Amid the grandeur of the whirlwind visit, the Rebbe and his entourage made sure to fit in one more destination

Living Higher

L

ast week, Rav Zvi Elimelech Halberstam, the Sanz-Klausenburg Rebbe of Netanya, paid a rare and much-anticipated visit to the United States. During his short stay in America, the first after a six-year hiatus, the Rebbe’s itinerary was packed with visits to American gedolim, exclusive fundraisers to benefit the chassidus, and major asifos, all of which the Rebbe presided over. Yet amid the grandeur of the whirlwind visit, the Rebbe and his entourage made sure to fit in one more destination: the Fountain View senior living facility in Monsey, New York. The Rebbe’s visit there wasn’t for the purpose of addressing an audience or even to raise funds for his mosdos, but simply to pay forward a debt of gratitude on behalf of his father, Rav Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam ztz”l, the previous Klausenburger Rebbe.

Rav Yekusiel Yehudah had lost his wife and ten children in the Holocaust before emigrating to the United States and establishing a yeshivah in Williamsburg, New York. One of the talmidim in the Rebbe’s nascent yeshivah was a young, determined bochur by the name of Shmeel Schwed, himself a survivor from Hungary. The young Schwed, an incredible masmid, developed a close relationship with the Rebbe. Eventually, Shmeel left the yeshivah for the diamond industry and embarked on a range of askanus initiatives, relocating to West Palm Beach in the process. The Rebbe went on to build the Sanz community in Netanya and established a court in Union City, New Jersey, but the bond between the two endured.

When Mr. Schwed moved back to Monsey, he moved into the Fountain View Rehabilitation Center. And so, on a cold Wednesday morning, the current Sanzer Rebbe, a son and scion of his father’s legacy, took a detour from a demanding agenda to visit his father’s talmid of long ago.

“Snow Problem”

Across the United States, severe snowstorms shut down schools, businesses, and shopping centers as the force of weather overpowered day-to-day functions.

But some forces can never be overpowered: Yeshivos and shuls continued uninterrupted, storming the heavens with an intensity that prevailed even over the severest of weather conditions.

The Lens

Rav Shimon Galai, one of the great tzaddikim and mekubalim of Eretz Yisrael, was recently in America, and the eighth-grade students of Lakewood’s Yeshiva Nesivos HaTorah traveled to the Westin in Princeton, New Jersey for a few minutes with the Rav. The bochurim are in the throes of the high-pressured “farher” season, in which the mesivtas administer the entrance bechinos, and the Rav delivered tailor-made divrei chizuk.

“I have heard that you are going to yeshivah ketanah. The ikar is that a bochur should be shakuah in Torah and be happy with every word that he learns,” he said. Then the Rav added, “Wherever you go is min haShamayim. Many times, a bochur thinks davka here or davka there. However, if the Ribbono shel Olam knows it’s not good for him, He directs him to another place. We have to understand that the Ribbono shel Olam knows better than us what is good for us.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1097)