(Excerpted from Torah Tavlin vol. 3, with permission)
זאת בריתי אשר תשמרו ביני וביניכם ובין זרעך אחריך המול לכם כל זכר. (יז:י)
“This is my covenant which you must preserve between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.” (17:10)
Aside from the horrendous loss of life World War II dealt us, another disastrous effect of the Holocaust was, for many survivors, loss of faith. After all they had experienced they tragically threw off any remnant of their Jewish past and their lineage.
One such man survived the Holocaust in body, but not in spirit. He was “angry” with Hashem and vowed to shake off anything to do with religion. After some time in a DP camp, he boarded a ship that brought him to New York, and he resettled in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. He soon married a similarly disenchanted woman. They had a son who was the apple of their eye, but they were careful to raise him without any Yiddishkeit; no bris milah, no Shabbos, no Torah!
The child grew up with only the slightest awareness of his religion. As it happened, he married a Jewish woman, but there was nothing even remotely religious about their lifestyle. Just as his father had done, he carefully and intentionally instilled a dislike for religion in his children and never celebrated Jewish holidays. This worked for all of his children—except one. To the man’s displeasure and chagrin, one of his sons became a ba’al teshuvah!
Although they lived in very different worlds, the religious son remained close to his anti-religious father. And so, when the young man called to inform him of the happy news that he was engaged to be married and he wanted his father to attend his chasunah, he was shocked by his father’s hostile reaction. “I have no interest in your religious ceremony! In fact, it pains me. My son, I love you and would do anything you ask of me, but I cannot attend a religious wedding. It simply conflicts with everything I stand for!”
The son took a few moments to digest this information. Then he seized the moment. “Okay, Dad, so don’t come if it bothers you so much. But when you say you will do anything else I ask of you…do you really mean it?”
“Yes, anything. If I can physically do it, I will do it for you. I give you my word.”
The son didn’t hesitate. “Okay, Dad. If that’s the case, then the one thing I ask of you is that you have a circumcision!”
A circumcision! The father was shocked. A bris milah was something he always avoided, for it was the quintessential sign of Judaism, the one thing he disliked most. On the other hand, he had given his word to his son to physically perform anything he asked. At first he said no, but after quite a bit of arguing, eventually he agreed and underwent the procedure.
It seemed that the bris had an immediate effect on his psyche, for a few days later, while still recuperating from the difficult surgery, he began to reconsider his decision not to attend his son’s religious wedding. He would come for a short while, he told himself, definitely not long enough to be influenced by those religious fanatics.
At the wedding, the father was so impressed by the enthusiasm of his son’s friends that he found himself dancing enthusiastically and just couldn’t pull himself away! At one point, the caterer approached the father and said, “Sir, I am so inspired by your joyous countenance that I wish to present you with a gift, something which is very precious. It is a dollar bill blessed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, R’ Menachem Mendel Schneerson zt”l.”
The father looked at the man and then at the bill. Suddenly, he turned pale and collapsed in a faint. When he regained consciousness, the first words he uttered were, “That’s my dollar bill!” Then he fainted again.
When he was finally fully revived, he explained his dramatic reaction.
“As a teenager growing up in Crown Heights, I once went with a few of my public school buddies on a Sunday morning to an old man who just gave out dollar bills for no reason. We stood on line giddily watching as the bearded man handed out dollar after dollar. When my turn arrived, he handed me a bill which I greedily took and moved on. But, suddenly, he called me back and asked me if I had a circumcision. I told him no, and upon hearing my answer, he proceeded to take back my dollar. Cryptically, he proclaimed, ‘When you have your bris, I will give you back your dollar.’”
The father shook his head in wonder. “Well, I just had my bris last week, and now, all these years later, I see that the rabbi sure kept his word!”
Torah Tavlin vol. 3 is available in Judaica bookstores or direct from Israel Bookshop Publications, by clicking here.
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3 Responses
AMAZING!!! No surprise though. I used to go to lubavitch a lot as a bochur. These stories are par for the course.
Really Nice story however it does not at all sound like the Rebbe to take something back from a person. One of the most important teachings the Rebbe imparted to the world was the value of one mitzvah and in this case the mitzvah of Tzedakah (The whole point of the famous “dollars” was that when two people meet they must do something to benefit a third) A person not having a Bris does not disqualify them from preforming other mitzvahs on the contrary we hope that thru the performance of one mitzvah it will lead to a hisorerus to preform another etc etc. This story should be verified by members of the Rebbe’s inner circle to check for validity and videos do exist for most if not all of the Sunday Dollars.
Here is the true verified story as related by Rabbi Yisroel Fried from Chabad Upper West Side wrote:
The family came to America from Moscow in the late 70s. The boy – who
eventually became one of our Baalei Batim – received a Bris in Moscow from
an American at 8 days but his father never did.
Hasgachah Protis – when they came to America, one of the first people they
met at the Chabad House in their city was the Mohel who had given the boy
his bris in Moscow. The Shliach told the father of the importance of Bris
– along with the rest of yiddishkeit – but he never actually was able to
make the decision at his age to go ahead with it.
The son told me that he had heard from family members (either his father or
his cousin, who himself had a Bris later in life) that the Shliach was
discussing his family as well as other Russian families in his city with
the Rebbe (apparently in a yechidus). He said that his family was the first
refusenik family to arrive in that city, but the Rebbe knew many more
refuseniks were coming and the Shliach’s discussion with the Rebbe was
about how to help all of these new Russian families. In that context, the
Shliach had mentioned to the Rebbe the issue of the father needing a Bris.
The Rebbe said to tell the father that “if he gets a Bris, he will receive
a dollar from me.” The son told me the phrase “receive a dollar from me”
always stuck in his head. Why didn’t the Rebbe say “I will give him (or
send him) a dollar?”
Years later, the son was living on the West Side and became engaged. His
marriage was in another city and the mesader kiddushin was a Shliach. On
the way to the wedding the son noticed his father was somewhat quiet and
reserved but he didn’t think anything of it.
Under the Chuppah his Kallah was surprised to see a small bottle of red
wine that the Shliach mixed in to the white wine to be used for 7
Brachos. This bothered her since she wanted only white wine (which is
customary) so there would be no chance of spilling red wine on the dress.
Obviously in the middle of the Chuppah she didn’t say anything and at any
rate, no wine spilled.
At the wedding, his father didn’t dance at all and the son thought that was
odd. The son finally asked him about it. After all, it is his wedding, the
most special day of his life, and his father shouldn’t dance with him? The
father said that he didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but in honor
of his son’s wedding, and in order to be a complete Jew for his
son’s wedding, he finally had a Bris. R Shain was the mohel.
He then explained that the red wine at the Chuppah was the wine that the
Brachah was said on at the Bris.
One of the Sheva Brachos was held at the Deli Kasba restaurant on the West
Side. In attendance at the Sheva brachos was Lubavitcher who was close with
the chosson and was his roommate for a while before the wedding. When he
heard this entire story told over at the Sheva Brachos, with the great
mesiras nefesh of the father, merov hispaalus, he excalimed “you deserve a
dollar from the Rebbe for what you did!” And he pulled out one of his
personal dollars he had received from the Rebbe from his pocket and gave
it to the father.
The date written on the dollar, which was of course the date that this
friend has received the dollar from the Rebbe years earlier, before Gimmel
Tammuz, was the exact date(day and month, though not year) which the father
had received his Bris, days before his son’s wedding.