I

 t’s one holy day in a holy place that Beri Weber tries not to miss: Lag B’omer with Rabi Shimon. Two years ago though, he had a last minute emergency and couldn’t travel to Meron. “One of my mashpiim advised me to go to a local kever of a rebbe, so that I would be able to connect to Reb Shimon there, and so I took a hitch with someone who was going to the kever of the Ribnitzer.” On the way, Beri was talking to the driver, and he mentioned that he had decided to work on a song in honor of Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai. The driver made one request: He had a son whom he was very worried about — could Beri mention his name at the kever and daven for his spiritual recovery? Beri gladly agreed, and even offered to dedicate the song he was working on to the boy’s soul.

When Beri asked Reb Pinky Weber for a song in honor of Rabi Shimon, the veteran composer offered a light but sparkling tune to the words that promise the eternal endurance of Torah. “I loved it. The words ‘Ki lo sishokach mipi zaro’ — the words inscribed over the tziyun and the end letters of which spell out the word ‘Yochai’ —are especially resonant for a Breslover, as there is a whole Torah in Likutei Moharan on this pasuk.”

That summer, Beri was in Tzfas for an event and met a group of teenagers — and he soon figured out that one of the boys was the son of that Lag B’omer driver.

“Three weeks later, the father called to tell me that his son had turned 18 and wanted to come back to America and do teshuvah. That was the week I was working on the final arrangements for ‘Rabi Shimon.’ The day it was ready, the boy came back!”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 707)