And It Happened at Midnight
| April 3, 2023While the world dreams and the stars twinkle, the Creator neither slumbers nor sleeps. Ten stories of midnight miracles, epiphanies, and revelations
Angels for Another Day
Russy Tendler
Rabbi Avraham Schwartz came to Atlanta as a classroom teacher, his dedication to spreading Torah and Judaism deeply impacted by his stint in Aish Hatorah. (In fact, Rabbi Schwartz was one of Aish’s first students.) Over his years in Atlanta, he became the manager of the kosher department in the community’s major grocery store, Kroger. Woven throughout all of his work was his deep desire to share his love of Torah with others. He was known by his customers for sharing a Torah thought each time they walked through the kosher department. He’d walk alongside his friends, sharing thoughts and ideas as they shopped. He was humble in all that he did, understated in his purity and commitment to a lifestyle he believed in so fully.
Yom Kippur fell on a Wednesday the year Rabbi Schwartz passed away. And it was on that day — the holiest day of the year, the day when the entire world is suspended in time, when all else seems to stop and the sanctity of life is almost tangible — that he was niftar, leaving behind his wife and two grown children. There were only two days until Shabbos, and his desire to be buried in Eretz Yisrael dictated the need to fly his body out on Motzaei Yom Kippur.
For the members of the community, Rabbi Schwartz’s friends, it didn’t matter that Yom Kippur had only just ended and that Succos was fast approaching. It didn’t matter that they were spent from a day of fasting and tefillah. It didn’t matter that the only way to accompany their friend to the Next World in the small way that they could was to wake up at three a.m. for the short levayah before the flight that would carry him to his final resting place. Of course it didn’t matter; this was Rabbi Schwartz.
The shul parking lot was dark and quiet. But when the hearse appeared in front of the shul, so did the many headlights of car after car pulled in to send off a friend with love and kavod. Like silent angels, a role they’d assumed on the Day of Atonement, the community members emerged from their cars one by one in an almost poetic display of holiness. There was no sound but that of the car doors closing and the rav delivering a short hesped. And in the silence was a message of friendship, spoken louder than words ever could, as people from Rabbi Schwartz’s 30 years in Atlanta stood at attention to show kavod hameis.
After the rav spoke, many cars accompanied the hearse in a lengthy procession from the shul to the airport. Night turned to morning, and as the cars made their way back home, Rabbi Schwartz left our city behind.
Shabbos and Yom Tov were fast approaching, and the hectic bustle of life and a flurry of preparations awaited the people of Atlanta. There was something different in our preparations that year — there was the sadness of the loss, but it was laced with the clarity of purpose that had been revealed on Yom Kippur and harvested by a community’s joint chesed shel emes in the stillness of the night.
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