The brief item in last week’s Inner Circle feature (Issue 342) brought back a flood of memories surrounding an unusual and moving encounter with Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman ztz”l the founder and rosh yeshivah of Yeshivas Ponovezh. I was a witness to that drama.

The news item told about the establishment of a shul in Kibbutz Ein Charod through the work of the Ayelet Hashachar organization. The Ponovezher Rav’s grandson Rav Leizer Kahaneman was invited to the dedication ceremony so that he could see with his own eyes how his venerable grandfather’s wish was being fulfilled.

Nice. For most readers this was an ordinary news item good news to be sure but nothing to get excited about. But for me and my contemporaries it was a momentous event the closing of a circle.

It carried me back in time to my days as a young bochur in Yeshivas Ponovezh when my friends and I had the privilege of listening to the fiery speeches of our rosh yeshivah. Time and again in those deliveries he declared his firm belief that even in such places as Ein Charod the people of Israel would one day do teshuvah and that we must prepare tefillin for these kibbutzniks. He held us spellbound with his rhetorical skills; his eyes would sparkle and flash shooting arrows of faith that pierced our hearts and lodged there infecting us too with the belief that this day would indeed come and that we must be ready for it.

Yes we believed in that blazing faith. Or to be more truthful we wanted to believe in it. But in those days his words seemed to be only inspiring rhetoric. We couldn’t help it. Much as we loved and admired our rav there was nothing to anchor his words in the reality we saw all around us the Israeli society of the fifties and sixties. There wasn’t the faintest sign on the horizon that his vision would actually come true. Quite the opposite. Reality was working against his great dream. Heresy was spreading aggressively. Pride in secular Zionism especially the Socialist brand was setting the tone in all areas of life. The chareidi sector especially the shrunken yeshivah world was an object of scorn and ridicule for the secular and religious-Zionist population who felt a sense of superiority and victory over us. “When the old chareidim die out their youth will be ours ” was a slogan often heard from the Left.

And don’t think their confidence was unfounded. Young people from the finest chareidi homes were swept away by the ideals on which the new Jewish state had been founded. The vision of establishing a state had been fulfilled and along with it came glorification of the army and a stirring of pride in the “new Jew” who had arisen from the ashes. Israeli hubris was at its peak and many of our youth came under its influence and drifted away….

Add to that the fact that in an organized antireligious campaign the government forcibly inducted thousands of immigrant children from Middle Eastern countries into secular kibbutzim where all traces of adherence to the mitzvos were eradicated from their hearts.

And what about Kibbutz Ein Charod? Ahh yes. It became the very symbol of Marxist-Socialist apostacy. It was the kibbutz that raised the banner of rebellion against the Torah and its adherents and flew it at full mast while a majority of Leftist kibbutzim followed its lead. We viewed it as the spearhead of the Sitra Achra in the Holy Land.

Yet in the midst of this gloomy situation of which I’ve sketched only a quick outline the Rav ztz”l stood up and publicly proclaimed “Prepare tefillin for the people of Kibbutz Ein Charod!”

You can imagine what many chareidi Jews thought about that statement….

Until one day when a striking thing occurred.

It was a few days after Tisha B’Av in 1960. During the summer bein hazmanim vacation the yeshivah was hosting Yarchei Kallah sessions (this was one of the Rav’s innovations an opportunity for working men to gather for a week-long Torah study retreat. The idea caught on and it has been much-imitated ever since).

We bochurim who learned there all year would go up to the yeshivah on the hilltop curious to see the wonderful sight of hundreds of balabatim occupying the students’ benches as they did in their youth hearing shirumim and enjoying the sharp pilpul of Torah. Since this whole idea was still in its infancy it was fascinating for us to see the beis medrash full of mature men. And as our eyes scanned the crowd we spotted one man who looked different from all the others. He was dressed differently and he even sat differently. Clearly this was not one of the frum balabatim of Bnei Brak.

Several of us boys went over to find out who he was. We introduced ourselves as students from the yeshivah and asked him where he was from. “I’m a kibbutznik” he said “and I want to learn a little Torah.”

“Which kibbutz are you from?” we asked.

“From Ein Charod” he replied.

Truth be told if we’d been seated at the time we would have fallen out of our chairs. As it was we just stood there speechless. Today after so many kibbutzniks have found their way back to the Torah this story might sound trivial. But then in our youth a kibbutznik farmer with gnarled hands and a suntanned face was something we didn’t see every day and certainly not in a yeshivah. And from Ein Charod of all places! And where was this happening? In Yeshivas Ponovezh a few steps away from the home of our rosh yeshivah who dreamed of the kibbutzniks of Ein Charod putting on tefillin. Incredible!

A tingle went up and down our spines….

The first one of us to recover said “He’s got to go in to see the Rav.”

We asked him if he’d come with us and he agreed. On the way he told us that he was the father of Meir Har Tzion who was one of a bold group of fighters in the special unit started by Arik Sharon to fight the terrorists that were infiltrating the fledgling state. He is an esteemed figure whose battle strategies are studied in many military schools around the world. Meir Har Tzion was an object of admiration for Israeli youth in those days even in chareidi circles.

And here was his father a member of Kibbutz Ein Charod coming to our yeshivah to learn Torah and now he was standing with us at the door of the Ponovezher Rav’s apartment.

An emotional scene ensued. The Rav fell upon the kibbutznik’s neck in a warm embrace. I don’t remember what they said to each other. But I know that we left that room with a powerful feeling that the Rav’s dream would indeed come true one day….

If the editor of the Inner Circle page had been me there would have been a big headline over that item about the shul in Ein Charod. This is a sensational event. On the other hand though I can say baruch Hashem that we are seeing such good days that for today’s readers the dedication of a shul on a secular kibbutz seems like an everyday occurrence. After all the shul in Ein Charod isn’t the first one to be dedicated on an Israeli kibbutz. Ayelet Hashachar and other organizations have already established shuls in tens of kibbutzim. For them Ein Charod is just one more kibbutz.

But for me it is much more….