M

y grandfather, Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch, the founding rosh yeshivah of Cleveland’s Telshe Yeshivah, was a lion when it came to enforcing Shabbos observance.When he was still living in Telshe, Lithuania, before the war, the local barber, an irreligious Jew, once kept his shop open Friday evening and continued giving haircuts after nightfall. Although many of the local Jews were also irreligious, it was nevertheless unheard of for any Jew in Telshe to keep his store open on Shabbos. Outraged by this brazen, unprecedented chillul Shabbos, my grandfather walked over to the barbershop that Friday night, accompanied by several bochurim from the Telshe Yeshivah, and tried convincing the barber to close his shop.

The barber was unmoved by his words, however. He responded in a disrespectful manner, whereupon my zeide slapped him across the cheek.

Furious, the barber went and sued my zeide in court. After listening to both sides of the case, the non-Jewish judge turned to the barber and castigated him for trampling on his ancestral legacy by disregarding the sanctity of the Jewish Sabbath. He then turned to my zeide and fined him a token penalty of one small coin.

The state of Shabbos observance in Cleveland was a far cry from what my zeide had experienced in Telshe. In the early 1950s, when I was growing up, there were few shomer Shabbos families in our community. Some of the recent Jewish immigrants had been observant back in Europe but could not withstand the pressure to work on Shabbos in America.

My friend and next-door neighbor, whom I’ll call Bernie, was the son of one such family. His father, an immigrant, worked as a shoe salesman in a department store six days a week, including Saturday. But in those days, Jews were Jews, and I, the grandson of the Rosh Yeshivah, played ball with Bernie, the kid whose father worked on Shabbos.

After graduating public school, Bernie moved to California and joined the Hollywood scene. I moved to Eretz Yisrael and opened a branch of the Telshe Yeshivah, in Telshe Stone. I completely lost touch with Bernie.

In the 40 years that I’ve been responsible for the finances of my yeshivah, only once, about 35 years ago, did someone walk into our office and make an unsolicited donation. I was not there at the time, but the next time I entered the office, the secretary handed me an American check, drawn on the bank account of a fellow named Bernie with a Los Angeles address and phone number.

I couldn’t remember the last name of my childhood friend Bernie, whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in decades, but the last name written on the check was vaguely familiar. Could this mysterious donor be the same Bernie?

Back then, I used to travel to Los Angeles every year to fundraise for my yeshivah. The next time I flew to Los Angeles, I took along the phone number of this Bernie, figuring I’d give him a call to thank him for his donation and find out whether he was indeed the Bernie I had grown up with.

Sure enough, when I called Bernie, he immediately recognized my name and introduced himself as the Bernie from Temblett Avenue in Cleveland. “Why don’t you come over to my house and we’ll catch up?” he suggested.

I accepted his offer, and when I arrived, he served me some fruit and coffee. His house was clearly nonkosher, and his wife eyed me, the rabbi, suspiciously the entire time.

Bernie informed me that he had become a successful Hollywood scriptwriter, and he listed some of the films he had scripted. “Not long ago,” he said, “when I was 40, I had a massive heart attack that almost took my life. I recovered, thank G-d, but the experience got me thinking about Judaism.”

One of the first things Bernie did, as part of his spiritual awakening, was visit Israel for the first time. While driving along the highway near Yerushalayim, he noticed a sign that said “Telshe Stone,” and, recalling the name Telshe from his youth in Cleveland, he decided to take a spin through the neighborhood. Once there, he passed my yeshivah, which was then named Yeshivas Telshe b’Yisrael (later, it was renamed Meor Eliyahu, after my grandfather), and decided to make a donation, not even knowing that I, his old friend, was affiliated with the yeshivah.

At this point, Bernie was starting to realize that Yiddishkeit and Hollywood were not a good match, but he was still trying valiantly to bridge the two worlds. “I’m working on a Torah movie,” he told me proudly, adding that he had the backing of a certain famous producer. He even showed me some panels for his upcoming movie, which showed a tefillin-wearing character scaring off would-be assailants through the mystical power of tefillin.

“Bernie,” I said, “everything in Torah has a mystical side to it, but we simple folk really have to concentrate on the practical side of things. It’s true that tefillin have the power to ward off danger and frighten our adversaries, but the practical side of tefillin is that we tie our minds and our hearts to Hashem every day. That’s what we should be focusing on when we wear our tefillin.”

Bernie was fascinated by that concept, and he proceeded to question me further about tefillin and other mitzvos.

Before my trips to Los Angeles in subsequent years, I debated whether to visit Bernie again. On one hand, he was an old friend, one who was struggling to find his way back to Yiddishkeit despite significant adversity. On the other hand, my time in the United States was limited, and any time I would devote to Bernie would come at the expense of several hours of fundraising for the yeshivah.

I thought of my zeide Rav Eliyahu Meir, who had dedicated his life to rebuilding the Telshe Yeshivah after the war. He had recruited my father, his son-in-law, to fundraise for the yeshivah, which displeased my mother. When she complained to her father that she wanted her husband to learn in the yeshivah, not travel to collect for it, his answer was, “We are all in service of the Ribbono shel Olam, and we each have to use our unique kochos to benefit the yeshivah. If I thought I could best contribute to the yeshivah by working as a janitor, I would do that.”

What would my zeide have said about my taking time from fundraising to spend with Bernie? My feeling was that he would have told me, “What’s the purpose of your yeshivah? The yeshivah is for the Ribbono shel Olam! Here’s a Yid who’s trying to work his way back to Yiddishkeit, and in exchange for perhaps a few more fundraising dollars, you’re bringing another neshamah back to the Ribbono shel Olam. So what’s the question?”

With this in mind, when I visited Los Angeles each year, I went to see Bernie, not to solicit a donation, but simply to catch up with him. Since his wife had seemed so hostile when I entered their home — she was unhappy with her husband’s shift toward Yiddishkeit, and did not take kindly to a visit from a bearded rabbi — I met with Bernie in local kosher restaurants after that first visit.

During our meetings, he would pepper me with questions about Yiddishkeit, and we’d reminisce about old times and laugh together, after which he’d write me out a check, even as he reduced his involvement in Hollywood and his parnassah dwindled accordingly. His donation was hardly the purpose of my visit, though.

Once, I asked Bernie what had led to his reawakening. “I understand that your heart attack made you reexamine your life,” I said, “but for you to embrace Yiddishkeit at age 40, in the midst of the Hollywood scene, you must have had a pintele Yid alive inside you all the years. Otherwise, how would you have known what to turn to when you hit a crisis? What was that thread that kept you connected?”

“Do you remember that you used to walk to shul with your grandfather on Friday nights?” he asked me.

Yes, I did. Since my father was often away on fundraising trips, my zeide would frequently take me to shul when I was a boy.

“When I would see you walking with your grandfather to shul,” Bernie continued, “I was so embarrassed, I wanted to bury myself in the ground. My father was still at work, and here I was playing ball, while you and the other religious people on the block were going to shul, dressed in your Shabbos finery.

“Those Friday nights, your grandfather used to walk over to me and say, ‘Gut Shabbos, Bernie,’ while lovingly caressing my cheek. All the years, even in my lowest spiritual moments, the saintly image of the rabbi and the memory of his warm caress kept me from falling off the cliff.”

Hearing that, I could practically feel my zeide winking down at me from Heaven, in approval of my decision to keep Bernie on the itinerary of my fundraising trips.

Bernie moved closer and closer to Yiddishkeit over the years, eventually becoming fully observant. During one of my trips to Los Angeles, about eight years after I first reconnected with him, he invited me to his home a second time. “I have great news,” he told me excitedly. “My house is completely kosher now. For years my wife was resistant to Yiddishkeit, but she finally came around, and she’s now fully on board.”

When I entered his house for the second time, his wife was clearly delighted that I was able to eat in her house. Over time, her husband’s sincerity had rubbed off on her, and not a trace of her original antagonism remained.

Bernie’s Torah movie did not pan out — apparently, Torah and Hollywood are not very compatible — and he eventually abandoned Hollywood entirely. Having no source of income, he could no longer write out his yearly check to my yeshivah, which pained him greatly, even though I always reminded him that I was coming as a friend, not as a fundraiser.

At one point, Bernie was threatened with eviction from his home, and I actually loaned him money from a gemach fund that I administer. When he took the money from me, he started to cry. “I’m supposed to give you money, Rabbi, not the other way around,” he said.

Not only did Bernie begin keeping Torah and mitzvos, he also developed ironclad emunah that I found awe-inspiring. His father-in-law was virulently anti-religious, and when Bernie’s finances went downhill as he became more observant, his father-in-law would taunt him about it. “Look what your religion is accomplishing for you,” he would tell Bernie. “This is how G-d rewards you?”

“When I daven to Hashem for parnassah,” Bernie confided to me, “I tell Him, ‘G-d, You know better than I do what’s good for me. I accept Your decree and am satisfied with whatever amount You give me, but please give me enough money to silence my father-in-law when he speaks against You.’ ”

He may no longer have been working as a Hollywood scriptwriter, but he was utilizing those same talents in formulating his personal prayers to Hashem.

Bernie’s wife went to work as an English teacher in a frum girls’ school, and from then on the family subsisted off her salary exclusively.

When Bernie was 50, he suffered a second, fatal heart attack. Apparently, Hashem had given him a ten-year reprieve after his first heart attack, affording him the opportunity to turn his life around. He died as a full baal teshuvah, leaving behind a beautiful frum family.

Several years after Bernie’s passing, a group of my grandfather’s talmidim arranged a gathering in Mattersdorf in honor of my zeide’s 50th yahrtzeit, and they asked me to say a few words.

“An adam gadol,” I began, “is someone who is able to transcend his natural inclinations and do what is right in every situation, even if that means employing opposite modes of behavior.”

I then told two stories that happened with my zeide on Friday night: the story of how he slapped the Shabbos-desecrating barber in the town of Telshe, and the story of how he caressed Bernie, the son of the shoe salesman in Cleveland.

Same man, same hand. On one cheek, a slap; on another cheek, a caress.

Yes, the Zeide would certainly have approved of my taking the time to schmooze with Bernie.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 726)

To have your story retold by C. Saphir, e-mail a brief synopsis to lifelines@mishpacha.com or call +1.718.686.9339 extension 87204 and leave a message. Details will be changed to assure confidentiality.