebbe

A woman from the Chabad-Lubavitch Community in Brooklyn was pulled over by a N.Y.C. traffic cop. Standing outside her open car window and watching her search for her license and registration papers, the police officer caught sight of a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in her open purse. “Excuse me, Maam,” he asked, “are you one of the followers of this Rabbi?”

The Hebron Purim

A special Purim is celebrated by certain Jewish communities on special days of the year to commemorate a particular miracle. One of these takes place in Hebron, Israel where many years ago a sizable Sephardic community lived. Every year on the fourteenth day of Tevet, they would celebrate Purim Hebron! The historical details of this event are hidden in the mists of the remote past. Our story is based on that event.

One More Light

This past week, I went to the dentist for a walk-in appointment because I’d been having severe tooth pain. After hours of waiting, I was told my tooth was infected and couldn’t be saved. They extracted it immediately. Everything happened so fast, and I left feeling stunned, my face numb, and in pain—surrendering to Hashem’s plan.

Lighting Menorah in a soviet labor camp

Rabbi Asher Sossonkin, a soldier in the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe’s army of teachers and activists who kept Judaism alive in Communist Russia in the darkest years of repression, spent many years in Soviet labor camps for his “counter-revolutionary” activities. In one of these camps, he made the acquaintance of a Jew by the name of Nachman Rozman.

Chanukah’s Fifth Candle (part 2)

After getting married, my father served as a teacher and rabbi for the Adath Israel congregation in Washington Heights, New York. My sister and I were born there. When I was five years old, we moved to Toronto where Reb Koppel (great uncle of his wife and a prestigious Jew in Toronto) found a position for my father in a Satmar Yeshiva. My younger brother was born there. Although my father’s attitudes became close to those of Satmar (Hungarian Chassidic group zealous in their approach and very insular), and he sent us to study in schools and Yeshiva close to their approach, he still respected the Rebbe and always spoke of him to us with the highest regard.

Chanukah’s Fifth Candle (part 1)

My father, Rabbi Abraham-Tzvi Greenwald, was born in Lodz. Poland, in 1911. His father died when he was only eight years old, leaving his mother alone with seven young orphans. She sent my father to live with her cousin, Rabbi Menachem Zemba, a famous Talmudic scholar in pre-war Warsaw and a dedicated Gerer Chasid. Rabbi Zemba raised him devotedly, taking responsibility for his education, and even studied with him personally.

The Rebbe’s Miraculous Recovery

For five weeks in 1977, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and people the world over anxiously prayed for the recovery of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson, of righteous memory, after he suffered a sudden massive heart attack that left the doctors wondering whether he would pull through.

Dr. Ira Weiss, a Chicago-based cardiologist, flew to New York shortly after the Rebbe’s attack to serve as one of the lead physicians.

The Miraculous Release from the Army

I heard this story from Reb Peretz Chein. Reb Peretz Chein had two brothers learning in Tomchei Temimim Yeshiva established by the Rebbe Rashab in the city of Lubavitch (White Russia).

“I”, Reb Peretz told me, “Was called upon to appear before the Russian army board to be inducted into the Russian army.”