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Beit Midrash
- Sections
- The Life of Tzaddikim
- Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu
When the Rav was coming out of the judges’ chambers, he noticed a woman in her thirties, an immigrant from Morocco, sitting with a book of Psalms in her hand. Day after day, the Rav saw her sitting and praying. When three weeks had passed, the young rabbinical judge requested that someone ask her what she was doing there.
The woman explained that she was married to a taxi driver in Morocco, and a week after the wedding, he set off on a journey to a distant city and never returned. Her investigations revealed that he had been in an accident but his body had not been found.
After the rabbinical court in Casablanca had not permitted her to remarry, due to a lack of witnesses, she decided to come to a rabbinical court in Israel and ask here for permission to remarry.
The Rav heard her story, and immediately took a taxi to visit the Baba Sali in Netivot. "My brother, the Baba Chaki, knows everyone in Morocco," the Baba Sali told him, and so the Rav traveled to Ramle in order to ask the Baba Sali’s brother if he knew the people concerned.
"There were two gravediggers in that town," the Baba Chaki told the Rav. "Both of them moved to Israel - one lives in Dimona and the other in Kiryat Gat."
And so the Rav carried on traveling, now to Dimona to order to find the first gravedigger. When he arrived at the address that had been given to him, he found a mourning notice of the entrance door, from which he learnt that the man he was searching for so hard, the man who could release the woman from her position as a wife without a husband yet who couldn’t remarry, had died right then, and the chances of the woman’s success were growing more remote.
Despite all this, the Rav entered the family home, waited for Minchah (the afternoon prayer), and between Mincha and Aravit (the evening prayer), he gave over some Torah thoughts and told the story which had brought him there. Suddenly, one of those listening got up on his feet and said, "I’m the other gravedigger from that town – I came from Kiryat Gat to pay a condolence call on my friend’s family." Right away, the Rav extracted from him a witness report that helped to free the same woman from her difficult position.
It’s true that books are full of stories of the wonders of rabbis, but this "wonder" wouldn’t have happened if the Rav hadn’t noticed that a distressed woman was sitting outside the courtroom and praying.
Rabbis in Midrash
Lessons
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Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 690
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D'varim Judaism’s Social Vision
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Kuzari -Rabbi Ari Shvat Kuzari class 9 - "Seeing is Believing" (parag. 21-30)
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Kuzari -Rabbi Ari Shvat Kuzari class 8- "Answering Questions on the Kuzari's Proof from Mass Revelation
How do we know that the "claim" of mass revelation to 2,000,000 witnesses at Mt. Sinai is really true? This important class answers all of the questions skeptics ask about this claim of the Kuzari.
Ein Aya Armies Still Necessary for Balance & the War Against Wars
Rav Kook explains why the world was originally divided into the various seemingly contradicting ideologies and cultures, in order to develop each one respectively. Swords or armies symbolize how each respective ideology defends themselves, as well as deters their opposing ideologies and cultures. On the other hand, the messianic era will be one of peace, and Rav Kook explains the transition to that stage, which mankind is already undergoing.
