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Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu

קטגוריה משנית

A good few years ago, I arrived in Israel from France for a visit. Fate intervened and on the same visit I found my soul mate, we married, and I stayed in Israel, thank God. Right after the wedding, my sister let us stay in an apartment she had in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem. Then, I was an energetic young man, and our home didn’t have much – two mattresses and a few pieces of old furniture. A few days after we had moved in, I heard knocking on the door. When I opened it, I saw a man with a pleasant face, wearing a white shirt, with a big black yarmulke on his head, and in his hand were two cups of tea and a plate of cookies. I thought he had come to welcome us, but he corrected me.
"I’m your neighbor, Mordechai – I came to meet you and drink some tea with you."
I brought our nice neighbor inside. Before he left my house, I suggested to him that we dance. The neighbor answered my invitation with a radiant expression, and so we burst into dance in the lounge!
One day, when I was wandering around the Mahane Yehudah market, I saw a picture of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu hanging up at one of the stalls. I thought to myself, "That rabbi looks really similar to my neighbor - I wonder if he knows him?"
The next time I bumped into my neighbor, I asked him if he knew Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. My neighbor smiled and said, "Yes, I know him." I told my neighbor that Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu looked so similar to him, and he smiled again.
Some time passed, and I was in need of a certain book. I knocked on my neighbor’s door and asked him if by any chance he had the book. My neighbor smiled and told me that I should feel free to go into his library and take the book. I was stunned by the size of the library, and there, on the wall, I saw another picture of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. I gazed at the picture and at my neighbor’s face, and again thought how close the resemblance was between them.
Another two months passed, and then, late at night, I heard people’s voices in the stairwell. I went out to see what was going on, and suddenly I saw my neighbor in front of me – but this time he was wearing the robes of the Rishon L’Tzion! Only then did the penny drop and I finally realized that he was the same Mordechai!
(Shlomo, former neighbor of the Rav)