In frigid Europe, hundreds of young women warm up with purpose and prayer for their future

Photos: Ishay Yerushalmi, Faiga Rus Yelen

From the gravesites of the Noam Elimelech and Sarah Schenirer to Rav Shayele of Kerestir and so many in between, 350 young women huddled together in entreaty, beseeching Hashem for their zivug and davening for their partners in prayer to merit children. While we experienced frigid single-digit temperatures and trekked through several feet of snow, it was the warmest excursion I’d ever been on

AS a rule, where to go on vacation depends on your weather preference. If you prefer it warm (as most older people do), you head south. If you like the cold and the snow (as some young people do), you head north. At times there are exceptions. I recently returned from just such an exception.

Permit me to explain.

I write these words after a four-day trip of a lifetime, in which a group of several hundred participants traveled to Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary with only two goals in mind: tefillah and chizuk. The weather wasn’t just cold, it was way beyond that. We experienced frigid single-digit temperatures along with several feet of snow, and yet it was the warmest trip that I ever had the zechus to participate in.

Our trip was organized by Ohel Sarala, an initiative that matches single women waiting for a shidduch with couples waiting to be blessed with children. Each half of the pair davens for the other, and we’ve seen over 8,000 engagements and over 1,000 babies born in the nine years since its inception.

On this trip, I joined over 350 bnos Yisrael from three continents, five countries, and dozens of cities, who visited some of the most wrenching sites in our nation’s history with red frozen cheeks and faces glowing with warmth. They walked through several feet of snow in frigid weather, bundled in several layers — yet the heart and soul were on fire.

Our singular goal for this trip was not a historical tour (though we did learn so much) but to provide chizuk to an (unfortunately) growing segment of our community: the singles struggling through the shidduch process, very often forced to deal with this overwhelming challenge all alone.

Did we succeed in our mission? As I was entering the airport in Budapest at the end of our trip to fly back to Eretz Yisrael, a young woman approached me and said, “Rabbi Ginzberg, my name is Miriam from Manchester, England, and I just want to thank you, because while I have no idea how much longer Hashem wants me to be on this journey, one thing that I know for sure is that the chizuk that I received over the past four days will help me remain strong for as long as I need to be, until this journey will be completed.”

As the young woman receded from view, I turned to my wife and said, “Mission accomplished.”