Who knows, perhaps Elul has an influence on thieves too – at least it does on this one.
Rabbi Levi Vilmovsky, who heads the Chabad operation in Migdal HaEmek, a resident of Kfar Chabad, was recently the victim of a burglary as his family was out of the home, celebrating a family bar mitzvah. Among the items taken was an envelope containing dollars given to him from the Rebbe Z”TL. The dollars have significant emotional value to Rav Vilmovsky and his family, and they made a public appeal to the thief to please return the envelope, which he did.
Using a third party to act as intermediary, the envelope with the Rebbe dollars made its way back to the Vilmovsky home.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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13 Responses
How does he know it is the same dollars?
#1
what difference would it make anyway
Did the thief return any 100 dollar bills?
BS”D
When we used to receive dollars from the Rebbe ZY”A, we would write the date and anything special the Rebbe ZY”A said to us in the white margins around the green. Rabbi Vilimovsky did the same and the dollars were very easy to identify.
I had also had my dollars stolen back in 1990 but sadly they have long since gone to various and sundry NY crack dealers :(.
I think that while it is still certainly a bad thing that the thief stole, let’s at least be glad that he was willing to rectify it in at least one small manner. That’s better than your average thief.
The Wolf
How much is the Dollar worth?
I had the zchus to recieve many dollars from the Rebbe and mine were all stolen in 1995.
As others have written already, most people would write on the actual dollar the date they recieved it and what the ocassion was.
Keep your eyes open for mine -:)
I know someone that after getting the “rebbe dollar”,would get back on line six or seven times unnoticed.
I was under the impression that the reason the Rebbe gave out dollars was so the recipient would then spend that dollar on a chesed. The Rebbe was acting out a minhag chassidus that when one jew meets another jew, they should try to do something together to help a 3rd jew.
The Rebbe gave the dollar so that the recipient could spend it on a chesed not to save it as a souvenir.
If I am correct, it is tantamount to stealing from the Rebbe by keeping them for your self and not using these dollars as they were intended for. The Rebbe trusted you to spend them for a mitzvah and you just keep them? It’s ironic that these stolen dollars that were returned are still stolen.
We once found a Rebbe dollar in some change we received here in Crown Heights! We were able to return it to the owner. Our Dollars are locked away. As to what they’re worth…priceless! Along with letters & seforim the Rebbe distributed. And the Brachas we received, the PERSONAL Nissim that happened to my family….
2morecents, thats a really good question. The answer is that when ever someone got a dollar from the Rebbe he took another dollar from his wallet and put that in the pushke and kept the one the Rebbe gave him, since those are too precious to give away.
2morecents:
You are right! The Rebbe did give the dollar for you to do chesed and all the people did do the chesed, only that they kept that exact dollar for themself and took another dollar, or dollars or hundreds of dollars and did chesed that way.
Amchu- You are lying!
As a boro park who went to get dollars from the Rebbe 50 times over about 20 years I can tell you that the line to get a dollar was thousands of people (and several hours) long, every single week. So even if your buddy was first one in the line, it is not shayach for him to go even twice unless he waited 5,6,7 more hours and for him to do that for 1 dollar, zet men shoin that he is an idiot, the Rebbe probably had rachmanus on him more than anything.
But to say that he went “six or seven time” is poshut not shayach bemitzious.
I will tell you better, once when I was 14 years old I went with a group of 6 Hungarian bochurim to get a dollar from the Rebbe, one of the group said that “if you tell the Rebbe you will be traveling, he will give you a second dollar to give to tzedoko in the place you are traveling to” so this one mechutzaf says (and this was not the only reason why he was a mechutzaf -:) that he will tell the Rebbe that he is going to London, so he will recieve another dollar . We all had a good laugh. An hour later as the line creeps up to the Rebbe, this bochur tells the Rebbe he is going to London, the REbbe says “vus”? So he says “Ich fur keyn London”, so the Rebbe says “vu”? this went on 3/4 times. Needless to say the bochur walked away without a second dollar.
To be clear, anyone who ever wenbt can tell you that the Rebbe was very free with the dollars. Almost 1/2 the people walked away with 2 or even 3 dollars. The Rebbe simply tried to get people to give more and more tzedoko and he could easily have given him a second dollar. To me the lesson learnt was that by a tzadik there is no room for sheker!
To you Amchu- do teshuva and stop lying!!!!!