Last-Minute Surprises

As the third son (and seventh child) of the Machnovka-Belz Rebbe, Rav Aharon Rokach, father of 13 of his own, could have settled into a life of quiet and tranquility in his rabbinic position, instead of flying around the world where he never quite knows what to expect. But as with so many things in life, becoming a mohel was a surprise to him as well.

Rav Rokach is the son-in-law of Rav Yitzchak Dovid Horowitz, av beis din and leader of the Ratzfert chassidic kehillah in São Paulo, Brazil. When they were first married, he and his wife lived in Bnei Brak, but would travel to her parents in São Paulo for Yamim Tovim — and when she was expecting their first child, she would be giving birth there as well. At the time, Rav Rokach began to study the more intricate halachos and stringencies involved in bris milah — things he might need to know in order to make sure the upcoming bris (if they had a boy) would have all the hiddurim. It was a sensitive issue though, as no one wanted to step on the toes of the community mohel, but as Reb Aharon was a private person — a guest from abroad and not part of the kehillah — and in the end he unobtrusively brought over an expert mohel from Eretz Yisrael and billed the bris as a private “rebbishe” event so that it wouldn’t cause bad feelings within the local community.

“But then,” he says, “I thought to myself that I had become so deeply involved in all the aspects of milah that maybe I should study professionally and consider going into it.”

Reb Aharon began to study under Rav Dovid Shlomo Gelber, a well-known mohel and nephew and talmid of Rav Shmuel Halevi Wosner (Rav Gelber’s father, Rav Shmuel Meir Gelber a”h, was a famed mohel and Rav Wosner’s brother-in-law). Rav Gelber is known for his travels to Eastern Europe and around the world for even the most challenging bris and family situations.

“I learned under Rav Gelber and became one of his foremost students,” Reb Aharon relates. “He often goes abroad for brissen and he also specializes in adult brissen which are not uncommon in Russia and Ukraine — and he started taking me along with him.”

As his own reputation grew, it wasn’t long before Rav Rokach himself was invited to do brissen in England, Belgium, the US, and was even called back to Brazil. Those invitations, though, are part of the business. But the most notable trips are those that are pure mitzvos — the many brissen he performs in Russia and Ukraine, often at the last minute, sometimes filled with surprises, but always with a special dose of siyata d’Shmaya.

Family Tradition

As a son of the Rebbe and rav of the kehillah in Elad, some people might think it odd that Rav Rokach is a globetrotting mohel, but he says he’s actually carrying on an elevated tradition. “In the generations before the Shoah,” he says, “all the rabbanim were also mohelim. In Belz, our zeides, the rebbes, were themselves mohelim.”

His international chesed is also a product of the home in which he grew up.

Machnovka-Belz, with batei medrash in Yerushalayim, Beit Shemesh, Elad, Stamford Hill, Manchester, Antwerp, Boro Park, Williamsburg, and Monsey, is headquartered in Bnei Brak, where the Rebbe, Rav Yehoshua Rokach, is famed for both his open heart and open accommodations for anyone in need of a place to stay, and tries to see everyone who comes regardless of whether they have a prior appointment. (A young chassid once lit a cigarette in the beis medrash where people were staying, and the Rebbe told him to extinguish it, saying that the smell bothers people. “It’s no worse than what he smells like,” the young chassid replied, pointing at one of the homeless fellows sleeping on a bench. “Right, but his is the smell of hachnassas orchim,” the Rebbe replied.)

The Rebbe of Machnovka-Belz is a scion of two great chassidic dynasties, his ancestry going back to both Rav Mordechai of Chernobyl and the Sar Shalom of Belz. He is a great-nephew and successor of Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heshel Twersky of Machnovka, the third Machnovka Rebbe, who reestablished the Machnovka court in Eretz Yisrael and served as rebbe for almost 70 years but passed away without children. The Rebbe is also the grandson and namesake of Rav Yehoshua Rokach of Yaroslav, a son of Rav Yissachar Dov of Belz and older brother of Rebbe Aharon of Belz.

Rebbe Aharon, the fourth Belzer Rebbe, together with his half-brother, Rav Mordechai of Bilgoray, miraculously escaped the inferno of Europe, finding refuge and rebuilding the decimated chassidus in Eretz Yisrael. As Rebbe Aharon didn’t leave any surviving children, his nephew, Rav Yissachar Dov Rokeach, son of the Bilgorayer Rav through his second wife in Eretz Yisrael, assumed leadership of the chassidus and is the current Belzer Rebbe. At the same time, Rav Yehoshua Rokach succeeded his childless great-uncle as Machnovka Rebbe and his court came to be known as Machnovka-Belz.

In deference to their holy ancestors, the Machnovka Rebbe encouraged his son to gain proficiency in milah and even tracked his progress.

“One time my father surprised me by showing up at a bris where I was the mohel,” Reb Aharon recalls. “It wasn’t a family bris, nor even for one of the chassidim — he just wanted to make sure I was doing it right.”

Ready and Willing

Rav Rokach has traveled to Siberia on many occasions, the first time together with his mentor Rav Gelber when Rav Wosner was still alive. “I went to Rav Wosner for a brachah,” Reb Aharon remembers, “and he was overwhelmed that a Yid was traveling from Eretz Yisrael to Siberia — that frozen wasteland where millions had been exiled — to do a bris.”

Just hearing the word Siberia conjures up images of political prisoners, “traitors” to Mother Russia, harborers of “state secrets” and Jews unwilling to reject their faith, languishing in the sub-zero frozen gulag. But today, Siberia, cold as it is (winters generally see minus-45-degree temperatures), has several large, technologically advanced cities — and many Jews. (The Chabad House in Irkutsk, for example, serves about 10,000 Jews, mostly unaffiliated, and Tyumen, the oldest Russian settlement in Siberia where Jews have been living for over a century, has about 3,000 Jews.)

“It’s a real balagan there in terms of Yiddishkeit and there is so much intermarriage, but I’m in touch with the Chabad shluchim all over Siberia and they call me when a bris is needed,” Reb Aharon says. “A Jewish baby is a Jewish baby, and a baby born from a Jewish mother in Siberia needs a bris just like any baby born in Meah Shearim. There’s no wiggle room here.”

Rav Rokach was once called by one of the Chabad shluchim to do a bris in a small Siberian town on Chol Hamoed Pesach. He packed some home-cooked Pesach food and bottled water for the journey, then flew from Ben Gurion to Moscow, where he was to catch a six-hour domestic flight to the town.

But in Moscow, he ran into trouble: There is a rule against bringing cooked food not commercially packaged into Russia, and the water bottles were more than the regulated three ounces for the domestic flight, and so despite all attempts to explain the laws of Pesach and his personal stringencies (the mini bottle of wine he took with got through), the water and food were confiscated. For the next 24 hours until he returned to Israel, it was more like Yom Kippur than Pesach.

Rav Rokach tells the story casually, as though it were no sacrifice, but simply another ordinary episode in the life he’s chosen. Sometimes there are hitches, but mostly, there are unplanned surprises, where he sees the Divine intervention of being at the right place at the right time.

Like the time he traveled to the Baal Shem Tov’s kever in Mezhibuzh in Ukraine.

“There was a Jewish fellow in the neighboring town of Chemilnitsky who I’d become friendly with from my travels, and as I was pretty close by, I called him to say hello and maybe come over for a visit,” he relates. “I was a little taken aback at how excited he was to hear from me, practically jumping for joy over the phone, until he explained that he has a friend, a 50-year-old Jewish man who he’s been talking to for years about having a bris, and just now, this man agreed. ‘If you’re here,’ my friend said, ‘let’s do the bris now before he changes his mind again.’

“I told him I would be more than happy to accommodate, as long as he organizes an operating theater. So he got a private operating room for the next morning — and I can’t describe how happy my ‘client’ was.

“Generally, with adults, something amazing happens to them — I’ve seen it at every adult bris. As if the spark of Yiddishkeit goes in. You see how suddenly there’s a light that opens in him, a kesher to HaKadosh Baruch Hu that you just can’t describe in words. I’ve been to hundreds of brissen of adults — those that I’ve performed and those I’ve participated in with Rav Gelber — and it’s always the same thing.”

(Rav Rokach qualifies that he will do an adult bris if necessary, but he doesn’t publicize it as his main skill set.)

“I’ve also done many brissen with geirim, and it’s really incredible,” he continues. “Someone born a Jew has a special privilege that he’s born Jewish, but when you do a bris on someone who’s made the conscious choice, it’s something special, something unique that the rest of us don’t have, that we’re missing. We never decided anything about being Jewish, but a person who makes the choice has the status of naaseh v’nishma, like he’s standing at Har Sinai.

Race Against the Sun

Because being in the right place at the right time is a pattern that seems to follow him on his journeys abroad, Rav Rokach always makes sure to have his milah equipment with him wherever he goes. Except for the time he didn’t.

It was a few summers ago, and he joined a group of his father’s chassidim who were traveling to the graves of tzaddikim in Ukraine. The highlight was the grave of Rav Yosef Meir Twersky, the first Rebbe of Machnovka, whose yahrzeit falls on Erev Rosh Chodesh Elul — that year, on a Friday.

The chassidim arrived in the town of Machnovka at around noon on Friday, planning to continue on to Mezhibuzh for Shabbos. As they boarded the bus for Mezhibuzh, one of the avreichim in the group happened to call Rabbi Hillel Cohen, a well-known communal askan and one of the major forces behind the Jewish communities of Ukraine.

“When I heard the avreich speaking to Reb Hillel,” Rav Rokach recalls, “I asked him to send regards from me. We’ve been friends for years, since he often calls me to perform brissen across Ukraine.”

As soon as Rabbi Cohen heard that Reb Aharon was in Ukraine, he practically shouted into the phone, “Rav Rokach, you’re here in Ukraine?!”

He explained that in Kyiv, several hours away, there was a Jewish baby who was eight days old, and despite all their efforts, the local community had not been able to find a mohel to perform the bris. (As Kyiv doesn’t have its own mohel, a mohel is usually flown in from Vienna, about an hour and a half away by plane.)

At that moment, Reb Aharon knew he wouldn’t be joining the group for Shabbos in Mezhibuzh. And so, committed to answering every bris call, he quickly packed, said goodbye to his friends, and left for nearby Berditchev, where he could catch a taxi to Kyiv.

On the way, Reb Aharon learned more. The baby’s mother was Jewish, but the father wasn’t — and the mother really wasn’t interested in having her baby circumcised. But Rabbi Cohen, who heard about the situation, didn’t give up. He tried to speak with the mother, to persuade her of the immense privilege and obligation of the bris, but she kept tuning him out.

And then, like an unexpected puzzle piece falling into place, another development occurred. That very Erev Shabbos, a large group of wealthy chassidic donors arrived in Kyiv as part of a trip organized by Ichud Mosdos Gur — the umbrella organization for Gur institutions in Israel. Rabbi Cohen, who was accompanying the group, shared his pain and frustration over the bris that might not take place.

The donors, tough-minded businessmen as they were, decided to intervene. “Tell the mother she can name any price she wants for letting her son have a bris,” they told him, pulling out their wallets. When the financially-strapped mother heard of this new factor in the equation, she suddenly announced that, in exchange for generous financial support, she would agree to the bris. The agreement was made, the wallets opened — and now only one problem remained: There was no mohel available.

It was already late. The sun was leaning westward, and Rabbi Cohen resigned himself to missing the mitzvah on its proper day — until he learned that a master mohel was, by Providence, in Ukraine. And then began a race against time.

“Usually, since I’m often called at the last minute, I carry all the necessary bris equipment with me wherever I go, but due to flight constraints on this particular trip, I hadn’t,” Reb Aharon relates. “So here I was, a few hours before Shabbos, in a taxi from Berditchev to Kyiv — without even a milah knife.”

At this point, desperate measures were needed. He sent Rabbi Cohen to a Kyiv gas station to buy a sharp knife and a bottle of pure alcohol. He arrived in Kyiv shortly before sunset and rushed to the shul, while the mother brought the baby and left. The honor of sandek was auctioned for a large sum by one of the Gerrer donors, the money going toward the “expenses” promised to the mother.

As the Kyiv sun set and the holiness of Shabbos spread across the city, no one present could hold back their tears — not even Rav Rokach.

“It was probably the fastest bris I ever did,” Rav Rokach says, “but it surely stirred the Heavens. The cries of that baby surely aroused great Heavenly mercy, even from within the spiritual darkness into which he was born. A destitute mother moved only by money, a non-Jewish father, yet a precious Jewish soul, now bound to his Creator in total purity.”

Never Say No

For Rav Rokach, miracles don’t only happen in faraway lands on foreign soil. He’s also seen tremendous siyata d’Shmaya much closer to home. He was recently contacted by a family right down the street in Bnei Brak, whose daughter had left Jewish life, married an Arab, and was living in the Muslim section of Yafo outside Tel Aviv. The mother was in sporadic contact with her daughter, and when a son was born to the couple, she begged her daughter to, at the least, give the baby a kosher bris. After all, she said, Muslims also circumcise their babies and the father would surely agree. In fact, most Muslims in Israel use either doctors or Jewish mohelim, often those in training, and have their babies circumcised before they leave the hospital.

“The grandmother of the baby asked if I would be willing to do it, to go into that Arab neighborhood in Yafo and make the bris,” Reb Aharon relates. “For a bris, you never say no. So I took another fellow along, we got to their house — just the parents of the baby are there — and the father asks me, ‘Why are you doing a bris, do you think you’ll make him a Jew? I don’t want any religious act here!’ According to Muslim law, the baby’s religion goes according to the father, so he was justifiably concerned. I calmed him down, told him I was just doing a favor to the grandmother, but I wanted to make sure it was a halachic bris, with wine — which is actually forbidden by them — with the brachos, the works.

“I had a tiny bottle of wine in one pocket and a mini goblet in the other, and my friend and I did everything quickly, the father looking on but not really understanding what was going on. My friend was the sandek — I told the father that he’s just here to help me hold the baby — and we did the bris b’kedushah v’taharah, like any Jewish baby. They even agreed on a name that goes with both Jews and Arabs. Omer. We said the brachos, v’yikarei shemo b’Yisrael Omer… and I hope and pray that one day, in the zechus of this kosher bris, Omer will find his way back.”
In these coming days, Rav Rokach will have another shlichus — he’s the chazzan for Shacharis on Rosh Hashanah in his father’s great beis medrash, where he will daven on behalf of the tzibbur to renew the covenant, just like at a bris. And together with his outpouring of prayer will rise the cries of thousands of babies from the most remote corners of the world — and may the power of those holy cries tip the scales of judgment, decreeing for all of Klal Yisrael a good and sweet year.

Rachel Ginsberg contributed to this report.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1079)