Weekly Chasidic Story #1395 (5784-52 ) 29 Menachem Av 5784 (Sep.2, 2024)

"Jobless, Twenty-Seven Years Old, and Single"

"I decided to do regular army service. To be honest," she said with a smile, "I just wanted to be able to have an excuse to trade in my skirts for pants!"

Why this week? This week's Torah reading opens with: "Judges and police you should have in all your communities"

Story in PDF format for more convenient printing.

JOBLESS, TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD, AND SINGLE

[Keep in perspective that this story was written sixteen years ago. - yt]

Sara is a vivacious, upbeat young woman who knows where she's going and how she's getting there. But if you had met her a few years ago, you wouldn't have gotten the same impression.

"I was born in Canada and spent my earliest years there," begins Sara. "When I was still very young, my parents started to become more involved in Judaism and eventually became fully Torah observant. Within a few years, they decided to move to Israel.

"We moved to a settlement in the Shomron. My four siblings and I went to religious schools in the settlement." Sara continued in the local schools until she reached high school age. "As we didn't have a high school in our settlement, I began attending a religious high school in Petach Tikvah. The other students there were also from 'Religious-Zionist' background."

Although religious girls in Israel can be exempt from regular army service, amongst the Religious-Zionists, girls are encouraged to fulfill "Sheirut L'Umi" (National Service). At the end of high school, most of Sara's friends chose to do Sheirut L'Umi. "By that time, I had become a bit of a non-conformist, and I decided to do regular army service. To be honest," Sara says with a smile, "I just wanted to be able to have an excuse to trade in my skirts for pants!"

Sara's parents were less than happy with her decision to do regular army service. Nor was Sara prepared for life in the non-religious world of the army. Unfortunately, her observance of mitzvot (commandments) quickly waned. By the end of her first year in the army, Sara stopped going home for Shabbat and spent weekends off with friends
.
When she finished her three-year army service, she no longer retained any semblance of a religious lifestyle. She decided to move to Tel Aviv, where she managed to find a job as a manager in a security company. "My time was divided between work and home, with not much else in between. I was working 16 hours a day."

But a few years of the work/sleep/work cycle made Sara realize that she needed more meaning in her life. So she decided that she would become a police officer! She served for a few years in the most crime-ridden area of Tel Aviv until she got a notice in the mail that would eventually be the push to help her find true meaning in her life.

"As a police officer, I received a draft notice to help the Israeli forces in the 'Disengagement,' the expelling of Jewish families from their homes in Gush Katif. This hit me hard; even though I was no longer religious, I had a strong love of Israel. I knew I would not be able to evacuate my fellow Jews from their homes. I was told by my superiors that I had two choices: either to serve or to go to jail for disregarding a direct order."

Sara chose a third option. "I moved to Canada, to live with my grandmother. But the reality of my life quickly hit me. I was jobless, 27-years-old and single. Plus, when I arrived in Canada, I hardly knew anyone.

"I began by asking some people where I could find fellow Israelis. I was told that the best place to start was the Chabad House for Israelis in Montreal called MADA." There Sara met many young Israelis who, like her, were not particularly religious but were looking for a "home away from home."

Sara attended events periodically at MADA, though she didn't change her lifestyle very much. She did, however, become close with Reut and Barak Hetsroni, staff members (and more) at the MADA Center. She eventually decided to spend a Shabbat with the Hetsronis, who turned out to be Chabad representatives, and to observe the entire Shabbat.

"From the minute we lit the candles until the Havdala ceremony at the end of Shabbat, I just could not stop crying! As a former police officer in the toughest area of Tel Aviv, I wasn't one to cry. Nor could I figure out why I was crying. But it finally occurred to me that I was crying because I had restarted my journey for real to find true meaning in my life."

Sara quit her job that required her to work on Shabbat and started teaching at the Lubavitch girls elementary school in Montreal, Beth Rivkah. "I taught 5th grade. I was in charge of praying with them every day and I taught them Hebrew language and Prophets. I did this for six months and loved every day of it.

"Reut encouraged me to attend Machon Chana Women's Institute in Brooklyn, a seminary primarily for young women who had not grown up in observant homes. But I wasn't ready to leave my comfort zone."

Throughout the summer, Sara received many job offers in Montreal and in Israel. She also wanted to finish her university studies. She discussed the various options with a woman in Montreal whom she had met through her teaching in Beth Rivkah and whom she had begun to consider her "mentor."

"She told me that of all of the options there was one I had not considered but that she really believed was best for me - to become a student at Machon Chana. I decided to follow her advice and moved to New York a few weeks later."

Before leaving Montreal, Sara went to say "goodbye" to her grandmother. "My grandmother handed me a dollar bill from the Lubavitcher Rebbe and said that it was for me.

"She explained that 30 years earlier she had joined a group of people from Montreal who were traveling to the Rebbe. The Rebbe had distributed to the group dollar bills that they were to give to charity. (In general, people kept the dollar from the Rebbe and gave a dollar or more from their own money to charity.) The Rebbe handed my grandmother three dollars: One for herself, a second for her husband, and a third one, explaining it was for her granddaughter who would need it one day.

"'I think this is the right time,' my grandmother told me."

Sara nods her head. Yes, this was the right time and Machon Chana is the right place.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source: Revised and supplemented by Yerachmiel Tilles from an article by Yehudis Cohen on LChaimWeekly.org (#1011). Yehudis Cohen is the long-time excellent editor-in-chief of the weekly four-page Chabad publication, L'Chaim.

Biographic note:
Nissim-Barak and Reut Hetsroni are Lubavitch emissaries in the Westbury neighborhood of Montreal. In 2018, Rabbi Barak became the Chaplain and Spiritual Advisor at JGH [Jewish General Hospital] in West-Central Montreal.

Yerachmiel Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and chief editor of this website (and of KabbalaOnline.org). He has hundreds of published stories to his credit, and many have been translated into other languages. He tells them live at Ascent nearly every Saturday night.

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