The lottery fell out on Reb Dan. Rav Meir had seen him once when they had thrown him into prison upon his arrival on the island. Reb Dan was a hunched, elderly man who was also almost unable to walk because of a problem with his legs. He did not look like someone who was capable of fighting a young, powerful sorcerer.

Reb Dan’s tribesmen hurried to his hut to inform him of the outcome of the lottery.

“Reb Dan, you’ve been chosen to help our brothers and sisters across the river.”

Reb Dan arose from where he sat learning and raised his saintly eyes at the messengers.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

Reb Dan turned to his wife and spoke with her for a few moments.

“So I will be traveling across the river on Shabbos?”

“Yes, there is no other way.”

“Obviously, I can never return home again.”

“Yes.”

Reb Dan thought for a few moments. Then he requested parchment and carefully wrote out a get, a bill of divorce, to his wife.

“Summon the man who crossed the river. He also needs to write a get to his wife. I will deliver it for him.”

Rav Meir entered the room shortly after and prepared a get, just as Reb Dan had. Afterward, he grasped Reb Dan’s hands.

“May Hashem watch over you. Thank you for doing this.”

“It is clearly the will of Hashem.”

“We are now switching places...”

Reb Dan looked up at Rav Meir and held him with his piercing gaze.

“We are switching worlds.”

Rav Meir understood. He was to remain on this island of kedushah, totally alienated from the rest of humanity, until the end of his life. Reb Dan, on the other hand, would be crossing over the great protective river and entering a foreign world that was fraught with danger, never to return again.

Indeed, they were switching worlds.

******************************

The following Shabbos, after the river had calmed, Reb Yosef and Reb Baruch beheld an amazing sight. A boat carrying a single man, old and bent over, was coming across the Sambatyon.

“I am Reb Dan.” The old man introduced himself in lashon hakodesh as he arrived on their side of the water. “I was chosen by a lottery to come with you and try and help you.”

Reb Baruch and Reb Yosef exchanged astonished glances. This was the powerful savior Reb Yosef had been told of in his dream? They had envisioned someone younger, vibrating with energy and youthful strength and spirit, not a frail, elderly man who talked in a whisper.

“Come, we need to travel quickly. I traveled on Shabbos because of pikuach nefesh. If that is so, we must not tarry an extra moment. Jewish lives are at stake!”

Reb Dan set off, hobbling across the beach, leaning on a long staff for support.

“We’ll be traveling for years at this pace!” Reb Yosef said in anguish to Reb Baruch. “By the time we make it back, the sorcerer’s time limit will be long over!”

Reb Dan’s voice suddenly called out to them from behind a pile of rocks.

“These must be your camels. Help me onto one of them, please.”

“We didn’t leave our camels here!” Reb Baruch murmured in astonishment. “We left them a long distance away from here, somewhere along the mountain pass.”

Reb Dan was silent, but they could see his lips moving in tefillah, pronouncing different names of Hashem with complete concentration and feeling.

Perhaps there was more to Reb Dan that met the eye.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha Jr., Issue 784)