Abba Luria looked at the two figures who’d just entered his tiny Jerusalem makolet on Rechov Chofetz Chaim next to the Zichron Moshe shtieblach. The young men were shabbily dressed with a foreign air. It was clear to the shopkeeper that his visitors were new immigrants — which in 1938 meant they had likely sailed illegally to bypass British immigration quotas perhaps spending months at sea before making it safely to some beach in Eretz Yisrael. Sensing they were searching for some sort of livelihood he engaged them in conversation. The two men were brothers he learned originally from Austria. When he inquired about the family occupation their shoulders straightened and their eyes lit up as they told him that their family had been butchers for generations. On the spot kindhearted Abba Luria made them the best offer he could considering the entire Jerusalemite yishuv was entrenched in poverty: He would buy a kilogram of meat and the brothers could cut it and sell it at the front of his store. The availability of meat would attract customers to Luria’s grocery and the profits would feed the penniless brothers.

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