There’s nothing that casts as much light as a Jewish soul aflame

People find all sorts of interesting ways to relax. One of mine is tracking what outreach pioneer Rabbi Shlomo Raanan is up to via his status. On any given day, the peripatetic head of Ayelet Hashachar — an organization that founds shuls and places kiruv couples in kibbutzim — might be offloading a prefab shul on the Lebanon border, leading a siyum in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, or popping up somewhere on the globe as he raises funds and reaches souls.

As I relax while watching his ceaseless toil, I’m reminded of a quote from Three Men in a Boat, a Victorian comedy: “I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

The committee responsible for one of Israel’s highest awards obviously likes Rabbi Raanan’s work, too. This week his organization was honored when a representative (Mrs. Rikki Sitton, who has done sterling service with the hostage families) was asked to light one of the torches at the Independence Day ceremony.

For those reaching the hard secular core of the Jewish people as Rabbi Raanan does, his approach is worth watching. While the agenda is clear — shuls, Torah learning, a mezuzah, chavrusas — his tools are endless conversations and simply caring.

He has hundreds of friends in kibbutzim all over the country. These are people he cares for, and who care for him in return. Some are becoming religious, and many never will.

That caring has led Rabbi Raanan down an interesting road over the last year. The kibbutzim of the Gaza and Lebanon borders have long been his stomping ground. When these places were destroyed on October 7 and the war against Hezbollah, these were friends who lost their homes.

So he started an initiative matching homeowners with architects and interior designers who would work pro bono on the rebuilds.

What did that have to do with outreach? How many people became religious through renovations?

Rav Shlomo Wolbe ztz”l had an interesting response to that. When Jews from the Soviet Union started to flood into Israel in the early ’90s, a group of activists came to him to discuss kiruv initiatives.

His response was surprising: “First help them get a job and find a home,” he said “and then they’ll listen when it comes to the rest.”

But there’s a paradox at the heart of a kiruv approach born of friendship. For friendship to work, it can’t be conditional. A relationship conditioned on spiritual progress is transactional, and is no friendship. Pretending to care when you only want the end result won’t cut it, because it’s transparently utilitarian.

So it has to be genuine, unconditional caring. But if there’s no outreach progress, why would a mekarev dedicate time to building those relationships?

The answer is that when caring is a complete package, when it’s about their lives in the broadest physical and spiritual sense — that gets through.

Readers who followed my journey through the Gaza border region with Rabbi Raanan (published in the last Succos edition) will remember just how effective his warm-hearted, genuine approach is.

In these uber-secular outposts of left-wing Israel, progress is incremental — measured in individual lives, not mass movements. But progress there is. And it’s because Rabbi Raanan isn’t transactional. He cares about their Yiddishkeit, their lack of a shul, the Jewish education of their children — and about their homes, finances, and general happiness, too.

Ultimately, the teshuvah movement that began with the Six Day War rests on one thing: the greatness of the Jewish soul, as exhibited by countless individuals who’ve undertaken a personal journey over the last six decades.

Along with hundreds of others, I was reminded of one of those holy neshamos this week at a tragic funeral in Yerushalayim. Avigail Nasi was from Poland, the daughter of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father. She’d undertaken a journey of discovery that saw her fall in love with Torah learning in all its facets.

Living first in Tel Aviv and then Yerushalayim, she’d turn up at any shiur possible. In life she was a reminder that there are many great souls who are on a journey, hungry for connection to Torah. It’s often a mystery why that search for truth burns so strong — yet it’s the privilege of any mekarev who crosses their path to assist the journey.

Avigail’s passing in her thirties was unusually tragic. Despite being a very sociable person, she died alone. Living in a community of many singles, it was three days before she was found. Yet at the levayah, the hundreds of friends who assembled were moved once more by the power of Avigail’s neshamah.

Rabbi Refoel Raiton, who does special outreach work in Tel Aviv, read over a text that Avigail had written a week before her passing to a rabbi in Australia, where she’d lived.

Avigail was finishing a course of antibiotics for a strong infection when she was shaken by a vivid dream in which she’d appeared before the Heavenly Court, and protested that she didn’t want to be there already.

“You know Rabbi I had a dream I was in a beit din. I woke up at two a.m. saying beit din beit din and thank G-d I was awake. Maybe I was supposed to die. Cause I felt my soul almost left my body, day by day it was happening, to the point where I felt like nothing, like I wasn’t here. I am on antibiotics finishing tomorrow, baruch Hashem this bacteria will be dead. But that’s so crazy what happened.”

Never was a truer word written. A great soul clearly sensed that it was on the verge of the ultimate journey.

Even in passing, Avigail brought others close to the roots that she discovered. I suspect that few of the hundreds who made it to the Shamgar funeral home will forget the soft singing of Shifchi Kamayim and Acheinu that swept over the crowd as we waited almost an hour for the levayah to start.

As anyone with a passing acquaintance with the world of front-line rabbinics can tell you, Jews are tough customers. The outreach world is one of much toil and tears. Yet as countless mekarvim will say, it’s all worth it because there’s nothing that casts as much light as a Jewish soul aflame.

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1059)