The early morning wind whips up a wild protest around the Vilna Gaon’s kever. Leah watches Leibel shadow the tealight with his hand. The flame catches, leaps, sputters. He tries again. And again. Until the candle glows. He places it on the ledge of one of the arched niches set in the ohel’s wall. A small spark of warmth in the blistering cold. Half-burnt candles and scorched matches litter the ledge. Others have been here before them. But for now, the Saltonishkiu beis hachayim is empty.

Leah cradles her Tehillim in the palm of her hand. She has said her perakim and so has Leibel. It’s time to say what’s in her heart, but her heart feels like the tangled heap of threads in her sewing box and she is struggling to separate the strands. She imagines that blonde girl, in her shredded jeans, sitting at her scrubbed kitchen table. Zeesy joins her for a bite and they share an easy laugh. Impossible. Her pulse quickens. Not to mention the half-drunk mother, a cigarette dangling from her hand like a fixed thimble. Too bizarre. Too complicated. Risky, even. And yet…

Her eyes rest on the plaque ahead of her. Stark. Square. Stuck above the white Magen David that shields the ohel: Here lies the Rabbi of all Yisrael, HaGaon Rav Eliyahu ztz”l. The words sear her heart... Rabbi of all Yisrael. All Yisrael… A tentative voice springs from the corner of her mind. That would mean the scholar and the shochet. The butcher and candlemaker.

Would not that include a seamstress from Yerushalayim who wishes her husband was home more, and her daughter… not? And the woman from Teplidskai with her teenage daughter? Surely, he will intervene on their behalf, too. The candle’s soft flicker lightens her mood. Another line pops out at her with even greater intensity. Leah stares. “Leibel – look!” Leibel acknowledges the plaque with a knowing smile.

And the ashes of the Ger Tzedek. After a long-ago trip to Vilna, Leibel had mentioned that the ashes of the righteous Avraham ben Avraham were interred in the Vilna Gaon’s kever, but somehow, she’d forgotten.

Avraham ben Avraham. The Polish Count Potocki. Leah’s spine tingles at the memory of her school’s bas mitzvah play. She recalls his passionate last words before being burned at the stake and fidgets with the magnetic clasp on her Tehillim. Open. Close. Open. Here was a man who had given all he had — life itself — for his belief. But long before he was captured by the church and led to his death, he had shunned aristocracy and all its luxuries for the worn bench of a beis medrash in Amsterdam. Leah tugs at her scarf. She bites her lower lip. It can be done. Greater migrations have been undertaken.

When they finally leave, the sun is high in the sky. Even though the day is chilly, its rays send a welcoming warmth their way. It’s not until they enter their Avis Fiat, however, and the engine starts running, that they warm up properly.

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 618)